I’m Hunting My Enemy - Chapter 20

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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20. Romantic Asylum (5)

Ohen moved silently.

The patients let Ryuie observe their bodies that had transformed into monsters with blank faces.

Ryuie slowly touched the transformed parts.

The white feathers that would have originally gleamed were drooping and slippery like festering scales.

“We provided both human treatment and monster treatment appropriate for the transformed parts.”

Ohen said.

“But neither method fit well with the changed bodies. Now we can barely maintain their condition even by forcing them to eat to fatten up.”

Indeed, most of the patients were emaciated and skeletal.

It seemed as if their strength had been drained by the parts that had become monstrous.

Ryuie quietly observed, then pretended to bury her hand in the feathers while lightly brushing against the person’s skin.

This time, unlike with Mos, Rkultu’s curse did not activate.

‘There’s no desire.’

Even though it had been a very long time since skin touched skin with another person, Ryuie felt no excitement whatsoever.

Far from feeling the hot passion she usually craved, it only felt cold and rough.

Because neither had any desire for the other, even the contact to confirm the oath was meaningless.

Ryuie withdrew her hand pretending not to notice.

“Have the priests step out for a moment so I can use magic.”

“You don’t need to use severing magic.”

“!”

Crack.

Ohen broke the shoulder blade of the patient he had been caring for just moments before.

The area covered with a hard shell like a turtle’s broke immediately like a tree branch.

“Good heavens.”

Despite the horrific sight, the patient only flinched briefly without screaming. Rather, Bendam, who was watching, showed a more anguished expression.

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Monsters are not human. If you feel pain when the non-human parts are injured, that would be wrong. It’s an act of making yourself into a monster.”

The patient, who had been quiet as death, answered in a low voice like a broken machine.

‘Brainwashing?’

Ryuie carefully observed the expression.

When she interpreted the ratio of anxiety, despair, and anger appearing on the patient’s face, the feeling was somewhat different.

‘…Or maybe it’s the only humanity they can hold onto.’

It seemed they couldn’t accept themselves having become monsters, so they completely separated it. That pain the monster feels is not my pain. Even though cold sweat was flowing down the withered skin that still maintained human form.

Having reached this conclusion, Ryuie actually felt relieved.

‘They still want to be human.’

If they didn’t even have the desire to be human, there would be no way to save them.

If that wasn’t the case, any treatment method could be tried.

Even as Ohen was cruelly tearing apart the monstrous areas, Ryuie saw possibility.

“Heal.”

The priest who had followed Ryuie immediately began praying.

The patient whose shell had been peeled off while alive remained calm even as the dark prayer wrapped around his shoulder.

Soon the torn area began to heal.

“Ah!”

“It’s shaped like a human shoulder!”

Bendam and Catsy exclaimed hopefully.

Some light returned to the patient’s eyes as well.

But as soon as the prayer ended and the wounded area recovered, the skin’s form distorted and transformed back into the shell they had first seen.

“Hmm.”

“Ahh…”

Bendam and Catsy made sounds of regret.

The patient also became dejected seeing his shoulder and forearm transformed back into a monster.

But Ryuie’s eyes actually sparkled and brightened. She was looking not at the patient, but at Ohen.

‘What?’

Ryuie bit her lips gently while staring at Ohen.

‘You. You knew, didn’t you?’

Even though he was blind and couldn’t feel gazes, Ohen’s expression was uniform like someone acting.

‘This makes you suspicious.’

Because it seemed like he deliberately showed her knowing that the treatment method Ryuie had mentioned wouldn’t work anyway.

Ryuie suppressed the laughter that was trying to escape.

As befitting a priest of Rkultu, he was indeed callous to pain and cruel.

He could have just said it in words, but deliberately showing Ryuie meant they wanted Ryuie to give up and leave. To disappear from here.

Driving away outsiders meant there was something they were hiding.

‘Good. Very good.’

It had been worth tolerating the priest’s insolent attitude toward a duke’s daughter.

‘The more secretive, the more perfect.’

The bigger whatever he was hiding, the higher the possibility it was connected to the missing Crown Prince.

Unfortunately, among the people in this room, there was no one with Joshua’s face.

But the priests might still be hiding the Crown Prince who had transformed into a monster.

If they put the villagers and the Crown Prince together, there would surely be a big fight like last time, so they might have kept them separate from the beginning.

Ryuie straightened up and stood, then commanded.

“Don’t put Mos in this room.”

“It would be better to gather and manage the patients together.”

“I’ll manage him myself. Move him to a bigger room too. Food, clothes, washing, every little detail – I’ll choose everything myself.”

For the time being, she needed to care for Mos while observing him differently from the existing patients.

By comparing, the differences would become more prominent too.

Most importantly, Mos was still vivid and full of vitality.

It would be too wasteful to put such a young man among these corpse-like people, wouldn’t it?

“Do as you wish.”

Ohen didn’t object this time either.

Having finished inspecting the patients, Ryuie visited Glem with a cheerful heart and conveyed the same realization.

“…So I’m thinking of writing observation logs from now on.”

“…”

Unlike Ohen, Glem showed very rich changes in expression.

He looked disgusted seeing Ryuie return, became serious at talk of patients, was shocked at the treatment method, and got angry hearing her demands to Ohen.

“Are you crazy?!”

‘That’s exactly it.’

Ryuie absorbed plenty of the emotional changes that had been so lacking earlier.

Proper anger, disbelief, and bewilderment were harmonizing on the handsome face.

Very much a passing grade.

“Be honest. Are you worried about my mental health too?”

Not knowing what thoughts Ryuie was licking his face with while spouting nonsense, Glem ground his teeth.

“Don’t you have any sense of caution at all? Why don’t you just ask outright?”

“What’s so outright? Me unpacking at the temple? Me monopolizing my patient saying I’ll care for him myself since you all look very suspicious? Or me not being able to hold back laughter? There are too many things to be caught for.”

“Weren’t you trying to secretly search through this temple?!”

Glem kept bursting out even though he tried to restrain himself.

“I found you while secretly searching! Your purpose isn’t the temple but the Crown Prince, right?”

“Of course. I think the priests are confining the Crown Prince who transformed into a monster.”

“…What?”

Glem seemed momentarily breathless from bewilderment and even stammered.

“That’s… that can’t be. For what reason would the priests?”

“Well. Because they don’t want to be punished for their own wrongdoing? Or because they need sacrifices? I can’t tell right now.”

Ryuie spoke nonchalantly.

“Seeing how they dare to project Joshua’s phantom over the swamp and then shamelessly tell people not to enter it, the priests must be quite involved too. Once I find Joshua, I’ll strip them all of their positions and drive them out.”

“What about the Crown Prince then?”

“Huh?”

“What if the Crown Prince was also cursed and transformed into a monster like that?”

Glem said something out of the blue. Ryuie frowned.

“If he became threatening, savage, filthy, and utterly impossible to keep nearby, would you drive him away just the same? Maybe you’d even have to kill him. Perhaps it would be better not to meet him at all.”

“You’re mistaken about something.”

Glem’s shoulders flinched at the sound of Ryuie clicking her tongue. Ryuie was glaring at him with burning eyes.

“Even before Joshua became a monster, I wanted to kill him. Why do you think I came here?”

“…Ah. But.”

“Even if other people, the Imperial Court, the whole world didn’t know, he should have told me before disappearing.”

Ryuie’s anger didn’t surge up piercingly high. But the emotions that had been building for ten years wouldn’t burst easily and had hardened with terrifyingly cold composure. Like a sword forged by alternately plunging it into hot fire and cold water.

“If Joshua wants to live when he meets me, there’s only one thing he can do. Want to die. If he wants to die, I absolutely won’t let him.”

Ryuie’s fierce determination to never give the Crown Prince what he wanted struck Glem powerfully.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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