Dilapidated houses on the verge of collapsing, people in shabby, filthy appearances.
‘This is a slum. Probably on the outskirts of the Capital…’
And shortly after, I discovered an angelically beautiful young child with blond hair and gray-brown eyes.
At a glance, he was an Ifrit around four or five years old.
Following him into the house, I saw a young and beautiful woman—yet one who looked half out of her mind—violently beating the young Ifrit without restraint.
Unable to bear watching the scene, I bit down hard on my lower lip.
“Because of you! My life turned out like this! Like this!”
“Ah, it hurts…! Mother, stop… sob…”
Whenever Ifrit cried or begged her to stop hitting him, her violence only grew worse.
“You’re of their blood, but the Marquis’ House hasn’t even come looking for you! You must be useless!”
As such things repeated for a long time, Ifrit gradually stopped showing any emotion even while being beaten.
“…”
Having learned how to hide his emotions, his face was nothing but expressionless, unlike that of a child.
More time passed.
To the boy Ifrit, who had accumulated years of anger toward House Pavel that had turned its back on both his mother and himself, the demon Astaroth appeared.
He had red eyes like Rastan, but with a far more cruel-looking impression, making my body flinch without realizing it.
“Boy, will you entrust your soul to me?”
“You are…”
“Then I will give you everything you desire in this land.”
Thus, the two made a contract.
And Astaroth, just as Ifrit desired, took the lives of his mother, his half-brothers, and his grandfather, one by one.
‘Oh my God…’
They were all people Ifrit had hated or who had stood in his way.
Even though they were his family, Ifrit had shown no hesitation.
Afterward, Astaroth also manipulated the vassal families so that Ifrit’s succession to the title would proceed smoothly.
‘So in the end, he seized the title with the help of a demon.’
I had never imagined that such a horrifying truth had been hidden behind the past he once told me with that innocent face.
I clicked my tongue as I looked at Ifrit, who had now become an adult.
‘Then now, shall I look mainly at things related to me, or memories of his evil deeds?’
He had grown up retaining the same angelically beautiful appearance as when he was young, but it was certain that his evil deeds weren’t limited to what he had done to me alone. After all, from the moment he made a contract with a demon, he must have already given up on going to heaven.
‘Ifrit owns more than just one or two gambling dens? No, that gambling den—isn’t that the place my father used to go to every day and lose money?’
But it didn’t end there.
‘What, the one supplying drugs and slaves to the Lansval Trading Company was also a front trading company secretly owned by Ifrit…?’
A scene appeared showing Ifrit’s subordinates kidnapping innocent people to sell them as slaves. Some of them even lost their lives in the process of being handled roughly.
And among them, there was also a scene of Sally being kidnapped.
‘Sally!’
When I saw the scene of them striking her head to knock her unconscious, stuffing her into a sack, and roughly throwing her aside, harsh words escaped from me without realizing it.
“You bastards…”
The tips of my fingers had long since gone cold with rage.
Meanwhile, the scene changed, and this time, I appeared walking together with Ifrit.
Wondering what it was, I looked more closely, and it was the day I had gone with him to the slave auction house.
‘Ha, come to think of it, I went there together with a slave supplier?’
Feeling pathetic for having thought of Ifrit as nothing but a kind helper, I struck my head repeatedly.
After hearing from me that I would soon report the slave trader, he must have begun erasing the evidence of his involvement one by one from that very day. Calmly and perfectly.
‘That’s why they were never able to find the supplier during the investigation into House Lansval’s slave trading crime.’
The saying that it was darkest under the lamp fit perfectly.
‘Ha, with such a kind face, and yet…’
Businesses like jewelry stores or construction were merely for show to the outside world, while the real income of House Pavel mainly came from such illegal businesses.
‘Was House Lansval only at the level of small fry compared to House Pavel…?’
If that was the case, then most of the wealth and status Ifrit now enjoyed had been built by grinding down other people’s money and blood—no, their lives.
‘But even that money wasn’t enough, so he tried to get his hands on my ability too?’
Deciding to find out what he had been thinking when he targeted my ability, I examined the memories related to me.
Then, things I had never expected unfolded one after another.
‘What, the communication orb Ifrit gave me had a location-tracking spell on it?’
When I had asked about the red blinking light whose meaning I didn’t understand, hadn’t Ifrit brushed it off by saying it was just an indicator that connection was possible, or maybe a malfunction?
‘That’s seriously… When someone lies so casually like that, how can you not be deceived?’
“That item he gave you, I would prefer that you do not bring it into my home.”
Perhaps Rastan had instinctively sensed the impure intent contained within that item.
The question of why he had tried to track my location was soon answered by the scenes that followed.
The birds sent by Ifrit had been observing my movements at the Lansval estate, at the lodging where I had almost been kidnapped, and recently even at Blake estate.
‘That Rodin bird, I treated it so affectionately, but it was actually on that side all along?’
It was ridiculous, but even toward such a small bird, a surge of betrayal swept over me.
‘In this world, the only bird I could trust was Raven, a demon.’
As I shook my head, I suddenly widened my eyes at the scene that followed.
After Rastan, Ris, and I had left, Ifrit had come to the lodging where I had been staying.
The assailants who had failed their mission to kidnap me were collapsed in the yard, but instead of being surprised, Ifrit only looked annoyed.
In the memory, he lightly kicked the fallen assailants as if checking them.
“Ha, useless bastards. I told you to hold out until I arrived. Tsk…”
Even though they had died carrying out the task he had given them, he showed not a trace of sympathy, sorrow, or guilt.
Then Astaroth, who had come with Ifrit, floated in the air and slowly curled up the corners of his mouth. It was probably a form invisible to others.
“They already collapsed after being dealt with, so I made sure to silence them properly at least. Hehehe.”
I recalled Ris’s report that she had returned there and confirmed the deaths of the assailants.
‘Now I understand.’
Ifrit had used the communication orb to track my location, and after I left the estate and security weakened, he had tried to kidnap me.
‘And when things went wrong because of Ris and Rastan, he simply killed his own subordinates like that.’
Was a human life really that easy and light to him?
‘I should have realized it back when he killed animals without hesitation as a child.’
As I remembered the young Ifrit holding a blood-soaked rabbit with an expressionless face, goosebumps rose across my entire body anew.
‘But he would only know my ability as something that purifies nightmares, so why did he desire it that much?’
With growing suspicion, I looked further, and the demon who had made a contract with Ifrit appeared again.
“Bring me that woman’s ability.”
It was clear that ‘that woman’ referred to me.
Judging by the context, it seemed to be a memory from just before he met me again after becoming an adult.
“If I absorb it, I will grow stronger. No, simply tearing that ability away from her would also be enough to make him lose his mind. Krrrk…”
It wasn’t difficult to guess that the ‘him’ Astaroth was referring to was Rastan.
“If I grow stronger, you who made a contract with me will also grow stronger. You said you wanted to have this entire human world, didn’t you?”
At those words, Ifrit’s gray-brown eyes were instantly dyed with deep greed.
Perhaps because he was in front of a demon, Ifrit didn’t bother hiding his emotions as he did in front of people.
“Yes. And when that happens, you will also grant me the throne of this Empire.”
“That much is easy. Your dream is modest, isn’t it?”
“Haha. I am merely a servant who offers eternal loyalty to the great Astaroth.”
The two of them shared a friendly, yet unpleasant laugh.
It was impossible to know whether that demon truly intended to give Ifrit the entire world.
However, judging from the things Ifrit had done until now, he had already gone far beyond the point of forgiveness.
‘He killed countless innocent people, starting with his own family, and in exchange, gained power and wealth.’
For the sake of future potential victims, it was certain that he couldn’t be left alone like this.
‘At the very least, for my own survival right now.’
At that moment, Astaroth, who had been looking at Ifrit, suddenly turned his head and looked at me.
“However… it seems we have an uninvited guest?”
