“…Duke? Didn’t you come to negotiate with me?”
The increasingly anxious Marquis finally spoke.
“Negotiate?”
However, Duke Carlyle’s head tilted slightly, as if hearing the word for the first time.
“That might have been possible before cursing an innocent woman.”
“C-Curse? I have no idea…!”
As the Marquis tried to defend himself, Lennox Carlyle took something out of his pocket and placed it between the bars.
It was a small glass bottle.
“You must recognize this.”
The Marquis, blinking rapidly, was utterly shocked the next moment.
“How… How…!”
Horror spread across the Marquis’s face.
Inside the small glass bottle was a dark, translucent, wriggling entity.
It was unmistakable. It was the spiritual entity they had sent to brainwash Juliet Monad days earlier.
“This is impossible…”
The Marquis murmured with a blank face.
His gaze remained fixated on the tiny entity trapped in the glass bottle.
All the spiritual entities sent to Juliet Monad never returned. Hence, Solon and Marquis Guinness naturally assumed she was completely hypnotized. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, given that beings capable of stopping spiritual entities were said to have gone extinct long ago.
Yet, inside the bottle, a genuine spiritual entity wriggled.
“The magicians told me interesting stories.”
Lennox Carlyle said in a monotone.
It was fortunate that the young dragon had brought this suspicious spiritual entity to him.
Upon capturing the spiritual entity, he immediately summoned several renowned magicians. The called magicians passionately explained the ‘Full Moon Curse’ to him.
– It’s a curse forbidden long ago.
– It’s a spell that turns people into puppets without will.
– But its side effects aren’t insignificant.
– It’s a very famous curse.
Lennox shook the small bottle. The entity inside awakened and thrashed about.
The Marquis still couldn’t close his mouth, unable to even imagine how the spiritual entity was captured.
“If the curse fails, doesn’t its backlash return to the caster multiple times over?”
“That…!”
Only then did Marquis Guinness snap back to reality.
Archbishop Solon had mentioned something similar. The stronger the curse, the stronger its backlash.
“Thanks to that, your wretched fellow Archbishops are easily dying from the curse’s backlash.”
“That’s not possible…”
Marquis Guinness flinched.
Since being imprisoned, the Marquis had been cut off from all outside information. Thus, he hadn’t heard what happened to Archbishop Solon.
“They say the limbs rot.”
Marquis Guinness looked fearfully at the small bottle. The tiny creature inside was raging.
“Eek.”
The Marquis staggered back as if the trapped entity might jump out and swallow him.
If that spiritual entity entered his body…!
Marquis Guinness was overwhelmed by fear.
He remembered the fate of the slaves controlled by the thought-forms.
“I don’t even know what’s going to happen.”
Reading the Marquis’s thoughts perfectly, Duke Carlyle quietly said.
“Listen! Duke Carlyle! Please hear me out for a moment! I was just deceived!”
The Marquis became desperate.
He had agreed to Archbishop Solon’s plan because the curse wouldn’t leave a trace.
But now the spiritual entity was in Carlyle’s possession. In essence, there was evidence that he had cursed Juliet Monad.
“But I won’t use it.”
“…?”
“So, it’s best to answer my questions honestly.”
“What… what do you mean?”
Marquis Guinness was tense. However, Lennox Carlyle asked a question he hadn’t expected at all.
“Do you have a punishment room in your mansion?”
“Yes. But it hasn’t been used for a long time…!”
“How many people did you kill in that room?”
“…”
Lennox Carlyle spoke as if he had witnessed it himself.
Could he have searched the Marquis’s mansion and discovered the punishment room?
Marquis Guinness was annoyed but held back.
He didn’t think Duke Carlyle was that righteous. Just because he killed a few unrelated women…
Marquis Guinness thought it best to deny it for now.
“Whatever you’ve heard, I don’t know anything. It’s true that I have a punishment room, but to say I killed women there…!”
Suddenly, a flame flared up at the end of the corridor.
Startled, Marquis Guinness felt an eerie vibe.
This prison was meant for high-ranking nobles or political criminals, and currently, only the Marquis was imprisoned.
A while ago, Lennox had temporarily sent the knights and guards outside, so only Duke Carlyle and Marquis Guinness should have been present.
Yet… torches in the empty corridor were flickering from a distance, one by one. And the flickering was gradually approaching them.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. I didn’t kill anyone…”
As Marquis Guinness was defending himself, he felt a chill.
In Lennox Carlyle’s hand was a sword that hadn’t been visible before. He recalled rumors about the Duke owning a legendary sword.
“Look here, Duke Carlyle!”
Marquis Guinness clung to the bars in desperation.
“Why are you doing this? I’ll give you anything, just spare my life…!”
But Lennox Carlyle calmly tucked the glass bottle back inside his coat.
“Don’t worry. You won’t die right away.”
“What, what are you…?”
Pop.
Finally, the fireplace right in front of the cell they were standing in lit up.
His vision became bright.
Thanks to that, the Marquis was able to clearly see the expression on Lord Carlyle’s face.
“You’ll just suffer to the point of wishing for death.”
He had surprisingly cold eyes.
Marquis Guinness was startled. He wasn’t looking at Duke Carlyle anymore.
Grrrr.
Although nothing was in sight, he heard the growling of an intangible beast.
“W-Who is it!”
The Marquis, who was frantically looking around, noticed something else strange.
Thanks to the fire, the prison was as bright as daylight. And on the walls of the prison were countless shadows that shouldn’t exist, lining up around him.
“Choke…!”
Thud.
Marquis Guinness couldn’t understand what was happening.
In front of him stood Duke Carlyle, with a face cold as eternal snow, and the Marquis himself was lying on the ground, with his joints twisted at grotesque angles.
“You’re awfully noisy.”
At some point, the prison door was wide open. And Duke Carlyle’s foot gently stepped on the Marquis’s chest.
The Marquis desperately met Duke Carlyle’s eyes, begging for his life. But he couldn’t speak anymore.
“I’m not that merciful.”
Inappropriately, the firelight cast a shadow on Duke Carlyle’s profile.
His extremely restrained face looked ascetic, as if it belonged in a temple.
Lennox Carlyle spoke as if discussing the weather.
“I’ll make you beg for death.”
The next moment, a terrible scream echoed inside the prison.
* * *
Juliet woke up when the sun was high in the sky.
“Ugh.”
As she tried to sit up in bed, she flopped back down onto the sheets.
‘Why is my head hurting so much?’
Her condition was terrible. It felt as if someone was stomping inside her head.
Knock knock.
“Yes?”
A man who could help answer her question appeared outside the door.
Elliot, holding a tray of tea as if he was a butler, peeked his head in.
“Ahem, are you awake, Miss?”
“Yes. Come in.”
Juliet quickly checked her appearance before opening the door.
“Are you alright?”
Elliot reminded Juliet of the events of the previous night.
“You came back late last night.”
“…Oh.”
Juliet immediately recalled the memories of the previous night.
She remembered drinking with the Dulton couple, who had worked at the southern Marquis’s house, to get the information she wanted.
If her deduction and the couple’s memory were correct, she could find the treasure of the Duke’s house that Lennox was looking for.
‘In the mansion of Marquis Guinness…’
But she was currently suffering a hangover. So much for just a drink.
‘Am I crazy..’
She briefly recalled the face of Lennox, who had angrily dragged her to the carriage.
‘I think I said something weird.’
She remembered being in the carriage with him, but didn’t know how she got back to the mansion afterward.
She was slightly worried.
While eating the soup Elliot brought, Juliet suddenly said:
“Elliot, I want to go to the south.”
“Excuse me? You just came back from there, didn’t you?”
But Juliet was in a hurry.
Now that she knew where the Duke’s treasure was hidden, she couldn’t sit still. It was a golden opportunity with Marquis Guinness in prison.
“Why are you going there?”
“I have something important to find.”
“Can’t we send the knights to look for it?”
Juliet hesitated for a moment but nodded.
“Yes. I need to go personally.”
It wasn’t a matter of whether she could trust the knights of the Duchy. She had to go and see for herself. The truth about everything surrounding her was there.
“But… His Highness won’t allow it.”
Juliet wanted to say she didn’t need Lennox’s permission, but it was true that she wasn’t feeling well.
“Moreover, the Emperor himself said he would directly manage the Marquis’s mansion until the situation is settled..”
“No way!”
Then, Juliet shouted in surprise.
Although yesterday she just casually promised to help Elliot get a ticket to the nobles’ council, now she really needed the Marquis’s mansion.
‘The storage is there.’
And maybe Dahlia was there too.