On The Other Side: I Quit Being Human

Splatter!

Eyes widened in bewilderment and shock, Niles stared at the thing he was grasping. Hand was not what he found; it was a handful of red puree with a consistency of a well minced meat.

Opening his bloodied hand, the bewilderment in his eyes were slowly filled with rage. He couldn't believe someone could do such a gruesome thing to a little girl just for the sake of pranking him.

"Just what kind of sick minded asshole thinks this is funny? Oh, it sure is funny for him—he is sick-minded." Gritting his teeth as he held back his fury, he sighed heavily to calm himself down. "I need to have someone investigate this."

Conjuring water out of thin air, he took a distance away from the mass of red paste on the ground before cleaning the blood off his body parts with it.

While doing that, he couldn't help looking at the pool of human puree on the ground. The little girl didn't leave anything behind—he couldn't see bones or organs or anything—and he found it fascinating as it was sickening.

When he finished cleaning his body, he immediately called one of his subordinates to clean the mess. Since very few people came near the slum area, if he didn't have his subordinates do it, no one would do it even after they saw it.

"Damn! I have realized this long ago, but this world is really fucked up," he muttered bitterly.

Turning his back on the human paste on the ground, with a sigh, he walked away. He still couldn't comprehend what the person's aim to do that to him was, and he couldn't bother to.

He had seen and personally known sick minded people, so his unsuspecting mind didn't think that there was more to the event that had just happened to him. Thus, Layland's Sealing Spell successfully took effect.

...

Back to Layland, he was silently watching the talk Winerva was having with her party leader, Xenon. They were talking about why Xenon and the rest were there and the reason why they even came to Brontes Dukedom.

He listened to it keenly out of curiosity, but couldn't help finding himself surprised by the reason why Winerva and her party came there.

"What?! So, the reason why we came here is to guard the banquet Layne asked me to go with him?!" Winerva asked in shock. "What kind of coincidence is this?"

Like Winerva, Layland also thought that the coincidences were too good to be coincidental. It was as if someone had planned them to meet each other and be entangled in one event.

"Who is Layne?" Xenon blinked her eyes.

"My husband!"

Layne was a name Layland had made up for his second fake identity. He preferred to use Kleinhaus, however Xenon and friends had already heard it when they met for the first time, so he couldn't use it anymore.

"Woah, chill. He hasn't even introduced himself—how could I know?" Xenon put up her hands. She leered at Layland in suspicion as she couldn't help finding him familiar.

'The aura might be completely different, but his stature and demeanor is very similar to Kleinhaus,' she thought.

Receiving Xenon's not so subtle gaze, Layland couldn't help smirking faintly. Apparently, Yule was not the only bright person amongst the party, and he found it rather troublesome.

He couldn't help himself from pondering about immediately killing them. He couldn't let his identity be at risk.

Luckily for them, however, they chose to drop their suspicion on him. They introduced themselves to him one by one as if it was their first time of meeting each other, and that made him to postpone his plan to kill the two of them.

"So... Are you going to go to the banquet with us or with your... Husband?" Xenon asked. She couldn't help feeling weird when she mentioned "husband."

"I'm going with my husband, of course!" Winerva answered instantly.

"It is better to not feel too excited about it, Winerva," Vinetta, who had been quiet the entire time remarked. "This relationship of yours is, after all, fake and temporary. You will only get yourself hurt if you get too attached to him."

"Geez, I got it, Vinetta. Don't you see that I am just having fun? There is nothing serious between us." Winerva waved her hand nonchalantly.

Vinetta looked at Winerva and Layland alternatingly before she eventually shrugged her shoulders. "Well, at least I have told you. Don't come to us crying about it when he dumps you right after the banquet."

Winerva pretended she didn't hear that, and dragged Layland with her by his hand. This was the moment where he felt the Curse he had cast on the little girl was triggered, and he didn't know how he should react to it.

A part of him was excited that he had managed to dull Niles' sense so he could kill Niles easier, but another part of him wished that the little girl hadn't met Niles so she didn't have to meet that fate.

Still, reminding himself of what he had done for the girl, in the end, he came to terms with it.

Another command he had told to the little girl was to hand the pouch of gold to her brother before she left to meet Niles. He had also cast an Ownership Spell on the pouch that would bind it to her brother when her brother touched it.

Because of that, even after she died, her brother could still have a good life. He was sure her brother had already known how to use the gold to improve his life.

About whether or not her brother could come to terms with his sister's death however, he couldn't tell. He did hope her brother could, however he wasn't sure if it would happen.

Anyhow, he had fulfilled the little girl's wish for her brother to get a better life.

"Why am I thinking about it? Does it even matter if he could prevail? Like the others, he is bound to perish when we conquer this Dukedom, isn't he?" He mused softly. "What a waste of time."

After ten minutes spent inside the clothing store, Winerva and the others finally got the dress they wanted.

Xenon offered to pay for Winerva's dress since she had the budget for that thanks to the payment for her party's service, but Layland immediately refused her by showing how much the dress cost—4,000 Peculias, which equals to $8,000.

It was a small spending for Layland who had thousands of gold coins, which a piece of it equals to 100 Peculias, but it was definitely not an amount of money Xenon would spend on a dress.

Clink-clank.

Upon getting out of the clothing store, the girls looked at Layland in wonder of what he did for living. He wasn't exuding that amazing of a pressure to show that he was a Knight, but he also didn't look eccentric enough to be a merchant.

None of them wanted to be too nosy, of course, since it was the last thing one should do in this harsh world. As long as one had power, in this world after all, killing another in cold blood could be justified.

"Kuhum! Well... I have to ask if you want to come with us or join your husband." Xenon turned to Winerva. "We are going to visit the city hall to talk about 'that.'"

Quirking his eyebrow faintly in interest, Layland wondered what kind of business they had in the city hall. Judging by how discreet the way Xenon talked however, he could somehow know it was about the matter of his troop mates.

"Well... They did look suspicious, but I don't think they are what you think." Winerva frowned. "Isn't it too much to think that your boyfriend is a... You know?"

Sighing helplessly, Xenon smiled bitterly. "It doesn't hurt to be careful, so it's better to notify the city hall about them and hope that we are just being paranoid."

At those words, Layland became even more convinced that they were indeed going to notify the army stationed in the Dukedom about his troop mates.

He would like to stop them since letting them do it would spoil his Conquest Mission; however, he had a better plan for that. Instead of preventing them, he decided to go with them.

"Are you perhaps going to notify the army about the possibly incoming invasion?" He said, shocking them.

"So, it's true!" Yule exclaimed, slightly terrified.

"Well, I am not too sure about it either, but I am about to talk to one of my friends in the army about it," he lied as easy as breathing. "Maybe, your testimony would support my suspicion, so can you go to the city hall with me?"

Anticipating their look of scepticism, Layland almost couldn't help bursting out laughing when all of them nodded their head in agreement without a shred of suspicion on him.

Leading them to the city hall, he thanked his decision to buy some information about the Commander of the Army stationed there. Using that information, he could act like he really knew about said Commander.

Because of that, he could suggest the Commander to position the army in the places where his troop mates would appear when the Conquest was commenced. In other words, he could allow them to eliminate all of the army in one go.

The sun set not too long after their meeting with the Army Commander. With a small smile on his face and Winerva in his hand, he went to the banquet.