Chapter 75

“Why won’t they just leave me alone? Why?”

In a room splattered with blood on every surface, a woman sat in a chair gnawing at her long, sharp nails. Scritch, scritch. Between the skin-crawling sound of teeth grinding against nails, pained groans could be heard.

“Urghk, gkk.“

“I was just going to eat the livers and disappear…. The Young Baron would surely be disappointed if he knew.”

The woman stretched out her leg and stepped on the neck of the man sprawled right beside the chair. As he choked and lost consciousness, the noisy groaning stopped abruptly.

Having reduced the village to this state, a report must have been filed with the temple or a Hunter by now. The reason she had not left and was still staying in this house was that she had not yet accomplished the purpose she had come to this village for.

“96, 97…. I ate one more just a moment ago, so that’s 98 in total.”

The remaining one could be filled by this unconscious man. She wanted nothing more than to slit his belly open and take his liver right now, but she had been feasting all day and was far too full.

If she forced herself to eat a liver at a time like this, she would end up vomiting all the livers she had barely managed to eat. The goal of one hundred livers was right around the corner, and she could not let greed ruin everything now.

The woman rose from the chair and walked to the nightstand at the far end of the room. She picked up the picture frame she had laid face-down so the photo could not be seen and set it upright.

“Young Baron….”

The photo showed a sickly man lying in bed, wearing a weak smile. The reason she had deliberately laid the frame face-down was that even though the person only existed within the photo, she had not wanted to let him see her seducing other men in front of him.

But now, it was all over.

“Your Sena has finally kept her promise.”

Sena stroked the man’s face in the photo with her hand. It was the face of the man she loved.

The Young Baron had told her, ‘Eat the livers of the dead or the dying and become human.’ He must have meant for her to minimize the killing, but there were limits to collecting livers without killing anyone.

Sena interpreted his words however suited her. Whether it was someone already dead or someone she had killed, wasn’t it all the same as long as they were dead either way?

The same went for those who were about to die. Whether it was someone who would die following the natural order of things or die because she targeted their life, she thought it was all the same in that they were destined to die anyway. In the end, instead of digging up graves to eat the livers of corpses, she killed the living and took their livers.

Still, since she would soon become human, she kept a bare minimum of conscience. She did not harm any humans other than the ones whose livers she was after. At least… that had been the case up until the last village.

“I did my best. I really tried not to kill them.”

For a demon, suppressing the urge to kill was as difficult as a cat ignoring a fish right in front of its face. She had endured all that, but the women of this village, blinded by jealousy, had ruined all her plans.

But it didn’t matter. As long as the result was good, what did the process matter?

Once she finished digesting, Sena would eat the unconscious man and reach ninety-nine livers. She was still one short, but that could be filled with the exorcist priest or Hunter who would soon come flocking in. There was bound to be at least one man among them.

“The legend passed down through generations had better be true.”

If there was one thing weighing on her mind, it was that she would be the first demon to eat one hundred livers and become human.

Sena was a demon from the Gumiho ^[1] clan, whose roots ran deep even in Hell. Her clan had a legend passed down through generations.

Eat one hundred livers of men and you become human. However, no demon had ever actually confirmed that legend. What foolish demon would want to throw away their powers and lifespan to become such a pathetic creature?

Because of this, the legend in her clan was treated less as a method for granting wishes and more as a taboo that should never be attempted. Be careful, or eating one hundred male livers might turn you human. It was a kind of warning that excessive greed would bring harm.

‘Telling a demon to curb her greed. Could there be a more ridiculous thing to say?’

When Sena first heard the legend, she had scoffed at it. She didn’t know back then. She didn’t know that a day would come when she would risk her very life, scrambling desperately to become human.

If she ate one hundred livers, she would become human. After that, she might be captured by an exorcist priest or a Hunter and lose her life.

But if she could just become human, even death was nothing to fear. No, it almost seemed welcome.

According to the scripture, demons were evil beings and humans were good. Unlike demons who simply ceased to exist upon death, humans had an afterlife. They believed that when they died, their souls would not disappear but would follow the god Bara and ascend to heaven.

The Young Baron would be waiting for her in that heaven. If only she could become human, then that very heaven would be where she would go after death.

 

T/N: 

^[1] ↩

Gumiho (구미호) refers to a nine-tailed fox from Korean mythology known for seducing men and eating their livers to gain power or become human.