Please Kill Me - Chapter 60

“Please, don’t talk about such things.”

“You are too shy, that’s your problem. Yekaterina will love what you’ve prepared.”

The couple conversed like any affectionate, ordinary pair, then beckoned Yekaterina again.

“Come on, let’s go. Dmitri is also waiting for us.”

Whispers followed, telling her to go enjoy some delicious food and have a joyful birthday celebration.

Yekaterina moved towards them as if in a trance, each step bringing her closer to the Offenbach couple, their smiles growing more intense.

As they stretched their arms wide to embrace her, Yekaterina’s hand wielding the dagger swept through the air, striking down towards Sergei’s face.

“Ah!”

“Yekaterina!”

“What have you done?”

Despite Sergei’s blood-dripping shouts, Yekaterina remained calm, flicking off the dripping blood from her dagger and murmuring to herself.

“I’m tired of this sweet dream…”

* * *

Mental monsters create illusions that can be horrifically frightening or deceptively sweet.

Yekaterina wasn’t immune to fear; her dreams weren’t always bitter. When she first faced a mental monster, she cried uncontrollably and vomited. As she grew accustomed, she sometimes wished she could just die in that sweet illusion.

The terror of becoming accustomed to fear was not because the fear itself was too great; rather, the illusions were too tempting.

Knowing they were illusions, she still found herself reaching out.

Wishing to die within an illusion of the Offenbach who she loved and who loved her back, could that not be considered a good death? The very act of resisting the desire to succumb to mere illusion was, in truth, the most challenging aspect of hunting mental monsters for Yekaterina.

If the only family she had were the Offenbachs, maybe she would have accepted that illusory hand.

‘But I have two reasons to live.’

One, the Offenbach family she dearly loved, and two, the family she left behind in her younger days.

– Survive, Yekaterina.

Her sister’s voice would echo whenever she was about to succumb to the illusions.

Why is the voice of a sister, whose face she can’t even remember, so clear? When she heard her sister’s voice, Yekaterina stopped reaching for the illusion and picked up the blade she should have grabbed sooner.

In that way, Yekaterina preserved my life. Without anything left to live, yet her lungs were still healthy enough that she could not stop breathing. Her mind was so dull that she lived forgetting that dawn comes after the night.

When she closed her eyes, the night seemed eternal, but upon opening them, the dim light of dawn made it seem as though life was just a string of moments held together. Like a blind fool, fumbling around what was in front of her nose. But that’s all in the past now.

Yekaterina no longer dreams those sweet dreams. Longing for illusions that vanish upon touch only leaves one with a colder reality. It’s been a long time since she realized that there is no one in this world who cherishes her and it made her pillow wet with tears.

Yet, the reason Yekaterina approached Sergei and Ludmila was entirely to pinpoint the monster’s true form somewhere within the illusion. That was the only way out of the illusion.

“Ugh!”

As Sergei was stabbed, the surrounding scene began to distort. Ludmila disappeared, and suddenly, in front of her appeared a monster with a red gaping maw.

‘It’s a corporeal type.’

While mental monsters are often corporeal, Yekaterina had suspected as much. Judging by its size, it appeared to be a second-grade, thankfully without any physical alteration in its attack methods, it was relatively weak specimen for its grade.

The real problem was the large range this mental monster had chosen for hunting, showing that there might be more prey nearby.

‘As expected.’

She leaped to her feet and looked around, spotting a knight not too far away, slumped over. Whether he was unconscious or dead was unclear, but people were strewn about the ground. It was certain they had not yet escaped the monster’s illusion.

If Yekaterina had awakened from the illusion even slightly later, they would have certainly be dead.

If there was any good news, it was perhaps that the figure of the slumped knight seemed familiar.

A knight with short chestnut hair.

‘Vasily Arkady.’

It seemed this place was where he died.

‘Am I lucky or not?’

Yekaterina sighed, flipping the dagger in her hand to adjust its orientation. There’s no time for distractions in battle.

With a high, piercing scream, the monster lunged at Yekaterina. The actions suggested it aimed to snatch her and swallow her whole. The monster’s body, resembling that of a leopard, swung its massive, stone-like front paw.

The force was enough that nearby trees shook, a direct hit would undoubtedly shatter bones.

However, its strength and size were inversely related to its speed.

‘That’s characteristic of mental monsters.’

Most mental monsters hunt by preying on their victims in a state of irrational panic induced by illusions, leading to their physical hunting skills being relatively inferior.

Hence, even a single swipe of its paw was dreadfully slow.