“With this, cut open this part of me and take it.”

Seeing Yuphe speak through his tears, Jella’s soul was horrified.

‘That, that crazy fool! What is he saying now!’

But her shock didn’t reach Yuphe. This was because she had deliberately shut down her consciousness and was observing her body’s movements.

Earlier, when she felt a headache along with the strange voice.

‘Who is playing these tricks on my body, and with what intention?’

The strange voice that had been clinging to her mind. It seemed she needed to resolve this first.

After frowning and contemplating for a moment, Jella deliberately loosened her consciousness.

Immediately, her body began to move as if bewitched, swept along by the voice.

‘Huh…?’

The moment her body moved according to the voice, an intense pleasure coursed through her blood vessels. Excited by this, her flesh became completely subordinate to the voice.

‘What, what is this?’

Clearly her consciousness was awake, yet it felt like she had lost control of her body.

Jella felt momentary bewilderment but calmly observed the situation.

However, as time passed, the extreme pleasure flowing through her blood vessels gradually numbed her mind. It felt like floating in the air, as if drunk.

What suddenly brought her back to her senses was Yuphe, who was nibbling on her flesh wherever he could see it.

‘This, this, this wicked mouth!’

True to his original character as ‘#MouthKarmaMan’.

His skill at biting flesh with his mouth was quite extraordinary.

Her toes kept curling involuntarily, but Jella couldn’t push him away.

Because the voice in her head was telling her not to push him away and to use this momentum to retrieve the heart.

‘Heart…’

Jella stared blankly at Yuphe’s chest where his heart was beating.

The voice had been shouting ‘heart’ all this time.

Even in her hazy mind, that one word came through clearly.

‘What exactly is this ‘heart,’ and why do I need to retrieve it?’

Niel had said the heart was already used.

‘Used? If it’s not the heart in a person’s body that I’m thinking of, is there another heart?’

She also remembered what Yuria had said before.

She had said that Yuphe was collecting hearts here and there.

She had thought it was crazy talk, wondering what kind of hobby involved collecting hearts…

‘Could it be that was actually true?’

It seemed that what was clinging to her now was the owner of the heart that Yuphe had stolen. Above all, she could feel both strong hostility and fear toward Yuphe.

‘This, this lunatic…! Why did you steal someone else’s heart and get me involved?’

Now her head was throbbing for a different reason.

Just a while ago, he had shocked her by saying he killed a god…

And in the midst of that, with slightly crazed eyes, he was confessing his feelings for her.

“I like you, Jella. I like you so much.”

“……”

His once intelligent eyes were unfocused, and he didn’t look well at all.

Then came the moment when a strange power was imbued in the voice flowing through her lips.

‘Huh? Just now, a suspicious power…’

Yuphe’s eyes, which were already half-crazed, became turbidly clouded and instantly compliant.

And finally…

“When you’ve loved me a little more and are about to get tired of me. Then, with this.”

“…?”

“With this, cut open this part of me and take it.”

He ended up saying such crazy things.

As Jella was internally exclaiming ‘That, that crazy fool!’

-Finally!

Suddenly, she felt a joy boiling up from somewhere inside her body.

‘Huh?’

Jella blinked with a start.

She could feel a particularly strong emotion from somewhere in her body. She seemed to have a vague idea of where the suspicious thing clinging to her mind was hiding.

‘If I stimulate it a little more, I think I can find it and drive it out of my body…’

It was then.

Plop.

Jella’s body collapsed onto the soft bed.

‘Huh?’

Suddenly a large shadow fell. Yuphe climbed on top of her and asked.

“Can I touch you?”

“…?”

Touch? Where?

Facing the bewildered Jella, Yuphe smiled softly and whispered in a relaxed voice.

“I want to try to delay the moment when you get tired of me, even if just a little.”

“……”

In that moment, his n*ked body, which she hadn’t properly noticed or had deliberately ignored until now, caught her eye.

The broad shoulders hidden under his priest’s robe, the thick chest muscles like those of knights, and in contrast, the thin waist and firm thighs that had been brushing against her with just a piece of cloth between them…

Jella’s breath caught in her throat as she stared at it quietly.

‘No, what kind of clergyman… why does he have such a perfect body…’

He wasn’t a knight who trained daily, and he didn’t seem to particularly exercise his body, but even for a protagonist of the original work, this was cheating.

Noticing her red eyes wandering aimlessly, Yuphe smiled brightly and caressed her cheek.

“Good Yuphe is giving you his heart too. Please allow me, Jella. Yes?”

“…Yes.”

Jella’s lips involuntarily let out words of consent to Yuphe’s fox-like seduction.

***

After witnessing Niel’s proposal and fleeing the scene, Cail shut himself in his hotel room.

Niel had made a grand proposal that had the entire capital buzzing.

However, Cail deliberately cut himself off from news about what happened afterward.

Had she accepted that man’s proposal?

He was curious, but at the same time, he didn’t want to know.

Whether she had accepted that man or not. It was a matter he dared not step into.

The moment he thought this, his emotions surged, and his heart and blood vessels constricted painfully with the fluctuating demonic energy.

“Hnngh…”

Lying on the bed and sweating coldly, Cail roughly tore open the front of the shirt he was wearing.

His exposed chest was stained black with demonic energy.

It was the price for ignoring Helasio’s repeated warnings about his unstable physical condition.

But at that moment, he couldn’t help but leave that place.

Even as he gritted his teeth against the pain squeezing his heart and barely regulated his breathing, Cail didn’t regret what he had done.

Seeing her receive a proposal from that man was far more painful than this mere physical suffering.

“Ha, haah…”

Only after a long while did the pain subside.

Cail slowly closed and opened his eyes.

A dark shadow fell over his somewhat rough face.

This pain was the price for reviving her, and it was the misfortune he rightfully deserved.

Cail remembered.

All this misfortune began when the most worthless and filthy slave fell in love with the most noble woman in the world.

As a child, Cail grew up moving between illegal slave markets secretly spread across the continent.

The owner of the slave trader who bound him was a very vicious person.

From a young age, he was frequently beaten, starved, and collapsed.

Then, around the time he passed through adolescence.

Noticing his outstanding appearance and physique that had gradually become handsome as he grew, the slave trader’s owner wanted to sell him for a different purpose.

Cail, who had been sold to a wealthy noble lady, caused a huge commotion and ran away, only to be caught, beaten severely, and returned to the slave trader.

The angry slave trader’s owner locked Cail in a filthy iron cage and whipped him.

He was given no food or water, and naturally, his wounds were not treated.

The wounds became infected, festered, and he developed a fever.

But no one took care of him.

It was so painful.

Painful and agonizing.

He thought he would rather die.

Suffering from a fever for a long time, Cail lay face down in the dirty mud, waiting for his breath to end.

He just waited for this pain to end.

Gradually his eyes closed and his ears became dull.

He seemed to hear commotion from afar.

But as his consciousness faded, he couldn’t remember anything beyond that.

He seemed to feel a soft touch amid his hazy consciousness.

Later, when he regained consciousness.

He opened his eyes in a clean room he had never seen before.

Without knowing that place was the imperial palace, he was led away by servants as soon as he opened his eyes.

The servants grumbled as they scrubbed Cail’s body.

“Oh my, now I’m even bathing a dirty slave boy. Why did the Imperial Princess bring in something like this.”

“The Imperial Princess’s whims are famous, aren’t they? Anyway, once the Imperial Princess gets tired of him, he’ll be thrown away again, I’m sure.”

While the servants snickered and exchanged malicious words among themselves, Cail silently assessed his situation.

It seemed he had been sold again.

The moment he recalled the woman who had groped his body at the noble’s mansion where he had been sold before, Cail unconsciously chewed the inside of his mouth.

It was a terrible memory. He just wanted to run away from this place immediately.

But thinking about what had happened when he fled from the noble woman who had bought him, his body shrank with learned fear.

He hated the idea of selling his body to a strange woman more than death…

Last time, he had been too ignorant. He had tried to escape in broad daylight in front of everyone, so he was quickly caught.

But this time would be different.

He would do the hateful act, and when the Imperial Princess let her guard down, he would break her neck.

Break the Imperial Princess’s neck and escape under the cover of darkness.

Of course, the plan to kill the Imperial Princess and escape was also an ignorant one, but Cail, who had grown up in a slave market his entire life, did not know how impossible it was.

With the sole intention of killing the Imperial Princess, his blue eyes flashed eerily, hiding murderous intent at his fingertips.

‘Perhaps I was being punished.’

After Jella died, whenever Cail recalled their first meeting, his heart always ached softly.

‘Perhaps I received delayed punishment for the sin of once harboring murderous thoughts toward her.’

In the end, just like the malicious intent on the day he first met her, didn’t he kill her with these hands?

Cail stared painfully at his palm and then clenched it into a fist.

At this moment, a knock sounded from outside.

Cail frowned and got up.

“What is it?”

When he opened the door, the hotel manager and a knight from the imperial palace were waiting for him.

“I apologize for the late hour, Lord Cail. His Majesty insisted that this letter be delivered to you…”

Cail carelessly scanned through Niel’s letter handed to him by the knight.

“……”

In an instant, the paper in his hand was crumpled with a crunch.