Lackey's Seducing Survival Odyssey

Chapter 1888: My Mother…

Aether was surprised to see that Arcane had taken his fake mother to Allen and asked him to protect her, almost as if she already knew that Aether would eventually come searching for his mother.

So… Arcane did all of this for him?

Just for him?

Not even for the other iterations?

Why?

Aether blankly stared at the visuals of his friend and his wife doing everything they could to keep Aether’s Mother hidden from the others.

They had brought her to this place and entrusted Allen’s grandmother with taking care of her, keeping her away from everything that was happening outside.

Aether fell silent.

Was Allen doing all of this because of the guilt he carried?

Was that the reason he had protected her despite everything that had happened?

And why had Arcane chosen him over Jonathan?

From Aether’s perspective, both of them had betrayed him.

Hell, Allen had even been willing to kill his own daughter.

“P-Please… forgive me. If it weren’t for me… A-Aether….Aether…. gulp… I should have done more… I should have been better. Please… I am sorry.”

Allen’s painful words echoed through the space.

Aether’s eyes gradually turned dull as he lowered his head, listening to the broken voice of the man who had once been his friend.

What was the point of asking for forgiveness when the damage had already been done?

After everyone had left his life, Aether had believed that his friends were the only people who would always have his back, but now, even that belief had become nothing more than another painful illusion.

“If I ever see him again, even if it is only for one last time, I would give him everything I have for his forgiveness, Mother. I know I have no right to ask for it… but I still want to hear him tell me that I am forgiven. I… I am really sorry.”

Allen quietly begged those words before Aether’s unmoving mother, his voice growing weaker with every sentence.

“…” Aether remained silent for a moment before slowly turning away. There was nothing else he needed to hear—

“My son… was assaulted by Maiuri, Mother.”

The moment Aether heard those words, his eyes instantly widened.

He turned back and saw Allen sitting there in silence, his face wet with tears.

The man looked utterly hollow, as though every reason he had to keep standing had been stripped away from him.

“Haha… First, my daughter was assaulted by my so-called friend, Jonathan, and now my son has been assaulted by his own wife. Was this… Karma, Mother? Is this the price I am finally paying for everything I had done?”

Allen clenched his eyes shut as a bitter laugh escaped his trembling lips.

“And do you know what is even worse, Mother? I could not even do anything to stop it. Just like before, I begged the President to protect my children, but once again, I could only stand there and watch things happen to them.”

His hands slowly tightened against his knees as his tears continued to fall.

“I am… completely useless. I could not protect my children. I could not protect my friend. I could not even protect the people who trusted me to protect them.

Tell me, Mother… what am I even living for if I cannot protect a single person who matters to me?”

Aether remained silent as he watched Allen slowly break apart in front of him.

There was no anger left in the man’s voice anymore, only exhaustion and the unbearable weight of everything he had carried in silence.

“Even though I was chosen by Arcane, in the end, I am still nothing but a puppet to him, Mother.

I was given power, authority, and a position that everyone else envies, yet I could not use any of it when the people I loved actually needed me.”

Allen stared blankly at the floor, his tears falling without resistance.

“I watched children being sold like toys to the rich.

I watched men being treated like tools and worked until there was nothing left of them.

I watched women being reduced to nothing more than test subjects as though their lives had no value beyond what could be extracted from their bodies.”

His voice trembled as he struggled to continue.

“And the worst part is that I stood there and played my part. I stood before those people and acted as an auctioneer while their lives were bought and sold in front of me.”

A bitter laugh escaped him again, but there was no amusement in it.

“Hahaha… It is disgusting, Mother. Everything about this is disgusting. I kept telling myself that I was doing what I had to do, that I was protecting something greater, that someday all of this would have meaning.”

Allen slowly lowered his head, his shoulders trembling.

“But how many times can a man tell himself that before he finally realises he has become part of the very thing he hates?

I want to die, Mother.

I genuinely want to disappear, because every time I look at this world, it feels more wrong than the last time.”

His words trembled with pain, as though the confession had been buried inside him for far too long.

“This world is wrong, Mother… so wrong. And the worst part is that I do not know whether I am still trying to change it… or whether I have simply become another part of it.”

“…”

Aether’s expression slightly frowned as he continued staring at Allen.

Allen then looked at the fake mother and spoke softly,

“The only reason I kept going was because of you, Mother. No… because of him. Arcane told me that he would come one day for you.

I don’t know how he knew, and I don’t know when that day will come, but… I have been waiting for it all this time.

One last time.”

“…”

Aether fell utterly silent as he watched Allen’s broken smile. A moment later, the visuals slowly dispersed, fading away until nothing remained.

Aether stood there silently within the reddish-hued space, his body unmoving as something deep inside him seemed to shift.

His eyes slowly cleared, as though a fog that had clouded them for years was finally beginning to lift.

He then turned toward the storm.

Without saying anything, he began walking toward it. With every step, the distant words of his mother echoed from within the storm.

“I…I…I…I…I…”

The same broken words repeated endlessly, like a damaged recording trapped within the storm.

Aether’s eyes trembled as he whispered,

“I had so much pain…”

He stepped closer and closer, and with every word that escaped his lips, his steps became heavier.

“I didn’t come here for your apology.”

Step.

“I didn’t come here for answers.”

Step.

“And I didn’t come here for your hatred.”

Step.

Aether finally stood before the storm. Slowly, he raised his hand and touched its surface with his fingertips.

The moment he touched it, he felt something.

Her pain.

It was not merely an echo within the storm. He could feel it resonating through him, as though the storm itself had become a reflection of everything she had suffered.

His eyes blurred with tears as he lowered his head.

“I… I came because… no matter what happened, no matter how hard I pretended to hate you, and no matter how much I pushed you out of my mind… deep down, I always knew the truth.”

His trembling fingers remained against the storm.

“We love you… and we always will, for as long as we breathe.”

We?

The child with ice-blue eyes stood before the storm, tears streaming down his face as he cried like a child who had finally found the one person he had spent his entire life searching for.

The storm violently trembled.

Aether weakly smiled through his tears and continued.

“The only reason I am here is to take you back. That’s all. I never wanted an answer from you, and I never needed one.

Even if the truth hurts, I know that my love for you was always real, even if it only came from my side.”

His voice grew weaker, but he refused to look away.

“I cannot leave my mother behind like a dead body.

Even if you hate me to the core… even if you never loved me… even if you never needed me… you are still my mother.”

His eyes trembled as his hand slowly moved toward the cosmic-black long katana embedded in his chest.

His fingers wrapped around its hilt.

He slowly pulled the blade from his chest.

A deep pain spread through his body, but he did not care. He simply smiled through the tears.

“But now I know…”

His trembling gaze remained fixed upon the storm.

“My mother… loved me enough to suffer.”

His voice carried both pain and love, as though those two emotions had finally become impossible for him to separate.

He raised the cosmic-black katana in one hand and the purple-flame sword in the other.

He stared at the storm with tears still lingering in his eyes.

“Enough of suffering for me, Mom.”

SLUCKKK!!

With all his strength, he struck the storm with both blades at the same time, crossing them into an ‘X’.

PUFFF!!

Like a flame blown away by the wind, the storm suddenly burst apart, scattering into countless fragments of light.

The person within the eye of the storm slowly began to fall from the air.

Aether shoved the swords away and gently caught his mother in his arms. He slowly sat down, holding her against him as he looked at her face with a warm, trembling smile through his tears.

His mother had always been beautiful in his eyes, even now, when her entire body was covered in cracks, as though she were on the verge of breaking apart completely.

The woman slowly opened her dull and broken eyes. The first thing she saw was her son.

A small smile appeared on her weak face as she parted her lips gently, each word seemingly causing her pain.

“I… am… sorry.”

Drip…

Drip…

Tears flowed from Aether’s eyes as he smiled through them. He gently wiped the blood-like tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Why are you sorry?” he whispered.

“You threw everything away just to stay for a soul that you owed nothing. Haha… I don’t know if I could have done the same.”

The woman blankly stared at his face.

“A… Aether…”

“Yes.”

“I… am… sorry.”

“It’s alright, Mom. It’s alright,” he said softly.

But the woman gently shook her head.

“I am… responsible… to you… dear…”

She slowly raised her trembling hand and touched his cheek.

Aether’s body trembled violently as more tears escaped his eyes. He gently took her hand and pressed it closer against his cheek.

“No, Mom… You are not responsible for what that man did to me. In fact, I am happy… You know, I feel like I am walking above the clouds right now, knowing that my mother never abandoned me.

It was her son who failed to see that.”

Seeing her son with those broken, dull eyes made something inside the woman ache.

Whatever pain she had been feeling seemed to disappear before him, as though none of it mattered anymore. She could not bear to see her son looking at himself as though he had been abandoned by the very person he had spent his life longing for.

The woman gently smiled as she whispered, “He… and I… are one. Whatever he did… belongs to me as well.”

Her trembling lips quivered as more blood-like tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I… I hurt you, dear. I hurt the one person who showed me what love truly was.”

Aether immediately shook his head, his voice trembling as he struggled to hold back his tears.

“N-No, Mom… You are not… You are…”

She simply smiled, as if silently admitting that she was. After all, to her, whatever that man had done to her son was something she had done as well, because the two of them were one.

The woman slowly sat up, even though the cracks spreading across her body widened further with every movement, small fragments of her beginning to crumble away.

“N-No, Mom… don’t move,” Aether tried to stop her, but the woman gently pushed his hand aside and sat upright.

She looked directly into his eyes and smiled, a smile filled with sadness, warmth, and something Aether had spent years believing he would never see again.

“Look at you… all grown up,” she whispered. “I still remember when you were so small that I could carry you in one arm. Somehow, you became someone I could no longer protect with my arms alone.”

She leaned forward and pulled him into her embrace, wrapping her fragile arms around him gently but tightly.

“Are you… alright, darling?”

Aether’s eyes widened for a moment.

Those words…

His dull eyes suddenly seemed to flare with colour, as though those simple words had reached into the deepest, emptiest part of him and finally filled the hole that had been there all this time.

It was only a question.

Just three words.

Yet those three words carried something he had been desperately searching for without even knowing how to ask for it.

No matter how powerful the embrace was, not even Mary had ever been able to make him feel this way.

His bright, colourful eyes slowly closed as more tears escaped them. He wrapped his arms around his mother and hugged her tightly, almost as if he were afraid that she would disappear the moment he loosened his grip.

“Mom…”

His voice was barely audible.

How long had he longed for this embrace?

So long… so long that he had almost forgotten what it felt like to be held by her.

Why was it so warm… and yet so painful at the same time?

Why did something this gentle hurt more than all the wounds he had ever endured?

The man who had believed he had lost every bit of emotion within himself, the man who had killed millions of innocents and hurt even his own wife, was now bawling like a child in his mother’s arms.

The woman gently ruffled his hair, her fingers moving slowly through it as she held him closer.

“You don’t have to be strong anymore, darling,” she whispered. “Whatever you have been carrying all this time, you can put it down here. Just for a little while… let your mother hold you.”

Aether’s shoulders trembled harder.

The woman closed her eyes and gently rested her cheek against his head.

“I am sorry you had to grow up without this,” she murmured. “I am sorry that when you needed your mother, all you had was an empty place where she should have been.”

Her voice trembled.

Then, she turned her gaze toward the child with ice-blue eyes who was standing quietly nearby.

“Come.”

Aether’s eyes widened as he looked at her.

“You can see him…?”

The woman smiled gently.

“Of course I can see my child.”

The moment those words left her lips, the child ran toward her and threw his arms around her.

The woman lowered her arms and embraced the child as well, holding both of them against herself.

She looked at her two children, but in her eyes, there had never been two of them.

They were one.

Her only child.

A gentle smile appeared on her face, though tears slowly gathered in her eyes.

“It is all because of me…”

Her gaze moved between them.

“Look at you… You are hurt, and you have been carrying so much pain for so long. If it were not for me… perhaps none of this would have happened.”

Her lips trembled as she struggled to continue.

“I… I wish I could tell you that I had protected you. I wish I could tell you that I was there when you needed me most. But I was not.”

She lowered her head.

“And for that, I have no excuse.”

“Please… never forgive this mother.”

“…”

Aether’s eyes trembled.

The child bawled as he violently shook his head, shouting, “NO!” as though those words were Aether’s truest emotions finally given a voice.

The woman reached out and gently touched the child’s cheek.

“It is alright to hate your mother, you know.”

Aether looked directly into his mother’s eyes.

They were filled with unbearable pain, grief, and guilt, as though she truly believed that she had been the one who committed every heinous act against him, the one who had broken his heart and destroyed everything he had once held dear.

Yet Aether knew the truth.

She had not done those things.

Those sins did not belong to her.

And yet…

She believed they did.

To her, there was no difference between what he had done and what she had done, because they were one.

And that belief was enough for her to look at her son and mourn every wound he had ever suffered.

Aether stared at her trembling face, his tears falling silently.