I Became the Leader of the Monster Circus Troupe

I approached her, pushing through the crowd.

Clara, who had been sitting on the ground, sobbing, spotted me and immediately raised her head.

“Director… huh!”

Without considering her broken arm, Clara tried to get up from the ground and immediately screamed as she fell forward.

It was both pitiful and absurd.

Laughter erupted among the spectators.

She poured out tears with a mournful expression.

I sighed lightly and approached her.

“Clara, what happened?”

She buried her tear-streaked face into my chest and poured out her words incoherently.

“T-The thing is… I wanted to help in the circus… sniff!”

“Calm down. Let’s start by treating your arm.”

Her arm was twisted completely outward, with the bone protruding from her elbow.

I understood why she was crying so much.

Clara was already sensitive to physical pain and sensations.

If she rode in the carriage for too long, she complained of back pain, and if something cold or hot was nearby, she would exaggerate her reactions, astonishing those around her.

I grabbed her broken arm and infused her with determination.

Debulroots flowed into her body.

The command I gave them was to recover her elbow joint to its original position.

It was a recovery command I had often used before.

However, this time, I had not considered one thing.

“Gyah… Ugyaaa!”

Crack. Snap.

The broken arm obediently followed my command, completely disregarding the pain its owner would feel.

It twisted and bent on its own, causing Clara to roll her eyes back and foam at the mouth before fainting.

“Oh dear.”

The treatment had been so rapid that I hadn’t had time to adjust the command.

Instead, I injected her with substances acting as painkillers and sedatives.

Her pale, contorted face regained color and relaxed.

After her treatment was over, I noticed the situation around me.

“I-I made a mistake… This shouldn’t have happened…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. Look, that girl over there just twisted her arm a bit.”

A bit?

I looked behind me.

There, a large man of almost 2 meters in height was comforting a girl in his arms.

Now that I looked, the people being started by others wasnt Clara but those two.

The man soothing the child was none other than Minova, the Director of the Satbeyol Circus, my rival from the Rose Windmill Cabaret.

It was a familiar face after a long time.

Just as I was about to greet him, harsh words burst from his mouth.

“You! I finally found you! What have you done to my daughter!”

“Excuse me?”

I stared blankly at him as he suddenly emitted hostility.

Then, the child in his arms, Ruelle, turned her head towards me.

It was Minova’s daughter, Ruelle.

She looked exactly as I remembered her, but there was something unfamiliar in her expression.

She glanced at me from head to toe and chuckled.

“It’s you. The one who made me.”

Her words sounded far from childish.

I alternated my gaze between the defiant Minova and the mocking Ruelle.

I couldn’t understand what had happened.

***

Minova realized something was wrong with his daughter shortly after Wonderstein left Luz.

There had been signs before.

Furniture in her room kept breaking or malfunctioning.

Shelves collapsed, doorknobs broke, windows fell out of their frames.

Ruelle claimed it was just her playing around.

Instead of scolding his daughter, Minova praised her.

It was a relief to see her finally using her own body instead of lying in bed in pain for more than half the day.

He was even moved.

But when he saw her pulling out a wooden door effortlessly, he knew something was wrong.

He was once known as the Star.

He knew that talented kids showed signs before they turned ten.

But that was when they controlled their movements and actions.

It was clear that being unable to control her strength in everyday life was unusual.

Even Ruelle herself didn’t know the cause.

“I don’t know. It’s been like this since I got better. It’s getting worse.”

“It’s okay. It’s not a bad thing! Haha, it seems like my daughter inherited her father’s strength, doesn’t it?”

He initially tried to think positively.

At least now it was certain what kind of acrobat his daughter would become in the future.

But that wasn’t the only side effect.

He woke up one night to a loud noise from his training room.

Rushing in, he found his daughter standing there in her nightgown.

He saw the iron bar in front of her crumpled like paper.

“Why… why are you in Dad’s training room?”

He saw that the iron bar in front of her was crushed like paper.

Rulle shrugged nonchalantly as she looked at it.

“I just wanted to test my strength.”

Her tone was so indifferent.

Minova’s paternal instinct kicked in.

He realized that the girl in front of him looked like his daughter, but what was inside her wasn’t his daughter.

“Who are you? Where’s my daughter?”

To his question, Rulle chuckled and shook her head.

“You catch on fast, huh? But even if you ask, I don’t know who I am. And your daughter is sleeping inside me. Don’t worry. I’ll give her back soon.”

There’s another entity inside his daughter!

That was enough to shock Minova.

***

Wonderstein, upon hearing the story, used his diagnostic function to check Ruelle’s body condition.

When asked if there was a problem, the Evolution Research Institute replied that there was no problem.

So he meticulously examined her body condition.

Before long, he could understand how things had gone wrong.

The Galaxy.

That was the problem.

At that time, Ruelle was receiving daily injections of the Galaxy into her body for treatment.

Originally developed as a curse remedy, it also had the effect of killing cancer cells.

Even on the day Wonderstein visited her for treatment, Rulle had just received an injection of the galaxy.

He intended to use Debulroots to cure her illness.

The command given to Debulrotos was to “treat cancer cells, make the body healthy and robust, oh, and make the hair grow back.”

It should have ended there.

But the problem was that the galaxy was flowing through her body.

That’s what corrupted Debulroot.

Wonderstein remembered the fanatics he had met in Dvallchep.

Fortunately, Ruelle hadn’t reached that stage.

The corrupted Debulroot did not possess her brain.

Instead, it formed another personality within her.

The change in her physique to “healthy and robust” was also a byproduct of that process.

Ruelle’s hair writhed like a living creature, swaying over her shoulders.

Her hair played around, picking up nearby objects and playing tricks.

Ruelle didn’t know what to do about it, so she bowed her head deeply.

It had a mind of its own, moving and acting on its own.

Wonderstein sighed.

He remembered the tales of cursed wigs that became possessed by demons.

“Indeed, it seems my treatment caused side effects.”

“As expected!”

Minova slammed the table in front of him.

As it shattered, all the cups on it fell to the floor and clattered.

He called in workers from outside to clean it up and sat back down.

Wonderstein asked, watching Ruelle calm herself by stroking her hair.

“So, what did you do next?”

“Ahem, I thought a demon had possessed Ruelle’s body. So I went to a nearby church. Luckily, Tisianne in the Luz Church had experience working in the Inquisition. I asked her to exorcise the demon from Ruelle’s body.”

Minova recounted what happened at the church.

***

It was like a horror movie.

The tense confrontation between the priest and the possessed daughter tied to the bed was thrilling.

The process of treatment was brutal.

Each time he drove the holy cross into Ruelle’s body, both the demon and Ruelle herself experienced excruciating pain.

Wonderstein believed it was inevitable.

The creature that had already been transformed due to Debulroots was no different from Ruelle herself.

In the end, unable to bear his daughter’s suffering any longer, Minova struck the priest on the back of the head, knocking her out.

The demon entrenched in Ruelle’s body proposed negotiations while tied to the bed.

It was a proposal to pretend to be healed, and Minova to cooperate with it.

“But won’t it be found out as soon as the holy stake is driven into the body?”

“Cut my hair. Most of my consciousness resides there. Without it, I won’t be able to exert any power. I’ll retreat into the depths of the consciousness. I won’t feel any pain even if the lance is driven into me.”

“And what if your hair grows back?”

“Then I’ll return.”

Minova’s fist trembled.

Negotiating with the demon infesting his daughter’s body was unthinkable.

But there was no other choice at that time.

If he didn’t agree, the priest would have tried to kill Ruelle to eliminate the demon.

Just as Minova was about to accept the proposal, Ruelle head turned 180 degrees to look behind him.

“There’s a little rat eavesdropping.”

***

At that moment, the door opened.

Thud.

All eyes turned in that direction.

Interrupting their conversation was the worker Minova had called earlier to clear the broken table.

His demeanor was peculiar.

It wasn’t that his appearance was extraordinary; he just displayed a sophistication that seemed out of place for his role—a scholarly-looking man with a refined demeanour.

He clicked his tongue at the broken table.

“What a mess. Who breaks things like this… Oh?”

His eyes met Wonderstein’s.

They stared at each other, unspoken animosity lingering between them.

Although they hadn’t met in a long time, there could never be any warmth between them.

From the perspective of Dosville, Wonderstein was the villain who twice brought about his downfall.

From Wonderstein’s perspective, Dosville was the despicable enemy who twice thwarted his quests.

As a chilly atmosphere settled in the room, Minova spoke up.

“The one who overheard our conversation is him.”

***

Minova continued the story, despite sensing the hostile tension between the two.

Dosville had been living attached to the church back then.

He lost his noble sponsors who once supported him during the opening ceremony’s trial, accumulated debts from gambling thugs due to wrongly betting on the Rose Windmill Cabaret’s test, and even fell out of favor with the authorities in Luz.

With nowhere else to turn, he sought refuge in the church.

Despite the church’s diminished authority compared to the past, it still held the privilege of sanctuary, where even kings couldn’t touch sinners.

Of course, in the current Orthodox Church, such authority wasn’t absolute.

However, even so, it wasn’t something that gambling thugs could meddle with.

Thus, he survived by obtaining porridge provided by the church once a day.

One night, he stumbled upon something unexpected: he accidentally witnessed people, including the priest, descending into the underground.

He witnessed everything, even the negotiation between the demon and Minova.

The moment Ruelle’s head turned 180 degrees to glare at him, he tried to flee in terror.

But the demon, still bound to the bed, leaped and subdued him.

“Aargh! S-Save me!”

Dosville struggled beneath the bed, foam forming at his mouth.

“He must die.”

As Ruelle’s hair extended like sharp blades, Dosville convulsed in terror.

But he couldn’t move a muscle against the monstrous force before him.

Just as Ruelle was about to decapitate Dosville, Minova intervened.

“Hey. Using my daughter’s body for murder! I can’t allow that!”

“Do you want to die?”

Minova glared at Dosville at his proposition.

Dosville trembled as he looked up at him.

He knew his life now depended on him.

His head spun frantically.

In that desperate moment, his survival instinct brought forth the only solution his quick wit could devise.

He crawled out from under the loosened bed, prostrated himself before Minova, and pleaded.

“Please accept me into the circus troupe!”

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Chapter 202: Wonderland – 5