Chapter 144

Chapter 144

At that time.

Elaine, who didn’t know what had happened to Cadis, was secretly sneaking around the palace as usual. She particularly frequented the area around the Imperial Research Institute, where the imperial wizards gathered. Occasionally, if she were lucky, she would get a chance to enter the library inside the lab and examine the forbidden books related to curses.

She was aiming for that again today.

‘I wonder if the library corridor window will be open again like last time.’

Hiding in a secluded spot, she meticulously searched the area. Then, all of a sudden, she heard a commotion coming from somewhere.

‘Hmm?’

She hurriedly hid herself among the ornamental trees and looked toward the direction of the sound through the gaps between the tree trunks.

“What the hell…! Let go of me…! Ugh! Uhhp!”

An imperial wizard dressed in a robe was being taken away by a palace knight.

‘… What’s going on?’

The wizard was struggling fiercely, thrashing their body from side to side. But with a skinny body that had no muscle at all, the wizard was no match for the knights.

Elaine watched the wizard being dragged away with a serious expression.

‘I think someone was dragged away last time too.’

Lately, the situation at the research institute has been unusual, and wizards kept disappearing one by one.

‘What on earth are you doing, Father?’

Those who disappeared were probably those who, voluntarily or unintentionally, must have known too much about the secret of the curse. What could they have learned that made the Emperor so determined to keep the secret, even at the cost of eliminating such talented people?

Elaine shrank even tighter and squeezed between the branches as much as she could.

She was afraid.

If William knew she was hiding here, he would drag her away somewhere, just like that wizard, regardless of whether she was his daughter or not. And like those others, she would disappear without a trace, just like a mouse or a bird.

She didn’t think they would be alive and well.

While she was quietly hiding and watching the magician being taken away—

‘Huh?’

—Elaine noticed something glinting in the wizard’s hand.

In a desperate flurry, the wizard threw an object they had been holding in their hand.

Something was strange.

‘…Did they just throw that on purpose?’

As if he needed to hide that object somehow while being captured, he threw it somewhere into the underbrush without the knights noticing.

After the knights left, Elaine remained hidden in the same spot for a while before she came out when she was sure it was completely safe. As she searched the underbrush for the object the wizard had thrown, she soon found a blue, diamond-shaped stone with a cord attached.

It was a bracelet.

‘What could this be?’

Could it be a clue to the curse?

An object containing the Emperor’s secret?

Of course, it might be too much to hope for. Still, just in case, she carefully put the bracelet into her pocket.

̊ · : * ✧* : · ̊

A few days later, a letter arrived from the capital to Avila, who remained in the Blois estate to manage the shapeshifters’ shelter with Esca.

Upon reading the letter, she hurriedly packed her things.

“I’m sorry, Esca, for leaving the shelter in your care alone. I’ll come back as soon as the matter is resolved. Please take care of things!”

Avila left for the capital in a hurry, leaving the young puppy shapeshifters in the care of Esca.

As she arrived at the capital, exhausted from passing through several teleportation circles, she rushed to her friend who had sent her the letter without even having time to catch her breath.

“Heidel, I read the letter. What does it all mean?”

Bursting into her friend’s house with a scary demeanor, Avila asked pointedly as soon as she sat down. It was still early afternoon, and Heidel, who must have been sleeping at this time since his hair was a mess, poured water into the kettle with a tired look on his face.

“Sorry, sorry. I feel like I’m about to collapse right now. Let’s have some tea and wake up a bit.”

He splashed his face with cold water and buried his face in his hands.

“As I mentioned in the letter, Senior Tara suddenly disappeared, so I had to handle the tasks she was responsible for. I’ve been staying at the research institute for several days, and I just managed to leave a short while ago. I don’t even know how long it’s been since I’ve been home.”

As the water started to boil, he trudged over and poured the hot water into a teacup.

Before the tea had even steeped, Heidel sipped it slowly and made a face as if he were trying to make do.

“When you said you were quitting your position as an imperial wizard, I thought you were crazy. I couldn’t understand how you could give up such an honorable position that you had earned. But these days, I’ve been envious of you.”

He then pointed to the piles of luggage stacked in a corner of the house.

“What’s the use of making a lot of money? What good does it do if people praise you? Ever since I entered the imperial palace, I haven’t even had time to move into a nice house or unpack the moving boxes I brought when I first came to the capital. Even if you have money, if you don’t have time, it’s all useless…”

Even though he was on the verge of tears, Avila cut him off firmly as if she had no intention of listening to his complaints.

“I didn’t come all this way just to hear your complaints.”

“Hmph, so heartless.”

“Enough about that. What happened to Tara? Why did she suddenly disappear?”

“I don’t know. She apparently suddenly submitted a leave of absence request. No one knows where she went, and no one has seen her.”

“Does it make sense that Tara submitted a leave of absence? She’s the kind of person who would keep working on magic research even if she were given a terminal diagnosis!”

“Exactly. That’s why I wrote you the letter because I’m curious too. You were the closest to Tara. Haven’t you heard anything?”

Avila shook her head.

“I haven’t spoken to Tara since I left the palace…”

“Hey, but you came all the way to the capital for something like this? I heard you’ve been staying in Blois these days. Isn’t that quite far?”

“Well, you know.”

Her expression, as she mumbled, wasn’t good. Heidel seemed to think that his senior, Tara, was on vacation somewhere, but she had a different idea.

‘There’s no way Tara would do that.’

She was someone who loved research far more than resting or playing.

Avila knew well how obsessed Tara was with magic. However, since she had worked as a junior research wizard and then quit, she didn’t know what the senior wizards were researching. Senior wizards often conducted research that was classified as a national secret, so everything was done with utmost confidentiality.

While she couldn’t guess what had happened to Tara, she remembered her last conversation together just before quitting her job.

For some reason, Tara was very drunk that day. She was a person who didn’t like alcohol very much.

“Good thinking, Avila. Get away while you can…”

“Senior? You’re quite drunk.”

“When you can run away… escape…”

“What on earth are you saying? And I’m not running away, you know? I’m quitting!”

“Run away, Avila…”

“Get a hold of yourself!”

“While you can still get out alive… You’re still okay…”

At the time, she simply thought that Tara was overwhelmed with work.

‘But the Tara I’ve known since the academy isn’t the kind of person who would run away just because research is tough. She wouldn’t disappear so irresponsibly.’

Why did she keep getting this ominous feeling?

Heidel smiled and reassured Avila, who didn’t have a good expression.

“Hey, aren’t you taking this too seriously? If Tara saw you, she’d think she had been kidnapped or something. She just submitted a leave of absence and disappeared.”

Then, he sighed deeply.

“But it’s getting increasingly frightening as senior wizards keep disappearing like that. The higher you go up, the more overwhelming the work must be if even those obsessed with research are fleeing.”

“Heidel, when was the last time you saw Tara? How did she look?”

“Well, she did look anxious, like someone being chased by a debt collector, though she was always like that. Oh, and recently, she was always carrying a book around like it was a treasure.”

As if he had finally remembered, Heidel then went into another room and came back with a notebook.

“I ended up taking over senior’s work, and since she disappeared without any handover, all her belongings, even the junk, ended up with me. This is the book she always carried around.”

Avila glanced over the parchment book, which was entirely made of leather. At first glance, it looked like an empty book with nothing written in it, but she knew exactly what it was.

“Is this a magically sealed notebook?”

“It seemed like that. It looks like it contains research data that Senior was working on, but I don’t know why she sealed it with magic. I couldn’t open it with my own power.”

As she inspected the book from various angles, she discovered a faint diamond-shaped mark on the back of the book.

“This is a seal that can only be opened with a key. You need the key to unlock it.”

“A key?”

“Yeah. Didn’t she have something she always carried around? Maybe that’s the key.”

“Well, I’m not sure about that. Is it absolutely impossible to open it without the key?”

“We can’t open it.”

“Come on, maybe you can figure something out? Do you want to take it and study it? After all, if you can’t break the seal, you won’t be able to see it. I’m not knowledgeable about sealing magic, so I wouldn’t be able to do it even if I tried.”

Avila fiddled with the parchment book and then got up from her seat.

“For now, I’ll be going. Let me know if you hear any news about Tara. I’ll be staying in the capital for a while.”

Leaving Heidel’s house, Avila clutched the parchment book to her chest and headed straight to the Blois family’s townhouse. She planned to inform Rowaine that she had arrived in the capital and ask if she could stay with them for a while. However, near the mansion, she unexpectedly encountered someone.

“Oh my, Avila?”

“Uh? Your Highness?”

“Shh. Don’t call me that.”

Elaine, who was wearing a hood pulled down low, looked around and cautioned her. On her wrist, with her index finger raised, there was a dangling diamond-shaped bracelet glinting with a blue light.

 
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