“Lucy!” Immediately after he set foot into the house, Dario had already let out a booming shout.

“Y-Yes, Father!”

When she got to the front door, Lucy was panting once again. But her sorry state didn’t evoke even a bit of sympathy in her father.

“What did you do?” Dario shouted once more with a volume that could burst Lucy’s eardrums. In front of the assault, she couldn’t do anything but desperately stutter:

“I-I… W-What do you mean, F…”

She couldn’t finish her panicked question, as another slap had already been thrown at her again, this time fully knocking her down to the floor.

“Do not talk back to me!”

“I…”

Once again, Lucy was forcefully shut up before she could do anything after taking another one of Dario’s kicks right in the stomach. The violent man not only not showed any remorse for his action, but also got even angrier as he saw Lucy keep lying down.

“What are you crawling around for?! Stand up and make dinner already!”

Lucy tightened her fist, tears welling in her eyes. This kind of unreasonable anger was nothing strange to her, but right now, after finally experiencing real kindness from another sane being, this unjust behavior was too much for her.

With all of her might, Lucy pushed herself forward. She had decided. She wouldn’t be pushed around anymore.

However, before she could even open her mouth again, Dario had already disappeared from the hallway. A rummaging sound echoed from his room, signifying the hunter’s return to his familiar quarters.

Again with nothing else to vent her frustration on, Lucy swallowed her tears and returned to the kitchen.

As dinner was finally done, the girl’s anger was already boiling like the pot of soup simmering over the fire. She had decided, this time for real. She couldn’t stand being like this anymore. One way or another, she had to let her father know a piece of her mind, even if she would be beaten to hell and back for it.

Practically stomping towards Dario’s bedroom, Lucy was about to shout out loud.

However, the end result was still a dead silence. Not because she suddenly was calm, nor was she too afraid to talk back again.

As her hand touched the knob on the door, Lucy could hear a faint mumbling from within the room. The kind of trance-like mumbling that she would never have expected from her father of all people, especially when he was alone.

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Lucy slowly pushed the door a tiny bit forward, only enough to have a peek at the inside.

There, she saw Dario immersed in the same book that she saw earlier in the day, carefully flipping through the pages to search for the kind of content he needed to see.

“I can feel it…” the man, not noticing his daughter’s presence behind him, continued to whisper to himself. “The girl is near her breaking point… she should explode any moment. But the hard part is how to get her out of the house to that old hag when she’s at her worst… Maybe I should just kick her out right now, that’ll push her over the edge. But I have to be careful; her exploding here wouldn’t be a good idea…”

Breaking point? Explode? What on earth is he saying? Question after question popped up in Lucy’s mind. Is he talking about me? Why would I ‘explode’? Did he mean that for all these years, every mistreatment he has ever done to me… those were deliberate? All this time, Father had been provoking me on purpose so that I would ‘explode’?

The anger in her head grew fiercer by the minute, and in a moment of carelessness, Lucy couldn’t control her body and pushed the door just a bit harder than she should, resulting in a creaking noise echoing through the room. On a normal day, it wouldn’t be much of a problem, but on a quiet night with only two people present, a small creak was akin to a thunder strike.

Dario instantly turned around to see his daughter craftily hiding behind the door. A brief, light smile could be seen on his face as the hunter silently thanked the gods for giving him the final chance he needed.

Dario punched the door, breaking it in half, and hit Lucy in the stomach again. The blow was too fast and hard, the girl couldn’t even turn her back around to run away. And this time, there was no holding back anymore; Dario had put all of his strength into this one attack. The man was sure that it was enough to knock out anyone he could imagine, let alone a single young girl like his foster daughter.

However, the man had miscalculated one thing, and that one detail was his downfall.

After being hit by Dario, Lucy was immediately thrown into the dark abyss as her consciousness was forcefully pulled away from her body. But what awaited her in the real world was a fate much worse than just a few hits.

“Ugh…” Lucy groaned in agony, placing her hand over her stomach to ease the pain. It was the first time she was ever knocked out by Dario’s beating. “Damn old man…”

She took a glance over the window, observing the full moon reaching its peak. It’s already way past nighttime, thought Lucy just in time for her stomach to growl. I should probably eat now…

Before she could make her way to the kitchen, however, a certain scent caught her attention. An unpleasant smell of metal.

What is that stench? Lucy turned around to search for the direction of the odor. However, only a second later, she already regretted her decision.

On the floor was none other than Dario. Or rather, Dario’s severed head and his lifeless body, all lying in a pool of fresh, crimson blood.

Instinctively, Lucy put her hand over her mouth to contain the nauseous feeling arising in her. However, the moment her hand touched her mouth and the bloody smell invaded her nostrils like never before, the girl vomited everything she had in her stomach.

“Hah… hah…” Lucy gasped for air, her mind in complete disarray. “No… this can’t be… why is he dead? Why are my hands filled with blood? Did I… Did I…”

Lucy couldn’t believe that she had killed Dario. However, the proof was right there in front of her. Her father was dead, and his blood was completely on her hands. If there was anything that was missing, it would be the weapon of murder, but even that wasn’t enough to get her out of being guilty.

“I need to get out of here.”