Having suddenly become a poisonous seedling, I forced a strained smile while my twitching cheek spasmed.
At this point, I even thought that it might be better for this negotiation if I simply weren’t here.
For a moment, I wondered if it would be wiser to just bury my face in the refreshments and pass out, but I decided against it. Varen wouldn’t just stand by and watch.
“Ha... haha, hello. My name is Ceryl Aylos....”
Every gaze inside the tent speared into me at once. My entire body prickled, and I wanted to hide anywhere at all.
I could especially feel Theo’s eyes, staring at me without blinking.
Adeline tilted her head with a gentle smile. In response, Theo stepped forward and bowed toward the leader.
“Cross, you must not trust him easily. As I told you, he is an extremely cunning and sly human.”
“He doesn’t look like it.”
“He has a kind face, but if it serves his goals, he can be as vicious as anyone.”
After finishing this conversation over my head, Theo lifted his chin. He unfastened two buttons of his shirt and pulled one side aside.
I squeezed my eyes shut again and turned my head away the moment Theo’s chest was revealed. Burn scars, densely layered and charred, covered one side of his upper body.
After showing his wounds, Theo neatly buttoned his shirt again.
“Ceryl is someone who deceives people with his silver tongue. He did not even properly hear me out before trying to kill me.”
Having been turned into a capital criminal, I glanced sideways, watching Adeline’s reaction. She was looking at Theo with eyes full of pity.
That expression nearly made a laugh burst out of me. How the hell did that bastard Theo manage to sweet-talk the Rebels?
And yes, it was true that I hurt Theo, but to me, he was someone I wouldn’t have minded tearing apart.
Theo was Zed’s younger brother, someone who carried out monster experiments alongside his sibling.
Finally finding something to say, I snapped my head up.
“Adeline, Theo was conducting experiments on monsters. He developed a drug to brainwash them.”
I thought I had landed a decisive blow, but Adeline’s expression did not change.
Theo snorted and turned to look at me. His gray eyes were filled with knots of resentment that had yet to loosen.
“I told you it was an experiment I didn’t want to do. I was practically a hostage to Zed!”
“...Was that so?”
“That’s why I asked you to help me escape, but you ignored me. I even told you where the antidote was, and you still left me to die!”
Hmm... maybe he did say something like that.
Besides the monster experiments, I felt like there had been another reason I didn’t save Theo. But since it hadn’t been important to me, I couldn’t quite remember what it was.
As I scratched the back of my neck in awkward silence, Theo began trembling all over.
I swept my gaze around, gauging the mood.
Adeline seemed completely on Theo’s side, but no matter what, I wanted to win her over as an ally.
If that was the case, my pride didn’t matter.
“Theo, I’m sorry.”
“...What did you say?”
Since I had nothing to be ashamed of, I straightened my chest proudly and faced him.
“Theo, I’m sorry! Please forgive me!”
“......”
“Just let it go this once!!”
Even after apologizing at the top of my lungs, Theo only stared at me with a baffled expression.
Adeline merely watched with evident interest, not intervening at all.
Then, after a brief pause, Theo shouted in outrage.
“Who apologizes like that?!”
Apparently narrow-minded, Theo refused to accept my apology so easily.
I was reluctantly considering whether I should even kneel when Varen, standing beside me, muttered in a voice chilled to the bone.
“So it was you. The one who drugged me.”
I flinched and looked at Varen. I hadn’t even considered Varen, who had suffered terribly from Theo’s brainwashing drug.
I couldn’t let things get any worse. I tried to grab Varen, but I couldn’t keep up with the blue eyes flashing with killing intent at the speed of light.
“Khk! Ugh...!”
Theo’s body lifted into the air, his limbs flailing helplessly.
Unable to breathe, his face turned bright red in an instant. Left like that, it looked as though his entire body might burst like an overinflated balloon.
“Wait, Var—!”
“Put him down. Don’t use force.”
I tried to stop Varen, even belatedly, but once again, someone moved faster than my gesture.
At some point, Noance’s baton was aimed directly at my throat. It was close enough that even the slightest movement would let the poison needle touch my skin, forcing me to hold my breath.
“Ceryl!”
The moment I was taken hostage before his eyes, Varen immediately shifted his gaze. Freed from the dragon’s glare, Theo collapsed to the ground, gasping desperately for air.
As for me, my entire body locked up stiff, and only my eyes, the one part I could still move, rolled around wildly.
When I left Belzena in search of the Rebels, I had been full of hope. But this first meeting was a complete disaster.
“...Release Ceryl immediately. If anything happens to him, I will burn every human here alive.”
With a lethal weapon pressed to my neck, Varen couldn’t move recklessly. Instead, he kindled a small flame in his palm.
Even seeing that, Noance merely smirked. His attitude went beyond confidence into outright arrogance, drawing a low growl from Varen.
“That’s enough. We shouldn’t treat our guest so roughly, Noance.”
It was Adeline’s gentle voice that brought order back to the situation.
At her single remark, the overbearing Noance immediately withdrew his hand.
Having been holding my breath in fear of the poison needle touching my neck, I sucked in air desperately. Varen extinguished the flame at once and pulled me into his arms.
He wrapped both arms around me and pressed my face against his chest, as if trying to hide something precious.
I took a deep breath, inhaling Varen’s scent. His heartbeat, already faster than a human’s, was racing like mad.
“I will apologize in his place, Dravergh.”
Even with a dragon seething with rage before her, Adeline acted as though nothing were wrong. However, befitting the leader of the group, her apology was followed by a sharp warning.
“That said, Noance has a duty to protect us. As long as you do not threaten us first, I guarantee the safety of Ceryl Aylos.”
In short, it was a threat to kill me if they were attacked.
I let out a strained sound and lifted °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° my head from where it was buried in Varen’s chest. When I saw his expression, my heart seemed to drop straight down.
Varen looked more terrified than I had ever seen him. For a fleeting instant, he was trembling at the possibility that I might die right in front of him.
It suddenly occurred to me that I was Varen’s only concern. Beyond holding him back, I had become his fatal weakness, and the realization left a bitter taste.
I let out a short sigh and patted Varen’s back.
“Varen, I’m fine. So....”
“Stay like this, Ceryl.”
As if I might die the moment he let go, Varen tightened his arms around me even more.
It was embarrassing to be like this in front of strangers, no less Rebel executives, but I couldn’t push away the anxious Varen. I stayed in his arms, patting his back.
Adeline laughed as if she found it amusing and addressed me.
“Ceryl Aylos, I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
It was obvious who she had heard those stories from, and there was no way Theo had said anything good about me.
On top of that, I was on Noance’s assassination list. It seemed that the original Ceryl’s misdeeds, which I didn’t even remember, were quite famous here.
“You were at the Fifth Monster Management Facility, weren’t you?”
“...Yes.”
“You’re also the one who nearly had that place, once known as an abandoned cage on the border, summoned to the Central Defense Corps.”
“...Excuse me?”
The one responsible?
I had been mindlessly repeating the same answers, but at those words, I snapped my eyes wide open and turned my head.
Adeline looked at me with a gentle face and nodded slowly.
“Cain ordered your death, but I was curious about you. I wanted to meet you at least once.”
None of it made sense.
The Fifth Monster Management Facility where I, as a transmigrator, first opened my eyes had indeed been an abandoned place on the border, just as she said. Being far from the capital, it had drawn little attention.
Yet I was hearing for the first time that it had nearly been brought to the center, and that I was responsible.
Moreover, the original Ceryl had been a monster executioner. I couldn’t fathom why the leader of the Rebels would personally want to meet someone like that.
Maybe... she wanted to kill me herself? To put me through every kind of torture so I could experience the same fate?
The thought sent a chill down my spine. Without realizing it, I burrowed a little deeper into Varen’s arms, and Adeline laughed out loud.
“I was just as curious as King Laskar. The first human to tame monsters.”
“.......”
“I couldn’t believe it from rumors alone, but Noance told me. That you’re traveling with a tamed Noark.”
“.......”
“Taming an ordinary monster would be astonishing enough, but a dragon as well.... Even seeing it with my own eyes, it’s hard to believe.”
