Chapter 127 …
Because Linji’s lodgings were tied to her status as Rita’s amethyst attendant, they were located right next to Lilieta’s bedroom, like a personal maid Hannah’s room.
‘I’ll knock out any guards or sentries I run into on the way, wake Linji quietly, then grab the healing potions from my room.’
That was a choice she would never have made in the past.
Compared to the possibility that a novice like Linji, facing a Named monster for the first time, might make a mistake — and the inefficiency of having to guide an inexperienced Linji while explaining what a mimic is — it would be far safer and more effective for Rita herself to hold her pain and push herself a bit.
‘But getting help is still the best option, right?’
She asked that question inwardly of the comrade who wasn’t here.
Rita tore a curtain from the banquet hall, draped it over the unconscious Leonhart, and then limped forward.
She let a faint, deliberate hint of vitality leak from her body so the mimic would look more tempting and lively.
The mansion at night was completely still. Moonlight and starlight divided by the window lattices fell over the purple carpeted corridors and cream-colored wallpaper.
Where the sky wasn’t painted, it was dark. The shadows of vases, statues, and tapestries blended darkness into darkness like a single painting.
Some nightmare prowled inside that endless shadow: a mimic that ate people and wore their skins over itself.
That single fact turned the peaceful image of the cream-domed house into something chilling.
It was here. It was there.
The clearer she became of that fact, the more her mind frayed. Every blink alternated between the carpeted corridor and a ruin strewn with broken corpses.
Sometimes those corpses took the faces she knew: apprentices, maids, secretaries, friends, colleagues, family, comrades.
Rita forced herself to steady her quickening breath. She choked down the rising terror and the faint, echoing roar at her ears by biting her own lip.
No matter how terrified or close to madness she felt, if she lost her head the nightmare wavering before her eyes would become real.
‘Hold on. Think only about what you need to do. Focus on the objective and the plan.’
Lilieta did what she had to.
She moved the leg that had been throbbing from earlier running with care. She knocked out the guard near the banquet hall and laid him down, then knocked out a watchman who had been patrolling the corridor.
After that, Linji’s room was right in front of her.
‘About twenty minutes to get here. The scent of digestion hasn’t spread yet.’
About ten minutes to stop Leonhart’s bleeding, and about ten minutes to get from the banquet hall to here. The nightmare hadn’t fully emerged yet — it was still inside the shadows.
Even if it was hard to sense the mimic itself, she could feel the reactions of the person it had attacked, just like how she’d sensed Leonhart earlier, so she should not have missed another victim.
She had to make sure she hadn’t.
Rita knocked softly on Linji’s locked door. The amethyst — trained as both the family’s secretary and a bodyguard — woke immediately at the small knock and quietly opened the door.
“…!”
Linji Dice saw that her mistress’s lips were ragged and stained with blood. The negligee hem was torn to shreds and the gown draped over it was soaked in blood.
Her dark eyes widened above the glittering tear at her eyelids.
“Ma’am? Wh—what happened…?”
“There’s a Named monster in the cream dome. Can you follow my orders exactly from now on?”
Rita’s voice flowed out flatly. Linji gripped the doorframe, her face hardening, and nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“First — do you know where Ethan’s room is? We need to wake him.”
“Ethan, the Beacon? He’s disguised as one of our footmen… I’m rather embarrassed as an amethyst that I didn’t notice his oddness earlier, so I know his location well enough.”
“Then lead the way.”
Rita cut her sentence short, grabbed Linji and pulled her close while raising a pistol behind the girl’s shoulders. She pulled the trigger at once.
There was the muffled thud of a blank round and a dull impact.
The sound came from the mimic which had leaped from the shadow of the half-open door: it dodged the bullet, dove into the shadow of Linji’s bed, and slammed the nightstand with its huge body, producing the noise.
‘You coward. Hiding at the slightest opportunity, you bastard.’
Rita ground her teeth.
Still, the fact that it was hovering around them instead of running off was good news. Her effort to leave an odorous trail — to make the mimic more attracted to her — had paid off.
‘Or maybe it’s sore because a few bullets found their mark. Either way, fine.’
A porcelain cup on the wobbled nightstand slipped, rolled across the floor with a clatter, and almost toppled onto Rita. Linji, who’d nearly fallen over, righted herself and caught the rolling cup with her foot. She inhaled hard and whispered roughly.
“Ma—ma’am, that was just now…?”
“Yes. A monster snuck into this mansion. Commonly called a mimic. Its characteristics are—”
Before she could explain the monster’s traits, a sound came from below.
The tremor and noise from earlier would be barely noticeable to anyone deeply asleep, but they were enough to wake up a top-rank knight with a trauma of having once lost his sister while she slept.
From Rita’s heightened detection range she had set as wide as she could, she felt Lihardt downstairs bolt out of his bed and run for the stairs.
‘No!’
No matter whether he was a top-rank knight or any other, if he wasn’t a Vow-bearer his aura would become tainted into a new monster. She had to put him back to sleep.
She started to move that way, but hesitated and turned back to Linji.
“Linji, my leg—”
“Where should I go?”
Before she finished the sentence, the amethyst scooped Rita up.
Rita pointed quickly toward the stairs. Linji dashed off immediately. She moved so fast it didn’t look like she was carrying a person.
“Doesn’t it feel heavy?”
“It actually feels lighter than when I used to use aura.”
Linji Dice was, by origin, a mid-level knight who used aura but had not manifested sword qi. She was more skilled in dagger work than swordsmanship — specialized in close-range guarding.
Knights who used aura typically awaken into a strengthened type. But Vow-bearer Linji wasn’t a strengthened type; she was a processed type, and she didn’t have the qualities of a mage or the various processed talents useful for a magic marksman.
‘Well, you’re a lightning-wielder now…’
Although Linji could process only a single type of od, the speed and force of her processing were exceptional.
In the ash-era they called such single-processing Vow-bearers “artisans” — if you processed only flame, you were a fire artisan; if only lightning, a lightning artisan.
Among lightning artisans, some weren’t great at generating massive bolts but were very good at producing fine currents, interfering with the body’s electric signals and moving more nimbly than strengthened types.
Linji was that kind of lightning artisan.
She reached the stairs at about the same speed as Lihardt even while carrying someone. The siblings’ gazes met from the top and bottom of the stairs.
“Li—”
“Shh.”
Rita put a finger to her lips and stopped her brother from calling out. Lihardt sealed his mouth reflexively. Linji descended the stairs holding Rita and approached him.
He stared wide-eyed at Rita’s state.
“You—!”
For a brief moment, Rita thought about her new dilemma.
Seeing her torn negligee, the blood-soaked gown over it, and the cut on her lip, would Lihardt accept that nothing had happened and go back to sleep if she told him to?
‘He absolutely wouldn’t.’
But knocking him out presented the problem of the top-rank knight’s quick reflexes, which might make the blackout messy.
The optimal method: make him let his guard down and then fire a paralyzing blank.
The best method, though—
Rita quickly shifted her three tactical goals and the people around her in her mind.
Her judgment was swift; her decision even swifter. She tapped Linji’s arm and stepped down in front of her pale-faced brother.
“Lihi—brother.”
“You—what’s with that blood? And your lips—what happened—”
“Lower your voice. This is an extremely dangerous situation. It’s not my blood, so don’t worry about that.”
“What? Then whose blood is it?”
“There’s no time for details. Just trust me and follow what I say. Can you do that?”
Lihardt stared at her in bewilderment. Her face was pale and expressionless with sharp eyes. Then, as if resolute, he nodded.
“No matter what, of course I’ll trust you. What should I do?”
“Carry me. If I move with this leg, the injury will worsen.”
Without complaint he scooped her up. Cradled in his arms, Rita produced a hand mirror and held it out to Linji.
“Linji, you know what this is, right?”
“Yes. It’s a communication mirror? Commander Olivia taught me how to use it.”
“Good. The monster we just saw moves through shadows. Try to move to places where the shadows aren’t continuous — as bright as possible — and try to communicate with this.”
“Understood. What message should I send?”
“‘Mimic appearance in the Cream Dome.’ Send it just like that and they’ll get it.”
“Got it.”
“You won’t be able to communicate anywhere the shadows connect. Keep searching for a place where it’ll work. The garden lamppost area is probably your best bet. We’ll keep drawing it away, but still, the mimic might attack you — so be extremely careful around shadows.”
“Understood.”
“And on the way, stop by the servants’ quarters and wake Ethan quietly. Can you do that?”
“Of course. Aren’t those just missions about avoiding shadows? Don’t worry, ma’am.”
“…Be careful. Don’t be at all careless.”
“I will. I’ll remember.”
Linji nodded, gripped the mirror, and leapt out the window. Her single tied-off black hair vanished into the garden.
Rita suppressed the swelling anxiety and worry for the novice Vow-bearer she’d just entrusted with the mission.
‘If I gave the task, I should trust her.’
She entrusted the first goal — communicating with the Beacon — and the ancillary goal of linking up with Ethan to Linji.
Now Linji and Lihardt together had to accomplish the second and third goals: knock out every awakened person and go around turning on lights, moving actively to serve as bait.
