Chapter 72 :

Chapter 72 - Friend

Plin looked up at Seya and Mir with startled eyes.

“You came back? All the way here again?”

“That’s right, well. And we have to go back again, so let’s put some strength into those legs!”

As if there was no time to be moved, Seya pulled the young duke again.

“No, wait. I think I can walk on my own feet.”

After being dragged about six steps, the young duke found the will to stand up and walk on his own welling up inside him.

It was because he thought that if he kept being moved, even his perfectly fine heels might get scraped raw.

“Good. Then where is the idiot who fell on the stairs?”

Seya turned her head to find her next target.

“No, I can just walk.”

The child, who had been listening to the sound of the young duke being dragged like a piece of luggage, spoke in terror, but unfortunately, it only served to teach Seya their location.

Seya quickly lifted the child into her arms and began running.

“I can’t do that for you, so you’ll have to walk on your own.”

Once only the two of them were left, Mir’s voice became even colder, but the young duke moved his feet while thinking he did not feel offended.

As they walked in silence, Mir opened her mouth.

“Why do you keep saving us?”

Her voice was somewhat sharp.

At Mir’s question, the young duke opened his mouth.

“That’s because.......”

“Other than because of your promise with Seya. Nobles aren’t people who move for reasons like that, are they?”

With his words cut off in one stroke, the young duke stared for a moment at the faintly visible back of Mir’s head, then slowly gave a more honest answer.

“It’s true that it’s because of the promise. I learned from my father that promises must always be kept. Still, maybe you’re right, Mir. It might not be only because of the promise.”

Was it because they were in darkness where he could not even see the other person’s face, or because his body was too exhausted to think deeply?

The young duke calmly poured out what was inside him, as if Mir, who did not even look back, were a doll that would swallow his secrets.

“There haven’t been many things I could do until now. Everyone works hard for me, hides everything for me, and risks danger for me, but there’s nothing I can do for them.”

“You seem like a model example of an exemplary noble, so aren’t you being too humble?”

At Mir’s reply, which was ambiguous as to whether it was sarcasm or praise, the young duke gave a small laugh.

“Being good at studying and responding well as the heir of a duke’s family are different things. As an heir, I’m terrible. I always ruin things. Everyone only ends up getting hurt. So, that’s why I came.”

The one phrase, “so”, contained many immature feelings the young duke could not express well.

Because he needed proof that it was all right for him to be in that place.

Because he wanted to be of even a little help to Tollin and the people of the duke’s family.

Because, like his father, he too wanted to save someone.

Mir quietly listened to him, unable to find much to say.

She thought the young duke, who chose the difficult path when an easy one was available, seemed a little more foolish than he looked.

But it was obvious that Seya would not think he was foolish.

At last, there were probably about ten steps left until the entrance.

Mir turned her body and looked at the young duke in the darkness.

The young duke, who had suddenly stopped and blocked the way, looked at the child as if asking what was wrong.

Mir was shorter than the young duke, but because she was about two steps ahead on the stairs, she could roughly meet his eyes.

“Please promise me one thing.”

Since the young duke waited as if telling her to speak, Mir continued.

“Once we get out of here, don’t ever look for us again.”

“All right.”

At the answer that came without even a moment of hesitation, Mir frowned without the young duke noticing.

“You answer easily, considering you stubbornly followed us all the way here.”

“I came this far because I thought it was dangerous. And if I disappear, a great many things change.”

That must be true.

Mir nodded in the darkness.

Since the heir of the Feedus family had disappeared, there must be chaos outside.

If the Feedus family was connected to this incident, everything would stop, and if they were not, private soldiers and guards would be searching the capital like they were hunting rats.

At his silent agreement, the young duke continued speaking.

“And from now on, maybe I won’t have to search for you myself. This time too, you came looking for me.”

As if she could not agree with this alone, Mir frowned.

“That’s because we owed you our lives this time. In that room. Have you already forgotten?”

“So if I help you first, you’ll come looking for me.”

Mir briefly turned her mind to find words with which she could mock him more strongly.

“That’s not much different from making friends.”

But she could not think of anything as foolish and powerful as what the young duke had just said.

“......You really are unlucky.”

In the end, another childish personal attack popped out.

“This time, I should understand it on my own as meaning that I have bad luck.”

Fortunately, Mir, who was angered by those words, lost the chance to say something rude again as the half-open door at the end of the stairs began to come into view.

It was the exit they had searched so desperately for, but right now, the fact that there was no one in front of it caught Mir’s attention more.

“That’s strange. I definitely told them to wait when they reached the door.”

Besides, if Seya had gone outside on her own, there was no way it would be this quiet out there.

Mir and the young duke’s pace up the stairs quickened.

Creak.

Mir opened the door with a different kind of tension than when she had first stood before it.

“Ah, looks like you’re the last ones.”

Mir prided herself on having thought of quite a few dangers that might unfold when she opened the door and stepped out.

Enemies might suddenly attack them, another prison might be waiting, or, though it was an extremely tiny possibility, they might even have come out in a completely different country.

But a situation she truly had never imagined even in her dreams was waiting for the child.

A man was standing there.

His brilliant platinum-blonde hair fluttered in the wind.

Along with an intense shock that felt as if it had struck his mind directly, Mir lost consciousness.

Among the collapsed children, only the young duke remained conscious, standing straight and looking at the man.

The child looked around in disbelief.

In the wide space surrounded by stone walls, there was a neat altar and a small sculpture.

The young duke’s gaze slowly moved beside the door he had come out of.

The child gasped and swallowed his breath.

A huge statue of Emperor Sierra was looking down at the child.

Beyond the window, the vast capital came into view all at once.

This place was a tower.

A place that entered one’s sight whenever one looked at the sky.

Unable to believe that such a sacred place was connected to a place where children were kidnapped and killed, he turned his eyes back to the beautiful imperial family member.

“So it really was you, Your Highness.”

“That’s right. I thought your aide understood what I said quite well.”

Step by step, he approached the young duke and smiled while looking up at the huge stone statue.

“Seeing that you came all the way here, maybe that wasn’t the case.”

The young duke sank down as if caught in a trap.

In front of the young duke, who could not continue speaking properly, Dito Abiran smiled playfully.

“Ah, you’ve finally arrived.”

Before anyone knew it, Gude and his subordinates had climbed all the way up the stairs and were coming through the door.

“Huff! I-I greet the Second Prince.”

Gude, who had been entering while panting heavily, prostrated himself the moment he saw Dito.

His subordinates who entered after him did the same.

“You couldn’t even manage a few children and let them come all the way up here. You really are useless trash with no value at all.”

“Th-the children used strange tools, so...... Kuaaaaaagh!”

At his voice full of laughter, one of the men hurriedly opened his mouth as if trying to make an excuse, but his words could not continue to the end because of his scream.

Flames had swallowed his head.

Gude and his subordinates bowed their heads even lower, unable to even scream.

The young duke turned his head away from the horrific sight that he could not bear to look at.

The child’s eyes caught sight of Dito’s face, smiling brightly.

Before long, the man’s body, whose screams had even stopped, collapsed.

“Urk!”

The Second Prince merely looked down silently at the young duke, who began dry-heaving at the terrible stench of a person’s body and hair burning.

The child, who barely came to his senses, looked up at him.

“Did you really kill the children, Your Highness?”

“Asking when you already know the answer is something only fools do. The clever heir of Feedus shouldn’t do that.”

Before his penetrating gaze, the young duke bowed his head, having lost his final refuge.

“Why? Why did you do something like this?”

“I’ve done far more things than anything you’re thinking of. Because it benefits me.”

Could that truly be a reason for someone who held all the wealth and glory in the world to kill children who barely survived from day to day?

As if reading every question in the young duke’s eyes, he slowly approached the child.

“These things are like pebbles that get kicked around on the roadside.”

Step by step, he was getting closer.

The pressure felt suffocating.

“Things no different from trash that no one cares about even if they break or disappear.”

After saying that, Dito began kicking aside the children collapsed between himself and the young duke, moving them out of the way one by one.

“But when you learn that something different is mixed among the pebbles, you have no choice but to gather them diligently, don’t you?”

At last, he reached the front of Seya and the small child, who had collapsed tangled together.

It was the child with the injured leg.

Their face had already grown as pale as it could be, but such a thing did not seem to enter Dito’s eyes.

“Please stop!”

At the plea that burst out like a scream along with the young duke’s stopped breath, Dito slowly lowered the foot he had raised and stared at the young duke.

His body trembled when he met those inorganic eyes, but the child did not stop speaking.

“They’ll die if you do that. Please stop.”

Dito laughed as though he had heard something funny.

“I won’t kill them yet. They’re such precious materials.”

As his mind began to work again, the word the prince had uttered again and again finally regained its proper meaning.

Materials.

Raw ingredients used to make something.

“What on earth are you making?”

When the young duke asked back, Dito seemed to think for a moment, then lightly opened his mouth.

“Starting six years ago, children who experienced strange phenomena during the Tinas ritual began appearing in the capital. There weren’t many. About one or two in a thousand.”

He continued speaking in front of the young duke, who did not know how to answer the conversation that had suddenly changed topic.

“When their hands touch Kor holy water, unbelievable things happen.”

Placing one’s hand into Kor holy water was the most important process in the Tinas ritual.

It was said that, among them, a very small number emitted white light the moment their hands touched the water.

This meant the person undergoing the ritual possessed Manis, and it was said to be rare even among the very few high nobles.

Of course, the young duke had heard of this phenomenon too.

It was something his father had experienced, and he had told the young duke about it again and again.

“But that’s.......”

“That’s right. It’s an ability that should not appear in ordinary people. That’s why they have to disappear.”

He spoke as if it were no different from killing cockroaches because they were filthy.

“Why? They didn’t commit any crime. They were simply born that way.”

The young duke’s voice gradually grew smaller.

The Second Prince’s cold eyes were staring at him as if they would pierce through him.

Those cold eyes that had stared at him in the reception room of the duke’s estate.

He tilted his head and asked.

“Why is that not a crime? They possess power beyond their station. Daring to possess a god’s ability.”

“It’s strange to punish someone just for possessing it. They’re the same as us.......”

They’re people.

A premonition warned the young duke that he should not continue the rest of the words.

Dito, who had been looking at the boy with his mouth tightly shut, turned his head as if nothing had happened and directed his gaze toward the collapsed children.

“I’m just gathering and using sinners who are going to die anyway. Since they’re hard to find, they make very good materials.”

He had the feeling Dito would not tell him what they were materials for.

He could not know what important thing he was trying to make, but had he captured countless children for the sake of just that?

When the faces of the children who had laughed so warmly even at a single squirrel came to mind, something hot surged up inside him.

“But these children are not pebbles, nor high-quality materials. They’re living people.”

At the child’s whisper, Dito’s smile deepened.

“It seems they became precious to you after being together with them. You are foolish, just like your father.”

His playful voice dragged the young duke into the reception room in his memories.

“You people seem to think you can save something if you throw away even that insignificant life of yours. In reality, it only leads to worse results.”

He stirred up the young duke’s insides, and if he revealed what was inside, he punished him without mercy.

At the fear that rose together with the memory, the child could not carelessly open his mouth.

Perhaps he liked that sight quite a bit, because Dito slowly looked over the children sprawled out around them.

“None of these ones will survive tonight. Originally, they wouldn’t have been wiped out like this. Who do you think that’s because of?”

When the child could not answer rashly, Dito tilted his head to the side.

“If that’s hard to answer, shall I change the question? Why do you think I personally came here today?”

The young duke raised his lowered head.

Reading the horror and despair filling the child’s eyes, Dito opened his mouth again.

“This is something I already told you earlier. It’s all because of you. Because you did something unnecessary, everyone here is going to die.”

His words were right.

No, perhaps he had ruined things even more than Dito said.

The prince said that because of the young duke, the children’s remaining lives had been shortened, but the child knew.

If it had been Seya and Mir, then as long as the Second Prince had not arrived, there was a high chance they could have escaped.

If only the Second Prince had not come, the children would have already leisurely gone outside and regained their freedom.

I ruined it again.

The children could have survived without my help.

Plin Feedus clenched his lips so hard that his jaw tightened, because he felt as though he would cry.

Even so, he had to keep talking to him.

Because at the very least, he had to buy time until people came to rescue them.

“Guards throughout the capital and the Feedus family’s private soldiers must be looking for me after I disappeared. Please release all the children even now.”

Dito, who had quietly listened to Plin’s answer, burst into laughter.

At his attitude, as if he had heard a funny story, the young duke swallowed dryly.

Why is he so relaxed?

He did not hurry to destroy evidence, nor did he try to flee.

Nothing had changed.

The kidnapped children were still unconscious, and Dito was staying in place while fiddling with the pouch Priest Gude had left behind.

Even though he surely knew that Tollin knew what he had done and was now coming to the temple, he leisurely looked out the window at the capital spread below.

The man, who had been tapping the window with his finger, suddenly turned his head.

Then he raised a finger and pointed at Seya.

“Let’s start with the tall one over there.”

Only then could the young duke realize what the Second Prince intended to do.

He’s going to continue this insane experiment.

“Wait! Shouldn’t you be running away even now? Tollin and the soldiers will be here soon. You don’t have the time to continue the experiment.......”

“Those things dare not arrest me.”

Dito cut off the young duke’s words.

“Then why did you secretly kidnap the children like this? No matter how much of a prince you are, if people find out you did something like this, they won’t just stay still.”

He looked into the young duke’s serious face, then laughed as if he had heard something amusing.

“Ha ha, you say such interesting things. Why would I fear such things?”

Then what was he afraid of, that he secretly kidnapped the children like this?

His words did not match.

At the child’s expression as he bit his lip, Dito continued.

“It will be faster to show you.”

When the Second Prince gave a glance, one of the men poured water over Seya’s face as she lay beside the young duke.

“Puhak!”

Seya’s eyes snapped open as she struggled to spit out the water that had filled her nose and mouth.

“You damned bastard!”

And she immediately rushed at the man who clearly seemed to have splashed water on her.

To be honest, the sight of the man clutching his beaten jaw was refreshing, but if there was any more commotion, the young duke did not know what the Second Prince might do.

“Seya, calm down!”

At the young duke’s shout, Seya paused for a moment and loosened the strength in her mouth, which had been biting the man’s arm.

“She really is nothing but a beast.”

Dito laughed as though he had seen an amusing spectacle.

At that voice, which was filled with obvious mockery, the young duke tensed his body to stop Seya from charging even at Dito.

But nothing like what the child feared happened.

Seya neither got angry nor became frightened as she had when she saw the young duke.

The young duke swallowed his breath as he watched tears gather in Seya’s eyes, which had always shone.

Even though no one around her was holding her down, the child slowly knelt and pressed her forehead to the floor.

As if she could not endure unless she performed the greatest self-abasement she could.