The Tyrant's Terminally-Ill Childhood Friend (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 61

When the darkness replied, René gave a soft chuckle.

“The cat form, you mean. At first, you absolutely hated it.”

【I still hate it, so don’t even suggest it.】

The darkness knew well just how detestable René’s smile was. Even on days when the darkness had devoured dozens of people, or when René tossed screaming victims before it and trampled them underfoot, he never once lost that smile.

Yet there was something peculiar: none of his smiles ever seemed genuine. The darkness had seen many who took pleasure in crushing others. They felt immense ecstasy in slaughter and domination, treating their own kind as inferior beings.

But René Martinek, the darkness’s current contractor, never once appeared to enjoy it. And yet, paradoxically, he was the cruelest and most merciless among all the darkness’s contractors.

“Even now, sometimes when I’m briefly free of you, I remember—the day we first made our contract.”

Beneath the Martinek estate lay sealed the true form of Noctiluca. Heirs of the Martinek family, upon succession, received instruction regarding this and descended into the underground chamber to form a contract with Noctiluca’s true form. Thus, they inherited the shadow. René was no exception.

[The method of contract is very simple, young master. Just show ‘it’ within here what it desires. After all, ‘it’ can only see the world through a Martinek.]

The head of the Martinek family shows the darkness their entire life and allows it to dwell within their shadow. In return, the darkness shares its power with the head—but how much power is granted is decided solely by the darkness itself, as all terms of the transaction were set by the darkness.

From the moment they stepped onto the contract circle, the darkness and its contractor could communicate.

That day, the darkness saw clearly what kind of man stood before it—a man crueler and colder than anyone it had ever known, someone who felt no emotion no matter what he held, even if everything he owned burned to ash.

Yet, paradoxically, this man possessed an emotion the darkness had never encountered before.

For the darkness, which had lived for hundreds of years, discovering a completely new emotion was exceedingly rare, so it decided to readily bestow immense power upon its new contractor.

But one condition was attached. Normally, such a condition would never exist—but by then, it had already witnessed René’s entire life and every conversation he’d ever had.

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