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Chapter 66
Seeing As calmer than before, I quickly nodded.
“Yeah, somewhere else! Hmm… I’ll take you to a place you’ll like.”
“…It’s a promise.”
As As muttered in a gentler voice, he rested his forehead against my shoulder.
I smiled softly, stroked his head, and then closed my eyes to focus.
Normally, sharing senses with a spirit requires giving oneself over completely, leaving the person in a fully vulnerable state.
So, I decided to summon Eldimir along with Undine to ensure safety.
The nature energy flowing throughout my body gathered in the air at my command, gradually taking shape.
It slowly formed into the shapes of a snake and a wolf, eventually becoming Undine and Eldimir, appearing before me.
Undine and Eldimir approached, rubbing their cheeks against me in greeting.
The cold yet refreshing touch made me laugh.
After stroking Eldimir’s fur once, I turned my gaze to Undine.
“Undine, I need your help. I want to check Dante’s office. Can you show me?”
She nodded.
Undine pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead, then seemed to dissolve into the air.
Slowly, another scene began overlapping my vision.
Fully entrusting my sight to Undine, I gradually collapsed to the side.
Einra lost her balance and fell to the side.
Akes reached out, holding her body and resting her head on his thigh.
Her chestnut hair, wet in the moonlight, cascaded to the side along her tilted head.
“Einra.”
The low voice, unusual for a child, resonated in the still air.
“I don’t have much patience.”
Softly, his fingers brushed through Einra’s disheveled hair.
“Waiting quietly isn’t my domain.”
“….”
“I hope this time, all your questions are answered.”
Eldimir, seated beside them, stared at Akes, clearly displeased with his gesture.
Akes didn’t care, tilting his head slightly.
“At dawn tomorrow, there won’t be another chance.”
You can’t ask the dead, and you can’t get answers from ashes.
He had already granted Einra the final hours of the day.
It was as much patience as he could afford her.
“You asked what would happen if someone so young came looking for you.”
No answer came from the one who couldn’t hear.
The only sound was the soft brushing of hair, quietly scattering through the air.
“I wanted to come in my original form too, but the Emperor kept blocking me. He said Serenia shouldn’t appear where Einra is. We can’t give the nobles an excuse.”
“….”
“Of course, I didn’t come alone. I hid the knights around the Baharman estate. At dawn tomorrow, we’ll strike immediately.”
Einra tilted her small head slightly.
Childish yet subtly curved red lips formed a line.
“You shouldn’t punish a traitor alone.”
Akes glanced out the window where the knights were lying in wait.
“…Still, I don’t want to kill the Grand Duke too easily, that’s the problem.”
Just imagining what was going through that crude mind made me dizzy.
Though his eyes carried a lazy, dangerous gleam, the way he stroked her chestnut hair and caressed her cheek was unexpectedly gentle.
He added softly:
“Of course, the traitor’s head will fall in front of all the people.”
The vision sharpened.
Undine swam through the Grand Duke’s estate and soon arrived in front of Dante’s study.
“Finally… I can check it.”
I took a deep breath and asked Undine to let me enter.
Inside, everything was more orderly than I expected.
Various magical tools, potions, oddly shaped experimental equipment, a huge amount of documents neatly arranged on the desk, and crystal orbs for communication.
Along the wall with windows was a bookshelf packed with books, and next to it, a small sofa and table.
“And… I can sense mana coming from all over the study…”
I tilted my head in curiosity, but focusing on examining the interior was more important.
I carefully checked every item in the study.
However, more than half of the tools were encrypted and unreadable, and the documents, when skimmed, were all mundane.
“As expected… trying to find clues about magic without knowing anything about it is hopeless.”
I felt a bit dejected.
After all the mental effort and persistence in this field, I had found nothing.
“Maybe I should bring Harnen…”
Just as I thought that, I noticed something.
“…Huh?”
A full-length mirror I hadn’t paid attention to earlier was directly in front of me.
“Was this here before?”
Perhaps I had just overlooked it because of the large bookshelf next to it.
I frowned in thought and approached the mirror with Undine.
I could sense strong mana from the mirror that I hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps some magic made the mirror’s presence faint until it was consciously recognized.
“But the mana is far too strong to be just an illusion spell.”
Maybe Dante deliberately hid the mirror’s presence for a reason.
As Undine’s tail touched the mirror’s surface…
“…!”
It passed right through as if it weren’t there.
“…Huh?”
Startled, I kept moving and inadvertently stepped into the mirror.
Blinking in shock, I slowly looked around the space beyond.
A small sofa and table, a window next to a large bookshelf.
Crystal orbs for communication, various documents, experimental equipment, potions, magical tools on the desk.
This space was a perfect mirror of the study I had just seen.
“And the mana that filled the study earlier isn’t here.”
Perhaps the mirror neutralized the illusion spell covering the study.
“Then maybe now I can actually find something…”
I approached a magical tool and examined it.
As expected, it wasn’t encrypted.
“Exactly.”
I smiled internally.
Now I understood. When I first entered, the study felt full of mana because it was masked with illusion magic.
“No matter how secure, you don’t encrypt every single daily-use item.”
Like setting auto-login because logging into a portal every time is tedious in a past life.
“So he used an illusion spell.”
Even if an intruder came, it would give a chance to defend.
Of course, the mirror would activate only if the mana’s quality and quantity reached a certain level, but as someone who didn’t study magic, I had no way of knowing that.
“Finally, the real space is revealed.”
Excited, I began examining it.
“Let’s start with the documents on the desk before wasting time on the complex magical tools.”
Undine moved closer to the desk, sensing my intention.
I decided to skim documents related to Belzesti first.
After a while,
“…A curse?”
I frowned, picking up a document marked with an ominous keyword.
Skimming it, I saw it was about cursing someone under specific conditions.
“What does this wicked mage plan now?”
I furrowed my brows and read quickly.
“Something’s wrong.”
I opened the references listed at the bottom of the document.
Following the chain of linked documents, I read everything.
The more I read, the more an eerie sense of dread ran down my spine.
Unusual phenomena at the mausoleum, a mysterious enormous power behind it.
Clues barely salvaged from ancient inscriptions.
Even these clues vaguely described an incomprehensible, dimension-scale power.
Phenomena beyond human interference.
A reincarnated soul connected to a corpse and incomprehensible forces.
Residual emotions left in the corpse after death.
And studies showing that one can curse a reincarnated person using these residual emotions.
“…What is this?”
My whole body trembled.
My mind went blank.
“Curse a reincarnated person using their past corpse?”
And the curse had only one target.
“…Harnen.”
