Chapter 101
“Miss Odette, come here. The master wants to speak with you.”
She snatched the wooden box from my arm without asking and, surveying my dress from top to bottom, said,
“But, milady — wearing a dress that exposes your shoulders while pretending to be a saint is a bit much. Maybe others don’t notice it’s fake, but don’t you? It’s embarrassing for me.”
“Dolli—”
Dolli cut in over my words.
“What was the gift? His Majesty said this year’s gift would be a magic item, right? The master asked.”
I was stunned by Dolli’s usual lack of manners, but for now I let it pass.
Making sure the plan proceeds correctly is more important than nursing my feelings.
“If you put on the Ring of Invisibility and shout ‘invisibility,’ the wearer becomes invisible. They say nobody else can see them.”
“Wow. They even have magic items like that? No wonder the summer hunt prize was supposed to be extravagant — it’s true, then.”
Dolli gushed and led me toward Father and Fernand. Both of them scowled in displeasure when they saw the laurel I wore.
‘Lucky this is the summer palace,’ I thought.
If this had been the Albrecht mansion, the harassment would have been unimaginably worse.
Everything has been going in my favor, so of course there would be interrogation — and they’d harass me mercilessly until they felt better.
But here it’s different. Because of who’s watching and because we’re inside the palace, Father can’t strut about as freely.
‘That bastard is obsessed with image management,’ I thought.
Constant donations. Caring for the lowest-tier tenants of the domain — all good PR. Even when his businesses were failing horribly, he was a pleasant, genial figure to the public.
After making me the “Purifier,” he double-downed on image control. Lately, people even whisper that he’s the empire’s most upstanding man.
“We’re going to the west wing,” Father murmured. His voice was low, pressed down with anger. I followed him and mouthed at Mrs. Becker.
‘Stop Father, please?’
Mrs. Becker pretended not to see and sharply turned her head.
‘Oh my.’
When the garden party began, the lights were lit. The flower-decorated lamps glowed prettily and several guests approached me — the evening’s focus.
“Pardon me. Odette is sick, I hear.”
Father refused their attempts at conversation and took me away from the outdoor banquet hall.
The emperor had intentionally sent Karl to the infirmary so they could speak privately, and then ordered the palace attendants to leave for a deeper conversation.
When the emperor entered the infirmary — a place meant only for slaves and attendants — he was shocked into a scream by what he saw.
“Eek!”
Karl, who had bared his upper body to receive treatment, looked absolutely dreadful.
There wasn’t a single place on his body untouched by bruises; his skin was torn and split. It was impossible to understand how he was even standing.
‘These wounds aren’t from ordinary stabbings or cuts — how are they so deep?’
They looked like the damage not from four assassins but from four bears. The injuries seemed ripped apart by brute force.
The emperor was moved. He had fought like a beast on my behalf.
“Karl.”
So the emperor called to him gently.
Seeing Karl like this made the emperor greedy. Who wouldn’t want such a knight in their service?
‘If I made him commander of the guard, would he come? No — better to grant him a high noble title. He used to be a crown prince; name him a count—’
But Karl’s answer shattered the emperor’s hopes.
“Your Majesty, there was no need for you to come all the way here and send palace physicians when you weren’t the one treating my wounds.”
The kindly, polite Karl from before was gone.
“What did you say?”
Instead of answering, Karl simply wore a blank expression. It wasn’t a normal blank look.
It was completely emotionless. If a tin soldier could have eyes, perhaps that’s how they’d look in fairy tales.
‘What is that chilling feeling?’
The mechanical face the boy wore was oddly disturbing.
Come to think of it, he was like this when he was crown prince of Fenril as well.
At seven years old, when he first came to seek refuge from me, his eyes looked down on me like I was an insect. The memory was so unpleasant I wanted to refuse any help.
The strange, unnerving child — I had almost forgotten him; those memories were from ten years ago. Even when he sought shelter then, his gaze had always regarded the emperor as though he were beneath notice.
How had he become so much more unsettling now? He wasn’t even this bad when confined in the holding cells.
It was as if he were a demon freed from a seal.
Still, the emperor did not frown. Back then he’d been sure Karl could not be tamed, but now things were different.
If Karl could be loyal to Odette, perhaps he could be made loyal to the emperor as well.
So the emperor continued in a gentle voice.
“You’re badly wounded, Karl.”
Gregory — had he ever tried this hard to ingratiate himself to someone before?
His voice was one that would have touched even me, yet Karl did not so much as nod.
Those chilling red eyes — devoid of feeling — did not even meet the emperor’s gaze; Karl merely let out a soft, short laugh.
“Still, I see a point to these wounds. I know how to control him now.”
A tiny mutter. The tone carried a strange enjoyment. It was clear whom Karl had in mind — the same smile he’d worn earlier when staring at Odette.
I had a guess as to what he meant by “control.” A suffocating pressure emanated for a moment, then vanished in an instant.
He seemed to be practicing pulling back the pressure — like a person rehearsing how to breathe.
It was not the first time the emperor had met someone with terrifyingly strong presence. He’d met transcendent beings before, and his own son was an S-rank transcendent.
When Viktor was appointed, he’d faced an unrestrained presence as well.
But this kind of cursed, viscous pressure was new — a murky, sticky oppressiveness.
‘This one is not normal.’
The emperor, unable to speak and panting under the pressure, became convinced: this one should never be attempted to domesticate.
He barely managed a word.
“Well, I only came to check on his health. I’ll be going now.”
Even so, simply walking away felt awkward. As he forced himself to offer parting words,
“Are you still here?”
Karl replied like that.
He was still practicing the pressure — drawing it in and letting it out.
“Oh — and Your Majesty. A word of advice. Mind your tongue. If you ever speak slander about my mistress again, I will pull out your tongue.”
Filled with fear, the emperor forgot for a moment he was the emperor and instinctively nodded. Karl, satisfied, waved his hand as if to dismiss the emperor.
It was obvious Karl intended to return the insult the emperor had made toward Odette earlier.
‘Madman.’
Those eyes were not normal. How had he kept up the pretense of being a decent human in front of everyone earlier? It made the emperor’s skin crawl.
Isn’t Fenril the only nation on the continent that doesn’t worship the sun god?
For a moment the emperor had a thought so out of time it belonged to the 19th century: perhaps the Fenril line really was a race born to darkness because their ancestor slew the sun god and were cast from the light.
Karl’s pressure felt different from a transcendent’s.
If the presence of S-rank transcendants is like the sun, Karl’s was a dense darkness.
It felt like walking over hell or death.
‘I’d rather tame a transcendent.’
At least they have the “Purifier” as a perfect rein. If the emperor could secure a Purifier, he could use a transcendent as a soldier.
But this — this was a beast without any rein.
The emperor felt fortunate that Odette had taken him in.
The count dragged Odette off to the palace’s west wing chapel, located in the summer palace’s west annex.
The summer palace was currently bustling everywhere, so the west annex — relatively less crowded — was chosen.
Fearful of being overheard by palace attendants, the count chose a small prayer room as the place to press his interrogation.
“You’ll confess right away. If you insist you don’t know and try to deny it, do you think I’m so stupid I’ll just let it slide?”
They had forced me to kneel on the hard floor of that stifling tiny room for two hours.
