Chapter 37
Chapter: 37
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>Translator: penny
>Chapter: 037
>Chapter Title: Predator (1)
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Marta could never forget the moment when she first locked eyes with the child.
The infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes, didn't cry but stared at her intently. The child's pitch-black pupils were so deep and dark they seemed to reflect not even a speck of light, as if devouring the image of her formed in his eyes and sucking in her soul itself.
For a moment, Marta barely suppressed the impulse to hurl the swaddling bundle away.
* * *
“…That kid's got a filthy sharp nose for things.”
Aslan froze on the spot, his entire body feeling as if it had turned to ice.
Kaiyen's single remark carried a wealth of implications. It was Aslan himself who had started this mess. And the target was none other than Aslan.
Was what he said true? If so, how exactly? Why on earth?
Kaiyen glanced at Aslan's rigidly stiffened face and let out a sneer as he limped past him.
Aslan could only watch in silence with his mouth clamped shut as Kaiyen moved away from the square.
Under the watch of a few bandits, Aslan and Bart were escorted to Aslan's hut. It meant Jerome's suspicions hadn't fully cleared up yet.
“We need to check the traps I set up, but…”
“Is now the time to worry about traps? Read the room, kid.”
At Aslan's words, one of the bandits spat on the ground and locked the door from the outside. It was blatant confinement.
Well, it was a relief they weren't thrown into the village barn being used as a makeshift prison.
His strength drained, Aslan leaned against the wall and slid down to slump onto the hut floor.
“Bart.”
Bart, who had been lost in thought, turned to look at him.
“Didn't I ask you yesterday if you'd ever crossed Kaiyen?”
“……”
“Could this really all be Kaiyen's doing?”
In the dim hut, Bart's eyes gleamed with a strange silvery sheen as he gazed at Aslan.
“Don't get too rattled by that child's words. It's all calculated provocation.”
Calculated?
Aslan looked up at him in a daze, and Bart began explaining in a calm voice.
“First, it's to goad you into suspecting the child yourself and working to clear your own name. You have no idea if this was the child's doing or not, and no way to confirm it. But if you know someone's trying to frame you, it's easy to act rashly out of a sense of crisis and fall into another trap.”
“Uh…”
That was right. Aslan had been thinking Kaiyen was framing him and debating whether to slip out of the hut to tail him.
“Second, it's to gauge how much you know about this and whether you avoided decisive suspicion purely by luck—by observing your reaction.”
“……”
What reaction had Aslan shown then? Thanks to Bart's warning, he'd vaguely anticipated something was up, and he'd reacted honestly to the nuance in Kaiyen's words implying he hadn't noticed anything.
Now Kaiyen would be convinced Aslan knew something about the incident.
“…A clever kid. Maybe from the moment he maneuvered you into bringing me here, he anticipated a situation like this.”
What?
“You're saying he… maneuvered me?”
As Aslan's eyes widened in shock, Bart tilted his head slightly and replied.
“Didn't you say Jerome is a deeply suspicious man? When you arrived, he was even more intent on killing me then. It was only because the child insisted that his mind changed, and you stepped in, wasn't it?”
…Come to think of it?
“It was probably a calculation that framing either you or me as a spy would suffice.”
Aslan realized Bart had known nothing about Kaiyen until now.
What had he thought of him all this time?
Jerome and Marta's son. Crippled from Jerome's abuse, a boy pouring his rage out on the whole world. A boy who wanted to kill everyone in the world and spat curses about doing so whenever he got the chance. A trash of a life that was utterly useless and only brought discomfort to everyone.
But what if every bit of that behavior was calculated?
“Nah, no way… That's overthinking it, right?”
He let out a hollow laugh, but even to Aslan, his voice sounded uncertain.
He thought "no way," but what if Bart was right? Then what was Kaiyen's goal in acting like that? No, could he even gain anything from it?
Aslan clutched his head and pondered for a moment, but nothing came to mind. He couldn't even properly pierce the meaning behind a single word from that guy—how could he guess at such complex intentions!
Aaaargh.
Bart watched Aslan mess up his hair wildly for a bit, then walked to one corner of the hut, quietly leaned against the wall, and closed his eyes.
“These things will sort themselves out with time anyway. Things will get hectic soon, so you should rest and conserve your strength.”
And sure enough, he looked a little tired.
Aslan instinctively checked Bart's aura activity again, but it was still at the level of a dying patient. With aura activation that low, a normal person wouldn't even be able to move properly, yet he'd somehow climbed the mountain with Aslan since morning.
Oh, right, while there's time.
“How about treating your wounds for now?”
Aslan sprang to his feet and rummaged through the shelf for medicine vials. They were ointments to prevent wounds from festering and speed up bruise healing, made by Aslan himself according to Seymour's special recipes.
Even just moving his hands a little had left his wrists ragged. Maybe he should pad something inside the manacles.
Bart watched what he was doing at first without understanding, but as Aslan approached with the medicine vials and clean cloth, he seemed to realize his intent.
“Ah, about that…”
He tried to stop him belatedly, but Aslan had already grabbed his manacles.
“……?”
Aslan's eyes widened as he fiddled with the manacles without much thought. Bart's wrists were smooth without a single scratch, as if the abrasions had never happened.
“Huh?”
He looked at Bart's face, then back at his wrists, and said.
“Huh?”
Hm. Bart averted Aslan's gaze slightly and hid his hands under the hem of his long robe.
“Didn't I say I was a priest before becoming an apothecary? It's natural for those with holy power.”
“Yeah, but Gustav didn't heal like that.”
Even as a low-rank priest, Gustav had decent holy power. He didn't seem to recover this quickly unless he went through the full ritual of prayer and invoking holy power.
No, even then, it didn't heal without a trace in one go like this.
Besides, weren't you stripped of all your holy power after the heresy trial?
The mark of a devil worshiper wasn't just any brand.
It was a mark stripping away all blessings from the Lord God, declaring the soul eternally unworthy of salvation. An eternal punishment that couldn't be escaped even after death. It wasn't called the worst penalty, the death sentence beyond death, for nothing.
“The Lord God pities and cares for even lost young lambs such as this.”
Aslan's face twisted.
Does that even make sense? Where's this sudden preaching coming from, you devil worshiper?
“Just to be sure, you're not really a spy disguised as a prisoner… right?”
“…Not a spy, but…”
“But?”
“……”
“Ah, seriously! What the hell did I pick up from Jerome!”
Damn it. Maybe I should just rat him out to Jerome.
Aslan glared at Bart with a scowl for a moment, then sighed and began wrapping a cloth piece around his wrist. Bart quietly let him do as he pleased, watching his face while Aslan wrapped it thickly in two, three layers.
Finally tying it off meticulously, Aslan grumbled as he put away the medicine vials.
“Even if it heals fast, it's better if no wounds show. And it's probably not good if others see it either.”
If someone saw scratches appear and vanish in an instant, he'd be pegged as a spy on the spot and things would go south fast. Bart apparently hadn't thought that far, as his eyes widened slightly before he nodded.
“Yeah, thank you.”
Aslan suddenly felt a strange sensation. He'd heard something similar yesterday, but in just one day, the warmth of it felt a bit different.
“…So, you're really not a spy, right?”
“…I'm not.”
* * *
“The only one who fits the spy bill is that guy, boss. No doubt about it.”
A bandit with a rough, menacing face rolled up his sleeve and growled.
“He's definitely the one who killed Konrad too! If we go grab that devil worshiper and beat him down right now, it'll all be solved!”
“That guy showed up yesterday. And one of the bodies found has been dead at least three days longer.”
Jerome waved his hand dismissively with an annoyed look.
“No, why think about it so complicated!”
“Exactly, boss. No harm in killing off the suspicious one first, right?”
“The timing of him suddenly showing up in the mountains is fishy too. And why take a trade route merchants barely use?”
As more underlings voiced agreement, Jerome's gaze sharpened.
“Or is there someone who wants to pin the blame on him instead and get rid of him? Or maybe an accomplice among us who needs to shut his mouth.”
“…….”
The hut's atmosphere froze in an instant.
Jerome was a strong leader. He'd shown his mettle by rallying his men and heading south before Rohan's subjugation force could sweep the mountains. His underlings followed him without the slightest hesitation because they trusted him.
But he was as suspicious as he was capable. And anyone who drew even a sliver of his suspicion never lasted long in the bandit gang.
“…Could it really be that Aslan punk?”
One bandit, gauging the mood, cautiously spoke up.
The two bodies found near the slash-and-burn village had been discovered last night. A search party returning past midnight reported to Jerome after finding them to the east of the village, covered in clear signs of torture.
They were men who'd holed up drunk at home after the caravan raid days ago, telling everyone not to bother them for a few days, so no one had even noticed they were missing.
Jerome and the bandits immediately thought of Aslan upon seeing the bodies. He was the only one who wandered busily around the eastern mountains on pretexts like hunting or gathering herbs.
Rumors had been swirling lately about signs of a subjugation force forming in Asein, or spies already dispatched before any subjugation.
But Jerome, who had been ready to grab and kill him on the spot, hesitated because of Kaiyen's snide remark from behind.
-Why would that little shit? Does he even have the ability?
That made Jerome regain his composure and start thinking. His chronic paranoia kicked in.
Come to think of it, why would he do it? Was it solo? If he just killed him in a rage now, wouldn't he get zero clues?
So Jerome ordered his men to monitor Aslan's movements. If decisive evidence turned up or an accomplice showed, he'd take his time torturing him to wring out every hidden fact.
But today, a new body was found. By the waterfall Aslan frequented, one of their own lay sprawled, stabbed with a dagger. The blood trail on his back hadn't even dried yet.
And Aslan had been wandering somewhere else entirely at the time. Now the case was a complete mystery.
“It's gotta be him, right?”
“He survived alone from the previous bandit gang too? That's suspicious. Maybe he's in cahoots with Rohan's subjugation force…”
Jerome sank into thought, ignoring his murmuring underlings.
He'd been too heated yesterday to consider it, but he couldn't rule out someone who knew Aslan's haunts trying to frame him.
If so, who? The first to come to mind among those who hated Aslan was his own son, Kaiyen.
But yesterday, Kaiyen had effectively talked Jerome out of killing Aslan…
Jerome's eyes turned to Kaiyen, who sat at the back with a sullen face.
It was right then. Someone suddenly flung open the hut door.
“Boss! Boss! Big trouble!”
A pale-faced underling rushed to Jerome, panting as he blurted out words in a rush.
“Cliff… Marta fell off the cliff, and her condition is…”
“……!”
Jerome shot to his feet, his face rigid.