How the Prince Makes Friends Chapter 154

“This is merely an illusion, so you may do as you wish.”

“…An illu…sion…?”

“That’s right.”

After giving him a half-hearted answer, Nihil turned around and continued walking. The puppy stood there dazed for a moment, then staggered to his feet and followed again, keeping his distance.

He was still wavering over whether to kill him or not. A feeble trace of murderous intent kept surfacing and disappearing.

In truth, murderous intent this weak was unlikely to lead to action. But if killing Nihil was what the contract required, it would be better to let him carry it out.

If Nihil unilaterally broke the contract, not only would his power be exposed, but he also had no way of knowing what might happen to the other party involved.

Ignoring the gaze fixed on him from a distance, Nihil entered his study and made some hangover medicine.

Annoyed with the puppy, he deliberately left out anything that might mask the bitterness and added generous amounts of unpleasant-tasting medicinal herbs.

After carefully putting away the hangover medicine, Nihil went to Rianus’s bedroom and picked up the rabbit doll.

He stared at it for a while, then stroked its drooping ears a few times. He wasn’t sure how effective it would be, since he had never been particularly attached to it or spent much time with it. Still, this was the only thing that belonged to him, so there was nothing else he could use as a substitute.

Even so, it was better than having nothing.

He squeezed out a little blood and fed it to the rabbit doll. The white cloth soaked up the blood and turned red.

And then,

“I’m sorry.”

He breathed into its nose.

The rabbit doll’s eyes, which had been pitch-black, began to glow with an unusual light. Nihil wrapped his own veil around its face in place of his own, then laid it on his bed.

He sat down rather carelessly beside it. The blanket, which had been deprived of its owner’s warmth, felt terribly cold.

Soon, heavy footsteps approached and finally stopped in front of the rabbit doll.

Nihil decided he might as well try to extract some information from the puppy, who seemed to be a little out of his mind, and opened his mouth.

“Who ordered you to do it?”

“…….”

“Where did you go?”

“…….”

“Who are you doing this for?”

“…….”

However, the puppy didn’t answer. He simply stared intently at the rabbit doll lying there.

Nihil couldn’t tell whether he didn’t want to talk or whether he was so soaked in alcohol that he couldn’t properly register his own voice.

“This is a dream. So it’s all right to talk.”

“…A dream.”

“Yes. A dream. This is a nightmare.”

Evan remained dazed for a moment before slowly opening his mouth.

“Aril.”

Aril? Was that a family member? Or a lover?

It couldn’t be the name of the person who had ordered him to do this. The puppy’s expression as he spoke that name was far too tender and sorrowful.

“Where is she?”

“…….”

“Bring her here.”

If the person named Aril was the other party to the contract, securing her would be the best course of action. That way, there would be no need to take any risks.

“Can’t… bring her.”

As he said that, tears suddenly streamed down the puppy’s eyes.

Seeing a grown man cry while staring at a rabbit doll lying down was somewhat ridiculous, yet he also looked so unbearably fragile that Nihil couldn’t help feeling concerned.

“…Why are you crying when you’re all grown up?”

“I… want to wake up from this dream.”

“Then finish what you have to do.”

“…But…”

The puppy mumbled excuses.

If the wildcat disappeared, His Highness would be sad. The marquis would be sad too. And… and…

“I… I’d be a little… too. But… Aril…”

“Evan.”

“…….”

“You may try. Everything will be as though it never happened.”

“I can… try…”

“Yes.”

“…I wish I’d had a nightmare like this back then, too.”

Then it would have ended as nothing more than a dream.

Nihil didn’t answer that murmur. The puppy remained dazed for quite some time afterward.

Since it would be a problem if all the breath he had infused into the rabbit doll escaped, Nihil urged Evan on.

“Hurry up and kill me. If you don’t kill me now, I’ll kill Aril.”

“…No. I can’t. I promised to protect her.”

“Then don’t hesitate. Protect what you wanted to protect.”

At those words, Evan seemed to make up his mind and raised his hand. It was trembling violently, but the moment it touched the doll, the veins in his hand bulged as he gripped it with enough force to crush it.

Looking at the rabbit doll, which had been thoroughly squashed, Nihil thought that surely a stuffed toy wouldn’t burst. But as the puppy’s grip grew stronger and stronger, a creeping sense of unease began to rise inside him.

…It would be a problem if it burst.

But at that very moment—

Riiip—

The damn mutt finally tore the doll apart.

Damn it.

He could almost hear a sickening crunch.

 

***

 

“Tsk.”

Because that damn mutt had used all his strength to tear the rabbit doll’s neck apart, Nihil had briefly lost consciousness.

Although it had been a makeshift solution, the avatar into which he had breathed his own life couldn’t bear the entire burden, and some of the damage had rebounded onto him.

When he came to, the puppy was sleeping on the floor.

He had considered punching him once, but the puppy was curled up miserably, sniffling in his sleep, so Nihil couldn’t bring himself to hit him.

Even with his own neck broken, he still had to clean up the mess. Swallowing the bubbles of blood rising from his throat, he hurriedly drank a potion.

Then he had to do some sewing at an ungodly hour.

He felt rather pathetic, having to stitch up a rabbit doll’s neck in a dark room. But if he hadn’t had the doll, his neck wouldn’t have merely broken. It would have been torn clean off.

I have to make sure it doesn’t hurt…

The puppy had mumbled that in his sleep. Nihil had wondered why he had used such excessive force, but apparently, he had wanted to finish him off in a single blow so he wouldn’t feel any pain.

It was so absurd that Nihil jabbed him with the needle. The puppy curled up like a roasted squid.

After neatly repairing the rabbit doll, he changed into another set of pajamas and went to find the butler.

If it came to light that a high-grade potion had gone missing, there would surely be questions. He figured it would be easier to get the old man’s cooperation in advance.

After asking the old man to conceal what the potion had been used for, Nihil returned and hoisted Evan, who was still curled up asleep on the floor, over his shoulders.

Even if the puppy was disobedient, Nihil couldn’t just leave him lying in his room.

He could barely lift Evan’s upper body, so his lower half dragged along the floor, but Nihil couldn’t spare the effort to worry about that too.

Thud. Crash.

Ugh…!

He had somehow managed to reach the entrance to the puppy’s bedroom, but he tripped and ended up crushed beneath that massive body.

He thought he might get squashed flat and end up like the rabbit doll himself, but fortunately, the puppy next door came to his rescue in a hurry, and he survived somehow.

In any case, the puppy’s contract had been properly fulfilled, and Nihil had even teased him mercilessly with the recording crystal the following day. He had been feeling rather relieved about the whole matter, so he hadn’t expected the puppy to suddenly try to check his neck.

Nihil clicked his tongue, lamenting the potion’s degraded functions compared to five hundred years ago. It could no longer eliminate subcutaneous bleeding. Then he fastened his buttons again.

Unlike at first, when the sensation of having his clothes buttoned all the way up to his neck had been terribly irritating, he had now grown quite accustomed to it.

Just then, the sound of metal clashing repeatedly rang out from outside. The two who had been crouching and talking in front of the bedroom door had apparently gone outside and started sparring.

Nihil glanced at the two of them through the terrace and tried to predict the outcome.

Judging from the snippets of conversation he could hear, it seemed they had agreed that Evan would talk if Frederick won.

The puppy next door will win by a narrow margin…

In fact, Evan had never won a sparring match between the two of them. After all, the experience of someone who had been through the battlefield couldn’t be underestimated.

But Frederick himself must have known it, too. With every successive match, Evan’s momentum was changing noticeably.

Soon, the sparring match ended, and Frederick came in noisily. Without bothering with any of the details, he immediately blurted out the conclusion.

“Young master, Junior acted that way because he had a stupid dog dream!”

“……?”

“Sir, how can you explain it like that…?”

Evan, who had followed him in, rubbed the back of his head awkwardly and glanced at Nihil.

Frederick quickly corrected himself.

“Ah! Not a dog dream. He said it was a wildcat dream.”

Nihil’s eyebrow twitched upward. He roughly understood what that meant.

“So, in short, you had an unsettling dream and came to check something about me.”

“…Young master, are you a genius?”

Frederick was amazed that Nihil could deduce all that from such a vague explanation. It was practically an admission of how terrible his own explanation had been.

“Please hurry up and give me my strength-enhancement training!”

Frederick demanded his reward, insisting that he had completed his mission regardless. Perhaps he was getting impatient as Evan’s skills continued to improve.

However, Nihil waved a hand.

“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“What? Why? Does that mean I have to extend my stay by another day?”

“…What do you mean, extend it? It’ll only take ten minutes. You can just stop by for a bit.”

Lately, the kid’s father had been subtly hinting that he should send the borrowed guard back, saying he would lend someone else instead.

Apparently, he wanted Nihil to give the strength-enhancement training to everyone equally. Frederick knew that, too, which was why he kept subtly extending his guard duty.

“If it’s only ten minutes, can’t you do it now?”

“If you overdo it, your mana heart might break.”

“What?!”

Nihil clasped his hands and made a gesture as though something were breaking, deliberately frightening him. Frederick took several hesitant steps backward. Meanwhile, Evan, whose training load was twice as heavy, had already gone pale.

“Don’t worry. I always check your limits carefully before training you.”

“Still, you should tell me about dangerous things beforehand!”

“Don’t act so wary now when you gobble down whatever medicine you’re given without a second thought.”

“Medicine and a mana heart aren’t the same thing!”

Nihil narrowed his eyes. Even that puppy, who was a knight and all, seemed to consider his own mana heart precious.

“I already explained the principle. It forcibly disperses your Aura more intensely. Do you think that’s the same as strengthening your muscles by moving them yourself and strengthening them by directly injuring them?”

Nihil gave him a perfunctory answer, then gathered the letters that had arrived for him and settled onto the sofa.

One of them was from the Chancellor, and its contents were probably not much different from the letters he’d received recently.

It would be the usual whining about when Nihil would meet him, when he would teach him magic, and how he wanted his mana restraints removed.

—Young Sir Neil, the Sirentea you gave me misses you so much that it’s wasting away with longing…

Riiip—rustle, whoosh—Fwoooosh!

“It burns rather well.”

“Is it really all right to burn a letter from the Chancellor like that…?”

“I did read it, at least.”

The Chancellor’s treatment had been postponed, but that wasn’t Nihil’s fault. It was the Chancellor’s fault for proudly declaring that he would divide the royal education classes and still failing to do so.

Nihil picked up the next letter. It was an extremely colorful letter covered in some strange drawings, and the moment he touched it, the dye rubbed off onto his fingers.

There was no name written for either the sender or the recipient, but he could guess who it was.

When he opened the envelope, he saw crooked handwriting.

—Pleese come to Cara’s birfday! Cara wants cat ears too!

“Hmm…”

This meant… she wanted cat ears, right?

Nihil raised a hand and fiddled with his own ears. They would probably disappear sometime today, so if he wanted to cut them off, now was his only chance.

In any case, cat ears? Children these days are frightening in more ways than one. Was this what they called pure evil?

Just then, the puppy, who had glanced over the invitation beside him, opened his mouth.

“Don’t even think about cutting off your ears.”

“You can’t be satisfied with just the tail?”

“…What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be greedy. Let the child have the ears.”

“……?”

Evan stared blankly for a moment, wondering what on earth that was supposed to mean, before suddenly shouting.

“Oh, seriously! I don’t need your tail!”

“Didn’t you like it?”

As he spoke, Nihil gently swished his tail, angling it toward Evan. It would disappear soon, but he was secretly pleased that he could now control it perfectly.

“I told you I don’t like it! I’m not taking it!”