Winding back time an hour or two, before the sky had even lightened...
Inside the castle of the Grote family, the candles in the room had long been extinguished, leaving only the torches hanging in the corridors to provide dim illumination for the servants busy with their early morning duties.
“Ugh—”
Mr. Moni Grote, who had been resting peacefully, suddenly snapped his eyes open. He propped himself up against the golden-thread pillow at the head of the bed, clutching his head.
A sudden surge of pain in his brain quickly roused him from his groggy slumber.
Along with this pain, his temples throbbed intermittently, and terrifying blue veins bulged at the corners of his forehead, as if parasitic roundworms were writhing under his skin.
“Damned brain worm... Why is it flaring up in the middle of the night?”
Evidently, young Mr. Grote knew full well the cause of this torment.
Because at his own entreaty, a certain existence had implanted an organism called a “brain worm” inside his body.
This creature allowed him, much like a queen in a beehive, to command undead creatures that subsisted on negative psionic energy.
The price, however, was that whenever the undead under his control died in large numbers, the brain worm would thrash inside his mind due to psionic backlash, causing him entire nights of sleepless agony.
Yet this kind of backlash was not common.
He had possessed the brain worm for two or three years now, but the backlash phenomenon had only begun appearing recently.
He wasn't sure when it started—perhaps a month ago, or maybe a bit longer.
New undead outside his control would occasionally appear in the cemetery, battling the old undead he had personally raised, which triggered the backlash.
Furthermore, these new undead were completely immune to the brain worm's control.
For this reason, Moni Grote had posted a commission at the Adventurers' Guild, hoping someone would destroy these new undead while also investigating the cause of their appearance.
However, those useless adventurers hadn't figured out anything after a month or two.
Moni had no choice but to order the undead under his control—mostly skeletons and skeleton soldiers—to hide underground and lurk in secret.
By reducing the deaths of his old undead through this tactic, he managed to lessen the backlash.
Ever since taking these evasive measures, Moni hadn't suffered insomnia for a long time.
Yet today, he had suddenly suffered an unprecedented backlash, far exceeding any previous occurrence in severity.
An ill omen stirred in Moni's heart.
However, the agonizing pain left him no room to dwell on it.
He scrambled to the edge of the bed and hurriedly opened the wooden cabinet beside him.
The medicine—or rather, food—he had prepared long ago lay quietly inside the cabinet.
It was a glowing greenish-blue mushroom.
Moni didn't bother having anyone cook it and stuffed it directly into his mouth.
After a couple of chews, the mushroom juice burst in his mouth alongside the flesh, releasing a delicious flavor.
After swallowing the glowing mushroom, the pained expression on Moni's face gradually smoothed out.
“Father...”
It felt as though he had returned to the fond memories of his childhood.
His father was still a hereditary Baron, and he was his father's only child, a noble of the future.
However, this bliss did not last long.
Meaningless chemical euphoria soon hijacked his consciousness, causing saliva to drool from the corner of his mouth as he slumped onto the bed like a senile patient.
This state persisted for a long while before Moni slowly woke up and regained awareness.
The toxin remaining in his body from the mushroom left his limbs aching slightly and twitching involuntarily, but compared to the agonizing pain of the brain worm's backlash, this was nothing.
Moni looked toward the nightstand; it was empty. The last piece of dried glowing mushroom was gone.
He needed to buy another batch.
And...
Moni recalled the adventurers who had visited the castle during the day.
They were also looking for moon dust fungus.
Perhaps they had glowing mushrooms on them as well...
At the thought of those delusion-filled adventurers, Moni sneered.
If he had something like moon dust fungus in his possession, he would have long since used it to brew Moon Potion so he could become a true spellcaster that much sooner. How could it ever fall into the hands of those brats?
Woken in the middle of the night, Moni had no desire to sleep any longer, so he simply began checking his account books.
Ever since taking over the two public cemeteries two or three years ago, the wealth in his family vault had grown steadily.
After earning money for a bit longer, he would be able to buy moon dust fungus from the elves.
When the time came to refine it into Moon Potion, he would become a noble Mage and restore his family's glory!
Everything his father had lost in the war, he would reclaim in full!
Moni immersed himself in his hopes for the future.
By this time, dawn was breaking.
Footsteps in the corridor gradually grew more frequent, until one pair stopped right outside his bedroom door.
Knock, knock—
“Young Master, those adventurers have returned.”
Oh?
Moni raised an eyebrow. He had just been wondering if those adventurers had any glowing mushrooms on them, and here they were, delivering themselves to his door.
Two young, attractive maidservants entered, thoughtfully wiping the cold sweat from Moni's body before dressing him in clean clothes.
Dressed immaculately, Moni Grote looked at himself in the full-length mirror. In the prime of his life and full of high spirits, not a trace remained of his disgraceful state while under the influence of the glowing mushroom.
Hands clasped behind his back, he strode out of the room. The servants in the corridor bowed respectfully as he passed.
Moni paid the servants no mind and walked straight toward the grand hall.
The butler followed right behind him, leaning in to whisper in his ear, “Young Master, the rogue sent to monitor those adventurers hasn't returned yet. Something might have happened.”
Moni frowned.
The unease that had temporarily vanished after consuming the glowing mushroom surged back up.
Calculating the time, the duration those adventurers spent completing the commission in the Graveyard seemed to coincide precisely with the timing of the brain worm's backlash.
Moni felt increasingly uneasy, and his footsteps quickened.
Striding rapidly through the covered walkway, Moni arrived before the doors of the reception hall. The guards pushed open the heavy doors for him.
Taking in the sight inside the hall, Moni was suddenly hit by wave after wave of dizziness—
Those few adventurers sat right there, conversing in low voices.
And on the table in front of them rested a cloth bag, filled to the brim with skeleton jawbones!
Just judging from the open mouth of the bag, there were roughly dozens of jawbones inside!
My skeletons...
Moni's vision went dark, and his legs turned weak.
Weren't none of those three adventurers supposed to be class-holders?
How did they clean out all the monsters in the Public Cemetery after just one turn around the grounds?!
Is this the kind of power apprentices should have?!
Besides, weren't his skeletons supposed to be hiding underground?!
Did those adventurers dig up the entire cemetery?!
Those skeletons were cultivated for the entity that had implanted the brain worm into him. If That Entity found out that all these skeletons had been slain by adventurers...
Moni didn't dare think any further.
Rate on N.U.
