He was glad that there was no animal rights community in Mora. If there were animal rights activists like those around the world, they would have started a massive lynching campaign against Yu after they found out what he had done.

-Experiment one: Three drops of blood were poured into the drinkers of three crows at night.

-Experiment result: At first light in the morning, all the crows were found dead.

-Symptoms: No changes were observed in the crows' bodies.

-Experiment date: February twenty-sixth, ABH forty.

In the morning he woke up as usual, looked at Yurine's sleeping face, smiled and got up first thing to look at the crows. When he saw the crows in the cage, excitement and fear combined to make his chest tremble.

He was excited because a few drops of blood had killed three living beings without warning. The usefulness of a poison that could also kill humans without a trace was beyond question.

He was afraid because a poison that can kill living beings without warning was coursing through his veins, reaching every cell.

“Was it a sudden death or did they die slowly over a period of time?”

Yu checked the crows' bodies thoroughly while Yurine was still asleep. He even plucked their feathers to see if there was any change in their skin, but the animals looked exactly as they did before they died.

“A small dose was enough to kill a small animal. But will it work the same way with larger animals? I'll try it on dogs, and I need to check if the poison is contagious or not. I don't want to accidentally infect Yurine.”

He took the birds out of tent and looked around. He saw the campfire around which several waking roaros were gathered.

“Good morning, Mr. Valarfin.”

Forgetting that he had given them guard duty, the sudden sound of Ana's voice caused him to flinch and on a sudden instinct he tried to hide the crows, not to mention that it was a failed attempt.

“Good morning. Are you still on watch?”

“Still not. We switched again after Sivina kept her vigil at night.”

Although Ana had gloves on, she rubbed her hands together to warm them. Her eyes shifted to the crows lying lifeless in the cage Yu was carrying.

"Aren't those the birds we brought last night? What happened to them?"

“For a number of reasons, they will not be able to continue their vital activities.”

He hoped that a long answer and an indirect way of explaining would stun Ana and give him time to escape. Unfortunately, Yu's hope was in vain.

“Did you kill them?”

“Please don't look at me like I'm a bad person...”

He didn't like Ana's look. He knew he was bad, but it still hurt when someone else threw it in his face.

“Do you remember the black blood that came from my hand last night? I put a few drops of that blood in the crows' drinkers.”

“Why did you do such a thing?”

“Because that's how I know there's poison in my veins.”

Just like in a moba game, Ana was stunned, unable to give any answer, and Yu told her she could leave the watch and went to the roarons who had built a campfire.

“The crows are dead, can I throw them in the fire?”

Burning the animals he poisoned seemed a safer option than burying them. He didn't want to face a scenario where the poison would pass from the soil to the plants that grew from the soil and spread to the world through the animals that ate those plants.

Even if such a scenario sounded utterly absurd, he could not ignore the possibility of this absurd possibility as the world was trying to put him in a difficult position.

The Roarons nodded and allowed the campfires to be used as crow graves. Yu threw the crows into the fire and went back to his tent.

“Yu~ why weren’t you with me when I woke up?”

“I'm sorry, I stepped out for a minute.”

Sitting up in bed, Yurine turned her cheek to perform their daily ritual with Yu. Yu placed a kiss on the offered cheek and then received a kiss from Yurine on his own cheek.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning, Yu.”

Before breakfast, he put on his black butler's outfit and examined himself in the mirror. Now that he was with Yurine, he had struck a few poses, though not his usual exaggerated ones.

He dressed Yurine in fancy clothes fit for a noble lady. He was not a fan of the girls' clothes of this world, but he bought the best he could find for Yurine. Later he would have modern clothes made for her.

Leoral insisted on having lunch and dinner with Yurine, but because she woke up late in the morning, Yurine had breakfast with the Virgo Cathedral's entourage and the roarons.

On Yu's side of their camp, the roarons made up the majority. They liked Yurine and wanted to have breakfast together.

When the roarons included breakfast, they had to set a very long dining table for two hundred people. Most of them didn't even hear what Yurine was saying.

Still, they had breakfast together and were happy about it. It was also good for Yu to give them such small joys, it strengthened their loyalty.

“Good morning to you, Your Eminence. And good morning to you, Mr. Valarfin.”

“Tch.”

Seeing Link after last night made his nerves jump. He pouted and turned him head away to avoid his face.

“Should I try the poison on him instead of trying it on the dogs?”

He still remembered what had happened last night and still couldn't understand why he had done what he had done. At least his pride hadn't been hurt by Link's finger up his ass. If Link had been the only one stung, he wouldn't have been able to sleep at night.

“Trying the poison on him... What effect would it have on a human being?”

They sat at the breakfast table. As usual, Yurine sat at the head of the table and Yu sat to her right. Link took the third chair to Yurine's left. He knew that the two chairs before him belonged to Sivina and Ana.

Sivina came and said, “Good morning,” and took her seat. Ana came with her.

Neither of them could sleep because they had spent the night on guard duty. They had been on guard duty before and sleep was not a problem then. Maybe they were sleepless because they had been up late at night.

“Good morning,” Yurine replied.

Given that Ana was going to be a priestess, Yu was the only one with the status of a servant sitting at the breakfast table. The other servants didn't seem to care, but Yu could feel the glances Bart was giving him as he set the plates in front of them.

It was unusual for a servant to eat at the same table as his master. Bart's occasional glances at Yu out of the corner of his eye stressed him out.

“What are they planning?”

If he hadn't gotten into Luna's head last night, he might have seen Bart as harmless. Now Yu was uncomfortable with him even being near him.

“Absolutely unacceptable, I can't leave Yurine's side.”

“Enjoy your meal,” Bart said.

Yu made up his mind at that moment, he wasn't going to risk anything.

“Hey, you didn't wait for me.”

“Hmm? I was actually waiting for you, I just wasn't waiting to start breakfast.”

Kigaro came and sat next to Yu. He knew that Dimen was on guard duty right now because Yu was the one who wrote the duty roster.

“Did anything happen about what I told you?”

“No.” Knowing that Yu was asking a serious question, Kigaro answered him seriously.

Yu didn't think Raul could enter their tent, but he didn't want him to come out of nowhere and talk to Sivina or Ana.

So he ordered Kigaro to stand guard around Ana and Sivina. He described in detail what Raul looked like and told them to kill him the moment he appeared.

“Tch, I wish it was like I said.”

He wanted Raul to be a fool and try to approach them to meet Sivina. That way Kigaro could kill him immediately and their problem would be solved.

“What if it was as you say?” Ana asked.

“It's not a big deal.”

Kigaro knew he was lying, but he told him it was for the sake of the two girls, so he didn't say anything to expose Yu's lie.

“Yu, stop talking about work at breakfast and eat your food. Come on, the bird is coming!”

“Are you my mother?”

Yu laughed and opened his mouth as Yurine dipped the cheese on a fork and brought it to Yu's mouth.

***

Their convoy followed the coastal road. In front, Vermilian soldiers were advancing to ensure the safety of their masters, who was coming from the rear.

At the very back were the roarons. The white wagon between the roarons and the Vermilia convoy belonged to Yu. On either side of the wagon driven by Bart, four roarons were driving their rinos.

“The sun is shining. The snow will start to melt.”

As a child, it made him sad that the snow would melt. Yu didn't want the snow to melt when he was a child either. As he grew older, he wanted winter to end and spring to come, but now, the passing of the days scared him because the coming of spring meant his death was near.

“After nine months it will start raining again.”

Yu had a notebook in his hand. The notebook was full of notes he had taken. He had taken so many notes that almost all the pages were full, even in school he didn't take so many notes. There were even subjects that he didn't feel the need to take notes since he could find most of them on the internet, but when he looked at the notebook in his hand, he realized that there was no more page for notes. He had to buy a new one.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

This was not the first notebook he had finished, he had many notebooks and he had kept most of them when he was at the Wizarding Academy.

When the little library was opened to him, he was not allowed to take all the books he wanted from it. But Maron had told him he could take as many notes as he wanted from the books he wanted. So he risked disrupting his sleep schedule and took note after note, day and night.

He wrote in the Latin alphabet so that he could take notes quickly, and because there were not many people who could read these notebooks except him.

“Where did I write this...”

After he had filled a few notebooks, he had added a table of contents to them to make it easier to find what he was looking for, but this was one of the first notebooks he had written, so there was no table of contents, therefore it was hard for him to find what he was looking for.

“Got it.”

This notebook contained information about the poison. When Maron wouldn't let him take the books about the poison, Yu wrote everything down in it.

He was weak, unable to fight, so he had to find his own ways of dealing with threats. Poison was one of the ways Yu found.

“I'm glad I bought something while we were in Rolderhelm.”

Yu had medicines and herbs he could use to make poison. Rolderhelm had plenty of them stacked there because they were easy to find.

“What are you reading?”

Yurine approached Yu and glanced at the notes he held in his hand. Naturally, she didn't understand any of it.

“Widow Poison. A poison that causes shortness of breath. Eventually it stops the victim from breathing and kills him.”

“You, why are you reading something like this?”

“I'm going to poison Leoral and Bart.”

He said it in a low voice and calmly. It was hard to decide someone's death just like that, even if he felt justified.

“Why? Can't we just fire them?”

“If we try to fire them out, Leoral will rightly claim that I force you to do it, and he will claim that I control you and use his military might to destroy the demon in your collar. Even if I try to defend myself with the roarons and we are facing a weakened enemy, we don't stand a chance against his army.”

Leoral could field his trained knights, Yu had thirty roarons to lead into battle.

“Leoral and Bart, those two can somehow link me to the events in İlonya, and Raul's sudden appearance has given them more ammunition. I bet they even think I killed Rie. They don't want me to be around you. Such a thing is unacceptable.”

Except for the great ideal they had, Yu did not want to leave Yurine. He would not let anything but death separate them.

“I'm going to get them out of the way so they don't continue their ideas and spread them to others. What do you think about that?”

He wanted to know her opinion. Yu was making up his own mind about the deaths of two people and he wanted to know what Yurine would say about it.

“Yu, if they try to separate us, they must die.”

Yurine's response was also quiet and calm. Like Yu, she made her decision in cold blood. In Yurine's eyes, anyone who tried to separate them had to be destroyed.

“It's horrible for a child to give someone a death warrant...”

He hated himself even more for forcing Yurine to do such things. In the new world, he would make sure she became a normal child.

“When we take a break, you stay with Sivina. I'll take Kigaro and Dimen and Bart and find a secluded spot on the side of the road. He'll be finished there. Then we'll say he's lost, and we'll look for him, but when we can't find him, we'll have to move again. Don't worry, I have an idea to hide him. You just say you're not feeling well today when we stop and extend the break.”

Yurine nodded and rested her shoulder against Yu's.

“Yurine, about Raul. The roarons will be around Sivina and Ana to keep him away, but Leoral will bring him to us. When that time comes, I want something from you...”

***

When their convoy took their first break, Yurine did her duty and tripled the break time. This would be enough time to cook Bart.

“Kigaro, Dimen.”

Their camp was near a small forest. Yu had seven rinos following him. When he called out to the two roaron commanders, he received puzzled looks from the rinos following him.

“Valarfin, what’s for that rinos?” Kigaro asked.

“Come here,” Yu said. He had not answered the question.

He walked to a secluded corner of the camp with Kigaro and Dimen following him. He kept looking around and checking to see if anyone was watching them. If not, the only ones who could see him now were the roarons.

When he was behind the trailers and near the trees, Yu stopped and turned to face them. Seeing his seriousness, the roarons became serious too.

“Listen to me, I will be brief and take no questions. Yurine is being betrayed.”

Betrayal was a word not part of the roarons' code. No matter what, they punished betrayal with death.

“Bart, the old butler, is telling the duke things that only Yurine and I should know. Even though the duke is Yurine's supporter, this is unacceptable. And it's a crime that he's even spying on us and accessing confidential information. We're going to kill Bart today. Yurine will send him here soon. Dimen, you take him and bring him into the forest. Kigaro and I will wait there.”

Neither of them questioned the serious Yu Valarfin. Of course they must have had a lot of questions, but if Yu said they were going to do something and Yurine was part of the plan, they had no choice but to accept it without question.

Yu entered the forest with a demon sword at his waist, the rope of rinos tied together in his left hand, a glass of wine in his right hand and Kigaro at his side.

“We will build a fire over there to cook the food for the rinos.”

Kigaro, normally talkative, quietly carried out his orders. When he prepared the places where the rinos would cook their meals, he didn't even ask why they would feed them here.

Yu had brought his sword in case the poison didn't work. In his hand he held the wine glass in which he had mixed his blood.

There was much more blood in the glass than in the crows' water, so much so that the red wine had darkened in color. Yu hoped it would kill him. Otherwise he would have to use his sword.

“They're coming.”

Bart's face showed no emotion as he walked in front of Dimen. They didn't speak until they were a few feet away from touching each other.

Dimen continued to stand behind Bart, while Kigaro stood next to Yu. Bart was a dead man from now on.

“What does young lady want?”

“Punish the traitors.”

When Yu made his intentions clear, his amethyst eyes locked with the gray eyes of the old maid. Bart's face was still expressionless.

“Does the young lady want this, or do you?”

“What difference does it make? Yurine's wishes are mine and my wishes are Yurine's.”

“Yurine?”

“Her name. That's what I named her when I adopted her in Rolderhelm. Isn't it beautiful? It's kind of a tradition to have ‘yu’ in our family members and her name has Yu for Yu, Ri for Rie and Ne for Neko.”

He spread his arms and laughed. He didn't like killing people, but he wouldn't feel as guilty about it as before. He was a more determined man now.

“I wonder what kind of demon you are.”

“Demon? Frankly, after what we've been through with the demons, it hurts me to be called that. I am a human being in the fullest sense of the word.”

Bart laughed mockingly at Yu's words. He couldn't tell whether this old man at the end of his life was very brave or very stupid. If Yu had been in his place, he would have tried to go easy on his killer so that his death would at least be painless.

If Yu was in his place, though, he wouldn't have betrayed anybody, or if he did, he wouldn't have been caught.

“She was entrusted to us by the real lady. I don't regret anything I did.”

“Anything you did?”

What had they done? They must have already planned something to end Yu, is that what he was talking about?

“How well do you know her? I'm her father and you tried to separate us. You spilled the secrets of the Virgo Cathedral. You stupid old man!”

Suddenly Yu lost his temper and shouted. Bart closed his eyes as he yelled.

“Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you have any idea what would have happened if Leoral had succeeded and separated us?”

“Yes, I do. Young lady, get rid of the demon from her collar-”

As Bart spoke, Yu handed the glass to Kigaro and punched Bart in the face. It didn't feel good to hit an old man, but he hated people like him who meddled in things that were none of their business.

And... He had no tolerance for betrayal.

“You don't even know our purpose... You don't even know what I've done for her... Yes, the things I did for her...” Even though he didn't need to control his temper, he was trying to stay calm because of his self-respect.

He had killed people, stolen their dreams and left chaos in his wake to fulfill Yurine's dream. Yu was sinking and had no choice but to keep sinking.

“But there's no need to tell all this to a dead man.”

He motioned to Dimen to help him to his feet and Dimen took Bart by the arms and lifted him to his feet. As the clouds disappeared in front of the sun, the sunlight that had leaked through the trees fell tragically on the old man.

“Tell me, what did you and Leoral talk about?”

Bart just smiled and refused to answer.

“That bastard Raul, is that unqualified whoreson really here?”

“Isn't it pointless trying to get words out of a dead man's mouth?”

“Hahaha... Hahahahahahaha!” He crouched down when he started laughing. His own words were being used against him. “You are a stupid person, just like other people.”

Yu gritted his teeth to stop laughing and stood up, taking back the goblet Kigaro had handed him. He shook it a little and looked at the dark red wine inside, then handed it to Bart.

“Make your choice, wine or...”

His other hand went to the sword at his waist. He hoped he would drink the wine, not wanting to inflict more violence on an old man.

The old butler could not escape. In his old age there was no way he could survive the roarons. His death certain, Bart took the goblet and downed it in one go.

“What is this? It tastes disgusting...”

“My body fluid. Blended with wine and a simple poison.”

Yu's answer disgusted him, but he couldn't say anything about it. His hand went to his throat as the glass fell to the floor. He was coughing.

The white of his eyes gave way to black as his pupils shrank. He spat blood as his lips parted. His blood was a burgundy color close to black. Blood of the same color flowed from his nostrils.

He fell to his knees, groaning in pain as black veins appeared near his eyes and covered his face, he brought his hands to his face and began to scratch over the veins.

It didn't take Bart long to realize that what he was doing was not scratching but tearing his face apart. He dug his fingernails into the black veins swelling on his face, bursting them, but he didn't stop. When his face was unrecognizable, he continued to scream and brought his fingers down to his neck and began to tear at the veins that had begun to grow there.

He kept vomiting blood from his mouth, but he was still not dead. When he tore the veins in his neck with his own fingernails, he fell, struggled a little, and only after drowning in his own blood did he lie dead on the ground.

“Terrible.” That word was the only thing that crossed Yu's mind.

He had thought that when crows died without warning, humans would die the same way, but Bart had died so horribly that he was unrecognizable. Even Yu, who had given him the poison, had been horrified, frozen, watching him struggle.

The two roaron warriors with him were also seeing such a path of death for the first time. Their eyes were locked on the sight.

“Cut him up, cook him, then give him to the rinos. They can eat his whole body,” Yu said. He still hadn't gotten over his horror, but the fear of his murder being discovered overcame him.

Rhinos were carnivores and had powerful jaws that could chew even bone. So they could eat their food with the bones and their stomachs and intestines could grind the bone. One thing Yu noticed about them was that when they ate bones, their feces came out white.

“This... This is...”

“What is this? What do you say, Dimen?”

“Cruel.”

Kigaro said what Dimen couldn't. Even the roarons were horrified. The thick eyebrows above the yellow eyes of the half-lions were furrowed and their mouths, full of fangs, were open.

He had two roarons who hesitated to obey the order. Yu was in a hurry, knowing their time was limited.

“How is poison received in your people?”

“We learned from you humans that there is such a thing as poison,” said Kigaro. “It is dishonorable.”

He spat the word quickly, as if insulting Yu. Hurt by the harsh response, Yu sank to the ground and leaned his back against a tree.

If he seemed to regret what he had done now, he would not present a good impression to the roarons. But then again, no matter what he did from now on, he couldn't make a good impression.

He took a few deep breaths in and out, a bad smell was beginning to emanate from Bart's body. Yu thought about the people he had killed in Rolderhelm. He still felt pain over Rie's and Camaeron's deaths, but he felt nothing about the ones he had killed in İlonya.

“It wasn't Yurine who killed them, it was me. I just used Yurine to kill them. Maybe the more I kill, the less I care about them.”

Although he was horrified by the way Bart died, he felt no emotion.

“We will turn back the clock, I have no doubt. If Denise can do it, so can I, but... Maybe I'm a demon, like Bart said.”

He put his hand to his heart and searched for any emotion there. His love for Yurine was there, but he could not find any regret or guilt for what he had just done.

“I can't be a demon if I still feel love.”

He pulled his knees to himself and looked up at Kigaro and Dimen. They didn't have much time and they had to dispose of the body.

“We would like to judge him, but the Virgo Cathedral is small and relatively new. Trying and executing a member for treason as soon as it is founded would drive people away from the cathedral. Maybe he committed treason thinking he could not be judged and get away with it.”

His words were meant to convince Kigaro and Dimen that what they were doing was right, and they were right. If they had judged and executed Bart, they would have left a negative impression in people's eyes.

It didn't matter whether they were right or not, a cathedral was being built and the first act was to execute one of its members. People certainly wouldn't like it. And they couldn't even explain it to people.

Of course, this was not the reason why Yu killed him secretly. It was only because it would not be easy to judge and execute him in the presence of Leoral.

“I did exactly the right thing. Who knows what they were planning against me? Whether I was just paranoid or not, there was no need to take risks. I have to go forward to reach my dream world.”

When he saw that Kigaro and Dimen were reluctant to dismember Bart, he took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, took the axe from Kigaro's waist and went to work.

“If you are not going to do it, at least one of you should bring me clean clothes and water to clean myself. And one of you light the fires, I felt the cold as soon as I took off my clothes.”

He might look like a monster, he didn't care. He had already gone far enough by killing him, he wasn't going to question what he was doing now. He wasn't acting just for himself, there was a woman to save and a child to make happy. Becoming a monster or a demon was an acceptable sacrifice for them.

With each blow of the axe, blood splattered from Bart's body and smeared all over Yu, but he didn't stop. He raised and lowered the axe again and again, chopping Bart's body into small pieces that the rinos could eat.

When he had completely cut it into pieces, he cooked it and gave it to the Rinos. He wondered if the rinos would be poisoned too. Even if they didn't die right away, he would put the rinos at the back of their convoy and keep them away from people in case the poison was contagious. Of course, he would also put healthy rinos with them to see if they were contagious.

If the Rinos were poisoned and died, it meant he would learn something new about the blood in his veins. And if the poison was contagious, he would have to stay away from Yurine. Even if he didn't want to, he had to stay away so as not to infect her. He hoped the Rinos would not be poisoned.

“Even if it's not contagious under normal circumstances, it could be because they ate Bart's flesh. Let's see what happens.”

Bart's flesh and bones were consumed and his internal organs were successfully hidden. There was no trace of him left.

“If the roarons saw anything, I'll tell them to shut up, and then I'll get ready for Leoral. When this is over, there won't be anyone trying to separate me from Yurine.”