Chapter 282: Silence before a storm (5)

With Zombie's life signature detection, it wasn't too difficult to find and get to Mary.

The surprising thing was who she came with.

A tall young man with tanned skin and long wild black hair with an orange glint to it was the one to wave at the master-servant pair as soon as he spotted them coming towards them - as if he was already familiar with them even though it was definitely the first time that Cranberry has ever seen him.

She didn't remember his face from multiple hours spent on memorizing the pictures of every single member of the important nobility that she was put through when she was a child, so this man shouldn't have been anyone that important...

Or should he?

"Young lady Cranberry, big brother Zombie!"

The tanned young man bowed towards the red-haired girl and the blue-skinned corpse puppet with extreme satisfaction as if he wished to have done that all along.

"Hello... nice to meet you, sir...?"

Cranberry furrowed her brows at the strange familiarity that the unknown young man had allowed himself for and glanced at Mary, expecting her to introduce her companion or remind him to introduce himself.

"We... we better find some place we could talk in peace."

But instead of that, Mary went ahead and hurriedly asked the master-servant pair while holding onto the muscular hand of her companion.

"Sure..."

Cranberry nodded with suspicion but still ended up leading the two to the most suitable place - back to the exquisite chambers usually meant for the foreign royalties.

So, basically, Zombie and Cranberry had returned right where they left just a couple of minutes before.

As soon as the door closed once the four of them were inside, the blue undead left the red-haired girl's side and approached the tanned young man, raised his hands, and...!

"Who's a good boy...?!"

Zombie grinned wildly and started patting the tall man's head.

"Z-Zombie what in the world are you doing?!"

Cranberry momentarily lost her cool, taken aback by the shocking behavior of her eternal servant. And looked between the embarrassed Mary and the overjoyed tanned young man...

Wait...!

Overjoyed...?!

"Hehehe! I knew that big brother Zombie would recognize me!"

The tanned man exclaimed happily, lowering his head to provide the best headpat-able angle possible.

"Recognize...?!"

Cranberry shook her head as if she thought that she misheard what the young man has said and turned right towards the increasingly red brown-haired heroine.

"...I seriously hoped it wouldn't play out like this..."

Mary sighed heavily, covering her face, shielding herself from Cranberry's confused eyes.

"Cranberry, don't you recognize him? It's Arion! The cute doggie, Arion!"

"...!"

Zombie looked at the red-haired girl and declared happily without stopping the affectionate patting.

"Arion?! But Arion was a wolf, ri...?! Ha?! So this was what that quest was about?! You needed ten corpses of the humanoid titan-class monsters to make yourself a boyfriend?!"

Cranberry shook her head in disbelief and waved her head at the human Arion and stared at the brown-haired girl, demanding an explanation.

"F-first of all, I would want to point out that Arion wasn't originally a monster, he was a human, a member of the Gluttony family, who was born with something called a curse of starvation that has forcibly turned him into a wolf when he was eight years old. He got chased away from his family since children with the curse of starvation were always said to bring bad luck for the rest of the Gluttony family and were also considered as weaklings that lost to the sin of gluttony. Normally the children who got turned into wolves would die within a year but Arion happened to survive a lot longer because he was in fact very strong for his age. Then he ended up coming across the group of adventurers hired by my father to look for a suitable monster for my first kill during the first kill part and... well, you apparently know the rest."

Mary explained everything so fast that she almost forgot to catch a breath and almost fainted.

Still, whether or not she explained everything properly, she did earn a judgemental look from the red-haired girl.

"So... you're telling me that this is your kink, huh..."

Cranberry looked at the handsome, well-dressed, tanned young man who was happily getting patted by the blue undead and then back at the crimson-red Mary.

"Hey! I don't want to hear that from you! At least Arion is alive, okay?! Ah, no offense, Zombie, I don't have anything against you being an undead!"

The brown-haired heroine scoffed at the red-haired villainess before hurriedly facing towards the blue undead and bowing down apologetically.

"Huh? Oh, sure, yeah, no offense taken... who's a good boy?!"

Zombie only glanced at her once before returning to the overly excited young man who had clearly spend way too many years as a wolf.

"..."

"..."

The two girls looked at each other...

""...haa...""

Before sighing in perfect sync.

"Alright, so Arion is actually a human and a member of the Gluttony family. Haa... surprising, but still, I guess this is what you meant about not choosing a harem route - you had your choice by your side the whole time. I respect the dedication."

Cranberry smirked and nodded to the brown-haired girl.

"Don't even get me started, at first I was kind of against it, you probably can understand why. And I even tried to go for the royal prince since he's cute too, but thanks to you his route got locked up for me extremely fast. But I guess that all well that ends well."

Mary shrugged her shoulders and pointed at the tanned man who looked like he was just a single bad decision away from going on all four and start barking as when he was still a monster.

"Zombie. That's enough. Arion is a human, not a wolf anymore, you can't act like that in public."

Cranberry pointed out to her blue undead, which earned her a grumpy look from the very same undead.

"...!"

...but he has also stopped moving his hands which caused Arion to get visibly sad even though he no longer had big ears or tail that would usually communicate his mood much better than human expressions.

"His life signature didn't change at all. It's still Arion that I know."

Zombie pouted but took a respectful step back from the presented man.

"Haa... I wonder if this changes anything..."

Cranberry tiled her head and murmured to herself, carefully observing the heroine and the wolf who got reverted back into a human.

*knock* *knock*

"Cranberry? Zombie? Can I enter? I want to talk about what we have planned for the... oh! Hello there!"

After a quick knock, Claymore, already dressed up in a beautiful white ballroom dress, sneaked up inside the chamber and was stunned by the appearance of the unknown tanned man right in her face.

"No, no, no! Not you! I'm not giving Arion to anyone!"

As soon as Mary saw Claymore, she paled and hurriedly walked in front of her to cover the tanned man from the avatar of lust's sight with her own body.

"Haa... Mary, relax. Claymore is a friend."

Cranberry breathe out and waved her hand dismissively.