Chapter 78

A sinister red gleam flickered in the eyes of the man steeped in shadow.

Calypse looked even larger than he had at the banquet as he advanced, step by heavy step, carrying the sleeping Aisha in one arm and a long sword in the other.

“W-Why are you...?”

Duke Pose’s mouth slowly fell open in shock.

Calypse should have collapsed. He had been stabbed—twice.

The dagger from earlier was still clutched in Aisha’s hand as she lay in his arms.

And that blade had clearly pierced Calypse as well...

Did he come all the way here like that? Carrying the child too!

How? How could that possibly be possible?

No. There was no point wondering.

The man standing before him was proving that it was possible.

Aisha. Wake up.

On the slim chance it might work, Duke Pose called to Aisha inside her mind.

Aisha! Open your eyes! Lift your eyelids!

Unfortunately, it seemed dark magic could not move the soul of someone who was asleep.

Damn it. I need to escape first.

Shaken by the unexpected turn of events, Duke Pose rose from his seat.

Then he swiftly hurled the chair at Calypse.

Thud!

But Calypse merely lowered his upper body and avoided it. The chair crashed into the wall and rolled noisily across the floor.

It did not matter. Duke Pose only needed to open the window and escape.

Besides, he may still be moving, but he is limping. He clearly is not in good condition.

He would flee first, then call upon the spy subordinates who should be stationed around the building.

With that thought, he reached for the window.

“Aaaaaagh!”

Duke Pose suddenly threw his mouth open and screamed in agony.

It was pain unlike anything he had ever experienced.

His bones felt crushed, his flesh torn apart. It was as though thousands of needles had pierced through the back of his hand at once.

When he came to his senses, an enormous sword had been driven through the hand he had used to reach for the window.

“Where do you think you’re going...? I don’t know what you might try, so let us restrain you first and talk afterward.”

“Y-You madman! Help! Pose knights! Spies! Someone get in here at once!”

They were on the third floor, inside a room enclosed on all sides.

Red veins stood out in the whites of the Duke’s eyes as he shouted words no one could possibly hear.

He had always been the one giving orders.

That had made him skilled at navigating society and devising schemes, but because he had relied solely on his mind for so long, he lacked both strength and experience in the field.

In truth, this was the first time he had ever faced a crisis like this.

What do I do?

He was floundering in panic when—

“Cough...!”

Thump.

Calypse spat up a mouthful of blood and dropped to one knee as though his strength had left him. Yet he never released the sword.

Duke Pose stared at him in horror.

Th-This lunatic...!

There was no one more relentlessly stubborn.

He should have been psychologically broken. His wife and daughter were spies. After hearing something that devastating, it was only natural that he would be too shaken to think clearly.

The entire operation had been devised around that calculation.

Five years ago, Calypse had plainly fallen into despair after losing Ariana and the children.

He had even worn a mask to hide his emotions.

Yet the man before him now appeared to have suffered no wound or emotional blow at all.

“D-Do you have no emotions? Your wife and daughter were spies!”

Duke Pose shouted, his arm trembling from the sword embedded in the back of his hand.

But then—

“Do you appeal to emotion in the middle of a war?”

A blunt, low voice answered, cold enough to send a chill down his spine.

“......”

A war.

As Duke Pose silently turned the word over in his mind, his lips parted foolishly.

Calypse bit out the next words.

“What father collapses alongside his child when she is crying and falling apart?”

Creak.

Calypse gripped the sword hilt so tightly that his hand turned white. The blade cut deeper into the Duke’s hand, driving itself in more sharply.

Duke Pose screamed in pain.

“Ugh—Aaaaagh!”

He had wanted a power of his own.

That was why he had created the power of poison and built enough strength to oppose the Kreutz family.

He had wanted to wield his power freely and bring down that damned man who never stopped going on about being a father.

But once he was thrown into a real fight, he could not even gather his thoughts.

The unfamiliar agony overwhelmed him. Instead of using his power, all he could do was cry out in pain.

Through his fading consciousness, he remembered the spies who had died soundlessly while carrying out their missions.

Cray Pose.

He was the head of the Pose family.

As the leader of a spy family, he was the one who handled tools.

Now, for the first time, he had become the tool himself.

And he understood.

The spies who abandoned their missions and fled had not been weak.

They had simply been living creatures struggling against the terror of death.

Yet when true, bottomless fear closed in on him, what he felt was stronger than even the instinct to survive.

It would be better to die.

He wanted to escape Duke Calypse, who clung to him like a leech.

Gulping down his dry saliva, Duke Pose finally made his last decision.

With great difficulty, he slipped his violently trembling free hand into his trouser pocket.

He was about to pull out the vial of poison inside when—

“No, Duke Pose.”

Crash!

Calypse must have noticed it somehow. In an instant, the hand gripping the sword snatched away the potion and shattered it.

“You cannot die now...”

But there was one thing Calypse had overlooked.

Thud.

His upper body, which had barely remained upright because he was supporting Aisha in his other arm, lost its balance and collapsed.

Calypse’s vision slowly blurred.

In truth, he had already reached his physical limit from blood loss. An ordinary person would have collapsed long ago.

The only reason he had forced himself all the way here and driven his sword through Duke Pose’s hand was vengeance and sheer willpower.

“...You cannot die now.”

As Calypse murmured those words, his eyelids slowly closed.

“......”

Silence settled over the room.

“...What?”

Duke Pose’s eyes widened as he stared at Calypse, who had fallen while still holding Aisha.

Unable to believe it, he rubbed his eyes with his free hand and checked again.

Calypse had collapsed.

That damned man, that leech who would not let go, had finally closed his eyes.

“H-Hah... Hahaha! Of course! My calculations could not possibly have been wrong!”

He could not move at the moment because of the sword through his hand, but his subordinates would soon realize what had happened and come.

“It’s over! This wretched operation is finally over! Now that the head of the Kreutz family is dead, it will not be long before the Frozen Kingdom is absorbed into Doctia and the Doctian Empire is founded—”

That was when it happened.

Crash!

“Duke Cray Pose. You are under arrest on charges of attempting to murder a member of the royal family, arson, and fraud.”

The closed door burst open, and knights from the Frozen royal palace filed into the room, surrounding Duke Pose in a fan-shaped formation.

Then—

“...What ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) did you just say? That the Frozen Kingdom would be absorbed into Doctia?”

At the knight’s murderous question, Duke Pose’s mouth fell open.

“I-I said no such thing. W-What is the meaning of this?”

He answered as though nothing were wrong, but inside, his thoughts were in complete chaos.

Arrest?

That was impossible.

The royal knights knew nothing of the connection between Pose and Calypse.

Had he not spent the banquet smiling warmly and establishing a presence among the nobles for precisely that reason?

Of course, seeing Calypse collapsed here might lead them to accuse him, but he had been stabbed as well.

He could easily explain the situation.

Yet they had clearly announced that he was under arrest for attempting to murder a member of the royal family.

He did not know what they had learned, but Duke Pose had the powerful backing of King Argen.

Which meant—

They have misunderstood something.

His startled gaze narrowed.

Duke Pose immediately recovered his noble dignity and roared at the knights.

“You insolent fools!”

The royal guards flinched.

Of course.

They had clearly misunderstood the situation.

It seemed those knights still did not know with whom the Frozen royal family had joined forces.

“You dare claim that you will arrest me? Does His Majesty King Argen know what you are doing? He will be furious when he learns of this!”

The knights had undoubtedly been sent by Empress Grace under pressure from the Kreutz family.

Mentioning King Argen should unsettle them.

And Duke Pose’s prediction appeared correct.

The knights frowned and exchanged glances, seemingly disturbed by his fierce rebuke.

Good. I will go straight to King Argen and tell him everything is over—

But then—

“Are you insane? We came here on the orders of His Majesty King Argen.”

The words fell upon his head like a death sentence.

“......?”

Silence followed.

His thoughts stopped completely.

After spending a long moment trying to understand the knight’s words, the Duke asked again, just in case.

“...King Argen personally gave the order?”

“We are royal knights. Whose orders else would we—forget it. There is no point talking to him.”

The knight captain clicked his tongue as though Duke Pose were an idiot, then gave a nod.

At once, the knights surged forward and began dragging Duke Pose away.

“King Argen would never...”

It was impossible.

King Argen and he had been bound far too closely.

They had plotted incidents together and committed crimes together.

Unless...

A terrible suspicion crossed his mind.

King Argen betrayed me?