Chapter 57
At that same hour, in Aisha’s bedroom.
“Mmph….”
A ball of fluff curled up inside the blankets, which were steeped in Aisha’s scent, let out a satisfied mumble.
Lately, Kyle found himself overcome with a drowsiness so heavy it felt like he was passing out whenever daytime rolled around. The sleepiness was especially potent after he’d consumed the blood of the spies who tried to infiltrate from time to time.
It was much like children going through a growth spurt.
“Zzz…”
Even in his sleep, his hindquarters wiggled vigorously as he tried to burrow deeper into Aisha’s embrace.
However.
“……?”
Aisha’s embrace was gone. Usually, her warm body heat should have been surrounding him.
“?”
As the lukewarm air chased away his sleep, he opened his eyes and looked around.
This was Aisha’s bedroom. But the owner of the room was nowhere to be found.
‘Aisha?’
The ball of fluff stretched out his front paws with a long yawn and shook his head.
After finishing a quick cat-wash, he hopped lightly off the bed and checked underneath it.
‘She’s not here either.’
Aisha was gone.
‘That’s strange. We’ve been stuck together like glue lately.’
Ever since he’d received permission from that middle-aged man, it had always been that way.
Kyle was a quintessential homebody. Naturally, it was only right for him to be in his home—her arms.
“Meow? (Aisha?)”
He pressed his nose to the floor and sniffed. Her scent lingered faintly, leading out of the castle like a trail of footprints.
He headed out of the castle without a second thought.
It was only right to go find what he had lost.
On the surface, this looked like an ordinary, somewhat dilapidated shopping district, but in reality, it was a so-called dark alleyway where black market deals flourished.
Everyone seen on the street was either wearing a robe or…
“Hey kid, looks like you’ve lost your way.”
“Yup.”
“If you’ve lost your parents, why don’t you come along with this mister?”
They were bad people who committed crimes out in the open.
“Take a needle of justice.”
“…What?”
Thwip—
I shot a needle into the bald man’s forehead. He twitched, his body trembling violently before he collapsed.
This was a lawless zone. That was why it was a decent place for the Duke of Pose’s spies to reside.
Jingle—
I stepped into a worn-down shop with a sign that read ‘Percus’s Bookstore.’
“Welcome… Oh, kid?”
A man who had been greeting me in a slouching voice recognized me and stood up.
He was a man with a large scar over one eye. The spy, Dolly.
“I heard you were adopted as a princess, so why are you still dressed like a beggar?”
Gosh. For a spy, why is his voice so loud?
I looked around and whispered.
“Hey. Is it okay to act like you know me so openly?”
“Why? Now that you’re the daughter of a high-ranking duke, are you embarrassed to be seen with someone like me?”
“No, that’s not it!”
Being fellow spies didn’t mean we were friends.
As I’d seen back in Dorothy’s time, spies didn’t contact each other unless it was for a joint operation or out of necessity; usually, they were jealous and envious of one another.
I wasn’t sure why, but it seemed to be because they were used to competing while being trained from a young age.
The man opened a newspaper and asked, “By the way, have you seen that guy?”
“Who?”
“A guy named Larter.”
The man squinted his eyes until they were mere slits.
“The one who always walks around with squinty eyes like this.”
A squinty-eyed character?
…Squinty-eyed, hmm… Ah!
Someone immediately came to mind.
A faint memory surfaced.
Back during the successor trial, when Marquis Lillis used a potion to make the monsters go berserk.
The mysterious man watching everything back then had squinty eyes.
I quickly spoke to Dolly.
“I think I saw him during the successor trial, but…”
“I saw him then, too. But I haven’t seen him since.”
Oh?
“I haven’t seen him since then either.”
“Really?”
A brief silence followed.
When a spy you know suddenly vanishes, it’s one of two things. They’re dead. Or they’re about to be.
Well. Things just got awkward.
It wasn’t like I came here for small talk anyway.
Standing on my tiptoes, I slapped my hand onto the counter.
“Anyway, about that Berserk Potion. You’re selling it here, right?”
“Why? You took a ton of it recently saying you were going to spread it at the End of the World. Did you have some fun with it?”
I’m asking for it so I can clean up that mess, you jerk.
If I could, I wanted to give the man who sold it a good smack on the head.
“Not enough fun. That’s why I need more.”
“There’s a red spine on the bookshelf over there. Press it and go into the room.”
The man didn’t take his eyes off the newspaper and gave a casual nod of his head.
For a spy storing illegal drugs, he was remarkably careless. Well, at least it was a relief he didn’t suspect me.
“Got it.”
I stood before the bookshelf and pressed the red spine tucked between countless books—
Rumble.
The ground vibrated as the shelves parted, revealing another room.
As I stepped inside, the temperature dropped sharply, as if I’d entered a freezer.
All sorts of drugs were displayed on wooden pantry-like shelves, all shielded behind glass panes to prevent tampering.
These were the real products of Percus’s Bookstore.
I scurried around busily searching for the drug until I found a potion the exact same color as the one I’d seen during the successor lesson.
“Found it. The Madness Amplifier.”
I stood on my tiptoes and tapped the glass, and it slid open automatically.
‘This is what caused part of the Ice Wall to collapse.’
Just thinking about it gave me the chills.
Shiver—
It was enough to make my cheeks vibrate.
‘He said he needed a large amount… so I’ll just take everything that’s here.’
It was then.
“What’s that?”
I was trying to reach for only the Madness Amplifier, but the tip of my index finger touched something else.
“…An ice crystal?”
Having pulled out the Madness Amplifier, I discovered something.
The curious potion was quite different from the others.
The ice crystal inside the potion shimmered and glowed like sunlight reflecting off a river.
‘It’s pretty.’
Before I knew it, my mouth was hanging open. I checked my surroundings and swiped one of those potions too.
Usually, if there were side effects, there would be a small skull pattern, but looking at the back of the bottle, there was nothing of the sort.
It was a potion that reminded me of the Ice Ability.
‘It’s pretty, so I’ll take one.’
Once the Duke of Pose is revealed as the culprit behind the monster berserk incident, this bookstore will disappear anyway.
‘That’s what you get for doing bad things.’
Hehe.
I chuckled secretly and tucked the potions into my rabbit bag. Just as I stepped out of the room and was about to press the red spine—
“You really are your father’s daughter, stealing without even blinking an eye.”
“Gyaah!”
My feet suddenly left the ground as I was hoisted up roughly by the scruff of my neck.
The culprit was the man who had been sitting at the desk.
Having suddenly grabbed me, the man threw my flailing body onto the floor.
“Ow!”
I must have hit my knee on the rough wooden floor when I fell. It hurt.
I tried to get up, limping, unable to even touch my scraped knee—
“You better watch your behavior lately.”
A look of contempt, worse than if he were looking at a bug, looked down at me from right in front of my face.
A chill ran down my spine, making my shoulders quiver.
Even if the man and I were both official spies, that man would be overwhelmingly stronger in terms of raw power and experience.
“Hey kid, about Larter. Do you know what he told me right before he vanished?”
Ominous words.
Dolly picked his ear with his pinky, blew on it, and tilted his head.
“He said you and the Crost lot looked a little too close. So he said he was going to follow you, and then he went missing.”
As his threatening voice grew lower, Dolly’s scarred face drew closer to mine.
At this distance.
He was close enough to tell if I was flustered just by the way I breathed.
“Too close? I’m quite the actress, aren’t I? Hehe.”
I hid my trembling heart and gave a cute smile.
But my opponent was a spy.
“You’d better choose your acting targets wisely.”
I hadn’t expected him to fall for it, but as expected, the corners of Dolly’s mouth curled into a thin line.
“You knew that even after Dorothy died, we’ve been sending spies to the Crost household periodically, right?”
…What?
My expression crumpled for the first time, blindsided by words I was hearing for the first time.
“But I’m sure you also know that every spy we sent ended up dead?”
“……?”
This was also news to me.
“How many spies did you send? I didn’t know.”
“How many? Did you just say ‘how many’? This is hilarious, hahaha!”
He covered his face with his hand and burst into laughter.
Then, in an instant, the corners of his mouth dropped, and he glared at me with that same look of contempt.
“…Well, His Grace will be pleased no matter what you do. Thanks to that girl, you’ve become a fun toy that must not be scrapped no matter what.”
“What does that… mean?”
I was starting to get scared by his cryptic words and was about to ask for clarification when—
‘You’ve brought back something quite interesting after your trip to the Duchy.’
“…….”
Something flashed in my mind.
It was definitely when I had passed out at Ahili’s Circus.
‘Don’t scrap her. This will get quite entertaining later.’
Two sentences that I remembered vividly, even though it had been a dream.
“……?”
My lips, which had stopped mid-sentence, parted as they trembled.
It wasn’t a nightmare?
Could this be a memory from my lost past?
“Hahahaha! This is driving me crazy, seriously!”
Observing the change in my expression, Dolly burst into laughter and stood up.
“Anyway, the better you get along with the Ice Duke, the more he’ll be destroyed in the end. You’re doing your job well enough.”
“…….”
Calips will be destroyed?
…The better I get along with him?
Now that I thought about it, he was right.
In the first place, the order the Duke of Pose gave me was to become the daughter of the Crost Duchy.
He told me to become the Duke’s beloved daughter.
I had said I would escape the life of a spy and refuse the mission, but I really had become his beloved daughter.
By doing so, I had moved one step closer to the Duke of Pose’s ambitions.
But if the fact that becoming his daughter was my original mission ever came to light, how much betrayal would Calips feel?