NOMAMWTM Chapter 25

"...And so, the monstrosities are... very frightening entities. I don't really understand why they obey Charlotte so well, either."

Cardium. An estate where countless people had died because of monstrosities for 36 years.

Isolated from the outside world, a prison from which no one who set foot inside could ever leave.

At dawn, having heard everything, Charlotte felt dazed.

The information that had flooded in all at once tangled chaotically in her mind.

Countless questions surged and subsided.

Reality was too different from what she had thought and felt all this time, making it difficult to accept.

Adeline gave her sufficient time.

"And... Michael probably—"

Charlotte, who had been staring at the table with empty eyes, raised her head.

"—thinks you're connected to the monstrosities, that you control them. The misunderstanding mentioned in the letter referred to that."

The truth behind those words, which had seemed like mere attempts to drive a wedge between her and Michael out of hatred, was more frightening than she'd thought.

"Me...?"

At Charlotte's dazed question, Adeline nodded.

"Since you came to the estate, deaths have increased dramatically, they say. Since I was ill at the time, I thought it might just be words meant to frighten me, but Michael... doesn't lie often."

Gradually, her hands grew cold as ice.

Adeline said that the Cardium family had been led by mages for generations, and Michael was a mage who inherited the position from his late father, a person who protected this estate.

She and all the household members were grateful to Michael, respected him.

The monstrosities were invisible to other people's eyes.

Then, what the servants had feared—was it Charlotte herself?

Because many people had died since she arrived?

"And this is my speculation, but... Charlotte. You said the monstrosities obeyed you well?"

Charlotte barely managed to nod.

"Charlotte, Michael is—"

Bang!

At that moment, someone flung the door open and entered.

Charlotte reflexively turned her head, and her eyes wavered.

"You."

It was Michael.

He strode into the room and seized her wrist.

His voice flowed out, too low.

"What are you trying to do here again?"

"Wait, son—"

The moment Adeline reached out, Charlotte's vision was engulfed in brilliant golden light.

Thud!

Almost simultaneously with realizing she'd been transported to the couple's bedroom in an instant, she collided with the wall.

Michael roughly planted his hands on either side of her head.

A deep shadow fell over her.

"You killed the maid. So today should be enough already."

His whisper-like questioning voice was chillingly low.

"How far do you intend to torment me?"

The face looking down at her was as emotionless as always, but terrible exhaustion seeped through.

Then, in an instant, the wax-doll-pale man's face twisted.

He pounded the wall his hand had been pressed against. Bang.

Again, bang!

"How far."

Despite his rough actions, he didn't raise his voice.

However, deep despair oozed from the voice that bit off each syllable.

'In the end, did you kill them?'

How long will you do this? How long must you torment me before you're satisfied?

It resembled how he'd interrogated her before collapsing.

As if she were the one who brought this despair, the one who killed everyone.

Charlotte bit her trembling lips painfully.

She had clearly heard from Adeline.

Michael was the only man protecting this estate.

Only magic could protect the people of this estate, and because he lived with the lives of all the household members weighing on his shoulders, he was sensitive to even the slightest threat.

She understood in her head.

The lumps—the monstrosities—originally killed people, and because such creatures followed her well, in his eyes she might truly seem like a dangerous entity, and all the appearances of him she'd seen until now might all be fake.

She barely understood with her head. With her head.

But she had just witnessed murder for the first time in her life. She'd received the shock that everything she knew wasn't real.

Honestly, it was miraculous she was maintaining her sanity right now.

And yet he couldn't embrace her and ask if she was okay, couldn't cry in relief that she was safe—instead he kept cornering her, and the emotions she'd barely held back seemed to surge up again.

"How long will you—"

"It wasn't me."

She whispered.

"How far will you destroy me?"

"I said it wasn't me!"

To Michael, who asked in a hoarse voice, she screamed while feeling tears leaking out.

She felt burdened enough to collapse at any moment. Being interrogated in the midst of that was very difficult.

"Ha, of course you'd say that."

Michael let out a powerless, bitter laugh.

Charlotte's shoulders trembled violently.

"It's true, I didn't do it. I didn't kill anyone. Jeina was possessed by a monstrosity and killed everyone, and tried to kill me too."

He stared at her with empty eyes.

"You must have ordered it. You called it a familiar, but have you given up the act?"

"I just found out, just now!"

She felt the tears she'd barely stopped with Adeline's comfort flowing out.

"I didn't know... it was this kind of place either..."

It was difficult.

Charlotte glared at Michael, who kept treating her like a monster, her hands trembling violently.

But she had to say what needed to be said.

"I thought those things were your familiars all this time. I mean, my words, they really obeyed my words well!"

She felt aggrieved too.

Earlier in front of Adeline, she'd used all her strength to accept it calmly, but once provoked, her emotions burst out again.

Those blue eyes looking at her, those blue eyes that thought all of this was because of her—they felt like they were strangling her.

"Since you're a monster—"

"I really didn't know. Just a, just a human. You don't have to believe me, but I'm human too, just like you. I thought the servants were afraid of you because the monstrosities looked disgusting. Even mages—"

"Why on earth are you trying to deceive me? Do humans look that stupid?"

They couldn't communicate.

Though they were close enough for their breaths to touch, it felt like there was a thick wall between them.

It was frustrating. Suffocating.

While trying to sort out her emotions and organize her thoughts alone was difficult enough to die from, this made it even harder.

"Ha..."

She really hated hearing his bitter laugh.

Charlotte wheezed and opened her mouth to snap something at him.

But, at that moment.

"...Mi, chael?"

His body swayed and collapsed forward toward her.

His chin came to rest on her shoulder.

"Micha—ugh!"

Heavy weight pressed down on her.

Crash!

She fell with him.

"Ow..."

The pain was brief—she realized the man collapsed on top of her had lost consciousness.

Just hours ago, she'd witnessed someone die.

Regardless of whether they'd been arguing just moments before, without time to think rationally, the blood drained from her face.

"...Mi—"

"Tsk, what are you doing?"

Just before her mind went blank, the weight crushing her body suddenly decreased significantly.

She exhaled roughly.

Looking up, a black-haired man—that is, Nero—was holding Michael up by the scruff of his neck while looking down at her.

"You suddenly got dragged away, so what are you doing, Master? I almost died trying to break through those crazy things alone."

He casually tossed Michael onto the bed, then scooped up Charlotte, who was just staring blankly at him.

Unlike Michael, he didn't grab her by the scruff like picking up a bug—he lifted her quite gently and laid her on the bed, even kindly pulling the blanket over her.

Then, seemingly satisfied, he instantly transformed into a rabbit and patted the blanket with his paw. Pat-pat.

"What is—"

She barely gathered her wits and opened her mouth, but Nero blocked her mouth with his paw.

[Master, sleep too, for now. Humans need to rest a lot, pointlessly so. I don't know if Master is really human, though.]

Charlotte tried to push away the rabbit paw pressing insistently on her lips and ask.

"Michael is—"

[That human just fainted. He's fine, so leave him.]

Looking to the side, she saw Michael had already fallen asleep with a peaceful expression, just as Nero said.

The man's shoulders rose and fell regularly.

Only then did the tension drain from her rigid body.

Though it was nothing serious, relief washed over her like a wave.

Following that, drowsiness suddenly flooded in as if something had snapped.

Sleep at a time like this. She let out a hollow laugh, but her thoroughly exhausted body screamed that it needed rest and forcibly pressed down her consciousness.

Fatigue crushed her body.

Her eyes drooped.

"...When you... wake up, you... also have to... tell me... what..."

She barely managed to mumble before collapsing into sleep.

Fortunately, this time no dreams came to her.

Deep within Alkern Imperial Palace, which reeked of corpses.

Maya Juben, the Imperial Family's First Grand Mage and the starting point of all these sins, felt the stone tucked in her bosom weakly emanating energy and took it out.

It was connected to the ones carried by those who entered Cardium Estate.

The stone flashed silver once.

"...Silver?"

An artifact created to detect the approximate energy of whoever came close within a limited space, in order to grasp even a little of the identity of 'Charlotte' who should be at Cardium.

It showed no reaction to ordinary people, emitted white light for Sornia's mages, and was made to glow black for similar entities.

But, silver?

"...Did it detect Michael Cardium as well?"

Maya Juben narrowed her eyes at the ambiguous color, but soon reached the conclusion that it didn't matter.

Silver—that is, gray—was a color mixed from black and white.

A color that couldn't be created without black.

Then, the 'Charlotte' in that estate was clearly—