I Have 10,000 SSS Rank Villains In My System Space Chapter 500: The Wagons

At the borders of Blackhollow Keep.

The main road leading toward the Osicade Kingdom stretched out beyond the great outer gates like a long grey wound cut through the land. The path was made from wide stone panels, old and heavy, fitted together across the ground and running straight through a clearing in the small forest beyond the keep. On normal days, merchants would have passed through that road with wagons full of grain, cloth, iron, salt, spices, timber, and letters from other territories.

On normal days, guards would have checked papers, travelers would have complained about taxes, and children from nearby houses would have stood at a distance watching the movement of carts with curious eyes.

But today, the place felt wrong. The air near the gates was tense, thick with whispers and fear, as if something terrible had entered the keep and everyone had already smelled it before seeing it.

A shadow portal opened quietly behind a line of soldiers, and Razeal stepped out of it without any announcement. Behind him came the four assassins, silent as black blades, and Lady Nyssa Veyra Sol, who followed with her report book no longer in her hand but her face far more serious than before. No one among them spoke. Even before they reached the wagons, they could feel that Devastating news Shade had brought to them.

Around the outer gate, civilians had gathered in small groups despite the soldiers trying to push them back. Men and women whispered to one another, standing on toes to look past the guards. Some had covered their noses with sleeves though they were still too far to properly see what was inside. Some looked scared. Others looked sick, as if they had already heard from someone who had seen too much.

The soldiers patrolling the area kept forcing people away from the gate, telling them to return to their homes, telling them there was nothing to see, though the trembling in a few soldiers’ voices betrayed the lie. There was something to see. Something no ordinary person should ever have to see.

When Razeal and his group appeared, the whispers began dying one by one. People recognized him immediately now.

The crown upon his head, his long silver hair, his crimson eyes, the cold presence around him, and the posters that had already spread through newspapers and public notices across the kingdom made him impossible to mistake. Some citizens lowered their heads at once. Some stepped back in fear.

A few mothers pulled their children behind them, not because Razeal had looked at them, but because his presence alone still carried the memory of the blood-covered coronation and the forbidden gods. No one stopped him. No guard dared block his path. The soldiers parted quickly, their bodies stiff and their faces lowered, while Razeal walked through the opening toward the gate without even slowing down.

As they approached, the wagons came fully into view. There were many of them. Not ten. Not twenty. More than eighty, perhaps close to a hundred, lined unevenly near the main road as if they had been sent together in a slow, dreadful procession from the direction of Osicade. Their wooden bodies were old and stained, some covered with heavy cloth, some with doors already closed, some with dark marks leaking between the floorboards. The horses that had dragged them were restless, stamping their hooves and shaking their heads as if they too wanted to flee from the smell behind them.

Near the first few wagons stood Sofia, several border guards, and another assassin dressed in black, standing silently like a shadow beside the scene.

Sofia’s face was different from usual. She looked pale, not from fear of battle, but from the kind of sorrow that had nowhere to go. Her eyes were hard because she was forcing them to be hard, yet the stiffness of her shoulders and the tightness in her lips showed that whatever she had seen had reached deep into her. She was standing beside one of the wagons, and just before turning, she had closed its door with her own hand, as though she did not want anyone else to look inside unless they had to.

Razeal kept walking. But when he came close enough, his nose suddenly twitched. The smell reached him before the sight did. It was thick, warm, rotten, metallic, and heavy. Blood. Not fresh blood from a battlefield where the air was open and wind could carry it away, but trapped blood. Blood soaked into wood. Blood mixed with flesh. Blood that had been shut inside wagons for too long.

His vampiric crimson eyes flashed with a sharp light by instinct, reacting to the scent before his mind fully accepted what it meant. His steps slowed for the smallest moment, and something in his face fell. It was not fear. It was not shock in the ordinary sense. It was the quiet drop of someone who had already understood that what waited inside was going to be worse than words could prepare him for. Sofia sensed him approaching and turned around quickly.

"Razeal..." she said, but her voice came out soft and hesitant. She stood partly in front of the wagon she had just closed, almost as if she wanted to stop him from opening it, not because he could not handle death, but because some things were cruel even to show to a person who had seen too much. Her eyes moved over his face, and for a moment she looked like she wanted to say, Don’t. Not this one. But the words did not leave her mouth. Perhaps she knew they would not stop him. Perhaps she knew that as a king now he needed to see what had been sent to his borders. Perhaps she only wished she could spare him the first sight.

Razeal walked past her without answering. His gaze remained on the wagon door. He reached out, placed his hand upon the wood, and pulled it open.

The smell struck him fully.

A warm, murky wave of blood-filled air rushed out of the wagon and hit his face. It was so thick that even the guards standing nearby turned away and gagged.

Lady Veyra’s expression tightened, and one of the younger soldiers near the gate stumbled back with a hand over his mouth. The smell was not only death. It was the smell of death packed tightly together, shut inside, made worse by heat, wood, old blood, torn flesh, and bodies that had no shape left.

Razeal stood still as the door opened all the way, and the inside of the wagon revealed itself.

It was filled with bodies.

No.

Not bodies... Pieces.

The entire wooden wagon was stuffed from the floor to the roof with bloody, mangled parts of people. Arms. Legs. Hands. Torn cloth. Broken bones showing through red flesh. Pieces of faces. Hair stuck to blood-soaked wood. Fingers curled as if still trying to hold something. Limbs cut into smaller parts so more could fit inside. Whoever had done this had not simply killed them. They had chopped them, packed them, and sent them like cargo. Like meat. Like waste.

The wagon had been filled so tightly that there was almost no empty space left, only flesh pressed against flesh, blood dried into dark layers, and wet red patches still shining in places where the cuts had been newer. Razeal’s eyes moved across it silently. He saw men’s hands hardened by labor, women’s torn clothing, small feet that could only have belonged to children, a little arm bent at an impossible angle, and pieces so damaged they no longer looked human unless one forced oneself to understand what they once were.

The world around him seemed to grow distant. The soldiers, the gates, the whispers behind him, even Sofia standing nearby all of it faded beneath the weight of what was in front of him.

Then his gaze stopped.

Among the mangled remains, half-buried between torn cloth and blood-dark flesh, was a small head. A little girl, perhaps eight or nine years old. Her hair was stuck to her face with dried blood. One side of her cheek was covered in red and brown stains. Her small mouth was slightly open, as if her last breath had been stolen before it could become a cry. But it was her eyes that held him. Dead eyes. Clouded. Empty.

Yet they were turned toward him from inside the wagon, staring straight out, as if even after death she was asking something no one could answer. Why? Why me? Why did no one stop this? Why was I cut apart and put in there?

For a moment, Razeal could not look away. He had seen death before. He had caused it. He had walked through many bad things.. blood, corpses, monsters, and screams. He had killed without blinking when he believed it was needed. But this was not same.

This was not enemies falling before him. This was just a child’s head placed among butchered bodies inside a wagon, sent across a border as if human life had become nothing ..

Something inside the air around him changed.

Razeal did not speak. He did not shout. He did not curse. His hand, which had been holding the wagon door, slowly loosened. His fingers slipped down from the wood, one by one, until his arm fell to his side and hung there without strength.

He simply stood before the open wagon, staring inside.

The silence around him became heavier than any anger could have been.

Everyone behind Razeal saw what he saw. Sofia, Viper, Lady Veyra, Shade, Zero, and Blitz all stood a few steps behind him, and for a while, none of them could speak.

They had all seen death before in one form or another. Viper and the assassins had walked through battlefields, assassination grounds, torture chambers, and ruined villages. Lady Veyra had seen the aftermath of noble wars, starvation, execution, and political purges hidden beneath clean reports and respectful words.

Sofia herself had not lived a soft life either, not truly. Yet what lay inside that wagon still turned the blood cold. It was not the number of dead alone that made the sight unbearable. It was the way they had been treated afterward. Cut apart. Packed together. Sent back like butchered meat. Men, women, old people, children, all reduced to pieces and placed in wagons as if their bodies were not bodies anymore but a animal meat sent by someone who wanted the receiver to feel every ounce of cruelty behind it.

The small head of the little girl still stared outward from inside the wagon, those dead, empty eyes fixed toward Razeal in a way that made even the assassins feel a strange heaviness pressing against their chests. No one wanted to look at her for too long, yet no one could forget her once they did.

Razeal remained standing in front of the open wagon, his hand hanging at his side after slipping away from the wooden door, his face still and silent, but something about that stillness felt different from his usual coldness. It was not indifference. It was the kind of silence that came when a blow landed too deep for the body to react at once.

Slowly, Razeal’s gaze moved away from the little girl’s face and turned toward the other wagons scattered across the road and near the border gate. Dozens of them stood there, perhaps close to a hundred, all lined across the stone road like a funeral procession with no mourners left alive to walk beside it. Some wagon doors were shut. Some were covered with thick cloth.

Some had dark stains leaking through the gaps between wooden panels. Blood had gathered along the corners of several wagons and dripped down in slow, thick drops, staining the wheels and leaving ugly red marks along the road. A few wheels had blood dried into their spokes, as if they had rolled for hours while carrying death inside them. The smell was stronger now that he understood what surrounded him. It was not one wagon. It was not one family. It was not one terrible accident. Every wagon was filled with the same horror. Hundreds of wagons, or close enough to feel endless in that moment, filled with dead, mangled, chopped pieces of people who had once been alive only days ago.

"What happened?" Razeal asked suddenly. His voice was soft.. Very soft. It did not carry the thunder from the plaza, nor the cold authority from the throne room. It was quiet, almost flat, as if the words had come out before he could stop them.

He did not even turn around when he asked. His eyes remained on the wagons, on the blood dripping down the wood, on the road that led toward Osicade, and on the bodies that had been sent back from that direction. Perhaps he already knew. Perhaps everyone knew. But some part of him still needed to hear it spoken aloud, because the truth hanging in the air was too cruel to accept in silence.

"What did you expect would happen?" a knight standing nearby suddenly said. His voice cut through the silence, rough with anger, grief, and disgust. He was an older man, probably past forty, wearing border armor with dust and dried sweat on it, his face pale from standing near those wagons for too long. His eyes were red, not from tears alone, but from the smell, the horror, the helplessness, and the fury he had been holding back for more than half an hour. He looked at Razeal not like a subject looking at his king, but like a grieving man looking at the cause of the tragedy before him.

"These are the bodies of the people you told to leave your kingdom." The knight’s jaw tightened, and his voice shook as he forced the words out.

"They must have been heading toward another kingdom. A kingdom that did not invite them. A kingdom that did not want them. So they were butchered and sent back to you as a message." His hands trembled at his sides. "This is your answer."

The air around them became even heavier. The soldiers near the gate stiffened, several looking toward the knight in shock and fear. No one spoke to Razeal like that. Not after everything they had heard. Not after the coronation. Not after the archbishop’s head had rolled across marble.

But the knight seemed beyond fear for a moment. Grief had pushed him forward where courage alone might have failed. Maybe if he had been strong enough, if power had been in his hands instead of only a sword and years of service, he might have attacked Razeal right there. Maybe he might have tried to kill the king, even knowing he would fail.

But he did not even move. He restrained himself, not because the anger was gone, but because he knew more deaths would follow if he acted foolishly. His whole body was trembling. He had been standing near the wagons for too long, watching soldiers open one door after another, seeing children’s hands, torn faces, parts of families that no one could put back together. In all his forty years of life, through border raids, famine winters, monster attacks, and executions, he had never seen anything this horrifying.

"I see," Razeal said. His head lowered slightly as the words reached him. He did not react to the knight’s tone. He did not punish him. He did not even look toward him. His voice became even lower, and his face tilted down enough that his expression was partly hidden by the fall of his silver hair.

For once, he looked less like he was standing above everyone and more like something heavy had been placed upon his shoulders. It did not take much to understand why this had happened. He had given the people two days to leave if they could not live under his law. He had told them to get out of his land if they still wanted to worship. Some had obeyed. They had trusted the road. They had believed another border would accept them, or at least allow them to pass.

Instead, they had been killed, cut apart, and sent back. Osicade had not just refused migration. It had sent a message to the new king of Denvaar.. your unwanted people are not ours to carry.

Lady Veyra closed her eyes the moment she heard the knight’s words. Her throat tightened, and for a moment, the political part of her mind went silent. She could already see the meaning of it all too clearly. This was not only cruelty. It was strategy.

Osicade had taken Razeal’s own order and turned it into a weapon against him. If he did nothing, his own people would see him as the king who threw them away and allowed them to return butchered. If he responded, the border could turn into war. And beneath all of that, there was the human cost, the thing politics always tried to reduce into numbers but could never truly erase.

These had been people. Citizens of Denvaar only days ago. Families. Children. The kind of people Razeal had promised food, education, safety, and a future to, even if they had rejected his law. Now they were dead because they had tried to leave.

"Sir Feyarr..." Ayoung soldier beside the knight whispered quickly, his voice full of fear as he leaned closer.

"Please..." The soldier’s face was pale, and his eyes flicked nervously toward Razeal. Like everyone else, he had heard the rumors about the new king. Ruthless. Cruel. Mad. A man who killed the archbishop, outlawed the gods, and threatened heaven itself.

The young soldier was afraid that one more word from Sir Feyarr would cost him his life. The knight heard the warning. His lips trembled as if there were still words burning behind them, more accusations, more grief, more hatred, but he forced his mouth shut. His fists clenched so tightly that the skin around his knuckles turned white. He looked away from Razeal and back toward the wagons, his eyes wet but refusing to let tears fall. There was nothing more horrifying than seeing innocent people returned like this. Nothing more humiliating than knowing they had been under Denvaar’s protection once, and now all that protection had failed them on the road.

Sofia stood silently beside Razeal, not directly in front of him this time, not trying to stop him, not trying to speak. Her eyes moved from the open wagon to his bowed head, and something painful tightened inside her chest.

She had seen him cold, cruel, proud, fearless, and terrifying even. But this silence was something else. He was not denying it. He was not saying it was not his fault. He was not saying they had chosen to leave, so their deaths no longer mattered. He was just standing there, staring at the bodies like the truth had finally reached a place inside him that even his hard logic could not protect. And that was what made the moment so painful. Because in some way, even if not fully, even if not directly, he was connected to this. One could say he had not killed them.

Osicade had. The butchers who cut those bodies had. The rulers who ordered this had. But another person could say they had only been on that road because of his command. Because he had forced a choice upon frightened families: abandon faith or abandon home. Some had chosen to leave, and now their children were staring back from wagons as pieces.

Sofia had expected Razeal’s rule to bring consequences. She had feared revolts, rebellion, hatred, assassinations, political collapse, and war. She had even expected that one day he might regret moving too fast, pushing people too hard, and treating belief like something that could be torn out by law.

But she had not expected this to be so fast. Not this kind of cruelty either.. atleast not a wagons filled with the chopped remains of migrants. Not a little girl’s head packed among bodies and sent back like a royal letter. It hit too hard, even for her. She could not imagine what it felt like for him, the one standing directly before it, the one whose order had started the road these people walked.

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