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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“You. You’re the curse caster from the train.”
“N-no, I’m not?”
I’m screwed.
I’m screwed, I’m screwed, I’m screwed!!!
Sweat trickled down my nape, and my pupils shook wildly.
I came here to try and scam some senile old man who said he needed an exorcist!
Why was the human from the train here?!
“Really, you’re not?”
“N-no, no! What are you talking about? I don’t know what you mean?”
The human stared at me intently with suspicious eyes.
But he didn’t seem completely certain yet.
My avatar back then had an adult appearance, and now I’d lost power and turned into a child…
Even if the clothes and atmosphere were similar, surely he wouldn’t be fooled when the age was so different?
“Then that totem wasn’t yours either, right?”
“Of course not! I don’t use curses or anything…”
“I never said anything about curses.”
“Oh.”
I was caught red-handed.
A smile spread across the human man’s face.
Without hesitation, I turned and started to run away.
‘That’s dangerous! Dangerous!’
My instincts screamed, pounding inside me.
That human was a monster outside the norm.
Why hadn’t I realized it when we first met?
Perhaps I had been overwhelmed by the blood ghoul scent covering his entire body.
The smell of blood from countless monsters.
‘Lady Kali’s scent was there too!’
Among them, I could even detect a faint scent of the Great Druid.
The reason why the Great Druid suddenly disappeared one day and her unique dungeon collapsed.
It all made sense now.
The Great Druid had been killed by that human’s hands.
The Great Druid was favored by Lord Draken.
What were her chances of survival against someone who had killed the Great Druid?
Obviously zero!
‘I want to live! I want to live! I want to live!’
I don’t want to die.
How did I manage to survive escaping from the collapsing dungeon?
How much smarter am I compared to my kin!
The world would lose so much if someone like me died!
“Undecided. Catch her.”
“…Uh? Okay? There are multiple now?”
Division.
I immediately split my body into 5, each running in a different direction.
I would lose most of my power if 4 avatars were destroyed, but this was the only way to survive.
Surely he couldn’t control 5 objects at once with telekinesis magic.
This was the method with the highest survival rate.
A mere 20% chance!
With this, I might be able to escape alive…
“Huh? What?”
But that’s not what happened.
Why was my body floating up?
Puzzled, I looked back and saw that the other 4 avatars had already escaped far away without any hindrance.
He caught only the main body, ignoring the avatars?
There shouldn’t have been any visible difference between them.
How on earth…?
“No. Where do you think you’re slipping away to, like a loach?”
“Aaaah!”
I immediately tried to undo my shapeshifting and transform into a centipede to escape.
But I couldn’t even take a single step before being caught by telekinesis again and dragged back.
“Got you, you little rascal.”
“Aaaah…”
As I was dragged in front of the human, the smell of monster corpses grew even stronger.
This wasn’t good.
I lost what little fighting spirit I had left, and all my strength drained away.
I called back all of the escaped avatars and reabsorbed them, then returned to human form and knelt down.
Being in centipede form would only increase my chances of being killed…
‘I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead!!!’
I knew well how people in this world viewed monsters.
They were viewed as hunting targets that left behind loot or medicinal ingredients, or pests that needed to be exterminated.
People only saw monsters in these two categories.
Which type would this man see me as?
It was obvious.
Since I had tried to knock out an entire train, he would surely see me as a harmful pest that deserved to be killed…
“The curse I used on that train wasn’t meant to harm people! It was actually just a curse to make them faint! You see, I need to regularly replenish human energy to survive! So I have to absorb energy from about one person every day, but that’s such a hassle, so I thought what if I just absorbed hundreds of people’s worth at once? I couldn’t resist the temptation…”
“I’m not curious about that.”
“Yes…”
In the middle of spewing out excuses, the man cut me off with a cold voice.
I knelt demurely and waited, then the man grabbed my head and forced me to look up and meet his eyes.
‘What a cold-blooded…’
He possessed the eyes of a monster who had hunted countless monsters.
The eyes of one who had killed the Great Druid, devoid of the emotion of fear.
His eyes were so terrifying that my body trembled uncontrollably.
“First, state your name and-”
“I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything! I was living in the Great Druid Kali’s unique dungeon! My trait is Division! I can split my body into multiple…”
If I lied and was caught, I’d die.
If I hid anything, I’d die.
With those thoughts, I desperately spilled all the information about myself.
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“And! I learned curses from some wandering old man! As for shapeshifting…”
I had expected at least some resistance.
But she spilled everything without hesitation, even things I hadn’t asked about.
Was her mind working too well?
With such cooperation, the chances of me killing her would inevitably decrease significantly.
‘To think she was a monster.’
Her true identity was quite shocking.
To think she was actually a giant centipede monster that had been living in Kali’s dungeon.
Usually, monsters, except for the Four Heavenly Kings, had low intelligence.
Very rarely, mutants would appear, and it seemed she was one of those.
Well, considering Undecided’s case, it wasn’t an extremely rare occurrence.
“You look like a small fry, but you’ve learned quite a lot of tricks. How many people have you killed so far?”
“I haven’t killed a single person! Really!”
“You knocked out a whole train full of people. And you expect me to believe that?”
“I was only going to make them faint briefly and suck a little energy. I, I really mean it.”
“Would you believe yourself if you were in my position?”
“Aaaah. It’s true! It’s truuue…”
The centipede nun whimpered as if wronged.
In fact, whether she had harmed people or not didn’t matter much to me.
Whether she was useful to me or not.
That was the only important thing.
“If you want to live, wake up that senile old man.”
“You mean the awakening curse? It does improve dementia symptoms, but it doesn’t last very long…”
“How long does it last?”
“About a week.”
“That’s enough, so proceed.”
“Um, will you really let me go if I just use the awakening curse once…?”
“I really mean it.”
Was she used to being deceived?
The biggest reason I came to the Clockwork City was for Cern.
If she could just wake Cern up, I could easily forgive the minor incident on the train.
But the centipede nun still seemed unable to trust me, twisting her body.
She slowly approached Cern’s bed and prepared the curse.
“If you try anything funny, you’re dead.”
“I-I won’t! Do you think I’m crazy?!”
Certainly.
She might try to seize an opportunity to escape, but it didn’t seem like she would try to stab me in the back.
She appeared to be that terrified.
‘What kind of smell is coming from me?’
She had sniffed at me and turned pale.
Was there some kind of smell on my body?
“Undecided. Do I smell of anything?”
“…Delicious smell.”
“No, not that.”
“…Don’t know.”
This one only saw me as a blood bag.
She was no help.
“Then I’ll start the curse now…”
The centipede nun prepared the curse while keeping an eye on me.
She closed her eyes and raised her right hand, and black energy gradually leaked from her fingertips.
Demonic energy.
Though made of mana, it was an energy distinctly different from magical power, gradually taking the form of a sphere.
“This is usually a very expensive curse… It consumes a lot of demonic energy too. In the south, there are many nobles who offer huge sums of money begging to use this curse on their parents.”
“Hey, bug. Stop muttering and just cast the curse.”
“…”
This brat.
Still not fully in her right mind, she kept muttering in a cowering voice.
But her hand manipulating the demonic energy didn’t stop.
From right hand to left hand.
And back to the right hand.
The centipede nun, who had been shaping the demonic energy as if molding pottery, took out a talisman from her bosom.
She brought the sphere of demonic energy she had molded to the talisman.
The demonic energy seeped into the talisman.
The demonic energy instantly inscribed unknown hieroglyphs on the talisman.
This was the limit of how far I could track the movement of demonic energy.
I could detect demonic energy flowing externally to some extent, but it was difficult to sense what had seeped into totems or talismans.
“I beseech you. Please drive away the evil that disturbs this old man’s mind.”
The centipede nun chanted a rather plausible spell, then
“Hiyah!”
She slapped the talisman onto Cern’s forehead.
Cern’s eyes bulged open, and he suddenly started coughing incessantly.
“Cough! Hack! Kuhack! Linda! Bring me water!”
[Understood.]
At that moment, the clockwork doll appeared from outside the door, bringing with her a cup of cold water.
I thought it didn’t have voice recognition functionality.
It seemed to be set to respond only to its master’s voice.
Cern, who had been gulping down the water Linda brought, sat up in bed.
His eyes were straight and resolute.
Though his body was quite emaciated, the remaining muscles hinted at a life that had not been easy.
He stood up leaning on a cane, looked around at each of us, and parted his lips.
“Were you the ones who woke me?”
“Yes. We’d like to request a commission.”
“How strange. I thought that once I went mad, no one would ever visit me until I died. To receive visitors twice in recent times. Perhaps I should install a guest reception mode in Linda.”
“Pardon? Twice? Who visited before?”
That couldn’t be.
Cern was supposed to be a person with no relations, abandoned by his wife, children, and all his colleagues.
Who on earth could have come to see Cern?
“A beast-folk woman visited. She asked if a handsome man with black hair and brown eyes had come here. Come to think of it, you look quite similar to the appearance she described.”
That was Yerina.
Suddenly, a chill ran down my spine.
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