The Vapor Is Cruel
The man's body was trembling like an aspen leaf. His jawbone had been completely crushed by my strike. He couldn't even let out a proper scream, only spewing bloody foam in greedy bursts.
I looked down at him with cold indifference and jerked my chin toward the sword slaves. "Prepare a pen and a place to write."
The order had barely left my lips before two sword slaves approached the man. One forcibly stripped off his coat and spread it wide across the floor. The other gripped the man's right wrist in a vise-like hold and drew a dagger with a gleaming blue edge.
Srrrng.
A silver arc sliced through the air, and the tip of the man's index finger dropped to the floor with a dull thud.
"Krrruuuugh—!!"
Dark red blood dripped steadily from the severed stump. The man rolled his eyes back in excruciating agony, convulsing violently. I grabbed him by the collar and locked his gaze to mine.
"Whatever I ask, write it on that coat with your blood."
The fresh blood gushing from his severed finger. "If the ink runs dry or you run out of space, I'll gladly make more for you. So take your time."
A cruel warning that I would cut off his fingers one by one. The man nodded frantically and pressed his bleeding finger to the coat on the floor.
"Who put you up to sabotaging the mine?"
His trembling finger began to trace bloody letters. I placed a hand on the back of his neck, sensitively reading the pulse in his carotid artery to detect any lies.
[A few months ago, while drunk in a back-alley tavern, a masked man made an offer. One gold coin as an advance payment.]
[All I had to do was push a cart with unknown contents into the mine shaft at the designated time.]
[If the mine encountered problems and the Arzen family went bankrupt, an additional ten gold coins would be paid as the final reward.]
It was an enormous sum—one that an ordinary family of four tenant farmers would need ten years to earn. No wonder he had been circling the Arzen mine, anxiously waiting for news of the family's collapse.
But his trembling finger did not stop there. It traced one more bloody sentence.
[This afternoon, I received a unilateral notice that the beast inside the mine had died and the contract was terminated. No final payment would be made.]
His pulse was filled only with the resentment of losing a fortune and the desperate will to survive. There were no signs of deception.
"You thought the table was already set, only for it to be overturned overnight. So you threw a tantrum."
I added a slight pressure to the hand gripping the back of his neck. "Then write down the description of the man who approached you in the tavern."
That was the moment.
The man's face, which had been about to write, began to flush a violent crimson. His bloodshot eyes rolled back grotesquely, and a beast-like scream tore through his shattered jaw.
"Kwaaaaaaaaagh—!"
Thick, dark red blood poured from both of his ears. Two hideous creatures—looking like a grotesque fusion of giant caterpillars and centipedes—crawled out from each ear canal, pushing through the viscous fluid.
The parasites slid down his cheeks and clung to them. Their bodies swelled and contracted repeatedly, expanding in a bizarre rhythm. Covered in blood and pulsing, the repulsive masses resembled tiny, shrunken colonies from an alien world, complete with membranous tissue.
Soon, the one on the right morphed into the shape of a human ear, while the one on the left twisted into the revolting form of human lips.
Crack.
The hideous lips on his left cheek split open, emitting a skin-crawling scraping sound.
"If you try to learn too much..."
A stranger's voice, delivered through the parasite's mouth. "Your lifespan may be shortened by twenty years at a time."
A vicious sorcery that burrowed into a person's brain, stole their memories, and sealed their lips. Fragments of Victor's knowledge flashed through my mind. An underground information organization that employed this nauseating method.
Silence Frog.
A group that maintained absolute secrecy and never entangled itself with other factions had now shown its tail and blatantly interfered with the mine's interests. This was clear proof that enormous gears hidden behind the scenes had begun to turn, far beyond the scope of the original novel I knew.
"So you weren't just some drunk from a tavern. You were a long-term pawn planted by the Silence Frog."
At my confident declaration, the grotesque lips on the man's cheek twisted hideously.
"For a bottom-feeder, your insight isn't completely worthless."
The membrane began to swell, a sign it was preparing to rupture. "Let us never meet again."
The moment those words ended—
Pop—!!
The two parasites burst from his cheeks in a spray of red blood. The man's eyes, his brain devoured, rolled back to pure white before he collapsed onto the marble floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
A perfect tail-cutting operation.
I shook the blood from the tip of my shoe and coldly ran the calculator in my head.
It has only been a few hours since we cleared the shaft and emerged.
There were only three witnesses—us—yet they somehow knew and immediately notified this subcontractor that the contract was terminated.
The answer was simple. A truly secretive information guild would not rely on crude physical surveillance networks. From the beginning, they must have implanted bio-tracking sorcery or mana detectors into the monster, monitoring the asset's value in real time.
The instant I severed the mother basilisk's windpipe, their leadership detected the mana wave vanishing, immediately recognized the failure, and severed their lowest pawn.
An unexpected intervention by a colossal force.
But as I stared down at the sprawled corpse, I remained calm. If a prey had entered the board, I simply needed to prepare thoroughly, slit its throat, and devour every last chip on the massive table.
The mansion in the capital, reached only after the deepest hours of the night. The bedroom door stood open. An oddly alien sight caught my eye.
"......"
Silvia stood frozen like a mannequin beside the bed. Perhaps because she had remained on guard without rest until late at night, the top of her usually immaculate maid uniform was slightly undone, revealing the tantalizing curve of her pale cleavage. Yet she had no attention to spare for her disheveled clothes. Both hands clutched her skirt tightly as she stared fixedly at the bed.
On the premium goose-down pillow made exclusively for me, a single silver fluffball lay sprawled on its back, belly fully exposed, drooling as it slept like a storm.
"It seems a strict lesson in hierarchy is required."
At my voice, Silvia's shoulders jerked violently. She bowed hastily, cheeks flushing scarlet.
"M-Master! You have returned. While I was distracted for just a moment..."
I grabbed the creature by the scruff and lifted it without ceremony.
"Kyuung...?"
The awakened Fenrir flailed its short legs and licked at my wrist. A memory of the conversation I had shared with Vivian in the shaft that afternoon resurfaced.
-What does this one eat? Does it chew magic stones?
-No. Only inorganic monsters like crystal golems can digest magic stones. When it's a cub, feed it the milk of livestock like any normal beast. Once it grows teeth, give it meat.
I tossed the dangling Fenrir into the soft basket Silvia had prepared.
"Replace the blanket and pillow it rolled on with new ones immediately."
"Yes, Master. I will prepare them at once."
Gazing at the wriggling fluffball in the basket, I spoke to Silvia with cool detachment. "I was told this one will need milk for the time being."
I stared openly at the loosened area around her chest and asked, "Can you procure milk right away?"
For an instant, Silvia's shoulders stiffened like stone. My dry question and persistent gaze caused a fierce red heat to bloom instantly from her pale neck all the way to the tips of her ears.
"It has not... come in yet for me......"
The usually ice-cold Silvia continued, visibly flustered. "But if I obtain the proper medicine and take it, I can produce it within a few days......"
A thoroughly broken answer, tangled with shame and an inexplicable sense of duty.
I narrowed my eyes in disbelief. "I meant to have cow's milk or goat's milk prepared from a nearby farm."
"......Ah."
Realizing her horrifying misunderstanding, Silvia's face burned crimson as if it might explode. She hung her head deeply.
"I-I will have it ready by tomorrow morning!"
She fled, clutching the bedding as if searching for a mouse hole to hide in. I let out a small chuckle and added, "Draw hot water for the bath."
"..."
Silvia left the bedroom with her head bowed, practically running away. In the mansion that had always been as cold and mechanical as a machine, a strange, fluffy warmth began to drift through the air.
A wide marble bathtub filled with white steam. Submerged in the hot water, I calmly reviewed the day's events.
To protect my safety on this brutal board, I needed to tighten the leashes on both Elina and Vivian even further. I had to bind them so deeply with psychological debt and relief that they would never even dream of turning a blade against me. I needed to reduce every variable to zero, even if it seemed excessive.
A person only has one life. In a world where astronomical sums of gold coins changed hands and both beasts and power-holders staked their lives on every move, I had already moved beyond the stage of mere desperate survival. Now I would seize the variables of this vast and barbaric world, rule over them perfectly, and savor the experience.
A vicious ecstasy flowed through my veins.
Splash.
As I kicked the water to clear my thoughts, a cautious voice came from outside the bath.
"Master. May I wash your back?"
Silvia's impeccably polite question.
"Enter."
The moment my permission was granted, the heavy wooden door opened. A figure emerged through the hazy steam.
Silvia had shed her entire maid uniform, covering her voluptuous curves with nothing but a thin white towel. Her cheeks were flushed red from the warm vapor, and her silver hair glistened with moisture. She approached with careful steps and knelt at the edge of the tub, radiating an overwhelmingly breathtaking beauty that stole the breath away.
Below her exposed collarbone, the crossed-swords brand—proof of my ownership—glowed a vivid red.
Srrk.
The soft sponge in Silvia's hand glided down my spine. Her pale fingertips traced over the countless rough scars. The original Victor had never once allowed anyone near him, nor had he ever touched a slave's body. In Silvia's memory, their master-servant relationship had consisted solely of training, discipline, and dry conversations aimed at generating profit for the company.
But the current master was different. There was something else—something far more restrained and calculated—that dissected people's psyches with limited words and actions to force submission.
The change Silvia sensed in her master was slowly carving unfamiliar cracks into her ice-like rationality.
"How much liquid capital can the company currently mobilize?"
I asked with my eyes closed. Silvia suppressed the slight tremor in her breathing and maintained the steady rhythm of scrubbing my back.
"Combining the funds recovered from the gambling house with existing assets, the total cash on hand..."
"......"
"Adding the magic stones harvested from the mine, the full sale of the basilisk corpse, and the revenue from potion sales..."
Her brilliant mind instantly calculated the complex ledger figures. "After deducting all fixed expenses—maintenance costs, slave training fees, Theo's alchemy research budget, and so on..."
Srrk.
Her hand swept across my shoulder blades. "The amount we can freely utilize comes to approximately four thousand gold coins."
Assets now close enough to repay the enormous principal borrowed from Gomez.
"Not bad."
At that instant, the fingertips touching my back paused ever so slightly. Even though it had been simple businesslike encouragement, a hot flush spread down her neck.
"I have not served you for very long, Master."
She opened her mouth carefully, her voice slightly husky. "But the recent Master... does not seem like someone being chased by something. Rather, you appear to be enjoying these circumstances."
A remark that went beyond merely reading her master's mood—it carried deeply personal sentiment.
"Your hands lack strength."
I pointed it out while leaving my back exposed. "Have you forgotten your training because I've been too lenient lately?"
At my rebuke, the fingertips on my back stiffened noticeably.
"I apologize."
As if recalling the fundamentals of her discipline, her touch changed completely. It was no longer simple friction; her movements became sensual and sticky, caressing every pore of my skin. From my back down to the firm line of my waist, her pale fingertips traced with languid seduction.
The dizzying sensation of her damp, towel-clad breasts brushing against my back, almost but not quite touching. Her breathing had grown so ragged she could no longer control it, and each warm exhale ghosted against the nape of my neck.
The back of a master who had never once allowed a personal opening. As she explored that unfamiliar warmth, her body began to lose its reason in tiny, subtle increments.
"You remember properly after all."
At my dry assessment, Silvia let out a faint, involuntary moan behind me.
A peerless beauty rarely found on Earth or in this world. The situation in which such a perfect woman, wearing only a thin towel, grew helplessly aroused at a single command from me and stroked my back felt almost unreal. Once again, the extreme master-servant dynamics of this world struck me as surreal.
"Silvia."
"......Yes, Master."
"Do you have any complaints about this kind of life?"
My question made her hands stop once more. It was the first deeply personal question from her master that had nothing to do with business. She took a shaky breath and slowly ran her hand across my wet shoulder.
"I have lived behind iron bars since I was very young. I have never even imagined any other form of life."
Her voice carried a plaintive tremor. "The life I have now, staying by your side, is the entirety of the world permitted to me. And......"
"......"
"Being by the current Master's side is incomparably more satisfying—so much so that it takes my breath away."
After voicing her secret confession, the tips of Silvia's ears burned bright red. I slowly turned in the tub to face her.
Beyond the steam, her flushed cheeks and passionate teal-brown eyes captured me. My gaze lingered on her wet earlobe before intertwining heavily with her trembling eyes in midair.
"......Hah."
A soft gasp escaped her from nothing more than meeting my eyes. Her full breasts, visible above the thin towel, began to rise and fall rapidly. Goosebumps rose across her reddened skin with every breath. Her white fingers gripping the towel were drained of blood. Her entire body was burning, on the verge of throwing itself into her master's intense gaze.
Her body was losing all control, reacting purely on instinct.
I rested one arm on the edge of the tub and slowly lowered my gaze to her cleavage. Then I spoke in a low, sunken voice.
"Milk."
"...!"
"Make sure you have it ready by tomorrow morning. It will be troublesome if the mutt dies."
"......Ah."
Her red lips parted blankly. The terrible misunderstanding—that my dark gaze had been secret thirst directed at her—shattered completely. That intense stare had not been aimed at her wet body at all; it had been nothing more than a perfectly dry cost-benefit calculation to secure meals for a baby beast.
The sensation of her mind bleaching white. The pale skin that had flushed from the steam now burned crimson with unbearable shame, spreading from her neck down to her chest.
Unable to meet her master's eyes, her silver head drooped helplessly. I seized her trembling, wet wrist as she shook like she wanted to crawl into a hole.
Srrk.
An irresistible, heavy force. I guided her hand and placed it firmly on my solid pectoral muscle.
"Wipe."
A indifferent command. Silvia, unable to even lift her head, trembled with ears burning scarlet and began to apply careful pressure to the sponge in her hand.