Chapter 136
Chapter 136
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 136
Chapter Title: The Captured Monster
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Now the Sabak Territory, formerly the Puegor Territory.
Perhaps because it was once a place where monsters gathered and lived, the mana was abundant, and dungeons crawled all around the area.
Dun inserted the key to the grand mansion Prim had given him into the door and turned it.
Click!
As Dun opened the ornate door after unlocking it, it creaked open, revealing the now-empty interior of the grand mansion.
Dun took in the modestly decorated interior, humble compared to the exterior.
Red blood was splattered across the floor, a total mess. The bloodstains trailed in one direction.
Dun followed the blood up the stairs and stopped in front of one room among many.
The bloodstains continued into that room.
Dun grabbed the doorknob and boldly opened it.
“…….”
Inside the room, a boy with bright red hair was tied to a chair.
The boy’s vivid red hair was matted with blood.
That boy was none other than Luyan, who had been beaten to a pulp during yesterday’s quest.
When he truly thought he was about to die, he had desperately fled and used humanization to hide his existence.
Once he transformed into a human, the quest to hunt monsters vanished, and the players naturally dispersed.
He had tried to somehow follow the other monsters back to Mont Gehenna but was caught by Dun, leading to his current predicament.
“I thought you were just an ordinary delivery guy…….”
Luyan opened his mouth, his voice trembling.
“To think you were the ‘Dun’ that one fears so much…….”
Luyan lowered his head and let out a hollow laugh.
“You guys were originally dispatched to monitor the emperor, so your info’s a bit delayed.”
In fact, Luyan was a monster temporarily turned into an NPC.
Having drifted further from his monstrous nature and having left Mont Gehenna some time ago, he wouldn’t have had access to the latest internal monster intel anyway.
“Did you know from the start that I was a monster?”
“I didn’t know until you helped Prim rebel. I found out while investigating if you were trustworthy.”
While checking backgrounds after Prim mentioned sending reinforcements, he learned that the Puegors themselves were a monster family turned into NPCs.
Fortunately, they had been NPCs for a long time and didn’t know Dun’s identity.
He had cautiously brought it up in front of the Crimson Ghost Knight, who had once been a duke, mentioning something about a commoner, but there was no real reaction.
If they had known about the warrant out for him in Mont Gehenna, they wouldn’t have acted that way.
It seemed like among themselves, they were more about checking each other than coexisting, so info didn’t circulate well.
Especially since the bounty on Dun was so huge, it probably hadn’t spread easily.
“How did you find out……? I definitely wasn’t in monster form.”
“There’s a way to tell.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen monsters like Luyan who temporarily changed forms.
Luyan fidgeted restlessly, shaking his legs. He glanced at Dun, then averted his gaze.
“W-what are you going to do with me now, Dun?”
Rolling his eyes, Luyan awkwardly lifted the corners of his mouth to look good to Dun.
Creak, creak!
Still tied to the chair, he crawled toward Dun, rubbing his head against Dun’s feet.
“Could you just send me back to Mont Gehenna now? I’ll stay put there for real! I won’t cause you any trouble! Please? Duuun. Pretty pleeease.”
He begged Dun with an utterly absurd attempt at cuteness.
Accompanied by an incredibly servile smile, his eyebrows drooping pathetically.
Thwack!
Dun kicked him—not hard enough to kill—sending him flying.
Then he grabbed the back of Luyan’s head and wrenched it.
“I’m so sick of the tricks you monsters pull.”
Dun ground his teeth, radiating killing intent.
“W-with the cute act?”
“No, not that, you bastard. What you did to Prim.”
“That was just me screwing up on my own……. It didn’t even work. So can’t you forgive me? You guys won anyway……. Show a little mercy, winner takes all and all that.”
Luyan peeked at Dun’s expression and chuckled nervously.
“What do you want me to do? Just knowing you intended it pisses me off.”
“S-sorry……. I won’t do it again! Sure, other monsters might, but I won’t! For real! I’ll stay in Mont Gehenna, gripping my magic club, beating up other monsters, and never show up in front of Prim or you!”
Dun stared at Luyan, who was babbling desperately to escape somehow.
“Actually, I caught you because I had questions for you.”
“What is it? I don’t know what I can offer, but I’ll answer everything! My height? Shoe size? Hand size? Just say the word!”
“Monsters who become NPCs make a soul contract with that monster boss to inherit some power, right? Explain the principle behind it.”
The unexpected question made Luyan blink for a moment.
“Why do you want to know that……? Oh, got it. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you. Just like you said, it’s a soul contract where a part of your soul is subjugated to him in exchange for sharing his power. With that power, you convert the outer layer of your monster core into a soul stone to suppress the slaughter impulses and pass as human. Oh, and by the way, all abilities come from the soul, got it?”
“Didn’t know.”
“Great, now you do. I told you something good, so let me go, hehe.”
Dun brought his hand to Luyan’s throat.
“Got it! I’ll tell you more. What else?”
“How much can that guy interfere with you through the soul contract?”
“If you’re in Mont Gehenna, he monitors everything, but once you leave that underworld, he can only interfere when you’re in monster state.”
“So even in humanized form, if he feels like it, he could kill you?”
“Yeah, since part of your soul is subjugated, if he destroys it, you die right there. Hmm, is it okay to say this stuff? He didn’t say not to, so probably fine. Anyway.”
Dun suddenly bowed his head deeply as he listened to Luyan.
“…….”
Luyan watched Dun go silent with his head down, tilting his own head in confusion.
Creak, creak—he crawled back toward Dun and rested his head on Dun’s leg as he sat on the floor.
For a moment, Dun’s face, hidden by his lowered head, came into view.
Drip.
A drop of moisture hit Luyan’s cheek.
Luyan blinked and licked the tear trailing toward his mouth.
It was human tears.
“Dun, are you crying?”
His reddened eyes, glimpsed briefly, looked oddly pretty.
The being he’d heard that one feared so much was suddenly crying—it was intriguing. A bit thrilling, too.
Wanting to see more of Dun’s crying face, he wriggled closer toward it.
Humans like being comforted when they cry, or so he’d heard.
Goblins often listened to humans’ troubles that way to bewitch them.
That’s why he’d been assigned to seduce Prim. Though he’d failed.
Maybe he could seduce Dun well enough to get sent back to Mont Gehenna.
Dun buried his face in his arms and sobbed quietly. No sound came out, but his shoulders shook.
Luyan rubbed his head against Dun’s arm.
“Don’t cry, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
Somehow, that thrilling sensation lingered around his chest.
‘I made him cry, right? Can I take credit for making him cry?’
The thought excited him more. He was witnessing the weak side of the being that one feared.
And he was the cause of the tears.
“Dun, if you don’t send me to Mont Gehenna, can you just show me your face once?”
Dun wiped his face roughly with his t-shirt and let out a sigh.
Sometimes it was fine, but other times exhaustion hit.
With bloodshot eyes and runny nose, Dun glared at Luyan, his face full of irritation.
“Hm? Don’t wipe the tears—can’t you show me while you’re still crying?”
Dun killed Luyan right then and there.
* * *
If one had to nitpick, the monsters of Mont Gehenna generally liked Dun quite a bit.
First, he had an enormous amount of mana, which they always craved. Second, there was the secret awe from the fact that even their follower feared him.
What would it feel like to capture Dun and make him kneel at their feet?
What thrill in utterly breaking that overwhelmingly strong being?
It was a fantasy every monster in Mont Gehenna, who had suffered at Dun’s hands for years, had harbored at least once.
But no one had ever seen Dun broken.
The Crimson Ghost Knight, currently out of contact, was said to have seen Dun at his lowest—but that was when he was very young.
Luyan, who had been regenerated by that one’s grace despite his luck, took a moment to survey the changed Mont Gehenna.
Failing the mission to protect the emperor and retrieve Primavera’s power had tanked the Crimson Ghost Knight faction’s standing.
The Blue Ghost Knight had peddled drugs with footage of Dun suffocating to death, only for it to be revealed as acting, so he’d tucked tail and vanished.
Monsters basically flock to the source of great power.
Even without that one’s orders, they probably would’ve all rushed to try killing Dun.
To that extent, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say everything in Mont Gehenna revolved around Dun—they were all bloodshot for him.
Luyan picked up a wanted poster lying on the street.
It featured a photo of a young-looking Dun.
It felt a bit unfamiliar.
To think the unremarkable delivery boy from the academy was the infamous figure monsters went mad over.
Even he, living far away, had vaguely heard the name Dun.
But he hadn’t known it was this Dun.
Staring at the wanted poster, Luyan recalled Dun’s face he’d glimpsed last time.
‘Ah, even if I had to use force, I wanted to see that face.’
Looking back, he realized he’d been tied to the chair with no strength left.
Regrettable.
Then he remembered this wasn’t someone he could subdue with force anyway.
Even more regrettable.
‘How can I make him cry again?’
Luyan pondered what had made Dun cry.
It seemed like hearing about the soul contract principle had done it.
‘Why did he really cry, though?’
Crying over the mechanics. What a weirdo.
Come to me.
As he walked thinking of Dun, that one suddenly called.
Space warped around him, his solar plexus yanked, and he was swiftly transported somewhere.
A handsome man with long silver hair and pink eyes sat on a sofa made of monster corpses.
His body had too many issues to be called a normal human’s.
Flesh didn’t connect in places, showing stitches where it had been sewn together.
Luyan looked at the being before him and lowered his gaze.
“Have you obtained a new body in the meantime? Congratulations.”
Give it here.
The voice echoed in his mind, noisy and distorted.
“‘It’ meaning?”
Your memory.
The silver-haired, pink-eyed man reached out and extracted the soul stone from Luyan’s solar plexus.
He then decomposed the soul stone into a ‘memory stone’ and ‘emotion stone.’
The silver-haired man extracted only the part of the memory stone where Luyan met Dun, crystallizing it.
“That ability……. Did you dispose of the Black Ghost Knight?”
Yeah, the idiot got played by some outsider’s offering and lost part of his crucial soul-related powers.
The silver-haired man lounged sideways on the sofa, holding the glittering memory stone up to blue light.
Well, I planted a monster core in him instead, so he might come under me.
Closing his eyes while gripping the memory stone, the vivid memory surfaced: Dun burying his face in his arms, shoulders shaking.
Scaring me like he’d kill me, then secretly crying. Phew, good thing. Guess he’s not that cocky after all.
Actually pretty cute, huh? He cries too. Must be scared of me, just like I am of him.
It amused him how he’d trembled, thinking Dun would come for him any second.
His hands still shook from the fear. The madness in those eyes was too vivid.
He, who had always been loved by monsters and humans alike, was terrifying with that “I like you” said through eyes that screamed he’d rip him apart.
The boy had the power to destroy everything he’d built, making him all the more frightening.
If only you hadn’t turned against me.
Then all complications would vanish.
He’d become the highest being he desired, and Dun would be the offering guarding the world he created.
Originally, he’d wanted to eliminate the sudden obstacle Dun as quickly as possible, but now he realized if he could bring him to his side, it’d be the best card imaginable.
He already looked battered; a little more crushing, and he might give up everything to become a monster.
The man recombined Luyan’s memory and emotions into a soul stone and returned it.
Receiving the soul stone again, Luyan blinked, wondering why he’d felt so good earlier.
Something exciting and fun—he’d wanted to see it again, do something to make it happen—but he couldn’t recall.
Had that one taken that part? Whatever it was, it was a shame.
Luyan looked at the wanted poster in his hand.
It depicted some unknown kid.