Chapter 53
I waved my hands several more times and, after struggling to clear up the misunderstanding, I finally managed to explain everything to the emperor.
How I had rashly made a contract with the duke because I wanted to get off the island.
How pitiful my situation was — still shackled by that contract and bound to the duke.
But instead of sympathizing, Evelin seemed to fixate on some totally random detail.
“You caught clams with magic? Ha, what a woman to envy.”
Her lips twitched with a strange expectation. Before Evelin could bring up marriage proposals again, I quickly clamped my hand over her mouth.
“I’ll leave at once to hunt the goblins, Your Majesty!”
“It doesn’t look like your master is willing to let you go.”
“He’s not my master, he’s just my employer—employer! Anyway, I’ll be back!”
I grabbed the duke’s arm—still obviously displeased—and bolted out of the audience chamber as if fleeing.
The sky had started to redden as the sun sank.
Duke Rupellen spoke as if displeased.
“Are you really going to go hunt goblins?”
“It’s already settled. If I don’t go, who else will catch them?”
“To be honest, Jiana, I don’t want to send you. You don’t have any obligation to stick your neck out.”
“No. No one else can catch the goblins but me, so of course I have to go.”
“Why do you act so altruistic? What has this empire ever done for you?”
“Do you need to be paid to do something?”
“Are there people who work without expecting anything in return?”
Our opinions clashed sharply. The duke glanced at me as if to scold me, then withdrew his gaze and said as if conceding defeat.
“Last time at least that Victor fellow helped with the fighting. Now he’s gone. Should I take Elliot along in a pinch? Or those three idiot brothers?”
“I’m fine with just Gari and me—no, I’m fine on my own. You saw me handle the pirates last time.”
“If a beam of light were to miss its mark…”
“Then attack again.”
“If a goblin lunges at you and injures you in the meantime…”
“Stop imagining ridiculous things.”
“Damn it, it’s a matter of your safety. My mind keeps coming up with all sorts of bad scenarios.”
The duke muttered a curse.
Since the naval battle with the pirates, he’d developed an almost pathological obsession with my safety.
I had thought it would get better after a few days, but it hadn’t at all.
‘It’s actually getting worse,’ I thought.
But my ability was worth a hundred men. I could single-handedly slay hundreds of pirates, and I was a hero whose potential was boundless.
I even had my companion Gari by my side. With that, I didn’t think I’d lose even against Sword Master Duke Rupellen.
The idea that I would be in a dangerous situation was almost impossible.
“If you’re that worried, why don’t you wait in the capital? Gari and I will catch the goblins and come back quickly.”
“What are you talking about? How could I let you go alone? Absolutely not.”
“I won’t be alone. I’m going with Gari.”
“No. I told you I won’t let you out of my sight. No.”
I sighed and, ignoring the duke’s adamant refusal, carefully lifted Gari out of my bag.
“Gari, want to relieve some stress? It’s been a while.”
“What happened?”
“We’re going to hunt goblins.”
“Oh, goblins!”
Gari’s eyes flashed with excitement and he instantly grew larger.
“I thought riding in carriages for days would make my bones ache to death! Where are the goblins? Let’s go catch them right now!”
“Hmm, they’re a bit far. We need to ride the carriage a few more days.”
“A carriage? No need. Ride on this splendid lord’s back!”
As expected, Gari offered his back to me.
“Hop on. I’ll show you a speed no carriage can match. Uh—huh?”
Duke Rupellen had quietly leapt onto Gari’s back and Gari nearly freaked out.
“What are you doing?! Get off this instant!”
“Now, Jiana. Hold my hand so you can get on safely.”
Gari flailed side to side to shake the duke off, but he clung stubbornly to Gari’s wings.
In the end Gari had no choice but to grumble as he carried both of us, and we set off for the southern coast.
“This time I’ll really put Carun through the wringer.”
Victor set his jaw and stared coldly at Carun’s mansion.
The sun had long since set and darkness filled the surroundings.
Victor had been working tirelessly to find the contact point between Carun and the Pen-Sing Factory.
But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t figure out how Carun was communicating with the Pen-Sing Factory.
‘They must be meeting with the higher-ups to conspire,’ he thought.
They couldn’t possibly be meeting without proof.
He had ransacked the factory that supplied Carun with contract quill-pens and stormed the offices he used to make deals with mages.
But they were just middlemen—people with no connections to the top.
‘What kind of clever trick are they using that leaves no trace no matter how thoroughly I comb the place?’
Tonight he decided he would hang Carun upside down and shake him until he spilled the truth.
Victor tightened his resolve and wrapped a black mask over his face.
Scaling the wall into the mansion wasn’t difficult.
As he crept toward the lit room, he saw Carun slumped over a table, thoroughly drunk.
“Wah, wah. It’s my fate.”
Carun was drunkenly lamenting his lot.
“Because of that bitch—Jiana or something like that—I’m ruined. I’m finished! I’ve been abandoned!”
He cursed Jiana for a long while, then hurled the bottle he was holding at the wall.
The shards of broken bottle scattered across the floor, so it looked like he’d thrown more than one.
‘How dare he talk trash about Jiana?’
Victor almost rushed in to strangle him, but he held back and decided to watch quietly for a moment.
Carun staggered up, fetched another bottle, and collapsed into a chair, shouting at his own fist.
“Hey, can you hear me? Where else are you going to find someone who works as well as I do? I’ve been loyal to Pen-Sing for a long time. Now I ask for work and they push me away?”
‘What’s that?’
Victor flinched at the sight. Although Carun was alone in the house, he was acting like he was talking to someone.
“You won’t give me the contract quill-pen so you can just toss me aside? Do you know how much I’ve done for Pen-Sing? If I’d sold all the quill-pens I supplied, I could’ve bought ten villas in the empire, you hear me?”
Raging at the unseen interlocutor, Carun suddenly choked and then yelled.
“Please, listen to me… I’m going to starve if this continues. You can’t do this to me. Damn those Pen-Sing Factory bastards, I’ll curse them to the end!”
In a fury, Carun ripped a ring from his finger and threw it away.
The ring rolled and stopped at Victor’s feet.
As Victor bent to pick the ring up—
“But if I don’t have that, I can’t communicate,”
—Carun, already plastered, staggered toward where Victor was hiding.
‘Communication? Maybe that’s it,’ Victor thought.
He quickly assessed the situation and melted into the shadows.
Just as Carun reached for the ring to put it back on, Victor darted out from the dark and struck him on the nape.
“Ugh!”
Taken by surprise, Carun collapsed right there.
“You’re a simpleton,” Victor said.
He stepped out of the dark, took the ring from Carun, and hoisted him up by the collar.
“I couldn’t find any leads, and you were using such a childish trick.”
“Gah, g-gasp. Who are—”
“Who do you think?”
Victor peeled off his mask to reveal his face; Carun, already pale, turned even whiter.
“Y-you! Why are you in my house?”
“Aren’t you offended I’m not ‘Mister Victor’ anymore and you can just call me ‘you’? How hurtful.”
Victor laughed brightly and tightened his grip on Carun’s throat.
“You were using this ring to contact the Pen-Sing Factory? No wonder I couldn’t catch them meeting with the higher-ups no matter how many tails I put on you.”
“Give it back! That’s mine—my profit!”
Carun struggled to snatch the ring back from Victor’s hand, but his feet didn’t even reach the ground.
Victor mocked him with a face full of derision.
