The group had the same lack of interest in adventuring anymore for the day despite their earlier thoughts of maybe having to traverse five more dungeon floors before going back home, so, after Marcel took Fabier’s body and put it in his spatial storage space, then cleaned a bit, they took the telecircle back to the last floor of the dungeon, avoiding the beasts, then took another back to the entrance and then home on Ains they went.

It was silent the whole way back and not a word was spoken by them, even when Marcel dropped Silva, Valeria, Nigel, Evan and Daniel back at the house they’d bought. Allan and Shalia tagged along back to the castle. They weren’t sure if Marcel should go back alone in his current mental state. He was too quiet, the atmosphere around him had changed since right before he killed Fabier and he’d become cold.

“He was definitely feeling the effects of killing someone.” They thought, having already forgotten what he said in the dungeon.

Marcel and the two others, made the trip back to the castle. At their arrival at the front gate, they found Claude, who’d also been out for some business and just returned. He, who’d just met them, asked,

“So, how was your trip?”

All he got was silence. Marcel looked down towards the ground, his eyes carrying none of brightness they usually possessed and his face, a blank, unreadable slate. Also, his long hair covered up his blank expression, increasing the overall feeling that something was wrong with him. Shalia and Allan didn’t look better either. From his earlier question, the atmosphere had suddenly grew tense.

Shalia quickly pitched in,

“Everything’s fine! It’s just that we’re very tired. It's just that something happened. We can discuss more on the matter later.” She answered, a wry, awkward smile on her face before she dragged the Chosen into the gate. Marcel and Allan followed suit soon after. Claude wondered what happened to cause such a drop in their vigor.

After they arrived inside, Marcel spoke for the first time since leaving the dungeon,

“I’m going back to my room.” He almost quickly strolled off after that. Claude grabbed his hand to look at him. He wanted to hear from him what happened. Shalia had wanted to stop him, to explain to him that Marcel needed a break, but it was too late. From the reaction on Claude’s face moments after he tried to stop Marcel from leaving, he already got it.

Marcel, when grabbed, showed eyes to Claude that felt new to his guardian. He’d been with him for so many years now but he’s sure he’s never seen that look before.

That look... that look of absolute disinterest in not only staying there to be asked questions or listening to Claude, but also in the person in front of him or even anything else for that matter. It was like he simply didn’t care. Marcel’s aura held the same purity as always, but a sharpness and brisk murderous intent was leaking out from somewhere as if ready to strike down anything in his path.

Seeing this, Claude quickly let go. He watched as Marcel walked off into the distance and vanished from the corridor.

Shalia, as he walked away, looked at Marcel’s back while wondering if he would be okay with an even more glum expression before dragging the Chosen with her to talk somewhere else. Claude would definitely find an explanation to why their angel had become a cold, detached rock very useful.

The Marcel he saw earlier, wasn’t the Marcel he knew. Those eyes of his felt cold, unforgiving and lastly, apathetic. He looked like he was carrying a lot of thoughts inside his big brain. What those were, he had no idea about, but Marcel’s entire demeanor deeply worried him.

His worry was so tremendous that, right after he heard the entirety of the situation, he knew that something had to be done, and quickly. Looks like that little one has a secret he hasn’t told anyone yet.

He quickly told the Demon Lord to ask his ‘wife’ what was going on with. His Lord was already on it the moment Marcel entered the castle. Again, the Demon Lord’s castle is full of eyes everywhere. This is certainly a good way to find out that His Majesty the Demon Lord is a stalker just as bad as the Dragon Empress and Sunfire Elven King Revalor. And yes, both of them are also worried, especially Alverona.

 

* * *

After he returned to his room, he had a fairly normal afternoon and evening routine, almost so normal that, if he didn’t carry that look of a cold rock with thoughts of murder on the brain, one would think that he was fine.

“My lord, please come! The young master isn’t looking too good!” Edgar, Portia and Judith sent random bursts of messages like this to the Demon Lord from afternoon all the way into the evening.

Marcel finally had dinner and went back to occupying his time knowledge-inquiring with Dragon Link and communicating with his two beast companions. Honestly, they already knew what the problem was from the memories of their master, so tried ways to cheer him up and disperse his current mood but to no avail. Now it really seems like the Demon Lord was their only hope left.

The Demon Lord came around Marcel’s corner of the castle a bit later after he put one of his clones to do his work, poor thing. Seeing Marcel like he currently was, he did the only thing he could.

What was that, you might ask.

Inviting him to take a bath with him, of course!

“Sure!” Marcel unexpectedly answered. The Demon Lord was a bit surprised because he never managed to get Marcel in the bath with him like this. Normally, it took careful and deliberate cunning to get himself in there with Marcel at the same time.

Why?

Well, it was his way of gauging how successful his ultimate plan to avoid death was going. To know how much Marcel was getting interested in him and his glorious body and seeing the cute reactions the latter always made when there with him, made his blood boil with excitement. It was worth the occasional future sight that demanded heavily calculations with the information he knew to predict future events.

It wasn’t that he was a peeper or anything. No, that was all for the sake of not dying, to protect the world.

Vitalis, who looked at the Demon Lord waste such great power on peeping on what they would consider an infant, thought,

<< Yes, sure! Nobody else but you would believe that, perv. >>

The Demon Lord couldn’t believe that it was so easy this time.

He loved the honey traps he created for Marcel in the end with that information. It melted his stress away just thinking of what Marcel would show him next. This time, though, he admitted that it was too easy.

So, why did Marcel accept his invitation so easily?

Well, it was because his current self didn’t care about anything, even the mighty fine Demon Lord who’d normally cause a nosebleed and occasionally, also cause little Marcel to jump excitedly from his pants.

Without hesitation, Marcel took off his clothes with no concern for the things he usually worried about, washing himself and soaked his tensed-up, fatigued body in the giant tub without even a stare at the usual source of all his troubles. The blank expression deeply worried the Demon Lord, however.

‘This is too unusual!’ He thought. Where is his nosebleed?! Little Marcel, what are you doing?! And Marcel, why do you look so unperturbed compared to last time four months ago?!! Ah, all that planning to uplift Marcel’s spirit with some naked skinship and eye candy, gone down the drain! No~!!!

The Demon Lord sighed, “Hah, so what’s the problem? What’s wrong with you?” He asked.

“Nothing!” Marcel replied, same lack of interest but also, unwillingness to share his thoughts. Sure, the Demon Lord could just forcibly invade his mind, but that doesn’t seem like a very good idea from the last time Claude and himself tried to enter. Looks like it was going to take old-fashion pestering and nagging into submission to get what he wants...

… And so, he did until current Marcel found the noise too unnerving and bothersome to filter from his brain.

“Fine, just shut up, please! I’m losing brain cells just listening to your infuriating voice!!!” Ah, the first reaction since he entered the bath with the rock, although it was anger. How happy the Demon Lord was to get something!

“So, will you finally tell me what happened to you?” He asked enthusiastically, though trying to match the expressional rhythm and tone of the latter. He didn’t want to come off as too pushy.

Marcel replied, “Just shut up and maybe I will.”

“Yay!” The latter expressed childishly before he waited for the latter to spill the beans.

Marcel sighed before moving his hands out of the water to wipe off some of the sweat built up from the hot bath. After, he fetched some of the water out the tub with his hand before swiping his long hair backward with it, moistening his silver locks. It was almost seductive and the latter’s expression of disinterest while he did it without concern, made it even hotter.

Marcel… was unintentionally… setting up a honey trap!

Oops, why was the Demon Lord almost the one to have Marcel’s usual reactions? Ah, what a little seductive beast he was raising!

Now, back to inquiring!

“So, why did you come back so early? I predicted your return in at least two weeks from now. What happened?” He asked despite knowing exactly what it was. That damn dragon!

“Not much really. You’ve probably already heard. I’m not stupid!” Marcel’s face carried a boldness that made the latter almost blush. So confident! He saw his maids panic throughout the day while transmitting telepathic messages somewhere. He wasn’t dumb.

“Then will you at least tell me why you became this, um... sorry to say, but ‘rock’?” The Demon Lord was very careful to not be pushy when asking about Marcel’s current state, but since he was asking about it, not very much.

The latter answered,

“It’s nothing! I had almost forgotten all about it since I came here. It’s been more than 10 years since I last became like this. During that fight with the giant poisonous scorpion in the human world, I think.”

Marcel looked like he was going to drag telling him the real matter, so he was very firm this time,

“Tell me! What is it?!” He almost yelled.

The murderous intent in Marcel’s aura spiked as he turned towards the latter and reached for his neck, an action that took a few milliseconds to perform. The Demon Lord was astounded. On this day, he learned a secret regarding how prophesized death at the hands of Marcel might occur.

He finally spoke,

“I’m confident that I can kill you, no matter how kind you are in the end. I can easily point at blade at this neck of yours and slice off your head without any hesitation. I don’t know why I can do this, but I just can.” Marcel looked at him with the same cold, unfeeling eyes he did with Claude and his friends.

Just before he really strangled the Demon Lord, he let him go. He fell back into a head bow, seemingly depressed, but really, just trying to calm the thoughts of murder currently swarming his mind. He then told the Demon Lord about ‘it’.

“So, how does it work?” The Demon Lord asked.

“From what I know, it’s almost always active. The question should be ‘to what degree does it work?’ Think of it as a sort of self-defense mechanism always looming over my consciousness. It’s the reason I am able to kill dungeon beasts without hesitation despite knowing that some have developed sentience. It isn’t limited to just dungeon beasts either. Anything I deem harmful to my existence will increase the degree of what you currently see. Simply speaking, I lose all emotions and everything I see as harmful to me become monsters that need to be slain.”

“So, you lose all reason and go berserk?”

“The first time it happened, yes, but after that, quite the contrary. Logic is fully active. Just that things like emotions aren’t around to impact my judgement. Basically, if you or anyone tries to harm me and I have enough time to see you as a threat, I become like this. I kill dungeon beasts all the time, so my guard towards them is lowered when compared to threats like humans or even you. It is part of the reason I was confident that I could end you when we first met, until you assaulted me in bed, that is.”

Eh, he’s also able to talk about ‘that’ without getting embarrassed? Oh, right! Emotions are offline.

“Can you tell me about your level of sensory perception when in your form?” The Demon Lord continued inquiring.

“All physical capabilities are boosted to at least 120%. The greatest boost I had received was around 140% in the human world but now, I can handle 300% or so. Pain perception is lost and natural regeneration abilities are boosted over normal capacities. Depending on the emotional state I was in before it triggered, murderous intent increases and is only suppressed when my target is killed or certain external conditions are met. Even after the job is done and this form dissolves back into my subconscious, my emotional state remains completely unaffected by my earlier deeds, no matter how close the target was to me before I turned into this state.”

“Wow, interesting~” The Demon Lord spouted.

Marcel’s eyes widened. He looked surprised.

“Oh~, you’re a strange one! When in this form, people are likely to call me a monster than interesting. You exceed my expectations all the time.” Marcel smiled slightly as he spoke. The Demon Lord thought he looked dashing.

“Ha... who called you a monster? Humans?”

“Yes, all 39 times it happened in the past. They tend to get so scared that some even unconsciously called me ‘monster’ to my face.”

“Hmm...” The Demon Lord wondered something before he shook his head slightly and continued, “Were you born with it?”

“I think so, though it didn’t activate until I was much older. I think it’s why I wanted to become a hero in the first place; to change people’s perception towards me and also, to better the situation at the time.”

“Will you tell me about it?” The Demon Lord was getting glum now. He was treading with the utmost care now. He wondered just what was so bad, it caused the bright, cheerful and cute Marcel to turn into this for the first time ever.

“It’s a very long story.” Marcel answered.

“Time is what we have. Also, my job is already being taken care of. You can talk for as long as you need. I’ll listen.” It must be nice to have clones and Chosens do your work when you can’t, isn’t it, Demon Lord?

“Oh~, you’re trying to gain more favorability points from me, aren’t you?” Marcel lightly smiled once again like earlier before reverting back to his emotionless state. The Demon Lord stayed silent. He didn’t know if to answer the question or not. Was it just him or was Marcel without any emotions perceptive or what?

Seeing as he got no answer, Marcel began,

“I was ten years old at the time...”

Allow me!

 

[Flashback]

Marcel was almost 10 years old at that time. He lived in an abandoned church-turned-orphanage alongside 22 other kids and two caretakers, both old priests. Among those 22 children were four 15-year-olds, two 13-year-olds, seven 12-year-olds and four 5-year-olds. The rest were babies; newborns at that who’d been abandoned at the orphanage from between a month and 4-5 months ago.

They all lived together until one day when the two priests said that the four eldest children were getting adopted. These four comprised of a girl named Mary and three boys, Albert, Ashe, and Garrett respectively. They were, apparently, going to be adopted by the nobility of the nearby city Vincent, who oversaw a territory that included where the orphanage was located.

They were all excited for the four eldest children who were going to be adopted before they came of age at age 16. Life as orphans in the Freiss kingdom was, after all, very hard. The orphanage was poor. These young adults who came of age would have had to set off on their own without anything but emotional support. They were ecstatic to learn that they’d been chosen by a family who wanted them, unlike their biological parents and even more so, it was nobility? All the kids, Marcel included, could feel nothing but joy for their four older siblings who were going to live better lives in Vincent.

They sent the four off nicely, the young Marcel aiding the priests in making a little feast. The four kids promised to visit the orphanage every now and then and everyone, including Marcel, looked forward to seeing them again.

 

A few months went by, and in the middle of what was a regular night when everyone was asleep, Marcel who’d woken up to go pee, learned a great secret.

He heard the two priests talking about the four kids who left the orphanage months ago. What he heard shocked him. Despite being as young as he was, he understood everything that was going on.

He heard them talking about things like ‘selling the older kids’, basically, what they’d done a few months ago. Young Marcel barged into the room and confronted them about it.

Marcel used his charisma that he didn’t even know he had at that time to get the priests tell him everything.

Apparently, his 4 fifteen-year-old siblings had been sold to a declining noble family house that wanted to adopt them because of their high magic potential.

He learnt that their little orphanage was a sort of market where people of noble bloodlines declining in magic potential came to buy kids that had high magic potential to raise, then marry off to their children to increase the family’s magic potential again and thus, stay in power. It was a transaction that helped both the orphans and the noble families. The same case applied to another set of the four older kids who left the orphanage a few years ago.

Marcel, after learning the truth, asked the priests to let him see the four kids again. Honestly, he missed them and also, wanted to see how they were faring. After begging for a while, the priests agreed, but what they were going to come upon was more gruesome than either of them had hoped.

***

The noble house that had adopted the four kids, was the Cladis house, a family that had been in power since almost the foundation of the Freiss kingdom they lived in, but over the generations, had declined to the point of barely being considered nobility: a Baron family, although they still oversaw the territory which included Vincent and a few other cities.

When they arrived at the noble house of Cladis, they were given the barely adequate treatment given to commoners like usual. Everything seemed fine around the place except, the four kids were nowhere to be found.

The master of the house, Baron Michael Cladis, a handsome young man in his late 20s, said that they were fine, apparently, they were undertaking some lessons in becoming better nobility and could thus not be seen. They took his word for it from how kind and accommodating he was to lowly commoners like them. They left to return at a much later date a few months later.

This… would also be the day Marcel’s murderous form would first activate, much to the horror of everyone present in that house.

After they entered the noble house, a maid uncomfortably told them to wait for a while as the head of the Cladis family was busy at the moment. It was almost as normal as the last time they were there, except, this time, Marcel just had to be a 9-year-old with a leaky bladder.

He visited the bathroom when, by accident, he took an unfamiliar route after doing his business, becoming embarrassingly lost in the noble house.

Yes, Marcel’s sense of direction sucked from childhood, all the way into adulthood before he gained Dragon Link.

A child hopelessly lost in a big house, Marcel began walking around to try and find his way back when he reached a part of the house that he, honestly, dread entering.

Behind one of the rooms, he heard moans and screams from someone who sounded like they were struggling to breath. How terrible it was for little Marcel that this particular room was only partially closed. He came closer to try and close the door when he saw it.

What he thought might be some noble child probably getting scolded or having a tantrum turned out to be something far worse.

Approaching the door, the curious child within him took control and he peeked into the room to find the head of the Cladis family, on a bed, naked and sweating.

Yes, Marcel, for the first time in his life, saw a naked, handsome young man, and for some reason; his eyes just couldn’t blink and look away.

His shoulder-length golden hair was disheveled and unkempt from rigorous physical activity as he sweated profusely. On his face was this twisted smile filled with pleasure as he moved vigorously in an in-and-out motion. Below him was someone who moaned occasionally and sometimes, screamed in intense pain.

Marcel, a child, wanted to inquire further about what was happening; you know, who the person screaming was, so he entered the room, not even quietly, and looked. He was shocked!

It was Albert, the blond-haired 15-year-old guy that took care of him all these years. He was the kindest out of the four older kids, basically, more of a father to him than the two old priests who were always leaving the orphanage. Here Albert was, naked and lying beneath the head of the Cladis house.

It wasn’t just him too. Beside him laid the three other kids, Mary, Ashe and Garrett, who looked like they were asleep, although Marcel the child, could somehow instantly guessed what happened to them when he saw the scar marks on their necks and bodies. They were…

He looked again at all of his four siblings who were on the bed in a mood indecipherable to him at the time. After that, he saw Baron Michael moving faster than before while Albert screamed louder and louder. Albert screamed until he couldn’t anymore and then he fainted. Even after he fainted, the house head, Michael, kept on moving before suddenly, he jerked for a moment; his eyes squinting and his face carrying a slight frown and then… he moaned. He smiled afterward, then wiped the sweat of his face in a delighted mood.

Marcel, seeing the scene that had just unfolded in front of him, was filled with an emotion: Rage, for the first time in his life.

“What were you doing?!” The little boy asked, almost yelling.

Baron Michael politely explained,

“I am taking their magic power. Young people recover so quickly!” He showed a twisted smile as he heaved heavy breaths.

Marcel got angrier afterward as the head elaborately explained with an expression filled with pleasure to the young Marcel.

 

A few years ago, the nobles who were declining in magic power potency developed a new technique to increase their declining magic power potency. The technique involved taking the magic potential from others, specifically, taking young teenagers brimming with magic power and potential. The magic power of young teenagers recovered much faster than that of adults and so, if they could take advantage of this and absorb the magic power, eventually, they could rejuvenate their own magic power and potentially even gain some of their potential.

For this endeavor, they bought teenagers from all over the kingdom, specifically, orphans with no connection and absorbed their magic through physical contact with a spell that uses the noble as a sort of magic siphon. After that, when they finally absorb until they reach their peak, they then had children, passing on whatever potential they had at the peak when their offspring was conceived. This was how noble families declining in magic power potential decided to make a comeback, even if it was by a fluke. It was mambo-jumbo that Young Marcel could never fully understand until he grew up a bit more.

Normally, all it took to absorb a teenager’s magic power was light contact like holding hands or kissing, but no, he just had to explain his method to a little Marcel who mysteriously understood the meaning behind his words,

“I like to take mine through sex. It’s so much more pleasurable and gets the job done. I also get to hear the young ones’ delightful moans as they struggle to escape. It’s the best~” The head spoke with an elated expression, though, not expecting a little kid to understand.

Unfortunately for him, Marcel not only got it, but also, the feelings he possessed from the understanding of the situation reached the necessary requirements to activate something dormant deep inside him.

 

Marcel was filled with rage that all he could see was red. He lost consciousness after that and didn’t know what happened during that span of time, as if unconscious during the first-ever activation of his kill switch. When he finally came to, there were horrific bloodstains everywhere. The entire Cladis mansion was covered in blood, their blood.

Over 20 people present in that noble house that day and almost everyone, except for four older kids and the two priests in the household, were dead.

When Marcel woke up standing, he found the four kids looking at him with aghast expressions on their faces.

Albert, his responsible and kind adoptive brother who had taken care of him his whole life, called him a monster. Marcel, at the time, wondered why, hurting inside. From what he knew, he wasn’t scary looking nor had fangs and claws to terrorize them.

Unfortunately, the young one didn’t realize that he was covered in black, brown and freshly-drawn red blood, forming layers on his skin and clothes that further increased the monstrosity of the child in front of them. He didn’t even realize that he held an adult woman’s head in his hand; the same maid who’d serve him tea.

Ashe, the third of the four, with light brown hair and tanned skin from always chopping wood in the middle of summer, walked up to him with wobbly legs and asked him if he knew what he’d done. Marcel understood nothing, so they gave him a quick recap.

He explained how they followed Marcel around and he killed everyone with power unlike any other. His eyes were filled with blood, iris, pupils and all. They were all bloody red and everyone he stared at died within moments of him making eye contact. He ripped them apart with his bare hands. He killed everyone in the mansion: the guards, the maids and also the head of the Cladis household, not sparing anyone that weren’t his adopted siblings or the priests. They were all dead now.

Strangely, even after they explained to the young one what he’d done, he felt not a shred of guilt or remorse nor held any particular emotion except what he usually felt, though, Albert calling him a monster after he awoke still hurt his feelings.

After cleaning up the mess that had become his body, he returned back to being the cute and innocent boy who loved listening to their tales once again. Almost every one of them quickly forgot about it and Albert even regretted calling Marcel a monster, though not forgetting the horrors of watching the child he raised be a killing machine. It gave him nightmares. And speaking of not forgetting the horrors, apparently, so didn’t the royal family and the capital.

Now, killing the entire Cladis household was a serious mess for the royal family to deal with as, one, they were nobles, and two, they managed Vincent and the territory around it, where the orphanage was located as well, which meant that Marcel had killed the lord of a province.

The royal family of Freiss would soon put out a restraining order and Marcel would be executed. If they were generous, he’d be imprisoned for the rest of his life or be trained as some kind of personal killing machine, and guess what? The order did come, although, it was for a very different reason.

Soon, the four kids, Marcel, and the two priests were called to the castle by the king, but the outcome of the visit… was a very unexpected one.

After seeing Marcel and how cute he was, the king granted amnesty to Marcel for his crime of annihilating the entire Cladis household and granted the four adopted kids the Cladis household name and everything that came with being a Cladis, the province, including Vincent, the riches, everything.

Soon after that event, the king made a public edict, warning all the nobles of the consequences if he caught them doing what the Cladis household had been: that he’d execute that noble’s entire household. Sure, he understood that the nobles still needed to have the teenagers in their families, so he allowed light physical contact and kisses as well as adopting teenagers, but only if they knew what the nobles’ intentions were for them. Hey, no need to be a tyrant when you don’t have to.

Unexpectedly, the king had open up a path for more declining noble families to openly adopt a vast number of youths into their families; some of which included Marcel’s adoptive siblings while they were still fairly young.

After, Marcel was given amnesty, he was ordered by the king to chat with him, the noble queen and the royal sorcerer. He thought he was going to get a heavy lecture but all he got were comments about how cute he was and how similar he looked to the blond-haired royals. His eyes were just as sky-blue as the queen’s. Basically, little Marcel was praised for how cute he was and how much the noble family would like it if he was their son. Marcel didn’t want to be adopt by them though, so he bore with being used as a snuggling cushion for the rest of the day. Honestly, meeting the royal family, to Marcel, felt very underwhelming.

The next day, the king had sent him home, although, not before telling him to be careful. Now people would probably be afraid of him from then on and call him names when they found out that he was the same child who annihilated the Cladis family in one night.

Little did Marcel know that he had already been given a title that made him sound like calamity itself: the ‘Child of Slaughter’. He became a legend in the kingdom and none of the guards went near him without extreme caution, even after he became a hero.

A Hero may be revered and hailed as the savior of humanity but not many people are willing to befriend such a monster of a creature, even if he bore such a revered title. They were so afraid that some of them pissed their pants when he came out of the castle that day as a 9-year-old.

From how afraid and fearful people were of him when they saw him, he felt like he needed to do something to show them that his power could be used for good. He wanted to be just like the heroes loved reading about. He wanted to protect his family with his own hands and defend those who couldn’t defend themselves.

Ever since the day that he killed the entire Cladis household, this has been his life. Anyone who threatens his safety or that of others he cared for could easily be killed off if he deemed it so. With all the power at his fingertips, he’ll make sure that person perishes, no matter how powerful or strong they were. Anyone who’s activated his murderous form so far has died, be it monsters, or people who threatened him.

Life in the human world after that event became harder, with many friends abandoning him because they learned his true nature or because he shone too brightly, especially after he entered adventurer school. He won a few true friends but in the end, he left them all behind when he decided to traverse into the ‘dark realm’ or the demon realms as we know it. Sometimes, he wonders to himself,

Were they right? If I can easily cast aside my emotions for the sake of my own wellbeing, then am I a monster? Are all the emotions I feel false feelings based on what I want others to think I feel? What… am I?