Ruyue’s gaze went back and forth between Damien and the corpse on the ground, the lost look in her eyes never disappearing.
“D-did you know?” She managed to force the words out of her mouth.
Damien looked at her with a complex gaze. But ultimately, he shook his head.
“I only had a hunch that something was wrong.”
He was telling the truth. From the start, he had noticed something wrong with the whole situation, he just couldn’t pinpoint it.
It was for this reason why, after Ruyue left his side, he traveled through the forest and observed all the larger beast packs within it, trying to gain some information.
During this observation, he realized something odd. There was a familiar feeling about the murky mana that encased the Elder’s room in the village.
He couldn’t figure out the source of this familiarity, but as he continued his stay around the beasts and observed them with utmost concentration, he realized it.
The familiarity was beast mana.
Not only was it something he had spent 2 years surrounded by, but it was also something that had become a part of him.
Although the beast mana was cleansed by his physique when it entered his system, it didn’t change the fact that he absorbed it to grow. That familiar feeling stemmed from what he felt during his first evolution when rampant beast mana invaded his body for the first time.
The instant he realized this, he rushed back to the village. But he was already too late. By the time he arrived, the deed had already been done. The ground was already stained in blood.
But he could still stop anything further from happening. He initiated combat with the thing pretending to be Elder Baba and ultimately ended up winning.
He had made sure not to go easy. He tortured that thing for information and even without too much pain, it told him everything.
It seemed to revel in the feeling of being caught like this. It didn’t seem the slightest bit afraid even when he tortured it.
It was at that time that he learned how things went down. The feeling he had during their first meeting, the one that made him assume the old lady was a seer, was just a front.
The beast, who somehow had knowledge of such occupations, used the situation to its advantage and distracted Damien with it since it judged him as the strongest one in the room.
And its strategy worked. Damien was too focused on the old lady’s identity and warding off the foreign mana that was trying to invade his body that he lost track of everything else, not paying attention until Ruyue dragged him out of the village.
And in that time, it had the ability to do whatever it wanted to Ruyue. It manipulated her emotions and her perception with its strange ability, forcing her to act out of character.
But it felt natural to her.
It led her to act according to its plan, fighting against the illusion it set up far away from the village while Damien was dragged along as well.
The only thing it couldn’t predict was Damien’s movement after everything was over with. It had expected him to go along with Ruyue, or at least it didn’t expect him to return to the village until it had left. But Damien was a variable it couldn’t control.
If it wasn’t for his familiarity with beast mana, if it wasn’t for his evolver title, perhaps the beast’s plan would have worked.
And once this exchange had ended, Ruyue showed up.
Damien was already furious after learning the prior information, and seeing how Ruyue attacked him without a second thought, he became enraged.
He didn’t even continue questioning the beast before killing it, succumbing to his desire for its death instead.
Damien sighed once again as he finished recounting the series of events to Ruyue, whose eyes were no longer lost. Instead, they were colder than even his when he was looking at the beast.
‘She closed herself off again.’
This was the outcome Damien wanted least. He knew that after learning how she was manipulated, she would be affected like this. He just didn’t expect it to be so bad.
Even when she looked at him, her gaze was freezing. There was none of the familiarity she held previously.
And frankly, he couldn’t bear to see her like that.
Damien’s gaze became determined. He walked forward, ignoring the unapproachable aura surrounding Ruyue and even her dead eyes as she gazed at him.
Ruyue backed away as he approached, not wanting to speak to anyone at the moment. Her mind was tumultuous and her heart was in chaos.
‘If it wasn’t for my childish dreams. If it wasn’t for my personality. If I had just listened to what he had told me…’
Inside her head, she kept blaming herself for what happened. She wouldn’t let herself be happy anymore if it meant she might get sucked into a situation like this again.
She felt like she was willingly becoming a caged bird, but she didn’t mind. If that’s what it took to solve her problems, so be it. She would kill that childish version of herself that wished for freedom.
But as her thoughts reached an apex, she felt two strong hands grab her shoulders. Before she could even process what was happening, she was pulled forward.
Her head lightly landed on Damien’s chest as his arms wrapped around her shoulders, embracing her.
“Don’t think stupid things.” He said in a soft voice. Even if his words were berating, his tone was too gentle for her to get angry.
Her body froze. It wasn’t necessarily shock that she was feeling, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.
She felt…comfort in his arms.
‘No. I’m not allowed to be comfortable. This will only lead to another situation like the previous one.’
She tried to struggle free of his grasp, but he wouldn’t let her go. She was forced to stay within the comfort that she was trying to run from with all her might.
‘Stop. Please stop. If you don’t…’
His soothing voice once again entered her ears. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay. Running from those emotions won’t solve anything, I promise. Just let it out. You have someone here who is willing to listen to it all.”
‘Why?! Why are you being like this?! Why can’t you just be the annoying asshole that you always are?!’ She cried inwardly. Yet, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t actually say the words.
It seemed like without even her own recognition, her arms had snaked around Damien’s chest, hugging him tightly.
It seemed like without even her own recognition, tears were streaming down her face, staining his shirt.
And it seemed like without even her own recognition, Damien had teleported the two of them to a secluded spot away from the carnage of the village. A spot where nobody would bother them as she cried.
He moved one of his hands to her head, gently patting her head and brushing her hair.
Every action he took made her want to dive deeper into this warmth, but her brain kept screaming at her that this wasn’t the right path.
She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t fight her feelings, yet she wanted to do it so badly.
In the end, she ended up crying in his arms, unable to decide on her next course of action.