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Chapter 2
Opaniel quickly added to Bella’s look full of disillusionment.
[Still — as long as you’re in that body, even if your heart is pierced you won’t die!]
Bella squeezed her eyes shut; she felt as if she could already see her bleak future.
[Think of your mission in the human world like chess. The human world is the chessboard and humans are the pieces. You move your pieces and kill the pieces the demon controls. Then he won’t be able to take this place.]
It would be easier — as always — to just deal with it alone.
After all, they’d never done a joint attack before.
Bella, ripping at her hair in frustration, took a deep breath.
Opaniel never took back an order once he gave it.
So — do it. Whatever it is, better to finish it quickly.
Steeling herself, Bella decided first to be certain who the enemy to be eliminated was.
On the ground rolled a hellish fire that seemed ready to swallow the world, and the sky was a final day clouded over with ash-gray smoke.
Among the tens of thousands of possible futures, on that final day two armies always met and fought.
The victor was always the Emperor’s army.
And the moment the Emperor won, the world became the demons’ land.
“So, if I just kill the Emperor — that bastard — it’s over, right?”
Then, with what piece do I kill the Emperor?
The answer was not hard.
In the final battle, the only family that opposed the Emperor’s army was Calypse (Kalips). Always at the vanguard of that family stood the same man.
Jet-black hair whipping in flames of wind.
Surprisingly vivid red eyes that reflected the blaze.
The desperate face of that man — even to Bella, who had seen countless beauties — was very beautiful.
Bella already knew the man.
More precisely, Belladis — the original owner of this body she’d entered — knew him.
His name was,
Theodore Calypse.
He was the husband of this body.
“In other words, I need Calypse. Theodore Calypse, too.”
Bella murmured as she slowly touched her cheek.
“This is Calypse’s place.”
At that moment a commotion sounded beyond the window.
“What do we do? All the chefs were dragged away!”
“They’re searching everywhere — the dining room and even the kitchen staff rooms! It’s chaos!”
Looking out past the window, she saw women scurrying under the shade of trees.
Hearing the word “kitchen” brought that conversation to mind.
‘…Immediately ransack the houses of the ducal household’s chefs and find the hidden evidence, then use that as a pretext to torture them a bit… Eventually someone will confess that the duchess’s death was ordered by the duke. It’ll take at most a week.’
‘Thus the Calypse ducal family will fall.’
“Calypse is about to be ruined.”
She hadn’t worked out a concrete plan yet, but first she’d put out the fire at her feet.
‘Poison the duchess and make it look like Calypse did it. Then the Emperor will move to destroy the Calypse house.’
If they planned to ruin Calypse using the death of this body as an excuse, all she needed to do was show she wasn’t dead.
Bella muttered gloomily and turned around.
The damned body, which had already died once, throbbed with sharp pain with every step.
A door she could once have opened with a single finger now required all her fragile strength to force.
“Step aside at once! Is she the duchess or the little duchess of Calypse? We must confirm her condition with our own eyes!”
“Do you think we’d show the duchess to the Calypse family who murdered her?!”
“What do you mean Calypse did it?!”
When she opened the door, there were far more people standing there than necessary to “guard a corpse.”
They were the ones who had wanted her dead: the royal guards.
Bella took a step toward the left, where the guards’ gazes were fixed.
The men, sensing movement, slowly turned their eyes toward her.
“Huh…?”
Passing silently among the men who were quietly aghast, Bella walked with heavy steps.
A large man standing with his back to her in the middle of the hall shouted loudly.
“I will hold you accountable for the crime of murdering the duchess!”
“Hey.”
“His Majesty will never allow such a thing to go unpunished!”
“Hey!”
The man screaming stopped short.
Before he even figured out what was happening, a thin voice sounded behind him once more.
“Move aside.”
The man spun around with a fierce scowl, and his face froze mid-yell.
A woman who could have been taken for a corpse — pale enough to be believed dead — was looking at him.
A chill skated down his spine.
“…T-the duchess?”
Not only believable as a corpse — the duchess who should unquestionably be dead — frowned while alive.
She spoke toward the man who still hadn’t moved.
“Listen once and for all.”
How many times did she have to repeat herself when she was about to die from the effort?
“Move.”
The piercing light in her pink eyes contrasted oddly with her bloodless face.
The shouting man stumbled back as if stepping backwards.
When the man who had filled the view retreated, Bella could finally see them.
Knights of Calypse, their chests bearing the sigil of the roaring wolf.
These were the very men who, in Opaniel’s vision of the final battle, had stood against evil until the last.
Bella started to walk toward them. She faltered, and one of them quickly supported her.
“Little Duchess, are you all right?”
Bella clicked her tongue and corrected her posture.
“You know where you have to take me, yes?”
They looked stunned — flustered.
“Get a grip.”
She felt like she could vanish at any moment.
“Where should I be taken?”
“Ah… ah, yes! Yes, Little Duchess!”
“Show the way.”
The Calypse family knights, now alert, immediately cleared a path.
Bella ground her teeth as she walked along the path they opened.
Damn this body.
What could she do with such a body? It drove her mad to think she couldn’t simply do nothing, but she couldn’t afford to just leave things be.
First, solve the immediate problem.
Calypse — my 0.1%.
Protect it at all costs.
Calypse.
A family that had always shone brilliantly in the long history of the Empire.
“Duke! We didn’t do it! How could we poison the Little Duchess’s food?”
How had such a family come to this?
“That will be revealed in time! Duke Calypse, allow me to personally interrogate them.”
At the royal guard captain’s words, the pale people began to wail.
The cooks, dressed in chef’s clothing, screamed and tried to run, but the tighter they tried to flee the crueller the hands that grabbed them became.
Just as one guard was about to slap a cook—
“Stop!”
A shout so fierce that even the captain flinched struck the hall and halted everyone.
The ruler of this place, watching the horror in silence, was Duke Calypse.
Strong body and vividly shining eyes.
Those sharp eyes made it hard to guess his age of nearly sixty.
But the silvered white of his hair revealed that his years were not few.
Kaltherion Calypse.
The old lord of this land finally spoke.
“Enough, Captain. You cannot question my people while excluding Calypse.”
At the low voice, the room quieted.
Pressed for a moment by his presence, the royal guards remembered the corpse of the duchess and straightened their chests again.
‘Even if he’s Kaltherion, he won’t escape this time.’
Not unless the dead duchess did not come back to life.
“A duchess in the ducal household was murdered! Be thankful you’re only being questioned first!”
“What—!”
Rodik, the long-time friend and retainer of Kaltherion, roared in anger.
The knights of the ducal house raged like boiling lava.
It was a hair-trigger moment ready to explode.
“For now, I think I should see my wife.”
The tension in the room, taut as if it would snap, suddenly relaxed.
