226. East, Hwaguk (14)
I didn’t remember my parents from the beginning.
‘Who is Zargas?’
‘He is our father.’
‘Father?’
‘They’re parents.’
A statue on the corner of the clan’s empty village was the only link between him and me.
‘Where did you go?’
‘It’s been a while since you went to the battlefield. He must have died.’
I couldn’t understand why my sister, who sometimes looked at the statue and looked sad, tried to smile at me.
I wasn’t that sad.
Because she was with her.
Sister taught me a lot.
‘We are Lycan Slope. It’s different from normal humans.’
‘How are you different from normal humans?’
‘…Ordinary people don’t have this.’
My sister, who was deeply troubled, took out her long fingernail and explained that.
It was much later than this that I realized exactly what was different from normal humans.
‘Now I’m going to go out of town and live.’
‘Why should I? Isn’t it comfortable here too?’
‘Volk doesn’t want to meet people?’
‘Not really.’
‘If it’s Volk. Shall I live with my sister here for the rest of my life?’
‘I like it!’
I thought I would never have to go out of town. To me, she was her whole world, and everything else was her prey and our food.
I thought that small world would be peaceful until the end.
Until her face turned pale.
‘Cough… Cough… Did Volk come…?’
‘Sister, I brought you herbs!’
‘It’s wonderful…’
The hand that stroked my hair was much weaker than before. She knew what it meant to be sick.
I’ve been sick before, and every time my sister has brought back tasteless weeds called ‘medicinal herbs’.
It didn’t taste good, but it was effective, and thanks to it, I was able to overcome my illness right away. Lycanthropes said that their resilience was very good.
So I thought that my sister would be able to regain her strength and stand up soon.
However, her illness was not easily cured.
‘I’ll go outside the village.’
‘Volk…’
She didn’t even have the energy left to answer.
I instinctively noticed.
I had to make a decision.
That’s how I stretched my legs out of town for the first time.
For the first time, I met ‘normal people’ outside the village, and for the first time I had a conversation with someone who wasn’t my sister.
What I learned later was that ‘money’ was needed to cure disease, and to earn money,
I had to do ‘work’.
But no one gave me a job. People called me ‘little boy’ or ‘beggar’ and ignored me.
I was hit with stones by kids who seemed to be the same age as me on the road.
It was the first time in my life that I felt ‘malice’.
In the meantime, I met a woman.
It was a woman named Shanova.
‘There, there are rumors that you… Are lycanthropes… Is that true?’
‘Yes, I know how to do things like this.’
I showed Shanova things different from the ‘ordinary humans’ I learned from my sister.
Sha Nova looked at me and her eyes lit up as if she had found a treasure.
‘Need money?’
‘Yes, I need money to treat my sister.’
‘Hmm… I just have something to entrust you with.’
Shanova gave me a job.
He said that there is a bad person who borrows money and doesn’t pay it back, and he wants that person killed.
I readily agreed.
It was just that the target they were hunting had changed from beasts to humans.
Following the scent, it followed behind, and its sharp claws easily cut the throat of its prey.
In a way, it was much easier than killing the beast. Beasts were able to sense threats instinctively, but it seems that ordinary humans did not have such a thing.
I brought the head of the prey to Shanova. She clapped her hands and rejoiced.
‘Give me the money now.’
‘Of course I have to pay. I’m not some kind of idiot broker who doesn’t even pay for it.’
That day, for the first time, I touched the word ‘money’.
They were shiny and shiny lumps of metal.
‘By the way, can you get a clinic to treat your sister? What should I do?’
From noble mtl dot com
‘Councilor? What is that.’
‘He is a person who heals people.’
‘…Please. Herbs couldn’t solve it.’
‘Then let me introduce you to a member I know well.’
Sha Nova kindly introduced me to her clinic, and she gave all of her money to the clinic. It costs more when treating non-human xenos, she says.
I immediately took the doctor to the village, and the doctor examined my sister’s condition and gave me medicine.
My sister who took the medicine was able to regain her energy a little. I was happy. I thought the only thing left was to go back to my normal daily life.
‘Sister, I caught a rabbit! …Sister?’
But after a while, my sister collapsed again.
When I went to the clinic and asked, he shook his head, saying that it would take a long time to treat because the condition was serious.
I needed drugs again, and I needed money.
‘It can be a little difficult this time. The opponent is a knight.’
‘Knights? Does not matter. Instead, I guess they give more money as much as it is difficult, right?’
‘Sure.’
I looked for Shanova again.
She constantly gave me work and allowed me to earn money.
Of course, all the money I earned went to the doctor, but it was nice to be able to talk to my older sister who recovered her energy after taking the medicine.
That’s how I started my life of caring for my sister during the day and killing humans at night.
There was no time to sleep, no time to wash, much less time to get simple food.
‘This wild dog…!’
As a result, I got a strange nickname.
It was a nickname I didn’t really like.
How can you compare the noble lycanthrope to wild dogs?
Even my older sister, who has the same blood as me, felt like she was being cursed at as well, so I felt even worse.
No matter how many years passed, my sister’s condition remained the same.
I was able to regain my strength when I took the medicine, but it wasn’t long before I lay down again.
As time passed, the cycle was accelerating.
I felt uneasy and asked the doctor about it, but the doctor said he was getting better.
I decided to believe that.
Shanova and the councilor were the only ones out of town who reached out to me.
So…
“…I don’t need your help. The treatment is already going well.”
I said that to the blind man who spat out nonsense saying that he would heal his sister.
Did you say he came back from paradise?
I don’t know how it got such a cumbersome nickname. However, one thing I could know for sure was that this black-haired blind man in front of me was an absurdly strong man, to the extent that he was given a large sum of ‘50,000 gold’.
I’ve met many strong people since I made assassination a career, but this was the first time I’ve been unable to use my hands without sharing a few.
I was conversing with him, bound by thick black tentacles.
“Treatment in progress?”
“Yes. Do I look like an idiot who can’t get a councilman?”
“It seems that way.”
The blind man answered as he straightened the bandage.
What do you see?
He had a strange knack for scratching people.
“…Anyway, I don’t need your help. I have no intention of entrusting my sister’s treatment to a blind man. Kill me if you’re going to kill me. Shanova will take good care of my sister.”
“Shanova?”
“My broker.”
“Keraph, do you know that name?”
That wasn’t the question I was asking.
As the blind man calls out to Kerap, he sees a man with a familiar face walking from the other side of the bamboo forest.
‘…Isn’t that a turtle? Wasn’t he dead?’
The man walked carefully to the side of the blind man, met his eyes with mine, and smiled shyly. It seems that the name Kedur was not his real name either.
“Shanova… I’ve heard of it. She’s quite the famous tycoon in the underworld.”
“How can demons and humans…”
“Well, maybe it’s because they’re demons that don’t smell bad.”
Keraph smiled as he said that, and then he continued his conversation with the blind man. Judging from Keraf’s tone and attitude, it seems that Keraf was a blind man’s servant.
“Who are you?”
“She is also called a corpse witch. She exploits her and her mercenaries or necromancers until they become her corpses…”
“You sound funny. Shanova is not that kind of guy.”
“Have you ever really heard of the nickname Corpse Witch?”
Keraph asked me.
“……”
I couldn’t answer.
Because she remembered hearing her called by that nickname when passing by.
Corpse Witch.
It was a nickname with a terrible tone.
That said, I didn’t particularly suspect Shanova.
I thought that maybe I wasn’t the only one with a strange nickname.
But I still couldn’t believe it.
I thought the guys who investigated me were talking nonsense.
She was as close as possible to Shanova, but she was not ignorant enough to believe the words of a blind stranger who had only recently seen her face.
I thought so until I heard the muttering of the blind man.
“A state of unconsciousness due to high fever. Since Lycanthropes are so resilient, there is no such thing as a long illness… Is it a genetic disease or a rare disease unique to the species?”
The blind man who was conversing with Keraf muttered that as if to listen.
“…How do you know your sister’s condition?”
“Did I tell you? You see things that are invisible to others.”
“…I don’t know what tricks they did, but it’s useless. I said that if you take the medicine in time, your sister will get better soon.”
“How many years is that? Now?”
“It’s been a while. That’s because I’m seriously ill…”
“…Wasn’t your condition getting worse day by day despite taking the medicine?”
“But after taking the medicine, I felt refreshed!”
“It’s just to cheer up for a while…”
“Maybe he used a stimulant or something.”
Keraph, who had been listening to the conversation, interrupted.
“If it’s the disease I’m thinking of, I think it’s possible to see a weak effect with a stimulant. Even so, the condition will never get better.”
What on earth are these guys really like, do they know all the details? It was difficult to understand unless you use magic to read people’s memories.
“For a corpse witch, it wouldn’t be strange to do such a thing.”
“It looks like the poor wolf cub was being used nicely.”
The blind man smiled bitterly as he said that.
My head was dizzy.
It felt like everything they said and what Shanova and the councilor said were all lies.
I couldn’t trust anyone anymore.
“There is an old saying. Children are innocent. There are only bad adults.”
The blind man pushed his face toward me, who was being restrained, and continued.
“Then I ask. Do I look like a bad grown-up or a good grown-up in front of you now?”
“…On the bad side.”
I turned my head away from his burdensome gaze and said softly. He wondered how he could feel the gaze of a blind man.
“Excellent. That’s right. I’m a bad grown-up. But I’m a bad grown-up who can heal the sister you care so much for.”
“How do you treat it?”
“Perhaps your sister suffers from ‘full moon disease’, a rare disease endemic to the lycanthrope race. It is a disease that gets worse when there is a full moon in the sky. Is that correct?”
“……What is the full moon?”
“That… I mean the full moon. The round moon.”
Keraph immediately added an explanation.
Round moon, full moon.
It’s a full moon.
“…I think it was.”
Once in a while, on nights when my sister shivered violently, such a round moon was bright in the sky.
“Then you’ll need a very rare medicine for the cure. But don’t worry, this bad old man knows where to get them.”
“So you’re saying it’s curable?”
“Of course. With those medicines, your sister will be able to regain her health as before. I can get them, but…”
“…What else?”
“As I said, I’m a bad adult and I’m not nice enough to give my child rare medicines without any strings attached.”
“You mean to entrust the work.”
On the contrary, it made the conversation more comfortable.
Both Shanova and the blind are hard to believe, but to put it mildly, after years of treatment, Shanova did not have much effect, and the blind man did not even meet his sister, but he was able to figure out the name of the disease and the symptoms, so he became blind. It was an undeniable fact that my heart was inclined to the side.
Instead, the key was what kind of work he entrusted, but in a way, it was an obvious story.
“Could you kill a ninja? As quietly as possible.”
As the blind man answered, he flicked his hand once, and then the unpleasant tentacles that had been gripping me released their pressure and quietly disappeared to the floor.
“Quiet? That’s kind of difficult.”
I didn’t think there would be anything wrong with doing one more job in a situation where 50,000 gold was gone anyway.
“Don’t worry about that. Keraf will help.”
“…Wait a minute. Me? Jetto?”
“Aren’t they close? It seems like they’ve met each other already.”
I laughed when I saw Keraf staring at the blind man with his eyes wide open.
“…We were friends. For a while.”