The pale face of the servant.
That face, which had smiled so freshly during the day, was now hardened terrifyingly.
A pillow strewn about. Alia not screaming.
And what the servant was holding in his hand.
He tried to run away imdiately, but before he could turn around, the door closed right in front of him.
-Bang!
A door that closed without anyone touching it.
A strange fragrance floating around the room.
The pale face that had handed him the herbs.
When he turned his head,
The servant was watching him from the middle of the room.
His eerily dark eyes glead like glass.
And he recalled soone who looked nothing like him.
"Yurik... Did the Crown Prince send you?"
"You knew? I thought you would have noticed, Your Grace."
The tone was excessively polite.
Why hadn't he realized that Yurik had planted an agent in the Arnold mansion?
While knowing that Yurik and they were in collusion, and knowing that Yurik wasn't such a soft person.
But there was no use in regretting it now.
All he could do now was buy ti.
He stuck close to the wall and slowly moved his feet.
"I didn't know the Crown Prince had such great interest in Alia."
"He thought so surveillance was necessary. Preparing for when the Duke would eventually co here."
"That's quite remarkable foresight. If I hadn't co, you would have had to continue working as a servant, wouldn't you?"
He glanced at the bed, but Alia showed no movent.
He might be next.
"Was Alia made like that on Yurik's orders?"
"Yes. And His Highness Yurik instructed to carefully watch not only Alia but also another person."
"I don't understand when 'carefully watching' started to an the sa as marinating soone in drugs."
"He was relieving them from guilt."
The black eyes continued to follow him.
It seed like he was gauging when to kill him, who had already circled halfway around the room.
Damn it.
Though he bit his lip, it wasn't like a good plan would suddenly co to mind.
Just a little. Just a little more.
"Were you afraid Alia might provide so information? Even though everyone already knows Yurik was involved."
"There was sothing to retrieve from her. Of course, the reason you ntioned was also there."
"Let ask while I can. Alia didn't seem like soone who would casually betray Hartmann, so how did you lure her?"
The servant tilted his head.
It was different from how Leandros or Arndt would tilt their heads.
It was like a doll imitating a human.
Goosebumps rose on his arm.
"Because she was in love."
"...What?"
"It was sothing involving the four individuals Your Grace is tracking. And Alia was easy to find a weakness for because she was in love... or so I heard. His Highness Yurik said so."
"Who did Alia love?"
"I do not know the details. But love often drags others into the pit together. All human love is like that."
Human love.
The words coming from that mouth were so plain and dry that if the word "love" were replaced with "dried pollack" or "coffee," it wouldn't have felt out of place.
What that dissonance proved.
This creature was not human.
He asked as he moved his steps.
"What else did Yurik order you to do besides 'caretaking'? What is this 'retrieval' of the object?"
"It's an object Alia received from the Duchess."
"I asked what it was."
"I'm not sure if I can answer that. I will respond after asking His Highness Yurik."
"You're a puppet that follows only Yurik, I see."
Just a little. Just a little more!
After taking one more step, he sneered with all his might.
"But haven't you taught too much without Yurik's permission? Aren't you not thinking about the consequences?"
"No. It was within the range of what His Highness Yurik commanded."
What?
The next mont, the servant's face was right in front of him.
Those cave-like eyes looked down at him without emotion.
Within those eyes, he was clearly.
"Since he said that after today, the Duke would also go missing."
Wearing a frightened expression.
A sharp pain struck directly in his lower abdon.
With a feeling of "oops" followed by excruciating pain.
The servant rcilessly pulled out the iron skewer he had thrust into his stomach.
He had no choice but to fall to his knees right there.
The sensation of sothing hot gushing out, the sticky blood flowing between his fingers as he clutched his lower abdon.
The servant continued in an still emotionless voice.
"So you won't be able to relay what I've said outside."
Was Yurik anticipating this far?
Preparing for his arrival, planting an agent, as if predicting the future.
No, that's not it.
Yurik didn't know the future like he did.
He rely predicted every possible range of moves and prepared for them.
Preparation more frightening than predicting the future.
Deliberately ignoring the blood dripping to the floor, he used the wall for support and stood up.
The servant was quietly watching him, perhaps thinking he would die soon.
"I'll... tell you... one thing."
"What is that?"
"Go... to Yurik... and tell him."
Because he had been kneeling, it was easy to snatch "that" from the hand of the figure standing right in front of him.
Then, with all his might, he threw his entire body toward the window.
The fragile lock and glass window shattered together, and the door flung open.
The cold air greeted him along with tiny glass fragnts, and the servant reached out toward him.
But it was already too late.
"Tell him you're dead if we et."
Damn, he had promised himself he wouldn't die in this life.
The face of the startled servant rapidly receded above.
The fall wouldn't be long.
He closed his eyes in anticipation of the terrible blackout.
However, there was no ominous sound of his neck breaking.
Nor did his body shatter upon impact with the ground.
Instead, a blood-soaked, firm arm was supporting him.
"Is this why you called ?"
And a pair of terrible eyes looking at him.
He almost burst into laughter at that mont.
"It wasn't my intention, but you ca at just the right ti."
"How can you laugh now?"
"Before you scold , could you handle the situation?"
Leandros raised his head to look at the window.
The servant was standing there.
But he didn't seem to have any intention of pursuing him.
He just stood there, watching him and Leandros.
Had he given up?
The mont he thought that, the shadow began to twist strangely.
What he thought was an arm caved in, and what he thought was a head moved downward.
Through the rain, he heard the sound of joints creaking and breaking.
An incredibly bizarre sight.
The servant looked like a spider or a centipede with its legs cut off.
With legs that had beco longer and thinner, he began to feel his way outside the window, and from his drooping head, he started making strange sounds.
-Woo, wooo, wooooo...
And then,
It began to descend along the wall at a frightening speed.
"Aaaaaaah!"
A scene reminiscent of a scene-stealer from a horror movie.
When he scread, Leandros swiftly chose to flee.
Fortunately or unfortunately, lights could be seen turning on one by one from the bottom floors of the mansion in response to his scream.
The servant-turned-spider no longer pursued them as they escaped through the rear garden.
He just kept watching them with his strange appearance, making wooing crying sounds.
Behind him, the lights of the entire mansion were brightly drawn.
Being carried by Leandros, who was running as if almost flying, he felt that the situation was not good.
Setting aside the cold from the rain, the sensation throughout his body was becoming dull.
He might have lost too much blood.
It might have been better to just die.
He barely opened his mouth.
"It was right that Yurik was connected to that monster and Alia."
"I had already noticed. About those monsters too."
"How?"
His consciousness flickered with each leap Leandros made.
"It's a widely known fact that the Crown Prince has great interest in unusual 'animals'."
"What?"
"I realized it when you talked about the east."
It was the story when he sold information at the Information Guild.
Since Leandros was also present, it was naturally sothing he knew, but why was this coming up now?
"Your mother, the forr Duchess, had mysterious abilities."
"Revelations?"
"So you knew. She foresaw nurous events through revelations. To the extent that it would be improper to call them foresight."
"For example?"
"If I tell you that it even included ways to control demonic beasts, would you understand?"
How do you control demonic beasts through revelations?
He hadn't even dread of such a thing.
As he tried to maintain consciousness with his increasingly blurry vision, Leandros continued.
"If revelations were simply the ability to see the future, they would have been called prophecies. The reason they're called revelations is because they're omnipotent."
Revelations and prophecies.
He had always thought the two weren't very different.
If it was about knowing future information, shouldn't it be prophecy rather than revelation?
"Omnipotent?"
"It's about knowing everything. Whether you want to or not. Whether it was sothing you originally knew or not. The forr Duchess called it 'a play shown by others.' It's been called 'revelation' because it's like being forced to know sothing."
So what Leandros was saying seed to be this:
Suppose through foresight, he knew he would win a Nobel Prize.
The result was clear, but how to achieve that result depends entirely on him.
But a revelation shows everything - that he researched this field, through this route, made this discovery, and therefore won the Nobel Prize.
If he woke up from the dream and followed the revelation, he could win the Nobel Prize.
Perhaps even more than that.
Because he already knew in the dream what value he would derive, what calculation formula he used, what research topic he chose.
Wasn't this like living a whole new life... wait a minute.
Omnipotent revelations.
A future already lived once.
The results of choices he made.
The path to reach there.
His regression.
He recalled what Arndt had said long ago.
-It's what that person shows you.
His cooling heart raced on its own.
No, no. It couldn't be.
Revelation was simply a device within the novel.
Say he experienced a revelation that he would die, so what?
He could avoid what was shown in the revelation.
So the future could be changed.
The forr Duchess proved that.
"Don't go to a physician."
"Your Grace, because of your current injury."
"Go to Arndt. We need to hurry."
Surely when dawn breaks, people would discover the missing apothecary and the dead Alia.
It wouldn't take long for this story to reach Yurik's ears.
The broken necklace dangled in his hand.
A black, elongated stone fragnt, half-covered in blood.
Looking at it, another question arose.
The Duchess's item that Alia had.
What was the reason Yurik had tried to take it?
The next day.
As dawn broke, wanted notices were posted throughout the baronial territory.
It was a wanted notice for the apothecary who had murdered Lady Alia Arnold.
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