“......But because of that damned woman!”
Suddenly, she let out a shriek so sharp it felt like it would tear their eardrums apart.
Startled, Leonia flinched, and Ferio lowered himself imdiately, wrapping both arms around her protectively.
“A filthy thing, no more than a plaything to him, dared to carry his noble seed!”
Mono and leis hastily drew their swords.
But Saura only thrashed in place, her eyes rolling back into their whites.
Pale foam leaked from the corners of her mouth.
She’s reaching her limit.
Ferio quietly narrowed his eyes.
The confession serum was finally driving Saura into madness.
“I stayed by his side for so long! He told —he always said the one he trusted and relied on was !”
Saura collapsed onto the floor with a heavy thud and writhed like a snake.
“He said he’d co back! That he’d definitely return for ! That wretched Voreoti was nothing more than a toy to be discarded after use...”
Suddenly, her body arched like a bow, and an awful cracking sound ca from within her twisted fra.
“Kegh! Kghhk...!”
A greenish substance was vomited from Saura’s mouth.
“Don’t look.”
Ferio quickly covered Leonia’s eyes.
Leonia buried her face in her father’s hand and clenched her fists tightly.
I don’t want to see!
She couldn’t bring herself to look at Teacher Connie—at Saura—any longer.
“Nggh... nnghh...”
Saura, groaning in agony as she rubbed her face against the floor, no longer resembled a human being.
Even Mono and leis, standing guard with swords drawn, couldn’t help but grimace.
Even the finest knights who hunted monsters every winter were repulsed beyond asure.
“He said he’d co, I waited and waited...!”
Tears of blood dropped from Saura’s eyes as she mourned the one who never ca. Real blood.
For a mont, the tornt twisting her body seed to pause, and she wailed with her whole throat.
Her cries and hysteria filled the vast, empty annex.
Then, suddenly, the crying stopped.
“Ehehe...”
And then laughter.
“AHAHAHA!”
Her twisted body convulsed as she cackled madly, bloodshot eyes locked on Leonia.
“So I got my revenge!”
Screaming at the top of her lungs, green vomit now mixed with red blood spilled from her mouth.
“I took revenge on the one who betrayed —and that lowly plaything!”
“......”
“I tricked him! I tricked that trash when she got pregnant with you, and I tricked him into thinking you were never born!”
The maddened howls of rage went on and on.
Leonia couldn’t even fully comprehend what she was hearing anymore.
All she could hear was a sharp, whistling hiss in her ears, like a boiling kettle screaming on a stove.
But what she could see was clear: the face of a monster, spewing curses at her.
“I’m the one who raised you! I’m your mother!”
“Don’t call yourself that...!”
Leonia ground her teeth in fury, unable to bear it any longer.
“Why the hell did you do it?!”
She finally let out every last drop of betrayal and rage she’d been holding back.
“We all believed in you! We endured that hellish orphanage because we trusted you!”
It wasn’t just her.
Yuben, and the other children, too.
They had been able to hold on because of the one and only adult who had seed to truly care—Teacher Connie.
But it had all been a lie.
Teacher Connie sold us out!
Saura, hiding behind the kind mask of “Connie,” had sold the children.
Yuben, who had left with a happy smile, returned to the orphanage as thin and hollow as ever.
“Why?!”
Leonia shouted until she ran out of breath.
She trembled from the unshakable fury welling inside her.
“Because that’s how we got money.”
But the answer that ca was disturbingly calm.
“You lived off that money.”
Saura slowly turned her head.
“You didn’t actually believe there was real funding for that orphanage, did you? That place collapsed ages ago. It was just a front—a shop for human trafficking.”
As if she truly didn’t understand.
As if she didn’t know what was wrong.
Then her lips stretched into a wide, grotesque grin.
“You lived off your friends’ price tags.”
If not for that, you’d have died long ago.
“So really, you should be thankful to .”
Saura leered at Leonia, whispering like a devil.
In that mont, a chill so deep and vile filled the room that even Ferio shivered.
Mono and leis both thought the sa thing: This creature must be killed.
That wasn’t a person—it was sothing wearing human skin.
Even calling it a monster seed too generous.
“...Ueurgh.”
Leonia couldn’t hold back anymore and vomited.
Ferio quickly moved her hand aside and gently patted her back.
As he did, Saura burst into laughter, watching them with delight.
Only to be silenced with a scream as Mono stomped on her.
“Hahahaha!”
But Saura couldn’t stop laughing.
“I fooled them all!”
High-pitched, rasping giggles pierced the air like a blade.
“Him! That woman! The Duke!”
“She’s insane...”
leis finally muttered a curse under her breath. Mono silently agreed.
To Saura, the curse sounded like a complint.
Her laughter, like scales of cold steel clinking together, showed no signs of stopping.
“And you too, Nia—I tricked you.”
Still grinning, she spilled cruel truths at the staggering child.
“Every ti you clung to and said you loved ... not even knowing I killed your mother with my own hands... How pitiful. How revolting.”
With an expression of ecstasy, Saura looked as though she had returned to that mont in her mind.
“You should be grateful to .”
Her eyes, soaked in blood, glinted.
“I raised you! A pathetic thing, abandoned and stupidly waiting without even knowing...”
“...Enough.”
A low, chilling voice cut through the madness.
Ferio, holding his daughter in his arms, slowly stood up.
His clothing was soaked in the child’s vomit, but he didn’t care in the slightest.
“Both of you. Out.”
Ferio ordered Mono and leis to leave.
Then took a sword from Mono.
“This is beyond outrageous.”
Ferio looked down at Saura with cold, emotionless eyes.
The mouth that had spewed madness just monts ago was now clamped shut, as if the confession serum had finally worn off.
“Go on, then.”
Terror stord through her once-maniacal eyes.
“Keep talking.”
“AAAAAGH!”
Ferio stabbed the sword through both of Saura’s hands, pinned neatly on the floor.
Dark red blood gushed beneath the blade embedded through her palms.
“You really thought soone like you could fool everyone?”
“Gh... ghhh...!”
“Regina had her foolish monts, that’s true.”
Which must be why she was deceived and killed by trash like you.
Ferio muttered, almost as if conceding the point.
“But in the end, Regina was still a beast who carried Voreoti blood.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled sothing out.
It was a gold chain—a necklace.
“Do you rember this?”
At the end of the chain, thin as a strand of thread, hung a small ornant.
As soon as she saw it, Saura’s eyes began to shake violently.
“N-no... no way...!”
Her pupils, dilated wide, looked like those of a snake confronted by utter darkness.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
That winter-night darkness was anything but peaceful for Saura.
Ferio slipped the necklace back into his pocket.
Then, just as he was about to draw the sword embedded in Saura’s hands—
“...Dad!”
Leonia forced out a trembling voice, shaking violently.
Her face was a ss of tears as she pleaded to be put down on the floor.
“Leo.”
Ferio let out a heavy sigh.
“I still regret bringing you here.”
“Don’t regret it.”
With a weak hiccup, Leonia finished her sentence.
“I’ll do it.”
“......”
“Put down.”
Leonia spoke with resolve.
After a mont’s hesitation, Ferio re-embedded the sword back into Saura’s hand.
The blade pierced through the sa wound again, and Saura let out a horrifying scream.
Leonia stepped closer.
Her enal shoes squelched in the pool of blood on the floor.
“Teacher.”
Leonia looked down at the collapsed Saura with a cold, emotionless gaze.
“Want to teach you sothing too?”
With a faint, powerless smile, she leaned down and whispered into Saura’s ear.
“...What?”
Saura’s eyes widened in shock.
Wider even than when Ferio had shown her the necklace.
‘I’m not that child.’
I ca from another world.
Taking a step back, Leonia smiled brightly.
“Thank you, Teacher.”
In her tear-soaked black eyes, a golden gleam began to rise.
Behind her, a golden mist quietly began to spread, slowly taking form.
“Thanks to you, I completed it.”
The golden mist expanded and gradually took the shape of a beast’s face.
The beast, in the form of a cub, opened its mouth wide.
Inside, four sharp fangs glead.
Until now, Leonia had never once succeeded in manifesting all four fangs at once.
This was the first ti.
“Goodbye, Teacher.”
The mont her small hand waved—
The beast’s fangs pierced straight through Saura.
***
“She’s alive. For now.”
Lupe continued his report, suppressing a pounding headache.
“Sir Ceres just confird she’s still breathing.”
Mono, who gave the report, didn’t look great either.
He looked like a man suffering from a monstrous hangover.
“It’s thanks to the black diamond we found in Saura’s coat pocket.”
“A fate worse than death.”
“Exactly.”
Ferio toyed with the black diamond in his hand.
It was a small, unpolished stone that the knights had taken from Saura after she collapsed.
Still roughly cut and irregular in shape, the diamond was tossed into a drawer.
“She’s worse off than the forr Lady Kerena of House reoqa.”
Lupe was still fighting the lingering pain of his headache.
The cause? The manifestation of Leonia’s “Fangs of the Beast” from earlier that evening.
For the first ti, her completed fangs had unleashed their full force across the entire estate.
Not only the knights outside—people inside the main mansion had been affected too.
The unrefined pressure didn’t spare anyone.
Those like Lupe and Kara, who had black diamonds, barely managed to get away with just a headache.
But the others? Many couldn’t even stand, let alone function normally.
Inseréa, who had never experienced the Fangs of the North before, developed a fever.
Only knights who had already developed a degree of resistance to Ferio’s own fangs could keep their composure.
“The damage is beyond asure.”
It wasn’t just the people—animals suffered as well.
The horses in the stable went into [N O V E L I G H T] fits, and even the kittens the maids secretly raised had fainted.
They had just barely opened their eyes again, but continued to cry nervously.
“You could’ve tried stopping her.”
“And how the hell was I supposed to do that?”
Ferio shot a glare at Lupe, as if asking if he was joking.
But this ti, Lupe held his ground.
“I understand how the young lady feels.”
But letting her emotions take over and harming others with the Fangs of the Beast—this wouldn’t be good for Leonia either.
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