“What a pity. I no longer require your assistance.”
“I know a way to halt the demon’s curse,” Holdin added instantly. “I attempted to break His Grace’s curse myself, to no avail. However, this knowledge is the fruit of that failure. It will undoubtedly prove useful to you, My Lady.”
“……”
Holdin wasn't wrong.
Opportunities to obtain exactly what one desired, completely free of charge, were exceedingly rare. But could these men truly be trusted?
As I wavered in contemplation, Holdin pressed on, his voice laced with an earnest appeal. “We will not interfere with whatever wish you make upon summoning the demon. My only desire is to find a clue that might lift His Grace’s curse.”
“So, this is your proposition, Sir Knight. You will aid me in safely summoning the demon, and in exchange, I shall grant you an opportunity to speak with it?”
“Yes. And you will allow us to return home, alive and unscathed.”
“Hmm.”
“I am certain this is by no means a poor bargain for you, My Lady,” Holdin stated, brimming with confidence.
Feigning brief deliberation, I turned my gaze toward Dejan. “What do you think? Your subordinate is offering me a trade using your very blood.”
“To be completely frank, I must oppose it.”
Naturally. Just this morning, the very moment he laid eyes on me, he had tried to convince me to alter my course. Yet, it did not seem as though Holdin had made this offer entirely on his own whim.
“However, seeing your reaction, My Lady, it appears you have no intention of giving up easily.”
In other words, it would be far more practical to strike a bargain where both parties stood to gain.
“You see right through me,” I replied brightly, pulling a key from my bodice.
With the heavy, grating screech of interlocking iron, the cell door swung open.
“Shall we move to a more comfortable setting first?”
I led them out of the subterranean gloom and toward the main estate. Dejan followed obediently in my wake, but abruptly broke the silence.
“There is one thing I wish to ask you.”
“Speak.”
“How exactly did you arrive at the conclusion of summoning a demon?”
“Let us just say I learned to recognize my own limitations early on.”
Glancing askance, I found Dejan looking down at me from his towering height.
“Is your information regarding the summoning ritual truly reliable?”
“Indeed it is. I confiscated it from the black market.”
As if I hadn't meticulously verified it myself. Smiling sweetly up at Dejan, who still wore a deeply skeptical frown, I deftly shifted the subject.
“I, too, have a question for you. How is it that the Nemanich family has traded with demons for generations?”
“That is no trade.”
“It is a trade,” I countered firmly, despite his denial. “Had you suffered only losses, it would be a mere curse. But regardless of the cost, you obtained the power of immortality, did you not?”
“Is it power that you seek?”
“No. I seek vengeance.”
“And once you find the culprit, what then?”
“Well, I suppose I will figure that out when the time comes.”
There was absolutely no need to fill him in on every granular detail. I brushed the matter off vaguely and quickened my pace, but Dejan caught up to me with effortless strides.
His legs are unnecessarily long.
As I swallowed my internal grievances, he spoke up once more.
“Is that simply your disposition?”
“What is?”
“Smiling like that.”
“……”
Good grief, he certainly talks a lot.
Maintaining that very same smiling facade, I utterly ignored his words.
What a bizarre thing to ask. Did he truly think I wandered about grinning like an idiot because I possessed a sterling personality?
Fortunately, we arrived at our destination before the conversation could drag on any further. The room, naturally, was the very one where I had previously attempted the summoning magic. Unlocking the secured door, I ushered them inside.
“We are here.”
“My, my. You certainly don't do things by halves,” Holdin murmured, a note of sardonic admiration in his voice as he slowly circled the magic circle. “May I examine it more closely?”
“Go ahead.”
With my permission, Holdin scanned the runes with a razor-sharp focus. After a prolonged scrutiny of the array, he pointed toward a corner.
“There is an error here. The text appears to have faded due to the age of the manuscript.”
Pointing out a few flawed sections, Holdin personally corrected the magic circle before straightening his posture. I watched his every movement like a hawk.
“There, it is complete. You may begin.” Holdin stepped back from the array.
Drawing the dagger I had kept prepared, I approached Dejan.
All this fuss over a mere few drops of blood.
Dejan’s shoulders were rigid with tension. Knowing his own condition all too well, he was bound to be hypersensitive to even the slightest scratch.
“Are you alright?”
“……Yes.”
“May I?”
When I asked once more for confirmation, his lips parted slightly before he ultimately offered me his palm.
“I shall do it myself,” Dejan said, his voice dropping to its characteristic low rumble. He was demanding the blade.
“Mmh, yes. Be my guest.”
After a moment's pretense of hesitation, I reversed my grip on the hilt. As I feigned handing the dagger over to Dejan, my eyes swiftly darted to Holdin. He was watching us with an expressionless face, but he could not conceal the heavy gulp that strained his throat.
Why on earth are they so incredibly tense?
I tightly suppressed the scoff rising in my chest. Why did the vast distance between the wide window behind Holdin and Dejan’s straight-line trajectory bother me so intensely?
I knew it.
One must never trust a soul so easily. Least of all, a knight from an enemy nation.
To look down on me so blatantly!
The exact moment I spun the hilt within my palm, I lunged forward and seized Dejan’s wrist.
Slit!
Without a shred of hesitation, I sliced deep across his inner palm.
“Ugh……!”
Instantly, the flesh parted, the muscle tore open, and a torrent of crimson blood spilled forth. Dejan instinctively violently tried to shake me off.
I am not letting go.
I discarded the blade, throwing my entire weight into anchoring myself to his hand.
“Giselle!”
Dejan’s blood pattered heavily against the floor, yet the magic circle remained utterly dormant. Holdin had played me for a fool with a cheap trick.
“Deal with Holdin!”
“Yes, My Lady!”
“Aargh! Stay away from me!” Holdin shrieked, making a chaotic spectacle as he leaped and dashed frantically to evade Giselle’s descending blade.
“A trade, you said?”
What a joke! Neither they nor I had ever intended to honor such a thing from the very beginning. That is precisely why they resorted to such a pathetic ruse!
I refused to loosen the grip of my fingers clamped around Dejan. As I clung to him with desperate finality, Dejan’s face contorted in agony, a profound anxiety bleeding into his expression as he glanced toward the fleeing Holdin.
“My Lady!”
“Your side was the first to betray me, so why direct your wrath at me?”
As long as I could secure the blood, I had absolutely no use for these men. I dug my fingernails deep into Dejan’s palm, where the wound was already beginning to knit itself back together.
“Urgh!”
This is my country. On the chessboard I had painstakingly constructed, the only piece permitted to move freely was myself.
Gouging into his wound with all my might, a thick, viscous coat of blood smeared across my hand. His eyes flashing a dangerous crimson, Dejan glared down at me.
What are you going to do about it?
You were the ones who devised petty tricks to deceive me first. I had merely refused to let my guard down until the very end.
“Unloose your hand!”
Bellowing like a wounded beast, he violently flung me away. Clutching my blood-stained fist tight against my chest, I leaped to my feet and bolted for the exit.
“Giselle, slaughter that bastard and flee the premises! It matters not if that man escapes!”
Simultaneously issuing the command, I threw myself out the door. The moment I jammed a pre-arranged iron bar between the handles, the door rattled violently from within under a barrage of brutal, heavy thuds.
“My Lady, I beg of you, yield! A demon cannot be mastered according to your whims!”
Did he honestly believe I hadn't factored that into my calculations? I dismissed Dejan’s warning without a second thought.
What I intend to do is not for my own salvation.
Vengeance. What a beautifully sweet resonance that word possessed. There wasn't a demon in existence that didn't relish it. Even if the fiend dragged me to utter ruin, if I could drag the culprit down to hell by the hair along with me, then that abyss would be my paradise.
“I am sorry, but if I were the type to falter at those words, I would have abandoned this path long ago.”
Leaving behind that soft murmur, I spun on my heel.
It is done. It begins now.
The most vital ingredient was smeared across my very flesh, and the preparations were already complete. So long as the summoning succeeds……!
It was then.
Splinterrr!
The sharp, terrifying sound of the door behind me being ripped entirely from its hinges seized my senses.
“What kind of monstrous strength is this……!”
Dejan was physically destroying the door in his pursuit to apprehend me.
“My Lady, please, listen to reason!”
Through the newly shattered gap in the doorframe, my eyes locked with his blood-red irises.
I must reach the magic circle immediately.
With the singular, burning fixation of summoning the demon, I sprinted down the corridor. Amidst a shower of splintering wood and metal, the door finally collapsed entirely, and Dejan began to pursue me with terrifying momentum.
In tandem, I pushed my body to its absolute limits.
“I will cooperate with you instead! If your objective is to uncover the culprit and exact your revenge, I will—!”
Whatever desperate pleas Dejan bellowed from behind, not a single syllable registered in my mind. I ran, my eyes locked strictly ahead.
The magic circle.
The circle. The circle. The circle!
Success was hovering mere inches away. I refused to let it end in a futile failure here. I ran with nothing but that absolute conviction driving my feet forward.