Running.
Just running fiercely.
Whether my mind is in chaos or everything I knew until now was a lie.
For now, I didn’t want to die, so I moved my feet like crazy.
But that was when Carmilla ran out of the house and reached the yard connected to the front door.
Crunch.
“…!”
“Hu-hut.”
A presence.
My mother had somehow approached behind me.
No, to be exact, a monster wearing my mother’s skin.
Before I knew it, it bit my neck and brought me crashing down.
“Ugh, ughhh…”
“My poor Carmilla. Did you really think you could escape from me?”
“You… Who the hell are you…?”
“Me?”
My whole body feels numb.
As if I’ve become a vegetative state with only my brain alive.
It was just one bite, yet blood was already trickling down from my face, forming a pool beneath me.
Am I about to die?
But even if I were to die, there was something I had to hear no matter what.
“Mother… No, what did you do to my mom…?”
Carmilla turned her gaze behind her to the monster wearing her mother’s skin.
She wanted to know when exactly this thing had started deceiving her.
She wanted to hear the truth.
So, she forced her head to turn back, despite the tears blurring her vision.
“Pfft, puhuhut! Kkkkkkk!”
“…!”
Her mother had changed after the summoning circle incident.
Even so, Carmilla had endured, believing that one day she would return to the kind woman she once was.
But now, at this moment, her heart—
“You’re asking when it started? Are you really that stupid, Carmilla?”
Shattered completely.
“We’ve been living together for years already. Or were you naïve enough to think I only started pretending to be your mom today?”
The monster possessing Lazerita’s body.
Her vulgar laughter stabbed deep into the heart of the girl who once called her “mother.”
“From the moment your parents first tried to summon me.
I have been by your side in this form ever since.”
“But that was at least three years ago…”
“Yes, idiot. Three years ago, that day.
I took over your mother’s body and have been pretending to be her ever since.”
That long…?
I couldn’t believe it.
No, I didn’t want to believe it.
The mother I thought had changed after my father’s death and the failed summoning ritual—
She was never my mother to begin with.
Then who was the person I had been desperately trying to make smile again?
Who was she?
The answer was simple.
“You’ve been nothing but a pawn for the monster you believed was your mother.”
“L-Lies…”
“It’s not a lie~. Think about it!
What kind of parent throws their child into the hero society, where they could die at any moment, before they even turn ten?”
“…!”
“The only reason to do that would be for their own gain.
A loving parent would never be that stupid, don’t you think?”
It all… made sense.
That’s why it hurt even more.
Because this was the moment all the years I had endured turned into nothing.
“Your parents were just as dumb as you~.”
“Shut up…!”
“What were they thinking, trying to form an equal contract with a ‘high-level monster’ like me?”
“Don’t use my mother’s voice… to say such things…!”
“Oh, and I heard that sword-wielding monster who flew into the human world got sealed away by some beastman.
Did they think that meant high-level monsters like us were weaklings?”
Her elegantly curled golden hair shimmered under the night sky, shining even more brilliantly.
And those golden eyes that glowed ominously.
There was no way this woman looked like a married mother of a ten-year-old child.
No, all of this—
Everything belonged to my mother.
But why did she keep using my mother’s face…
Why did she only say things my mother never would?
“This is all…”
“Hmm?”
“Because of Dad…!”
Realizing that even the mother she had been living with was a fake,
Carmilla clung to the only thing that could anchor her amidst the storm of emotions.
Hatred for her father.
“If Dad… had never summoned you…!”
“If that hadn’t happened, we could all still be living happily together!”
It was all because Dad was incompetent.
This was all Dad’s fault.
Thinking that way made her boiling rage feel a little more bearable.
The next moment.
“Puhut! What?”
Three years ago, on the day the summoning circle was activated.
“Oh, Carmilla, what an ungrateful little girl you are~.”
“Ungrateful daughter?”
“I haven’t seen an idiot like you in a long time.”
At least, not until I heard the real truth directly from the perpetrator.
“You mean you really have no idea how your father died that day?”
“No idea…? Dad got caught in the explosion caused by the summoning circle failure…?!”
“That’s. What. I’m. Saying! You idiot, that summoning circle didn’t fail!”
It was just unstable due to your parents’ lack of ability.
But the summoning itself was successful.
As proof, I’m here—occupying Lazerita’s body as a vessel to restore the physical form I lost due to that unstable summoning.
So here’s the question.
If the summoning did succeed, then why was there an explosion in the basement?
The answer was simple.
“As soon as I was summoned, Lazerita and I engaged in a fierce battle for control over her body.”
“A battle…?”
“That’s right, Carmilla. While you were unconscious, crushed by our combined energy, our fight shook the entire basement.”
Carmilla had never known.
But on that day, three years ago—
In City C, where their family lived, an unexplained earthquake warning had been issued.
Of course, the real cause wasn’t an earthquake.
It was the brutal fight between Carmilla’s mother, Lazerita, and the monster trying to take over her body.
“If I had a physical body back then, it might’ve been different.
But as just a soul, defeating an A-rank hero was difficult.”
I had finally made it to the human world.
A place swarming with prey.
If I wanted to survive, even just a little longer—
“Humans are weak.”
“…What?”
“Let me show you what I mean.”
“!? No, stop! Carmilla!”
“Honey!”
Back then, the monster had been at a disadvantage.
So it resorted to its final, desperate move.
To take the daughter’s life—
And shatter the mother’s focus.
But the plan only half succeeded.
Because…
Slash.
“See? Humans are weak.”
The one who allowed me to take Lazerita’s body.
It wasn’t the daughter I had originally aimed for.
It was the one person who had knowingly thrown himself into death—
Just to save that unconscious little girl.
“No way…”
“That’s right.
The human I sliced in half instead of you—”
“…!”
“Was your father.”
The man Carmilla had despised.
The man she thought was weak.
Her one and only father.
“D-Dad…?”
“Yes, he—”
“…What?”
“I was going to kill you, but your father volunteered to die in your place.”
“Well, thanks to that, I found an opening in Lazerita’s defenses, so it all worked out in the end, don’t you think?”
What…
What the hell…
Did she just say?
“…Huh?”
Dad.
My dad.
The man who had pathetically died alone in that basement—
While his much younger daughter had survived.
His death wasn’t because of some accident.
It wasn’t because he was a man.
It was because of me.
Because of me, Dad…
Had died.
“L-Lies…”
“Do you really think so?”
“O-Of course! That can’t be true! It can’t be true!”
Desperately, she tries to cover the sky with her hand.
To block out the sun called “truth.”
But just like sunlight seeping through the gaps between fingers—
“Think, you idiot.”
The monster grinned wickedly, digging into the girl’s already shattered heart.
“If it were just an explosion, then tell me—
How does someone get cleanly sliced in half?”
“…!! T-That’s…!”
“Unless it was cut by a monster’s claws.
Think a little harder, moron. The answer’s obvious!”
No…
No, this can’t…
Be the truth…
“My dear daughter.”
“Yeah, Dad!”
“You know Daddy loves you, right?”
“Hehe, of course!”
T-The truth…
“Carmilla, hurry and get upstairs!”
“I-I’m too scared… My legs won’t move, Dad…!”
“Then crouch down, Carmilla!!”
Was this… really the truth?
All of it?
“A-Aaaaah, AAAAAAAAAH!”
“Pfft! Kkkk, HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Her mother losing her body to a monster.
Her father being found lifeless in the basement.
It all came back to one person.
The daughter.
Because of her own overwhelming helplessness.
And now, three years later, Carmilla had finally realized the truth.
The overwhelming emotions bursting from her throat turned into wails and screams so violent they tore at her vocal cords.
And the monster behind her?
It only laughed mockingly, as if enjoying the spectacle.
“Then tell me! Why the hell did you let me live?! Why didn’t you just kill me, instead of pretending to be my mother and tormenting me?!”
Carmilla’s face was already drenched in tears and snot.
Trapped, unable to move, she barely managed to choke out her question.
“Because you were useful.”
“…What?”
The monster casually admitted it, as if wondering why she even had to ask.
“Think about it. Our family has quite the standing in hero society, don’t we?”
“…So what?”
“So what? Oh, Carmilla, come on. With such a good opportunity, wouldn’t I be a fool not to take advantage of it?”
Just like how an internal enemy is always more dangerous than one outside.
No matter how much she was broken through harsh training—
As long as Carmilla became a powerful hero, she would still be useful.
The monster possessing Lazerita’s body had planned to use Carmilla, brainwashing her until death,
And enjoying herself endlessly from within the Hero Association.
Well… at least, that had been the plan.
**”Originally, I was going to wait until you became an A-rank hero, maybe? Somewhere around there.
Then I’d just ‘swoop in’ and kill you to take all the power stored inside your body.”**
“All the… power?”
“Oh, it’s in there, alright.”
Carmilla.
She had never known.
But deep inside her body—
A piece of the monster’s original physical form had been planted long ago.
“Yes, that’s right. My other half has been inside you this whole time.”
Just like how the sword-wielding monster sealed by the Okami family had its soul and body separated—
The monster possessing Lazerita had done something similar.
Its soul remained inside Lazerita’s body.
And its physical form, which had vanished due to the unstable summoning, had left behind only a “blueprint” inside Carmilla’s growing body.
The monster had been waiting.
For years.
“Hah… But if I absorb it now, will I just return to my old self?”
What a shame.
If it had aged for about ten more years,
I could have been reborn even stronger than before.
If that had happened… maybe, just maybe,
I could have put even those monsters in their place.
No, perhaps not them, but at least—
At least I could have crushed that arrogant ‘sister’ of mine who always looked down on me.
But oh well.
Right now, I just want to kill that damned horned bastard.
That worthless half-breed monster that dared humiliate me!
And so—
CHOMP.
From the moment the monster had sunk its fangs into Carmilla’s neck,
It had already begun absorbing all of her remaining life force—
And reclaiming its true form.
“KHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”
WEEEEEOOOOO—!
The city-wide monster alarm blared across C City.
And at the same time—
The deadliest poison ever weaponized by modern civilization—
Had just awakened.
**”I am the one known as the strongest in this era!
The very ‘Radioactive Monster’ that even the Poison Beasts bow before!”**