Melville spat out the tea he had yet to swallow.
But that was not the end of it!
At the thought of the tea he had already swallowed, Melville's expression turned utterly sickened. Just then, Arthur, sitting cross-legged in his chair, deliberately began rotating his ankles.
Though he was wearing boots, the movement instantly reminded Melville of...
Dead skin from his feet!
Blegh!
The founder and strongest member of the Death Masks, one of the Count of South Los's Sixteen Advisors, and the Grand Duke of Inner Bay's Hidden Pawns doubled over and vomited loudly.
Sitting opposite him, Arthur deliberately covered his nose and leaned away as he spoke.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. You look like a dog."
Silence.
Melville, who had been doubled over vomiting, froze at those words.
Once again, he remembered that rainy night in South Los ten years ago, when he had encountered that man just after finishing a "hunt."
That man from the Death Poetry Society's Thirtieth Choir, known as the Left Cantor.
He had been beaten down in an instant.
The power he was so proud of had been useless against the man.
Instead, the man had seized control of it and turned it against him.
In that moment, he had been furious, yet utterly hopeless-
"I'm sorry!
Please, spare me!
I'll never use the name of 'death' again!"
He had prostrated himself on the ground and begged at the top of his lungs.
And the man had indeed spared him.
"You look like a dog."
That man, who upheld the Death Poetry Society's old-school ways, had spared him, but had also left him with an assessment he would never forget.
From then on, his mind had never known peace again.
"You look like a dog!"
"You look like a dog!"
*"You look like a