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Chapter: 11
“……”
Erden looked at me with a mix of disbelief and suspicion.
He clearly knew where the family’s crafted items were kept, but his expression said he felt extremely uneasy about telling me outright.
In that case, I had my trump card.
“By the way, Erden, did you finish your homework?”
“……!”
“You look pretty relaxed, so I figured you finished earlier than planned. I’ll let Father know! He’ll definitely be pleased—”
“There’s a storage room in the main house where the family’s alchemical inventions are kept. You need the head of the household’s permission to enter!”
Before I could even finish speaking, Erden flinched and glanced around nervously. Then, hastily gathering up the alchemy textbook he had left on the floor, he rattled off his words like rapid fire.
“I haven’t done my homework yet, so don’t tell Father. I have class now, so I’m leaving.”
After Erden practically bolted toward the annex where his lesson was held—
I moved to find Father with a victorious smile on my face. Tch. Simple-minded, that one.
“You want to see the alchemical invention storage?”
“Yes!”
I ran straight to Father and put on my best act of a curiosity-driven, immature child.
And just like when I’d said I wanted to accompany Duchess Bellas, the performance worked surprisingly easily.
After all, I was a member of the family too—there was no reason not to show me.
Following Father down a marble corridor and through a wooden door carved with geometric patterns, we entered a vast storage room with high ceilings and little natural light.
The tall, wide space was crammed full of inventions, display cases packed tightly from end to end.
“Woooow……”
“Be careful not to touch the exhibits.”
Father gave me a few words of caution at first, then gradually walked ahead, beginning to explain various things.
“This furnace is something I invented in my youth. By using a special fuel, it drastically shortened alchemical synthesis time.”
“Wow! Father, you’re amazing!”
“Amazing? Hardly. It was simply something that had to be done for the revival of our family.”
That was true.
Although House Utel had been a family of founding merit, they had long lived as recluses, withdrawn from both politics and high society.
The reason Utel suddenly became a household leading the empire’s cutting-edge technology was precisely because of this furnace Father invented.
Alchemical synthesis, which once took days or weeks—sometimes even months—was reduced to mere hours after the furnace was created.
That made mass experimentation possible, and the empire’s alchemy advanced at a dazzling pace.
After that, Father continued strolling through the storage room, introducing one item after another.
Potions with various effects, beautiful crystals produced in laboratories, intricate mechanical devices.
As I walked and looked around, my eyes suddenly caught sight of a small spherical object that felt oddly familiar.
At the same time, a status window popped up.
—Ding!
[ITEM: Hypnosis Orb]
[A fumigator containing a hypnotic elixir. Through colorless, odorless aromatic smoke, it can place a target under hypnosis.]
Th-This is……
In the novel The Sacrifice of the Thorned Golden Flower, this was the item Erden had used on Lexia for truly vile purposes.
So he hadn’t invented it himself—he’d taken it from the family vault.
This was no time to hesitate. The only option was to block the source entirely, so he couldn’t ever get ideas like that in the first place.
[SYSTEM: You have stolen the item ‘Hypnosis Orb’.]
Compared to the enormous storage room packed with countless objects, a fist-sized orb was small enough to go missing without anyone noticing.
That’s right. To save my brother from the future swamp of moral corruption, I chose to become a petty thief myself.
In other words, this was an act of noble self-sacrifice.
[ADMIN: Lady Rohesia…? What exactly do you think you’re doing?]
Apparently caught off guard, the administrator blinked and objected.
What, man?
[ADMIN: I thought you’d talk your way through it again using your con artist skill.]
So stealing was unacceptable, but scamming people was fine?
It seemed the system administrator was oddly rigid about certain things.
Still, this was easier than explaining in detail why I needed the Hypnosis Orb.
And Father didn’t seem to have noticed anything either.
“Rosha.”
“……Yes, Father!”
Father called out to me then, and I hurried over, forcing a cheerful tone while my heart pounded.
For a moment I wondered if I’d been caught—but contrary to my fears, Father brought up something completely unexpected.
“Do you know the motto of House Utel?”
“Huh?”
I searched through Rohesia’s memories and the contents of the book.
The motto of House Utel.
It was Enlightenment and Progress.
“Whatever Utel does, it must produce a better result than before. That is what progress means.”
Father continued.
“And through that progress, it must have a positive influence on others. That is enlightenment.”
Caught off guard by the sudden seriousness, I nodded quietly.
Father smiled gently.
The face of the red-haired, handsome man who looked just like me softened.
“You are also a member of House Utel, so your actions must bring about the same kind of results.”
“……”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, Father.”
He patted my head, led me out of the storage room, and then excused himself, saying he had work to attend to.
‘What was that?’
Thinking it over, it felt like Father might have noticed something—but at least for now, he didn’t seem inclined to make an issue of my actions.
[QUEST: Bring food to the male lead ‘Adrian,’ who is imprisoned and starving in the basement. (1/3)]
I glared at the quest message floating before my eyes.
For survival’s sake alone, this quest had to come first.
The dark basement of the Bellas family’s annex.
The door opened, letting in a single shaft of light, and a young girl walked inside.
Adrian Bellas, imprisoned behind iron bars, quietly lifted his head.
“Hello, Adrian.”
A basket hung from the girl’s arm, and a savory aroma drifted out from beneath the cloth covering it.
Seeing that, Adrian let out a bitter smile.
In some ways, that girl was more dangerous than Melisandra.
Her flashy hair and delicate face, packed with striking features, were enough to make one’s eyes linger.
The faint light revealed the curve of her cheeks—they looked tempting. Like the food she brought, those soft cheeks seemed as though they would be warm and tender.
If this were Adrian before he’d been locked in the basement, he might have wanted to believe the words coming from her mouth.
With that flimsy tongue and those eyes, she could probably have easily ensnared others.
But it wouldn’t work on the Adrian of now.
He had learned, with his whole body, what betrayal of trust truly looked like.
Still…
He decided to watch and see just how far this girl would go with her empty words to deceive him.
After all, watching a child who would surely burst into tears the moment real danger approached daring to prance around so confidently in front of him had a certain entertainment value.
That was all.
Truly.
“Adrian.”
Just as his thoughts reached that point, Rohesia spoke.
“Do you trust me?”
“……”
It felt like a direct hit. Adrian did not trust the girl.
Then, Rohesia’s small, pale hand slipped through the bars.
That hand gently cupped Adrian’s face.
Yet Adrian couldn’t bring himself to knock it away.
If he moved carelessly, it felt like her thin wrist might snap with a sharp crack.
‘…So what if it breaks?’
Adrian questioned himself briefly.
For some reason, right now, he didn’t want to see the girl clutching her injured wrist, crying with a scrunched-up face.
A whim even he couldn’t understand.
“If we don’t trust each other, what’s the point of working together?”
The girl always spoke confidently. Perhaps that was why—
“Why are you helping me?”
Adrian asked, betraying his own resolve to keep his guard up as his mouth spilled his true thoughts.
“What do you even gain from sticking your nose into my business?”
“That’s……”
Adrian stared intently at the girl’s slowly moving lips.
Unaware of it himself, he harbored a sly hope that an answer he liked would come out.
“That’s……”
How should I answer?
Of course, helping Adrian was because of the quest. First, because the system ordered me to. Second, because I wanted to save my own life.
But there was no way this prickly boy would accept an answer like that.
Should I say it was simply because it was the right thing to do?
Adrian wouldn’t accept that either. He knew too well how many members of the ducal family had ignored him despite it being the right thing to help.
Then…
“It’s because I’m a Utel.”
The words that slipped past my lips surprised even me.
I’d never felt particular pride in being from House Utel before.
That answer probably came from what Father had said before we came to the Bellas estate.
“House Utel is a family of alchemy, and alchemy is the study of change.”
“……”
“And the changes Utel brings about must be good changes.”
That was the meaning of enlightenment and progress.
The boy who had been destined to commit slaughter after escaping this dark basement would instead feel relief that the nightmare was over.
People would see Melisandra’s actions and fate, and realize that the world does not let villains go unpunished.
‘And me…’
If, instead of merely struggling to survive, I could do something that helped someone, even a little—
It would be a small comfort for having fallen into the middle of this spinning, annihilating bad ending.
But Adrian was tougher than I’d expected.
“In the end, it’s just self-satisfaction.”
“…Huh?”
“You asked whether I trust you. But do you trust me?”
Adrian’s hand slipped through the bars and slowly closed around my neck.
Despite being only twelve years old, his hand was large enough to wrap entirely around my throat.
“You want me to be so moved when I’m freed that I obediently grovel at your feet. You want a loyal hound that’ll act exactly how you like. Isn’t that right?”
“……”
“What if I repay kindness with betrayal? What if you annoy me, and I just kill you instead?”
I slowly opened my eyes and looked straight at Adrian.
