Chapter 217

Chapter 217: Adol and Mona (2)

“Everything is because you are a monster.”

At the simple and rude insult that came from Mona’s mouth, fire rose in Adol’s eyes.

Adol lunged at Mona, trying to grab him by the collar, but he could not overcome his physical limits and merely ended up clinging to the hem of his clothes.

“If you were trying to piss me off, you succeeded, you son of a bitch. If a person asks seriously, shouldn’t you give a proper answer?”

“You are not a person. You are a monster born between a monster and a human.”

By this point, Adol could be certain.

The goal of this damn bastard was to make him so angry that his head would spin.

Perhaps he only wanted to see him turn into a monster again.

“Looks like you want to see me turn into a monster, but if that was what you wanted, you should’ve opened your eyes wide and checked last night. You ran away with your tail between your legs because you were scared of getting beaten by a monster, and now you......”

“I told you. Everything is because you are that monster.”

Before Adol could even finish speaking, Mona deliberately prodded the child’s temper and rose.

Adol, easily toppled by Mona’s strength, rolled across the floor.

“Not a weak human brat like you, but the power of a monster is what I need.”

At that brazen statement, Adol’s brow furrowed.

“What kind of bullshit is that? You’re a real monster, and yet you’re saying you’re going to borrow strength from a half-formed thing?”

“Even if you are a half-formed thing, Archie’s blood flows through you. I already confirmed last night how much power you can produce.”

At the calm word confirmed, Adol ground his teeth.

“Is that why you turned me into that mess yesterday and ran?”

When Adol raised his voice again, Mona lifted his index finger and brought it to his lips.

“There is no need to raise your voice. This is not a bad story for you either.”

What a joke.

No matter how stupid he was, he was not naive enough to believe the words of a bastard who had already trapped him once.

Perhaps reading his ridicule, Mona twitched an eyebrow.

“This means I am giving you a chance to take revenge on Archie yourself.”

Adol, who had been about to sneer with all his strength that Mona should stop with the bullshit, paused.

A chance to take revenge. So was he saying he would give him a chance to kill Archie now?

How?

His heartbeat quickened as if striking his chest.

Adol tried to gather his wits.

This time, he had no intention of being dragged along according to the bastard’s will.

It was still too early to judge whether Mona’s words were true or false.

Recalling Ran’s voice warning him that he had to think and find out for himself in order to uncover the truth was helpful.

Besides, if that bastard found out one more time that Adol had lost his reason to anger, he would not seem likely to let the opportunity pass.

The first time, he had let it go because Adol had been crying, but this time, he would mock him until he got angry.

He would probably treat him like an idiot, saying he had fallen for Mona’s trick again.

When Adol pictured him sneering shamelessly, somehow his head felt like it cooled.

Surprisingly, his mind cleared.

Right. If only to avoid being mocked by that bastard, he needed to come to his senses now.

Using a different kind of anger to calm his excitement, Adol opened his mouth with a much calmer face.

“So you mean you’re going to use me to kill Archie.”

“I will not deny it.”

Mona admitted it obediently.

“Why? Why now of all times? You’ve followed him just fine until now, so why are you saying you’re going to kill Archie now, when I came here?”

“The reason you were able to find us is because I allowed it. It is not that I am doing this now because you came. I called you because now is when I need you.”

Mona arrogantly pointed out that Adol’s will had not existed from the very beginning, then shrugged and added.

“Because I can no longer leave the pack to move according to Archie’s plan.”

“Archie’s plan?”

“The reason I followed him until now was because I agreed with his objective too. The continuation of the race.”

The continuation of the race.

Adol’s face hardened as he recalled Mona’s disgusting claim that Amy had been forced to have him.

“So why did you drag humans into that plan instead of just living well among yourselves?”

“Because we cannot live well among ourselves. Why do you think we live hidden away like this, even though we possess overwhelming strength compared to humans?”

When Mona asked back, Adol thought for a moment and opened his mouth.

“Because...... humans are overwhelmingly numerous.”

“Yes. You are too many, and there is a limit to how much our numbers can increase. Archie thought that in order to defeat humans, we too had to increase our numbers by that much. It was around then that he began trying to kidnap humans.”

Mona pointed with his finger at the devastated outside.

“At first, I also agreed with his words. But as you know, the result is terrible. Humans are so weak that they die simply by living together with monsters, and dissatisfaction only keeps growing.”

Adol recalled the bastards who had grown excited at the idea of tormenting humans and had thrown trash at him, as well as those who had watched.

“I do not like Archie continuing to occupy the leader’s position like this. The same goes for him playing around with humans. I do not want to stay in the same space as disgusting bastards, nor do I want unnecessary conflict to arise any further within the pack because of it.”

Mona’s argument sounded rational at a glance, but Adol’s suspicion continued.

“You hate humans so much, so how does it make sense that you want to borrow my strength when human blood is mixed in me?”

“I do not want to admit it, but humans occasionally screw us over in ways we do not expect.”

The words that the same went for the Werewolf bastards lingered in Adol’s mouth.

“In particular, I still have not found out what your human friend did to Archie. On the night I turned you into a monster, the plan went awry because the human came out before Archie. It would have been better if Archie could have been dealt with as he was. A shame.”

Contrary to his words, Mona spoke without a single trace of regret.

Adol could not readily say he understood.

“What if I refuse? By your words, it doesn’t seem like I need your help to kill Archie.”

At the words of refusal, Mona twisted the corners of his mouth slightly.

“It seems you still do not understand your position. I did not give you the right to decide. I merely explained the situation.”

His voice carried a hint of contempt, as if he had not expected he would have to point out even this.

“You were never in a position to refuse my words from the beginning. Because you have nowhere left to go now. You will no longer be able to hide among humans. I will not leave you to do so. I already confirmed that you cannot control yourself when you turn into a Werewolf.”

A faint smile appeared on Mona’s face.

Adol was certain that this smile of Mona’s was absolutely not an expression of positivity, goodwill, or optimism as accepted by the world.

Otherwise, there was no way he would feel this ominous.

“I will not let you hide and live among humans. No matter where you hide, I can find you and expose the fact that you are a monster before humans. After you are covered in human blood a few times, you too will naturally realize it. That you are not a being who can hide and live among humans.”

“There’s no way something like that is possible. As long as I don’t fall for your provocations, I can also......”

“You grew up with humans, yet you know nothing.”

Mona cut off Adol’s words as if there was nothing more to hear.

“To think you do not even know how sensitively humans react to monsters. Did your mother not teach you such things?”

Adol struggled not to let the rage surging up in him burst out.

Because getting excited every time Mona brought up Amy would only mean moving exactly as that bastard wanted.

“Threatening me won’t work. Just because I can’t live with humans right away doesn’t mean I’m going to blindly believe your words.”

“It seems you still do not want to believe that your mother died at Archie’s hands, but you should accept reality.”

At Adol’s effort to maintain his calm, Mona raised his arm without wiping away his sneer.

Adol grew tense, wondering if he was about to attack, but contrary to that, Mona’s hand headed toward the floor of the worn-out house.

“You asked why I brought you here. It was to let you confirm it. That my words are not a lie.”

Without taking his eyes off Adol, Mona’s hand swept across the floor thick with dust.

Was he suddenly cleaning the floor?

As Adol narrowed his eyes and watched what Mona was doing, his breath stopped at the traces that appeared after the thick dust vanished.

What was revealed was a name clumsily carved into the floor.

Among the faint letters, one word could be read clearly.

[Amy]

Now he could understand Mona muttering that this had worked out well.

“This place is......”

“It is the village where your mother was born. And this house is the house where that woman lived. Though after she was caught by Archie, she could never return.”

Mona’s emotionless voice reciting those words felt distant, as if coming from far away.

***

Amy and her young son lived happily in a house that suited them perfectly, neither lacking nor overflowing.

Compared to where they had lived before, it was far from the village, but still, Adol liked the house.

It did not matter that there was no father.

Adol liked the house so much that Amy, unable to keep watching, had to suggest to her young son rolling around on the floor that he go outside.

-Adol, go out and play. Children your age are supposed to play while seeing the sunlight.

At those times, Adol would answer with a sullen face.

-I’m not going out.

-Why? Are you scared? I told you. The Werewolves won’t come this far.

-I guess they won’t. There’s already another monster here.

-Wow~ Then I’m the person who gave birth to a monster? Maybe I’m not a person either, but a monster.

Even though Adol had said it on purpose, when Amy stopped speaking and quietly looked at him, he glanced at her with a startled face and checked her mood.

-Why do you say things you’re going to regret anyway?

-......

In truth, the reasons were ultimately, first, to draw Amy’s attention, and second, to confirm Amy saying without concern that he was a monster, so Adol had nothing to say.

Amy, who had been working after receiving sewing to do, stopped her busily moving hands and approached Adol, whose spirits had fallen a little as he closed his mouth.

Then she hugged the child tightly from behind.

-My cute Adol! Who did you take after to become this prickly and timid?

Adol knew from experience that if he spouted something like “I must have taken after Dad,” Amy would truly be hurt.

Even while enduring the hard work of raising a child alone, she did not curse Adol’s father.

Not that she praised him either.

Amy did not seem to like talking about his father.

When he was very young, she had occasionally answered his questions about who his father was.

What his face looked like.

That the name Adol had been taken from his father.

That they would never meet again.

As his head grew larger, Adol no longer asked about his father.

Because he had naturally learned that it made Amy sad.

Since Adol did not ask, conversations about his father disappeared between the two of them.

After a little more time passed, she began acting as if his father did not exist.

As if such a person had never existed from the beginning, as if a family was originally made up of only two people, a mother and a child, she acted that way.

Adol was in no position to dare break Amy’s stubbornness.

Because the reason she had settled here, far from the village, was all because of him.

Of course, even if that had not been the case, there was no reason to deliberately break Amy’s principles of childrearing.

Rather than such things, Adol would focus his attention on every action of the person called Amy.

Because she was an unpredictable person.

Amy was someone who could smile as if nothing were wrong in difficult situations, but at the same time, she was someone who could make an expression frightening enough to send chills down one’s spine.

On days when something happened in the distant village, Amy would look outside the window with an expression sharpened to the limit.

Adol guessed that it was related to Werewolves, and further, to his father as well.

But whenever Adol asked Amy what was going on, she would brush it off by saying, “I’ll tell you when you’re a little older.”

At those times, Adol imagined a version of himself that had grown a little older and was talking with Amy.

He did not know well, but he thought that if he got older, he would understand why she laughed, and when she became anxious, and things like that.

At least until she died.

Until she lost her life before his eyes at the hands of a monster.