Flash.
Lightning struck. In an instant, a dazzling flash of light pierced through the forest, where even moonlight couldn’t reach.
In that gust of wind, a man’s straight forehead, stubborn eyebrows, and cold red eyes were revealed.
In front of him, a gigantic centipede-like monster writhed with its head severed.
Kurung.
Lennox raised his head, like a man who had suddenly come to his senses.
However, he wasn’t surprised to find himself standing in the middle of the dark monster-infested forest.
Lennox thought of a certain woman who disliked thunderstorms.
“When will you come back?”
It wasn’t easy to notice that Juliet was afraid of thunder and lightning.
First of all, Juliet Monad had a bold and even fearless personality.
And in the North, it was rare for a heavy rain accompanied by thunder and lightning to occur.
The season when large typhoons usually came was in summer, and around that time, they would be staying at the Summer Palace.
But that was only his recollection, so Juliet’s memory might be a little different.
The position of the Duke of the North was not handed over easily, and he often left Juliet alone.
“There’s a typhoon coming soon… So…”
If she had told him not to go or asked to accompany her, or if she had begged him to come back early, maybe he would have realized it sooner.
“Be careful…”
Struggling to open her mouth, that was all she managed to say.
‘How foolish…’
In that aspect, Juliet acted naively to the point of frustration.
When dealing with conservative and scheming noble families in the North, she would overturn everything without changing her expression. So there was no way she would be afraid of something like a ghost.
She probably didn’t want him to know that she didn’t like being alone, like a child, on nights when thunder roared.
Lennox had only recently learned about it.
Flash.
On nights with intense thunder, Juliet would keep a bright fire burning and crouch down in a corner.
“But then it would be hard to fall asleep.”
In response to the casually thrown remark, she flinched and reluctantly extinguished the fire. It was probably closer to trauma than fear.
Finally, he recalled the day when her parents died, a storm of such magnitude that it could be counted as one of the biggest thunderstorms he had ever witnessed.
She had never shown it, but on nights when thunder rumbled, she would pretend to be indifferent and desperately bury herself under the covers, her face pale, which was quite cute.
So he pretended not to notice it either.
There had been times when he wondered what Juliet would do when he wasn’t by her side and she couldn’t fall asleep alone.
But he never asked.
He simply guessed that she would either stay up all night with the lights on, waiting for the storm to pass, or call the maids and spend the night with them.
It wasn’t something he needed to know more about, and he didn’t want to.
Flash.
When the lightning struck again, Lennox discovered a fragile white bone beneath his feet.
The forest floor was littered with what clearly appeared to be human bones.
All these scattered bones rolling under his feet were not unfortunate travelers who had lost their way.
The contaminated forest affected not only grotesque monsters but also emitted toxicity itself.
The floodwaters emitted their own poison.
Strangely, this toxin harmless to animals induced hallucinations in humans, producing an effect similar to being under the influence of a strange drug.
Those who knew this fact were extremely rare, but in the North, where there were many mountains, there were naturally many contaminated forests.
Dealing with the residents of the territories who were addicted to hallucinations while subduing the monsters of the Northern territories was also one of the tasks of the Duke’s Knights.
Lennox became curious once again.
The poison emitted by the monsters, the toxicity emanating from the contaminated forest, had no effect on his body.
Then, would it be the same for his mind?
Although he had roamed the contaminated forest countless times, Lennox had never experienced hallucinations even once.
In the damp fog, Lennox stared intently through the pitch-black forest.
Eventually, amid the dark trees where nothing could be seen, a hazy figure floated like smoke.
Starting with tangled hair and a twisted face, an incomplete image of a woman wandering alone in the eerie forest soon emerged.
The silhouette of a familiar woman seemed to appear vividly before his eyes, but Lennox didn’t even smile.
He was a little perplexed. Could he see her if he wished to?
Lennox wondered if he was truly experiencing hallucinations or if it was just his imagination.
Flash.
The woman, who had been nervously scanning her surroundings, suddenly turned to look at him.
As he looked ahead, the woman’s expression brightened.
In the next moment, Lennox instinctively reached out with empty hands towards the woman leaping towards him.
“Stay….”
As if she would really jump into his embrace.
However, the woman, like a ghost, passed Lennox and ran behind him. When he turned around, the woman was nestled against an unseen figure.
Flash.
Thunder struck again, but the woman, clinging to the unidentified person with bare feet raised like a magpie, no longer seemed frightened.
Instead, she appeared to be the happiest person in the world.
With a face I had never seen before, she smiled brightly, as if waiting for a secret lover, and embraced him around the neck, playfully teasing him with a smile in her eyes before kissing him.
Then, leaning her cheek against the chest of the unidentified man, she whispered with a touch of sadness, but tenderly and secretly.
“I’m pregnant.”
Her lips, which had been so obedient to Lennox, seemed to blossom.
“So let’s run away, my love.”
Clang!
He blindly swung his sword, cutting through the image of two lovers, but his blade fell on something hard.
When Lennox saw the small sparks flying and guessed its nature, he was already pulling the bowstring with his hand.
Thump.
With a dull sound, the arrow flew and the body of the monster fell heavily.
It was a bronze deer, a low-level monster commonly found in the forest.
The only difference was that its entire body was pale. Such mutations were not surprising in the infected forest.
Perhaps it had been hiding somewhere after witnessing the death of the centipede that occupied the middle of the forest and had now rushed out.
Lennox looked down at the fallen monster with cold eyes. A red streak rose from the white deer’s neck.
The illusion of the woman that had lingered before him had long disappeared.
“This is not your child.”
However, contrary to the silent murmurs of hallucination, Juliet, smiling sweetly, clearly spoke those words to him.
Under normal circumstances, he would have doubted the truth of those words. It was rare for him to lose his composure.
However, his tilted sanity clouded his judgment.
He couldn’t find the right timing to cut her off. And yet, he didn’t suspect that letting go of her hand first would be to his disadvantage.
But…
‘The truth is, I had an ulterior motive.’
Lennox’s lips twisted cruelly.
He could have easily grabbed her if he reached out. Just a mere butterfly. Juliet’s enchantment had no effect on him.
Juliet, who had never shown any tears in front of him, wavered with teary eyes.
Snap.
The necklace clashed as it fell from his grasp.
This extravagant necklace, known as the ‘Tears of the Sun’, was worth as much as ten mansions.
Yet Juliet took nothing. It was as if anything associated with him, no matter how valuable, was repugnant to her.
The white deer, with its pierced neck, twitched and fell lifeless.
‘Maybe I like you.’
With a cold mind, Lennox pondered.
But he still hadn’t realized that he had never given anything to Juliet.
* * *
“My lord…”
Hadin, who had been waiting outside the dark forest with his words, was taken aback when he noticed the Duke walking out of the forest slowly.
Hadin, with dark-colored skin, was a member of the southern immigrant tribe and the leader of the elite knights who were loyal only to the Duke.
He had always faithfully carried out his lord’s orders without blinking an eye, but even in Hadin’s eyes, the Duke’s appearance, cloaked in the blood of monsters, felt eerie.
Not only did he walk out unscathed from the lair of the mutant monsters, but the Duke also dragged along a white deer drenched in blood.
“My lord.”
Hadin tried not to give any attention to the dead deer and awkwardly opened his mouth.
Originally, it wasn’t Hadin’s job to deliver this kind of news.
It was the duty of the secretary, Elliot, or at least that of the other knights. But it was only Hadin who was by the Duke’s side now.
“…A message came from the palace a little while ago. They said the lake has turned red.”
Near the capital, there was a sacred lake, access to which had only a limited circle of people.
The seemingly ordinary small lake was considered sacred because it foretold calamity.
If the lake turned red every few decades or even centuries, it was a sign of an impending disaster.
To make matters worse, the ominous sign appeared the day after the grand New Year’s celebration. It was only natural for the Emperor to panic and urgently contact Duke Carlyle in the middle of the night.
“My lord?”
However, Lennox Carlyle, who was wiping his hands after throwing away the prey, showed no interest in signs or disasters.
After casually wiping off the streak of blood running down his chin, the Duke asked with a nonchalant expression.
“Where is the mansion of Count Monad?”