The Cause of the Monsters' Formation (big chapter seeking monthly ticket)
"The entire Noble District has undergone a mutation?" Kaila raised her head and looked at the empty streets around them and the drifting ice crystals.
She thought of the mutated maid. Her face turned slightly as she looked at He Ao. "These monsters were all transformed from people?"
"Yeah." He Ao shrugged. He stared silently at the empty street, his movements slowing, his gaze deepening, his voice lowering. Then he sighed again. "Yeah."
"What caused it?" Kaila seemed to sense his emotions. She folded her hands before her and slowed her voice as she asked softly.
"The cause..." He Ao paused. His previously muddled thoughts had completely sorted themselves out with Kaila and Rot's arrival. He turned to Rot, who had already risen fully. "Have you had any meat soup recently?"
A faint cold wind brushed Rot's face. The dizziness caused by being shaken rapidly up and down had indeed made him uncomfortable, but he had actually regained consciousness long ago.
It was only that the contamination within the ice crystals around them had stirred up the intense hunger in his body. He had spent some time suppressing that rising hunger before finally coming fully to his senses.
And the moment he did, he heard He Ao's question.
He raised his head. First, he was stunned, then he answered instinctively, "I haven't had meat soup in a long time."
He rubbed his brow. "Though meat soup gets delivered to the Consul's Palace every day. I don't know where they get the meat, but I never drink it. I usually let the maid—"
At that point, he stopped abruptly. He jerked his head up and looked at He Ao. "The meat soup is the problem?!"
"Perhaps." He Ao's gaze swept