Grayan moved his feet, following the woman with a little hesitation, making it look even more realistic and not like an act!

Seeing Grayan’s hesitating appearance, the woman tightly grabbed his hand. At the same time, she turned to look at Grayan and closed her eyes, smiling.

…What to say, rather than an action to reassure… It seemed like a warning not to run away.

‘Well… It seems impossible to run away at this point.’

I looked around through the butterflies’ eyesight. This place, after all, was a densely populated area with criminals. There would definitely be human traffickers and slavers.

A lost child would be an easy target, so it would be better to rely on the woman than to think about escape. If a ‘real’ child had been kidnapped, he would undoubtedly have thought so.

‘Perhaps that’s what she’s banking on, bringing him here. By the way, what’s this woman’s name?’

“Aha… I realized I didn’t introduce myself properly…”

…The woman spoke as soon as I thought of it. Her, her ears, is she a ghost? The woman, with her dark hair behind her ears, smiled and then said,

“My name is ‘Olivier’… You can simply call me ‘Liv.'”

“…”

Grayan looked at the woman’s face, glancing and nodding silently. This person’s acting is no joke. When dealing with me, I’m curious about which part is acting and which part is sincere…

‘I’ll have to ask him later.’

Before I knew it, Grayan and the woman had reached the iron door at the end of the dark alley.

The woman put her hand inside her shirt collar and pulled out a necklace made of silk thread. At the end of the necklace was a keyshaped pendant… no, it must be a real key.

The woman applied the key to the lock of the iron door.

Click

When the woman inserted the key and turned it to the side, the iron door opened. A creepy squeaking sound was heard.

The woman turned to Grayan and reached out again.

“Come, this is the place… Let’s go in quickly…?”

“……Yes.”

Grayan obediently replied and took the woman’s hand, passing the iron gate.

The woman pulled up the corners of her mouth, smiling, and after positioning Grayan on one side, closed the iron door again. Then she kindly spoke to Grayan.

“Wait here for a moment… I have to tell everyone that a new child has arrived… You’re a good boy, so you can wait, right…?”

This time too, Grayan nodded his head like a gentle fawn without fail.

The woman smiled satisfactorily and walked to the end of the alley. The woman, or ‘Olivier,’ tapped a few bricks with her hand, and suddenly the wall moved, revealing a dark underground passage.

‘Is this Ha× Po×?’

The rumbling, clattering sounds of the moving bricks soon subsided. The woman looked back at Grayan once more and then disappeared into the dark passage.

‘…Guys, can you follow her? If she’s hiding something, we need to dig it out.’

{Yeah, it feels bad, but we’ll try.}
A foul place indeed. I dislike it.

The smell of death has grown stronger.

I don’t want to go, but… I can’t refuse Gloria’s request.

A few of the butterflies perched on Grayan’s shoulders fluttered away into the dark corridor.

Grayan then looked at his shoulder and mouthed the words, ‘For now, stand by.’ He probably couldn’t hear me, but I softly muttered, “Understood.”

Next, I sat down properly, closed my eyes, and took deep breaths. I tried to concentrate my mind on the butterflies that had chased the woman.

Soon, I began to see what the butterflies saw.

‘…It’s terribly dark.’

The woman was slowly descending the stairs, down the corridor. The corridor was quite dark, lit only by very dim lanterns on the walls, but it seemed familiar to the woman.

‘What is this place used for?’

A while later, the woman reached the basement and opened an iron door. Bright light poured out from behind the door.

‘…!’

Beyond the door lay a very bright corridor. It was so bright that it was hard to believe it was the same place that had been reached by passing through such a gloomy corridor.

And it was very clean. As if it were swept and polished every day…

“Sister Olivier, welcome back.”

Then someone spoke to the woman. The woman, Olivier, turned to the speaker with a wide smile. …It was a smile filled with complete sincerity, unlike when she had kidnapped Grayan.

Pure joy, and trust.

“Brother Cain, I happened to find a lost beastchild and brought it here… It’s waiting outside.”

‘Sister? Brother?’

Those titles seemed to be something that would be used by a religious organization. So, was this really a cult…?

“Excellent, Sister Olivier. Thanks to you, our humanity is closer to salvation. I will prepare to receive the child, so please go and bring it.”

“Yes, Brother Cain. Working for the ‘Human Salvation Society’ is always a great joy to me…”

‘Wait a minute… The Human Salvation Society?’

Is the real name of this cult ‘The Human Salvation Society’? Human… as in human world. The question is whether the term ‘human’ here includes ‘beastpeople’ as well.

‘If human means excluding beastpeople…’

I observed the man named Cain and Olivier closely through the eyes of the butterflies. …Hmm, I couldn’t tell just by looking. Whether these people were ‘ordinary humans,’ or ‘beastpeople.’

‘Do the butterflies sense anything? Grayan would have detected it right away with his superior wolfbeast senses… but there’s no way to communicate with him now.’

That’s when it happened. One of the butterflies quickly read my mind and informed me.

{These two are not beastpeople, they are just humans!}

Immediately after, another butterfly chimed in.

{And both of them feel bad. Very bad.}