Monsters Wag Their Tails Only at Me

Milo’s already frightened and pale face turned even whiter. He was even gasping for breath, as if breathing itself had become difficult.

At the unexpected situation, I hurried over to Milo, lifted him by the shoulders, and checked his condition.

“Milo, Milo! Why are you suddenly like this?”

“Hueh... hck, huuh...”

“Get a hold of yourself! Milo!”

Milo raised a hand with no strength in it and grabbed my collar. The way he panted made him look as if he might stop breathing at any moment.

Why is a kid who was fine until just now acting like this? When I looked back in confusion, Phiren curled up the corners of his mouth.

At his expression, a dizzying sense that something had gone wrong struck me, and at the same time, I sensed presences. Varen and I threw our gazes outside the building.

Standing there were the servants of the Aylos family, who had rushed out of the building because of the untimely commotion. Dressed in sleepwear, they whispered among themselves as they looked at the garden that had been turned into a mess.

“Oh my! Lord Phiren, what in the world is this disaster!”

Another voice came from above the stairs. It was Isabel, the only one who stayed in the main building.

Days was already standing beside Phiren. Phiren wrapped an arm around his son’s shoulders and lifted his chin. The gaze looking down at me gleamed with enjoyment.

Phiren whispered in a small voice by his son’s ear.

“Order them to kill Ceryl.”

But to me, that murderous sentence sounded clear. Only now did I understand Phiren’s confident smile.

“Y-yes? Ceryl...?”

After hearing his father’s order, Days made a troubled expression. He only hesitated, looking back and forth between Phiren and me.

In my urgency, I raised a hand toward Days. Opening my mouth as if to tell him to calm down, I spoke.

“Days, don’t. You don’t need to listen.”

The father and son were similar, yet different in some ways. Days was exactly like his father in his greed, but unlike Phiren, he was cowardly.

Whether some faint affection for Ceryl, his cousin, remained, or whether it was because of his weak nature, Days could not easily bring himself to say the words to kill me.

But Phiren was not a father who would quietly watch his hesitating son. No longer whispering, Phiren raised his voice in a hearty tone.

“Days, hurry! Hurry and give the order!”

“U-ugh, Father... But Ceryl is...”

“He is a traitor to Lavier! He is threatening both my life and yours!”

What the hell is he talking about? I had considered whether to kill them or not, but I had not planned to kill them immediately.

At Phiren’s brazen lie, my eyes widened. But for the cowardly Days, his father’s shout worked unbelievably well.

Days spoke haltingly, his face stained with fear.

“K-kill... Kill Ceryl...”

Even at his powerless voice, I held my breath. A dizzying scene of what would happen next flashed before my eyes.

Before I could react, I felt someone seize me by the collar. It was a grip with not even the slightest malice.

When I looked back in shock, the one holding me was Milo. With a hand that had not yet fully matured, he abruptly wrapped his fingers around my neck.

“Hhh, hhh...”

Milo sobbed in pain. Without understanding anything, against his own will, he was moving like a puppet.

The hand that had grabbed me to kill me trembled violently. Its feeble strength could not even choke me, but it was enough to make my heart collapse.

“Hk, hhh... I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

“Milo! What are you doing!”

The one who stopped him in my place, when I could not bring myself to shake Milo off, was Margon.

Margon grabbed Milo from behind and pulled him away. Restraining the struggling boy with one arm, he looked at me with startled eyes.

“Lord Ceryl! Are you all right?”

“...Yeah, I’m fine.”

I touched the neck Milo had grabbed and stood up. Varen was looking outside the building with a coldly sunken gaze.

“This has become troublesome.”

The servants who had rushed out of the annex were gathering here, even though they should not have been able to hear Days’s voice.

Even so, there were not even ten of them, and they were civilians without weapons. There was no way they could be a threat, but Varen swung his hand broadly toward them.

With one light gesture, flames rose at the building entrance. It was the dragon’s warning not to come any closer.

“Aaaaaagh! Hot! Aaaaagh!”

“Aaagh, aaaagh! Save me!!”

But Days’s puppets endured the pain of being burned and pushed through the flames as they approached. Startled by the tearing screams, Varen waved his arm once more.

The roaring flames quickly died down, but the embers clinging to the people’s clothes did not go out. In an instant, the acrid smell of burning flesh spread.

Even limping with their bodies on fire, the servants were approaching me. The sight of them moving like living corpses gave me a sense of deja vu.

“Haah... ha, how the hell...”

The sight of someone searching for me even with broken legs and a hole in his chest.

The image perfectly identical to Leobin triggered my trauma.

Meanwhile, Milo was still struggling, trying to kill me, and Isabel ran down the stairs.

“Urgh, Isabel! No, get a hold of yourself!”

“Ugh! Let go! Uuuugh!”

Margon, who had hurriedly gotten up, grabbed Isabel. Then this time, the freed Milo lunged at me.

Leobin trying to protect me with a corpse-like body had been shocking too. But the sight of people under the same curse rushing at me to kill me was a shock on a completely different level.

Just then, the servants entering the building were blown outside in an instant. The loud sound of people falling snapped my mind awake.

Looking at the people still screaming with their clothes on fire, I grabbed Varen’s forearm.

“Varen, dirt... cover them with dirt.”

“A good idea.”

The garden Horace had torn up was nothing but dirt everywhere. At Varen’s gesture, a mound of earth surged up and covered the servants struggling to get back up.

But the amount was considerable. It was not merely enough to put out the fire.

Startled, I grabbed Varen again and shouted.

“Hey, hey! What are you doing burying them alive!”

“Did you not tell me to bury them in the ground? They will crawl out anyway.”

Just as he said, the buried people wriggled, and the mound of dirt shifted.

Remembering Leobin’s case, it was obvious that they would keep moving until their breath was completely cut off.

“Ugh, hey! Help me, ngh, help me!”

Behind me, Margon groaned and asked for help.

Margon was an adult man built like a door, but restraining a middle-aged woman and a boy with one arm looked difficult even for him.

When I tried to step toward them at once, Varen stopped me with one arm.

“Those humans are trying to kill you.”

“Ah...”

It would not help for me to restrain people who were rushing at me to kill me.

While I pressed my mouth shut, Varen approached Margon. Then, with an easy motion, he placed his palm on Isabel’s head.

As soon as Varen’s hand touched her, Isabel closed her eyes and collapsed. Milo also lost consciousness quickly after coming into contact with Varen.

Only after the two collapsed did Margon rise, sweating profusely. Varen lightly shrugged and turned back to me.

“I only knocked them out. This way, they will not hear the order.”

At his words, I nodded. Holding my forehead after the successive shocks, I struggled to organize the situation.

The name list we saw in the underground laboratory had the servants of the Aylos family written on it. They were victims of the same curse as Leobin.

When I first saw the name list, I had only focused on who had been put under the magic. But just as important was who their lives had been bound to.

I looked at Days with a coldly sunken gaze. His deathly pale face, dripping with cold sweat, entered my sight.

“Days, aren’t you tired?”

“...Huh? What?”

At my sudden question, Days stepped back. With eyes full of fear, he glanced at his father and asked for help.

Phiren only let out a low groan. At that shameless face, anger surged up in me.

I roughly swept my hair back and steadied my breathing. I tried to calm down, but it did not go the way I wanted.

“That crazy bastard... He killed his own older brother, and now he’s even using his son?”

At my sharp voice, Phiren’s eyes twitched. Days only looked back and forth between me and his father with an expression that said he did not understand.

Looking at Days, who was stupidly innocent, I ground my teeth.

“Days, you idiot! Those people being unable to die and trying to protect you isn’t just a good thing!”

“What does that...”

“Your life force is the collateral! The reason those people don’t die no matter how badly they’re hurt is because they’re receiving life force from you!”

When I screamed at him, Days blinked his large eyes. At his expression, as if he did not understand my words, frustration surged up in me.

Then Phiren cut in with a snort of laughter.

“Ceryl, if you are going to sow discord, you should at least say something that makes sense. How dare you...”

“Bullshit. You can say that after seeing the state he’s in?”

Only then did Phiren glance sideways at his son’s condition. Even after seeing Days trembling as his energy drained away in real time, he opened his mouth calmly.

“If everything had gone according to my plan, they would not have been hurt.”

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