Tamed Monster - Chapter 124

Two days later, well past midnight in the deep hours before dawn, Kuinan came face to face with the monsters of the western swamp along the riverbank where golden waters flowed.

“What the hell—why did you all come in a pack?”

He had expected, at most, five or six of them. Instead, several times that number stood before him, eyes blazing. Rather than shrinking back, Kuinan openly mocked the monsters clustered together in a tight group.

When he snorted and glanced toward the one-eyed monster among them, the creature flinched under his pale gaze and spoke up.

“We’re here to get a definite answer in Hector’s place. Are you actually preparing properly for the job?”

“What job?”

“…The poison. The poison! You infiltrated the Duke’s estate by disguising yourself as a human to deal with it, didn’t you? How can you forget that? Don’t tell me you’re so distracted by some human woman that the mission’s become an afterthought.”

They already knew the answer—they were just testing him. Every single monster who had witnessed Kuinan coupling with Sylvia when he entered the swamp with her would have realized long ago that he’d completely lost his head over a human woman.

The monsters gathered here now were all spectators back then.

“Of course it’s an afterthought.”

When he replied casually, even yawning, a monster puffed out his chest in disbelief and let out a furious howl. He shouted accusations of betrayal, vowing to report everything to Hector.

“Do whatever you want.”

It was a shame his relationship with that one had soured, but he wasn’t about to give up the woman over it. Kuinan even went so far as to pick at his ear.

The monster’s yelling grew louder. His ears starting to hurt, Kuinan covered them with both hands and muttered for him to shut up. Only for the monster to glare past Kuinan’s shoulder with bloodshot eyes.

…Past his shoulder?

There was no reason to look that way. Frowning at the odd reaction, Kuinan turned around—and jolted, leaping back to put distance between himself and a monster that had been hiding there.

How long had it been since someone other than Hector had managed to get behind him like this? He hadn’t sensed a thing. A red-haired monster with a face just as sullen as Kuinan’s spoke to him abruptly in a flat, emotionless tone.

“Hey, Kuinan. Why are you being so uncooperative with your own kind?”

A monster who had grown at an inexplicably rapid pace over the past few years. Kuinan remembered Hector mentioning him more than once. This was the one who had hovered around Hector until just before leaving the swamp.

Hector didn’t keep fools around for long, which meant this wasn’t someone to take lightly.

“Uncooperative how?”

Kuinan’s pride was deeply bruised. No matter how careless he’d been, the fact that someone other than Hector had gotten the drop on him so easily irritated him. If this monster had lunged for his vital points with intent, Kuinan might have been seriously injured in an instant. Annoyance and competitiveness surged up together for the first time in a while.

“No, I’m not here to fight. I’m honestly curious.”

“……”

“You weren’t this irresponsible before. You handled the role of leader pretty well for a long time. So why are you acting so crooked now? Do your own kind really mean nothing to you anymore?”

Monsters were not particularly close with one another. The only reason they ever gathered like this, even briefly, was when they shared a common goal—exterminating humans. After centuries of killing humans and being killed in return, the monsters had reached the limit of what they could endure.

Humans felt the same. They, too, were devising plans to wipe out monsters entirely. At the center of those plans was the poison developed by the crown prince—no, the Emperor himself. The monsters gathered here, unaware that Kuinan had already fallen victim to the poison once, could not understand his relaxed attitude at all.

“Hm… so that human woman really is that important to you, huh?”

So important that his own kind—whom he had bickered with and lived alongside for centuries—no longer even crossed his mind. The human woman he had grown attached to now mattered more.

The red-haired monster, along with every other inhuman beast present, felt resentment toward Kuinan. They had come hoping for dialogue, only to be met with an unyielding wall.

“Well then, this should solve it.”

The monster at the front slapped his fist into his palm. It was the same gesture he had made to his companion shortly before being discovered by the human Kuinan had killed not long ago. Having lived his entire two-hundred-year life in the swamp, his way of expressing emotions was simpler—and more inhuman—than Kuinan’s.

“We kidnap that woman.”

Though friendly toward Hector and Kuinan, he harbored nothing but hatred and contempt for humans, and he arrived at the decision with ease.

The moment Kuinan heard the word that woman, his expression froze over.