Chapter 130 …
“You…”
Ethan stared at her blankly, as though seeing something unfamiliar. Hannah met his gaze.
“Ethan, you said you made an oath to serve the lady as your master, right? Was it ever hard to obey her? Did she ever give you unreasonable orders?”
“…Never. Not once.”
“Then you understand.”
Hannah smiled. The freckles across the bridge of her nose crinkled slightly.
“I’m going to stake my life on the lady.”
“…”
“So teach me. Tell me what I have to do, what I have to learn—everything.”
Ethan fell silent for a long time.
Someone he had barely noticed before—only felt a flicker of guilt and an immense awkwardness toward—now looked different.
She had stepped across the narrow line of his human connections and stood clearly inside it. She had become a “person” to him.
Countless civilians, mostly scrambling to survive and acting on instinct alone—by Ethan Pascal’s standards, such people were just one indistinct mass.
They could become beasts at any moment.
Even if they pretended to be good for now, the instant their own situation grew dire they would turn vicious. They would throw the children they had been protecting to the monsters if their own lives were threatened. They would cry with gratitude for being saved, then turn around and steal your food.
And when caught, they would scream that they had no choice, that anyone in their situation would have done the same.
To Ethan, ordinary people were not fundamentally different from those who had once chosen to eat human flesh and, lacking conviction, had tried to shove raw meat into his mouth to force him to join them.
People who only felt safe when everyone else sank to their level. People who thought that wrongdoing together made it not wrong. People who believed it was fine because everyone was the same, and who never blamed themselves.
People who changed their beliefs and bent their will according to circumstances, who made choices but never wanted to bear the responsibility, who chased their instincts and desires without any consistent conviction.
Strip off one layer, and humans were all beasts. At least in Ethan’s eyes.
But at the same time, there were also “people” in the world who chose the direction of their lives with a clear will and personal principle, and who bore responsibility for it.
If he had never met such people, Ethan might have lived forever without interacting with anyone, believing all humans were beasts and killing them without hesitation.
At this moment, Hannah had separated herself from that mass of “humans” and stood on the same level as the few “people” Ethan truly acknowledged—for the first time since his comrades at Beacon.
Ethan didn’t fully recognize this change in his perception.
He only vaguely sensed it: that he would never again be able to forget or dismiss the woman named “Hannah.”
He forced himself to speak.
“The training will be hard.”
“I’m ready.”
“It’ll be even tougher because it’s short-term. And since you don’t even have the basics, it’ll be brutal. Even then, you’ll only manage the bare minimum as an oath-bearer—you won’t suddenly get strong.”
“I know.”
“I won’t go easy on you. Even if you whine you can’t do it once we start, it won’t matter.”
“I get it. Ethan, am I really that untrustworthy? Maybe I look like some clueless girl jumping in without fear, but in my own way—my own way—I really thought hard about this and mustered the courage—”
“Damn it, I get it, I get it! Your resolve is f***ing real.”
Ethan cut her off, rubbing his face roughly. Hannah faltered, then spoke softly.
“Uh, but Ethan…”
“What.”
“Could you… tone down the swearing a little? At least when you’re talking to me…”
“What?”
“It’s just, I’m a little scared… I scare easily. When you were undercover, you spoke so gently, so kindly… you can talk like that too.”
She didn’t look at him, her head bowed, fingers fidgeting as she spoke.
“Of course I know now—you thought I was the lady back then, that’s why…”
Ethan drew in a harsh breath, but Hannah still didn’t raise her head.
“The things you said… about mistaking me, about me misunderstanding you, about not recognizing the real one right in front of me… I finally understand what you meant.”
Hannah’s shoulders shook.
When Lillietta introduced Ethan. When she learned they had known each other long ago. When she realized they had recently reunited after some separation.
When she realized that reunion must have been the moment Ethan abruptly changed, took over her work, and went into the reception room. When she glimpsed inside and noticed how his gaze and expression toward Lillietta were different.
When she knew that Lillietta hadn’t disappeared in her original body but that only her soul had gone elsewhere—that he had been the one to place the childlike Lillietta in the coffin in the lake.
Hannah pieced together all of Ethan’s words and guessed what had happened. Ironically, she only saw it clearly after she’d let go of her lingering feelings for him.
“The body the lady used for the past ten years… it looked like me, didn’t it? That’s why you mistook me for her… why you were so kind to me. So, I’m not asking you to treat me special like you did then, but at least the swearing…”
“…You damn—ha, no, hell… anyway, don’t ever say you’re thoughtless again.”
“Huh?”
“No, actually, you are kind of dumb. But hey, do you think I don’t swear at Rita? Don’t kid yourself—I talk even rougher to her. After seeing each other’s lowest depths, why would I put on an act? Shi—…”
He barely swallowed the curse that slipped out and shot to his feet.
“Tomorrow.”
“Huh?”
“Tomorrow, after using the Scales, we’ll do the oath. Decide by then what you’re going to swear.”
“Not now?”
“Where’d you hear that once you make an oath you can’t change it? Think carefully for at least a day about what it’ll be. And, fu—no, damn it… I’m sorry for everything.”
Ruffling his hair and throwing the apology out like a weapon, Ethan bolted from the room so fast it looked like he was fleeing.
‘What’s with him all of a sudden?’
Left alone, Hannah sat blankly for a moment before slowly standing.
‘Still, he did try to listen when I asked him not to swear.’
It was a bit surprising. The sudden apology was surprising too.
But inside Hannah, Ethan’s presence had already faded long ago. She quickly shoved the handsome bastard’s odd behavior out of her mind and focused on other thoughts.
As she moved and worked out of habit, countless thoughts drifted through her head. The one that lingered longest was the content of the oath.
‘A vow I have to keep for life…’
Nothing came to mind. More accurately, she wasn’t sure she could truly keep anything.
‘If you break it, it hurts terribly, and if you keep breaking it, the oath shatters and you become a wreck. Scary.’
Something trivial—like “I’ll never eat cherry jam again”—she could probably keep forever. But with an oath like that, she doubted she’d become a proper oath-bearer.
Even lying in bed at the end of the day, she couldn’t stop worrying. Amid the dizziness of no good ideas, one thought slowly grew clear—more like an example.
‘The oath Ethan made…’
If she could choose her own master, wouldn’t that be a good oath? Since it’s a big restriction, the effect should be strong.
‘And in my situation… isn’t it better to rely on the oath than on some old magic tool like the Scales?’
If by any chance she got possessed again, wouldn’t an oath of loyalty protect both herself and the lady far better than a magic tool?
‘Looking at Ethan, it seems like that oath isn’t even much of a restriction if you choose Lady Lillietta as your master.’
Thinking that, she drifted to sleep.
When she awoke with a sudden chill, her body was already moving on its own.
‘Just like ten years ago!’
She rose from bed without willing it and headed for the door. Her body wouldn’t obey her. Hannah panicked.
‘Why tonight, of all nights! Tomorrow everything will change! No!’
Struggling desperately, she felt the presence inside her click its tongue.
‘I hate this, it’s horrible, I won’t let it happen again!’
In extreme fear, she sensed this was her last chance before “it” did something else.
‘What I can do now…!’
An oath—she had to make the oath.
She thrashed with all her strength and knocked over the glass on the nightstand.
“You draw the pattern on your palm with your own blood, then place your hand on your neck and recite the oath’s spell as you swear—that’s how you make the oath.”
“But honestly, that was a method developed by some bastards who wanted to mass-produce oath-bearers for weak-willed people… they say if your will is truly strong, the form doesn’t matter. The first oath-bearers awakened just fine without patterns or spells.”
Ethan’s explanation of the oath came back to her. But Hannah wasn’t sure she had a will that strong.
‘I have to draw the pattern with blood somehow…!’
As she tried to grab a shard of the broken cup, the thing in her mind bound her even tighter—like when she was a child and it fully possessed her for disobedience.
‘N-no!’
In the end, she couldn’t even draw blood before her consciousness blurred.
‘Why is this happening only to me? I just wanted to live a normal life…’
She thought she might have cried a little from the injustice and grief.
Then suddenly she snapped back to herself. A dazzling golden light flickered before her eyes.
Lillietta was staring at her in shock.
‘My lady!’
Even if unintended, she had betrayed this person once. That betrayal had led to ten years of disappearance and countless sorrows.
She couldn’t betray her again. She couldn’t harm her again. She didn’t want to.
That fierce rejection created a brief opening for her. Hannah seized back her body and bit down on her tongue with all her might.
The taste of blood filled her mouth.
Praying that this blood would substitute for the pattern, praying that she might have a will strong enough despite being so small and insignificant—
—she challenged the oath.
