Chapter 200. Cognitive Dissonance
“Where are you...!”
The words Count Conte shouted once echoed twice, then three times, striking his ears over and over.
“Over there!”
“No, over here.”
“Maybe he isn’t anywhere.”
“Is he dead?”
“No way.”
“Stop! Stop!”
Each time the echoes repeated, they whispered different words into the Count’s ears.
Sometimes softly, like a whisper.
Sometimes loudly, like a scream.
Sometimes harshly, like a threat.
Sometimes carefully, as though holding back tears.
“Haa! Haa!”
The power built up inside his body had nowhere to go.
It rampaged through him wildly.
His ragged breathing was drowned out by the even louder pounding of his heart.
His bones shattered...
Then fused back together.
His flesh burst apart...
Then new flesh grew in its place.
Tears poured endlessly from his eyes.
Endlessly.
Truly without end.
As though every drop of liquid inside his body was being dragged out through his eyes as tears.
“Aaaaaagh!!”
Count Conte, who had been exposed to the greatest amount of the drug, swung his sword recklessly with the little sanity he had left.
When he cut through a flower blooming on the ground, childish laughter tickled his ears.
When he swung toward the wind blowing past him, the wind seemed to become angry and struck back even harder, blowing him away.
“Hey, why are you acting like that? Calm down.”
A wolf spoke.
Its mocking tone carried laughter, as though it were making fun of the Count.
“We don’t need to do this, do we?”
“Honestly, if we handle things properly, we could negotiate with the Demon King and get out of this.”
“S-Shut up... shut up...!”
“Is this because of Derd?”
Thud.
Something approached Count Conte from behind and bumped its head against his back.
Startled, the Count spun around and split the enemy behind him in two with a beautiful sword strike.
It had the body of a pig.
And Derd’s face.
“Fa... ther....”
His heart seemed to drop.
The heart that had been pounding so fiercely and burning hot instantly turned cold.
He couldn’t breathe.
Faced with something so far beyond common sense, Count Conte forced air through his blocked throat and desperately sent oxygen to his frozen mind.
Only then did the shock burst from his mouth.
“Haa! Haa! Aagh!!”
“Do not show me lies!”
“Do you think I’ll be fooled by a pathetic hallucination like this?!”
The wolf laughed.
“No, no.”
“The Demon King didn’t show you anything.”
“You just imagined something you didn’t want to see.”
It chuckled.
“It’s the same thing as saying, ‘Don’t think of an elephant.’ What’s the first thing you think of?”
“Hahaha. An elephant.”
Count Conte froze.
“I... imagined it?”
“Exactly!”
The wolf grinned.
“So was your cute youngest son a pig bastard who smelled like shit?”
“Was he such a coward that even after dying, all he could do was cry for his father?”
“Was he someone who deserved to die?!”
“Aaaagh!”
Count Conte dropped his sword.
Then he fled blindly.
His heart felt ready to burst.
His legs refused to obey him.
He couldn’t see properly.
He couldn’t even recognize the path ahead.
He simply ran.
Thud!
Then he collided with something.
Terrified, Count Conte dropped to the ground and tried to crawl away.
What spread out before him was an endless field of lilies of the valley.
The sweet fragrance made him clutch his stomach.
“Ugh! Uuuugh!”
A rotten stench so powerful it turned his stomach filled the air.
Even Count Conte, who had experienced countless battlefields, recoiled at the smell.
Since when did lilies of the valley smell like this?
That can’t be right....
Lilies of the valley were like my lady....
As though blocking that very thought...
Blood slowly began seeping between the flowers.
In moments, it rose until it covered his ankles.
Panicking, Conte turned toward the direction he had fled from and tried to run again.
Then he realized what he had crashed into.
“...Jaran...?”
Count Conte’s proud eldest son.
A future pillar of the Empire already promised in marriage to a Duke’s child.
He had become a withered tree.
Thin branches stretched from his body.
At their ends hung tubes Count Conte recognized all too well.
If not for the family seal Count Conte had personally left in the hand sticking out from the trunk...
It would have been difficult to recognize him.
“Biro?”
Count Conte’s dependable second son.
A knight who had already gained achievements across many battlefields through his strong will and exceptional martial talent.
A man capable of standing independently and protecting the Empire with his own strength.
His entire body was tangled within Jaran’s roots.
He had become fertilizer, feeding nutrients into the tree.
If not for the family crest visible on the clothes between the roots...
No one would have known that the dried mummy was his second son.
The wolf spoke.
“This isn’t something the Demon King is showing you.”
Count Conte gasped.
“...Hk!”
Splash.
The voice suddenly came from behind him.
Count Conte turned pale and stumbled through the blood as he stared at the wolf in terror.
“You imagined it yourself.”
“N-No....”
He shook his head violently.
“That can’t be....”
“I imagined it because of what the Hero told me.”
“Just like how being told not to think of an elephant makes you think of an elephant....”
The wolf shook its head.
“You can’t imagine a scene like this unless you’ve actually seen it.”
“No....”
Count Conte trembled.
“That can’t be true.”
“The otherworlders must have done something to me in some incomprehensible way.”
His breathing grew rough.
“The Hero and the Demon King planned this together and made me like this...!”
The wolf tilted its head.
“For example?”
“For example...”
Conte faltered.
“For example.... You people... the Demon King...!”
The wolf calmly replied—
“Even otherworlders have to follow the laws of this world while they’re here.”
“We can’t do things that ignore those laws.”
Count Conte’s face turned deathly pale.
Unable to hold back the nausea boiling inside him, he collapsed.
He vomited again and again despite having nothing left in his stomach.
Only clear liquid barely dribbled from his mouth.
Still, his body continued trying to expel something filthy from within.
“N-No....”
Little by little...
Memories that had been painted over began returning.
Cherry Ground.
The man had come to him carrying a strange drug.
Count Conte had refused at first.
But after his lady suggested it...
He accepted.
“Stop.... No....”
He had offered the same drug to the sons who visited the barracks.
They refused.
Of course they did.
Who would accept something like that so easily?
Instead, they scolded their father and tried to free him from the drug.
“...Ah....”
But the father betrayed his sons.
That evening...
The sons ate food mixed with the drug.
Just like the soldiers.
“Kugh! A-Aaaagh! F-Father! Why?!”
“F-Father...! Please come to your senses!”
“...Pathetic fools.”
“You cannot even overcome something as small as this?”
That day, Biro tried to cut him down.
And Jaran used his entire body to restrain Biro until the very end.
His eldest son’s voice echoed inside Count Conte’s head.
Begging him to wake up...
Until the final moment his consciousness faded away.
“Jaran... Biro...!”
Count Conte crawled through the rising blood toward his sons.
He reached out meaninglessly.
He tore at the vines wrapping their dead bodies.
He ripped through the roots.
RIP!
When he finally tore every vine and root apart...
His two sons instantly melted into liquid and scattered across the ground.
The liquid gave off a scent Count Conte knew all too well.
