Chapter 5

As Esteban, who had been walking ahead of me, came to a sudden halt, I naturally stopped in my tracks as well.

Letting out a shallow sigh, Esteban finally lost his patience and turned around.

“What exactly are you trying to do?”

I tilted my head, looking at him as he spat out words that seemed to come out of nowhere. His face crumpled at my reaction, and he continued speaking.

“Don’t follow me.”

“Pya-byat…?”

‘Does this country not even have freedom of movement—! Oh, wait, it doesn’t.’

It suddenly occurred to me that Idelio was a nation where the residential areas of beast-people and humans were divided, meaning there was no freedom of movement.

In the first place, I wouldn’t have been able to stay here at all if it weren’t for the five-year contract signed between Winchester and Fennec.

I shook my head from side to side, wondering how I could have completely forgotten about that just because I’d been here for a few days. Watching me, Esteban’s face crumpled again as he resumed his walk.

I hurried after him, determined not to lose him.

Esteban, walking without a single backward glance as if trying to ignore me, was heading toward his room.

‘What? You were just going to your room? If that’s the case, you should’ve said so!’

I had been following right on his heels fearing he might go somewhere else, so I turned around, feeling the wind taken out of my sails.

‘Nothing can be done about it. Since I’m already here, I might as well get some rest in my own room.’

The technician who was supposed to come in the morning must have stopped by early; I pushed through the perfectly timed sub-entrance and entered my room. Just then, I heard Esteban’s irritated voice from behind me.

“Just how far do you plan on follow—!”

I heard his voice a beat late, but I was already inside.

I wondered if I should go back out and strained my ears to listen to the sounds outside. I heard Esteban muttering in a small voice.

“So she wasn’t following me, she was just going to her own room…”

‘No, I actually was following you at first.’*

Of course, there was no way Esteban could hear my answer. I heard him rushing into his room. The door slammed shut with a heavy thud, making the frames on the wall rattle.

‘Was he embarrassed?’

I thought my eardrums were going to burst from the force of the door slam, but imagining him feeling bashful made me feel quite amused.

‘He really is just a kid.’

I stuck my tail up in the air and stretched my front paws, all while keeping my ears pricked to monitor the activity in the next room.

I could hear the sound of splashing water.

‘Ah, looks like he’s taking a bath. Then there’s a low chance he’ll lose control while bathing, right?’

Going berserk was usually something that happened when the mana veins, synchronized with emotions, were stimulated.

Leaning against the wall, I sat down and combed through my memories regarding the “berserk state” described in the original work, checking if there was anything I had missed.

The saying that life is a comedy from a distance but a tragedy up close applied perfectly to the Winchesters. The direct descendants of Winchester were superior in both their innate “basic mana”—which was linked to their life force—and the “applied mana” they could increase through training.

Thanks to that, most Winchester descendants became Sword Masters or mages, bringing honor to the family name. However, the fatal flaw was that because they were born with such a massive amount of mana, they couldn’t properly control it during their childhood.

The bottom line was that if they couldn’t maintain their reason in an emotionally stimulating situation, that overflowing mana would cause them to fall into a so-called berserk state.

‘And the male lead of <Watch Out for That Rampage!> had also gone berserk in his childhood.’*

Esteban Hardel Winchester.

The boy who would later become a Sword Master and be hailed as the Guardian of Idelio was currently nothing more than a brat who couldn’t properly manage his own mana.

The solution the Winchesters found for this generation was the Fennecs. The direct descendants of the Fennec tribe had low innate mana, but in their humanized form, they possessed the ability to absorb the basic mana of others.

Upon discovering this fact, Hardium proposed a five-year contract, offering “Bluebells”—which activate mana flow—as the condition.

Simply put, if the Fennecs helped the Winchester heirs stay by their side and prevented them from going berserk during those five dangerous years, they would be provided with as many Bluebells as they wanted.

‘They really poked at the Fennecs’ Achilles’ heel—their short lifespan due to low basic mana.’

Of course, it would have been nice if the rampages were stopped, the Bluebells were obtained, and peace came to everyone…

But in the end, Ariel, who was Esteban’s contractor in the novel, failed to stop his rampage.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say she chose not to stop it.

“N-No! I’m scared! You never said it would be this dangerous! What if I get caught in the rampage and get hurt too!”

“W-What are you saying now, Lady Ariel! You clearly signed a contract with Winchester to help!”

“I-I’m going back. I’m going back to the Fennec tribe!”

Later, after Esteban regained his senses and saw the Grand Duchy turned into a wasteland, he let out a hollow laugh.

‘…In the end, my efforts meant absolutely nothing.’

I quickly shook off the thoughts before my mood turned gloomy.

‘That’s just the original novel I read.’

To avoid being brutally killed by an Esteban who turned dark after a horrific rampage, I had to change fate somehow.

‘But since I can’t become human right now, wouldn’t it be simpler to find the cause of Esteban’s rampage and remove it?’

In the novel, Esteban went berserk because a culprit put ‘Allium Seeds’—a poisonous herb that stimulates the flow of mana—into his food.

The problem was that because it was an unannounced accident, there were numerous casualties even within the Grand Duchy.

‘No, the bigger problem is that they never caught the culprit.’

I suspected the reason was that the person who triggered the rampage also ended up dying in it.

‘So, to summarize, I have to find someone who died at the very beginning of the novel and never even had their appearance described…?’

“Kking…”

I brushed off the thoughts of the answerless situation.

Just then, the sound of water from the next room stopped. From now on, I’d stick close to Esteban and sniff out anyone suspicious!

‘To think I have to use my body as a shield even though I know the original story…’

Feeling miserable, I left the room through the small entrance.

As I approached his door, I saw a small sub-entrance had been made there as well, just like in my room.

‘Well, I should at least knock before entering, right? I’m a beast-person with manners.’

I scratched the sub-entrance with my claws and then stepped inside.

Upon entering the room, I found Esteban, who had already changed into casual clothes after finishing his bath.

‘He really is pretty.’

Esteban’s silver hair wasn’t fully dry yet, so it shimmered whenever the sunlight hit him, and he smelled pleasant from his recent bath.

I watched his movements while wagging my tail, and Esteban suddenly whipped around as if sensing something.

“What are you?”

“……?”

“Are you a pervert?”

I blinked blankly at his question, then let out a bewildered, hollow laugh.

‘If I were a pervert, would I have come to your room?’

Thinking that being denounced as a pervert just for looking at his still-youthful self was about five years too early, I thwacked my tail against the floor.

‘Have a little conscience, will you?’