Chapter 73 :

Chapter 73 - Betrayal

Seya lowered herself with all her strength to show her submission.

At that sight, nausea of unknown origin surged up.

“Seya, stop and get up. You can stop now.”

But Seya did not lift her head.

“I said stop!”

Only after the young duke forcibly raised Seya could the child’s face leave the floor.

Seya blankly stared at the young duke’s distorted face.

“Ah, I haven’t learned anything, so.....”

“Don’t kneel like that. That person is the one who captured us like this. He’s the person who killed your friends and has been experimenting on the children of the capital like toys......!”

Seya’s eyes widened as she blankly stared at the young duke, who was glaring at Dito.

Plin had expected that even if Seya did not charge in recklessly as usual, she would at least get angry.

“Then I’ve been committing a great sin until now?”

“What......?”

“I should have died sooner.”

Strength drained from Seya’s entire body as she spoke helplessly.

The child fell together with the young duke, who could no longer support that weight, and lowered her head.

“If the imperial family tells me to die, then there’s nothing I can do about it. Everything was pointless from the beginning.”

“What are you talking about?”

Behind the young duke, who asked blankly, laughter rang out.

“I told you, didn’t I? That it would be useless.”

Dito was laughing.

As if he had known from the beginning that this would happen.

“You were probably planning to hold out until people came to save you, but nothing changes even if everyone in the world comes. If I tell them to shut their mouths, everyone has to shut their mouths.”

When he raised his hand and made a gesture to pull something over, a man in a black robe separated Seya from the young duke’s arms.

“Stop. What are you trying to do?”

When the young duke tried to stop him, this time two men rushed in and forced the child to kneel on the floor.

The young duke hoped Seya would struggle and resist as usual, but the child was dragged calmly in front of Dito like a doll whose spring had not been wound.

As soon as the man put her down, Seya knelt again and pressed her face to the floor.

Dito smiled as he watched the young duke, who did not stop his futile struggling.

“Sometimes everything is so easy that it becomes boring. If I had saved the world like the First Emperor Sierra, perhaps I wouldn’t be bored.”

“Your Highness cannot become such a hero.”

At the young duke’s defiant answer, his smile deepened.

“There is nothing I cannot become. I could become a slaughterer, but I could also become a hero who defeated a mentally ill noble who pretended to help street vagrants, kidnapped them, and carried out a massacre.”

The young duke felt his blood run cold.

Because he did not have to think hard to realize whom the mentally ill person Dito was referring to was.

“No one will believe something like that.”

“I thought you were clever, but you still say foolish things. If the isolated Feedus family loses even that arrogant acting family head, who will take your side? No one will help you by going against the words of the imperial family. If I say it is so, then that is what it becomes. That is what being a god means.”

Dito continued speaking while watching, as if in delight, the young duke’s clear eyes grew cloudy.

“Tomorrow, news like this will spread throughout the capital. The acting duke of the Feedus family, who had been carrying out charity work for the children of the streets, was in truth a murderer who captured and killed children. Blinded by power, he eventually even drove the heir of the Feedus family he served to his death. And the one who captured that criminal was the almighty prince.”

He took one step closer to Seya, who still could not lift her head, and lifted the child’s head with his foot.

Seya obediently raised her face, but still could not even open her eyes properly.

“What remained at the scene were the corpses of children brutally killed, and the charred corpses of the duke’s family people who paid for their crimes by the prince’s hand. What do you think? I think this is a story everyone would be satisfied with.”

Dito did not blame the young duke, who merely trembled without any answer.

“Then shall we start by making the children’s corpses? It would be a waste to simply throw away such fine materials.”

After removing his foot from Seya’s chin, he shook the tip of his foot against the floor several times, as if something dirty had touched it.

At his words that he would kill Seya, the young duke came to his senses.

“If you need Kor holy water, it’s useless. It already spilled onto the floor underground.”

“Oh my, what a waste.”

He said it in a tone that sounded not at all regretful.

The young duke soon learned the reason.

The liquid sloshing inside the small bottle in Dito’s arms was undoubtedly Kor holy water.

“H-how do you have that......?”

“The world is always on my side.”

Dito answered with a delighted smile.

When he tilted the bottle slightly, a few drops of Kor holy water flowed into Seya’s mouth.

Contrary to the young duke’s tension, nothing changed.

He had barely let out a sigh of relief when he had to blankly watch Dito’s hand slowly rise.

Dito clenched his fist tightly.

With a crunching sound, blood flowed from his palm.

Though such a wound soon disappeared without leaving even a scar on the imperial family’s hand, the blood he had deliberately squeezed out gathered and fell downward.

When he saw the vivid red liquid, the red liquid inside the water bottle Priest Gude had carried around like his life flashed through the young duke’s mind.

So that was it.

It was imperial blood, so he had tried so hard not to drop it.

While the young duke was thinking, the drops of blood slowly flowed into Seya’s mouth.

One drop, two drops, three drops.

Even though it was only drops of blood entering her mouth, instinctive revulsion wrapped around the young duke.

He did not know what principle it worked by, but it was obvious even without seeing it that this would have a bad effect.

Seya had said her friends lived like dolls that could not think about anything, then died soon after.

Which side would Seya be?

No matter how much he struggled in his anxiety, his body, pressed down by two adults, would not move.

Someone please save us, please.

The child’s unreachable prayer became tears and flowed down.

Boom!!!

At that moment, the room shook with a roar.

“Who is making my son cry!!!”

At the voice he thought he would never hear again, the young duke slowly turned his head.

A tall figure, silver hair, deep eyes.

The face he had longed for so much was there.

“Who is making my son cry!!!”

He entered with a furious roar and swept his flashing eyes across the room.

The place his gaze turned toward was neither the Second Prince nor the statue of Emperor Sierra.

It was his son, kneeling on the floor while being held by the hands of two men.

Soon after, his face was dyed with enormous rage.

“Step away from him at once. Unless you want to disappear with only those hands left behind.”

At his force, the men flinched and tried to move away from the child.

Though it did not continue to the end, because Jing, having lost patience, could not endure their slow movement and blew them away.

Jing, no, Agony Feedus, quickly raised the child and checked his condition.

“Plin, are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?”

Even at his father’s question, Plin could only stare blankly at his father and could not answer at all.

When his once-brilliant son opened his mouth and said nothing, as if he had become an idiot, impatience appeared on Duke Feedus’ face.

“Did you hurt your head? Is it hard to answer?”

As Agony Feedus ruffled his hair and searched for wounds, he saw the scratches and bruises all over his son’s face, and the corners of his eyes that had become raw from tears.

At the sight of his son, who clearly seemed to have suffered while he was away, his brow naturally furrowed.

Agony Feedus clenched his teeth and gently brushed the bruised forehead, and only then did Plin slowly raise his hand.

The small hand, compared to his father’s, fumbled over his father’s face, which had grown thick with beard.

“Father......?”

“Yes. Are you coming back to your senses now?”

“Did you return as a ghost?”

Well, it was understandable that he would think that.

His father, whom he had thought dead, had suddenly appeared, and there was no other way to explain it.

While he briefly wondered where he should begin explaining his situation, in which he had unintentionally had to pretend to be dead, the child now grabbed Agony Feedus’ thick beard and tugged hard.

“If you are a ghost, Father, does that mean you could not go anywhere and became a fugitive?”

The tears that had briefly dried in the child’s eyes welled up again.

Was he disappointed in his father, who had died and could not go anywhere?

Unable to speak rashly because of his apologetic feelings, Agony Feedus stood before him as the tears filling Plin’s eyes poured 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 became a fugitive, I’m simply happy that I can see you again. Even if you could not find rest, I’m so happy.”

Immersed in the emotion of their dramatic reunion, they did not notice the presence of the shadows quietly slipping out beneath each of their clothes.

* * *

Jack never loosened the thread of tension for even a moment against Tollin, and he was someone who knew how to deal with people who used their heads.

Even so, enduring the humiliation of being dragged along by Jack without being able to utter a single word was also Tollin’s choice.

Had he known in advance that the news that greeted him the moment he entered the temple would be the young duke’s disappearance, he would not have simply stayed still.

His right shoulder, which was being gripped tightly, hurt terribly.

“Are you saying the young duke ran away?”

Jack asked back, unable to understand what he had just heard.

“That is correct. This is......not a matter that can simply be overlooked as a child’s mischief. Refusing the ritual and running away is something for which he would have no excuse even if he were punished the moment he was caught......surely you know that.”

The priest who had supposedly watched the young duke last spoke arrogantly while looking down at Tollin.

“What are you saying!!! What idiot runs away before the ritual, and naked at that!!!”

Tollin, who had kept his mouth shut until now, could not endure it and shouted.

If Plin had the ability to disappear this completely on his own, Tollin would not have needed a plan to risk his own share and smuggle the young duke out in the first place.

“Logically, isn’t it far more likely that someone kidnapped him? Is the temple now avoiding responsibility for the safety of the Feedus family’s sole heir?”

Tollin struggled so violently that Jack, who was holding his shoulder, was pushed back by the force and briefly flinched.

His gaze, boiling with anger and worry, turned toward Priest Vesper, who was watching the situation.

The mouth bearing a faint smile opened.

“It is not as though there is no evidence.”

Priest Vesper gave another glance to the priest who had explained the young duke’s disappearance to Tollin.

He stepped forward with an uncomfortable look and watched Priest Vesper’s expression.

“......He had a pair of rings. Because they were heirlooms of the Feedus family, he stubbornly insisted that they could not be removed from his body until the moment of the ritual. Perhaps he intended this from the beginning...... I think.”

The young priest, who had been unable to abandon his greed until the very end, testified while perfectly hiding the existence of the glittering rings inside his own pocket.

“......How does possessing the family rings become evidence of escape?”

“I am saying that, as you said, he did not disappear with nothing at all.”

His words were correct.

They were rings originally handed over to him for the sake of fleeing in an unexpected moment.

Though he had not expected this to trip them up in this way.

“Damn it......! Jack, search every inch of the temple right now.”

“.......”

As if out of habit, he gave Jack an order, but Jack did not move.

Still feeling the force restraining his shoulder, Tollin raised his head and had no choice but to quietly despair at the firm eyes looking down at him.