Gluttony Demon King with the Swampman ~A Man with No Magic Power Who Dreamed of Magic, Wielding Knowledge from His Past Life Through Steady Research and Hard Work to Become the Most Vicious Final Boss~

Chapter 41.1: Trust

The children from the monastery.

Their ages felt like two were younger than me, and one was a bit older, something like that.

While they thrashed about wildly, still bound in ink, Noiche and I discussed the situation.

“Haro, what should we do?”

“Well… We’re not debt collectors. If possible, I’d like them to talk to us…”

“Don’t mess with us! Let go, you lowlife scum!”

“…Yeah, seems like the type with strong preconceptions. Let’s keep them like this until they calm down.”

With opponents like these, the best thing is to leave them alone until they’re exhausted.

“Now then, shall we search inside for any traces of the dollmaker?”

“The little kids are watching.”

Beyond the dirty window, small children were peering over at us with frightened faces.

“It feels bad to scare them. Noiche, put them to sleep for me.”

“Got it.”

The night sky has an aspect of sleep.

When you want to neutralize someone without hurting them, Noiche’s magic is extremely useful.

As Noiche wove her incantation, shadows stretched from her feet toward the monastery—and the blackness that soon covered the entire interior put the children to sleep in an instant.

For now, we have these three captured, so if there’s anything we want to know, we can ask once they’ve settled down.

While sealing the mouths of those still trying to struggle with ink, we stepped into the church.

It felt simple yet clean.

The orphans must take good care of the place; everything was well-maintained, and the sleeping children were wearing decent clothes. Come to think of it, the dollmaker had been the same.

But this didn’t feel like financial comfort… It felt more like a stubborn determination to at least give them a humane life despite having no money to spare.

“This is a good monastery.”

“Yeah.”

We continued searching.

There were many rooms, so where should we start?

As we wandered around—

The moment we approached one particular room, the boys we had bound in ink suddenly thrashed wildly again.

“This room, huh. Very obvious.”

They were resisting as if screaming “Don’t open it!”

Sorry, kid, but for the sake of that dollmaker too, we have to investigate.

I opened the door without mercy.

It wasn’t anyone’s private room; it looked more like a storage closet, crammed with old cloths and cleaning tools.

And further inside, we found a single doll.

Life-sized, dressed in fine ceremonial robes.

“———!”

The children thrashed harder.

That reaction alone was enough to guess it had once been human.

And judging from the clothes—

This person had probably been a cleric.

“Even so, being a cleric doesn’t mean they couldn’t do bad things. My guess is this guy was quite the villain… What did he do to you?”

After asking that, I released the oldest-looking boy.

The boy stared at me in shock.

“…! H-how do you know that…”

“There’s a magic-eye user in this monastery, right? But she can’t fully control it, so when it runs wild, she ends up turning enemies into dolls. That’s my theory.”

“W-where did you hear about Big Sis Oz’s magic eyes… You guys really aren’t debt collectors…?”

I’ve been saying that from the start.

So the magic-eye user’s name is Oz.

When I answered only with my gaze, the boy calmed down a little. I released the other children too.

“…That priest was a bad man. After the previous director died, he was the second one sent from church headquarters. But as soon as he found out we had no money, he turned violent.”

The boy started to open up bit by bit.

“The magic eyes went out of control because he used violence?”

“No. That guy tried to sell off the kids here. Because the debts had piled up.”

Human trafficking, huh.

I can’t feel any sympathy at all.

“So Big Sis Oz turned him into a doll. But problems remained after that. When that guy borrowed money from bad people, he used the monastery’s name!”

Now I understand everything.

These kids had unknowingly been saddled with that priest’s debts.

“This priest doll doesn’t move?”

“…It doesn’t move. The dolls from around that time don’t.”

From around that time?

“Ever since the Demon King’s prophecy, Big Sis Oz’s magic-eye power has been getting stronger. In the past, covering her eyes with cloth was enough, but by the time that priest arrived… her gaze started piercing right through the cloth.”

It sounds like some kind of see-through ability manifested.

The boy added that it only happens when her emotions run high. That really does feel like “running wild.”

“Her magic eyes are still growing stronger even now.”

“Yeah. Up until recently, the dolls just stopped moving, but lately they’ve started moving on their own…”

“Can’t she control the dolls?”

“I-it depends on the size… I think. When she turned mice or stray dogs into dolls, she could control them freely.”

Size, huh. Interesting point.

True magical puppets work by circulating magic power evenly throughout the entire body and controlling it perfectly.

In other words, the smaller the size, the less magic power needs to be controlled.

And at the moment—

Oz cannot control human-sized dolls, so they move on their own. That seems to be the truth behind this incident.

At that moment, one of the boys I had freed looked toward the window.