The Number One Star in the Interstellar Era

Chapter 740: A ’TERRIBLE’ BROTHER

”WHAT happened? Did you fight with your brother?” Astrid asked, his voice soft with worry. He hesitated for a second before adding, ”Is it... because of me?” He didn’t wait for an answer, rushing to reassure the other. ”If it were, then you shouldn’t be angry for me. I mean, I wasn’t really that offended. Maybe a little irked, but that’s it.”

”At first, I was mad for you,” Wulfric began, his voice rough and unsteady. He ran a hand through his hair, a clear sign of his agitation. ”Then, it escalated, and I said something that I shouldn’t have.” He swallowed hard, the words seeming to physically pain him. ”I... I crossed a line and hurt him. You know how insensitive I could be.”

His gaze dropped. ”I probably hurt Cyn with my words more than once in the past and never really knew that I did. It’s not that I don’t care for him. He’s my brother. Of course, I do.” His voice cracked slightly, thick with a guilt he was only now allowing himself to feel. ”But I just didn’t have the capacity to show it. Not until I met you and learned how to.”

He finally looked back at the screen, his expression showing his guilt. ”That’s why when I saw Cyn’s expression earlier after I said what I said, I understood. I finally understood how much hurt I inflicted with my words. Something I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t met you.”

He shook his head slowly, a profound sadness settling on his features. ”It was something that I’ve seen on his face a number of times in the past but never really understood what it meant. Now,” he whispered, the self-loathing clear in his tone, ”Now I knew. And I hate myself for only realizing how deeply Cyn was drowning in his own despair.”

Wulfric had known something was missing in him as a person. He understood it clearly when he was twelve. His bastard of a father shipped him off to a harsh military training base.

There, he was forced to spar with grown men, soldiers who were bigger and stronger than him. In the beginning, he lost every time. He would get beaten until he passed out, only to wake up in a medical cabin. The next day, the same thing would happen all over again.

He did not hate it. In fact, he started to look forward to the pain. Because that kind of stimulation was the only thing that made him feel anything at all. For the first time, he felt truly alive.

But over time, he got better. His body adapted. He started winning. The bruises on his skin became fewer, while the injuries he caused became more severe. Even when his opponents were clearly defeated, lying broken on the ground, he would not stop. He kept hitting them until someone had to physically drag him away. Eventually, no one would dare to spar with him.

It was not that he enjoyed causing pain. He just didn’t know how and when to stop. He couldn’t recognize when he had crossed a line because he was completely disconnected from other people’s pain. Their screams didn’t register as distress to him, just noise that meant he was winning. He saw tears, saw people flinch or surrender, but felt nothing. His only instinct was to press his advantage until his opponent no longer had any fight left in them.

That continued until he officially entered the military. No, it was probably more accurate to say that he became worse. In the structured brutality of military life, his inability to hold back was not corrected. It was rewarded instead. The very traits that made him dangerous were sharpened into weapons. The quiet emptiness inside him grew louder, fed by a system that valued results over mercy. He became more unhinged, more detached, more effective. The boy who didn’t know when to stop had become a man who didn’t even wonder if he should.

A good example of that was what happened in Orus. All the blood, all the screams, all the pain. He was right in the center of it all. If he had not had his team with him, the things he might have done there would probably have been even worse. The four of them were what kept him grounded. Maybe it was because they were the closest thing to friends he had ever known. If not for them, he would have spiraled a long time ago into a kind of madness he could never come back from.

But honestly, the reason why he went on such a killing spree in Orus was because of what happened when he returned to the capital for the first time after being sent away.

He saw something that made his blood boil, a rage so deep and hot it burned away every shred of control he had left. The anger was instant and all consuming. Like a fire in his veins that demanded he do something. It was that blinding fury that made him drive a laser sword straight through the back of that f*cker calling himself emperor and father.

The rage he felt then was the reason he turned into a killing machine in Orus. He purposely told Cynric, who by that time had already been crowned as the new emperor, to send him there. He did it because he knew that if he did not find an outlet for all that anger inside him, some innocent person might end up dead by his hand.

Wulfric shook his head, trying not to go back to that moment. Despite everything that had happened, he still hadn’t been able to be what Cynric truly needed. He believed that a person like him, shaped by brutality and hardened by chaos, did not possess the capacity to offer solace. He did not know how to mend, only how to break. So he fell back on the one skill he had mastered. He returned to the only thing that felt like purpose. He fought and killed.

”I’m a terrible brother,” he murmured, his voice low and rough with guilt and regret.