Chapter 91
It was a pitch-black night. The area around this mansion, located in the suburbs quite far from the city, was so quiet at night that even the sound of breathing could be heard clearly, as cars rarely passed by. The living room, where everyone had returned to their respective rooms and fallen asleep, was even more so.
In that quiet darkness, two shadows flickered.
“I don’t like it.”
Edstan, sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed, said as if tossing out a remark.
“What don’t you like?”
Violen, standing in front of him, asked with an indifferent expression.
“The way you handle Master, the way you monopolize Master.”
At the returned answer, Violen chuckled.
“Is that monopolization? I even shared her with Rufus.”
At his attempt to brush it off lightly, Edstan twisted his lips and sneered.
“Don’t make me laugh. Sharing Master wasn’t your intention. You’re in a position where you have to share Master. That softie Master of ours wouldn’t be able to abandon anyone else besides you, would she? In this situation, what’s your best option? To become the highest and most important among us and seize the initiative.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Edstan glared fiercely at Violen, who replied with a calm face.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know, Violen. Should I tell you exactly what you did today? You flaunted your position to us. You openly embraced Master in front of us, at her urging, and offered her body to Rufus as if you had the right to Master’s body. On top of that, you even taught him how to do it, naturally making him perceive himself as below you. That’s how you flaunted your special status among us and preempted the initiative.”
Violen, who had been listening with a stiff face, soon relaxed his expression and let out a hollow laugh.
“Your imagination is still quite rich.”
“It was pretty effective, wasn’t it? That idiot Rufus will really think that. He probably genuinely thanked you and thought he should follow your words from now on. Alburn will also naturally recognize that you are the one with the initiative here. But not me.”
“If it’s out of jealousy, then stop, it looks ugly.”
“Violen.”
Edstan cut him off with a firm voice and looked at him.
“Didn’t I tell you before? If I’m a lunatic, you’re trash. At least if you’re going to do something like this, be sincere with the woman. But even when you’re sincere, you’re still trash.”
“…….”
At those words, the smile on Violen’s face vanished. Instead, a chilling coldness filled him. But he soon sneered coldly.
“Well, you, who are a high-class demon by birth, and I, who am a lowest-class demon by birth, are in different positions. If you roll around in the gutter, you naturally become trash. You, who could live freely and choose women as you pleased, and I, who have never had the freedom of choice and have only struggled to avoid being abandoned, are different. I don’t want to hear such noble words from someone who has never even dipped a toe in the gutter.”
This time, Edstan’s expression crumpled. He glared at Violen again and said,
“So, that’s why you treat Master that way?”
“Didn’t you tell me from the beginning that it would be my best option?”
At those words, Edstan let out a hollow laugh.
“Now you’re showing your true colors.”
Violen also laughed. With a dry, rasping sound,
“I still don’t like you.”
“Same here.”
Saying that, Edstan stopped laughing and frowned.
“But we’re already in the same boat.”
“Are we in the same boat?”
“I want to protect Master, and you’ll want to protect Master too.”
“So, since our goals are the same, we should act together?”
“We have to. Everyone else is a hanger-on, and I, the only high-class demon, have no combat ability. We have to stick together.”
“We shouldn’t even encounter anything that needs protecting.”
“Will that happen as we wish? Dangerous things are already roaming the human world.”
“They are only a very small minority.”
“Humans with Master’s level of magical power are also a very small minority.”
Edstan, who had been lost in thought for a moment, soon let out an annoyed sigh.
“Still, I don’t like it.”
“What is it now?”
He raised his head, glared at Violen, and replied.
“Even if the other demons didn’t know, you did. You’re Izzen’s accomplice. Yet, you act like you knew nothing, pretending to be innocent and sticking by Master’s side. It’s annoying.”
“I told you earlier, didn’t I? I’ve never had the freedom of choice.”
“So, you’re clean because you just did as you were told, regardless of your own will?”
“I can’t claim to be clean, but I have never once condoned Izzen’s actions.”
“How can I believe that?”
Violen chuckled at Edstan’s question.
“Do you think I would want the demon world to be rebuilt?”
“No. If I know you, you’d be quietly rejoicing at the demon world’s destruction.”
“You know me well.”
“But you’d still have the desire to gain power and rise higher.”
“That’s not why I f****d Heesu.”
“Even with this result?”
“It’s just a result.”
Edstan, who had been watching him reply indifferently, frowned again in annoyance.
“I also don’t like how you always call her ‘Master’ to her face, but ‘Heesu’ behind her back.”
“Are you going to pick a fight over that too? It’s just a form of address.”
“It’s not just a form of address. It’s proof that you don’t actually consider her your Master. What do you even think of Master?”
At his sharp retort, Violen simply smiled sweetly instead of answering. At that, Edstan frowned even more, resting his chin on his hand and looking at Violen askance.
“Just one question, Violen. Is Master, Lee Heesu, precious to you?”
At that, the smile vanished from Violen’s face. With a smile-less face, he said as if spitting it out,
“Yes. To the point of going completely insane.”
His expression seemed both tender and filled with rage. With those two emotions intertwined, Violen turned his head and looked at the moon beyond the window.
The moon. Looking at that moon, some sang of lovers’ love, while others spoke of the madness of various beasts.
What Violen possessed was similar. The longing of a boy who had just experienced his first love, and the madness of a demon trying to possess his female. Violen stood on that boundary line.
He liked Heesu. That’s why he decided to make her his last master. That alone was a rare sincerity he held.
But as it was the first emotion he had ever had, he didn’t know what to do next.
He didn’t know how to love. He had never learned it, nor had he ever received it.
At least, if they had met in a different way, in a different situation, it might have been better, but that wasn’t the case either. So he was just picking and choosing the methods he thought were best, one by one.
It was like walking on a endlessly precarious tightrope. Even though he knew well that the path ahead was shrouded in endless darkness, and even though he knew well that he could never monopolize her.
***
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