Ch.23The Modern World’s Deadliest Poison (1)

I run.

I just run fiercely.

Whether my mind is confused or everything I’ve known until now is a lie.

For now, I moved my feet frantically because I didn’t want to die.

But Carmilla, who had been running like that, was it when she came out of the house and reached the yard connected to the front door?

Crunch.

“…!”

“Hehe.”

Her mother who had somehow approached from behind.

No, to be precise, she collapsed as the monster wearing her mother’s disguise bit her nape.

“Ugh, uuugh…!”

“Our poor Carmilla. Did you really think you could run away from me?”

“You… who are you…?”

“Me?”

My whole body is numb.

As if I’ve become a vegetative patient with only my brain alive.

Even though I was only bitten once, blood was already seeping from below my face, forming a puddle.

Am I going to die soon?

But even if I was dying, there was something I absolutely needed to hear.

“Mother… no, what did you do to my mom…?”

Carmilla looked at the monster wearing her mother’s disguise, looking down at its prey from behind her.

She wanted to hear the truth about when this creature had started deceiving her.

So, with tears welling in her eyes, she painfully turned her head back.

“Pfft, puhaha! Kukukuku!”

“…!”

Mother had changed after the summoning circle incident.

Still believing that someday she would return to her former caring self, Carmilla had somehow endured until now. But at this moment…

“Since when, you ask? Are you really that stupid, Carmilla?”

“……Huh?”

Her heart shattered completely.

“We’ve been living together for years now. Or did you naively think I was just pretending to be your mom today? Did you still consider that possibility?”

The monster that had possessed Lajerita’s body.

Its vulgar laughter stabbed like a dagger into the heart of the human who had been its daughter.

“From the moment your parents first tried to summon me. I’ve been by your side in this form ever since.”

“But that was at least 3 years ago…”

“Yes, you idiot. That day 3 years ago. I took your mother’s body and have been pretending to be your mom ever since.”

For that long?

It was unbelievable.

No, she didn’t want to believe it.

To think that the mother who seemed to have changed after dad’s death and the failed summoning ritual wasn’t actually her mother to begin with.

Then the person she had been trying desperately to make smile again, working herself to death…

Who on earth was she?

The answer was simple.

“You’ve just been used by the monster you believed was your mother all this time.”

“That’s, that’s a lie…”

“It’s not a lie~. Think about it! What kind of parent would throw their child into the hero society, where they could die at any moment, before they’re even 10 years old?”

“…!”

“Unless they were trying to use them, what kind of idiot parent who loves their child would do that?”

It was all… true.

And that made it even more painful.

It was the moment when all her efforts over the past few years turned to nothing.

“Your parents were reeeally as stupid as you are~.”

“Shut, up…!”

“How did they have the guts to try making an equal contract with a ‘high-ranking monster’ like me?”

“Don’t say such things… with mom’s voice…!”

“Or maybe they thought I was weak because that sword monster who flew to the human world was sealed by some beast-human? Did they think high-ranking monsters like us were pushovers because of that?”

Her elegantly styled golden bun hair shines even more brilliantly against the night sky.

Simultaneously, her golden eyes gleam.

She had an appearance that could never be mistaken for a married woman raising a 10-year-old child.

Yes, all of that belonged to my mother.

So why does she keep saying things my mother would never say with my mother’s mouth!

“This is all…”

“Hmm?”

“Dad’s fault…!”

The daughter who suddenly realized that even the mother she had been living with was fake.

The lifeline Carmilla clung to in order to somehow endure the tsunami of emotions washing over her.

It was hatred toward her father.

“If Dad… hadn’t summoned you back then…!”

“……”

“Then… we all… could have still been living happily!”

It’s all because Dad was incompetent that things turned out this way.

Anyway, it’s all Dad’s fault.

Thinking that way made her feel a bit calmer, as anger rose and cleared some of the confusion in her mind.

The next moment.

“Puhaha! What?”

“…?”

That day three years ago when the summoning circle was activated.

“Our Carmilla, you’re truly an ungrateful daughter~?”

“Ungrateful?”

“I haven’t seen such a fool like you in a very long time.”

Until she heard the actual truth from the perpetrator herself.

“Do you really not know how your father died that day?”

“Not know… Dad was caught in the explosion from the failed summoning circle…?!”

“I. Am. Telling. You! Idiot, the summoning circle didn’t fail!”

It was just unstable due to the couple’s lack of ability.

The summoning that day was actually successful.

As evidence, she was currently inside Lajerita’s body, having entered it as a “vessel” to recover the physical form she lost due to the unstable summoning.

So here’s the question.

If the summoning was successful, then why was there an explosion in the basement?

The answer was simple.

“As soon as I was summoned, Lajerita and I engaged in a fierce battle as I tried to take over your mother’s body.”

“A battle…?”

“Yes, Carmilla. While you were unconscious, overwhelmed by my and your mother’s energies, our fight shook the entire basement.”

Carmilla herself didn’t know.

Three years ago on that day.

An unexplained earthquake alert had sounded in C City where the three family members lived.

Of course, the true nature of that earthquake was the fierce battle between Carmilla’s mother, Lajerita, and the monster trying to steal her body.

“If I had a physical form, it might have been different, but it’s truly difficult to defeat an A-rank hero with just a soul.”

Having just arrived in the human world.

To survive a little longer in this place crawling with prey.

“Humans are weak.”

“…What?”

“Let me explain what I mean.”

“!? No! Carmilla!”

“Honey!”

The final measure the monster, who was at a disadvantage, used to defeat Lajerita.

It was to take her daughter’s life to shatter her mind.

But that plan was only half successful.

Because…

Slash.

“See? I told you humans are weak.”

The family member who allowed her to take Lajerita’s body.

Instead of the daughter who was her original target, it was the one man who willingly jumped in front of the unconscious Carmilla, even though he must have known he would die.

“No way…”

“Yes, the human I sliced in half instead of you back then.”

“…!”

“That was your father.”

The man Carmilla had hated so much, the man she thought was weak.

It was her one and only father.

“D-Dad…?”

“Yes. I originally intended to kill you, but your father volunteered to die in your place.”

“…Huh?”

“Well, thanks to that, I was able to exploit Lajerita’s weakness, so I guess it worked out well in the end?”

What.

Is.

This.

Nonsense?

“……Huh?”

Dad.

Our Dad.

Our Dad who died pathetically alone at a scene where his much younger daughter survived.

Are you saying that Dad’s death wasn’t because of his gender but because of me?

Dad…

Died because of me?

“That’s, that’s a lie…”

“Do you really think so?”

“O-Of course! It can’t be true! It can’t be!”

She tries desperately to cover the sky with her palm.

To avoid seeing the sun called ‘truth’.

But just as she couldn’t block the sunlight seeping through the gaps between her fingers.

“Fool, think about it carefully.”

The monster began to thoroughly tear apart the heart of the human who had been her daughter, smiling maliciously.

“If it was a simple explosion accident, how could a person die by being cleanly cut in half?”

“…!! T-That’s…!”

“Unless it was cut by a monster’s claws. If you think about it for just a moment, the answer is obvious, you idiot!”

That’s…

That’s all the truth…

“My daughter.”

“Yes, Dad!”

“You know Daddy loves you, right?”

“Hehe. Of course!”

The, the truth…

“Carmilla, go upstairs quickly!”

“I-I’m scared… my legs won’t move, Dad…!”

“Then duck, Carmilla!!”

Was it… the truth?

All of it?

“Ah, aaaah, aaaaaaaaah!”

“Pfft, puhaha! Kukukuku, bwahahahaha.”

Her mother’s body being taken by a monster, her father being found as a cold corpse in the basement—the cause of it all was the daughter.

It was all because of her own incomparable powerlessness.

Carmilla, the daughter of the couple who realized this fact after three years.

Now, emotions welling up endlessly inside her were transformed into screams and howls, tearing from her throat.

And behind her, the monster laughed mockingly, as if enjoying it.

“Then, then why did you let me live!? Why didn’t you kill me and instead pretended to be my mom while tormenting me like that!”

Carmilla’s face was now covered in tears and snot.

Unable to move in that state, she asked.

“Because you had value to me.”

“…What?”

The monster revealed everything straightforwardly, as if asking what she expected.

“After all, our family has quite a standing in the hero society, right?”

“…So?”

“So what? Come on. When you get a good position like this, shouldn’t you make the most of it?”

Just as internal enemies are more frightening than external ones.

Carmilla, who would grow into an excellent hero regardless of how damaged she became from her Spartan training.

The monster possessing Lajerita’s body planned to use Carmilla, to enjoy manipulating her brainwashed daughter in the Hero Association until she died.

Well, that’s no longer possible now.

“Originally, I was planning to kill you when you became a promising hero, maybe A-rank or so, and take all the power inside your body.”

“All the… power?”

“Yes, Carmilla. You didn’t know, but deep inside your body, there’s a part of my original physical form that I planted long ago.”

To be precise, half of herself.

Just as the Sword Monster sealed by the Okami family had its soul and body separated.

The monster controlling Lajerita’s body kept its soul inside Lajerita.

And it had placed only the “blueprint” of its physical form, which had disappeared due to the unstable summoning, inside the still-growing Carmilla’s body and waited for a long time.

“Sigh… I wonder if absorbing you now will resurrect me in my usual form?”

What a shame.

If only she had matured for about 10 more years, she could have been resurrected in an even stronger state than before.

If that had happened… she might have been able to break the pride of the monsters at the very top.

No, maybe not “them,” but at least the “sister” who looked down on her. That was truly regrettable.

But what could she do?

Right now, I want to kill that horned mask bastard who gave me such humiliation!

That mixed-breed monster bastard I’ve never heard of before!

And so.

Hissssss.

The monster had already absorbed almost all of Carmilla’s life force and reclaimed its physical form since biting her nape.

“Bwahahahaha!”

Weeeeeeee-!

“I am the ‘Radiation Monster,’ the strongest of modern times! Even the Poison Monster, known as the deadliest poison, kneels before me!!”

Late in the evening.

As a monster alert sounded throughout C City, the worst extreme poison weaponized by modern civilization.

The Radiation Monster had completed its resurrection.