Chapter 1: Moma leaf tastes TERRIBLE!

“I-I’m sorry…….”

A man kneeling on the floor, his face gone pale, stammered out an inexplicable apology.

He had an uncommon head of green hair, but it was so unkempt and disheveled that the color seemed to have faded. In stark contrast, a large, middle-aged man dressed in gleaming garments looked down at the shabby figure with an air of superiority.

“Sorry? Not only are you stupid, you’ve lost your mind! How dare a s*ave like you disrespect me?”

His fury, already at a boiling point, had now reached its peak. As if to display his surging emotions, his meticulously tailored clothes seemed ready to burst at the seams.

“Even if you’re a lowborn s*ave with no roots, to not even know basic manners—what in the world has the steward been teaching you!”

But the man curled up on the floor was, in fact, not a s*ave. He didn’t even know what a s*ave was to begin with. He merely assumed that the word “s*ave” must refer to something utterly useless and worthless.

“M-Moma was wrong…….”

“What? You were wrong? Still can’t come to your senses, can you!”

He didn’t know why, but Moma always seemed to draw others’ anger. This time, too, he must have done something wrong without realizing it. But unable to figure out the cause, all Moma could do was apologize and shrink his body as much as possible so as not to be an eyesore.

Smack!

A thick hand struck Moma’s cheek as he cowered. The sound of tearing friction echoed through the room.

Along with a burning heat, Moma could no longer hold himself up and collapsed to the floor. His only focus was clinging to consciousness as intense pain crashed down on him in waves.

The man in the splendid attire, showing no intention of considering Moma’s condition, stomped hard on the back of Moma’s hand.

“Can’t you get up right now?”

His thunderous voice echoed all the way into the hallway, but no one came to save Moma. The mansion was cozy and safe from the outside, but at the same time, it was a trap with no escape.

“Hngh…….”

Moma, trying to push himself up with arms that simply wouldn’t muster any strength, collapsed flat again under another bellowing shout. The man looked at Moma with contempt and ground his head under his shoe.

“A mere s*ave, daring to disrespect a noble? Now every dog and cow is trampling on the Berral family. I’ve lived to see……!”

But Moma didn’t know what a noble was.

‘Noble, is that a pig spirit?‘

Even as kicks rained down on his huddled body, Moma did his best to guess the meaning of the words. It was a habit of his—he’d had to learn language all on his own.

“Dirty s*ave bastard.”

‘Dirty means useless. Everyone hates Moma.‘

And this situation, too, was something Moma was accustomed to—like second nature.

‘Human, heavy. Ah, was it scary?‘

He was scared. Not just the pig spirit—no, the noble human who looked exactly like one. It wasn’t only him.

Four days since he’d fallen into the human realm. Every human he’d met since then had struck him as if it were the natural thing to do. Just today, Moma had been shoved into a room as a punching bag for the pig-human’s venting, without understanding a thing.

The humans who pushed Moma into the room hadn’t shown even a trace of guilt. A fool who couldn’t speak properly and moved sluggishly—Moma was utterly useless.

“Hmph. What are you, to make me breathe this hard?”

The count, who spat out ragged breaths, blamed even that on Moma. But that much didn’t matter. However, Moma’s face turned blue at the count’s next action.

“Now that I look at it, that hair color is wasted on a s*ave. It’s good for nothing on you—I’ll pluck out your hair and sell it, and that will make up for the losses you’ve caused.”

The count’s thick hand reached toward Moma’s head. Moma hurriedly tried to cover his head and dodge, but his utterly exhausted body wouldn’t move easily.

“A…… Ah!”

Moma couldn’t resist any longer and squeezed his eyes shut. But fortunately, before the hand could touch him, the count’s hand hesitated and drew back upon seeing the clumps of dust and dried dirt tangled in his hair.

“Tch, it’s so filthy I don’t even want to touch it.”

So being dirty could be helpful sometimes—that was a first. Seeing the withdrawn hand, Moma finally let out a small sigh of relief.

‘It’s over now. Moma not hurt.‘

But perhaps his inner thoughts had been seen through. The count’s hand, which had seemed to be pulling back, changed direction and seized Moma by the throat.

“Then I’ll just kill you and order the other slaves to pluck out your hair.”

A small breath burst from Moma’s lips—he’d been holding back his sounds so as not to provoke the man further.

“Hngh!”

The nape of his neck, bearing the full weight of the man’s bulk, felt like it would snap at any moment from the pressure. Moma hastily reached out to grab the count’s arm, but his strengthless arms were far too weak to move those thick limbs.

“Keuk……!”

The count muttered something along with a sneer, but with his airway increasingly blocked, Moma had no room to respond—he could only twist his body shallowly. Moma’s hands desperately clutched at the count’s thick forearm, but his grip was so weak it couldn’t even leave a scratch.

“Tch, struggle a bit more, will you! Useless to the very end!”

Mixed with the count’s excitement, a chilling voice he’d heard before overlapped in his ears.

‘A useless thing has been born.‘

As his vision slowly flickered in and out, Moma squeezed his eyes shut.

Perhaps these were things he should never have wanted from the beginning. But the lingering attachment rising thick on Moma’s face was unavoidable. If he’d tried just a little harder, if he’d been even a little useful—would something have changed?

His first memories weren’t very clear, but one thing was certain.

From the very moment he was born, he was a useless existence.

‘I thought life was finally descending upon the Heavenly Realm after so long, and of all things, it’s that useless one. Tch.‘

A gigantic being’s gaze briefly touched Moma. Facing Moma, who blinked his clear eyes with a clueless face, the being clicked his tongue and shook his head.

As if understanding that cold gaze, Moma—in the form of a young child—instinctively tried to fumble and hide the small branch-shaped horns protruding from his head. Though hiding them wouldn’t change anything.

‘Too insignificant to replace the child of spring. Throw it into the Demon Realm.‘

At the time, Moma couldn’t grasp the meaning of those words. But he could at least understand that he had been abandoned.

The self-proclaimed masters of the Demon Realm rejected and persecuted Moma for the sole reason that he looked different from them.

Moma was a useless existence that belonged nowhere.

Unlike the other spirits with massive bodies, he had only small tree horns, and since he’d never bloomed any powers, he couldn’t fight them either.

The only thing he had that other spirits didn’t was a purification ability, but that was only useful for Moma himself, who couldn’t overcome the energy of the Demon Realm. And in the human realm—where the energy was incomparably cleaner than the Demon Realm—that ability was utterly useless.

A useless, unidentifiable tree spirit that hadn’t even taken root in nearly twenty years. That was his essence.

Driven out and driven further out until he descended to the human realm, Moma even broke off his own tree horns to belong with them. But even that resolve seemed to have been utterly worthless.

‘Couldn’t take root.‘

As death pressed right up to his chin, regret and remorse surged in like waves. It seemed there was no place for him in the human realm either.

Swallowing the overflowing regret, strength gradually drained from Moma’s body. Breath still remained, but Moma’s will to survive, worn down to utter exhaustion, was slowly fading.

At that moment, the count’s voice, filled with bewilderment, rang out.

“W-Who are you! There’s no one outside……!”

He seemed unable to finish his sentence, as if he’d seen something strange and startling.

Then a chilling voice echoed, flat and even. It was hidden by the count’s body, but someone seemed to have entered the room.

“How noisy.”

“How dare you commit such rudeness in whose mansion…… Gaaaaah!”

It was the same angry shout as before, but the trembling voice couldn’t be hidden. In the end, the count’s words couldn’t be finished—they scattered into the air mixed with a scream. At the same time, the count’s hand, which had been choking Moma’s breath, was completely severed.

Moma coughed and gasped for air, but it was buried under the count’s screams and hardly audible.

“Hahk, hahk……. Keuk!”

As if Moma didn’t even register, the unidentified intruder was carrying on a one-sided conversation with the count. Of course, the intruder seemed to prefer conversing with the body rather than the count’s will.

“I’ll give you all the jewels and gold bars I’ve stored, I’ll give them to you, so please just spare my life…… keuk, keuaaak!”

“I told you to be quiet, Count Atike Berral.”

Only then did the count seem to realize the danger, and he now tried to appease him. But the intruder, showing not the slightest interest, didn’t even let him finish before raising his sword without hesitation.

“Eek! D-Duke……! G-Go away, go away!”

The count, who belatedly confirmed the man’s face as he drew near, turned pale as if he’d seen something terrifying, flailing his arms wildly as if trying to block the man’s approach.

But his arms—far too slow, weighed down by useless flesh—were eventually cut off, spraying blood. His flailing legs were severed in a single stroke as well. Unlike his still movements, the carpet was rapidly soaking with red blood.

There wasn’t a trace of hesitation in the man’s gestures.

Moma, who had been watching all of it, felt his mind go hazy at the horrific scenes. As he exhaled raggedly, the metallic smell of blood assaulted his nose. Moma, sprawled limp on the floor with his gaze turned toward the half-open door, couldn’t help but stare wide-eyed.

‘Humans dead, all of them!‘

Through the gap in the door, he could see the humans who had pushed him into this room lying gruesomely scattered on the floor. He couldn’t see all of them, but judging by the amount of dark red blood flowing into the room, it seemed to be more than one or two.

Moma instinctively began crawling along the floor, fleeing to the corner of the room opposite the door. If he went out into that hallway, he’d end up just like them. A loud danger signal blared in Moma’s mind.

‘Run. Not now.‘

Moma wriggled his body under the count’s blanket that had fallen to the floor.

The intruder, leaving the unconscious count behind, was opening a drawer in the corner and taking something. The man picked up a box from deep inside the drawer, checked its contents, and then mercilessly cut off the count’s breath.

‘*D-Dead? Pig human dead! By a monster…… a monster human!”

Fleeing from a cruel human would have been impossible. Choosing to hide instead of run might have been the right answer.

But Moma’s ability ended right there. His legs were left dangling outside the blanket, but Moma, unaware of this, was steadying his breathing and waiting for the monster human to leave.

Having tucked only his upper body and face into the blanket world, trembling with fear, Moma felt the surroundings go quiet and cautiously turned his body.

Peeking through the gap in the blanket, he saw the count’s blood-soaked corpse lying squarely in the middle of the room. It looked like only one part of his arms and lower body had been particularly mutilated, but that wasn’t what mattered to Moma right now.

‘A-Alive?‘

Despite the hiding being so sloppy it seemed like a joke, he apparently hadn’t been caught.

Relieved at the invisible intruder’s absence, Moma slightly lifted the blanket—and at that moment, a sword dripping with blood came vividly into his view.

It wasn’t difficult to realize that the sword was pointed at him. Following the blade upward with his gaze, Moma met the pitch-black eyes looking down at him, unobscured by any mask.

The man’s gaze, calm as water at the bottom of a deep lake, was utterly different from the count’s. Unlike the count’s, which had been filled with greed and excitement, the man’s black eyes were murky and cold, as if they weren’t alive.

“Keup…….”

Moma swallowed his breath and wanted to hide back under the blanket immediately, but he knew well that it was far too late to turn back. The sword, soaked in blood, was now about to be swung at Moma.

“U-Useful! I’m useful!”

In a life-or-death situation, the words Moma desperately squeezed out were to proclaim that he was useful. Of course, it was a lie, but now wasn’t the time to quibble over such things.

“…….”

Amazingly, Moma’s choice seemed to have an effect. The sword that had been about to swing toward Moma halted abruptly in midair. If the situation hadn’t been what it was, he might have felt quite proud that his words had worked—but this wasn’t the time for that.

Realizing his words had an effect, Moma hurriedly added more.

“……Moma save! I-I’m not tasty. Bad for your body!”

Moma could no longer think normally. He was simply doing his best, crying out instinctively.

“Moma not tasty at all!”

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