Late at night, Midgard sat alone on the roof of the werewolf settlement, staring up at the crescent moon as she took slow, absent sips of her drink.
Not far away, laughter drifted through the night. A group of werewolf wizards who had just come off watch were gathered together, eating meat and drinking, relaxed and genuinely happy.
In the past, a scene like this would have been almost impossible. Even the better-off werewolves under Fenrir's command struggled to manage three full meals a day.
If they couldn't even fill their stomachs, how could they afford to drink and eat meat on the regular?
Back then, if werewolves wanted meat or alcohol, they had to steal it or take it by force. Outside of that kind of dirty work, they had almost no way to gain any resources from society.
No one was willing to hire a werewolf. With no legitimate work, there was no legitimate money, and without money they could only steal and rob. Then all the wizards hated them even more.
It was a vicious cycle. The more they couldn't find work, the more they had to steal. The more they stole, the more people despised them, and the harder it became to find work at all.
And then there was the werewolf curse itself. Any wizard who saw a werewolf instinctively avoided them, as if standing too close for too long might make them turn as well.
But now things were different. Wizards still held their prejudice, but the werewolves' lives had improved.
And it had all started when she met Leonard.
It had only been a little over half a year, and Midgard could already see it. Both she and the werewolf community had changed under Leonard's influence.
His vision, his intelligence, his caution, the way he handled people… all of it had shaped Midgard, and shaped the werewolves.
That reckless boy who had barged into Knockturn Alley had brought the werewolves a new life.
What would things look like without Leonard?
Without Leonard's bold, reckless ideas, she never would have gotten the first pile of gold that let her start changing their lives.
Without Leonard, she would've let the werewolves sink into lazy, useless parasites, just eating and waiting to die.
Without Leonard, they wouldn't even have the Wolfsbane Potion. They'd have been trapped in transformations they couldn't change, burning themselves out again and again until the whole group fell apart.
"No… without Leonard, I probably would've been killed by Fenrir a long time ago," Midgard muttered with a snort of laughter.
She thought back to the second time she'd met Leonard. That was when she realized the seemingly harmless child she'd saved earlier that day was, in fact, a wolf cub that ate meat.
He wasn't a good person. Midgard was sure of it. And luckily for her, he wasn't. If he'd been one of those "good people," he never would've helped her, never would've helped the werewolves. In a wizard's eyes, werewolves and evil were practically the same thing.
Midgard couldn't stand "good people."
So-called good people always played at being generous when they were hurt, letting the other person off, even trying to persuade them to "be good."
As if anyone could be talked into being good or evil. Especially in Knockturn Alley. This wasn't some civilized street. It was a black forest cut off from the civilized world.
People here wore indifference like a disguise and armed themselves with sin. Good people didn't survive, because in this black forest's food chain, the good were at the very bottom.
Even Midgard, though she had her own sense of justice and believed werewolves shouldn't hurt others for fun…
Even she had killed people. More than a few.
So the moment she laid eyes on Leonard, she'd liked him. He'd felt… right.
Back then, she still thought of him as a child.
But his calm, his slyness, the cruelty he showed when he killed… again and again, he forced her to rethink him.
From an insignificant little brat, to a kid she needed to look after, to someone who looked after her.
Leonard only grew more dazzling, and Midgard found herself instinctively following his lead. In her eyes, Leonard wasn't a child at all. He was a reliable companion she could lean on.
Maybe more than a companion…
Midgard suddenly realized something was off about her feelings toward Leonard.
She remembered the time she and Leonard worked together to set up Fenrir, and later she changed clothes without thinking twice. She hadn't cared at all, but Leonard's face had gone red with embarrassment.
Midgard looked down at the mysterious bitterthorn on her arm. That had been the first time Leonard had shown her his secret.
"Damn it. He's just a little brat who hasn't even grown up yet," Midgard cursed with a laugh, then let out a long sigh.
Leonard was just a kid. He was only eleven.
And she was already over forty.
Her skin was still smooth, her face still young, her body still at its peak. Whether it was looks or figure, she was top-class.
But age still crushed you. It still made you feel small.
"Enough," Midgard muttered. "Why am I thinking so much? I'm this old and I'm still dreaming about an old tree blooming again?"
She drained her cup in one go, stood, and looked up at the crescent moon.
"Damn it. Why am I overthinking?" she said under her breath. "Right now, he needs me, and I need him. Isn't that enough?"
The crescent moon remained unchanged, its light spilling through a window into Damocles's potions laboratory.
At that moment, Damocles was pressing on, studying the properties of the two newly delivered Aconite Fruits. He intended to use them as the base for a new preliminary draft of a potion, then start testing.
The potency of those two Aconite Fruits was so astonishing that Damocles even felt the fruits alone might be enough to calm a werewolf.
But it still wasn't enough.
Damocles had long since stopped being satisfied with what the Wolfsbane Potion could do. He needed a completely new formula, a special potion that could truly solve the werewolf curse.
"The Wolfsbane Potion patent has already been sold," Damocles thought, excitement buzzing in his chest, "but this won't count as the Wolfsbane Potion. When it's done, whether I sell the patent again or apply for one directly… I'll make a fortune."
He didn't say any of it out loud.
He knew he was being watched. Not just by the werewolf wizard apprentice at his side, but by other werewolves outside the lab as well.
If he showed the slightest sign of something strange, Damocles couldn't guarantee what they might do.
He recorded line after line of medicinal properties in his notebook, and combinations of ingredients flowed steadily from his pen.
Then, in the middle of his focus, he heard a few odd sounds.
Damocles looked up and realized his werewolf apprentice had fallen asleep sprawled across the worktable at some point.
What is this? How can you fall asleep at your age?
Frowning, Damocles was about to wake him when he noticed a letter on the table in front of him, as if it had appeared out of nowhere.
A raven was drawn on the envelope. Its eyes were a vivid crimson, gleaming with a strange, mysterious light.
"…A raven?" Damocles's expression shifted.
...
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