Chapter 73 : Betrayal
Seya lowered himself with all his might to show his intention of submission.
At that sight, an inexplicable nausea surged up.
“Seya, get up now. You can stop.”
But Seya did not raise his head.
“I said stop it!”
Eventually, only after the Little Duke forcibly pulled Seya up could the child’s face be lifted from the floor.
Seya stared blankly at the Little Duke’s distorted face.
“Ah, because I haven’t learned anything……. I didn’t know that just kneeling wouldn’t be enough. What should I do?”
“Don’t stay kneeling like that. That person is the one who captured us like this. The person who killed your friends, Seya, and has been experinting with the children of the capital like toys……!”
Seya, who had been blankly staring at the Little Duke glaring at Dito, widened his eyes.
Flinn expected that even if Seya didn’t pounce aggressively like usual, he would at least get angry.
“Then I have been committing a great sin until now, haven’t I?”
“What……?”
“I should have died sooner.”
Strength drained from Seya’s entire body as he spat out listlessly.
The child, who fell together with the Little Duke unable to support that weight anymore, lowered his head.
“If the Imperial Family mber tells to die, it can’t be helped. Everything was in vain from the beginning.”
“What are you talking about?”
Laughter was heard behind the Little Duke who asked blankly.
“Didn’t I tell you? It would be of no use.”
Dito was laughing.
As if he knew it would turn out like this from the beginning.
“You probably intended to endure until people ca to rescue you, but nothing changes even if everyone in the world cos. Because if I tell everyone to shut their mouths, everyone has to shut their mouths.”
As he raised his hand and made a gesture of pulling sothing, a man wearing a black robe detached Seya from the Little Duke’s arms.
“Stop it. What are you trying to do!”
When the Little Duke tried to stop it, this ti two n rushed in and made the child kneel on the floor.
The Little Duke hoped Seya would struggle and resist like usual, but the child was dragged quietly in front of Dito like a doll that hadn't been wound up.
As soon as the man put him down, Seya knelt again and buried his face in the floor.
Dito laughed, staring at the Little Duke who did not stop his futile struggle.
“Sotis everything is so easy it borders on boring. If I had saved the world like the First Emperor Sierra, it wouldn’t have been boring.”
“You cannot beco such a hero, Your Highness.”
At the Little Duke’s rebellious answer, his smile deepened.
“There is nothing I cannot beco. I can beco a massacre, but I can also beco a hero who defeated a psychotic noble who pretended to help street vagrants but kidnapped them and committed a massacre.”
The Little Duke felt his blood run cold.
Because he could realize who the psychotic person he ntioned was pointing to without needing to think about it.
“No one will believe such a thing.”
“I thought you were smart, but you still say foolish things. If even that cheeky Acting Head of Family disappears from the isolated Piteos family, who do you say will take your side? No one will help you to the point of going against the words of an Imperial Family mber. If I say it is so, it becos so. That is what being a god is.”
Dito continued speaking, enjoying the Little Duke’s clear eyes clouding over.
“Tomorrow, news like this will circulate throughout the capital. The Acting Duke of the Piteos family, who was conducting charity projects for street children, was actually a murderer who captured and killed children. Blinded by power, he eventually drove even the successor of the Piteos family he served to death. And that it was the omnipotent Prince who caught that criminal.”
He took a step closer to Seya, who still couldn’t raise his head, and lifted the child’s head with his foot.
Seya quietly lifted his face but still couldn’t even open his eyes properly.
“What remained at the scene were the corpses of children who were brutally killed, and the corpses of the Ducal family people burned to a crisp, having paid for their sins at the hands of the Prince. How is it? I think it’s a story that everyone would be satisfied with.”
Dito did not bla the Little Duke who was only trembling without an answer.
“Then shall we try making the corpses of the children first? Since it’s a waste to just throw away such good materials.”
Taking his foot off Seya’s chin, he shook the tip of his foot on the floor a few tis as if sothing dirty had touched it.
At the words that he would kill Seya, the Little Duke ca to his senses.
“If you need Cor holy water, it’s useless. Because I already spilled it on the floor of the underground.”
“Oh my, you did a wasteful thing.”
He spoke in a tone that wasn’t regretful at all.
The Little Duke could soon know the reason.
The liquid rippling inside the small bottle in Dito’s arms was undoubtedly Cor holy water.
“How, how did you get that……”
“The world is always on my side.”
Dito answered laughing as if he was enjoying himself.
As he tilted the bottle a little, a few drops of Cor holy water flowed into Seya’s mouth.
Making the Little Duke’s tension pointless, there was no change.
Relieving a sigh of relief for a mont was brief; the Little Duke had to watch stupidly as Dito’s hand slowly went up.
Dito clenched his fist strongly.
With a cracking sound, blood flowed from his palm.
Although such a wound would disappear without a trace soon without leaving even a scar on the hand of an Imperial Family mber, the blood he deliberately squeezed out pooled and fell down.
Seeing the vivid red liquid, the red liquid inside the water bottle that Priest Gude carried around like his life flashed through the Little Duke’s mind.
It was that.
Because it was the blood of an Imperial Family mber, he tried not to drop it like that.
While the Little Duke was thinking, drops of blood slowly flowed into Seya’s mouth.
One drop, two drops, three drops.
Even though it was just drops of blood entering, an instinctive repulsion wrapped around the Little Duke.
He didn’t know the principle, but it was obvious without looking that it would have a bad influence.
They said Seya’s friends lived like dolls incapable of any thought and died quickly.
Which side would Seya be?
No matter how much he struggled in anxiety, the body pressed down by two adults did not move for him.
Soone please save us, please.
The child’s prayer that couldn’t reach flowed down becoming tears.
Kwang!!!
At that mont, with a roar, the room shook.
“Who is making my son cry!!!”
At the voice he thought he would never hear forever, the Little Duke slowly turned his head.
Tall height, silver hair, deep eyes.
There was the face he missed so much.
***
“Who is making my son cry!!!”
Scanning the room with flashing eyes, he entered letting out a roar.
The place his gaze headed to was not the 2nd Prince, nor the statue of Great Emperor Sierra.
It was his son kneeling on the floor captured by the hands of two n.
Soon his face was dyed with imnse anger.
“Back off imdiately. Unless you want to disappear leaving only those hands behind.”
In that spirit, the n faltered and tried to fall back from the child.
Although it couldn't be completed because Jing, who lost his patience, couldn't endure those slow movents and blew them away.
Jing, no, Agoni Piteos quickly raised the child up and examined the child’s condition.
“Flinn, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
Even at his father’s question, Flinn just stared blankly at his father and couldn’t give any answer.
As the brilliant son opened his mouth and couldn’t say anything like a simpleton, anxiety appeared on Duke Piteos’s expression.
“Did you hurt your head? Is it hard to answer?”
In the eyes of Agoni Piteos, who was ruffling his hair looking for wounds, scratches and bruises all over his son’s face, and the eyes sore from tears ca into view.
His brow furrowed automatically at the appearance of his son, where signs of suffering while he was away were evident.
As Agoni Piteos, who ground his teeth, carefully stroked the bruised forehead, only then did Flinn slowly lift his hand.
The hand, small compared to his father’s, fumbled and touched his father’s face where a beard had grown bushy.
“Father……?”
“Yes, are you coming to your senses a little now?”
“Have you co back as a ghost or sothing?”
Well, it was understandable to think so.
His father, whom he thought was dead, suddenly revealed himself, so there was no way to explain it other than that.
While he worried for a mont where to start explaining his situation of having to pretend to be dead unintentionally, the child pulled Agoni Piteos’s bushy beard hard this ti.
“If you are a ghost, have you beco a fugitive unable to go anywhere, Father?”
Tears that had dried for a mont welled up again in the child’s eyes.
Was he disappointed in his father who died and couldn’t go anywhere?
With him unable to speak rashly out of apology in front, tears filling Flinn’s eyes flowed down like a waterfall.
Only then did the child cling to his father’s leg.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Father. Even if you beca a fugitive, I am just glad to see you again. Even if you couldn’t find rest, I am so happy.”
Soaked in the emotion of the dramatic reunion, they did not notice the existence of a shadow slipping out quietly under each of their hems.
***
His gripped right shoulder hurt too much.
Jack did not let go of the tension for a mont against Tollin, and he was a person who knew how to deal with soone who used their head.
Even so, enduring the sha of being dragged by Jack without being able to utter a word was also Tollin’s choice.
If he had known in advance that the news greeting him as soon as he entered the temple was the Little Duke’s disappearance, he wouldn’t have just stayed still.
***
“Are you saying the Little Duke ran away?”
Jack asked back, unable to understand the words he just heard.
“That is correct. This is…… not a problem that can be passed over simply as a young child’s mischief. Refusing the ritual and running away is a matter where he would have nothing to say even if punished imdiately upon capture…… naturally, you would know.”
The priest who claid to have watched the Little Duke last scanned Tollin and spoke arrogantly.
“What are you talking about right now!!! What idiot runs away before the ritual, and with nothing but his body at that!!!”
Tollin, who had kept his mouth shut quietly until now, couldn't hold back and shouted.
If Flinn had the ability to disappear so completely with his own strength, Tollin wouldn't have needed a plan to smuggle the Little Duke out risking his share in the first place.
“Common sensically, isn’t it more likely that soone kidnapped him? Is the temple evading responsibility regarding the safety of the Piteos family’s only successor right now?”
Tollin’s struggle was so intense that even Jack, who was holding his shoulder, faltered for a mont pushed by that montum.
A gaze boiling with anger and worry headed toward Priest Vesper who was watching the situation.
A mouth holding a faint smile opened.
“It is not that there is no evidence.”
Priest Vesper signaled once again to the priest who explained the Little Duke’s disappearance to Tollin.
He ca one step forward with an uncomfortable look and glanced at Priest Vesper.
“……He had a pair of rings. He insisted that he couldn’t take them off his body until the mont of the ritual because they were heirlooms of the Piteos family. I think…… perhaps he intended this from the beginning.”
The young priest, unable to abandon his greed until the last mont, testified while completely deceiving the existence of the rings shining in his pocket.
“……How is having the family rings evidence of escape?”
“I am saying that he didn’t just disappear with nothing as you said.”
His words were right.
They were rings handed over for him to escape in an unexpected mont in the first place.
Though he didn’t know they would catch his ankle in this way.
“Damn it……! Jack, search the temple thoroughly right now.”
“…….”
Although he gave an order to Jack out of habit, Jack showed no movent.
Tollin, lifting his head feeling the force still restraining his shoulder, had no choice but to despair silently looking at the hardened eyes looking down at him.
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