She still had the shimmering key tightly clenched in her hand.
“It seems that arrogance and deceit can topple a demon.”
Juliet recalled the exact phrase she had heard from her grandfather.
At the last moment, the snake forcibly unlocked her past memories for a fleeting moment.
Avoiding the snake’s gaze, a butterfly frantically flew into Juliet’s hand stealthily. What Juliet had secretly glimpsed through the butterflies was not her own past memories.
‘Quirier Monad.’
Hundreds of years ago, the first human who deceived the evil spirit and trapped it inside the ‘door’.
The butterflies shared the memories of the moment they were trapped, and Juliet understood how Quirier Monad had tricked the evil spirit into the door.
Moreover, Juliet recently realized something.
‘How foolishly it must have looked down on me.’
That cunning snake was viewing her with outrageous disdain.
Thinking it would fall for the same trick again, that with just a little push, it could be toppled. Such demonic arrogance.
Juliet loathed her former self.
Always fretting about being abandoned, fleeing in fear, those were terrifying and horrible memories for her. Her powerless, swayed past self was a trauma.
‘But I’m not fragile to crumble that easily.’
She had not become fragile enough to be driven insane by merely having nightmares.
It means, though she endured brutal events in her two lives, she became stronger as much as she was hurt.
“He won’t come.”
Juliet had a hunch. The probability of dying here before someone came to rescue her was high.
Initially, after being trapped here, she didn’t even know how much time had passed.
A day? Two days?
Her body ached so much that she even lost the sense of time.
‘Still, I wanted to tell you.’
Tears rolled down her cheeks, but Juliet didn’t have the energy to wipe them away.
She blinked slowly and quietly reiterated.
‘I hope you’re okay, even without me.’
Among the past events shown by the snake, there was just one scene that startled Juliet.
It was not her memory.
Instead, it was a past event that occurred after Juliet herself had died.
A man stood amidst a hell filled with corpses. Surrounded by mountains of bodies, a man, appearing to be on the verge of death from exhaustion, leaned on his sword for support.
-Don’t you wonder what price Lennox Carlyle paid to bring you back?
The snake showed that scene for a mere moment, so Juliet wasn’t sure what she had seen.
But undoubtedly, it was a dreadful scene. Though it was brief, Lennox didn’t look like a normal human. It was a suffocating and shuddering sight to behold.
The snake said it was the ‘price to turn back time.’
She didn’t know what he offered, but Juliet hoped that the same event wouldn’t occur this time.
“…”
Therefore, Juliet felt both desperate and relieved.
‘It won’t happen now.’
Because there wasn’t a snake coaxing him to exploit the black panther’s ability.
But just in case, she needed to tell him not to do so this time.
To do that, first, she had to get out of here…
“Do you want to leave?”
“…?”
Caught off guard by the sudden voice, Juliet was startled.
She unconsciously lifted her head and almost screamed.
She wasn’t alone.
Juliet was surrounded by little children.
Round heads, chubby white cheeks.
Dozens of pairs of eyes, resembling black pearls, were looking at her.
For a moment, terrified Juliet barely managed to come to a rational conclusion.
“…Butterflies?”
“Right!”
“It’s us!”
Butterflies, taking on the form of five-year-old children, surrounded her joyously.
“Why… have you turned into humans?”
Juliet asked, bewildered.
“We beat the snake!”
“So we took it!”
“Now this ability is ours!”
The butterflies were brimming with energy, making it hard to believe they were on the verge of death just a while ago.
Confused, Juliet remembered that these mysterious butterflies were chatterboxes before they hid their appearances.
And now they didn’t even stutter.
Of course, their vocabulary was still at a five-year-old level, so understanding their words took some time…
Juliet decided to roughly understand it as ‘just like the snake was able to use hallucinations by stealing the butterflies’ abilities, now the butterflies can borrow human appearances.’
“Oh.”
Slowly getting up, Juliet clutched her ribs and moaned.
Then the butterflies created a fuss.
“Contractor, does it hurt here?”
“We can fix it!”
Juliet’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“How?”
“A long time ago, a fish got eaten by the snake!”
“This is the ability of a fish that used to live in a temple!”
“Stupid fish!”
…What does that mean? Juliet gave up interpreting.
One question led to several answers.
But when the noisy butterflies tightly hugged her, surprisingly, the pain that seemed to kill her just by breathing disappeared.
‘Is it a healing power?’
Touching the rib area, Juliet suddenly realized.
The butterflies, with their eyes sparkling, seemed to have fully regained their energy. Moreover, looking at how they were freely using strange abilities unlike before, it seemed that the power balance had shifted from the snake.
‘In that case…’
Juliet, who couldn’t help being excited, subtly asked while meeting eyes with the restless butterflies.
“You know, so now, can you send us anywhere?”
“Yeah! Where do you want to go, contractor?”
“We can go anywhere!”
“Even the contractor can go anywhere!”
Of course, the urgent matter was to get out of here, but Juliet remembered.
One of the three ways to break the curse that the black panther told her was to banish the evil spirit that cast the curse to another dimension.
And these butterflies have the power to freely roam in the field anywhere.
“So, can you also banish the snake trapped behind that door far away?”
Pause.
The children, or rather the butterflies who were clinging to her affectionately all at once, stiffened.
Watching the expressions of about ten children harden at once in the dark underground was quite creepy, no matter how cute they looked.
Juliet asked as if she was not bothered.
“Why? Can’t you?”
“No! We can…”
“We can open the door!”
The irritated butterflies shouted while trembling.
Juliet kindly asked at that moment.
“Then can you send the snake back to the dimension it came from? Okay?”
The cunning way to break the curse laid by the snake on the mansion was only this.
But for some reason, the butterflies were sneaking glances at Juliet and avoiding her gaze.
“Why?”
The hesitating butterflies opened their mouths one by one.
“But we.”
“The snake is scary.”
“No, it’s just a little scary!”
“Right! Just a little!”
“Anyway, a little bit scary…”
Juliet persuaded the butterflies patiently.
“What’s there to be afraid of when it’s trapped? Just shoo it away far.”
“But…”
The butterflies rolling their round eyes exchanged glances among themselves, and suddenly pretended to be very weak.
“We are tired…”
“To send the snake far away, we have to use a lot of energy.”
“That’s why we look this cute.”
“But we can’t…”
“Will the contractor like us even if we turn ugly again?”
Juliet didn’t care about such things.
In fact, she was internally hoping that they would turn back into butterflies, as it was creepy to see evil spirits impersonating humans like the snake did.
However, it didn’t seem right to say that out loud.
“Let’s do this.”
Juliet took out a silver key and shook it slowly in front of the butterflies.
The eyes of the butterflies followed the silver key.
“If you guys banish the snake far away, to another dimension first, I’ll release all of you from the artifact.”
It worked.
As soon as the artifact was mentioned, the butterflies’ deep blue eyes started sparkling.
“…Will you release us?”
“…Then can we return to our original dimension?”
“Yes. But you have to teach me the way.”
“That’s easy!”
“Soft water!”
“Find soft water first!”
“And then release us!”
Soft water? What’s that?
Juliet didn’t get a chance to ask.
Excited, the butterflies swirling around her suddenly paused. They whispered to each other, and their expressions changed.
“But humans lie well.”
“Right. They did last time, remember?”
“We are not fools anymore!”
“We won’t be fooled again!”
A dozen pairs of dark eyes filled with hostility.
Juliet’s spine tingled, but she didn’t show it.
Although they looked like cute round-eyed children, these butterflies were evil spirits at their core. If they seem weak, they might turn violent and devour her at any moment.
“No, I’m serious this time. You can trust me.”
“…”
“I swear.”
Juliet calmly extended her pinky.
“Pinky?”
“What’s this?”
Fortunately, the butterflies who looked like children also had the mental age of five-year-olds.
Soon, curious butterflies started imitating the hand shape and gathered around, buzzing.
“This is a hand gesture for making a promise. You hook pinkies like this, and stamp.”
“Stamp?”
“Then contractor, will you keep the promise?”
“Yes. I’ve stamped it.”
“Really…?”
“Really really.”
“Umm…”
The butterflies, looking like human children, exchanged glances among themselves hesitantly, and then seemed to make a decision, nodding their heads.
“Okay!”
“You must keep your promise!”
“We like the contractor!”
The butterflies affectionately hugged her.
“But, contractor…”
Suddenly, the butterflies seemed to remember something, their eyes became strange. A few butterflies seemed anxious, with a look that seemed to worry about what was behind.
“You know…”
“Yes?”
“But contractor, you have to hurry.”
What?
It didn’t take long for Juliet to realize why she needed to hurry and what it was about.