Chirp, chirp.
Peaceful morning sunlight seeped through the gaps of the thick blackout curtains in the hospital room.
Outside the window, birds chirped, and a warm heat settled over the bridge of my nose.
"……."
I snapped my eyes open.
Strange. It was too quiet.
Sylvia, who had been fussing over my chest last night rambling about black magic and curses, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Ellara, who had jumped down from the ceiling like a ninja swinging her blade.
Even the faint killing intent and chill flowing from the rooms on either side had vanished as if washed away.
'Did they leave? Did they give up and return to the North? Did Ellara go to her knight order for training?'
I clutched my trembling chest and slowly raised my upper body. The pain in my shoulder remained, but the mere fact that those two crazy women had disappeared from sight made my body feel lighter, like a placebo effect.
"Benjamin!"
I called for my personal attendant in a hoarse voice.
The hospital room door opened immediately, and Benjamin entered. But he looked a mess. His hair was disheveled as if he'd been tearing it out, and his face was pale and haggard, like a corpse that had stayed up for several nights.
"Y-Young Master…… you are awake."
"Why the fuss? Where did those two crazy—ah, I mean, where did those two ladies go, who were stuck to my room like leeches?"
At my question, Benjamin wiped his face with a trembling hand and whimpered.
"Th-that is…… they are currently in the manor's underground torture chamber."
"……What? Why there?"
"Before dawn even broke, Sir Ellara and Lady Sylvia suddenly bound the Ducal House's chief court mage and personal physician, along with all the high-ranking retainers who have served for over ten years, and dragged them underground!"
I doubted my own ears.
They bound the chief mage and high-ranking retainers?
Those old men were limbs my father cherished. The brains of the Ducal House!
"Dragged them away?! Did their escort knights just stand by?!"
"Sir Ellara unleashed her sword aura once and all the knights' swords were shattered, and Lady Sylvia froze the entire reception room in absolute zero, declaring that 'those who resist shall be turned into ice shards and melted.' Taking advantage of His Excellency the Duke's absence for a territorial inspection, the two of them have completely seized the manor……!"
Inside my head, I heard the snap of reason's string breaking.
Last night's dreadful conversation struck my ears like an auditory hallucination.
[The probability that this is an inside job of the Ducal House is high. To plant a curse from the closest distance……]
[That filthy trash bastard is asking who did it.]
They were crazy.
Completely insane. These two lunatics had decided to find the culprit behind the 'black magic lodged in my heart (system penalty),' and were holding a witch hunt by capturing the Ducal House's innocent core personnel!
If my father's retainers died or got hurt here?
When my father, a duke with neither blood nor tears, returned, it was obvious he would start by severing the head of the one who caused this—me!
"Benjamin! Wheelchair!! We're going underground immediately!!"
"B-but Young Master! Your body……!"
"If I stay lying down now, it won't be my body that needs worrying—it'll be my head flying off!! Hurry!!"
The spiral staircase descending to the underground prison was like the entrance to hell.
The further down the stone stairs lit by damp torches I went, horrific screams and a bone-chilling cold assaulted me simultaneously.
"Kyaah! I-I don't know! I really don't know!!"
"Please spare us, Lady Kraus! Sir Ellara! We have never cast any black magic upon the Young Master…… Kyaargh!"
When I pushed open the heavy iron door of the underground torture chamber, the scene before my eyes was a vivid demonstration of the Rothschild Ducal House's authority being slammed into the dirt.
Sharp ice thorns were sprouting from the floor like bushes, and from the ceiling, five high-ranking retainers including the chief court mage hung upside down, bound by magic-sealing orbs.
And in the center,
"You are the personal physician. There is no way you wouldn't know. Why did you keep your mouth shut until such a terrible curse took root in my liege's heart? Were you a bystander, or did you plant it yourself?"
Ellara tapped the physician's cheek with the blunt edge of a gleaming longsword, whispering like a demon from hell.
Beside her, Sylvia had dozens of icicle daggers floating in the air as she smiled coldly at the chief court mage.
"You pierced through the layers of magic barriers surrounding the Ducal House to plant a curse on the Young Master? It's absurd that you, the chief court mage, wouldn't have noticed. Spit it out properly. Who put you up to this? Unless you want to be dragged to the Magic Tower and have your brain dissected."
"C-cough! It's a misunderstanding! From the start, apart from a congenital mana deficiency, the Young Master was not afflicted with any curse…… kuhk!"
At a single gesture from Sylvia, one ice dagger grazed the chief court mage's thigh.
'Fucking hell! Stop it, you crazy bitches!!'
I couldn't contain my horror and half-rose from my wheelchair.
But if I panicked or acted submissive here, the system penalty would activate.
I bit my trembling lips hard enough to draw blood and pulled up the expression of the most arrogant, rotten villain in the world.
"……So the disgusting sound of rats being slaughtered in my house's basement since morning was this."
As my cold voice echoed through the torture chamber, the gazes of the two rampaging heroines turned toward me at once.
"M-my liege?!"
"Kailan? How did you get here……!"
Leaning crookedly in the wheelchair Benjamin pushed, I snorted.
"How did I get here? I heard you were playing with my toys without permission, so I came to watch."
"Toys?! My liege, these people may be traitors who planted a horrid black magic upon you!"
Ellara tried to approach urgently, but I raised my hand irritably to stop her.
"Ellara. I believe I made myself clear last night."
I narrowed my eyes like a snake and glared at her.
"What is lodged in my body is the price for gaining power. How long must I tolerate you spewing nonsense about black magic and ruining my plans?"
"Kailan! How long are you going to lie?!"
Sylvia approached in anger. Her blue eyes shook pitifully.
"No matter how much you want strength, what idiot in this world would willingly place a mad curse that gnaws at their own heart?! You're right now forcing yourself to protect someone, or something!"
She had struck the mark.
She wasn't a fool. As befitting the successor of the Magic Tower, she had seen through the flaw in my lie.
[Warning! The heroines' suspicions are escalating.]
[If you fail to control the situation, the 'Curse of Karmic Retribution' will activate.]
The system's blood-red notification window flickered before my eyes.
To somehow escape this situation, I pointed my chin at the retainers hanging upside down and trembling.
"Release that trash immediately."
"……What?"
"They are my household, my limbs. Whether they rotted or betrayed me, punishing them and lopping off their heads is my authority as the successor of the Ducal House. I cannot tolerate some Northern mage or a mere dog belonging to a knight order damaging my property as they please."
It was an excuse packaged with utmost rudeness, thoroughly wrapped in possessiveness and arrogance.
But in this crazy delusion harem, my excuses were always translated in the worst possible direction.
(Ellara & Sylvia's Mental Auto-Translation)
'Ahh…… Even retainers who committed such terrible acts—he tries to save their lives simply because they are people of his house. To keep blood off our hands, he voluntarily uses cruel words like 'property' and takes on the role of the villain. Just how much more does he intend to bear alone……!'
Sylvia's lips trembled. She slowly retracted the ice daggers in the air and looked at me as if she couldn't believe it.
"Kailan. You…… are a truly hopeless fool."
"What are you babbling about?"
"If you are that desperate to shield them, it means these people aren't the culprits."
Sylvia withdrew her gaze that had been glaring at the chief court mages and stared into empty air with sharp eyes.
"I thought it was strange too. There's no way the chief court mage of a Ducal House could cast a curse of this level. And the fact that you are so desperately trying to hide the culprit—fearfully, someone who must endure pain alone without anyone knowing……"
Sylvia's gaze grew cold, as if she had realized some great truth.
Her eyes met Ellara's in midair.
Ellara, too, widened her silver-grey eyes and hesitated, then soon gripped her sword hilt tightly.
"It can't be……"
Ellara's voice shook as if an earthquake had struck.
"The only absolute being in this Ducal House who can ignore the magic barriers, trample upon my liege as he pleases, and whom my liege can never resist—forced to endure all hatred alone."
No.
Wait. Guys. What are you imagining right now?
"……His Excellency, Duke Rothschild."
At that name that spilled from Sylvia's lips, I felt my breath choke.
"His own father planted a curse in the successor's heart……? To trample the sprout that would threaten his power in advance? So if that's why Kailan had to act like trash, putting on a debauched performance without being able to resist even once despite hating his father so much……"
A perfect leap in logic. But within their own logic, it was the chillingly perfect completion of a gear.
"Y-you crazy…… shut up with that nonsense!!"
I screamed, feeling my blood rush backwards.
"It's not my father! That's not it, fuck!!"
But my desperate denial was seen in their eyes as nothing more than 'the thrashing of a wounded beast whose truth has been exposed.'
"……I understand, my liege."
Ellara fell to her knees on the floor, a single tear dropping.
"Why you acted so boldly toward your father while actually bleeding tears inside. Why you so desperately stopped me when I pointed my sword at His Excellency the Duke."
Ellara raised her head. Her eyes now shone with the fanaticism of a holy knight serving a martyr, beyond simple blind devotion.
"Do not worry. The karmic burden of parricide for killing my liege's father—this hunting hound shall bear it all."
"Hey!!!! Ellara!!!!"
"I'll join too."
Sylvia cut in coldly.
"No matter how much an Imperial Duke he may be, he must pay the price for reducing the Magic Tower's son-in-law to such a state. I will send a letter to my grandfather and have the Northern mages descend in secret."
They were crazy. These two women were right now making a sworn pact to assassinate my dad—the strongest in the world—and stage a coup.
All because of one fucking system penalty lodged in my heart.
The worst 'Dad Hunt' in history was raising its curtain—one that would turn the entire Rothschild Duchy to ashes, no, the entire Empire into a battlefield between the Magic Tower and the Sword Ghost.
"C-cough……!"
Unable to endure the boiling blood pressure and stress, I finally vomited black blood again and collapsed over the wheelchair.
"Young Master!!"
"My liege!!"
Even as my consciousness faded, I heard the voices of the two crazy women sobbing as they embraced me, swearing that they would definitely kill my father and avenge me.
Please, someone save me.
No, rather, please save my dad……!