There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 84

“What kind of arrogant little brat is this?”

Damyeon. Cassis de Millang knows him. Just before Damyeon, looking flabbergasted, lets out a hollow laugh and shows his next reaction.

He gripped his sword. And he tried to slash with all his might. Wham! But he was just kicked away. The young body is struck in the solar plexus and hits the wall, coughing up stomach acid. Damyeon, feeling a great deal of both guilt and bewilderment at the fact that his body had reacted instinctively, tries to approach Cassis de Millang, but when he stabs with his sword once more, Damyeon frowns and twists his arm behind his back. Crunch.

“Ugh, heuk…”

“Did the family order you to do this?”

“Such, ugh, cute words…”

A deliberately low voice rings in his ear. He knows that this man is a victim of de Millang. De Millang oppressed him and made him suffer. They broke him cruelly. They forced him to be unable to even die. It was the deed of the blood flowing in Cassis de Millang’s veins.

‘So what, should I show him some compassion?’

Or should I expect some compassion from him?

‘Go fuck yourself.’

He doesn’t want pity. He made a choice, and pity can’t save him. He knows. It has been repeated over and over. Even the researchers who conducted the experiments told him dozens of times that they couldn’t do this anymore, that they should run away together. Them? What happened to them? They all died or betrayed him. It was the same old story. They had families too, and if hostages were taken, they gave him up. There were even ten times when he almost lost his family after getting caught up in the researchers’ useless melodrama. He paid an even greater price to barely get them back. It was because he had bet on others. All because he was so fucking weak. Because he was stupid. Because he had trusted people.

“See, I expected that you wouldn’t obey orders meekly. So I set up a little device. Your son and daughter. They’re doing well.”

“…!”

“What do you think I can do?”

So Cassis de Millang decided not to trust people.

“What… do you want? After doing this to me, after making me like this, what more…!”

“Take me as your disciple. Ah, you’ve already agreed? If you truly think so, that’s a bit funny. You haven’t even punished me… If you can’t even give me proper instruction, I don’t need a master like you. And I hate things that have no value.”

“You…”

“Teach me. This is an order.”

“Is that all I have to do?”

“Don’t go easy on me.”

Is violence passed down? Cassis de Millang did many cruel things to Damyeon. So it was a natural consequence for him to receive it back.

“Kill it. Or die.”

Damyeon, his hesitation gone, pushed the young body in front of the monster.

He still didn’t know how to handle the mana embedded in his lower abdomen. He collapsed, coughing up blood while trying to forcefully draw it out, and became broken. Damyeon pulled the child, crushed by fangs, out of the monster’s mouth, poured a potion on him, and pushed him back in. He picked him up again, and pushed him again, waiting without promise for the day Cassis de Millang would unleash his mana to avoid death. Ah. Something, whether it was warmth or coldness from the bones, was branded onto his back like a hot iron. Cassis de Millang had to watch with his own two eyes as his chewed-up body was put back together with a potion. It was Damyeon who grabbed the kid crawling on the floor with his broken bones set incorrectly and pushed him in front of the monster again.

Damyeon looked to be in pain. It’s a truly sorry thing to say, but that’s why he could endure. He was no different from himself. He had been made a cripple by de Millang against his will. His body was neither living nor dead. Looking at him was a comfort. If I really can’t endure it, they’ll turn me into something like Damyeon and preserve me as a specimen. If that happens, the time I have to protect my parents will increase… Even if I go mad by then and want to kill myself, I won’t be able to. Ah. It’s perfect…

Cassis de Millang might have been able to live by positioning himself as a victim. He might have been able to achieve a mental victory. But Cassis de Millang had done many bad things too. If he was told to kill someone, he killed them. Knowing full well that they too wanted to be happy, one by one, if he was told to kill, he killed. The reason was simple. If he killed them, his parents would live. There was no reason not to kill.

His body was already ruined. Even after adapting to the mana circle located in his lower abdomen, he felt like coughing up blood just by drawing on his mana. Killing people was easy, and resistance was impossible. So he had just chosen the easy way.

Human. And meat. No difference. Nothing was different. Humans live by killing humans. Humans live by killing meat. Those who survived were human. If you die, it becomes meaningless. Only by surviving can you claim to have been human. So he had to survive.

But he himself was not human. Huh. That’s strange. If I’m not human, why am I alive? I. Human… Am I human? Human.

One day, Cassis de Millang felt himself going mad.

That was a problem. He was a tool. A tool had to be sharp. It had to be clear. It had to be rational. That way, it could kill people well. Killing was not the goal. The reward that the act of killing promised him was the goal. Since he had to maintain his sanity for as long as possible to efficiently receive the reward, he decided to protect his sanity. Around that time, a proposal was made. De Millang accepted the proposal conditionally, and Cassis de Millang decided to do something crazy.

That was how the thirteen-year-old dungeon conqueror was born.

From then on, Cassis de Millang was able to observe his parents in a little more detail. He was even able to touch them in person, to meet them in reality.

However, there was something he hadn’t imagined.

“Um. Hello? I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“…”

“What’s your name?”

To his parents, who had forgotten the existence of their child, Cassis de Millang was a kid they were seeing for the first time.

“Did you hear? We’re supposed to become a family from now on…”

…I know. Everything was as he had wished. He had erased their memories because he had wished for it. He had fabricated the identity of an adopted son because he had wanted it.

However, for his parents, it was a situation where they suddenly had a thirteen-year-old son.

‘I was stupid. I misjudged. But… how can they smile at me like this?’

They were smiling. That smile where the corners of their mouths turn up, dimples sink in slightly, and their eyes curve like half-moons. Even in this situation, where de Millang had forced them to register an adopted son with the ‘false’ setting of being ‘a child they had given birth to from the beginning,’ they were kind. Even if it wasn’t the way he had dreamed of, their warmth remained. It was protected. He had protected it. He…

There was at least one thing in this world that he had accomplished.

“We, uh, were just making something. Would you like to try one of these?”

“…I should get going.”

“Oh, huh? Hey, wait, what about food…! At least have a meal before you go! Hey…! Son!”

His chest churned strangely. Cassis de Millang vowed to live his whole life imagining this moment. It was a pledge to never have private time with them again. Meeting them made his heart feel strange and troubled him. He was not supposed to break down, but being swept away like a sandcastle by a single wave was too much.

Even when they happened to meet during official occasions, like at a de Millang dinner banquet, he didn’t greet them properly. Just existing in the same space made him happy and, at the same time, a passion that felt like he would die overwhelmed him. He couldn’t open his mouth properly for fear that he would burst into tears, so he just picked at his food. He left the lavish banquet leftovers, even though he was only given one meal a day. Because he didn’t want to cry in front of them. Instead, he cried a little after returning to his iron cage.

He seemed to have cried a lot when he was first captured. It had been so long that it didn’t come easily. So he decided to just imagine.

To look back with dry eyes.

‘What would have happened if I had eaten with them then?’

Now a distant thirteen years old, when he had seen them in person.

He would try to imagine what it would have been like if he had stayed for a meal. He had eaten such vile food for so long that he had now forgotten the food they had made for him when he was young.

What would it have been like if he could have overlaid it with love, just once?

‘Yeah, it would have been sparkling.’

Since it wasn’t mealtime when I arrived, if I had said I hadn’t eaten yet, they would have been fussily surprised and brought out some snacks. The snack they had mentioned then, the one they were making. He now knew what the strange sweet smell lingering at the tip of his nose was. But he couldn’t imagine it. It was because he had never eaten it. He had been able to peek at them making it with magic a few more times after that, but no matter how desperately he imagined it, it didn’t resonate. It was made by mixing two white powders, was it medicine? For him, whose thought process could only go that far, he could always easily recreate the warmth of the sunlight falling on their cheeks.

But what form that sweetness took, what kind of sensation it was…

What in the world was it?

“How much is it?”

“Huh? Huh?”

“Is one gold bar enough?”

“N-no! This is, it’s just a five-hundred-won…”

“You can keep the change.”

One day, Cassis de Millang came across that snack by chance on the street. He threw a gold bar and picked it up with his thumb and forefinger. It had a strange sweet smell. He held it up to the sunlight. The yellowish-brown color shone lusciously. The thinly baked sugar let the sunlight pass through, shining like a light source in its round shape.

Cassis de Millang swallowed the light. And then.

“…A cheap taste…”

After that, Cassis de Millang decided not to eat dalgona anymore.

He was twenty years old.