The One and Only Sami Chapter 48

“The title ‘Harut’ only replaced the traditional title of ruler about five generations before me. Not that long ago. Since the only Harut in this desert is the sovereign, it doesn’t really matter which one people call me.”

“Then… what is the ‘energy of Harut’?”

“Who knows. The ancient texts say it’s your nature pooling together until it spills out as a scent.”

“That sounds…”

Sami didn’t stop walking, but his gaze drifted downward. He looked deep in thought.

“It sounds like a story about some kind of natural medicinal oasis.”

“Aha… You mean something for anti-aging and improving your eyesight?”

He let out a boisterous laugh.

“At any rate, it seems to have a significant influence on others. Put simply, is it the ability to seduce people without much effort?”

Razard spoke lightheartedly, brandishing his sword through the air.

“A Harut is essentially born with a natural disposition for charm. Why? Don’t you think it suits me?”

As Razard shrugged with a smirk, his face remained gorgeous and striking, unaffected by the arrogance of words that should have halved his charm. Sami couldn’t even bring himself to grumble a denial like, ‘No, not really.’

“But… for someone who can make a person their pet with a single word, isn’t that a… redundant ability?”

“Well, the scope of the power is different. They say that if you have this scent, you can seduce any creature—be it male or female, or even an eighty-year-old man—to the point where they’d beg you to get them pregnant. Apparently, you can actually make it happen, too.”

“What?”

Was he joking?

“A Harut is responsible for absolute prosperity. This is just one of the abilities included in that prosperity. —At least, that’s what the books say.”

“Absolute prosperity…”

Technically, if childbirth is prosperity, then it counts, but… he really wasn’t joking?

Even searching his face, it was hard to read his intent because Razard wore the same smile whether he was amused, annoyed, or lying. Instead, he gave a firm nod of confirmation as if to say, ‘It’s true.’

Everything about what he said was strange.

It wasn’t just the content; Sami felt a profound sense of dissonance in Razard’s delivery. He used endings like ‘they say’ or ‘it seems’… He sounded detached, as if he were merely relaying something he’d read in a book or heard through the grapevine.

Even though it was a story about himself.

Sami looked up at Razard with wide eyes. Razard spun the sword on his shoulder once before settling it back and speaking.

“Usually, I keep it suppressed.”

Razard swept aside the hair that fell loosely to his chest, baring his neck. There was a tattoo engraved on the back of his neck that usually wasn’t visible. Razard tapped the pattern with his finger, making sure Sami saw it.

“Ideally, I should be able to control it myself without such tricks, but I lost that ability because of a curse the Mages placed on the royal family generations ago.”

A curse?

That was a word that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with Razard. He seemed like the type of man who would cast a curse, not be the victim of one.

Sami blinked a couple of times and looked up at him.

He saw the face of a man wearing rings sparkling with every imaginable color on all ten fingers. He carried a scimitar adorned with gold and jewels over his shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and there wasn’t a hint of hesitation in his stride.

He lived exactly how he wanted without a care for what others thought, and even his arrogant, lawless attitude felt as natural as his own skin. He was so overconfidently at ease that it seemed he had never faced a single hardship in his life.

That was the Razard Sami saw.

The master of the desert and the oases who had everything. The Harut.

“Why would someone like you be cursed, Razard?”

The question just slipped out. To Sami, it was hard to believe that a man for whom everything seemed so easy would be carrying around something like a curse.

“I told you, it’s been passed down for generations. It happened through no fault of my own. Mentioning it again makes me annoyed all over again. I really should just exterminate every last one of those Mages.”

See? Even now, he answered as if it were nothing.

‘A curse? A real curse isn’t like that.’

But then Sami remembered a self-deprecating comment Razard had tossed out once before. At the time, Sami thought he was just teasing and comforting him while he was panicking about being possessed by a Djinn.

“Razard.”

Sami felt he shouldn’t just let it slide, caught up in the man’s nonchalant vibe. He stole a glance at him before speaking cautiously.

“Um… what happens if you can’t control it?”

At Sami’s question, Razard let out a short ‘hmm’ and shrugged. Who knows.

“Being Harut is practically my ‘nature.’ I’m suppressing the things I’m naturally supposed to do as a Harut, so I’ll probably go mad if I leave it like this.”

For a while now, Razard’s attitude had been strange in a way Sami couldn’t understand. Even though he was talking about himself, he looked indifferent, as if he were talking about someone else entirely.

“But that’s…”

“A problem, right? That’s why I’m working so hard to collect the Maruts. They help neutralize me.”

Every fact he shared was alarming.

It was unthinkable for the master of this desert, of all people, to go mad. The Master of the Desert. Sami suddenly looked at the man walking beside him with new eyes. The most noble and high-ranking ruler.

At the same time, he was a frivolous, arrogant fraud who used magic more freely than any Mage.

And now, a new thing for Sami to learn: a man who possessed an uncontrollable power and was at risk of one day losing his mind.

“Doesn’t it… get hard for you?”

Razard paused for a moment at the question, which was asked with a foolishly naive sincerity.

He had heard plenty of direct advice and loyal warnings from his ministers. However, those were strictly professional; Razard hated it when people touched on his personal life. Those who knew his temperament knew better than to pry.

So, this was the first time Razard, as an individual, had received concern from anyone.

“Hmm? Well…”

Receiving a worried look from someone else didn’t feel as bad as he expected. Instead, because it was a question he’d never been asked, he was at a loss for words. The man who always had a snappy comeback stayed silent for a good while. His gaze drifted past Sami toward the ceiling above them.

“Is it hard? I’m not sure. I stay busy cutting down Mages, stealing Maruts, looking for a way to break the curse, running the country, and going on outings occasionally. I’m living without any major issues for the moment.”

The sword kept rolling in his hand. The smooth scimitar glinted sharply in the torchlight.

“I don’t really know.”

But suddenly…

He found himself wishing he could get Sami’s scent sooner.

He felt an impulse to devour this tiny creature who was looking at him with wide eyes and asking, ‘Doesn’t it get hard?’ Forget the complicated thoughts about using the boy’s body scent to track the Marut’s fragrance.

He wanted to do it, so he should, but right now he couldn’t. It felt a bit annoying.

“Still, it would be better to break the curse soon, wouldn’t it?”

Perhaps because it was the first time he’d said it out loud, he felt a bit of an itch. He wanted to resolve the shackles bound to his body quickly.

“Then I’ll have to work hard to help you…”

Seeing that face nodding innocently without understanding the true weight of his words, the impulse surging inside Razard bucked even harder.

Should he just say it? That taking his scent was actually a matter of completely violating him. That even if he cried or tried to run, Razard had no intention of stopping until he was satisfied, and that he would release all that terrifying Harut energy to consume him whole.

He grew curious about what kind of face Sami would make then.

“Sami.”

Just as Razard finally called his name, unable to hold back…

“Razard, did you feel that too?”

“…What?”

Sami came to a dead stop, standing before a pair of pillars with a serious expression. It didn’t look particularly different from any of the other pillars, but Sami seemed to have felt a dissonance.

“It’s between these.”

His amber eyes stared intently at the space between the pillars. Where his finger pointed, a thin veil of sand was drifting down. The slowly falling sand sparkled elegantly like a golden beaded curtain.

“…You got lucky.”

Razard didn’t clarify whose luck he was talking about. His inner thoughts, which had been about to burst out violently, recoiled and hissed like a hidden snake. Only Sami, who had no way of knowing he had been seconds away from a wicked confession, glanced sideways at him.

“…You’re going to send me in alone again, aren’t you?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“Sigh. The Marut’s illusions… they’re really scary.”

“What are you worried about? If anything happens, I’ll break through and save you.”

Razard, having tucked his impulses away for now, gave a mischievous grin.