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Chapter 69
“Bishop, do you think Margaret has disappeared?”
“Well… if not, then—”
If not, then she might be dead. Ruzef swallowed the rest of the sentence as he stared at the enormous tarantula.
Ruzef himself couldn’t hide his confusion. He didn’t even want to consider the latter possibility.
Margaret dead? That couldn’t be true. It must not be.
“Isn’t that a footprint?”
Ruzef spotted something near the edge of the cliff and stepped closer.
It was hard to make out clearly in the darkness, but at a glance, it looked like a human footprint.
“Judging by the size, it seems to belong to Lady Flone.”
Ruzef quietly followed the trail with his eyes. There were smaller footprints and larger ones beside them. The larger ones likely belonged to Kaiden.
A bad feeling crept up on him. Unable to accept the situation, Ruzef stared fixedly at the ground.
“…It looks like there was a battle with monsters.”
The footprints led toward the dead tarantula, and there were clear signs of violent movement.
As he followed the trail, Ruzef saw that the footprints stopped abruptly at the very edge of the cliff.
It didn’t look like a voluntary stop. There were no signs of stepping forward or sideways—just an abrupt end, as if someone had been struck and sent flying.
“Your Highness, did you see this? This couldn’t possibly—”
Ruzef hurriedly crouched at the edge of the cliff and looked down.
The height was dizzying. If someone had been struck and thrown down from here, death would have been instantaneous.
Enoch stood beside him, arms crossed, gazing silently down below.
Rustle.
A sound came from the bushes. It was unclear whether it was just the wind—or a monster.
A chill ran down Ruzef’s spine as he turned toward Enoch.
“Your Highness, we should return. It’s dangerous to stay here.”
But Enoch didn’t move. Ruzef wasn’t even sure he’d heard him.
Ruzef anxiously checked their surroundings, but fortunately, nothing else stirred in the forest.
Enoch remained standing at the cliff’s edge. When Ruzef approached, he showed not a trace of emotional disturbance.
Ruzef had no desire to stay any longer among monster corpses, but he also lacked the courage to return alone.
In the end, he stood quietly beside Enoch.
Margaret was gone.
Whether she had left of her own will or met with an accident, either possibility was enough to drive him mad.
His insides churned.
Unknown, burning emotions flowed through his chest like molten lava.
The hand gripping Margaret’s bag strap trembled violently.
His heart pounded with anxiety and impatience, threatening to consume him with helplessness. Breathing felt difficult.
Ruzef spoke to him from beside, but Enoch couldn’t hear a word.
Beyond the great river, behind dense foliage, a massive mountain ridge loomed. Above it, the night sky was filled with stars.
And among them, a large moon shone brightly in the dark night.
It reminded him of Margaret.
I must really be losing my mind over her.
Now I even think of her when I look at the moon.
“Honestly, I don’t understand why Your Highness refuses to marry or even get engaged. I have what you don’t—pure noble blood.”
Margaret’s past words echoed in his ears.
“Now that you’re the Crown Prince, marriage is even more important. You need to secure your position. You should consider it fortunate that I, the Duke of Flone’s daughter, like you.”
She had been born with the noble status he had always admired and desired—yet that was all she ever knew how to talk about.
She claimed to like him, but there was not an ounce of respect in her attitude toward him.
Then again, had anyone ever truly respected him? Probably not. That was why he had to be perfect.
But the Margaret of now…
The woman he met again on this island didn’t care about his status—or even her own. She pursued the essence of a person, not appearances.
Perhaps she was the noble and strong person he had been searching for all along.
Enoch furrowed his brow, imagining her face, then closed his eyes with a pained groan.
“I’m going insane.”
His grip on the bag tightened.
“Do you think the two of them are alive?”
Ruzef asked quietly.
“They’re alive.”
Enoch murmured as if brainwashing himself.
Ruzef looked at him with hope, then quickly hardened his expression and sighed.
Enoch calmly scanned the surroundings and replied indifferently.
“Margaret will return. And if not, I’ll search this entire island until I find her.”
They turned back to retrace their steps—
And found the cliff surrounded by spiders as large as human torsos.
“Ahh!”
Startled, Ruzef screamed and collapsed to the ground.
Shing.
Enoch drew his sword, eyes sharp as he surveyed the endlessly approaching monsters.
“This is a good opportunity to wipe them out.”
“Just the two of us? Isn’t that dangerous?”
The number of monsters surrounding them was overwhelming, and more kept pouring out from the forest.
Enoch calmly assessed the situation.
“I don’t know how they’re gathering like this, but if we leave them alone, they might surround the cabin.”
He tilted his head slightly and glanced at Ruzef.
“Fighting at the cliff is dangerous. We’ll need to move—but for that, we need bait.”
“D-Don’t tell me you mean me—”
Before Ruzef could finish, Enoch smiled and sliced his own arm with the sword.
“Your Highness! What are you doing?!”
“If the rampage doesn’t stop after the extermination, stab me with your sword—even if it means knocking me unconscious.”
With that, Enoch charged forward.
You could kill him if you stab wrong!
Ruzef screamed internally, frozen in place as Enoch disappeared into the swarm.
The blade flashed under moonlight. With every elegant arc, green blood sprayed into the air.
Enoch moved like a man without brakes. He wasn’t sane anymore.
Ruzef stood paralyzed, overwhelmed by Enoch’s madness, watching him slaughter the monsters.
And so they spent two days like that—until Margaret appeared with Kaiden.
Eunji leapt down from my arm and slithered across the ground. It was definitely faster than me.
Unbelievable. Crawling is faster. Definitely a monster.
Kaiden followed behind, staring in fascination.
“Will it grow?”
I shrugged as I ran.
“Probably?”
“If it’s the baby anaconda we saw before, doesn’t that mean it’ll grow that big?”
I froze at his words. Eunji and Kaiden both stopped and looked at me.
“Don’t say that. Eunji won’t grow that big.”
Eunji tilted its head, not understanding.
I approached and stroked its back.
“Wouldn’t that be better? Raise it, train it. It might hunt other monsters for us.”
BOOM! CRASH!
A thunderous sound echoed through the forest.
“We should probably hurry, don’t you think?”
I nodded.
This feels bad. Enoch hasn’t gone berserk, has he?
Suppressing my rising anxiety, I ran.
Soon, we reached a clearing—one that had clearly been forcibly created by fallen trees.
Spider corpses littered the ground.
Thick green blood pooled everywhere. I quickly picked up Eunji before it could crawl through it.
It looked up at me, tongue flicking, as if asking why it wasn’t allowed.
“What on earth happened here…?”
Kaiden stared around in disbelief.
“Whose doing do you think this is?”
“Who else?”
We were thinking of the same person.
Enoch.
Only he could devastate monsters to this extent.
Boom!
A loud crash echoed nearby.
“Your Highness! Stop! It’s dangerous!”
The desperate scream sounded like Diego’s.
