Chapter 181
Sometimes, he would stare at her blankly, lost in who knew what delusion, and when she asked, there was a high chance he would say something absurd, so there was no doubt. But was that possible even when he had no memories?
‘As expected, some part of his memories of me is still there. Maybe he left some kind of suggestion on himself so he could never hurt me, no matter the situation?’
Swallowing down her tender feelings, Cynthia carefully looked for an opening. Just then, Segleninde dropped the sword, slick with the blood of his clones, from his hand.
The only surviving clone crawled over and grabbed his ankle, and the moment Segleninde returned to reality, he kicked the clone away.
Then Cynthia threw herself forward too.
She rushed in nimbly and hugged Segleninde tightly. At the movement, almost like an ambush, he froze for a moment as if faltering, and at the same time, several white plant stems burst up through the ground.
“Ugh…!”
A bundle of white tentacles gently pushed Cynthia away, then instantly wrapped around Segleninde and bound him tightly. Some of the tentacles that were his main body were always waiting here, and sometimes, when Segleninde was busy, she would come alone and play with them.
Though she had never imagined she would end up tying him with them.
“What on earth is this…!”
Segleninde twisted his body in bewilderment. From his perspective, it was no different from having tied up his own body with his own hands. But even the control authority over those tentacles belonged to Cynthia, so he was completely immobilized. His arms, legs and torso were all bound by thin and thick tentacles.
Most of all, Cynthia smiled when she saw the reaction slowly beginning to rise in his body.
“As expected, that worked.”
Strength was gradually draining from Segleninde. His arms and legs, which had been struggling desperately to free themselves from the bundle of tentacles that had firmly bound even each joint of his fingers, slowly went limp. Finally, his chest heaving, he asked in a panting voice.
“What did you do to me?”
“What? You saw it all with your own eyes.”
The traps he had kept breaking through were the cause. The dense aphrodisiac smoke and the slime, which likewise contained aphrodisiac components, were slowly but surely stirring a reaction in his body.
And as if those had not been enough, the Butcher Cook brothers, who had died at Segleninde’s hands a while ago, had also secretly lent a hand by quickly obtaining aphrodisiac powder through the old merchant woman Clara and scattering it over Segleninde.
Thus, as a result of countless aphrodisiac components overlapping, their effect finally reached Segleninde.
But having returned to the memories of the time when he had not yet properly understood the concept of lust, he merely glared fiercely.
“Untie me. Right now.”
At the words he spat out in a low, hoarse growl, Cynthia shrank back for a moment, even forgetting that he was tied up. His eyes, having thrown away all the delusions he had been having before he was bound by the tentacles, stared only at the woman before him with murderous intensity.
Rumble!
The ground split, and inside it, white flesh-like things stirred. Red eyeballs sprouted among them and stared at her all at once. The enormous white tentacles squirming beneath the ley lines seemed ready to surge up at any moment, but since he could not quite regain control, they only lurked there.
‘S-Scary.’
It had truly been a long time since he had felt this frightening. It was almost as if things had returned to the past. When she was a person unfairly dragged into this world, and he was the villainous mastermind who sought the life force of living beings and killed her endlessly.
Cynthia recalled the story the self-proclaimed ‘Will of the World’ had told her.
Segleninde still regretted what he had done back then and wanted to make up for it. Even after receiving her forgiveness, he had continued to be tormented by self-hatred.
That was why he must have pretended to be weak in a way that did not suit him. Because he truly wanted to become a frail being who could not live without his wife’s touch, without his woman’s breath.
Because he wanted to be with her as something harmless to anything, docile and weak…
But all those were feelings that should have been left behind before their marriage.
“I came back to your side because I decided I would stay with that version of you.”
Cynthia approached Segleninde. The man, who had only been panting from the unfamiliar sensation consuming his whole body, flinched when he realized her hand had touched him without hesitation.
“So let’s pull all those feelings out here and now. Anyway, you’re standing right now in this spot, aren’t you?”
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