Episode 225
"...Heave-ho."
Frey, having picked up Lulu who had fallen asleep hugging what she mistook for his leg but was actually a chair leg, even drooling on it, laid her on the bed in her room.
- Swoosh...
Carefully, he pulled the hair she had been holding in her mouth and tucked it behind her.
"Hehe..."
When Frey gently stroked her hair carefully enough not to wake her, Lulu smiled happily even in her sleep, as if pleased by his touch.
"I need to hide you tightly in this mansion... for a while."
Frey, looking at her with affectionate eyes, straightened his clothes and headed for her door.
"...I can't let that damn woman target you already."
Leaving those words behind in case she woke up and clung to his leg asking to be taken along, Frey hurried out of Lulu's room.
"I told you to go down and prepare."
"........."
"Looks like my words don't sound like words to you."
He spoke in a cold voice to Aris and Arianne who were quietly waiting in front of her door.
"I can send you back to prison anytime. That's the sentence. And if that happens, not only will you be expelled from the academy, but you'll also suffer terribly in prison."
When the two girls flinched at the word 'expulsion,' Frey glared at them and added as he walked between them.
"So obey my orders quietly. Don't have any wild thoughts."
"...Yes."
The two girls, reluctantly answering him, followed Frey who started descending the stairs.
- Swoosh...
The two girls watched Frey withdraw his gaze and pull out a cane from his bosom.
They exchanged glances for a moment, then began to subtly close the distance with Frey.
"...Did you call for the carriage?"
But Frey, his hand holding the cane twitching slightly, turned around and questioned them.
"It will be waiting outside."
"Did you put the family crest on it? I'm worried whether you lowly ones did it properly."
"...There will be no mistakes."
"Well, we'll see when we look."
Frey, looking with satisfaction at the two women speaking respectfully to him, moved forward again.
"Ah, um..."
Arianne, surprised by his pace several times faster than before, tried to stop him.
"...Leave it."
Aris grabbed her arm.
"Let's do this more certainly."
"........"
Arianne, hesitating at those words and lowering her head, looked at Aris with trembling eyes.
"You stay out of this. I'll do it alone after all."
"But..."
"I just realized. You can't kill people. Unless it's protecting or guarding someone."
Aris spoke in a cold voice to Arianne who was lost in thought, fiddling with the dagger she held in her bosom.
"Just clean up afterwards. If you really don't want to be involved, you can block the surroundings with a barrier."
"I, I'll help too..."
"Do as you please. But don't interfere."
Somehow, Aris no longer bore the sharp and intelligent appearance of a commoner representative, but rather the appearance of a skilled assassin of the Moonlight House.
"Welcome, Young Master Frey."
Aris, who quickened her pace leaving Arianne with a dark expression behind, boarded the carriage with Frey who stepped outside the entrance.
"The destination is..."
"Go to this location."
"Understood."
Then, sitting naturally in the seat beside him.
"Until we arrive, I'll lean on you for a moment."
"...Understood."
When Frey leaned toward her diagonally and closed his eyes, she answered in a low voice and muttered internally.
'Sorry, but Frey. You won't be arriving there.'
Feeling the murderous impulse that always boiled up when killing a target, and for some reason was now boiling up several times more strongly, throughout her body.
'...Forever.'
After a while, the carriage departed.
.
".....Mmm."
"............"
Inside the carriage heading to the location Frey indicated at a rather slow speed, Aris sat stiffly.
"Mmm..."
On her shoulder now, Frey was nodding off with his head leaning.
Frey, whom she had to assassinate today. Frey, who should become her prey. He was completely defenseless, entrusting his body to her.
From the perspective of a skilled assassin like her, this situation was no different from a well-prepared meal.
That's why she was seized by the impulse to take a spoonful.
- Rustle...
She wanted to take out the knife from her bosom and plunge it into Frey's neck, putting the prepared meal in her mouth.
She wanted revenge on Frey, known as the one who created the 'Curse of Subjugation' engraved on her and her comrades.
Actually, she wanted revenge on Frey, who could control her at will with just a word.
"........"
But Aris was suppressing that impulse.
Because that wasn't the plan she had made beforehand, and if she killed him now, the innocent girl in front of her would also bear guilt.
And to receive the orders transmitted secretly through the curse, she was exercising transcendental patience.
"Hmm..."
But there was something strange today.
The patience that she could normally control freely during assassination missions had been running dry since earlier.
'What... on earth...?'
Every time Frey leaning on her shoulder exhaled, and every time his breath touched her shoulder, two emotions clashing fiercely were rising up wildly.
Of course, one of them was 'killing intent.'
Disgust toward Frey, the one known to have created the 'curse' that made her and her comrades puppets of the Secret Lord.
Discomfort and revulsion she felt every morning when she woke up seeing him standing before her with a meaningful expression, threatening to make her a sex slave.
And various other negative emotions she felt when he committed various atrocities all combined to make Aris feel quite strong 'killing intent.'
For some reason, it was even more intense today.
"Mmm..."
And the unknown emotion that arose along with that killing intent was a quite bewildering emotion for Aris.
She, who was cold both outwardly and inwardly, had been trained to limit feeling most emotions through artificial training because she shouldn't show emotions during assassinations.
So the emotion she was feeling now was quite a 'disturbance.'
'What is it...'
Because of that, she decided to analyze the cause and internally analyzed her emotions diligently.
"I don't know..."
But even after quite a long time, she couldn't reach a proper conclusion.
Every time she saw Frey's pale face for some reason, hesitation came to her heart that had decided to kill him.
Concluding that ambiguous state, with only that, as one emotion was nearly impossible.
- Whoosh...!
Aris, who was in the midst of the greatest dilemma of her assassination career, quickly turned her gaze there when the flow of air changed.
- Crack!!
"...Ugh."
Then, a stone struck exactly the point of the window she was watching.
"What is it...?"
Although it was a carriage of the Duke's house with good protection, so the stone couldn't penetrate the magic circle, it was enough to make Frey, who was pretending to sleep while assessing the situation, open his eyes.
"What the..."
Of course, since he had been tossing and turning in sleep, he rubbed his eyes and squinted while looking out the window.
"......."
Then, he froze.
"Oh my."
The people on the street were throwing stones at him with angry expressions.
Some were throwing bottles instead of stones, some were throwing eggs, and some were even throwing fire pokers.
"Let go of this!"
"...Ugh!"
Of course, such people were immediately arrested by the security forces surrounding the street.
"Trash bastard..."
"Just die already."
"What are the monsters doing? Not catching that bastard..."
But it was beyond their capacity to arrest everyone who cursed at him.
The Starlight family crest attached to the carriage was shining so brightly in the sunlight that all the people in the market alley who noticed it came out to the street and behaved that way.
"...How amusing."
Frey, who had been frozen for a moment, raised the corner of his mouth and spoke with an interested expression.
"No matter what they do, I'm this safe."
The people who saw that became even more angry, and Frey, who watched the people in the paralyzed street for a while, eventually clicked his tongue as if his interest had cooled and lowered the curtain.
"That's strange..."
And at that point, Aris's doubts increased.
"What's going on..."
She had witnessed it.
The moment she had to focus and analyze every instant of the target.
Something only a seasoned assassin like her could catch.
The expression Frey had worn in that frozen instant.
In that fleeting moment, he had.
He had clearly worn an expression of fear, an expression of hurt, and an anxious and sad expression.
'There's no way I'd be shaken just from seeing that...?'
Of course, seeing such an expression of her target Frey and feeling sympathy or wanting to go easy on him was a possibility that would make a seasoned assassin like her snort in dismissal.
But for some reason.
Seeing that expression of his, she somehow felt a slight hesitation.
It wasn't based on sympathy. She had become too emotionless to feel such things.
Then was it because of love? That couldn't be possible. The possibility that she suddenly fell in love with Frey seemed nonexistent no matter how she thought about it.
'Is it just my mood...?'
Eventually, concluding that it was just a day when her condition wasn't good, and that was why her emotional fluctuations were severe, she thought so while carefully observing Frey.
"Aris."
Frey, who had been staring at such Aris at some point, spoke to her right at that moment.
"Tonight too, please take good care of me?"
Saying that with a creepy smile.
"........!"
Upon hearing those words, Aris's blood rushed in reverse.
"You, you...!"
The clapping sounds she heard every morning that she had been ignoring. The somehow uncomfortable feeling. Frey's satisfied expression.
When all those puzzles came together, unbearable anger surged up.
"You, you bastard...!"
Come to think of it, it was indeed strange. No matter how much she hated it to death, no matter how much she hoped the situation would never occur, she shouldn't have shown such a reaction.
Even if her emotions exploded, the fact that she, trained to think of the operation first, fell for such low-quality provocation was itself absurd.
- Thud...!
Somehow, Aris, who lost her reason due to the killing intent inflated several times over, pulled out a dagger from her bosom and pierced Frey's left arm.
"Hmm."
"......!"
Frey watching that situation with interest, and Arianne panicking at the unexpected situation.
'What... did I just do?'
Aris, who quickly regained her reason in that situation, desperately racked her brain.
'First, think about that later, since it's come to this... I have to dispose of him.'
And as soon as she finished thinking, Aris violently twisted the knife stuck in his left arm.
The intention was to cause pain and incapacitate Frey.
"...Hmm."
"......?"
But she had to be flustered.
"What are you doing right now?"
Because Frey was looking at her with such a calm expression without complaining of any pain at all.
"What are you doing to my body..."
Thanks to that, she was quite flustered but without losing her composure, she tried to pull out the dagger she had thrust into his arm.
"...Ugh?"
But, for some reason, the dagger didn't come out.
- Crack...!
"Oh."
Black energy suddenly surged from Frey's arm and tightly grabbed the dagger.
"What is this..."
Thanks to that, she was breaking out in cold sweat, but when she finally came to her senses, she quickly put her hand in her bosom.
- Boom...!
"Kyah!!!"
At that moment, Frey with a cold expression grabbed her collar with his left hand and slammed her onto the carriage floor.
"Ugh..."
"........"
The carriage, protected by numerous soundproofing and defensive magic, rang quite violently from being slammed onto the floor, so she fell into a groggy state.
And so the situation ended in an instant.
"Just... how..."
"Do you think I don't have a single power received from the Demon King?"
"Ah..."
"There's no need to give orders through the curse. Even in a normal state, you're no match for me."
Aris, who asked such a question after a moment of silence.
"Rather, kill me."
Said so with a trembling voice upon hearing Frey's answer mixed with mockery.
"I don't want to live like this anymore either."
Looking at Frey with a humiliated and disgusted expression.
"Rather than suffering such acts from you every night... dying is better."
"That was a lie though."
"Shut up, kill me quickly. You fool."
Looking down at Aris who declared so like a female knight defeated in war, Frey smiled.
"I don't want to."
He whispered in a cold voice.
".....Ugh."
At those words, Aris closed her eyes tightly.
Blaming her powerless and pathetic self for being subdued by her prey instead, chewing her lips, she spat.
"Ptui."
She spat blood-mixed saliva at Frey.
'Kill me... kill me...'
A provocation she did because she wanted him to kill her quickly.
'Please...'
Failing the 'mission,' the terrible pain that the Curse of Subjugation, which was already causing pain to her and her comrades while urging assassination, automatically activated and began to bring.
And at the same time, the things that would happen to the children she cherished like younger siblings.
The way to avoid those things was to commit suicide or be killed before the curse activated.
"Kill me quickly...!!!"
Therefore, looking down at Aris who shouted even while shedding tears.
"Heave-ho."
"Huh?"
Suddenly, he made her stand up and sat her next to him.
"Shall we make a bet...?"
"A, a bet?"
Then, Frey said so while raising the corner of his mouth.
"My power weakens every week."
"What?"
Looking at Aris who had a dumbfounded expression at those words, Frey chuckled, slightly opened the window and looked outside while continuing his story.
"So, kill me every week."
"What do you mean..."
"No, to be precise... I'm telling you to attempt to kill me. Try to assassinate me with all your might every week."
At those incomprehensible words, Aris wore an absurd expression, and Arianne kept pinching her cheeks wondering if she was dreaming.
"At that time, I won't hold you responsible for anything. You can legally kill me."
"What...?"
"I'll write a will too. So you'll be safe. And actually, people will like you? If you succeed in killing me, you'll probably be treated as a hero."
Frey's incomprehensible words continued after that, and because of that, Aris, who was coughing up a little blood while glaring at Frey, spoke in a cold voice.
"What's your intention in doing this...? For what purpose..."
"Instead, if you fail to assassinate me..."
"...Right, I knew you'd say that."
Then, when Frey brought up those words, Aris wore a disgusted expression.
"I'm not your entertainment. So..."
"For one week, you'll serve as a maid without complaint."
".....?"
But the words that came out of Frey's mouth were different from what she expected.
"Sincerely, like a maid who has served for a very long time... become quite a diligent servant."
"........"
"Then, I'll give you a chance to assassinate me every week."
When Frey finished those words, silence flowed in the carriage.
"How about it?"
Since she could legally kill him who weakened every week, it was quite an attractive offer for Aris.
No, not an attractive offer. It was an offer she absolutely had to accept.
If she periodically attempted assassination, even if the lord died, the pain that had been binding her constantly due to the 'kill Frey' command that continued to be maintained would disappear.
And the same would be true for her comrades.
And, she could become a hero even after killing Frey, who she thought was the worst evil personally as well as being the creator of the 'curse' that put them in this situation.
"Why are you making such an offer...?"
That's why, Aris asked once more.
"What benefit is there...?"
What meaning did this offer, so advantageous only to her, have for him?
"Well?"
Frey shrugged at those words and answered.
"Because it seems fun?"
Aris frowned at those words.
"...Actually, do you miss the servants?"
But when Frey said the next words, Aris unknowingly relaxed her expression.
Because on his face, a sad expression passed by again for a fleeting moment.
"Well, that's... you guys figure that out yourselves."
"M, me too...?"
"Yeah, you too."
Like that, while Arianne was asking Frey questions in bewilderment, Aris, who had been wearing a blank expression.
"Fine."
Eventually, she changed her expression to a cold one and answered.
"I don't know what your scheme is, what story there is... but I'll kill you."
"Good, then it's settled."
Frey, who smiled slightly at her words, opened the curtain with a pleased expression.
"........."
But seeing that the carriage was still surrounded by demonstrators holding picket signs, his expression instantly darkened.
"...Ugh."
And then, he trembled all over and clutched his chest.
"Hoo..."
Even so, he deliberately looked out the window and maintained an indifferent expression.
"...Anyway, today's assassination attempt failed."
He said in a lonely voice, still fixing his gaze outside.
"So please grant me a favor."
"What favor..."
"Could you bandage this for me?"
Saying that, Frey extended his arm that Aris had attacked.
"........."
Aris, who was quietly observing that sight.
- Swoosh, swoosh...
She took the bandage handed to her and slowly wrapped it around Frey's arm, then flinched.
"Hmm..."
While looking at Frey who was staring blankly at the people shaking picket signs at him, she was able to roughly identify the emotion she was feeling.
The emotion she felt toward Frey was.
The familiarity she felt toward the Hero of Money she had been eating meals with recently.
And, guilt and self-reproach whose source she didn't know, that couldn't be grasped.
"........."
Those were, of course, emotions an assassin shouldn't have.
"I'll kill you, Frey. If I defeat you, I'll torture and kill you as cruelly as possible."
"Okay."
"I won't fall for your purpose. If I see signs of you using me... I'll just commit suicide."
"Do as you please."
"And today's assassination attempt isn't over, so be prepared."
"I see."
She shot sharp words to try to forget those emotions, but Frey just answered nonchalantly.
"......."
Because of that, eventually she closed her mouth and silently began wrapping the bandage around Frey's arm.
"...I sincerely hope you just die."
[Hidden Quest: Remove Serena's Curse of Subjugation]
[Progress: 20%]
[Rewards: Secret Lord elimination, ???, ???, ???, Serena's 19+ event liberation, Top priority designation]
A system window floated before Frey who was looking outside with a faint smile, when she said those words to sort out her troubled heart while wrapping the bandage for a while.