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Chapter 43
Helena quickly returned the piece she had been holding to its original place.
Benjamin traced the shape of wings on the statue’s back with his finger.
“There are wings here as well. I gave up on carving them since it would be difficult to express in sculpture, but… perhaps attaching something like lace might work.”
“I-I see.”
“I thought of it when I saw you just now.”
Benjamin, wearing his glasses, looked at her and smiled softly.
Incredibly, he looked genuinely pleased.
In a gentle voice, as if soothing her, he spoke.
“If there’s anything you’re curious about, feel free to ask.”
“O-okay…”
Caught off guard by the unexpected hospitality, Helena felt dazed.
She needed to search through as many shelves as possible while Benjamin was here, yet she couldn’t pull herself together—as if she’d been slapped across the cheek.
‘What is with him…?’
Empress Clarissa had clearly said that Benjamin was as wary as a small bird and as ferocious as a wild beast.
She said he trusted no one and kept no one by his side.
Yet the Benjamin before her now wasn’t a wary little bird at all—he was more like a foolish hen that kindly stepped aside for someone coming to take her eggs.
‘Whatever. There’s no point trying to understand a man who’s not right in the head.’
Helena forced herself to focus and began carefully scanning the shelves.
They were packed with countless sculptures of various magical beasts. Just looking at them made her feel dizzy.
An ordinary person wouldn’t even spare them a glance, let alone examine them closely.
That was precisely why Helena thought this shelf was the perfect place to hide something.
‘…Or maybe not?’
Contrary to her expectations, the shelves really did contain nothing but sculptures.
“What’s this?”
“A centaur. A half-human, half-horse magical beast.”
To check the far corners of the shelves, she deliberately pulled out sculptures that were wedged deep inside, pretending to inspect them with interest—but there were no hidden compartments. Only dust came out.
After searching the shelves for quite some time, Helena began to feel increasingly empty.
‘Is there really nothing here?’
Lowering her head with a bored expression, she scanned the lower shelves—and something caught her eye.
‘Huh? Is that a magical beast too?’
Helena picked up a wooden carving that looked quite old.
The edges were worn, suggesting it had been made a very long time ago. It wasn’t a magical beast—it was a woman.
The woman, with long hair and a generous bust, wore a gentle, kind smile. Judging by how much it had been touched, dark smudges from handling marked various places.
Holding the sculpture, Helena glanced sideways at Benjamin.
‘Benjamin’s first love? My god, that poor woman—loved by that lunatic. How miserable must she have been?’
Benjamin, who had been continuing his work indifferently while keeping Helena in his peripheral vision, met her gaze.
Sensing something unusual in her slightly narrowed eyes, his gaze shifted to the sculpture she was holding.
The next moment, Benjamin sprang to his feet.
“Th-that is…!”
Helena narrowed her eyes further and asked,
“What is this? It doesn’t look like a magical beast.”
“It’s nothing. Please give it to me.”
“Doesn’t look like ‘nothing’ to me.”
Helena quickly turned the sculpture around, taking in its full form.
Then she noticed something—tiny letters engraved on the bottom of the statue.
‘What is this? Ancient script?’
From the faint shape, it looked like an ancient language no longer in use.
Just as she was about to take a closer look, Benjamin snatched the sculpture from her hands.
“This… this is not allowed.”
Helena’s eyes instantly sharpened into triangles.
“What? What is it? That’s suspicious! Give it back!”
Instead of answering, Benjamin shamelessly placed the sculpture on the very top shelf—far beyond her reach.
Helena’s mouth fell open.
“You put it somewhere I can’t reach? Seriously? That’s low!”
“Haven’t you seen enough? Please leave now.”
“Leave? You’re telling me to leave? You’re kicking me out? From my own house?”
“This place is—”
Benjamin clamped his mouth shut before finishing, Why is this your house?
Instead, he brushed the sawdust and dust off his clothes, then grabbed Helena by the shoulders and herded her toward the door like a sheepdog driving livestock.
“Then let’s leave together. It’s gotten dark, and I was planning to stop for the day anyway.”
“What is it? Why are you hiding it like this?”
“……”
“Suspicious! Show it to me again!”
“……”
Ancient script was a dangerous form of writing that possessed magic in and of itself.
It was said that during the Age of Magic, people could use magic simply by writing or speaking in ancient script.
That power was so great that even now—over four hundred years after the Age of Magic faded and the Empire was founded upon its ruins—relics of that era still remained.
Ruins such as gates and various magical tools from the Age of Magic had physical forms, making them possible to control and manage. But written characters were different.
For that reason, books dealing with ancient script were strictly regulated, and the use or transmission of the script itself was considered a dangerous act.
‘Benjamin must be the one who engraved that on the statue. If that really is ancient script…!’
Helena felt her heart pounding harder than ever.
Using forbidden characters.
That fact alone was enough to put Benjamin in serious trouble.
‘This is like grabbing hold of a gourd vine. I need to pull carefully. Who taught that man ancient script?’
Why teach a forbidden language at all?
Dismissing it as simple transmission didn’t make sense—Benjamin was hardly an ideal disciple.
If there truly were a surviving master of ancient script somewhere, someone who wanted their knowledge passed down and preserved, they would never have chosen Benjamin as their student.
‘Then there must be another motive.’
No matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t see it in a positive light.
‘Teaching a knight with exceptional talent a secret script that no one else can recognize—and that is incredibly dangerous… and then making him a southern count…? What in the world is the intention here?’
Helena pressed her fingers to her brow, sinking into deep thought.
But no matter how much she pondered, nothing came to mind.
If the goal had been for the foolish Benjamin—ignorant of the dangers of ancient script—to casually engrave it somewhere, letting someone like Helena discover it and become suspicious, then that goal had already been achieved…
Helena finally raised the white flag.
‘Ugh, I don’t know.’
Besides, she wasn’t even certain it was ancient script.
Benjamin, narrow-minded as a pickled anchovy, had engraved the letters so minuscule that they were hard to see—and she’d only glimpsed them briefly.
‘I need to see those letters again.’
Having made up her mind, Helena stood up.
Benjamin had placed the statue on a very high shelf, but if she climbed onto a chair, it wouldn’t be impossible to retrieve.
Helena rushed to Benjamin’s workshop—only to find the door locked.
“Huh?”
She forcefully twisted the brass doorknob. Despite being an old, worn-out door, it didn’t budge an inch.
Flames flared in her eyes.
“That bastard—has he completely lost his mind…?”
Even the key Benjamin used to lock the door had been brought by the butler she herself had found.
And yet Benjamin had locked the door with it just to block her.
Furious to the very top of her head, Helena dashed down the freshly cleaned hallway, her footsteps thudding over the new carpet.
Benjamin was calmly eating dinner with the castle soldiers at one side of the grand banquet hall.
Seeing his peaceful face—his mouth shiny with grease from tearing into meat—made Helena feel her anger surge.
She wanted nothing more than to swing her fist into his jaw, grab him by the neck, and shake him until he handed over the key.
If her fists were as big and her arms as thick as Benjamin’s, she would have done exactly that.
But her fists were too soft to crack his solid jaw, and even if she grabbed his thick neck with her slender arms and shook him, he likely wouldn’t budge.
Helena suppressed her boiling rage, steadied her breathing, and armed herself with a radiant smile.
The castle soldiers noticed her approaching and hurriedly stood up.
“My lady…!”
Caught off guard by the sudden appearance of the countess, the soldiers didn’t know where to look.
Most of them, like Aaron, had admired Benjamin and followed him all the way from the mercenary corps.
In other words, they followed not the Count of Ishpern, but the man named Benjamin himself.
That was why they hadn’t particularly cared even when Benjamin turned the castle into a mess or neglected the governance of the territory.
No—it would be more accurate to say they hadn’t even realized those things were wrong.
But with the arrival of their new lady, changes had begun to stir in their hearts.
