I don’t remember giving my consent for him to marry… In the absence of our parents, even if we are twins, I am the oldest one! I am the legal guardian! What whore dared to get into his pants whilst my back was turned?!

  Wait a minute… A tall monsterfolk woman with draconic attributes?

  …This little bastard. He sent his woman after me?

  Not only do I find out that, as it turns out, the dragon bitch and my treacherous brother share the same bed, but that the limping fuck is also such a damned coward that we would send his, then, future wife to try and murder me? Me?! His own sister?!

  There were several things wrong about this whole situation. I always knew that my brother was about as masculine as a little boy trying on his mother’s dresses… But that was a bit much, now the Nebulo name–My name–Would forever be associated with a guy who is into getting dominated by monsterfolk women.

  But anyway… As shocked as I was by hearing about my brother getting married, which in itself was shocking, what sort of woman would go for this guy? Even if he was filthy rich, there were limits.

  What was most surprising was hearing about the supposed achievement of ‘Leton Nebulo’. If I had to guess, after getting his hands on the steel of the automatons, which I gathered for him, he somehow managed to do whatever it was that he had cooked up inside of head. Revolutionising the entertainment industry with new and improved automatons, using that success to start and complete many other projects by seemingly using the same method he used to create the new entertainment automatons.

  Before I became what I now am, entertainment automatons were nothing more than a slight novelty that was doomed to fall out of grace and be forgotten. Somehow, Leton found a way to make these steel screechers so good and effective that the concept instead spread beyond the borders of the nation and became pretty much a continent-wide phenomenon.

  Now, what Harvey’s Diner had attempted to pioneer was everywhere, but the architect of that success was instead the one who had robbed that very same diner… A robber, and also the sort to not only abandon his sister, but attempt to murder with assassins afterwards.

  Truly the lowest of the low. Without me around, he really went down a bad path… Bastard couldn’t be content with being little bourgeoisie for the rest of his life, he just had to aim higher and get a genuine noble title and fame across many nations.

  What an utter filth.

  Good thing I got myself new siblings to replace him. They are much cuter, and don’t stab me in the back despite me doing my best for them.

  I will tear you limb from limb you little-

  “Miss… Nebulo…” Annie phased into the room through the ceiling, and basically leapt at me to whisper something.

  We had unwanted guests. Again.

  However, what my speedster was describing was far more worrying than usual. In fact, the self-proclaimed deity that I beat with ease wasn’t even nearly comparable to what was currently storming into my territory, stepping onto my lawn…

  There seems to be two groups, the description of one told me that it was the knight establishment, which I had already grown a bit familiar with thanks to the searches they had performed not long ago.

  And the other… I recognised the banner design Annie described to me. A dragon climbing atop a big V. This was the symbol of the Vomhargon family.

  …Did they all figure out that I was to blame and decided to join hands? Come on, I didn’t even do anything that bad! I am being discriminated against! Killing and eating people is in my nature! Are they the sort of people who think that carnivores are immoral creatures?!

  I called back my assistants and most of my lesser servants. The troops of the noble family seemed to have quite a lot of mages, and I didn’t want to lose a whole chunk of my arduous efforts because of this.

  There are many people up there, and according to what I am being told, some of them look strong… Like, I didn’t need to see a two meter tall knight in black, reflective armour with a dark red feather atop his head in action to know that he was definitely going to beat the shit out of me.

  Oh… My poor rural legend… Why do people always ruin what I am trying to do? Am I not allowed to settle down and enjoy myself for a little while? This is unfair persecution.

  Mara, they are certainly going to try and dig you out or otherwise invade the underground… It would be best to get out of here as soon as possible

  I was tempted to try and take out some of them by using the tunnels to my advantage, but I could tell that both the knight establishment and the Vomhargons had brought some troublesome people with them. The chances of me running into one of those and getting torn apart were way too high.

  Well… I could use my Molten Form and about nine per cent of my stocked up steel to try and mess them up… And if I did this when they attempted to intrude into my underground, I should be able to completely fill a bunch of tunnels with molten steel, and then, I am sure even a powerful knight wouldn’t have many ways to fight back…

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  Mmh… It was an alluring idea, but my instincts were telling me to lay these foolish ambitions to rest. Either I was being paranoid, or there were actually people dangerous enough to beat me down even whilst in my Molten Form.

  I activated all of the music boxes and voice boxes dispersed throughout the forest at full volume. I didn’t bother infusing any negative emotions into them, simply using their basic capabilities to confuse and distract them for a little while as I crawled through one of my escape tunnels.

  I just wasn’t allowed to have nice things, I suppose. There must be some cosmic force out there whose sole purpose is to spoil my fun… Well guess what, I’ll just go back to having a little murder tour.

  If I won’t be left alone when I am being–Mostly–Calm, then I guess I’ll just go and start slaughtering and raiding stuff to speed things up… Surely, there are a few more curse slingers like… Like… Crap, what was his name again?

  Argantis

  Right, there should be more people like him that can provide me with sustenance in the form of curses and spirits. If not, then I’ll just settle with eating flesh, steel, and trying to unlock more forms for myself.

  Who knows, maybe I’ll get my hands on nifty upgrades and go through a new evolution this way…

  Damnit. I had something going on here.

  That’s it. I am going to traumatise some–Wait a second.

  The ground was starting to shake, the rumbling coming from somewhere behind me. It felt like an earthquake, only that it somehow felt as though there were two distinct sources of the trembling.

  And somehow it felt like the tunnel I was in was beginning to widen…

  Did they get earth mages to crack open my underground?!

  I began crawling away faster, putting my thoughts on hold as I focused on getting the hell away. Thankfully, the escape tunnels I had prepared in advance had been well-made, and made a straight line, allowing me to just barrel ahead without having to worry about a thing.

  And being an expert at tunnel digging, I had naturally not been lazy. I ran through the tunnels for two hours before arriving at the exit point, which simply required me to lift a big rock out of the way, leading directly next to the edge of a cliff, at the bottom of which was a torrential river.

  A nice idyllic spot that I had picked not only because it was pretty, but also because it could serve as an extra layer of security, just in case.

  Let’s see things on the bright side, I don’t need a precise spot to build my legend… I could always make myself a specific modus operandi and have people all over the place talk about me. Anyway, I already collected a fair bit of negative emotions, as well as negative energy from my time in Louwoods, I could go a while without a good source.

  Now that I know that my dear brother is at the head of several successful businesses, I think it only stands to reason that I dedicate some of my focus toward absolutely tearing some of them down… And since he is the king of entertainment automatons, this should be a worthwhile source of steel.

  Sounds good to me. I just need to figure out where to go from there.

  “Ah… You’ve finally come crawling back to the surface? Oh woah, you're a real ugly thing, you know?”

  A voice rang from behind me, somewhat muffled by a steel helm.

  Somehow, a knight had tracked me down all the way through my escape tunnel.

  It was a peculiar knight at that, the man’s armour seemed rather tight-fitting as he appeared lean even whilst fully geared-up. His visor was shaped like a bird’s beak, and the weapon he carried was anything but common, in fact, it looked highly unwieldy and ineffective.

  It was like a handheld sickle with a very rounded blade, but much larger and put atop a long handle, turning it into a polearm.

  I had been going full speed underground, and this guy didn’t even sound the slightest bit out of breath.

  “...D–Do you have business with me–me?”

  The knight tiled his head, presumably not having expected the atrocious steel abomination to actually talk back.

  “Of course I do. You’re the one who killed Young Master Milkard, did you not?”

  “W–Who?”

  I fully flexed my ability to lie. I was quite proud of it, I had always been more convincing when spreading falsehood than when speaking the truth for some reason.

  “Oh? So, you, the monster who just so happened to flee the area we were searching, isn’t the one who slaughtered a whole group of knight trainees, including a young noble?”

  He didn’t sound very convinced.

  “M–Me? I would never. I merely left because the noise and shaking was a dis–disturbance”

  “Right. You do realise that I see you getting closer to the edge of the cliff?”

  I spewed flammable fuel at the knight as I let myself fall backwards. I did not see it happen, but it quickly became apparent that the knight moved, as my body was split into several pieces, a single slash going right through my right shoulder, and following a diagonal direction down to the left of my hips.

  My head crashed into a rock protruding out of the turbulent waters, bouncing off after taking a chunk out of the stone.

  I disappeared into the river, activating my ‘Trickster’s XP Tank’ not long after, I had no idea if the knight was fooled or not, but using my left arm which was still attached to the portion of my chest, I secured a hold upon a rock underwater, keeping still as the other pieces of my body were swept away without me being able to do anything about them.

  The pain is so… Sweet, but I am still seething. My legs! I lost my legs! The chances of me recovering them were pretty slim, not to mention that they were getting further and further away whilst being constantly battered against rocks.

  If I couldn’t recover them, I would have to crawl around with just one arm for a long while before being able to regenerate what I lost.

  I see how it is… This guy must have wanted to get on my hit list as well. Fine. Very well.

  I’ll slaughter your entire bloodline, just you wait!