MPNS Ch 40

Chapter 40

In truth, Yullan Balt was a rather simple man.

Perhaps it was only natural — after all, there was a four‑legged beast living inside him.

He both cursed his curse and never denied the pull in his blood that drew him toward Nikiel.

Just as the flesh of the weak becomes the meal of the strong, just as flowers bloom in their season and night follows day, so too did he see it as only natural that a cursed being like himself might be drawn toward Nikiel, who carried holy power.

A platinum‑haired, blue‑eyed royal, under the blessing of the Lord of Beasts, would marry into one of the Four Houses and — regardless of whether they were male or female — gain the ability to bear children.

For Yullan, securing heirs to make Iteren strong was part of his duty as its ruler.

So if he found himself drawn to Nikiel, he would not deny it.

Even if that man was the despicable sort who had once sacrificed small animals to save his own life.

The issue was — he had never once felt that pull toward that “slut” before now.

Nikiel, over the years, had played countless little games with Yullan. Not only Yullan, in fact — he had slinked around all four heads in that same cloying way.

By royal order, he could not touch Yullan directly — but he made up for it by acting even cheaper than touch.

He would slip underclothes scented with the aphrodisiac bloom Anona nillang¹ into envelopes and send them, or tuck into Yullan’s cloak‑pocket one of the contraceptive devices Ossinis newlyweds used on their wedding night.

As a Swordmaster, there was no way Yullan could fail to notice him doing it — so Nikiel would simply bide his time, picking moments when people swarmed around Yullan at banquets to pull such stunts.

If anything, the only reason Nikiel needled him less than the others was because he feared Yullan the most.

Raymon, after all, had been publicly humiliated at the height of the winter banquet when Nikiel announced that “Raymon’s manhood was manhood in name only.”

The “bird” and the “snake brat” hadn’t fared much better.

The four heads shared one thought they had never voiced aloud:

Why must that slut be my deliverer?

As ill‑starred as the others’ fates were, Yullan Balt’s life had been as good as ruined from the start.

His grandfather, Dominic Balt, had been the only full younger brother of the then‑head of house. Serving his elder, who bore the Dragon’s Curse, he was granted a countship.

Consumed with envy toward his gentle, mild‑tempered brother, Dominic murdered him during a joint hunt and seized the title of Grand Duke.

When the curse thereafter skipped House Balt, he sought to bring it back — by raping his daughter‑in‑law to produce an heir who would be both son and grandson, namely Yullan.

In the twisted logic of the house, even if a child born that way inherited the curse, so long as he transformed into a wolf‑master, the house would prosper. Thus Dominic aimed to create a monstrous wolf through that crime.

In the process, to punish the daughter‑in‑law who resisted him, he locked her in a grain store and starved her without a drop of water.

Yullan’s father, away on a monster‑subjugation campaign, received the news and fell into despair, dying soon after at a monster’s claws.

So Yullan was born of that vile stock. Noble? Hardly. Even the lowest creatures in the world committed nothing so foul.

In his own mind, he was no different from a pig or a dog.

Born with a towering pride, and growing into it on the back of everything strong and beautiful in him, he matured into a man of contradictions.

With each passing year, he became more set apart from ordinary men.

House Balt was the one most violently shaken by the Black Dragon’s madness.

While the curse‑tainted blood thickened his muscles and strengthened his bones, something shifted inside Yullan — he ceased to see other humans as his own kind.

To him, people were too weak: bones too soft, flesh too light.

Perhaps it was the years spent from early boyhood wielding a sword against monsters to keep out of Dominic’s reach — but fangs that were not needle‑sharp, venom that did not run in the veins, all looked fragile to him.

All of this only isolated him further.

An extraordinary birth; a growth so exceptional it was repulsive; a body and blood strengthened and warped by madness — all conspired to make of Yullan something other than human.

At times, he wondered if he might, in fact, be a kind of monster himself. It was at least a relief to know he was not the only thinking, reasoning “beast” among the heads of house.

The supreme loneliness of one who stands at the peak pervaded his life. And so, perhaps, he had harbored, quietly and without knowing, a hope — for a platinum‑haired, blue‑eyed savior to appear.

And when that savior finally appeared before his eyes, it was Nikiel Ossinis — a man whose looseness below the waist could be likened to the demon of syphilis.

The disappointment he had felt, then, was crushing.

Until that moment, Yullan hadn’t even realized he’d been holding such hope for the platinum‑haired and blue‑eyed. He had thought it natural to be utterly alone in the world — and yet the immediate sense of letdown on seeing Nikiel was itself a kind of despair.

That he had placed “expectations” on someone? That the Black Wolf of the North — the monstrous beast of Iteren, who thought solitary life his nature — had in truth been wishing for salvation?

It was the day the four heads gathered for the first time to offer their blessing to Nikiel Ossinis, the royal child of platinum hair and blue eyes who had passed his fifteenth year.

Born deep within the palace, Nikiel had never shown his face in public save one occasion — when, at a year old, he left the Prince’s Palace to receive baptism from the Pontiff.

“My son is somewhat delicate of health.”

For the first time in history, all four houses had at once produced heirs afflicted with the Dragon’s Curse.

The councils of each feared losing Nikiel to another house, and so each vied to send the most precious tribute to the capital for their head of house to present.

At the time, even the youngest, Jikari, had reached his majority.

The faces of the heads gathered in the capital for their supposed “deliverance” were drawn and sunken.

It seemed that all of them felt, in equal parts, half relief and half despair — relief, mocking themselves for being so weak as to yearn for quick salvation from that young royal, and dread at the thought of becoming the slave of his greedy fool of a father.

Clad in the uniform of the Ossinis Royal Armed Forces, they had stood, bearing faces full of mixed longing and regret, waiting their turn to give the blessing to the royal child.

And when the king’s young son finally appeared, they had all thought the same thing:

That is a counterfeit. A flower in form, but without fragrance.

None could say why — but they knew at once. Despite the platinum hair and blue eyes, that young royal had no power to save them.

From that moment, Yullan had never again expected anything of Nikiel. He’d never again thought there was any hope of freeing his cursed life.

He saw the boy as nothing more than a pitiful life marked to end someday with his guts torn out by a monster, following the fate of both his father and his half‑brother before him.

Until then, his life was just the mechanical discharge of duty: holding the witless king in check long enough to delay Ossinis’ collapse, and cutting down the verminous beasts whose numbers grew each year, for the sake of common folk suffering under monsters.

It was a life of duties alone, and the ennui of it all.

But lately… Nikiel seemed different.

More precisely, it was from the time of the rumor that he had lost his memory encountering a demon.

One day, Nikiel had collapsed and fallen unconscious. He roused only to vex his father, then, upon finally coming to his senses, declared that he had lost his memory.

The foolish, greedy king seemed wary of spreading the tale that his holy‑powered son had faced a demon and been thus stricken — but the rumor had already spread underground.

How could it not? For Nikiel — that slut — to forswear both front and back‑door indulgences, cloister himself in the palace for two months, and do nothing but read books was such an astounding thing that to have no rumors would have been stranger.

And two months was the length of the summer ball season in the capital.

The party‑goer, the libertine, the peacocking seducer of noble ladies and young lords alike — shutting himself in to read?

Unless he’d suffered amnesia from a brush with a demon — or quite literally died and been reborn — it was impossible.

When Yullan met him and saw for himself, he had no doubt the rumor was true.

“You are neither my vassal nor loyal to me; next time you address me before the king, refer to yourself not as ‘your loyal servant’ but simply as ‘so-and-so.’ Say, ‘I, so‑and‑so, speak to Your Highness,’ and then I’ll consider hearing your plea.”

Hearing those words from Nikiel had confirmed for him that it was no mere rumor.

So crisp a pronunciation. Eyes so clear. The two blue orbs that had always looked like the glazed‑over stare of a dead fish on an open‑air stall — whether dulled by intoxicants, narcotics, or drink — were now a piercing blue, as clear as ice, gazing up at him.

He could not forget that sight.

Indeed — he could not. And no one knew better than Yullan, the beast who had no interest in humankind. For him, humans were the same as rabbits kept in a hutch — perhaps rabbits with developed ears and tongues for speech, but a different species all the same.

¹ Anona nillang: A fictional flower in this setting, whose oil is described as having aphrodisiac properties.