No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 84

“What a cocky little bastard.”

Damyeon. Cassice Demillang knows him. Just before Damyeon laughs absurdly and shows his next reaction.

He grasped the sword. And tried to slash with all his might. Whoosh! He just got kicked. The young body gets hit in the solar plexus and crashes into the wall, vomiting gastric juice. Damyeon felt very guilty and perplexed at the fact that his body reacted instantly, and as he tried to approach Cassice Demillang, when he thrust his sword again, Damyeon frowned and twisted his arm behind his back. Crack.

“Ugh, ugh…”

“Did the family order you?”

“Hah, such cute words…”

A carefully sunken voice rings in his ears. He knows that he is someone who suffered at the hands of Demillang. Demillang oppressed him and made him suffer. Cruelly shattered him. Forced him not to die. It was done by the blood flowing in Cassice Demillang’s veins.  

‘So what, should I show kindness?’

Or do you expect him to show you kindness?

‘Eat shit.’

I don’t want sympathy. He made a choice, and sympathy can’t save him. I know. It was repeated many times. Even the researchers conducting the experiments told him dozens of times that they couldn’t do this anymore and to run away together. Them? What happened to them? They all died or betrayed. Just like the typical story. They also had families, and when hostages were taken, they abandoned him. He almost lost his family ten times after getting caught up in the researchers’ useless melodramatic acts. He barely got them back by paying an even greater price. He did that by relying on others. It was all because he was damn weak. Because he was stupid. Because he trusted people.

“See, I predicted that you wouldn’t obediently follow orders. So I put in place one measure. Your son and daughter. They’re living well.”

“…!”

“What do you think I can do?”

So Cassice Demillang decided not to trust people.

“What… do you want? After doing this to me, making me like this, what more…!”

“Accept me as your disciple. Ah, you already agreed? If you really think so, it’s a bit funny. You didn’t even punish me… If you can’t even give proper teaching, I don’t need a master like you. And I hate worthless things.”

“You…”

“Teach me. This is an order.”

“Is that all you need?”

“Don’t go easy on me.”

Is abuse passed down? Cassice Demillang did many cruel things to Damyeon. So it was natural karma that he was getting it back.

“Kill me. Or die.”

Damyeon, whose hesitation had disappeared, pushed the young body in front of the monster.

He didn’t know how to handle the mana embedded in his dantian yet. He tried to forcibly draw it up and collapsed, coughing up blood and getting ruined. Damyeon pulled the child crushed by fangs out of the monster’s mouth, poured a potion, and pushed him again. Waiting indefinitely for the day when Cassice Demillang would burst his mana to avoid dying, picking him up again and pushing him again. Ah. Something that could be warmth or chill transmitted from the bones was branded on his back like a seal. Cassice Demillang had to watch with his own eyes as his chewed up body was reattached with potions. It was Damyeon who grabbed the child crawling on the floor with misaligned broken bones and pushed him in front of the monster again.

Damyeon looked pained. I’m really sorry to say this, but that’s how I could endure. He was no different from me. He was made a cripple against his will by Demillang. He became a body that was neither alive nor dead. Seeing him was comforting. If I really can’t endure it, they will make me like Damyeon and turn me into a preserved specimen. If that happens, the time I can protect my parents will increase… Even if I go crazy by then and want to commit suicide, I won’t be able to. Ah. It’s perfect…

Cassice Demillang might have been able to live by putting himself in the position of a victim. He might have been able to have a mental victory. But Cassice Demillang also did many bad things. If told to kill someone, he killed them. Knowing that they also wanted to be happy, one by one, if told to kill, he killed. The reason was simple. If he killed them, his parents would live. There was no reason not to kill.

He had already discarded his body. Even after adapting to the mana circle located in his dantian, just drawing and using mana made him want to cough up blood. Killing people was easy, and rebelling was impossible. So he just chose the easy path.

People. And meat. No different. Nothing was different. People kill people to live. People kill meat to live. Those who survive are human. If you die, it becomes meaningless. Only by surviving can you claim to be human. So he had to survive.

But he wasn’t human. Huh. It was strange. Why am I alive if I’m not human? Am I… Am I really human? Human.

One day, Cassice Demillang felt that he was going crazy.

That was a difficult situation. He was a tool. A tool had to be sharp. It had to be clear. It had to have reason. That way, he could kill people well. Murder was not the goal. The reward promised to him by the act of murder was the goal. Because he could receive rewards efficiently by maintaining his sanity as long as possible, he decided to keep his sanity. Around that time, a proposal came out. Demillang conditionally accepted that proposal, and Cassice Demillang decided to do something crazy.

That’s how the thirteen-year-old dungeon conquerer was born.

From then on, Cassice Demillang was able to observe his parents in more detail. He was even able to touch the real thing and meet them in reality.

However, there was something he hadn’t imagined.

“Hmm. Hello? I’ve never seen you before.”

“…”

“What’s your name?”

To his parents who had forgotten the existence of their child, Cassice Demillang was a kid they were seeing for the first time.

“Did you hear? From now on, we decided to become a family…”

…I know. Everything was as he wished. He erased their memories as he wanted. He created the identity of an adopted child as he wanted. 

But for the parents, it was a situation where they suddenly got a thirteen-year-old son.

‘I was stupid. I made the wrong judgment. But… how can you smile at me like this?’

They were smiling. That smile where the corners of the mouth go up, dimples form slightly, and the eyes curve like a crescent moon. Even in this situation where they were forced by Demillang to adopt a child with the ‘false’ setting of being ‘a child born from their womb from the beginning’, they were kind. Although not in the way he had dreamed of, their warmth remained the same. Protected. He protected it. He…

There was at least one thing he had accomplished in this world.

“Well, we were just making something. Do you want to try one of these?”

“…I’ll get going now.”

“Oh, huh? Uh, um, the meal…! At least have a meal before you go! Hey…! Son!”

His heart stirred strangely. Cassice Demillang vowed to live imagining this moment for the rest of his life. It was a promise that he would never have private time with them again. When he met them, his heart would feel strange and it was troublesome. He couldn’t collapse, but being swept away like a sandcastle by a single wave was too much.

Sometimes when he met them in public, for example at Demillang’s dinner parties, he didn’t greet them properly. Just being in the same space made him feel both happy and like he was going to die, so he couldn’t even open his mouth properly and picked at his food. Despite only getting one meal a day, he luxuriously left the feast. Because he didn’t want to cry in front of them. Instead, he cried a little after returning to his cell.

I think I cried a lot when I was first caught. It had been so long that it didn’t work out well. So I decided to just imagine.

Looking back with dry eyes.

‘What would have happened if I ate the meal and left then?’

When he saw them in person at the distant age of thirteen.

What if I had eaten a meal and left, he imagines that. He had eaten such low-quality meals for so long that he had forgotten the food they made for him when he was young.

What if he could have added love even once.

‘Yes, it would have sparkled.’

Since it wasn’t mealtime when he arrived, if he said he hadn’t eaten yet, they would have been surprised and taken out snacks. The snack they mentioned then, the one they were making. He now knew what that strange sweet smell lingering on the tip of his nose was. But he couldn’t imagine it. Because he had never eaten it. He was able to peek at them making it a few more times with magic after that, but no matter how vividly he imagined it, it didn’t feel real. It was made by mixing two kinds of white powder, was it medicine? With his thought process that could only think like that, he could easily recreate the warmth of the sunlight falling on their cheeks.

What form that sweetness took, what sensation it was…

What is that, really?

“How much is it?”

“Huh? Huh?”

“Is one gold bar enough?”

“Ah, no! This is, it’s just five hundred won…”

“Keep the change.”

One day, Cassice Demillang encountered that snack by chance while walking down the street. He tossed a gold bar and picked it up with his thumb and index finger. It had a strange sweet smell. He held it up to the sunlight. The appetizing light brown color shone. The thinly baked sugar transmitted the sunlight, shining like a light source in its round shape.

Cassice Demillang swallowed the light. And.

“…Tastes cheap…”

After that, Cassice Demillang decided not to eat dalgona.

He was twenty years old.