Chapter 80

Lino thought the surgical lights had flared so violently they swallowed the entire room. No, it felt less like a flare and more like the bulbs had literally exploded with a deafening pop! In a fraction of a second, the blinding light devoured both his vision and his consciousness.

Huh.

Looking around, Lino realized the lights hadn’t exploded; he was simply standing in a space made entirely of radiant light. It was white everywhere. Top, bottom, left, and right—an endless, seamless void of pure white where the ceiling, floor, and walls were indistinguishable. And he was completely alone in it.

After staring blankly at the white expanse for a moment, Lino suddenly realized his stomach was completely flat. He jumped in shock.

Where did the babies…!

Then, recalling that his last memory was lying on an operating table, he let out a soft “Ah” of realization. It was an ambiguous sigh, hovering somewhere between relief and dread. And then.

Is this a dream?

He assessed his current situation. The transition from the blinding surgical lights to this serene landscape was entirely disjointed. It had to be a dreamscape.

He remembered being carried to the bathroom by Grondil, the deeply humiliating things that happened there, and his sheer panic when his water abruptly broke. After that, everything was a chaotic blur. One thing was certain: his delivery was nowhere near normal. His stomach had been in such agonizing pain that his consciousness kept trying to snap. He vaguely remembered Grondil and Erin discussing his condition in the limo, but his fading mind hadn’t comprehended a single word. It had taken everything he had just to focus on Grondil whispering to him, desperately maintaining eye contact so he wouldn’t pass out. When his eyelids grew unbearably heavy, he clung to the sound of that voice; when the ringing in his ears drowned out the words, he anchored himself to the searing heat of Grondil’s hand gripping his own.

Figures. A natural birth was totally impossible.

Even Lino had known the babies were far too large. Watching his belly balloon exponentially day by day, he had genuinely feared it might just burst open. While he hadn’t exactly been around many pregnant people in his life, he was self-aware enough to know his condition was far beyond any normal metric.

Thud. Lino sat down, then unceremoniously flopped backward onto the floor. There was no point in exploring; the endless white void killed any desire to wander. Surprisingly, the floor beneath him was warm and incredibly plush. Soft white hazes flickered around him, making it feel as though he were lying on a bed of clouds.

I’m sleepy.

The moment he lay down, a wave of drowsiness washed over him, drawing a soft chuckle from his lips. It’s a dream, yet I’m getting sleepy in it. It felt entirely absurd, but then again, dream logic dictated anything was possible.

Lino absentmindedly rubbed his newly flattened, awkwardly empty stomach. Are the babies out by now? He wondered if the surgery was still ongoing or if he had already been moved to a recovery room.

Lifting the hem of his shirt, he inspected his abdomen. The well-defined abs he’d had before meeting Grondil were perfectly intact. If he’d had a C-section, there should be a massive surgical scar. Is it missing because this is a dream? Or…

Was everything up until now the actual dream…?

Hmm… Lino stared up at the featureless ceiling, closing his eyes. If lying on that operating table was the dream, did that mean this empty void was reality? But this place lacked any sense of reality, too. Was he having a dream within a dream?

A faint crease formed between his closed eyes. It didn’t matter if this was a dream or reality. What genuinely bothered him—what caused his brow to furrow—was wondering exactly how much of his time with Grondil had been nothing but a hallucination.

There were definitely parts of his life he wished were dreams. Being abandoned nameless in the freezing dead of winter outside an orphanage, enduring the absolute squalor of the slums—those were lives he never, ever wanted to repeat. Sure, others might have had it worse, but he still refused to live through that hell again. If he could, he wanted to track down his faceless parents and demand to know why they even bothered having him if they were just going to throw him away.

You should have just killed me. Leaving an infant wrapped in a mere sack in the murderous northern winter was tantamount to a death sentence anyway. If you wanted me dead, why go through the hassle of dropping me at an orphanage? He had wanted to scream that at them, though that burning resentment had gradually softened once his overwhelming desire to see Isberg took root.

Outwardly, Lino always appeared entirely carefree and unbothered, but inside, his heart was a tangled, scarred mess.

Regardless, Lino had lived his life like a fallen leaf drifting on a rushing river, simply surrendering to the current. He never had the luxury or the power to rebel. Believing he had to at least maintain his basic human dignity, he endured by emotionally shutting out the various forms of violence inflicted upon him. It was only possible because of his inherently stoic, accepting nature.

But then, Lino truly believed a blinding light had finally pierced the darkness of his life. Castillion Luz Grondil La Isberg. The Grand King of the Principality of Isberg—the very place he had yearned to see. In truth, the Grand King of a Grand Principality, and in reality, a divine beast beloved by the gods.

In actuality, the title of Grand Duke was merely a convenient facade; Grondil was the true, hidden ruler of the Terne Continent, utterly untouchable by the Cartia Empire’s influence.

And that absolute ruler had brought Lino to Isberg. He had revealed the secrets of Lino’s own body, claimed him as his mate, and ruthlessly eradicated every single threat to Lino’s life.

Most importantly, to a man who had been profoundly lonely his entire existence, Grondil had given him a real family. Sure, there was the minor technicality that Lino had to physically give birth to them himself, but in the blink of an eye, he had gained the wealthiest husband on the continent and three adorable—they had to be adorable—babies.

And he was just moments away from finally meeting the children he had nurtured in his own womb.

Was all of that just a dream, too?

The crease between his brows deepened, crinkling the bridge of his nose. His white teeth began to anxiously gnaw at his lower lip. A soft, muffled groan vibrated in his throat, unable to fully escape his lips before fading away. Slowly, the tension in his face smoothed out. His reddened, bitten lip was released.

“Well, that’s just my luck.”

Nothing I can do about it.

In that fleeting moment, Lino accepted his supposed fate. He didn’t know if this was reality or a dream. He couldn’t comprehend how any of this worked, but he simply accepted it and gave up. He had learned long ago that swiftly accepting whatever was thrown at him—good or bad—was the only way to survive to see tomorrow in one piece.

But when I wake up from this dream, what happens then?

Where would his reality resume?

Keeping his eyes closed, Lino fell into deep thought. What point in time would he need to wake up at to ensure a somewhat peaceful life? The absolute best-case scenario would be waking up in a hospital bed after safely delivering his babies, but Lino refused to harbor such hope. In his entire miserable life, whenever he stood at a crossroads, he had never once been allowed to choose the path he actually desired. No matter what he picked, the outcome was always a desperate struggle just to keep breathing. Having only ever experienced outcomes that were neither the worst nor the best, his current lack of hope for a future in Isberg was simply a trauma-induced defense mechanism.

Even if he desperately wanted to start a new life in Isberg with Grondil and their babies, hoping for it would only result in the bitter reminder that the gods were never on his side. If it were a dream, he would give up easily; if it weren’t, he would give up while leaving behind a crushing mountain of lingering attachment. Either way, the end result was him giving up…

“I don’t want to.”

The short, blunt refusal slipped from his lips before he could stop it. Startled by the defiant words that bypassed his own will, Lino let out a soft gasp.

“…”

Did that really slip out against my will?

Or did my true, unfiltered feelings just surface?

“I really don’t want to.”

Saying it a second time cemented the feeling. He absolutely hated it. The brightest, warmest light had finally graced his miserable life—why the hell should he have to turn his back on it? If his time with Grondil truly was a dream, wasn’t it entirely natural to pray it was reality? If it’s a dream, I want it to be real; if it’s reality, I want to go back to it. What was so wrong with wanting that? It was just a simple desire. If it came true, great. It wasn’t as if there was some cosmic law stating Lino Cliff wasn’t even allowed to be greedy.

For the first time in his life, Lino dragged his deeply buried desires into the light. And, directing his grievances at no one in particular, he began to vent.

There probably isn’t a single soul in this world who has submitted to their given fate as compliantly as I have. No matter what irrational, absurd choices were forced upon me, I accepted them. So just this once, couldn’t you let me grab the choice that leads to a happy ending?

In that empty, echoing void, Lino poured out his grievances like a bitter lament.

Truthfully, even now, he was about half… no, seventy percent resigned to his fate. The thought even crossed his mind that this might be the afterlife.

But if this is the afterlife, does that mean I died giving birth? If so, I really hope I died only after safely delivering the babies.

Operating on the desperate premise that his time with Grondil wasn’t a dream, Lino let his thoughts run wild. Every single thought was dripping with a thick, heavy attachment to the life he had built.

“Seriously… I’m so fucking sick of this.”

He was sick of being in pain, and he was sick of being alone. Yet his final memory was being in agonizing pain on an operating table, only to wake up completely alone in a barren white void.

The gods really must despise me. They consistently threw nothing but the things he hated most right at his feet. Overcome with sudden gloom, Lino aggressively rubbed at his heating eyes, using the stinging friction to crush the tears before they could fall. There wasn’t a single soul here to judge him for crying, but pure, stubborn pride demanded he erase the evidence.

“Let’s just sleep.”

He had been fighting off the encroaching drowsiness for a while now, but upon reflection, there was absolutely no reason to resist. Would he wake up somewhere else? What if he woke up in an even more utterly fucked-up situation? Anxiety prickled at him. But ultimately, he decided to just surrender to the heavy pull of sleep. If it’s fucked up, so be it. It was just another current he couldn’t fight against anyway. He would just ride it out. If the current dragged him down to the absolute rock-bottom worst…

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to just cut the cord myself before it gets to that point.

What was the point of struggling so desperately to live? The one fragile hope he had managed to grasp had dissolved into sea foam. If that was the case, enduring until he broke… no, why even bother enduring that long?

Lino decided to lean into his ultimate specialty: letting go at the first sign of overwhelming hardship. Acceptance, resignation, surrender.

Thinking about it now, it was genuinely a miracle he hadn’t killed himself using those three coping mechanisms. It was equally miraculous that his sole reason for fighting tooth and nail for one more day of life had been the singular, desperate goal of seeing Isberg.

Isberg. Well, I did get a rough look around. He had achieved his life’s greatest wish, so maybe that was enough. As for building a family—he never got to hold his babies, but he had technically formed one. And as for finding a home for them, living in Grondil’s colossal palace was more than enough to satisfy him.

As if his passionate venting moments prior had never happened, Lino methodically laid out every logical reason why it was perfectly fine to give up. Because of this, because of that… so, there’s nothing I can do.

Right. There’s nothing I can do—

Just as he fully embraced resignation and allowed the heavy blanket of sleep to pull him under.

—Nevertheless. Are you not the one who will refuse to give up and keep moving forward?

A resonant, echoing voice vibrated directly within Lino’s mind.

Huh…?

It was a voice he had never heard before. A bizarre, entirely unplaceable voice that was impossible to categorize as male or female, young or old.

Who are you?

—Go. I shall bring your hardships to an end here.

…?

Lino desperately tried to comprehend the cryptic words, but his consciousness, already half-devoured by sleep, began to rapidly melt away into a hazy blur.

At the very fraying edge of his awareness, he felt something incredibly warm and soft gently stroke his hair. And a whispering voice, laced with profound pride and comfort.

—You have endured well.