Chapter 7

Ever since Kuhn left the Belzeart family, the faces of those remaining in the house clearly lost their cheer.

Latz began throwing fits again, like he used to, and his mood only worsened. Fearing his temper, his wife, Sarah, and son, Zach, spoke to him less frequently, resulting in an increasingly dark atmosphere throughout the household.

It felt as though they had gone back several years in time.

With a lingering sense of gloom in the air, yet another family meal began.

“Ugh, is this really all we have today?”

Latz clicked his tongue in irritation, causing his third son, Row, to tense up in fear.

The main reason for Latz’s foul mood was the drastic change in their diet.

Instead of a juicy steak made from monster meat, his plate now held sautéed field mouse. And yet, having any meat at all made this a more lavish dinner than usual.

Recently, the meals at the Belzeart household consisted mostly of bland porridge and bitter-tasting salads—exactly the same diet they had before Kuhn began hunting. Perhaps “returned” would be a more accurate way to describe it.

“Honestly… even that good-for-nothing Kuhn could at least bring in some meat,” Latz sighed.

Row, who had caught the field mouse, sat nearby, looking deeply embarrassed.

If a child like Kuhn could manage it, Latz reasoned, then he expected the remaining four brothers to go out and hunt monsters as well.

But such a feat was beyond them. Since then, their table had not once been adorned with ample servings of meat.

The village did have hunters, but the amount of meat they could procure was far from plentiful. Without combat skills sufficient to take down monsters, the hunters could only capture the occasional animal from the forest’s outskirts.

Imitating the hunters, the brothers could at best use traps to catch small animals like rabbits or mice that managed to escape the monsters.

Sarah, once so lively before Kuhn left, now ate her porridge with lifeless eyes.

With the decline in nutrition, her once healthy, glowing complexion had paled, and her cheeks were now hollow. Her ghostly appearance was another source of Latz’s irritation.

“Sigh…”

Latz let out another deep sigh, his thoughts drifting back to the moment Kuhn had brushed off his hand with some kind of magic before leaving.

Kuhn could use magic.

The thought of Kuhn hiding this from him only made Latz angrier.

—Maybe he’d made some mistake along the way.

As he rubbed his stomach, which let out a feeble grumble even after finishing his meal, that thought came to mind.

But no matter how much he regretted the past, Kuhn’s departure was an unchangeable fact. Latz took a sip of wine to dull his hunger, and the alcohol quickly took effect on his empty stomach.

“Tch…”

Another click of his tongue.

No matter how foul his mood, the table would never return to what it had once been.

Even with his mind muddled by drink, Latz knew this. Frustrated, he swallowed down his irritation along with the wine.