No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 83

“A deal? With the likes of you? You think you can say that even when your limbs are being ripped apart.”

“Then, did you think you could hide your hand while acting so blatantly? That what you desire is me… Did you hope that I wouldn’t know that only I can fulfill your will? You were dull. Truly foolish… Haha.”

Cassice Demillang did not want to be left as a victim who was kidnapped. 

He was not someone who could be dominated from the beginning.

“Don’t you need me? Isn’t it you who needs me…? You praise me when I obediently submit to be tamed. Isn’t it natural to raise beasts with food and whips?”

“Then what should we feed you?”

“That’s right. Now we can make a deal.”

He announced his terms on the spot.

“Don’t lay a hand on my parents. If you want to threaten me, use a different hand. Otherwise, I swear on this soul that I will destroy you.”

He forced others not to be involved in the life and death of his parents.

He thought that was enough. Since they made his sinful birth a blessing, he wished for them to live a long life on their path.

Therefore, what he did was a deal. He voluntarily put on a leash. In exchange for entrusting the authority to handle his body, he protected the survival of two lives.

But that wasn’t all.

‘The safety of my parents.’

It couldn’t be accepted just by hearing news about it.

He had to confirm it with his own eyes. Demillang agreed to that and, in compliance with the conditions, allowed him to peek at their daily lives with magic. But the parents he faced were dying. It wasn’t because Demillang touched them. A child taken away in life. They were collapsing, unable to endure the void left by the disappearance of Cassice Demillang. Memories inevitably accompany pain. Was it arrogant to hope that parents who lost their living child would live in their right mind?

He didn’t want to know how cruel he could become. He really didn’t want to know such a thing. But.

“I know what you’re doing to me. Do it a little more. Don’t worry about being half-hearted. I won’t go crazy…”

“What are you up to?”

“Let me make just one request.”

With the additional deal made like that, in exchange for being treated a little more harshly, Cassice Demillang succeeded in erasing himself from his parents’ memories. When he deprived even the opportunity to miss their child from the parents who had their child taken away.

Only then was Cassice Demillang satisfied.

“I think I did well leaving the family head position and running away. Dating you, marrying you… Why do you have that expression?”

“I wish I was an ordinary person. I’m afraid my bloodline will block your future path…”

“Don’t say that. Because only you are my treasure.”

It was bright. It was warm. That meadow. The flower garden that was trampled by military boots bloomed with green. Violets, fragrantly blooming and the honey that enchants butterflies… Even the small stream flowing with milk, ah, that place was perfect. Perfect happiness, love. A place I miss so much. But now it’s enough. Because just looking at it is sufficient.

Once, he too was his father’s treasure, but now he’s just a raw fish collapsed on a chopping board. He made himself that way. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t escape the fish tank. Even if he couldn’t set foot on land in his life.

If the white sand shines brightly in the sun.

Even if they can’t think of him when they see a scaly thing washed up.

‘It’s fine.’

So Cassice Demillang decided not to resist. When he opened his eyes, it was hell, and when he closed them, it was still hell, but he still had light. He thought life was worth continuing because he could hold that in his hands. He could endure being imprisoned for a thousand years. Any longer than that and he would probably go crazy.

‘It’s warm.’

He had light. Family. Home. Perfect peace. As the price of the deal, he could observe them for ten minutes once a day. The time was always precious. He focused on that moment, even regretting breathing and blinking, gritting his teeth.

Everyone said he must have gone crazy, but he had his reasons.

Cassice Demillang had a great imagination since long ago. When the ten minutes were over, it was five hours of sleep from then on. But even sleeping was a waste. He wanted to dream of himself in the scene he saw that day, so he shoved everything he observed into his head. He couldn’t waste a single moment. He reminisced. The intelligence that comes once in a thousand years dissected all the images that the eyes explored, appreciated, and indulged in. Today they walked in the park. If it’s a flower garden, he could imagine based on what he directly saw and experienced, but not today. Because it’s time for a new experience. Come on. Think about it. What would the texture of the leaves be like?

‘Until I was caught, what I saw and touched was soft and moist.’

But the leaves I see now have rough, cotton-like fuzz. Then would it be a bit rough? Or would it be scratchy to look at but tickle the skin with its contours when touched? Which would it be? What about the butterfly? I’ve never touched a butterfly. But somehow it has a silky luster. Then would it have the texture of silk? Ah. What was the texture of silk like? My father’s necktie was silk. Father. I can’t remember well. But no. I can’t give up. You can remember. You’ll be able to remember. Let’s recall the scent. Mother…

Then he felt like he was in between them. That was his rest. After finishing his routine – fighting, killing, fighting, killing, regenerating before dying, being experimented on, being tortured, becoming a lump of meat, and finally becoming human again, closing his eyes and crawling into the cradle. Peace was not far away. He just had to imagine. The better he imagined, the more concrete the image became, the more it felt like falling asleep in his parents’ arms.

Even if in reality, he was crouching and sleeping in an iron cage thickly wrapped in chunks of metal. His body was imprisoned, but his soul was embraced. He was sincere. Even when the promise to suffer a little more severely led to the bizarre demand to insert the mana circle of the heart into the dantian, and he even realized that all the experiments so far were just preparations for this.

“How is it, are you afraid?”

“If I was afraid of this trivial thing, I would have bitten my tongue and died long ago.” 

He could accept it as if it were natural.

“Ugh, ack. Ah. Urgh…”

But just because it was natural didn’t mean it was nothing. Damn it, pain came instead of fear. Pain was existence. Only those who exist can feel pain. Therefore, all this pain that Cassice Demillang feels will surely prove that he is surviving. That directly refers to the continued existence of the family he loves endlessly. It was what he wanted.

It was what he wished for. So he had to endure.

‘…I have to live.’

He endured with just that thought. At that time, when inserting the mana circle into the dantian. He was on the altar like a sacrifice. People chanted spells as if praying, and the mana swirled and rose, and the sound of him suffering and convulsing did not reach anyone. It reached their ears but not their hearts. No one pitied him. Because he was a vessel. At best, a tool.

His arms and legs, which convulsed involuntarily even though he didn’t want to, twisted while bound by iron chains. The bound wrists bent and the convulsions continued. An organ that shouldn’t exist was embedded in a position where it shouldn’t exist. It was not something a human could endure. But he could endure it. Only he could endure it. It just happened to be a stage he could endure. Crying, bleeding, he survived.

Circulating mana was impossible. It was something humans shouldn’t have done in the first place. He survived because he was Cassice Demillang. But that was it. How could he circulate mana when it felt like he would die just by breathing? Just attempting mana breathing made his heart convulse. He fainted dozens of times a day. There were many times when he was forcibly kept conscious by administering awakening potions and his soul almost collapsed. This won’t do. Everyone agreed. It wasn’t enough to shove the mana circle into the dantian. They had to make him awaken mana somehow.

“He is your teacher.”

And so, at the age of eight, he got a teacher. Of course, it wasn’t to save him. Nor was it for him to live. Cassice Demillang had to be used up.

“Greetings, Teacher.”

“…”

“Do you have value?”

He didn’t differentiate between himself and others.