“Wake up.”
Spikes jutting out along its back, oversized teeth, a massive physique.
A monster twice the size of a grown man slowly floated up into the air.
Blood gushed furiously from the place where its neck had been cleanly severed.
“M-My Lord…?”
Just as the rough hide brushed against Fel’s fingertips, a sudden vortex swallowed them up.
Amidst a wind fierce enough that flying far away would not have been strange, Fel still stood with his feet firmly planted on the ground.
Before long, the monster’s bulk began to shrink. It soon became as small as Fel’s height, scattering like dust.
“Your name shall be Asnel.”
Black dust hovered above Fel’s head. Amidst the dark and damp atmosphere, the black dust gradually absorbed into his body.
“Asnel.”
Fel called out the monster’s name in an exhausted voice.
At that, a slightly more blurred figure of Asnel appeared before his eyes.
The monster’s fur, which had originally been pitch black, was tinged with a bluish hue in patches.
“My Lord… please, give the command…”
Fel wiped away a droplet of blood clinging to his cheek and tossed the holy sword he was holding as if dropping it to the ground.
Then, with a detached and somewhat choked expression, he commanded the monster he had subjugated.
“Kill me.”
It was a statement hard to imagine coming from the crown prince of the Spelland Empire.
He, who had the position of the next emperor secured in the palm of his hand; he, in whom flowed the most precious blood of the empire; he, who could live in luxury for the rest of his life with just the wealth he currently possessed.
Why on earth would Felio de Spelland—?
“My Lord… unable to kill.”
Asnel refused Fel’s command in a low voice that seemed to rise from the depths.
A dry, hopeless laugh slipped from the corners of his lips.
“…Another failure, then?”
Taking the lead in subjugating monsters was done solely for the sake of dying.
He had rushed here in a single breath, thinking that perhaps he could die in this place—a monster lair from which even those legendary heroes never returned alive.
Yet the entrance to the monster lair, rumored to be so chaotic, was terribly quiet.
No, that only applied to Fel.
Fel , who stood proudly at the vanguard of the knights holding his sword, Fel, who had willingly jumped onto the battlefield declaring he wanted to die… the monsters did not touch him.
It was like a scene from a movie. Lower-tier monsters lowered their swords, slipped past Fel as he waited detachedly for death, and rushed straight for the knights instead.
As if they couldn’t kill Fel. As if it were a command decreed by the gods.
‘You must die definitively. Only then can you return.’
The words that had constantly echoed deep within his mind: You must die definitively.
To understand what that “definitiveness” meant, Fel had tried every method imaginable.
He had drunk poison directly, slashed his throat with a blade, thrown his body into the water, and even jumped from great heights.
Yet, not even once had the god ever granted Fel death.
“Asnel, I commanded you to kill me.”
“Your Lordship, I am… unable to kill you.”
Fel stepped closer to Asnel, who had become a soul.
Asnel, a haughty existence who would never bow his head to anyone, was now prostrating himself closely before Fel, holding his breath.
“Why can’t you kill me?”
“My Lord is… our sword, and the one who grants us life. Such a great being cannot be killed…”
“Then why the fuck, without a single moment of resistance, did you hurl yourself onto my sword?”
In truth, Fel had had no intention of killing this gray wolf.
Standing quietly in front of the gray wolf for ten minutes, failing to react when the creature suddenly lunged onto his blade—that was the root of the mistake, if any.
“You. You’re an existence that shouldn’t die right now. You’re supposed to die by Ethan’s hand…”
“My Lord is… our sword, and the one who grants us life. Such a great being cannot be killed.”
“…You just keep saying the same thing.”
In the novel, this gray wolf died at the hands of the protagonist.
Ethan—the only human who leisurely walked out of a monster lair from which no one could ever return alive.
He was the illegitimate son of Duke Soliar and the protagonist of this novel.
Given how much trouble Ethan in the novel had gone through just to kill the gray wolf, Fel had thought the creature would easily be able to take his own life.
‘So I thought if I came looking for this fellow, I might be able to die…’
This, too, had been a useless endeavor.
“…I want to die.”
When on earth could he return to reality?
Tears no longer flowed from eyes filled only with emptiness.
Like a terminally ill patient waiting only for the day they die, Fel was slowly going mad.
Feeling Asnel’s soul turn completely to dust and absorb into his body, Fel stared blankly at the empty air.
The villain of this novel, the crown prince whom everyone feared, a monster growing stronger by devouring souls, and the outsider who had slipped into such a body.
“What on earth am I?”
Fel was an outsider.
An outsider who had slipped into a novel titled ‘The Duke Wants to Live Today, Too’.
By now, he had even forgotten what his original name had been, what his parents’ faces looked like, or how happy a life he had lived.
“Your Highness.”
Fel , blinking sluggishly, turned his head toward the voice.
A man filled his skewed field of vision.
It was one of the knights of the Imperial Knights who had set out on the monster subjugation with Fel.
“You’ve killed the gray wolf, so you must return to the imperial palace now.”
The knight stammered with a terrified expression.
It was likely because Fel kept moving his feet even though every single monster in the vicinity had been slaughtered.
He seemed to be thinking, ‘What on earth will we do if Your Highness collapses like this?’
“You haven’t slept or wielded your sword for three whole days now. At this rate…!”
“Right, I must return.”
“…”
“I have to return now.”
Because this place was no longer of any use.
“Now there is only one method left.”
“Pardon? W-What…”
At Fel’s self-muttering, the knight trailed off in confusion.
