🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 25
The veterinarian urgently requested a private meeting with Aldehide.
Seeing how urgent it was, Aldehide just nodded vaguely.
“I really need to study why I become so soft around Lylie… but what’s going on here?”
But the veterinarian looked completely disheveled.
His head was shiny and bald in patches, and he had some kind of sack slung over his shoulder.
“What’s that?” Aldehide narrowed his brows with a troubled expression.
“Th-that….”
“Why?”
“The puppy that was subjected to illegal experiments back then… it’s regained consciousness!”
“A puppy? Alive? That’s good news.”
The puppy had been an important piece of evidence. They had instructed him to report immediately if it regained consciousness, so it wasn’t strange that it came to him.
“…Where is it? Bring it here.”
“B-but the thing is….”
The veterinarian carefully set the sack he’d been carrying on the floor, then suddenly began opening it.
Aldehide’s expression twisted in disbelief. What on earth was going on?
But the stranger thing was yet to come.
“…What the heck is this?”
Even if a stranger suddenly slapped you on the street, it wouldn’t feel this absurd.
The puppy that appeared from the sack was not the same puppy he had seen before.
“Do puppies… normally look like this?”
It was exactly as he dryly pointed out. The puppy’s appearance was extremely unusual. In other words, its whole body was muscular.
“Th-that….”
“Where did the small, plump white puppy go?”
The creature in front of them now was a puppy so muscular it could rival a kangaroo.
Aldehide remarked bluntly:
“Did you overfeed it or something?”
Aldehide stared expressionlessly at the muscular puppy.
It had once been a pure white baby puppy, but now its back muscles bulged, and its legs were thick.
Yet, somehow, it still seemed like a puppy, its ears flicking adorably.
“…It grew a lot in the meantime.”
“Yes… it did grow quite a bit…”
“But why… is there a problem?”
“Well, after checking the puppy’s origins, it turns out it came from the Western Puppy Islands. This breed is special even among puppies. They’re called ‘Selvio,’ and they require both a mother and father to raise properly.”
“Oh…”
“If a puppy doesn’t have its mother or father nearby when young, it’ll weaken and eventually die.”
“Can other dogs handle this muscle monster? Anyway, check if there are any potential parents among the other puppies.”
“W-well, the parents don’t necessarily have to be dogs.”
“…What kind of dog genealogy is this?”
“It’s because a puppy can recognize a being as its mother or father.”
Aldehide stared at the muscular puppy.
Its entire body was rippling with muscles, not cute at all. It didn’t evoke pity either.
And ever since earlier, the damn puppy had been obsessively clinging to him.
From the moment it saw Aldehide, it wagged its tail wildly, and now…
“What the hell is this? Why do I feel uneasy?”
The muscular puppy dangled from his wrist, oblivious to his thoughts.
“…Hmm, I think it found its dad, probably.”
Aldehide glared at the puppy with a mix of annoyance and disbelief.
So, wait… what?
“Am I supposed to… play family with this thing?”
“Um… yes. I suppose now it just needs to find a mom…”
Sweat beaded on the veterinarian’s forehead. Aldehide stared at the muscular puppy and thought:
“My sister thinks of me as a puppy… but surely she doesn’t imagine a puppy like this.”
He snorted, looking at the fat muscular puppy dangling in his arms.
“Totally different from my sister’s cute little baby puppy♥.”
“Uh, just in case… maybe you could… take care of it for now, Aldehide-sama?”
“Take care of it?”
“Yes! Could you do that?”
Aldehide tucked the muscular puppy into his side and thought:
“Protecting world peace really is hard work.”
“Alright. But…”
He lifted the plump puppy and growled lowly.
“There are some things I need to confirm with His Majesty. Come on, puppy, follow me.”
He needed to fully understand the situation—this suspicious ship’s cargo, and the true nature of the puppy.
The place Aldehide took the muscular puppy was the beautiful lakeside surrounding the imperial palace.
“Ah, good timing! I have some good news to tell you!”
He frowned at the sight of the emperor leisurely boating and the muscular puppy playing on the grass.
The emperor began explaining what he had discovered.
“…So you’re saying this puppy might have some incredible hidden ability?”
“Exactly! And we’ve caught the minions responsible—not the one who made the sedative, but the ones who performed the illegal experiments! Our empire is on the brink of collapse!”
Aldehide raised an eyebrow, recalling the letter from his sister who had worried about him.
“So, the fact that these maniacs are running wild is… good news, your highness? Did the definition of ‘good news’ change while I wasn’t looking?”
“Huh? Well, now that the villains’ identities are revealed, isn’t that good news?”
Seeing the emperor anxiously watching his reaction, Aldehide rubbed his forehead.
This old man with the flower-like hair simply could not be reasoned with.
“Alright. I’ll have to investigate exactly what experiments they did on this puppy.”
He secured the puppy under his arm again.
At that moment, the emperor urgently called Aldehide over.
“And take this!”
“What is it… a watch?”
The emperor shook his head and showed the screen.
“It’s a Rampage Rate Monitor. You can wear it on your wrist like a watch!”
He strapped the monitor to Aldehide’s bare wrist like a watch, then swallowed nervously.
“…Whoa, 85%! Be careful of rampaging, young master. That’s a dangerous level. For a normal person, it wouldn’t be strange if they went berserk in a few hours.”
“Yeah, I’ll handle it.”
If the rampage rate exceeds 95%, he really would go berserk.
‘If I feel like I’m going to rampage, I just need to move quickly so I don’t harm others.’
Normally, people die when they go berserk, but someone with Aldehide’s powers wouldn’t die just from it.
‘It just gets extremely painful and leaves you incapacitated for a while. Compared to not seeing my sister, that’s nothing.’
Physically, it might be tough. But for someone who suffers daily from not receiving letters from his sister or seeing her, this was trivial.
That was all he thought about it.
‘Anyway, if my sister isn’t around, the rampage won’t calm down.’
He could send her a letter begging her to calm it, but he’d rather just go through the rampage than burden her.
‘I don’t want to look like a whining child. I’ll endure it myself. Strongly.’
He crudely tilted his head while holding the muscular puppy under his arm.
“See you later, old man.”
Aldehide entered the Imperial Knights’ headquarters carrying the puppy.
All the knights looked astonished at his imposing presence.
With the muscular puppy tucked under his arm, the scene looked quite… bizarre.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Hmm.” Paul pointed at the puppy in shock.
“Even your pets, Aldehide-sama, are extraordinary.”
“It’s not a pet. It’s a puppy that went through sedative experiments. You helped rescue it back then, remember?”
“Whoa, from that ship? It didn’t look so muscular then, did it?”
“Unfortunate, isn’t it…? That’s just how it turned out.”
Despite saying “unfortunate,” Aldehide entered the commander’s office as if it didn’t matter.
‘Honestly, I don’t care about any of this. I just wish my sister would reply.’
After requesting a meeting, his sister hadn’t replied.
“This time, she might’ve really blocked me.”
Should he just give up?
Right after asking to meet, the letters stopped mysteriously. Aldehide looked into the mirror in the commander’s office—always kept to maintain his appearance, not knowing when he’d meet his sister—and muttered softly:
“You’re crazy… You don’t deserve to live. Why send something like that? A letter would have been enough.”
After a long soliloquy, he washed his face quickly.
‘Alright, before dinner, time for the second soliloquy.’
He planned to direct it to his cherished doll, Gomdori.
As he reached to take Gomdori from his arms, he paused.
The muscular puppy on the table was staring at him with its shiny black eyes.
“W-what…?”
The experimental puppy placed its front paw on his arm and turned to look at him, as if to tell him to follow.
What’s this?
‘Ah, I got it.’
Aldehide put down his precious doll, Gomdori, and spoke to the puppy.
“You’re an outdoor potty-trained dog, huh?”
