There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 83

“A deal? Someone like you? Do you think you can still say that after having your limbs torn off?”

“Well then, did you think you could hide your hand after being so blatant? That I am what you desire… Did you hope I wouldn’t know that I alone can fulfill your will? You were foolish. Truly foolish… haha.”

Cassis de Millang did not wish to remain a victim of his own kidnapping.

He was not of a nature to be dominated in the first place.

“You need me, don’t you? Aren’t you the ones who need me… You should have cherished me when I groveled at your feet, saying I would be tamed meekly. Isn’t a beast meant to be raised with food and a whip?”

“Then what should I feed you?”

“There we go. Now we can finally make a deal.”

Right there, he revealed his reverse scale.

“Do not lay a hand on my parents. If you want to threaten me, use another card. If you do not, I swear on this soul of mine, I will bring ruin upon you.”

He forced others not to interfere with his parents’ lives and deaths.

He thought that was all that mattered. Since they had turned his sinful birth into a blessing, he hoped that they would live out their natural lifespan on the path they were on.

Therefore, what he did was a deal. He put the leash on himself. In exchange for entrusting the authority to handle his own body, he protected the continued existence of two lives.

But that was not all.

‘My parents’ safety.’

There was no way he would be satisfied just by hearing news of them.

He had to be able to see them with his own two eyes. De Millang agreed to that, and in exchange for complying with the restrictions, he was allowed to glimpse into their daily lives through magic. However, the parents he saw were dying. It was not because de Millang had touched them. The child, taken from them alive. They were crumbling, unable to bear the void left by Cassis de Millang’s absence. Memory inevitably entails pain. Was it arrogant of him to hope that parents who had lost their living child would live on with their sanity intact?

He did not want to know how cruel he could become. He really did not want to know such a thing. But.

“I know what you are doing to me. Do a little more. Don’t worry about such pathetic things. I won’t go mad…”

“What are you plotting?”

“I have just one request.”

With that additional deal, Cassis de Millang succeeded in erasing himself from his parents’ memories in exchange for being treated a little more harshly. When he deprived the parents, from whom their child had been taken, of even the chance to miss him.

Only then was Cassis de Millang satisfied.

“I think I did the right thing, giving up my position as head of the family and running away. Dating you, and marrying you… why are you making that face?”

“I wish I were an ordinary person. I’m afraid my bloodline might have blocked your path…”

“Don’t say such things. You are my only treasure.”

It was bright. It was warm. That grassy field. Green bloomed in the flower garden that had been trampled by military boots. Violets, fragrant and in full bloom, with honey that seduced butterflies… and even a small stream flowing with milk, ah, that place was complete. Complete happiness, love. Such a longed-for place. But it was enough now. Just looking was enough.

There was a time when he too was his father’s treasure, but now he was nothing more than a raw fish lying on a cutting board. He had made himself that way. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t escape from the fishbowl. Even if he could never set foot on land for his entire life.

If the sun shines on the white sandy beach, making it glow.

Even if they see the scaled thing washed ashore and don’t remember him.

‘Good.’

So Cassis de Millang decided not to resist. Hell unfolded when he opened his eyes, and it was hell even when he closed them, but still, he had a light. Because he could hold it in his hands, he believed that life was worth perpetuating. He could endure being trapped for a thousand years. Any longer than that, and he would probably go mad.

‘It’s warm.’

He had a light. Family. A home. Complete peace. As a price for the deal, he was allowed to observe them for ten minutes, once a day. He always felt that time was precious. Even breathing and blinking his eyes felt so achingly regrettable that he struggled to focus on that moment.

Everyone said he must have gone mad, but he too had his reasons.

Cassis de Millang had always been good at imagining things. When the ten minutes were over, there were five hours of sleep. But even sleeping felt like a waste. He wanted to dream of himself in the scene he had seen that day, so he crammed everything he had observed into his head. He couldn’t waste a single moment. He remembered. The intellect, said to be born once in a thousand years, dissected every image his eyes had explored, admired, and indulged in. Today, they had walked in the park. If it were a flower garden, he could imagine it based on what he had seen and experienced himself, but not today. It was time for a new experience. Come on. Think. What does a blade of grass feel like?

‘What I saw and touched before I was captured was soft and moist.’

But the blade of grass I see now has a rough, downy fuzz on it. Would it be a little scratchy then? Or, even if it looks rough, would it bend and tickle the skin when touched? What would it be like? A butterfly? I’ve never touched a butterfly. But somehow it has a silk-like sheen. Then does it have the texture of silk? Ah. What was the texture of silk like? My father’s necktie was silk. Father. I don’t remember him well. But I can’t. I can’t give up. You can remember. You can remember. Let’s recall the scent. Mother…

Then he felt as if he himself were among them. That was his solace. After finishing his daily routine—fighting, killing, fighting, killing, being regenerated before dying, being experimented on, being tortured, becoming a piece of meat, and now finally becoming a person, closing his eyes and crawling into a cradle. Peace was not far away. All he had to do was imagine. The better he imagined, the more concrete the image became, the more it felt like falling asleep in his parents’ arms.

Even if in reality, he was sleeping curled up in an iron cage bent from thick slabs of steel. Though his body was trapped, his soul was held. He was sincere. Even when the promise to endure a slightly worse fate brought about the grotesque demand to shove the heart’s mana circle into his lower abdomen, and even when he realized that all the experiments thus far had been merely preparations for this.

“Well, are you afraid?”

“If I were to be afraid of something like this, I would have bitten my tongue and died long ago.”

He could accept it as a matter of course.

“Hh, keuk. Ah. Ugh…”

But just because it was a matter of course did not mean it was nothing. Dammit, instead of fear, pain came. Pain was real. Only that which exists can feel pain. Therefore, all this pain that Cassis de Millang felt would surely prove that he was alive. And that meant the continued existence of the family he loved so dearly. That was what he wished for.

It was what he wanted. So he had to endure.

‘…I have to live.’

He held on with that thought alone. At that time, when they shoved the mana circle into his lower abdomen. He was on an altar like a sacrifice. People chanted spells as if praying, and mana swirled up like a vortex, so the sounds of his agonized convulsions did not reach anyone. It might have reached their eardrums, but it did not reach their hearts. No one pitied him. Because he was a vessel. Because he was merely a tool.

His limbs, convulsing spasmatically against his will, twisted while bound in chains. His bound wrists bent as the convulsions continued. An organ that should not exist was embedded in a location where it should not exist. It was not something a human could endure. But he could endure it. Only he could endure it. As it happened, it was at a stage where he could endure it. He cried, bled, and lived.

Rotating the mana was impossible. It wasn’t something a human was supposed to do in the first place. He had survived because he was Cassis de Millang. But that was all. He felt like he would die just from breathing, so how could he circulate mana? Just trying to breathe mana caused his heart to seize up. He fainted dozens of times a day. There were numerous times when he was almost on the verge of his soul collapsing after being injected with awakening potions and forced to stay conscious. This wouldn’t work. Everyone agreed. Shoving the mana circle into his lower abdomen wasn’t enough. They had to make him master mana somehow.

“This is your master.”

And so, at the age of eight, he got a master. It was not, of course, to save him. Nor was it so he could live. Cassis de Millang had to fulfill his purpose.

“Greetings, Master.”

“…”

“Do you have any value?”

There was no difference between himself and others.