The Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health Chapter 357

‘…Dad?’

I widened my eyes, then calmed myself almost immediately.

‘That’s not my dad.’

I knew instinctively.

‘There’s no way my dad would ever look at me like that.’

Seeing such cold, emotionless eyes—eyes that regarded others like objects—made me realize anew just how carefully my dad had looked at me, even back when we weren’t close.

Still, the man looked so much like him that I’d mistaken him for a moment.

Kind of like… a cold, handsome version of Valer?

‘Wait, is he a doppelgänger?’

So my idiot dad had confidently gone off alone and gotten eaten by a monster?!

I tried to make sense of the situation that way, but then the black mages greeted the man as if they’d met their savior.

“Duke!”

“You’ve come to save us!”

The man called “Duke” sneered coldly at their words.

“You’re even more incompetent than usual today. Other than procuring test subjects, what use are you? You get caught this easily the moment the head of Fusco steps away—what exactly am I supposed to do with you?”

“Ghk.”

“I truly wonder why the Black Star even bothers keeping incompetents like you.”

The black mages trembled but couldn’t bring themselves to argue back.

It was quite a sight.

‘Internal conflict…?’

It seemed the Duke and the black mages were cooperating despite having different objectives.

The monsters that had looked ready to pounce on us at any moment merely growled and kept us in check at the Duke’s gesture.

‘They look like Cerberuses.’

Frowning at the dogs leaking unpleasant black energy, I noticed the “Duke” examining my face closely, as if intrigued.

A subtle standoff began.

 

 

***

 

 

‘…Dad?’

I widened my eyes, then calmed myself almost immediately.

‘That’s not my dad.’

I knew instinctively.

‘There’s no way my dad would ever look at me like that.’

Seeing such cold, emotionless eyes—eyes that regarded others like objects—made me realize anew just how carefully my dad had looked at me, even back when we weren’t close.

Still, the man looked so much like him that I’d mistaken him for a moment.

Kind of like… a cold, handsome version of Valer?

‘Wait, is he a doppelgänger?’

So my idiot dad had confidently gone off alone and gotten eaten by a monster?!

I tried to make sense of the situation that way, but then the black mages greeted the man as if they’d met their savior.

“Duke!”

“You’ve come to save us!”

The man called “Duke” sneered coldly at their words.

“You’re even more incompetent than usual today. Other than procuring test subjects, what use are you? You get caught this easily the moment the head of Fusco steps away—what exactly am I supposed to do with you?”

“Ghk.”

“I truly wonder why the Black Star even bothers keeping incompetents like you.”

The black mages trembled but couldn’t bring themselves to argue back.

It was quite a sight.

‘Internal conflict…?’

It seemed the Duke and the black mages were cooperating despite having different objectives.

The monsters that had looked ready to pounce on us at any moment merely growled and kept us in check at the Duke’s gesture.

‘They look like Cerberuses.’

Frowning at the dogs leaking unpleasant black energy, I noticed the “Duke” examining my face closely, as if intrigued.

A subtle standoff began.

 

 

****

 

 

 

Separated from Arellin and Pession, Valer wandered the old mansion alone.

Even though he was walking aimlessly, the place felt strangely familiar.

‘Familiar.’

A place he didn’t remember—yet his body reacted.

‘Why?’

Ever since entering this domain, his heart had been pounding abnormally hard, so loud that he couldn’t hear anything else.

The vision of his sister—gone since the Gairen ruins after confirming Arellin’s survival—appeared again, whispering to him.

—It’s okay, Valer.
—Forget.

But despite that effort, fragmented memories from his buried childhood surfaced beyond countless regressions.

Scattered serum vials.
Screaming people.
Himself, bleeding.
The “sacrifices” offered to him.

“…Ugh.”

Clutching his head, Valer noticed how quiet it had become. There were no footsteps—yet he sensed someone.

His body stiffened.

That feeling—like sinking into a swamp.

Valer finally came face-to-face again with the nameless immortal he’d once encountered in the Domain of Sloth.

Cheyen smiled.

“Hello?”

Receiving that smile, Valer felt changes erupting inside his body even in the silence.

Only then did he fully realize the true nature of the “serum” injected into him during Morden’s experiments, ever since the day he was first dragged into the basement of the Halbern estate.

‘Immortal blood.’

Unprocessed.

His crumbling sanity screamed at him to hold on, but what little humanity remained was pathetically weak.

So that was it.

That was why all the other test subjects who couldn’t endure the serum had turned into monsters.

Valer let out a hollow laugh.

Why hadn’t he remembered this “memory” until now?

‘…Because this is the first time I’ve stayed sane this far.’

Realizing how thoroughly he’d been toyed with, Valer bit his lip until it bled.

“…The immortal blood in my body.”

Cheyen’s smile deepened.

“Do you think it belongs to you?”

Valer already knew the answer even as he asked.

“You only figured it out now?”

Valer gasped faintly. He finally understood why this man had appeared before him.

And he realized—this immortal was the one who had driven his life into ruin and turned the world into hell.

Valer glared at Cheyen, panting. Cheyen kept smiling.

“What’s your goal?”

“The complete end of the world.”

Cheyen whispered.

“You thought you were chosen to regress, but you weren’t. You were merely given the chance to be swept along by the world’s regression. And that regression hasn’t ended.”

Cheyen’s golden eyes glowed strangely.

“I will destroy that regression and bring about true annihilation.”

Valer trembled.

“For that to happen, you must die.”

The madness sleeping within Valer—madness he thought he’d barely suppressed—opened its eyes.

“Because that is the ‘correct order.’”

The pressure of space around Valer shifted.

He dropped to his knees, bracing himself against the floor. His hands shook violently, veins bulging, blood vessels bursting in the whites of his eyes until his vision blurred red.

The last thing he thought of—

Was Arellin.

Valer’s mind collapsed.

KWA-AANG—!

The prelude to a rampage.