The Monster in the Annex
Judiel swallowed hard.
W-why is that child here...?
She couldn't make sense of it. Raon Zieghart was supposed to be asleep in his bed. So why had he appeared behind her — and with a blade leveled at her back?
Ugh...
She wanted to grasp the situation, but the instant she saw those crimson eyes reflected in the lake, even breathing became impossible, let alone thought. It didn't feel like meeting a child's gaze. It felt like locking eyes with a murderer who had cut down hundreds — thousands — of lives. Her heart clenched into a crumpled knot.
"I felt a watchful gaze from the very first day I returned to the Annex."
"Hhk...!"
The first day. That meant he had been aware of her surveillance from the very beginning.
T-that's impossible.
She had been trained as a spy since childhood. Killing her presence, erasing her existence — that was the one skill she had more confidence in than anyone alive. She had never dreamed a child this young would see through her identity and take her from behind.
"Open your mouth."
"Ah..."
Raon Zieghart's words were not a suggestion. They were a command. Judiel's shoulders shook as she parted her lips.
"Ghhk..."
His finger slipped through her open mouth. Something hooked on that finger slid down her throat and into her esophagus.
"Khak!"
A scream tore out of her unbidden — a pain as if an awl were punching straight through her esophagus and stomach.
"Ghhhk..."
The heat in her belly would not fade, as if she had swallowed fire. It was agony enough to make her want to claw her own abdomen apart.
Raon Zieghart left her writhing, clutching her stomach, and waded into the lake. He came back with a dark navy sheet of paper. As he unfolded it, his eyes sank heavy, as if they held the dark itself.
"This is no ordinary paper."
"Khhk..."
Judiel clamped her mouth shut. The pain was vicious, but a spy had her pride. She would not yield like this.
Raon Zieghart studied her eyes for a long moment, then nodded.
"Water, earth, fire, wind."
He suddenly began listing the elements, as if searching for a way to read the paper's contents. Why he was saying them out loud, she had no idea.
"...Sunlight. Moonlight."
The answer was moonlight, but Judiel did not react. She bit her tongue and endured the crushing pain in her gut.
"Moonlight, then."
"Wh...?"
Her heart nearly leapt out of her chest. The moment their eyes met, Raon Zieghart spoke the correct answer.
W-what? How?
She hadn't reacted at all. She had done nothing but endure the pain. How had he figured out the paper's secret?
He turned and shone moonlight on the paper for a long while, then checked its contents.
"A thorough investigation in every respect. Where does this go?"
"Nngh..."
Raon's face was still expressionless. The fear now outweighed the pain. A terror like fingers closing around the nape of her neck sent an ache through her lower back.
"Aris Zieghart."
He didn't press her. He simply spoke the name of Glenn Zieghart's eldest daughter.
"Karoon Zieghart. Denier... Karoon Zieghart, then."
"Hahk!"
Judiel couldn't hold it in any longer. A scream burst from her.
"W-what are you?!"
Her jaw trembled with a fear that came from the unknown.
W-what is this child?
Controlling one's expression and cultivating endurance were the first things a spy ever learned. For a child that young to look into her trained eyes and pull information out of them — it was absurd. It shouldn't have been possible.
Raon Zieghart still said nothing, looking down at her. She ducked her head to escape that razor-sharp gaze — and a different thought occurred to her.
Wait. What if he isn't reading my face?
His eyes hadn't been studying her expression. He had simply been watching her suffer.
Don't tell me...
The gut-ripping pain, and the way Raon seemed to be reading her thoughts — a single curse flashed through her mind.
"D-did you feed me a Rage Worm?"
"You know about the Rage Worm?"
Raon Zieghart's expression changed for the first time. The look in his eyes said, How would the likes of you know about that? — but that was enough.
"Ghhhkk!"
She gagged.
A R-Rage Worm?
The Rage Worm was one of the curses called the worst of the worst. Once the caster's worm entered the body, it revealed not only the victim's location but every emotion they felt. The most vicious part was that no matter how far they fled, the caster could inflict excruciating pain and kill them at will.
That's the only explanation. It's a Rage Worm.
This vicious pain, the way Raon Zieghart seemed to read her thoughts — whatever had gone into her mouth had to be a Rage Worm.
"H-how do you have a Rage Worm...?"
A child who had just turned thirteen. A child who had been sickly his entire life, using a Rage Worm — it was hard to believe, but she couldn't think of anything else.
"That isn't what matters right now."
Raon Zieghart shook the paper and stepped in front of her eyes.
"Nngh..."
He was right. With a Rage Worm inside her, resistance and escape were both unthinkable.
"Sending a letter like this to Karoon Zieghart means you're a spy for the Heavy Martial Palace. The plan would have started seven months ago, at the Selection Ceremony."
Judiel's eyes flew wide. That was right, too. The circumstances that had brought her here had begun at the Selection Ceremony seven months ago. Once again, it confirmed this was a Rage Worm.
"A very detailed investigation. Myself, I can understand — but Mother, Helen, and the other maids as well."
Raon Zieghart smiled faintly as he looked at the letters glittering in the moonlight. The killing intent in that smile soaked her spine in a cold sweat.
I... I touched someone I never should have touched.
She had thought it was an easy mission. The Annex had no martial artists, and the people were kind. Gathering information on young Raon and the broken Sylvia — she had thought it would be like taking candy from a baby.
She had been wrong.
A monster lived in the Annex. A monster steeped in vicious killing intent. Meeting those crimson eyes made her want to hang herself on the spot.
"Gnnnkh..."
She dug her nails into the flesh of her arm. The pale killing intent rolling off Raon felt like it was splitting the skin of her face, and the organ holding the Rage Worm was on the verge of bursting.
"I-I'll change the contents. I'll write something that isn't true..."
"No need."
Raon Zieghart lowered the paper and erased the letters shining in the moonlight. He folded it again and set it floating on the lake.
"W-why...?"
"Even if you alter the information now, word about me will reach Karoon eventually. All that would accomplish is proving your incompetence."
"Hhk!"
He sank to one knee and met her eyes. Blood-red irises. Her hands and feet trembled.
"How often do you report?"
"R-regular reports are every two weeks."
"I defeated Burren today, so the regular reports will come faster. It'll probably change to once a week."
"Y-yes..."
Judiel nodded. She had thought the same thing.
"From this moment on, you are a double agent. Hand over information that would be caught immediately, and hide the important information that won't be discovered. In return, bring me their critical intelligence."
"I-I understand."
If it would let her escape this terror, she would do anything. She nodded without hesitation.
"When I come back next time, I expect you to have something useful."
With that, he vanished into the dark.
"Nngh..."
Even now, she felt as if those crimson eyes were still locked on her heart.
Judiel's shaking legs gave out, and she collapsed where she stood.
"T-the pain..."
The agony was already gone. Raon Zieghart must have reined in the Rage Worm.
A monster...
The thought of resisting didn't even cross her mind. Something more terrifying than death had been hiding in the darkness of the Annex.
"Nngh!"
Judiel bit her lip and ran for the servants' quarters. The terror Raon had left behind sank into her heart as deep as the goosebumps standing on the back of her neck.
"When did you summon a Rage Worm?"
"That wasn't a Rage Worm."
Back in his room, Raon shook his head.
"What?"
"I only fed her a poison that temporarily induces extreme pain."
He had fallen victim to a Rage Worm in his previous life, but that had been before he even had memories of his own. He had no idea how to summon one. What he had given Judiel was nothing more than a poison used for torture.
"I wouldn't use a Rage Worm even if I had one."
He had not the slightest intention of employing a curse that vicious. If the worm had been sitting in front of him, he would have crushed it underfoot.
"Then where did you get that poison?"
"I made it."
"So that's why you went to the kitchen and the warehouse earlier..."
"That's right."
He had the compounding formulas memorized, so he had adapted a poison from materials he could obtain here.
"Wait. You read that woman's thoughts completely, did you not?"
"I did."
"How did you know all that without a Rage Worm?"
"Some of it was prediction. Some of it I read from her condition."
"You read her condition? The wretch wore the same expression the entire time."
Wrath's blue flame flickered wildly. He clearly could not understand how anyone could pull information from a face that never changed.
"I can."
He had lived more than twenty years as an assassin in his previous life. He had conducted interrogations of his own, so reading Judiel's thoughts had not been particularly difficult.
"A thirteen-year-old who knows how to plant terror in a human being... Even when This King resided in the Demon Realm, This King never witnessed such a thing."
He wasn't wrong. Without those years as an assassin in his previous life, Raon never would have noticed Judiel gathering information, and he never would have been able to use a method like this. Looking at it now, that previous life was proving useful in its own way.
"Anyway. So it was Karoon Zieghart."
Raon sat on the bed and turned the name over in his mouth. He had a rough idea why the man had planted Judiel here. After what Raon had shown at the Selection Ceremony, Karoon would have wanted a grasp on this side's information.
But he had chosen poorly. If he had only watched Raon, that would have been one thing. Folding Sylvia, Helen, and the other maids of the Annex into the observation range was the worst mistake he could have made.
"Then why did you not change the information?"
Wrath tilted his head and drifted closer.
"The paper that woman wrote contained information that you had overcome a great deal of cold energy, and that you had obtained an outstanding aura cultivation method. Should you not have erased that?"
"That's small-fry information anyway. If you want to stab someone in the back, you have to hand over that much."
He traced a finger across the bedspread as he went on.
"As she sends my real information to the Heavy Martial Palace, their trust in her reports will build. Keep feeding them useless truths, then deliver a lie at the most critical moment — and that will create an opening to devour Karoon Zieghart whole."
"Hah..."
Wrath let out a hollow breath. To think through all of that in such a short span of time — this one truly was no ordinary human.
"You are no thirteen-year-old. Your belly is stuffed full of a hundred-year-old serpent."
"Just a serpent?"
Raon smiled as if mocking him and wagged a finger.
Not a serpent. An assassin.
And the greatest one, at that.
Runaan Sullion did not stop training even after returning to her family home. The movements Raon Zieghart had shown on the day of the exam kept replaying in her mind. She couldn't sit still.
But.
"This isn't working."
When she trained with the equipment at home, the weight she could lift dropped sharply compared to when she had been at the training hall. It wasn't just the equipment. Long-distance running and other physical training weren't going as well as usual either.
"Mm..."
She thought it through carefully, but there was only one answer.
"Raon Zieghart."
Raon wasn't here. Without the boy who had always been right beside her, she couldn't bring out her usual strength. Lately the cool, clean scent that came off him had grown even nicer, and she had found herself breathing it in without thinking. That was probably part of it too.
I need it.
Runaan Sullion nodded and left the training ground.
"Runaan?"
Lokan Sward, head of House Sullion, narrowed his eyes at the sight of his daughter leaving the family's training hall.
"You were going to train with Father. Where do you think you're going?"
"To Raon's."
"Raon? D-don't tell me you mean Raon Zieghart?"
"Mm."
"W-why would you go to that boy? And now, of all times — when you were supposed to train with Father?"
Lokan Sward lost every shred of his usual composure and began to stammer. His hands trembled. He had finally carved out time to play with his youngest daughter, and now she was suddenly going to Raon.
"There's the smell. And the training."
"H-huh?"
He couldn't make sense of a word she was saying.
"I'm going."
Runaan patted the dust from her clothes and walked out of the training ground.
"W-wait just a moment! You can train here with Father!"
"I have to do it there."
Runaan shook her head, unyielding.
"You keep saying you're going... D-don't tell me Raon did something to you?"
"Did something?"
She lowered her head blankly and thought back over the time she had spent with Raon.
He helped me.
Raon hadn't given her direct assistance, but just being beside him made training go well, so it counted as help.
"Mm. He did."
"Ghhhk! Raon, you little—!"
Lokan ground his teeth.
How dare he threaten my daughter?
A single short answer, and Lokan's imagination painted a complete picture: his poor daughter, trembling under Raon's threats, the image devouring his mind.
"Good heavens! My lord! What are you doing standing here? Today's work absolutely cannot be postponed—"
"Bring me my sword at once!"
Lokan bellowed at the steward who had come looking for him.
"Eh? Y-your sword, my lord?"
"Runaan. I'm coming too! I can't just leave that bastard be!"
Lokan's eyes blazed. He looked ready to smash the Zieghart Annex to pieces on the spot.
"Uh? Uh?"
The steward's mouth fell open. He could already feel a headache blooming. What disaster was this daughter-obsessed fool about to cause today?
"What are you standing around for? Did I not tell you to bring me my sword?!"
"P-please wait a moment, my lord! If we could just talk—"
"There will be no talk! Only the sword and punishment!"
"Aigoo..."
The steward turned toward Runaan. She was watching Lokan with vacant, unreadable eyes. There would be no resolving this with that taciturn young lady.
The only person who can fix this is her.
He shook his head and went into the manor — not for a sword, but for the lady of the house.
"So Young Master Raon helped you with your training? It wasn't a threat."
"Mm."
Runaan nodded at her mother Clara's words.
"Dear."
Clara's violet eyes turned left, gleaming with a chilly light.
"N-no, I naturally thought she'd been th-threatened. She just kept saying she was going, that's all. Anyone would have misunderstood. Yes! Anyone at all!"
Lokan, who moments ago had looked ready to charge Zieghart himself, was now crouched in the corner with his shoulders folded in half.
"That's enough. Go do your work."
"But today I was going to play with our Runaan..."
"Tsk."
"A-all right."
"I'll come check later. If the work hasn't been handled properly, you'd best be prepared."
"Y-yes. Don't worry."
Lokan dragged his enormous frame back toward the manor, drooping the whole way.
"Runaan."
"Mm?"
"Did you thank Young Master Raon?"
"I did when I got the snacks."
"And when he helped you train?"
"I didn't."
Clara laughed softly and stroked the head of the girl who was shaking her head.
"Then the next time you see him, tell him thank you."
"But Father said."
"Mm?"
"Father said not to speak to boys first."
"Aha!"
Clara smiled brightly. Watching that smile, the steward was certain Lokan would be listening to a lecture all night.
"Forget what Father said. Boy or girl, it doesn't matter. If someone helps you, thanking them is simple courtesy. Do you understand?"
"Mm."
"Then shall we train with Mother today, instead of Father?"
"Mm."
Runaan headed into the training hall with Clara, thinking of Raon's calm, unreadable face.
I should say thank you.
The thought of speaking to him first made her heart beat just a little faster.