The cold stone floor pressed against his skin, a chilling sensation seeping inward. To a human, the frigid air would have caused an instinctive shudder, but for the current Damian, it was the final safety measure keeping his mind anchored to reality. Amidst the heat rising into his very marrow, only this cold kept him tethered.
Soon, his heart began to throb.
His breathing grew ragged, hot gasps scattering against the stone walls. Though he had endured this countless times, the sensation of standing on the threshold of his heat cycle was still revolting.
A heat he couldn't get used to, a realization that he was losing control. The impulse to tear everything in sight apart tangled with the desire to touch someone’s warmth, gnawing at his sanity.
One day, two days, then three passed.
On the night of the fourth day, as the fever reached its peak and began to slowly flicker out, Damian suddenly stopped breathing.
“……?”
A familiar scent brushed against his nose.
The senses of a monster in heat are more acute than their natural state, and his sense of smell alertly distinguished every odor.
The smell of earth, the scent of life and death. And beyond all that, a fragrance he had grown accustomed to recently wafted into his nostrils.
It was sweet.
A warm, sugary scent like honey or toasted grain. Underneath it was the smell of air after a rainfall, or water droplets clinging to wet grass.
‘…Shion?’
Damian’s red eyes snapped open.
It made no sense. There was no way he should be here.
And yet, the scent was unmistakable.
A fragrance carved into him through kisses and breaths, so close their air had mingled countless times. It wasn't a memory, it was a mark etched into his very senses. Even if he tried to deny it, a monster’s nose in heat did not lie.
There was a faint, lingering trace of a cool, earthy scent, similar to the forest floor, but it was so weak that Damian’s focus immediately shifted elsewhere.
‘……Where is it coming from?’
He took a deep breath. Air rushed down his throat.
The direction of the scent became clear.
West.
The territory of Basha.
Shion had crossed the border and was there?
Images flashed through Damian’s mind like lightning. the centipede servant that had swarmed the inn, the day he had laid waste to that Western region. He thought he had made himself clear that day, had he been wrong?
The huddled Damian slowly rose to his feet. A massive shadow stretched lazily in the darkness. The stone walls vibrated low, and dust billowed into the air.
“…Shion.”
Damian headed West immediately. Toward the source of the scent, toward the direction where that familiar sweetness was leaking out.
***
As he tore through the forest, the branches beneath his feet were crushed into splinters. Sharp twigs pricked him repeatedly, but they only tickled his thick hide. As he drew closer to Basha’s territory, the scent grew thicker.
It was Shion’s scent.
It was sweet, but it was mixed with the metallic tang of blood. The familiar sugary aroma and the smell of iron tangled together, piercing Damian’s senses sharply.
Soon, Basha’s cave came into view. He burst through the damp stone walls, and in the center of it all, he found Shion.
He was shaking and crying. Dozens of centipede legs were coiled around his wrists, and from every point they tightened, flesh had ruptured, sending streams of blood down to pool on the floor.
The red stain spreading across the damp stone grew wider. Shion’s face was deathly pale, and the sound of his teeth chattering leaked through his trembling lips. His breath was shallow, sounding as if it might snap at any second.
As every detail of that wretched sight burned into Damian’s vision, a heat surged from his depths to the top of his head in an instant.
Grrr.
A sound like a sob leaked from deep in his throat.
It was a sound where the ferocity of a predator reacting to blood mingled with the instinct that awakens when a mate is threatened.
His red eyes flashed, cutting through the darkness.
“I believe I told you not to touch that human.”
In his vision, there was only Shion.
***
The Monster Forest is divided into four regions, North, South, East, and West, centered around the King.
Lagon the Beast King reigns in the South, Mors the Skeleton in the North, Lindel the Lady of Mirrors, in the East.
And in the West, the Poison Master, Basha.
The reason he was called the 'Poison Master' was simple. Poison was often considered a weapon of the weak, a cowardly means chosen by those who couldn't fight head-on. But Basha’s poison did not belong to that category. It was a natural disaster.
In the world of monsters, power was hierarchy. Thus, despite the tendency to disparage poison users, Basha had climbed to the position just below the apex through that poison alone.
His venom was something even the dead feared, lethal enough to wither the very earth with a single drop.
Therefore, no one dared to mock his methods, and no one dared to trespass in his territory lightly.
Strangely, however, despite having the hide of a beast, Basha never spared a glance for power, honor, or pleasure.
It was a path entirely different from Lagon’s. He chose silence over desire and tranquility over conquest.
To the outside world, he appeared indifferent and cold, but behind that indifference lay a reason no one could reach, a reason known only to Basha himself.
To return to the point, it wasn't particularly strange that Basha frowned at the news of the King’s visit. No matter how indifferent he was to the monster ecosystem, he couldn't be ignorant of the fact that the King secluded himself periodically during his heat.
So, he had taken that opportunity to meet the human personally.
At first, it was curiosity, then, it was an act of verification.
But his expectations were missed by a wide margin. The human was absurdly weak. He was faint-hearted, cowardly, and had even fainted, wetting himself before a real threat could even be issued.
Looking down at the unconscious human, Basha felt a sense of bewilderment.
This human really killed my servant, and with a single blow?
If that were true, it had to be a fluke or pure luck.
However, his subordinate who had lost his mate, Seraphion, seemed beyond such questions. Then again, one couldn't expect reason to remain in a monster whose mate had been killed.
The unconscious human was eventually moved to Basha’s domain. Because the King had recently trashed the area, he was cautious, but he couldn't leave the human alone without questioning him.
Perhaps Basha had been too focused on his "personal matters." He had underestimated Seraphion’s rage. He hadn't expected him to lose his sanity so easily and pressure the human.
Yet, he hadn't stopped him either. He considered it a justified anger. The only thing that worried him was...
“Back away. Now.”
...that he hadn't wanted things to end up like this.
Basha looked at Damian. The expanded muscles, the redness around the eyes, and the feverish body, it meant the heat cycle wasn't over. It was a period when one's primal nature became overwhelming.
Basha unconsciously flicked his tail.
The massive snake-like lower half of his body scraped the stone floor with a dull friction. It was a defensive reflex, a calculation of the possibility that the King might move to suppress him.
But that judgment ultimately failed to act in time.
Because before the defense could even take shape, Damian moved.
“…Cough!”
It happened in a heartbeat.
Damian’s hand clamped around Seraphion’s throat, and his body was hoisted into the air.
Seraphion was by no means small, but before Damian, his stature lost all meaning. His imposing body was lifted like a doll, his toes scrabbling fruitlessly in the air.
As strength surged into the hand crushing his throat, the centipede legs coiling around Shion’s wrists spasmed in unison. Then, unable to hold on, they went limp and released.
Dozens of legs hung loosely before falling to the floor, the form reverting to something like long strands of hair.
“Gurgle, ack, gack…!”
At this rate, his subordinate would die.
Basha had already lost one sentient servant. He couldn't lose another, so he finally spoke.
“King, we only brought the human here because we had questions.”
But those words did not reach Damian’s ears.
Instead, in the air thick with the scent of blood, Damian only saw Shion bleeding from both wrists. Every time a drop hit the floor, Damian’s expression twisted further.
“I believe I gave a warning. To lay hands on this human... is that a challenge directed at me?”
“The King is the pinnacle of monsters, the pride of our kind. Is it a righteous judgment to take the side of a human who killed our brother?”
Basha’s face remained void of emotion as he spoke, but the sound of his tail scraping the floor betrayed his tension.
Damian’s red eyes slowly turned toward Basha.
The cave became deathly silent.
Only the intermittent chattering of Shion’s teeth and the fading gasps of Seraphion, still dangling from Damian’s grip, broke the stillness.
A split second passed that felt like hours.
In that silence where no one dared to even breathe, Damian slowly opened his hand.
Seraphion’s body crashed to the stone floor.
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