Leon made an enigmatic expression before straightening nonchalantly and picking up the wine cup she had set down. The liquid swirled as it passed between his wet lips. He drank the wine brazenly, as if it had been his cup all along.
Just as she was thinking that his lips had touched the same spot as hers—
“Do you know how Bahamuts reproduce?” Leon suddenly asked.
When Veronica shook her head blankly, he set down the cup and told her, “By splitting.”
Splitting?
“If they devour a hundred humans, that means there will be a hundred more Bahamuts. If they consume one thousand humans, they multiply by a thousand as well.”
This was the first she’d heard of it. Shocked by this crude, protozoan-like reproduction method, Veronica frowned, momentarily forgetting her own situation.
“Doesn’t that… make it hopeless for us, then? If they multiply so rapidly?”
“There’s still hope. No matter how much they multiply, killing one kills all its offspring in a chain reaction. Its children, and its children’s children—as if they’re all connected.”
His long fingers caressed the rim of the cup, circling it once before moving to the handle.
“And once I learned that fact,” he continued, “I naturally arrived at a hypothesis.”
Veronica held her breath. When Leon slowly raised his eyes, he was no longer smiling. For no apparent reason, chills ran down her spine.
“What if all these monsters now infecting the entire southern continent originally came from just one single creature?”
The shocking proposition caused a scene to unfold before her eyes of the single Bahamut born from the meteorite that had fallen into the sea three years ago. It multiplied by consuming human brains. More numbers meant more strength, so it bred, and bred, and bred again.
“If we kill that original Bahamut, the calamity across the entire continent ends.”
His quiet, calm voice seeped into her ears. Veronica trembled as if electrified. She imagined cutting the topmost thread of a string of connected beads.
It was at that moment that Leon tilted the wooden cup over an insect on the floor that seemed recently dead—or more precisely, over the black mass of ants swarming around the corpse.
Veronica could only stare blankly as the strong liquor splashed down over the creatures.
The black ants were swept away by the yellow flood. They struggled in vain, but it was impossible to fight against the current.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
“I think you understand why,” Leon replied in a casual tone. “A woman in front of the church moaned and told me that you locked eyes with a Bahamut with a face.”
Veronica recalled the woman she had encountered just before her corruption, and the monster that had been bent forward when she looked back. Its red eyes had shown her the world’s end.
Her breathing quickened. Now she understood what he wanted.
“It’s just a hypothesis, but I think you’ve been corrupted by the original monster,” he continued. “You’re the only connection to it.”
He expected her to help him track it. If his hypothesis were correct, killing just that one would eliminate all Bahamuts across the continent. But…
“…What if I refuse to cooperate?”
A sense of déjà vu strangled her as the same situation seemed to repeat itself. Veronica thought of Benjamin, a friend who had offered a helping hand. He’d demanded she pay him back for saving her as well, just like Leon was doing right now.
“You don’t have a choice. Either your head explodes, or you come with me. Those are your only two choices.”
Sure enough, his answer was an uncompromising demand without a hint of hesitation. Veronica grew suspicious. Was this really Leon Berg?
His cruel expression and manner made him seem more like a rough mercenary than a dignified knight. Here was a man who suited darkness even blacker than night.
What would happen to her if she followed this man? Was there any guarantee of humane treatment?
As these thoughts crossed her mind, she felt nauseated and gritted her teeth. Otherwise, her churning stomach would surely spew bile. Benjamin had clearly left a deeper trauma than she’d realized.
Some misfortunes had no bottom, and sometimes the misfortune right before your eyes was more terrifying than a calamity befalling all humanity.
The man’s cold gaze kept overlapping with Benjamin’s gleaming eyes. Leon and Benjamin seemed different yet similar. She had certainly asked for help, but she had never agreed to pay such a price. She never dreamed she would have to trade her entire life for being saved from death.
A defiant color gradually rose in Veronica’s pale face.
If he needed information, they could use letters, messengers, or other methods of communication. There was no need to travel together. So…
“I refuse,” Veronica replied clearly. “I’m grateful that you saved my life, but I don’t want to travel with you.”
Her heart was pounding violently. Her scarlet eyes flashed like a lit wick, and the air visibly rippled. As a strange killing intent settled in, Veronica instinctively grabbed the dagger lying beside her sleeping bag. It was the one Benjamin had given her, which she had stuffed into her pocket.
Unfortunately, she didn’t even have time to draw the blade. Before she could, the man’s languid gaze changed.
In an instant, he grabbed her hair and roughly yanked her pale neck backward.
The quick, brutal restraint choked off her breath, and a pained groan escaped her. The clatter of the falling dagger echoed in her ears, and when she came to her senses, the cold metal against her nape made her skin tremble. Looking up, she met Leon’s gaze—the look of a butcher examining livestock.
“Didn’t I tell you?” The man smirked, his voice dropping to a completely different bass tone. “I told you to only ask for my help if you wanted to survive—even if you had to crawl through hellfire.”
Her body froze stiff as a corpse. Their difference was not only in their strength but the level of violence each of them was used to. No matter how unusually Veronica had grown up, no matter what strange power she had acquired, she was helplessly overwhelmed by his murderous intent.
Her small body instinctively cowered in fear. She had lived normally for twenty years. There was no way she could face a former knight who used to have legal permission to take lives.
Tears like pearls formed at the corners of her eyes. Veronica gritted her teeth and said in a hoarse voice, “You’re no knight. You’re supposed to protect the weak, not kidnap and threaten people like this.”
She packed her words with suppressed indignation and anger.
Leon frowned slightly at the tears in her eyes, but that was all. Soon, the blade pressed closer against her skin, as if to imprint terror into her.
She felt warm liquid trickling down her throat. It felt like blood. He opened his mouth slowly.
“You still don’t seem to grasp the situation. As of yesterday, you’re not a weak civilian anymore. You’re a Bahamut that devours humans.”
Leon yanked her head closer by the hair. His sharp face looked down at her obliquely, close enough to kiss.
“And I’m sorry, but I should tell you one more thing. If torturing you would reveal Its whereabouts, I’m capable of doing that too. I could cut off your limbs, or drag you around tied up. As long as you don’t die, it’s all the same to me.”
His low voice violently pierced her eardrums.
He meant it. This wasn’t a mere threat.
“What I want is simple. First, from this moment on, tell me immediately if you experience any symptoms—visions, voices, anything unusual. Second, obey me unconditionally. If you try to escape or resist, you die. How’s that? Too difficult to understand?”
If she refused now, she would die immediately. It was that simple.
Her eyes wavered with rising fury. She wanted to spit at him, but her mouth was too dry. So Veronica cursed instead.
“Go to hell.”
“Sure, let’s go together.”
Leon interpreted her words as he pleased, raising the corner of his mouth. Despite his breathtakingly handsome smile, Veronica couldn’t smile back. It probably would have been the same even if he had removed the sword and released her hair. She would have collapsed, unable to move. She knew there was no point in running away now.
Her wings had been clipped the moment he saved her.
A cicada with broken wings was nothing more than a crawling insect on the ground.
It was on the longest night of winter in the Divine Year 1521—a night when even angels slept—that Veronica Schwarzwald was subjugated by Leon Berg.