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<Chapter 4>
“Wow, dust.”
An ancient castle whose outer walls were wrapped white with frozen snow.
The interior atmosphere was quiet and gloomy, like a place where ghosts lived. It was obvious that it hadn’t been managed for a long time, making it clear whether anyone actually lived here.
‘The castle’s state is comparable to my appearance… Ah, right.’
I couldn’t keep going around looking like this forever.
Still, my magic power had recovered after resting a bit. I calculated my magic power while touching my cuff.
The moment the red light sparkled like a small firework.
The old dress I was wearing transformed into a new one, and I became clean from head to toe as if I had just washed.
Niche, who was leading the way through the gloomy corridor, looked back.
“What, you’ve never seen a magical girl before?”
“Ugh”
……With reactions like that, there’s no point in joking.
Feeling awkward, I cleared my throat meaninglessly and followed him.
Crossing the long hallway and climbing stairs several times, we finally reached the top floor of the castle.
At that moment, Niche, who had finally stopped, pointed his thumb at a door that anyone could see was out of the ordinary.
“Here. Go into the bedroom and wake up the master.”
“……?”
“If you do that, he says he’ll grant you asylum.”
A bolt from the blue couldn’t be more sudden than this.
The Grand Duke’s bedroom, which I was practically pushed into.
“You’re telling me to wake up the Grand Duke? Just like that?”
“You’re a pretty well-known mage, aren’t you?”
“That’s true, but what am I supposed to do? At the very least, you should tell me why he’s asleep in the first place!”
“Magical energy. I don’t really expect you to wake him either… Why don’t you try using your impressive magic or something?”
With those words, Niche left heartlessly.
Common sense dictated that this wasn’t exactly a request to make to a noble young lady from an enemy country you’ve just met for the first time, was it? Maybe if she were a saint.
If this were gamefied, it would be a broken game that pushes you to go catch the final boss without even a tutorial.
“……Huh. Alright, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
If this works? Then I’ll just live large.
If it doesn’t? Then I’ll just negotiate as I originally planned.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. Probably because ever since I entered this place, the magical energy felt eerily strong.
‘Alright, let’s think.’
The Grand Duke, asleep due to overflowing magical energy. And according to the original work, in one year, his magical energy will run rampant and he will destroy the world.
If I had to guess, it’s highly likely he’ll still be asleep then.
If that’s the case, perhaps.
“If the Grand Duke wakes up, does that mean we move away from destruction?”
Thinking thoughts that involved the fate of the world, I slowly approached the bed, but soon was silently startled.
“Gasp.”
Correction. I was startled, letting out a sound as if I was choking.
Because a man, so beautiful it felt unreal, was lying there like a corpse in a coffin.
White, shimmering silver hair. Skin like transparent marble.
Was it because he was excessively pale? He felt more like a statue than a person, or like a ghost with a form.
His face was fantastical, as if sculpted by a god, but.
‘What, the magical energy.’
Suffocating magical energy composed him like cells. A natural unpleasantness and repulsion crept up.
‘……But still, I have to do it, right?’
I, no saint, had suddenly received a mission to wake the Grand Duke, so what other method could I have thought of?
It was that very method that both Snow White, who fell asleep after eating an apple, and Princess Aurora, who fell asleep after pricking her finger on a spindle, experienced.
‘Since it’s a world inside a fairy tale or a romance novel.’
It might be a sophistry, but it was worth a try.
To wake the sleeping princess… no, the Grand Duke as pretty as a princess, I slowly lowered my head. Just in case, I also raised my magic power.
Flutter.
“Just in case something…….”
……Wait, flutter?
It seemed like his eyelids trembled. So slightly that one might think it was an illusion.
At a distance close enough for our noses to almost touch. His long eyelashes fluttered delicately like a butterfly hatching.
“……You.”
Chilly silver-gray eyes captured me as if piercing through me.
A sensation as if my heart suddenly stopped and all the blood in my body ran cold. Goosebumps spread down my spine.
The man, who was like a moving statue, said.
“Since when were there rats in my castle?”
A tone cool and devoid of inflection.
It was a smooth, clear low voice, not like someone who had been sleeping for several months. Now that I looked, there wasn’t even any sleep dust.
‘Is this a Northern Grand Duke buff? How terrifying.’
While staring at him, forgetting to breathe from surprise, I also calmly admired him.
Come to think of it, the Grand Duke’s name was definitely.
“I think it was Daviere…… Ah.”
The Grand Duke frowned slightly.
Only then did I, who had been holding my face too close, properly compose myself and take a step back from him.
Then, the Grand Duke, who had risen like a ghost, stood before me. He had closed the distance I had created.
“Answer me, mage of Hilvarcia.”
……He was so handsome it was almost scary.
‘Could his true identity be something like a male god?’
The fact that he was wearing a tunic made him look even more so. Though it seemed casually thrown on, it exuded elegance.
If it weren’t for the deep, dense magical energy he possessed that seemed to have no end, I wouldn’t have thought he was the Demon Grand Duke.
“I asked how you got in here.”
The Grand Duke, who evoked a labyrinthine cosmic horror, forcibly pulled me from my idle thoughts.
“Niche…… said to wake the Grand Duke……?”
“Not Giselle?”
“I’m not sure, but it had the nuance that someone ordered it. Whether it was a witch or a beauty…… Actually, there wasn’t any explanation whatsoever…….”
Somehow, I felt like I was tattling.
A look of displeasure rose on the Grand Duke’s delicate, sculpted face. I explained myself as if a thief’s legs were trembling.
“I didn’t really do anything in particular. I just got close, and the Grand Duke suddenly snapped his eyes open! It’s quite mysterious, isn’t it?”
At this point, it was mysteriously frightening.
Even though I hadn’t done anything special, things kept working out smoothly whenever I made a move, like a roll of toilet paper.
The Grand Duke asked monotonously.
“Today’s date.”
“Divine Year 3196, October…… 31st, I think.”
“……Only 3 months, then.”
He closed his eyes as if thinking for a moment, then looked at me with a penetrating gaze and said dryly.
“I can’t sleep.”
“……I see.”
What am I supposed to do about it?
“It seems the reason might be you.”
At first glance, it sounded romantic, but it didn’t feel that way at all. Rather, the back of my neck felt cold.
As I was bewildered, unable to grasp the meaning of his words, the Grand Duke extended his elegant finger and lightly tapped my forehead.
And then unkindly commanded.
“Wait.”
As if I were some kind of pet dog.
……I thought that, but since he was the Grand Duke, the superior I needed to make a good impression on, a submissive answer came out.
“Until when?”
“Oh my, you really did wake up.”
The top floor of the Grand Duke’s castle, covered in white snow like a shroud.
Giselle, the red-haired witch, admired her master, who had appeared in his office for the first time in a while.
Niche, who had been lounging on a couch, rose belatedly and silently greeted his master. In his own way, it was a very proper attitude.
Their master, Grand Duke Daviere Winze Belmeyer, leaned against the couch his knight had vacated and said.
“Explain.”
As if she had been waiting, Giselle quickly spoke.
“You asked us to bring the saint, but we brought the villainess instead. She requested asylum.”
She recalled the villainess she had seen through her ‘Sight’. Irene Valtress was the Empire’s most famous celebrity, someone Giselle couldn’t possibly not know.
“Irene Baltres. The Crown Princess-in-waiting, a princess with a father who’s a staunch Imperial loyalist.”
“And a felon who stabbed the Crown Prince and ran away. We couldn’t bring the saint because of her.”
Niche added in a sullen tone.
He had received the mission to abduct the saint from the witch and left for the Empire with Zephyr, but had no choice but to return empty-handed.
Because an unexpected incident had occurred.
“Well. I also didn’t expect the saint to hole up in the Imperial Palace, saying she would treat the unconscious Crown Prince.”
Her rhythmic voice was cheerful.
Giselle was surprised, firstly, that ‘that’ villainess, obsessed with the Crown Prince, had personally assassinated him, and secondly, that even the saint divine power couldn’t completely heal the Crown Prince’s injuries.
And thirdly.
“Did you see it too, Master? The color of that child’s soul.”
“……Yes.”
Davies, who slowly affirmed, recalled the soul that the woman, like an exquisite wax doll, possessed—a soul the color of dawn in the early morning sky.
“I’ve never seen such a pretty summer sky blue before.”
The current Bellmire main castle, commonly known as Winter Castle.
Its members are those who were cursed by God due to the incident of ‘that day’ about a hundred years ago.
Once human, but now called demons or monsters, they could see the essence of humans through the form of color.
This was actually closer to an act of sensing rather than seeing, and the color was expressed differently depending on the aesthetic standards of the observer.
Niche interjected.
“……It was the color of green leaves to me.”
“Oh my. It’s a color neither of us can see in winter.”
Giselle’s vividly bright green eyes curved into a smile. She continued before her master could urge her.
“I saw the future through that child as well.”
Eyes that see all of creation.
Giselle, possessing the ability of ‘Sight,’ could see everything within her reach and sometimes even glimpse the future.
Therefore, Giselle, who is the prime minister of Belmeyer yet called a witch, spoke with a confident tone.
“Irene will free you, Master, from the magical energy. And…….”
“And?”
“She will become Bellmire.”
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