Chapter 103 :

Chapter 103 - Those Who Remained (1)

In the middle of a room so barren that it did not have even one proper piece of furniture, Tollin scrubbed the floor hard with a rough cloth.

Tollin, who had been scraping off unidentified black lumps stuck to the floor and mopping it, blankly stroked his fingertips, where the patterns had worn away and turned dark.

He had had calluses before, but in the more than thirty years of his life, he had never once had filth like this caked into them.

There was no way he could skillfully perform labor he had never even imagined doing, so naturally, his fingertips ended up a mess.

Every time he brushed over the worn spots, a prickling pain climbed upward, but Tollin could hardly stop fiddling with his hands.

Because that subtle pain made him feel that this situation, where he had survived, was not a dream.

“Ah! Look at that! Lisa is picking at her fingertips again!”

“Lisa, what are you going to do if they start bleeding again? If mopping is that hard, I’ll…”

“Just leave her be. Bad habits must be fixed by oneself.”

And to think he had survived not alone, but together with everyone like this.

With a somewhat empty, yet newly overwhelming feeling, Tollin looked down at the three children who were having a heated discussion about him.

Two filthy vagrants, and the young duke, who had likewise become filthy.

On the storm-like night of the ritual, Tollin, who had been wandering the capital in search of the young duke, suddenly lost consciousness from a strong impact he felt at the back of his head.

With the last bit of awareness being that, for some reason, he seemed to have been attacked on the head often lately, he closed his eyes, and when he regained consciousness again, what greeted Tollin was his strangely stinging cheek and three pairs of eyes looking down at him.

-If you’ve come to your senses, get up and take care of the children.

Among them, the owner of the black eyes said in a breathless voice.

Feeling that the situation was strangely familiar, Tollin quickly raised himself this time and checked the other person again.

-Seventh Prince?

-We have no time. Take the children and get up.

At his order, which seemed somehow anxious, Tollin raised himself without thinking any further.

There was no need to confirm the identity of the “children” he had referred to.

-Tollin!

A small body with a tearful voice tightly grabbed his waist.

Though the weight that rushed at him with all its strength made his body stagger backward, Tollin gladly accepted him and embraced the child.

The area around his solar plexus became soaked with the hot tears Plin was shedding.

As he held the child’s finely trembling body even tighter, Tollin also felt his throat choke up.

It was not a dream, nor was it an illusion.

Plin was alive.

-Thank goodness, truly, thank goodness.

The young duke hugged him even more tightly as he repeated those words like a prayer.

The one who poured cold water over their tearful reunion was, this time, the voice of someone who had caught his breath.

-I told you we don’t have time. If you’re done, carry that collapsed one over there too.

Only then did Tollin look back and forth between the Seventh Prince, who was standing a step away and watching him, and the other two children beside him.

The one lying unconscious on the floor was definitely the vagrant who had turned Duke Feedus’ household upside down.

He did not know what had happened, but her pale face had turned so white that it was hard to think of her as the tomboy from back then.

And the smaller child standing beside her was struggling to carry the child on his back.

-Mir, wait. I’ll help you.

The child who had slipped out of Tollin’s arms hurriedly carried the collapsed child on his back.

Tollin was startled and approached them.

-Young duke! I will do it. Please give her to me.

The child called Mir, while not lowering his guard, obediently handed his friend over to Tollin.

He had no idea what had happened or how things had come to this, but he could not let Plin carry something heavy.

-Young duke, where on earth is this? And why is the Seventh Prince…

-It is one of the academy buildings. If you’re done, move. If we are going to save Duke Feedus too, we have no time.

The Seventh Prince answered, cutting off Tollin, who had been about to pour out questions while carrying the child.

As if he would not take any more questions, he turned around.

Belatedly, Tollin’s eyes grew used to the darkness, and his surroundings began to come into view.

At the end of the place where small candles lit the inside of the dark building, there was a narrow, old staircase.

Tollin hesitated for a moment, then adjusted the child on his back and followed behind the Seventh Prince.

Judging by the circumstances, the one who had brought him here was the Seventh Prince.

Tollin recalled him from the Hunting Festival.

The him who had told him to confirm Duke Feedus’ end, and the him who had provoked Duke Feedus in the forest overlapped, and one hypothesis became clearer and clearer.

That the beginning of all of this was the Seventh Prince, and that for some unknown reason, he had saved him and the young duke.

That alone was enough reason to obediently follow behind him.

To begin with, there was no other option either.

* * *

-To think there was a building like this in the academy…

Tollin, who had muttered without realizing it, was startled by how loudly his voice echoed and hurriedly closed his mouth.

-It is not a place students come to. It is a building with an owner.

The Seventh Prince, who had been climbing the stairs as if running, returned an answer that was kinder than expected.

After briefly watching his mood to see whether he could continue asking questions, Tollin carefully opened his mouth.

-Seventh Prince, where are we heading now? Is Duke Feedus still fighting against Prince Dito?

-We are heading to the top of the building, and Duke Feedus is still facing Dito, so if we do not move quickly, his life will be hanging by a thread.

With that calm answer as the last thing he said, he stopped walking.

Tollin gasped for breath and lowered Seya, whom he had been carrying on his back.

-T, then I will go to the duke now. I have no intention of hiding safely by myself.

-I will follow as well.

The young duke who had followed behind spoke while sticking close to Tollin’s side, as if he would not be separated from him.

However, the Seventh Prince’s gaze was cold.

-Are you confident you can survive without anyone else’s help?

At his question, neither of the two could rashly answer yes.

Because both Tollin and the young duke had just barely preserved their lives thanks to the help of others.

-The two of you, as you are now, will only be burdens even if you come along.

At his biting assessment, Tollin and the young duke could no longer insist.

The Seventh Prince looked at the two of them and continued speaking.

-Survive. At least within a month, an opportunity will come.

-What opportunity are you speaking of?

-An opportunity for the enemy to show an opening. An opportunity to gather people who share your will.

Tollin thought that when he did not even know how to avoid people’s eyes here right now, there was no way such an opportunity would exist.

-For the time being, you should be able to stay here while doing odd jobs. Until the door opens, do not move first and wait. Do not be seen by people.

As if he had read those thoughts inside him, the Seventh Prince answered quickly and nimbly climbed onto the window.

-That is dangerous!

A startled Tollin shouted.

Even just the height they had climbed was easily over four floors.

There was no way the Seventh Prince, who had no abilities, could jump down and survive.

However, as if he could not hear his concern at all, the Seventh Prince threw himself out the window without hesitation.

For a moment, thinking that he might have simply taken his own life, Tollin leaned half his body out the window.

However, the terrible sight he had imagined did not unfold.

Far below, there was nothing that looked like a corpse on the ground.

A single black feather, carried by the wind that stung his eyes, brushed past the corner of his eye and flew into the tower.

* * *

The door on the top floor opened around the time Seya came to her senses, the four of them exchanged the information they each had, and they began to realize that they had not eaten anything all evening.

In other words, it meant that no one had come looking for the room at the top of the tower until the sun rose high in the sky and the door opened.

Creak.

What emerged from behind the door that had opened without the sound of friction was a man wearing a robe with all kinds of dirty things stuck to it.

Without saying anything in particular, he looked over Tollin and the three children, then moved his body inward as if telling them to come in.

Tollin, who had been hiding the three children behind him with a tense look, could not help but pause at the man’s attitude, which was so compliant that it drained his strength.

Then annoyance appeared on the man’s face.

“I don’t know how you lived until now, but from now on, I will not tolerate you dawdling like that. Move quickly.”

Confusion and a bit of displeasure appeared on Tollin and the young duke’s faces.

Because it was the first time in both of their lives that they had been told not to dawdle.

If they had lived diligently, they had lived diligently; neither of them had ever been told they were sluggish or slow.

Of course, Tollin had been told several times that his movements were slow, but that only meant that his physical ability was inferior to that of his brothers.

This was the first time he had been scolded as if he were someone who could not understand words.

Unfortunately, however, just as the man said, Tollin and the young duke were slow and clumsy.

It did not take them long to realize that they were dawdling exactly as the man had said.

“We apologize. We will do better from now on.”

“We are truly sorry.”

Unlike Tollin and the young duke, who were standing blankly, Mir and Seya quickly bowed their heads deeply.

Tollin and the young duke, who had been watching the two of them, belatedly bowed their heads as well.

“….I apologize.”

Tollin bowed his head while feeling his teeth grind together.

The man looked down at the four heads lowered toward him, then soon sighed and turned around.

“Follow me. Do not even make the sound of breathing.”

Tollin, who entered the room following him, slightly furrowed his brow at the sight of a room dirtier than he had expected.

What bothered him more than the scraps of paper scattered everywhere were the bones of unknown origin rolling around here and there.

Since it was inside the academy, where killing was forbidden, at the very least, they could not have been things he had personally killed, but it was still not a very pleasant sight.

With the filthy scenery in their eyes, the four crossed the room after the man and soon reached the door of another room connected inside.

The man took a brief deep breath, then carefully brought his hand to the door.

Knock, knock, knock.

The door sounded exactly three times.

“Come in.”

A voice mixed with a metallic sound flowed out from inside.

Even though it was clearly speaking gently, it was a voice that had a strangely irritable edge.

Thinking it must have something to do with the man carefully opening the door so that it would not make any sound, the four checked the name written on the doorplate.

[Mia Lera]

The man urged them with his eyes, and the four entered the room with tense faces.

The inside was very….very dirty.

To a degree that could not even be compared to the outside.

Leaving aside the clothes and empty glass bottles scattered everywhere, the sight of long, strange tools of unknown use tangled together like a knotted bundle of thread made it impossible to know what on earth they were for.

In that spacious room, where all sorts of junk were scattered around, the only clean place was the center of the room.

Mir thought that if one looked down from above, it would probably look as if there were a hole only in the middle.

In the center of that chaos, there was a person.

To be precise, it was something that looked like a person.

The figure wearing something like a black burlap sack over his head looked like a strange creature no matter how favorably one viewed it.

He had pressed what appeared to be his face closely against a large tank in the center of the room and was observing something.

The four narrowed their brows to take a closer look at something wriggling inside the tank.

Though they failed because of the man who stepped in front of them.

“Lady Mia, these are the children who will be in charge of odd jobs starting today.”

When the man spoke carefully, the person called Mia slowly raised his body.

“….”

And there were no words.

“We will be serving Lord

To maintain courtesy, and to remove the awkwardness, the young duke greeted him first.

Fortunately, eyeholes had been cut into the black sack, so they could confirm in which direction the other person’s gaze was moving.

His eyes swept first over the young duke, who had spoken first, then Seya and Mir in turn.

At last, his mouth opened.

At least, it seemed so.

Even though his face could not be seen, a voice like scraping metal could be heard.

“Why are you standing there like idiots? If you’re going to be paid, you should work.”

Tollin and the young duke were shocked by his character, which did not even include a basic greeting, but Mir and Seya, on the contrary, felt more at ease.

Because this kind of treatment was actually familiar to them.

What words could be simpler and clearer than telling them to work if they wanted to be paid?

As long as he was not the kind of person who later cheated them out of their pay, such straightforward orders were better.

“Then what should we start with?”

At Mir’s crooked question, the man who had guided them here glared fiercely.

However, no fist flew at him rashly.

So, even in the academy, was hitting children prohibited?

Thinking the environment was better than expected, Mir twisted his mouth.

“Can’t you tell by looking at the state of this room? Obviously, start with cleaning. Move as little as possible so you don’t get in the way of my work, and clean quietly.”

After finishing those words, Mia turned his body back with a sharp sound and walked to the center of the room.

At the sight of him pressing his face against the tank again, the hearts of Seya, Mir, Tollin, and Plin came together as one.

On the point that this one month would by no means be easy.