There’s Something Special About Her - Chapter 11
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Episode 11.
Hot blood pulsed through his veins, thrumming beneath his skin.
The full onset of symptoms had begun this afternoon.
Grin Merchant Leader had detonated the Dragon Blood that had been simmering slowly within him all this while.
A single foolish moth—a lowlife who didn’t know the value of her own life—had charged at him, and because of her, the period his retainers secretly called the Lunar Eclipse had begun far ahead of schedule.
Though the rampage had been abruptly triggered, the sensation of his entire body surging with power and blood was, as always, exquisite.
That was why Killian Knox’s mood was decidedly not poor.
He’d spent the entire day in the Underground Prison savoring Grin Merchant Leader’s blood to his heart’s content.
But then.
“Mm.”
Killian quieted the heat rising sporadically within him with a low sigh, gazing down at the small figure kneeling at his feet.
‘Irritating.’
A mere foot soldier of the Action Squad.
A nonentity was touching his nerves.
Like prey caught in a spider’s web, tugging at the silk to summon the trap’s keeper, so too was the presence of Lunelk Ains.
“Did you already know of the assassin’s existence, sir?”
Despite the trembling, his steady gaze was defiant.
It had been a long time.
A long time since anyone had asked him a question, or threw themselves forward to protect him.
“What if I did?”
“If that were truly the case…”
Lunelk Ains pressed his lips firmly together.
Irritation flickered across those unusually large, upturned blue eyes.
That was all that was readable.
“Tell me. How did you know Grin Merchant Leader harbored murderous intent?”
Lunelk Ains hesitated for a moment, then answered.
“I, as I mentioned, I simply have sharp intuition…”
Once again, nothing was readable.
Whether the wretch was lying or speaking the truth was unknowable.
The ability Killian had possessed since birth could not penetrate this one.
A thoroughly disagreeable existence.
Killian gazed down at the small, round head with narrowed eyes and thought.
Yes, killing him would be far preferable.
The impulse promptly became action.
“Ugh…!”
Killian’s massive hand closed around Lunelk Ains’s throat.
The slender neck, devoid of muscle, seemed made for the grip of his palm.
The hand that touched the pale skin, where blue veins were visible, burned like fire.
“So it was all mere chance, then.”
That this unreadable being had come and gone from the Bathhouse—a place as private as an inner sanctum—and that he had also saved him from the assassination attempt.
“That’s impossible.”
Killian laughed, a quiet sound.
As he watched the blue eyes, wet with tears from strangled breath, turn toward the corners of his smile, he tightened his grip on the throat he’d been holding loose.
Such a frail body would crumple pitifully under only the slightest force.
Then this unpleasant sensation gnawing at his nerves would surely vanish.
Killian had no doubt of it.
Yet in that instant, a pain like a white-hot nail driven through his skull halted him.
“Nh… ugh.”
As a single tear fell from Lunelk Ains’s flailing form onto the back of his hand, the headache sharpened further.
During the Lunar Eclipse, a body that accepted even the pain of a blade’s cut as sweet pleasure suddenly went rigid from a sensation so eerie.
And his Hypersense, which had been quiet until now, rang out a loud alarm.
‘You must not kill him.’
The moment of realization, his grip went slack.
It had happened before he could even make a judgment himself.
As if the Dragon Blood had seized control from him, if only for a moment.
Thud.
Lunelk Ains, fallen to the floor, grasped his throat and coughed wetly.
“Gasping…! Cough, cough!”
Killian stood before him, looking down at his own right hand.
Repeatedly opening and closing his large fist in the empty air as if testing it, Killian’s eyes glinted with something unexpected.
“Interesting.”
Fascinating.
Such an intense sensation.
And the involvement of the Dragon Blood, at that.
Novel.
The fever that, during the Lunar Eclipse, could only be cooled by the warmth of blood alone had by now retreated far into the background.
‘What are you, exactly.’
Lunelk Ains, his underdeveloped shoulders trembling as he drew ragged breaths, still appeared to him like nothing more than a scrawny, unbroken colt.
Yet the Dragon Blood, which had never betrayed him until now, had intervened.
Along with intense curiosity, an impulse surged forth suddenly.
To think he’d caught the eye of Killian during the Lunar Eclipse—how pitiful.
Killian mocked his own hollow compassion and asked Lunelk Ains.
“Do you wish to live, Lunelk Ains?”
“…Cough!”
Still tears spilled down his cheeks, but his blue eyes, wide and sharp, spoke for him.
Was that what you called a question?
Killian did not suppress the laughter that escaped him.
Hypersense had always, only ever, worked for Killian.
So this Lunelk Ains was a necessary existence to him, then.
“Let me test just how useful that intuition of yours truly is.”
“That… cough, what do you mean by that?”
His hoarse voice asked, but Killian ignored it and simply regarded Lunelk Ains quietly.
No matter how much he looked, this frame was too frail to ever truly become part of Knox.
If this small body hid itself away somewhere, he might not be able to find it.
“Yes, there was a way.”
There was a method by which he could track the wretch no matter where he fled.
Satisfied smile spreading across his face, Killian reached out his hand toward Lunelk Ains again.
Whether refusing to yield passively this time, the wretch pulled his body back with surprising agility, but it was not nearly enough to escape Killian’s reach.
“Ugh! This… let go!”
“Shh, stay still.”
Grasping the small jaw slightly above the neck already mottled with bruises, Killian pulled Lunelk Ains forward.
“If you’re going to kill me… just, just kill me!”
“Kill you? Didn’t you just say you don’t want to die?”
With a rare smile that even his associates seldom witnessed, Killian brought his other hand to his own mouth.
Crack.
The sound of white teeth tearing into the flesh of his own hand was so vivid that Lunelk Ains, who had been struggling to wrench free, went still.
Drip, drop.
Red blood mixed with Dragon Blood, gleaming with golden light, fell with a heavy sound.
Killian confirmed the flow of blood was sufficient, then forced Lunelk Ains’s jaw open roughly.
“What are you… doing…!”
“Swallow.”
As he clenched his bitten hand, golden threads of blood dripped down.
“I, I don’t… *gag*, *cough*!”
“Good.”
No matter how much he resisted, breathing required swallowing the liquid in his mouth.
Humans were so fragile.
Only after Lunelk Ains had swallowed several mouthfuls of Killian’s blood did he release his jaw.
“Cough, *retch*, gag!”
The wretch tried to expel what he’d been forced to swallow, but to no avail.
The Dragon Blood that had entered his body had already been absorbed and disappeared.
Evidence of this was plain: the burst capillaries around his reddened eyes, the handprints on his neck—all slowly fading.
Looking at Lunelk Ains’s face, now covered in his own blood, Killian spoke in a gentle voice.
“Do you know what Dragon’s Retinue means?”
“How would I… *cough*… know something like that…!”
“It means exactly what it sounds like—the property of a dragon. You’ve just become mine.”
Killian bent his knees to meet Lunelk Ains’s eyes level and smiled.
“So from now on, wherever you are, I can sense you. Even if it’s across the sea on the Western Continent. As long as breath remains in your body, you cannot escape me.”
Thump, thump, thump.
Following the rapid beating of Lunelk Ains’s heart, his own energy coursing through the wretch’s body was vivid and clear.
“Now that I’ve put on your collar, I’ll give you your first task.”
Those moonlike, cool gold eyes glinted with cruelty.
“You have five days until the Day of Earth. In that time, bring me Knox’s darkest secret.”
Issuing a command that was absolutely impossible to fulfill, Killian laughed savagely.
“If you fail, you die.”
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————