Chapter 2: The World of Snow

The front courtyard of the mansion, which had been bustling with knights and slaves, fell silent in an instant. Everyone’s gaze was fixed on the mansion’s entrance. The man, seemingly accustomed to such attention, strode purposefully along his path.

With every step he took, the stench of blood radiated from his entire body. People flinched and backed away, their expressions filled with fear and a subtle disgust.

*Thud—.*

A large object was being dragged along in the hand of the man, who exuded a chilling aura that made it difficult to approach him.

Jerone, the captain of the knight order, flinched when he recognized what that object was. He didn’t want to even look at it, let alone speak to the man, but he couldn’t avoid the situation either.

“Duke Lailius…….”

Though he was covered in blood and received looks of disgust from everyone, he undeniably held the title of duke in the Kingdom of Rodelln. However, he might not have been a fitting figure for the Lailius Duchy, a family with a long history of holy knights.

It was just that the Lailius Duchy in their memories was now more famous as a cursed family than as holy knights, so his appearance didn’t feel out of place.

Count Berral was a figure notorious for illegal s*ave trading and cruel sorcery research. The duke was scheduled to, by the king’s order, clean up the retainers within the count’s mansion and retrieve the family head’s seal.

It was an open secret that the reason for retrieving the seal—which signified the king’s permission—was to hide the king’s connection to the illegal sorcery research, but the duke didn’t care about reasons. His role was simply to carry out the given task without question.

This time as well, while he handled the dirty work, the simple task of retrieving the monster corpses and slaves from the underground prison fell to the royal knight order.

He had thought all the slaves in the mansion had been dealt with, but from somewhere they’d been hiding, a single unconscious man wrapped in a blanket was being dragged out by the duke’s hand.

Hidden in the blanket, he wasn’t clearly visible, but the glimpse of hair was noticeable for a s*ave. However, there was no information that anyone in the count’s household had such green hair, and even if there were, they should have long since been killed by the duke’s sword and turned into cold corpses.

So the one being dragged out in his hand must be a s*ave the knight order should have retrieved.

‘*Of all things, to get caught…….*’

Having ended up doing trivial cleanup because of the duke’s involvement was quite a blow to the pride of a royal knight. But he had nothing to say, having failed even that simple cleanup. On top of that, the other party was none other than Duke Lailius. There was nothing to gain from needlessly engaging him.

“It seems we missed one. My apologies.”

That was all he could say. Saying more would be like spitting while lying down—pointless.

Jerone politely extended his hand to take the s*ave being dragged along by the duke’s hand. But the duke passed by Jerone without even giving him a glance.

Heading straight to the carriage, the duke tossed the dangling s*ave into the carriage.

*Thud!*

Even though the knights present were all members of the kingdom’s knight order, their shoulders flinched at his every action.

Even Jerone, the captain, could see the disorderly state of his men, but he couldn’t reprimand them. And for good reason—he had never seen Duke Lailius openly express emotion like that before.

‘*……Well, that’s something new.*’

He never wavered in any situation, to the point that rumors circulated that he was afflicted with a curse that stole his emotions. And Jerone’s knight order, who had accompanied the duke on several missions, understood better than anyone that those rumors were true.

But this time was different. His noticeably emotional state was simply unfamiliar.

Once the somewhat irritable duke boarded his carriage, the knights hastily finished their preparations and quickly departed the count’s mansion, which was now as silent as if a curse had fallen upon it.

Before long, the knight order’s carriage, which had been following at a distance from Leupen’s carriage, changed direction. Beside the rattling supply wagon, the knights driving the horses grumbled with sighs.

“Finally, we can breathe. Scary as hell. He’s blood-crazed, but did you see how he didn’t spill a single drop of his own blood today? He’s a monster, no doubt.”

“I still feel uneasy. They say the curse spreads just by being near him. Every time I come back from a mission involving the duke, I feel sick for months…….”

Those who hadn’t been able to say a word until now expressed their complaints the moment the duke disappeared. But Jerone, driving the horse at the very front, tilted his head with a distinctly uneasy expression.

‘*That s*ave wrapped in the blanket earlier…… which supply wagon did we load him into?*’

The knight order’s supply wagons returning to the palace were loaded with various gold and silver treasures the count had amassed, but the duke’s simple carriage contained nothing of value. It merely held things the king didn’t want, yet didn’t want to leave behind in the count’s mansion.

‘*Surely not…… did the duke take him?*’

At this point, a small doubt sprouted in Jerone’s mind—was that really a s*ave? The emotion he’d seen flicker across the duke’s face earlier also added to his unease.

But soon Jerone shook his head and dismissed it as a baseless speculation.

‘*I must have seen wrong.*’

Those who fell out of his favor—even if they were family—were all part of the “Cursed Duke” who spread the curse. For him to not only take in a mere s*ave but to want to keep one by his side?

‘*That’s impossible. This is Lailius Leupen we’re talking about.*’

Jerone, who had been rigid with tension and unable to relax, finally released the tension in his shoulders and drove his horse toward the palace.

****

Meanwhile, a desolate air hung over the Lailius Duchy.

It was nothing special for Leupen, the master of the mansion, to return covered in blood. But the problem was that something that shouldn’t be there was mixed in.

Leupen entered the mansion without a word, but the murmuring of the servants organizing the carriage was growing louder. Only one servant was unloading the carriage bit by bit, and everyone else couldn’t bring themselves to approach it.

When the organizing still hadn’t been completed after quite some time, a cold voice flew toward the servants.

“What are you doing right now. Aren’t you working?”

After Leupen’s return, Eden, the head steward, spoke in a voice more sensitive than usual. The servants bowed their heads at Eden’s reprimand, but their gazes kept drifting elsewhere.

“What is it.”

“There seems to be…… a person in the carriage.”

Even the servant saying it looked unsure whether he’d seen correctly. Eden merely wore his usual slight frown. But he couldn’t help but quicken his steps toward the carriage.

****

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****

At the soft, fluffy sensation against his skin, he moved his fingers slightly. As the buoyant feeling enveloped his entire body, a smile formed on Moma’s lips.

But at that moment, as if having a nightmare, the image of the human’s flashing eyes raising a blood-dripping sword surfaced before him.

‘*A dream……?*’

It was strange. For a dream, the metallic smell and the extreme tension that had made his whole body tingle were too vivid. The sensation was so real, as if he’d just experienced it, that his eyes flew open.

“H-Huh?”

It was a human domain. It was a little different from the pig-human’s room in his last memory, but it was unmistakably a human domain. The fact that he was under a blanket was the same as the nightmare, but unlike before, he wasn’t on the floor.

Once his mind cleared, he lost the leisure to enjoy the plush sensation he’d found so pleasant. With a sudden rush of alertness, he hastily raised his body.

“Ngh.”

Intense pain shot through his entire body as if he’d been beaten. Moma dropped back onto the soft bed and examined his body with minimal movement.

“It hurts…….”

He couldn’t understand what had happened, but one thing was certain—he wasn’t dead. Vivid bruises had bloomed all over his body. But other than that, there wasn’t a single cut mark.

He didn’t know if it had been a realistic dream or truly reality, but he felt relief at the thought that he’d survived. Blinking a couple of times, Moma hurriedly fumbled around his head.

“I didn’t get caught!”

Fortunately, he didn’t feel much of a foreign sensation. His fluffy green hair was thoroughly tangled and messy, doing a good job of hiding the base of his broken tree horns. He felt a vague anxiety that the tree horns, which had only left traces, might have grown a little, but he shook the thought away.

“……I didn’t get caught. Yeah.”

But the tiny, slightly protruding tree horns that would be visible if one lifted his hair seemed to assert their presence with particular prominence.

“Should I cut more?”

Easier said than done—it couldn’t be easy for a spirit to cut off its own horns. Moma, who was timid to begin with, didn’t want to experience that pain again. The day he’d cut off his horns was the most painful day of his life, but he didn’t regret it.

If he’d kept his horns, his identity would have been discovered by humans, and then not just his horns but his entire body might have been cut to pieces. He remembered the spirits’ words that humans would devour him.

Recalling the monster human who had cut down his own kind, Moma was realizing firsthand that the spirits’ words hadn’t been an exaggeration.

“Human, might eat me.”

He tried to dismiss it as a dream, but the scene of blood splattering before his eyes surfaced vividly, making his body tremble.

Being beaten by the human called the steward and various humans in the pig-human’s domain was no different from the Demon Realm. The humans were a bit more persistent and vicious, but that was all.

However, the pig-human had tried to break his neck to kill him, and the monster human swinging the sword in his last memory had cut off the limbs of his fellow pig-human and ended his life.

“It’s dangerous. I-I have to run away.”

Whether this was a dream or not, he had to run. Moma bit his lip anxiously.

“Humans are bad.”

Just as his own nature was a useless tree spirit, Moma was convinced that humans were evil beings. He couldn’t stay at ease any longer in the domain of such evil humans. Moma, who had been wriggling and curled up under the blanket, mustered his courage and took a step.

“Huh……?”

Just as he barely raised himself on trembling legs like a newborn fawn, a window so large he wondered why he hadn’t seen it until now caught his eye. And the moment he saw the scenery beyond it, Moma’s round eyes began to grow wider and wider.

His faltering legs seemed ready to give out at any moment, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the window until he reached it.

“This place is…….”

Outside the window was a world of snow.

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