In a kiss that was inhumanly soft and unrealistically sweet, the first thought that came to Hans’s mind was this : I’m dead.
His survival instincts pulsed so strongly that he had no time to savor the moment.
But soon, Hans calmed down.
If Gretel had been watching this scene, then everything was already over the moment Alje revealed her true form.
No matter how fiery Gretel’s jealousy burned, it couldn’t compare to the crime of harboring a monster.
Either way, the situation was beyond his control.
There was nothing he could change now.
No matter how accustomed he was to life in the labyrinth, his essence was still human, and humans could not survive in the labyrinth.
In the end, he would have to return to the city.
And if he returned, there would be no avoiding the witch’s gaze.
Avoiding her entirely would only make things more suspicious.
He couldn’t abandon the doll either.
The fact that he had enough room in his mind for such thoughts only proved how unimpressive Alje’s skills were.
“Haa… ngh…”
There was no exchange of tongues, nor was it deep enough to leave him breathless.
Despite the courage Alje had mustered, Hans was inwardly making a cold, detached assessment.
Even though he rationally understood that the girl was fatally beautiful, his emotions no longer wavered.
Maybe, at some point before, he had been slightly shaken.
But now that the wound on Alje’s chest was exposed, kissing her felt no different from kissing a corpse—just unsettling.
Even so, Hans could not push her away.
“Ah… ah… Hans… oppa…”
“Let go now.”
His ribs, crushed under her grip, had long since passed the point of bearable pain.
No, in truth, it had been agonizing for a while, but he had merely endured it in silence.
If his body hadn’t been trained, his organs might have been completely crushed.
Alje, her body limp and dazed, obediently released him.
Hans finally slipped from her grasp and began massaging his limbs, trying to ease the accumulated strain.
Even that trivial motion seemed to concern her, as Alje snapped back to attention and hurriedly asked,“Are you okay, old man? You must’ve overexerted yourself fighting…”
“Make up your mind. Am I your ‘oppa’ or an old man?”
“If you’re hurt, here.”
The power of miracles passed through him, instantly healing even minor injuries.
The lingering soreness in Hans’s limbs was purely due to Alje’s suffocating embrace.
Practicing both harm and healing, Alje tightly grasped Hans’s hand.
Humming softly, light shimmered from her body and transferred to him.
A warm yet cool and refreshing sensation.
As the light washed over him, the dull pain faded as if it had never been there.
“Tell me if you’re hurt. I’ll heal you. No! I’ll make sure you never get hurt in the first place!”
Innocence can be easily tainted, but purity does not change so easily.
That was why Alje remained pure.
As she confidently thumped her chest, a drop of blood splattered.
Hans frowned at the sight.
“Put some clothes on first.”
“Heheh, are you embarrassed? Okay~”
Even her absurd misunderstanding didn’t amuse him anymore, but to the girl who saw this dark, suffocating cave as a bright spring day, it seemed to be nothing but delightful.
“But, old man, I don’t have any clothes.”
“…Ah.”
A careless mistake.
The clothes Alje had originally been wearing had been torn to shreds, leaving no trace.
Her spare clothes were with the rest of their supplies back at the temporary base.
That realization made it sink in—this ordeal was finally over.
“Haa…”
“Hans?”
“Let’s go back.”
One – winged angels weren’t particularly aggressive monsters, so nothing should have happened in the first place.
But amid the chaos of battle, the insects and fruits Hans had painstakingly gathered had been trampled before they could even reach his mouth.
Still, he had collected more feathers than expected, so maybe that was a win.
Even if the rest of the creature had ended up in the maw of a shapeshifting monster.
Though his body was physically fine, his mental exhaustion was overwhelming.
Holding back the urge to collapse, Hans picked up the iridescent feathers scattered on the ground.
Once they returned, he would finally get some real rest.
But until then, he couldn’t afford to let his guard down.
*
Or so he thought.
The moment Hans returned to the temporary base, he collapsed into sleep as if his body had given out entirely.
If the power of miracles could be used so easily, there would be no need for a special position like [Guardian Knight], nor would they be treated with such prestige.
While miracles erased even the side effects of their own power, a shaken soul still needed time to settle.
By the time Hans awoke—after nearly ten hours of uninterrupted sleep—he found something soft cradling the back of his head.
“Hehe.”
And in his blurry vision, there was a pair of gently rising hills.
With a shy little sun peeking out between them.
A hunter would normally train their body to avoid falling into a deep sleep after leaving the labyrinth, but Hans had built up so much exhaustion that all his efforts were in vain.
A sleep so deep that he didn’t even dream.
A sleep so deep that he didn’t even notice the touch against his body.
“Are you awake?”
A gentle hand softly swept through his tangled, matted hair.
It was a delicate and slender hand, its grace so profound that it was hard to reconcile with the monstrous strength it held within.
Even after spending days in the labyrinth, her skin remained
unblemished—always the same.
“Ah… Alje…”
“You must’ve been really tired, old man. You were completely out.”
The girl’s scent wasn’t particularly strong right now.
Though her white, radiant body was no longer exposed, she had at least put on some clothes—not perfectly neat, but decent enough.
In other words, she now looked like any other traveler in the labyrinth.
Of course, even so, if she were to walk through the city streets, she would undoubtedly draw every eye.
After all, extraordinariness could never be fully concealed beneath the ordinary.
Rather, at times, that very ordinariness served to make her extraordinariness shine even brighter.
Now that she had stepped back into the realm of reality, her beauty seemed even more dazzling—just like how Hans had felt more repulsed by her minor wound than the gaping hole in her heart.
This time, that effect was reversed.
For a fleeting moment, he forgot she was a monster.
“…”
Of course, it was only for a moment.
The sight Alje had shown him was far too shocking to be dismissed so easily.
Even Hans, who had spent over ten years entangled with monsters, felt the weight of it.
But humans were creatures bound by what they could see.
And when looking at Alje now—completely free of any monstrous traces.
“Oh! Look at this, old man!”
The girl giggled as she held up a bouquet of flowers—red petals speckled with black spots, like a ladybug.
Witch’s Blossom.
“Looks like I slept for quite a while.”
“Huh? No, no! I just went out for a little bit!”
The nearest patch of Witch’s Blossom Hans could recall was at least a full day’s journey away.
He chose not to ask anything further and simply accepted the bouquet Alje offered.
Her hands had expertly bundled the flowers, their stems still full of life, as if they had just been picked.
If someone unskilled had gathered them, their vitality would have already faded.
The knot securing the bouquet was tight and meticulous, the work of a practiced hand.
Hans silently tucked the flowers into a specially treated pouch.
With the One -Winged Angel’s feathers secured and the Three-Eyed Hound’s eyes easy enough to obtain, only one ingredient remained.
“Alright! Now we’re going to hunt the Pentagonal Specter, right? I’ve got everything ready!”
Everything was neatly packed, leaving Hans with nothing to say or do.
Standing before Alje’s bright, eager expression, all he could do was nod.
Honestly, it was… convenient.
He knew he shouldn’t feel this way, but the tension in his body was slowly unraveling.
The initial shock of seeing the monster had subsided.
Right now, Alje was still Alje.
He had always known she was a shapeshifting monster—there was no point in being surprised now.
And the Alje he had seen all this time had always been the same girl.
Pure, radiant, and brimming with goodwill toward him.
Perhaps that “goodwill” was a heavier emotion than he had initially thought.
Even though Hans had never given a response to Alje’s confession-like words, her actions spoke louder—like how she had instinctively closed the distance and taken his hand.
“I did well, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
And yet, in the end, wasn’t he the one not pulling away?
As Alje looked up at him expectantly, Hans raised his free hand and ruffled her hair.
For a brief moment, the strands between his fingers felt less like human hair and more like the smooth shell of an insect.
Even after he let go, that sensation clung stubbornly to his fingertips, refusing to fade.
“Let’s finish this quickly and go back. I want to rest.”
“Mhm! This time, I won’t just stand back and watch. I’ll do my best to help you, old man!”
Meanwhile, the hand holding his own was growing damp with sweat—its warmth unmistakably human.
Hans couldn’t even understand his own feelings anymore.
Was he unable to let go of Alje’s hand because he feared how the monster in her would react to his rejection?
“Or…”
Was it because, little by little, he was being swayed by the girl instead?