Tamed Monster - Chapter 169

Kuinan merely gave a light shrug at her question.

“I’m going back to my homeland. And you, wife, are returning to yours.”

With Hector nowhere to be found—neither soaring in the sky nor lurking in the swamp—Kuinan’s chances were high that he would be tortured for information and then killed. Even so, he spoke to her as though he were simply heading back to familiar soil he missed.

Her worry filled gaze lingered on him.

He knew she didn’t believe him. But there was no more time.

He lifted Sylvia onto the horse and placed the reins in her hands. Then he tore a sliver of flesh from his fingertip and pressed it against the back of her hand. If any monster tried to follow her in secret, he would know.

And then, he would slaughter every last one of his own kind if he had to. Even if it meant losing his reason entirely and living as nothing more than a beast.

He kicked the horse’s hindquarters. He had meant to strike hard, but the animal only let out a sharp neigh instead of bolting in agony. The poison had weakened his muscles; he couldn’t even kick properly anymore.

Kuinan stood there, watching the horse retreat at speed.

The woman he placed carefully kept looking back at him from the saddle, as if trying to hold him in her sight for just a moment longer.

The red-haired monster snorted, arms crossed, watching the scene with a mocking laugh. And once she disappeared beyond the horizon, a swarm of claws and limbs descended upon Kuinan, binding him so thoroughly he could neither see nor walk.

[You’d better start talking soon. Unless you’re eager to die.]

Kuinan felt satisfied.

The monsters had taken their attention off Sylvia—that alone was enough.

When he’d first learned she had run, he’d clenched his teeth, vowing to bind her to him and make her suffer forever. But once he began tracking her and caught the scent of the red-haired monster, only one thought remained, to protect her.

He acted on that thought without hesitation. For the first time since his birth, he had done something that felt right. It was for his female and for himself.

Even as he was dragged away roughly in the monsters’ grasp, Kuinan kept laughing lowly, almost delirious with satisfaction.

Only when the red-haired monster grew tired of the rasping, blood-thick laughter and smashed his fist into Kuinan’s head did the laughter finally stop.

Kuinan’s eyes closed, still curved in a faint, almost contented smile.

Kuinan headed west. Sylvia rode south, toward the family she had longed for. The distance between them widened until it became unbridgeable.

In time, Sylvia reunited with her family. And the monster who had once been her husband was thrown like refuse into a cavern deep within the swamp—the long-standing lair of the red-haired monster.

It was the day the complete separation Sylvia had once so desperately wished for finally arrived.

* * *

“Damn it! Damn it all—!”

Crash! Clatter!

Furniture splintered. Glass shattered.

Eyes bloodshot with rage, the Emperor stood in the very place where the false Grand Duke had shed his human disguise and revealed his true form, spewing curses thick with fury.

“That bastard—that damned monster figured everything out and ran. F**k… what the hell do I do now…?”

He had suspected it all along.

The Grand Duke felt like a monster wearing human skin.

It had been a quiet suspicion lodged in the back of his mind. He hadn’t even realized he believed it until that brief moment during the duel—when the Grand Duke made a split-second mistake and a glimpse of his true body showed through.

The Emperor had understood at once. He summoned soldiers in secret.

In truth, he had been arrogant. Reckless and greedy.

He had wanted to capture a new species of monster alive for study—something never before seen. So he informed only a select group of elite knights and attempted to subdue the Grand Duke with minimal forces.

Looking back, a creature who had toyed with his imperial guard barehanded out of boredom was never going to be captured so easily. Not even with the overwhelming weapon of the poison.

True, once the arrow struck his shoulder, the monster’s movements had visibly slowed. But in the end, he escaped.

Only afterward did the Emperor remember that he had sent the monster’s wife to the treasury. After reorganizing his troops and preparing thoroughly, he went to the treasury himself.

The moment he arrived, he felt it.

‘I’m f****d.’

Corpses lined the entrance. The doors stood open. Inside, the vast treasury lay eerily silent. All of it screamed that the fate of the Empire was being shaken to its core.

And it happened in less than twenty minutes.