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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“You know this is the priestess’s quarters, right?”
“I do.”
“You know that usually strangers, especially men, are absolutely forbidden from entering here?”
“Should I leave then?”
“No, it’s fine. I did want to see you after all.”
Mia grumbled in surprise upon seeing me, but unable to hide the smile on her lips, she seemed inwardly pleased.
Mia quickly turned around to check if anyone was watching before closing the door and entering.
“But what brings you here? Sneaking into an empty house like a petty thief.”
“Um… Could you please refrain from calling me a petty thief? It stings a bit.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
It used to be fine, but lately I’d become quite sensitive to being called a petty thief.
Of course, it was true that the magic I used, my disguise trait, and various other skills I’d learned were all fitting for a petty thief.
Still, this was only the second time I’d trespassed into someone’s home in this round.
“There’s a celebrity among my companions, so it was a bit awkward to enter openly.”
“Hehe. Who could it be? Last time it was Yevgenia’s eldest daughter. What woman did you bring this time?”
“It’s not a woman. Their an ex-convict, so we had no choice but to sneak them in.”
“Ah. Speaking of Yevgenia’s eldest daughter, her name was Alicia, right? I saw her again a few days ago.”
“What?”
For a moment I doubted my ears.
She saw Alicia again?
Here?
“H-how did that happen?”
“The Frost Duchess suddenly visited Elvenguard. Alicia came along with her.”
“Surely. They didn’t greet her like they knew her, did they?”
“The elders greeted her first, saying they were meeting her again…”
“…”
Mia hung her head low, as if feeling ashamed.
Oh no.
This was bad.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to calm myself by inhaling the scent of the tea Mia had brought.
“Alicia came here without the Frost Duchess knowing.”
“No wonder Alicia seemed so frantic, making some hand signals from behind…”
I started to understand the situation.
If Alicia had any sense, she wouldn’t have willingly come to Elvenguard with Yerina, where the elders would clearly recognize her face.
She must have made excuses not to come, but was likely forced to.
There was only one reason Yerina would be so forceful.
Alicia’s clumsy lies had finally been exposed to Yerina.
It was expected, but it happened sooner than I thought.
Then again, facing a monster who could detect lies by observing the slightest tremor in one’s brow, Alicia’s acting couldn’t have lasted long.
“How did the Frost Duchess react?”
“There wasn’t anything particularly strange… Oh. Now that I think about it, there seemed to be a faint anger mixed in behind her smile…”
She was angry.
Of course she would be.
She found out that the loyal subject she sent down to find a man had secretly gone elsewhere.
This must be why Alicia’s letters stopped coming at some point, she couldn’t continue doing suspicious things after being caught.
The key question was how much of Alicia’s lie had been exposed.
It would be great if this was seen as just a simple act of rebellion, but if it was revealed that Alicia’s independent action was connected to me, things would become much more complicated.
‘The one fortunate thing is that Alicia is properly mistaken.’
The fortunate thing was that Alicia completely treated me as just another human, she would choose to bite her tongue and die rather than see me reunite with Yerina.
That was how much Alicia disliked me, she didn’t even treat me like a person.
So the possibility of Alicia opening her mouth voluntarily was extremely low.
Of course, Yerina would do her best to make Alicia talk, so I couldn’t be completely at ease…
‘This is giving me a headache…’
Each time the encirclement tightened, I felt more and more suffocated.
The most annoying thing was that Yerina had recalled her memories from the 12th round.
I vividly remembered the 12th round too, as it was the previous round.
The memories of me crying and laughing together with Yerina.
Although for me, most of them were events I had repeated many times and my smiles and lines were fake to seduce Yerina, I couldn’t say there wasn’t a bit of sincerity mixed in.
The problem was, the moment I faced Yerina from that time again, I wouldn’t be able to reject her twice.
Yerina originally boasted an extremely difficult level where even triggering the successful confession event didn’t fill the conquest rate to 95%,
But with her memories from the previous round recovered, and various errors occurring, who knew what variables might have arisen.
In other words, if I encountered her again this time, the conquest rate might immediately break through 100% and trigger a game clear.
To prevent that, the moment I faced Yerina, I would have to hurt her again and leave, but I didn’t have the confidence to do that.
I didn’t have the confidence to hurt Yerina, who had regained her memories, twice.
I didn’t have that level of cruelty.
“Let’s leave that in the past. More importantly, I heard two prophecies came down?”
“Actually, it’s three. Another one just came down.”
Mia’s face grew even more serious, and she began to recite the three prophecies.
The three prophecies were as follows.
– Darkness will descend upon Basel.
– The World Tree’s priestess will fall into grief of lamentation and regret.
– The World Tree’s priestess will drive Elvenguard to destruction.
The first prophecy must refer to Belphegor’s perfect barrier.
The other two were ominous.
Both were related to the World Tree’s priestess, and had quite negative content.
And seeing this content, what came to mind was of course…
“I don’t think the World Tree’s priestess mentioned in the prophecies is me.”
“Could it be referring to the former priestess?”
“That’s what I’m suspecting.”
Yulia.
No matter how I thought about it, Yulia kept coming to mind and it seemed I wasn’t the only one thinking that way.
Mia had also been suspecting Yulia for a while…
After all, she had already tried to burn down Elvenguard once by provoking Ifrit.
There was still a deep rift between Elvenguard and Yulia, so it was quite reasonable to suspect her.
‘But Yulia shouldn’t be that crazy…’
Of course, that was from a third-party perspective.
To the elves, Yulia would look like a witch who betrayed Elvenguard and left, succeeding with evil drugs and now throwing her weight around.
But I clearly knew that Yulia had fled after suffering from intense political struggles and schemes.
Yulia was a priestess who had tried to reform the tightly closed Elvenguard.
She was a thorn in the side of the elders at the time, and had to endure numerous political attacks.
In the midst of that, an incident perfectly suited for attacking Yulia erupted, and Yulia fled as if being chased out.
It was another story that after the elder council completely changed, reforms proceeded as Yulia had advocated.
‘Yulia is unexpectedly sane…’
Even the Great Fire of Elvenguard could be somewhat excused, as Kali’s unique dungeon had been nestled inside the roots at that time.
Yulia had tried to eliminate that, rather than aiming to destroy Elvenguard as her main purpose.
Of course, she might have thought it would feel satisfying if Elvenguard was destroyed along with it…
The point is, Yulia wasn’t that much of a psychopath.
‘A priestess before Yulia? Or someone who will become the priestess in the future?’
But if we excluded Yulia from the list of suspects, the investigation fell into a dead end again.
Should we assume Yulia would cause trouble out of malice after all?
If not that, could it be Mia…?
“Is there something on my face?”
“No…”
There was nothing I could be certain of at this stage.
Still, I realized we should keep a close eye on anyone who had ever held the title of World Tree’s priestess.
Though I believed it couldn’t be, though I firmly believed it absolutely wasn’t, perhaps I needed to consider even a future where I might become complete enemies with Yulia.
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“Delivery!”
“…”
“Excuse me! Delivery!”
“…”
At the top of the Petenburg building, the delivery person who entered that desolate office took off his cap and looked around for a moment.
There seemed to be no one around, as there was no response.
“Are they in the inner room? Delivery!”
“…”
Thud thud.
Even when he made loud noises with his footsteps, there was still no response.
It should have been heard in the inner room by now, but seeing there was no reaction at all, it seemed no one was there.
“So this is the office of the Witch of Petenburg…”
The delivery person briefly glanced at the various books scattered on the office desk.
Words like search magic, location tracking magic, and binding magic stood out here and there, but the writing was so dense that the delivery person gave up reading and turned his gaze away.
“Tsk. I’ll be late for my next delivery. I’ll just leave it here.”
“…”
The recipient was absent.
He couldn’t stick around waiting for them to return.
The delivery person turned his back and went down in the elevator.
“Hu-hurry up and leave. Why are you looking at someone else’s desk, da-damn it…”
And a moment later, black hair and long ears peeked out from under the office desk.
The elf with tired eyes checked once more that the elevator was going down, then walked lightly on tiptoes and lifted the box.
“Ugh…!”
No. She tried to lift it.
No matter how much strength she put into her skinny arms, the box wouldn’t budge.
Her pale face turned bright red from exertion, but all she could manage was to push it slightly.
Finally giving up on moving the box, Yulia sat down in front of it with scissors.
The strings on the box marked “Handle with Care” were cut one by one with a soft snip and finally, the box was opened.
“W-what? I paid so much but there’s only this much? D-did I get ripped off?”
Inside were small wooden totems, stuffed dolls, talismans, and so on.
With an ancient language book open beside her, Yulia carefully examined each item that came out of the box.
“Magical engineering was easy to learn by self-study. Why is everything for curses so hard to get…”
All of the items were catalysts for curses.
After thoroughly searching her business connections, she had barely managed to contact a curse caster and purchase these.
The open book was also a text on curses, difficultly obtained from a black market auction.
Lacking the confidence, sociability, and courage to meet a teacher directly, she had no choice but to do it this way.
Just as she had always done, all through self-study.
“Damn it! This is volume 2! Where’s volume 1!”
But learning curses through self-study was nearly impossible.
Curses were occult arts suppressed in many countries and cities.
It was a skill taught and learned through word of mouth within small but tenacious curse caster communities.
Learning such curses without a teacher would be like creating something from nothing.
“Th-this is so frustrating. I have to go to the black market again wearing a hoodie, mask, and sunglasses…”
But no matter how difficult and arduous the path ahead was, Yulia had no intention of giving up.
To find Yoo-jin and to catch him.
Also, to stop his regression.
For now, none of the existing magical systems offered any good solutions for any of these.
There was no magic that could track someone just by knowing their name, scent, eye color, and how pretty their dimples were when they smiled.
Even if she found him, catching him was another problem.
It might be solved by hiring someone strong, but ordinary mercenaries working for money would be no match for Yoo-jin.
Also, stopping his regression was absolutely impossible with magic.
“I-if it’s curses. If it’s curses, still an unknown world, everything might be possible…”
If it was impossible with magic, could it be possible with curses?
Starting from that idea, Yulia chose to learn curses without hesitation.
She didn’t care if the Papal State suppressed curse casters and arrested them on sight.
She just wanted to meet Yoo-jin as soon as possible and stop his suffering.
Before other stupid women found him and caused trouble for Yoo-jin.
Before Yoo-jin got tired of it all and regressed again.
She intended to break this eternal cycle before then.
“I, I… I’ll make you comfortable. I’ll make you happy.”
Tears welled up in Yulia’s eyes, glistening.
Suddenly, she started crying.
Wondering why she was like this, as she wiped her tears, a painful memory flashed through Yulia’s mind.
‘If it weren’t for you, I would have seen the ending this time. For a trophy heroine, you sure get in the way a lot.’
“Ah, aah! Aaaah…”
Yoo-jin’s voice, so vivid it seemed to be right next to her ear.
Her chest ached, and tears burst forth uncontrollably.
It must have been words he didn’t mean, to make her hate him.
He had deliberately spoken those words.
Or, some evil thing like a curse had forced him to say such things.
She had to think that way, or else her heart felt like it would shatter.
Yulia clutched her chest and cried, vowing that she would make it so Yoo-jin wouldn’t have to say such things he didn’t mean anymore.
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[Bro she psychooo dis why they say don’t stick your dick in crazy]
LMAO