Demimore stared at the white hand that had suddenly entered his vision.
After a brief moment of hesitation, he grabbed the hand tightly and shook it roughly. It was more like mimicking a handshake rather than an actual handshake.
He regretted it after putting his hand down.
He didn’t want to shake hands, but he reasoned that doing so would make him seem childish. As a result, he agreed, but later felt that this behavior made him appear even more childish.
He didn’t know if it was a sense of inferiority, but X’s smile looked like he was mocking him.
“Stay away from my brother.”
The pseudo-handshake was the most goodwill Demimore could show to X.
With that, X surrendered and lifted his hands, stepping out of the curtain that covered the bed.
Demimore followed him with quick steps.
“What have you done to my brother?”
“Me? Not Rex?”
It was a fairly natural response for a man who was caught in the act.
“I was helping Rex, did you forget Rex’s advice to Cameron?”
It seems he manipulated Cameron’s dreams to keep him reliving the horrors of that day over and over again.
Did it have to be done this way, right beside him? Even though they unexpectedly ran into each other, his nonchalant attitude indicated that he had probably been waiting for this day to come.
‘Was it this easy to break in?’
It’s a place he’s lived in for over a decade, a place he considered safe, even if he wasn’t attached to it.
But Arsene and the guy in front of him broke in so easily. It broke his heart to think of his mother, who had lived her life thinking this was the safest and most complete place she could be.
“Are you going to kill him too, like Baron Bruno……?”
It should be enough to make him stir but Cameron was sound asleep without even a twitch.
If it weren’t for the faint rise and fall of his chest, he might have thought he was dead. X laughed softly at Demimome’s words.
“What do you know?”
“…….”
“But does it matter? Whether it’s Bruno or Cameron,……. Aren’t they better off dead?”
Though he couldn’t sympathize with the idea that it would be better for them to die, he wasn’t exactly happy to see them.
No. If Cameron dies, Demimore will be the only prince on the continent, and his mother’s status will rise a little further.
“Death doesn’t solve everything.”
Demimore shrugged off X’s discreet temptation. X’s smooth face seemed to show a fine crack.
Demimore realized that what he had just said might have sounded like a snipe at the God of Death, though he didn’t mean to.
He took a step back as X’s eyes grew vicious.
“Then do you want to die?”
He was strangled. By the time he realized it, it was too late.
Demimore couldn’t help but to stop breathing as he met his snake-like eyes.
X grinned wickedly at Demimore’s gaping face and tightened his grip on Demimore’s throat.
A choked, raspy sound came from his constricted throat. Demimore gripped the wooden sword tightly, with his breath running out and his mind felt utterly empty without any thoughts.
With his left hand, the one that wasn’t gripping the wooden sword, Demimore slapped the hand that was strangling him, but it only tightened the grip in his throat.
Images flashed through his mind. His mother, tucked away in a small palace somewhere in this vast, sprawling palace, thought it was the entirety of the world.
Even though she was favored by the Emperor, she had to live with great risk.
Even when she regained her memories, they were still memories of a life where she had to hide and live to avoid someone…
And then he remembered Mary.
It was fun from the first time they met. He couldn’t take his eyes off her because she always seemed to jump into dangerous situations
Somehow, she always managed to figure it all out.
The two women in his head are so different, but they’re the ones he wants to protect.
‘I need to get my act together.’
Demimore raised his wooden sword and brought it to X’s stomach. X lowered his head at the dull pain in his gut.
He can’t even hold this thing and swing it. X smirked. His grip on Demimore’s throat loosened a little.
“What do you expect to achieve with this?”
X was caught off guard, and the plain wooden sword glowed golden.
Enough to light up Cameron’s darkened room. Black dots sprouted from the hilt, resembling swimming fish, formed the black letters, completing the spell activation.
“Ugh!”
And the blunt end of the wooden sword, which had been pointed at X’s stomach, became sharp.
Demimore channeled the remaining strength in his body into the hand holding the sword and lunged at X’s stomach.
X let go of his grip on Demimore’s throat and grabbed his own bleeding stomach.
It was an instant.
X, with a fatal wound, alternated his gaze between his own bleeding stomach and Demimore, who was coughing madly, his face turning pale.
“You… a spell, a forbidden spell?”
Only now did the spell engraved on the wooden sword come into his sharp snake-like eyes. It was because he had underestimated this young human and let his guard down.
“Do you think I didn’t know?”
Arsene, who had visited the Imperial Palace last time, looked serious. The palace reeks of snake stench. Perhaps X visited the palace.
What business would X have in the palace? There was only Cameron, so they went to check on him. Arsene sighed as he looked at Cameron lying still.
He must have visited him. The traces of the snake wrapping around Cameron’s body were still there.
Will he come again? When asked by Demimore, Arsene was convinced that he would definitely come back. This wooden sword was prepared for snake hunting.
X had been underestimating Demimore, and Demimore had acknowledged his own limitations. He needed to catch him off guard..
So he chose a wooden sword. He utilized the spell in making a weapon, and Arsene willingly infused it with his power.
In the end, this is how he was able to fatally wound…… X.
“I thought about it.”
“Hmph.”
“I didn’t know if you’d die from a simple stabbing, but since it is said that Grand Duke Estin has killed your alter ego with a blade, I thought I’d try this.”
Looking at X, who was bleeding profusely from his mouth, it felt like the three days he had suffered were nothing.
The heat clouded his vision. He felt like a little kid in pain, crying for his mom.
“W, we’ll see.”
With that, X suddenly disappeared.
Demimore sank to the ground and stared at the blood on his wooden sword. X’s blood pooled on the floor.
As he stared at the mess, a steady sob came over him.
He had replayed this scene in his head hundreds, maybe thousands of times..
He had imagined himself slaying the God of Death’s underling, for the sake of Mary Conler, but for once, the weight of reality was heavy.
Something greater than the pride and joy of victory crashed over the young boy like a wave.
“Ugh..”
Demimore covered his face. After sitting so still for a while, Demimore scrambled to his feet and opened the door.
The guards, who had been looking at the blood-covered Demimore, were taken aback and grabbed him.
When the palace knights rushed in to check, Cameron’s face had become considerably calmer.
“Your Highness!”
Jasper rushed over to Demimore with a sandwich that appeared large in his hand, and took care of Demimore’s well-being.
“I thought Your Highness might have concocted a rebellion.”
It was funny that he still had a sandwich in his hand while having such a scary thought.
Luckily, he whispered it only in Demimore’s ear, so the palace knights around didn’t seem to hear it.
“So, were you looking forward to it?”
“Oh, come on, seriously?”
Jasper replied deftly. Then Demimore patted him on the shoulder, as if he knew without being told.
***
Oh, this is so annoying.
“What’s with the look on your face?”
“It’s nothing”
Lucas asked playfully, poking me in the cheek. I answered back in the same playful tone, matching his joking mood, while nursing my wounded heart as much as I could.
Lucas smiled coolly, as if he liked my answer.
Why are you laughing so much?
Tia Bluea, who visited the Grand Duchy after a long time, widened her eyes in a round shape and said she would go see him when she heard that my father still hadn’t gotten out of bed.
Despite Lucas’s firm refusal, stating that her father needed to rest since he had been complaining of headaches.
“Well, I guess I should go check on him. After all, I was there by his side when he woke up last time.”
Eventually, Lucas lost to her words.
Tia ran up to my father’s room, and Lucas was playing around like this to make me feel better without following her.
I know it’s childish. I know, but I couldn’t help feeling bad. I crossed my arms and waited for Tia Bluea to come downstairs.
It bothered me that my father was increasingly unable to hide his pain.
The things the God of death had said were echoing in my head, and everything was starting to bother me.
“Oh, he’s coming down there.”
At Lucas’s words, I looked toward the center staircase. My father was descending at a brisk pace.
He was followed by Tia Bluea, who looked anxious. No, why does he look like that? I had never seen my father in such a state of urgency before.
His face was much better than before. It’s a good thing that my father is doing better, but I also felt a strange emotion.
Is Tia Bluea really helping? I ducked my head, feeling something stab me in the chest.
“Mary Conler.”
My father called my name.
Stubbornly staring down, I finally turned my head at the sound of the loving voice calling my name once again. My father was looking straight at me.
Those eyes…….
Lately, the way Estin Conler has been looking at me, there’s been an odd sense of guilt, of awkwardness.
His demeanor toward me was sweet, clearly loving, but I felt myself shrink as I looked into his eyes, which were filled with guilt for forgetting about me.
“My daughter.”
Estin opened his arms to me. Like a clear sky after a heavy fog, where the guilt had been erased.
“Dad, why are you…”
It was filled with nothing but unwavering love for me.
Demimore stared at the white hand that had suddenly entered his vision.
After a brief moment of hesitation, he grabbed the hand tightly and shook it roughly. It was more like mimicking a handshake rather than an actual handshake.
He regretted it after putting his hand down.
He didn’t want to shake hands, but he reasoned that doing so would make him seem childish. As a result, he agreed, but later felt that this behavior made him appear even more childish.
He didn’t know if it was a sense of inferiority, but X’s smile looked like he was mocking him.
“Stay away from my brother.”
The pseudo-handshake was the most goodwill Demimore could show to X.
With that, X surrendered and lifted his hands, stepping out of the curtain that covered the bed.
Demimore followed him with quick steps.
“What have you done to my brother?”
“Me? Not Rex?”
It was a fairly natural response for a man who was caught in the act.
“I was helping Rex, did you forget Rex’s advice to Cameron?”
It seems he manipulated Cameron’s dreams to keep him reliving the horrors of that day over and over again.
Did it have to be done this way, right beside him? Even though they unexpectedly ran into each other, his nonchalant attitude indicated that he had probably been waiting for this day to come.
‘Was it this easy to break in?’
It’s a place he’s lived in for over a decade, a place he considered safe, even if he wasn’t attached to it.
But Arsene and the guy in front of him broke in so easily. It broke his heart to think of his mother, who had lived her life thinking this was the safest and most complete place she could be.
“Are you going to kill him too, like Baron Bruno……?”
It should be enough to make him stir but Cameron was sound asleep without even a twitch.
If it weren’t for the faint rise and fall of his chest, he might have thought he was dead. X laughed softly at Demimome’s words.
“What do you know?”
“…….”
“But does it matter? Whether it’s Bruno or Cameron,……. Aren’t they better off dead?”
Though he couldn’t sympathize with the idea that it would be better for them to die, he wasn’t exactly happy to see them.
No. If Cameron dies, Demimore will be the only prince on the continent, and his mother’s status will rise a little further.
“Death doesn’t solve everything.”
Demimore shrugged off X’s discreet temptation. X’s smooth face seemed to show a fine crack.
Demimore realized that what he had just said might have sounded like a snipe at the God of Death, though he didn’t mean to.
He took a step back as X’s eyes grew vicious.
“Then do you want to die?”
He was strangled. By the time he realized it, it was too late.
Demimore couldn’t help but to stop breathing as he met his snake-like eyes.
X grinned wickedly at Demimore’s gaping face and tightened his grip on Demimore’s throat.
A choked, raspy sound came from his constricted throat. Demimore gripped the wooden sword tightly, with his breath running out and his mind felt utterly empty without any thoughts.
With his left hand, the one that wasn’t gripping the wooden sword, Demimore slapped the hand that was strangling him, but it only tightened the grip in his throat.
Images flashed through his mind. His mother, tucked away in a small palace somewhere in this vast, sprawling palace, thought it was the entirety of the world.
Even though she was favored by the Emperor, she had to live with great risk.
Even when she regained her memories, they were still memories of a life where she had to hide and live to avoid someone…
And then he remembered Mary.
It was fun from the first time they met. He couldn’t take his eyes off her because she always seemed to jump into dangerous situations
Somehow, she always managed to figure it all out.
The two women in his head are so different, but they’re the ones he wants to protect.
‘I need to get my act together.’
Demimore raised his wooden sword and brought it to X’s stomach. X lowered his head at the dull pain in his gut.
He can’t even hold this thing and swing it. X smirked. His grip on Demimore’s throat loosened a little.
“What do you expect to achieve with this?”
X was caught off guard, and the plain wooden sword glowed golden.
Enough to light up Cameron’s darkened room. Black dots sprouted from the hilt, resembling swimming fish, formed the black letters, completing the spell activation.
“Ugh!”
And the blunt end of the wooden sword, which had been pointed at X’s stomach, became sharp.
Demimore channeled the remaining strength in his body into the hand holding the sword and lunged at X’s stomach.
X let go of his grip on Demimore’s throat and grabbed his own bleeding stomach.
It was an instant.
X, with a fatal wound, alternated his gaze between his own bleeding stomach and Demimore, who was coughing madly, his face turning pale.
“You… a spell, a forbidden spell?”
Only now did the spell engraved on the wooden sword come into his sharp snake-like eyes. It was because he had underestimated this young human and let his guard down.
“Do you think I didn’t know?”
Arsene, who had visited the Imperial Palace last time, looked serious. The palace reeks of snake stench. Perhaps X visited the palace.
What business would X have in the palace? There was only Cameron, so they went to check on him. Arsene sighed as he looked at Cameron lying still.
He must have visited him. The traces of the snake wrapping around Cameron’s body were still there.
Will he come again? When asked by Demimore, Arsene was convinced that he would definitely come back. This wooden sword was prepared for snake hunting.
X had been underestimating Demimore, and Demimore had acknowledged his own limitations. He needed to catch him off guard..
So he chose a wooden sword. He utilized the spell in making a weapon, and Arsene willingly infused it with his power.
In the end, this is how he was able to fatally wound…… X.
“I thought about it.”
“Hmph.”
“I didn’t know if you’d die from a simple stabbing, but since it is said that Grand Duke Estin has killed your alter ego with a blade, I thought I’d try this.”
Looking at X, who was bleeding profusely from his mouth, it felt like the three days he had suffered were nothing.
The heat clouded his vision. He felt like a little kid in pain, crying for his mom.
“W, we’ll see.”
With that, X suddenly disappeared.
Demimore sank to the ground and stared at the blood on his wooden sword. X’s blood pooled on the floor.
As he stared at the mess, a steady sob came over him.
He had replayed this scene in his head hundreds, maybe thousands of times..
He had imagined himself slaying the God of Death’s underling, for the sake of Mary Conler, but for once, the weight of reality was heavy.
Something greater than the pride and joy of victory crashed over the young boy like a wave.
“Ugh..”
Demimore covered his face. After sitting so still for a while, Demimore scrambled to his feet and opened the door.
The guards, who had been looking at the blood-covered Demimore, were taken aback and grabbed him.
When the palace knights rushed in to check, Cameron’s face had become considerably calmer.
“Your Highness!”
Jasper rushed over to Demimore with a sandwich that appeared large in his hand, and took care of Demimore’s well-being.
“I thought Your Highness might have concocted a rebellion.”
It was funny that he still had a sandwich in his hand while having such a scary thought.
Luckily, he whispered it only in Demimore’s ear, so the palace knights around didn’t seem to hear it.
“So, were you looking forward to it?”
“Oh, come on, seriously?”
Jasper replied deftly. Then Demimore patted him on the shoulder, as if he knew without being told.
***
Oh, this is so annoying.
“What’s with the look on your face?”
“It’s nothing”
Lucas asked playfully, poking me in the cheek. I answered back in the same playful tone, matching his joking mood, while nursing my wounded heart as much as I could.
Lucas smiled coolly, as if he liked my answer.
Why are you laughing so much?
Tia Bluea, who visited the Grand Duchy after a long time, widened her eyes in a round shape and said she would go see him when she heard that my father still hadn’t gotten out of bed.
Despite Lucas’s firm refusal, stating that her father needed to rest since he had been complaining of headaches.
“Well, I guess I should go check on him. After all, I was there by his side when he woke up last time.”
Eventually, Lucas lost to her words.
Tia ran up to my father’s room, and Lucas was playing around like this to make me feel better without following her.
I know it’s childish. I know, but I couldn’t help feeling bad. I crossed my arms and waited for Tia Bluea to come downstairs.
It bothered me that my father was increasingly unable to hide his pain.
The things the God of death had said were echoing in my head, and everything was starting to bother me.
“Oh, he’s coming down there.”
At Lucas’s words, I looked toward the center staircase. My father was descending at a brisk pace.
He was followed by Tia Bluea, who looked anxious. No, why does he look like that? I had never seen my father in such a state of urgency before.
His face was much better than before. It’s a good thing that my father is doing better, but I also felt a strange emotion.
Is Tia Bluea really helping? I ducked my head, feeling something stab me in the chest.
“Mary Conler.”
My father called my name.
Stubbornly staring down, I finally turned my head at the sound of the loving voice calling my name once again. My father was looking straight at me.
Those eyes…….
Lately, the way Estin Conler has been looking at me, there’s been an odd sense of guilt, of awkwardness.
His demeanor toward me was sweet, clearly loving, but I felt myself shrink as I looked into his eyes, which were filled with guilt for forgetting about me.
“My daughter.”
Estin opened his arms to me. Like a clear sky after a heavy fog, where the guilt had been erased.
“Dad, why are you…”
It was filled with nothing but unwavering love for me.
Demimore stared at the white hand that had suddenly entered his vision.
After a brief moment of hesitation, he grabbed the hand tightly and shook it roughly. It was more like mimicking a handshake rather than an actual handshake.
He regretted it after putting his hand down.
He didn’t want to shake hands, but he reasoned that doing so would make him seem childish. As a result, he agreed, but later felt that this behavior made him appear even more childish.
He didn’t know if it was a sense of inferiority, but X’s smile looked like he was mocking him.
“Stay away from my brother.”
The pseudo-handshake was the most goodwill Demimore could show to X.
With that, X surrendered and lifted his hands, stepping out of the curtain that covered the bed.
Demimore followed him with quick steps.
“What have you done to my brother?”
“Me? Not Rex?”
It was a fairly natural response for a man who was caught in the act.
“I was helping Rex, did you forget Rex’s advice to Cameron?”
It seems he manipulated Cameron’s dreams to keep him reliving the horrors of that day over and over again.
Did it have to be done this way, right beside him? Even though they unexpectedly ran into each other, his nonchalant attitude indicated that he had probably been waiting for this day to come.
‘Was it this easy to break in?’
It’s a place he’s lived in for over a decade, a place he considered safe, even if he wasn’t attached to it.
But Arsene and the guy in front of him broke in so easily. It broke his heart to think of his mother, who had lived her life thinking this was the safest and most complete place she could be.
“Are you going to kill him too, like Baron Bruno……?”
It should be enough to make him stir but Cameron was sound asleep without even a twitch.
If it weren’t for the faint rise and fall of his chest, he might have thought he was dead. X laughed softly at Demimome’s words.
“What do you know?”
“…….”
“But does it matter? Whether it’s Bruno or Cameron,……. Aren’t they better off dead?”
Though he couldn’t sympathize with the idea that it would be better for them to die, he wasn’t exactly happy to see them.
No. If Cameron dies, Demimore will be the only prince on the continent, and his mother’s status will rise a little further.
“Death doesn’t solve everything.”
Demimore shrugged off X’s discreet temptation. X’s smooth face seemed to show a fine crack.
Demimore realized that what he had just said might have sounded like a snipe at the God of Death, though he didn’t mean to.
He took a step back as X’s eyes grew vicious.
“Then do you want to die?”
He was strangled. By the time he realized it, it was too late.
Demimore couldn’t help but to stop breathing as he met his snake-like eyes.
X grinned wickedly at Demimore’s gaping face and tightened his grip on Demimore’s throat.
A choked, raspy sound came from his constricted throat. Demimore gripped the wooden sword tightly, with his breath running out and his mind felt utterly empty without any thoughts.
With his left hand, the one that wasn’t gripping the wooden sword, Demimore slapped the hand that was strangling him, but it only tightened the grip in his throat.
Images flashed through his mind. His mother, tucked away in a small palace somewhere in this vast, sprawling palace, thought it was the entirety of the world.
Even though she was favored by the Emperor, she had to live with great risk.
Even when she regained her memories, they were still memories of a life where she had to hide and live to avoid someone…
And then he remembered Mary.
It was fun from the first time they met. He couldn’t take his eyes off her because she always seemed to jump into dangerous situations
Somehow, she always managed to figure it all out.
The two women in his head are so different, but they’re the ones he wants to protect.
‘I need to get my act together.’
Demimore raised his wooden sword and brought it to X’s stomach. X lowered his head at the dull pain in his gut.
He can’t even hold this thing and swing it. X smirked. His grip on Demimore’s throat loosened a little.
“What do you expect to achieve with this?”
X was caught off guard, and the plain wooden sword glowed golden.
Enough to light up Cameron’s darkened room. Black dots sprouted from the hilt, resembling swimming fish, formed the black letters, completing the spell activation.
“Ugh!”
And the blunt end of the wooden sword, which had been pointed at X’s stomach, became sharp.
Demimore channeled the remaining strength in his body into the hand holding the sword and lunged at X’s stomach.
X let go of his grip on Demimore’s throat and grabbed his own bleeding stomach.
It was an instant.
X, with a fatal wound, alternated his gaze between his own bleeding stomach and Demimore, who was coughing madly, his face turning pale.
“You… a spell, a forbidden spell?”
Only now did the spell engraved on the wooden sword come into his sharp snake-like eyes. It was because he had underestimated this young human and let his guard down.
“Do you think I didn’t know?”
Arsene, who had visited the Imperial Palace last time, looked serious. The palace reeks of snake stench. Perhaps X visited the palace.
What business would X have in the palace? There was only Cameron, so they went to check on him. Arsene sighed as he looked at Cameron lying still.
He must have visited him. The traces of the snake wrapping around Cameron’s body were still there.
Will he come again? When asked by Demimore, Arsene was convinced that he would definitely come back. This wooden sword was prepared for snake hunting.
X had been underestimating Demimore, and Demimore had acknowledged his own limitations. He needed to catch him off guard..
So he chose a wooden sword. He utilized the spell in making a weapon, and Arsene willingly infused it with his power.
In the end, this is how he was able to fatally wound…… X.
“I thought about it.”
“Hmph.”
“I didn’t know if you’d die from a simple stabbing, but since it is said that Grand Duke Estin has killed your alter ego with a blade, I thought I’d try this.”
Looking at X, who was bleeding profusely from his mouth, it felt like the three days he had suffered were nothing.
The heat clouded his vision. He felt like a little kid in pain, crying for his mom.
“W, we’ll see.”
With that, X suddenly disappeared.
Demimore sank to the ground and stared at the blood on his wooden sword. X’s blood pooled on the floor.
As he stared at the mess, a steady sob came over him.
He had replayed this scene in his head hundreds, maybe thousands of times..
He had imagined himself slaying the God of Death’s underling, for the sake of Mary Conler, but for once, the weight of reality was heavy.
Something greater than the pride and joy of victory crashed over the young boy like a wave.
“Ugh..”
Demimore covered his face. After sitting so still for a while, Demimore scrambled to his feet and opened the door.
The guards, who had been looking at the blood-covered Demimore, were taken aback and grabbed him.
When the palace knights rushed in to check, Cameron’s face had become considerably calmer.
“Your Highness!”
Jasper rushed over to Demimore with a sandwich that appeared large in his hand, and took care of Demimore’s well-being.
“I thought Your Highness might have concocted a rebellion.”
It was funny that he still had a sandwich in his hand while having such a scary thought.
Luckily, he whispered it only in Demimore’s ear, so the palace knights around didn’t seem to hear it.
“So, were you looking forward to it?”
“Oh, come on, seriously?”
Jasper replied deftly. Then Demimore patted him on the shoulder, as if he knew without being told.
***
Oh, this is so annoying.
“What’s with the look on your face?”
“It’s nothing”
Lucas asked playfully, poking me in the cheek. I answered back in the same playful tone, matching his joking mood, while nursing my wounded heart as much as I could.
Lucas smiled coolly, as if he liked my answer.
Why are you laughing so much?
Tia Bluea, who visited the Grand Duchy after a long time, widened her eyes in a round shape and said she would go see him when she heard that my father still hadn’t gotten out of bed.
Despite Lucas’s firm refusal, stating that her father needed to rest since he had been complaining of headaches.
“Well, I guess I should go check on him. After all, I was there by his side when he woke up last time.”
Eventually, Lucas lost to her words.
Tia ran up to my father’s room, and Lucas was playing around like this to make me feel better without following her.
I know it’s childish. I know, but I couldn’t help feeling bad. I crossed my arms and waited for Tia Bluea to come downstairs.
It bothered me that my father was increasingly unable to hide his pain.
The things the God of death had said were echoing in my head, and everything was starting to bother me.
“Oh, he’s coming down there.”
At Lucas’s words, I looked toward the center staircase. My father was descending at a brisk pace.
He was followed by Tia Bluea, who looked anxious. No, why does he look like that? I had never seen my father in such a state of urgency before.
His face was much better than before. It’s a good thing that my father is doing better, but I also felt a strange emotion.
Is Tia Bluea really helping? I ducked my head, feeling something stab me in the chest.
“Mary Conler.”
My father called my name.
Stubbornly staring down, I finally turned my head at the sound of the loving voice calling my name once again. My father was looking straight at me.
Those eyes…….
Lately, the way Estin Conler has been looking at me, there’s been an odd sense of guilt, of awkwardness.
His demeanor toward me was sweet, clearly loving, but I felt myself shrink as I looked into his eyes, which were filled with guilt for forgetting about me.
“My daughter.”
Estin opened his arms to me. Like a clear sky after a heavy fog, where the guilt had been erased.
“Dad, why are you…”
It was filled with nothing but unwavering love for me.
Demimore stared at the white hand that had suddenly entered his vision.
After a brief moment of hesitation, he grabbed the hand tightly and shook it roughly. It was more like mimicking a handshake rather than an actual handshake.
He regretted it after putting his hand down.
He didn’t want to shake hands, but he reasoned that doing so would make him seem childish. As a result, he agreed, but later felt that this behavior made him appear even more childish.
He didn’t know if it was a sense of inferiority, but X’s smile looked like he was mocking him.
“Stay away from my brother.”
The pseudo-handshake was the most goodwill Demimore could show to X.
With that, X surrendered and lifted his hands, stepping out of the curtain that covered the bed.
Demimore followed him with quick steps.
“What have you done to my brother?”
“Me? Not Rex?”
It was a fairly natural response for a man who was caught in the act.
“I was helping Rex, did you forget Rex’s advice to Cameron?”
It seems he manipulated Cameron’s dreams to keep him reliving the horrors of that day over and over again.
Did it have to be done this way, right beside him? Even though they unexpectedly ran into each other, his nonchalant attitude indicated that he had probably been waiting for this day to come.
‘Was it this easy to break in?’
It’s a place he’s lived in for over a decade, a place he considered safe, even if he wasn’t attached to it.
But Arsene and the guy in front of him broke in so easily. It broke his heart to think of his mother, who had lived her life thinking this was the safest and most complete place she could be.
“Are you going to kill him too, like Baron Bruno……?”
It should be enough to make him stir but Cameron was sound asleep without even a twitch.
If it weren’t for the faint rise and fall of his chest, he might have thought he was dead. X laughed softly at Demimome’s words.
“What do you know?”
“…….”
“But does it matter? Whether it’s Bruno or Cameron,……. Aren’t they better off dead?”
Though he couldn’t sympathize with the idea that it would be better for them to die, he wasn’t exactly happy to see them.
No. If Cameron dies, Demimore will be the only prince on the continent, and his mother’s status will rise a little further.
“Death doesn’t solve everything.”
Demimore shrugged off X’s discreet temptation. X’s smooth face seemed to show a fine crack.
Demimore realized that what he had just said might have sounded like a snipe at the God of Death, though he didn’t mean to.
He took a step back as X’s eyes grew vicious.
“Then do you want to die?”
He was strangled. By the time he realized it, it was too late.
Demimore couldn’t help but to stop breathing as he met his snake-like eyes.
X grinned wickedly at Demimore’s gaping face and tightened his grip on Demimore’s throat.
A choked, raspy sound came from his constricted throat. Demimore gripped the wooden sword tightly, with his breath running out and his mind felt utterly empty without any thoughts.
With his left hand, the one that wasn’t gripping the wooden sword, Demimore slapped the hand that was strangling him, but it only tightened the grip in his throat.
Images flashed through his mind. His mother, tucked away in a small palace somewhere in this vast, sprawling palace, thought it was the entirety of the world.
Even though she was favored by the Emperor, she had to live with great risk.
Even when she regained her memories, they were still memories of a life where she had to hide and live to avoid someone…
And then he remembered Mary.
It was fun from the first time they met. He couldn’t take his eyes off her because she always seemed to jump into dangerous situations
Somehow, she always managed to figure it all out.
The two women in his head are so different, but they’re the ones he wants to protect.
‘I need to get my act together.’
Demimore raised his wooden sword and brought it to X’s stomach. X lowered his head at the dull pain in his gut.
He can’t even hold this thing and swing it. X smirked. His grip on Demimore’s throat loosened a little.
“What do you expect to achieve with this?”
X was caught off guard, and the plain wooden sword glowed golden.
Enough to light up Cameron’s darkened room. Black dots sprouted from the hilt, resembling swimming fish, formed the black letters, completing the spell activation.
“Ugh!”
And the blunt end of the wooden sword, which had been pointed at X’s stomach, became sharp.
Demimore channeled the remaining strength in his body into the hand holding the sword and lunged at X’s stomach.
X let go of his grip on Demimore’s throat and grabbed his own bleeding stomach.
It was an instant.
X, with a fatal wound, alternated his gaze between his own bleeding stomach and Demimore, who was coughing madly, his face turning pale.
“You… a spell, a forbidden spell?”
Only now did the spell engraved on the wooden sword come into his sharp snake-like eyes. It was because he had underestimated this young human and let his guard down.
“Do you think I didn’t know?”
Arsene, who had visited the Imperial Palace last time, looked serious. The palace reeks of snake stench. Perhaps X visited the palace.
What business would X have in the palace? There was only Cameron, so they went to check on him. Arsene sighed as he looked at Cameron lying still.
He must have visited him. The traces of the snake wrapping around Cameron’s body were still there.
Will he come again? When asked by Demimore, Arsene was convinced that he would definitely come back. This wooden sword was prepared for snake hunting.
X had been underestimating Demimore, and Demimore had acknowledged his own limitations. He needed to catch him off guard..
So he chose a wooden sword. He utilized the spell in making a weapon, and Arsene willingly infused it with his power.
In the end, this is how he was able to fatally wound…… X.
“I thought about it.”
“Hmph.”
“I didn’t know if you’d die from a simple stabbing, but since it is said that Grand Duke Estin has killed your alter ego with a blade, I thought I’d try this.”
Looking at X, who was bleeding profusely from his mouth, it felt like the three days he had suffered were nothing.
The heat clouded his vision. He felt like a little kid in pain, crying for his mom.
“W, we’ll see.”
With that, X suddenly disappeared.
Demimore sank to the ground and stared at the blood on his wooden sword. X’s blood pooled on the floor.
As he stared at the mess, a steady sob came over him.
He had replayed this scene in his head hundreds, maybe thousands of times..
He had imagined himself slaying the God of Death’s underling, for the sake of Mary Conler, but for once, the weight of reality was heavy.
Something greater than the pride and joy of victory crashed over the young boy like a wave.
“Ugh..”
Demimore covered his face. After sitting so still for a while, Demimore scrambled to his feet and opened the door.
The guards, who had been looking at the blood-covered Demimore, were taken aback and grabbed him.
When the palace knights rushed in to check, Cameron’s face had become considerably calmer.
“Your Highness!”
Jasper rushed over to Demimore with a sandwich that appeared large in his hand, and took care of Demimore’s well-being.
“I thought Your Highness might have concocted a rebellion.”
It was funny that he still had a sandwich in his hand while having such a scary thought.
Luckily, he whispered it only in Demimore’s ear, so the palace knights around didn’t seem to hear it.
“So, were you looking forward to it?”
“Oh, come on, seriously?”
Jasper replied deftly. Then Demimore patted him on the shoulder, as if he knew without being told.
***
Oh, this is so annoying.
“What’s with the look on your face?”
“It’s nothing”
Lucas asked playfully, poking me in the cheek. I answered back in the same playful tone, matching his joking mood, while nursing my wounded heart as much as I could.
Lucas smiled coolly, as if he liked my answer.
Why are you laughing so much?
Tia Bluea, who visited the Grand Duchy after a long time, widened her eyes in a round shape and said she would go see him when she heard that my father still hadn’t gotten out of bed.
Despite Lucas’s firm refusal, stating that her father needed to rest since he had been complaining of headaches.
“Well, I guess I should go check on him. After all, I was there by his side when he woke up last time.”
Eventually, Lucas lost to her words.
Tia ran up to my father’s room, and Lucas was playing around like this to make me feel better without following her.
I know it’s childish. I know, but I couldn’t help feeling bad. I crossed my arms and waited for Tia Bluea to come downstairs.
It bothered me that my father was increasingly unable to hide his pain.
The things the God of death had said were echoing in my head, and everything was starting to bother me.
“Oh, he’s coming down there.”
At Lucas’s words, I looked toward the center staircase. My father was descending at a brisk pace.
He was followed by Tia Bluea, who looked anxious. No, why does he look like that? I had never seen my father in such a state of urgency before.
His face was much better than before. It’s a good thing that my father is doing better, but I also felt a strange emotion.
Is Tia Bluea really helping? I ducked my head, feeling something stab me in the chest.
“Mary Conler.”
My father called my name.
Stubbornly staring down, I finally turned my head at the sound of the loving voice calling my name once again. My father was looking straight at me.
Those eyes…….
Lately, the way Estin Conler has been looking at me, there’s been an odd sense of guilt, of awkwardness.
His demeanor toward me was sweet, clearly loving, but I felt myself shrink as I looked into his eyes, which were filled with guilt for forgetting about me.
“My daughter.”
Estin opened his arms to me. Like a clear sky after a heavy fog, where the guilt had been erased.
“Dad, why are you…”
It was filled with nothing but unwavering love for me.
