***
His vision flashed red.
At the same time, a sound like tens of thousands of monsters shrieking in convulsions rang through his head.
“I was wrong. Lord Richard, please…….”
As Richard endured the vicious headache, the buzzing voice at his ear irritated him like a fly.
He tilted his head slightly.
Was he begging to be spared?
Had he not already accepted death when he chose to betray him?
The man groveling before him was one of Richard’s trusted subordinates, and only ten minutes earlier, he had led assassins here and driven a blade into Richard’s abdomen.
It was not particularly surprising.
Lately, attempts to buy off Richard’s close associates had never stopped.
The greater his fame and popularity became, the more blatant his political enemies’ schemes grew.
“Aaaaaagh!! Ghk……! H-heh…… Lord Richard, please…… please, spare m—!”
Richard silenced the irritating fly without hesitation, then suddenly twisted his lips.
In truth, the petty power struggles surrounding him were nothing compared to the monster rampaging inside his own body.
During the subjugation of the berserk Black Dragon, Baelmos, he had been swept into an enormous, unidentified hole.
It was a place reminiscent of the “Chaos” described in the Holy Scripture’s account of creation—a realm untouched by the hand of God, smothered in disorder.
Chaos, said to give birth to unholy things.
After entering that dense abyss and returning alive, something monstrous had taken root inside Richard.
Yet even after being swallowed by that terrible Chaos, he had not become a complete monster.
His unprecedentedly powerful Mana Core suppressed the demonic energy, leaving him neither fully monster nor wholly human, but in a half-monster state.
Mana and demonic energy now coexisted inside his body in an unnatural balance.
And today, the demonic energy was especially violent.
The arteries bulging beneath his skin gradually darkened, while his muscles swelled unnaturally and twitched.
As burning pain coursed through his body, Richard briefly retraced what might have caused the demonic energy to run wild.
‘Was that cigarette the problem……?’
The moment he inhaled smoke from the oddly scented cigarette a street vendor had recommended, the mana inside him had subtly twisted.
Had that created a fracture within him?
The demonic energy that had been suppressed by mana began running wild all at once, like horses breaking free of their reins.
To make matters worse, tonight was a full moon, when the demonic energy grew stronger, and the ambush had drawn blood.
Of course it had become more violent.
As the burning sensation tearing through his entire body intensified, Richard’s patience rapidly wore thin.
Before long, demonic energy stretched out behind him and writhed like a living creature, swallowing the surroundings in blackness, while his round pupils narrowed.
It would be easier to simply surrender his body to the monster.
But if he lost control in the capital, dealing with the aftermath would be far more troublesome.
So Richard scraped together the last of his restraint.
‘Demonic energy weakens when the sun rises. I only need to endure until morning…….’
Then—
“Gasp……!”
Beyond his red-stained vision came a tiny sound of breathing.
‘Another fly is still here.’
The irritation that had been circling in his gut all day boiled up violently.
His eyes gleaming, Richard glared toward the source of the sound.
***
The moment those vertically slit pupils stared through her, primal fear clamped down around Mona’s chest.
‘That’s not something I can deal with like a slime.’
I need to run.
Frozen like prey before a predator, Mona barely managed to move her feet.
Then she spun around, clenched her skirt in both hands, and ran as fast as she could.
She did not get far.
BOOM—!
The mana around her suddenly twisted, and the high wall enclosing the alley exploded.
“Ugh!”
The violent impact and flying debris knocked Mona to the ground.
To make matters worse, the collapsing wall completely blocked her only escape route.
“Gasp……!”
Now trapped like a rat in a jar, Mona swallowed a trembling breath and looked back.
Beyond the thick cloud of dust, a figure with blood-red eyes drew steadily closer.
“……!!”
As the clouds shifted and moonlight revealed the predator’s face more clearly, Mona’s eyes widened.
‘Richard Cronel……!?’
The face of the war hero who had been showered with awe and praise at the banquet only a few hours earlier made her breath catch.
“H-heh…… Lord Richard, please…….”
At the same time, she remembered the pleading voice she had heard moments ago.
Yet even through her fear, Mona felt something was wrong.
Was that…… really the war hero?
‘Something is strange.’
To Mona, the being in front of her was not human.
It was a monster.
She could stake her entire monster-obsessed life on it.
For one thing, the mana in the area was reverse-circulating around him.
And those reptilian, narrow pupils hardly looked human either.
‘But there is no way Richard Cronel, the Emperor’s nephew and heir to a Grand Ducal House, could be a monster…….’
Then what in the world was that?
Ah……!
A plausible answer suddenly flashed through Mona’s mind.
A Doppelgänger.
She had read about them in an old book as a child.
Monsters that imitated human appearances were not limited to ghost stories—they truly existed……
But perhaps because their true nature was so uncertain, the old book had contained very little information about Doppelgängers.
They had no body heat, vanished in daylight, and were classified as high-ranking monsters because of their intelligence.
That was about all she remembered.
“One little rat is still left…….”
While Mona was recalling the traits of Doppelgängers, the surrounding air vibrated, and an unnervingly deep voice resonated through her head.
Before she knew it, the being she assumed to be a Doppelgänger had approached to within only three or four steps.
As the distance closed, the sharp smell of blood reached her nose, and Mona sucked in a breath.
A dagger was still lodged in his abdomen beneath the badly torn shirt.
Blood ran down around the wound, and Mona covered her mouth.
‘How is he even moving like that……?’
Was it because he was a monster and could not feel pain?
SWISH—
While she stood frozen, the man—no, the monster—drew a blade and raised it with gleaming eyes.
“……Who sent you?”
The tip of the blade he aimed at her pointed toward the mask Mona wore in place of her glasses.
The blade tapped the mask and slid past it, but she had no chance to straighten it.
“……!”
The blade immediately lowered beneath her chin, and her lips began trembling on their own.
Fear swept over her as though her throat might be pierced at any moment.
The hostility contained in those blood-red eyes was that intense.
‘Well, he was stabbed in the abdomen. It would be stranger if he did not hate humans.’
Even knowing the collapsed wall blocked her path, Mona desperately backed away.
Tap—
When her back finally hit the wall, Mona clenched the hand that had been twitching all this time.
‘I can’t touch that.’
After her disastrous experiment, she had developed a peculiar constitution that made monsters respond favorably to her.
But that effect only worked through physical contact.
At this rate, her neck would be cut before she could even reach out a hand.
She had come here relying on that trait alone, never imagining that something terrifying enough to be impossible to touch would appear……
‘Is there really no other way……?’
But no other means of surviving came to mind.
Biting her lip hard, Mona rummaged through the pocket of her skirt like someone clutching at the last straw and pulled out a small perfume bottle.
Inside was a concentrated solution designed to draw friendly reactions from monsters.
She called it the “Monster-Befriending Perfume.”
Even after the spectacular failure of her experiment at seventeen, Mona had not given up.
Far from it, she had secretly continued her research in an abandoned monastery near the Academy.
‘It’s unfinished, and I’ve never actually used it…….’
For now, she had no choice but to hope it worked.
She could only pray the perfume would soften even a little of that murderous hostility.
‘Open. Please.’
Cold sweat gathered in her palm.
Trying not to attract his attention, she used only one hand to open the cap, but her fingers kept slipping.
Click.
It opened……!
Then the tip of the blade against her neck pricked her skin, and her heart dropped.
Mona lost her grip on the glass bottle.
‘Oh no……!’
The perfume spilled all over Mona’s skirt, and its dense, concentrated scent burst into the air.
“……!”
The instant the fragrance spread, the figure before her let out a short groan and staggered.
CLANG—
At the same time, the blade aimed at Mona’s throat fell limply to the ground.