Carl ordered Sienna and drew his sword. Sienna looked at the sword, which gave a green glow, and stopped him. She realized what he was about to do.
“What are you doing?!”
“This kid can’t live anyway. It’s better to let him go comfortably than to keep him suffering like this and then die.”
“No!”
Sienna pulled off Carl, who was about to end Kevin’s life.
“It’s not just about your emotions. With this much injury, it’s unimaginable to be alive right now. How much more are you going to let him suffer? It would be better for this kid to make him comfortable at once.”
“No! He can save him. I’m sure Roy will save him. We can save it!”
Sienna clung to Carl’s arm holding a sword and shouted.
“No matter how capable he is, this is too much.”
“The power of treatment of God is great, but how can we save this child, who is already like a dead body?” Sienna was stubborn. “Here.” Carl shook his head.
“No, Roy will be able to save his life if he keeps his breath. Please.”
Unable to beat Sienna’s request, Carl put the sword back in. She wrapped her hands around Kevin’s torn stomach. It was to stop the bleeding.
Kevin no longer groaned. He was on the verge of death.
“Please wake up…”
“If Priest Roy doesn’t get here soon…he’ll have to save the body of a dead child, not a dying child.”
“He’ll be here soon.”
Sienna said confidently, with no information on where Roy was.
“Kevin, wake up. Please hang in there until Priest Roy comes.”
Sienna held on to Kevin and said desperately. Carl was looking at them, trying to calm his grieving heart when he felt a small movement.
“Is there another space here? I hear the children crying.”
Sienna recalled what Roy said at the banquet at Carl’s words. There was a secret space on the floor of the dormitory, which used to be a liquor storehouse, so it was used as a hideout for children.
“I heard there was a place on the floor of the children’s bedroom that used to be a liquor storehouse.”
When Carl heard that, he looked between the beds. Sienna also heard only through Roy that there was a place like that, so she couldn’t explain it in detail because she didn’t know exactly where it was.
Carl quickly scanned the floor. He could see a spot on the wooden floor where the gap stood out. When he knocked on the spot, there was a hollow sound, unlike other floors. Through that, he knew there was another space under the wooden floor.
He lifted his finger between the cracks. The door was oiled and lifted smoothly.
“AHHHHH!”
The children’s cries were heard as soon as there was a crack.
“Save us! Please!”
The frightened children begged for help as soon as the light came on in the dark underground. Carl said he wasn’t a killer with a puzzled look, but it didn’t work. The children, who saw Carl’s face for the first time thought he was an intruder who came to kill them, cried, and begged for their lives.
“I’m here to save you.”
Said Carl, reaching out his hand. The crying children could not easily believe what Carl said. After a long pause, the children came up holding his hand.
The children’s condition was a mess. Some children had vomited underground, some had vomit on their clothes, and some showed disrespect for their pants. Even the street children who grew up in harsh conditions were not able to handle this situation.
The children came up and vomited again, unable to bear the sight of the misery.
The floor was covered with blood and parts of the body that fell off rolled on the floor. What’s worse was that those who shed their blood were friends who slept and ate with them.
“What’s going on here? No, rather, where is Priest Roy?”
Carl asked a girl who was in a relatively normal state of speaking.
“The Merchants, the Merchants… He went there.”
“Merchants?”
Sienna answered Carl instead of the girl.
“She’s probably talking about Aunt Kelly’s Green Merchants. I’m going to go get the priest Roy.”
Carl shook his head at Sienna’s words. It was clear that she would be in the limelight if she went outside, covered in blood.
“I’ll go. If you could explain where it is.”
“I’ll go.”
Said the girl who had just answered Carl’s question. Carl said he would go because he had to move quickly, but the child strengthened her eyes and said clearly.
“I’m good at running. I can run fast.”
Carl read the will in the child’s eyes. He let her go because he didn’t want to break the child’s will.
The child turned around and moved quickly, but stopped at the door. The child’s face showed a fear that was hard to win by will alone.
Carl knew the horrors outside the door. He didn’t know if the child saw the tragedy or not, but it was a terrible thing that the child should never see. Carl hugged the child around her waist and lifted her up.
“Oh my!”
The child, who suddenly fell into Carl’s arms, screamed in a fit of surprise.
“Only until the entrance to the temple. Keep your eyes closed.”
Understanding Carl’s words, the child closed her eyes tightly and covered her face with her palm showing her nervousness. Carl looked around Sienna and said, “I’ll be back.”
“Be careful please.”
Carl wondered what was there to be careful about coming back forth from the Merchants, but he still answered by simply nodding his head.
The children who came up from the basement went near Sienna. Fortunately, there were children who knew Sienna. The children sat around Kevin next to Sienna.
Sienna asked the children what happened. The children explained about the crowd of men who entered the temple as soon as Roy left.
“We thought they were new believers. There are a lot of new people coming these days.”
“Did they come in without a mask?”
Sienna bit her lower lip when she heard that they had entered the entrance with a mask covering their faces.
Not even thinking about covering their face meant they came in with a purpose not to leave any witnesses behind. The aim was to kill all the children in the temple from the start.
“Yes, they just came in. They asked me where the priest was, so I told them he’d be back in the afternoon. And one of them locked the door that leads outside of the temple.”
The children judged their behavior suspicious. Robin immediately captured their grotesque energy and movements and whispered to Kevin to run away to the dormitory, lock the door, and evacuate the children. Kevin didn’t understand Robin at once, but he was a reliable brother, so he moved quickly as he said and went into the dormitory.
The men took out their swords immediately realizing that the children had noticed. What the children saw as they closed the back door of the temple was the bloody faces of their older brothers, and of the man running to stop them from closing the door.
Fortunately, Kevin and the children could enter the dormitory and lock the door. But the raiders tried to kick in the door.
There was nowhere to run. Men who couldn’t win with their bare hands were swinging long swords. Kevin realized it was hard to survive in their hands.
“*sniff sniff* Kevin told me to hide down there. And don’t make any noise because bad people have come in.”
“Why didn’t Kevin hide with you?”
“Kevin and we are too short to close that door from the inside. You have to push it outside like this. I asked him to come in with me, but…”
The child burst into tears without being able to speak. They would never forget Kevin’s face who assured them they would be okay as he closed the basement door above them, for the rest of their life.
Kevin must have been scared, but still went on to tell the younger ones that it’ll be okay, don’t worry about him and keep holding their breaths. Kevin apparently still managed to raise the corners of his mouth, but he was shaking with a pale complexion. He kept looking back at the noise of knocking down the door. Nevertheless, he tried not to show fear.
“To save us…”
“Sienna, is Kevin going to die? Is he dying because of us?”
The children, who had just barely stopped crying, burst into tears again. Sienna also burst into tears.
“No. When Roy comes, he’ll save him. He will, I promise.”
Sienna spoke emphatically, but the children didn’t believe it. She was so nervous that she had trouble speaking, and her eyes were soaking wet with tears.
Children’s cries grew louder in the dormitory. The dormitory, which served as a roof for children with nowhere to go, had become a terrible scene of a crime, with a mixture of the smell of blood and filth.
Sienna hoped that the door would open before the faint pulse felt in her palm stopped. She hoped Carl gets Roy in a hurry…
The door opened wide and Carl came in as if her earnestness had worked. Roy hung on one arm of Carl with an uneasy face.
“Priest Roy!”
Sienna shouted in a voice of joy and relief.
*PLOP* Carl threw Roy to the floor and dropped him. Roy raised himself with a cough.
“Cough, cough! What’s going on?”
Asked Roy, who came dangled into Carl’s arm and saw the terrible misery inside the temple.
“Hurry! Please save Kevin quickly.”
There was no time to explain this situation. Sienna felt the pulse in her palm too faint and slow to be sure that Kevin was alive now. It was an attack that would not make it strange if Kevin’s heart stopped immediately.