Chapter 55
‘I wish I could help them catch the mage soon.’
Wouldn’t it have been possible for them to run away by now? I thought I would be able to manage the sounds I was making more carefully, but I was wrong.
I lifted the cat inside my arms while thinking regretfully about the ruckus.
The cat looked at me with innocent eyes and rubbed her body against my chest.
“Cute!”
As I muttered quietly, Wyndert and Deleign were talking beside me.
“A cute thing is holding a cute thing.”
“I should’ve brought a camera.”
I absentmindedly ignored their chatter, I was getting used to the new surroundings and stroking the cat’s head.
“Do you know where the person who made you like this went?”
As I whispered softly, the cat wiggled its butt a few times as if understanding what I had just said, and lightly jumped onto the ground.
“Oh?”
“Meeeeow!”
The cat looked back at me, patting the floor with its tail, as if telling me to follow it closely.
“Hey, the cat must know something!”
I ran towards the direction where the cat was running.
When I suddenly started to run, the Grand Duke and my brothers clung onto me as if protecting me.
“Shushu, it could be dangerous if you run off suddenly.”
I was already starting to run away at full speed, but Wyndert effortlessly stopped me without any hesitation.
“You promised not to act alone.” The Grand Duke also voiced his disapproval with a stern voice, seemingly worried about my sudden running.
“I-I’m sorry! But first I need a moment…… it was so hard!”
I’ve never run like this before but after running after the cat at full speed, I was out of breath.
Fortunately for me, the cat stopped running not far from where we were.
“There’s nothing here…….”
The cat was staring into the air between some of the trees.
“It can see what can and cannot see with our naked eyes. Among basic magic, there is invisibility magic. Moving will break the magic.”
The Grand Duke swung his sword towards the air the cat was looking at.
“Ahh!”
Then the wizard in a white robe was startled and stepped back. It was as if he was watching our movements while using the invisibility magic as the Grand Duke had said.
“It’s a mage from the White Magic Tower. Only wizards from the White Magic Tower wear that white robe.” Wyndert said in a cold voice.
A unique pattern was engraved on the hem of the white robe using gold thread.
The wizard, who was discovered, turned his back and ran away wildly.
‘No! You must catch him!’
I imagined a bubble of water catching the wizard. It wasn’t really difficult to use force if I’m not interfering with a life, and it was only about the size where I can contain a single person.
“What is this!”
Using my imagination, power spurted out from my fingertips, which then turned into water to form a bubble that trapped the wizard inside.
The wizard was very embarrassed and fell to the floor of the bubble as it changed shape into a net. It all happened in an instant.
“No! Damn it!”
Caught in the trap and sprawled on the ground, the wizard desperately struggled to escape.
However, the White Magic Tower is a magic tower that studies the power of healing and curative powers, so he couldn’t even remove a net.
He used all kinds of crude magic, including some common basic magic, anything he knew that was not healing magic, but the prison of water wasn’t removed.
“You caught them. Since you caught a suspicious person, you should be rewarded.” The Grand Duke slightly smiled and patted my head.
Until now, the Grand Duke had bought me so many things, and now he’s rewarding me too?
I shook my head and watched the Grand Duke approach the wizard.
“P-please s-save me!”
“Take a good look Wyndy, Del. I’ll tell you what to do with a guy who dares to do something suspicious in my territory.”
A slightly dangerous smile appeared on the Grand Duke’s cold face. Still, it was daunting to see the Grand Duke’s malice added to the already threatening cursed aura.
The wizard looked up at the Grand Duke, trembling in fear, still wrapped in the net.
The Grand Duke then stabbed his sword into the ground between the wizard’s legs, cutting the hard ground like tofu.
“Hiiick! P-p-please!”
The wizard begged with a pale face, perhaps becoming more frightened every time he looked at the sword stuck between his legs.
‘I guess that’s why they were called villains…….’
My family is full of kind and good people! Why are you calling them villains?!
…… is what I thought but rationally, I understood that one’s eyes are covered with bean pods.
(T/N: ‘one’s eyes are covered with bean pods’ 콩깍지가 씌다 is a Korean idiom that means ‘you’ll only see the good thing about a person after falling in love with them’.
In Shuelina’s situation, she already saw the good in the Grand Duke’s family that’s why her eyes were already ‘covered with bean pods’.)
If anyone saw the Grand Duke’s face like that, it would be so misleading because of his terrifying attitude and dangerous expression.
‘I don’t think I should completely change the impression some people have of him, those who believe that he’s a rough and terrifying person, because it’s also quite good sometimes.’
I liked this formidable attitude much more than someone who goes easy on an enemy, this type of personality makes it easier when you are trying to protect those around you.
But you can’t kill the wizard yet.
I also think that such a bad person is a waste of air…….
‘You can’t kill him yet.’
I didn’t feel particularly incapable of ending a noble’s life. It doesn’t matter to me if a bad person dies.
However, I think there was a more benevolent way to make use of this wizard.
“Hold on, Dad. I caught him so please let me do what I want with him for my reward!”
Maybe I can really land a hit on Azuela with this situation.
I ran to the Grand Duke, who was swinging his sword down through the air like he was slicing through a pudding, and started clinging on his thigh.
“What should I do, Shushu? I will destroy the tower so they won’t be able to harm you again, and it would be perfect to use his separated neck as a declaration of war.”
I realized now that the Grand Duke was holding back a lot of anger from almost losing his daughter, me, several times now.
It was clear that this had become a source of intolerable anger for the proud and highly responsible Grand Duke.
“I have absolutely no desire to forgive this person but I think there is a better way to solve this.” I said with my eyes shining.
If it’s to protect a villain’s family, it seems I’ll end up becoming a villain too.
‘Let them fall for their own tricks.’
Like the wizard caught in a net…… I decided to cast a large net to catch the Empress and Azuela.
All the employees bowed quietly as he walked downstairs.
Ignoring all the greetings, he went down to the dungeon and looked down at the wizard lying on the floor.
“You came, my lord?”
The knight who was watching the wizard greeted him politely.
“You’ve worked hard.”
“It’s nothing!”
The knights had a hard time monitoring the wizard they had caught in the monster forest.
It was because the knights, not ordinary soldiers, were sent to the monitoring station in order to prepare for any unexpected situation.
‘If it’s about my Shushu, I can’t afford to be sloppy.’
It was because of Shushu that the wizard was locked up like this.
It was the first thing Shuelina asked of him, other than bringing her to the monster forest as a birthday gift.
For the safety of my daughter.
He wanted to carry everything out perfectly without any flaws.
Upon entering the prison, the pale-skinned wizard was quietly tied up.
「‘Sir, please……! I didn’t do anything! Is it okay to treat the magician of the White Magic Tower like this?’」
He claimed innocence on the first day of his captivity. The wizard was persistently saying he had only come to study magic and the cat staring at him was only a misunderstanding.
It was, of course, unbelievable.
「‘Chop it up properly.’」
[e/n: “it” being the wizard]
He doesn’t have enough time to play with Shuelina as is.
There was no need to spend so much time interrogating and torturing criminals.
He gave instructions to his loyal knights to deal with the wizard instead.
The wizard he met the next day had a face like his brain was absent from work.
“Ah…….”
The wizard didn’t say anything and only let out a long moan. His face was shriveled, and he had scars all over the place.
It was impossible for him to move because of the shackles, so he opened his eyes and looked at the Grand Duke.
“Why…… Why…….”
Eyes full of fear, asking him why the Grad Duke came.
While the Grand Duke stared intently at the wizard, he walked back out without a word. This pattern continued for a few days.
‘Because of these guys…….’
The errand people that the Empress sent to try and manipulate him.
Thinking how Shuelina had suffered at their hands, he couldn’t quell his anger even if his head exploded right now, but Shuelina told him she had something she wanted to use the wizard for so he had to let him go.
What he had done on purpose now was nothing more than to deliberately intimidate the wizard.
“The person who made you do this will contact you, correct?”
“Th-that’s r-right…….”
1STKISSNOVEL. DO NOT STEAL MY TRANSLATION!
The magician nodded softly.
About two weeks before the new year, he was scheduled to receive a call.
“Tell them it’s going well. It’s your job to reassure them.”
「Everything is going well. Turning the cat into a monster is going well, so we should be able to raid the private estate on schedule.」
He intended to reassure the Empress in that way.
When the time comes and she realizes something is wrong, she won’t be able to make any moves at all.
‘You set this trap yourself.’
Shuelina’s eyes were shining as she said that.
Even with a conspiring face, she was invincible and cute.
Just thinking about losing such a gentle and lovely child was extremely upsetting.
He liked that Shuelina wasn’t only kind.
An attitude of counterattacking rather than holding back an attack. It was a perfect fit for the Grand Duke’s house, called the villainous family.
“Why do you think I let a bastard like you live? If you don’t do it right, I’ll show you what you should fear even more than death.”
Hearing the direct threat from the Grand Duke, the magician’s face became paler in an instant.
On the other hand, the Grand Duke felt a little better when he saw the wizard’s pale face. The wizard said that his elder was the one who told him to do the work and it wasn’t all that unexpected because the Empress was the actual owner of the White Magic Tower.
However, she seemed to have given her instructions to a lot of people so as to not be directly involved at all.
Neither Shushu’s tutor nor this wizard, no matter how tortured they were, never said the name of the empress.
Since there was no direct evidence, there was no way to bring the empress to court.
He tried to open push the wizard for other information, but even that didn’t work.
It was because he (wizard) didn’t know anything about Shuelina’s spirit powers, the empress’s plans, or anything actually significant.
“Yes…….”
The wizard shook his head helplessly. During that time, he suffered severe torture and lost most of his will due to the trauma.
Even calling him a wizard was a little ambiguous now. In the process of torture, his mana container was also injured and it would be difficult for him to do well in the future.
His eyes, which burned with hatred in the beginning, were weathered down after repeated torture.
Those who tortured and tormented Shuelina all her life were so weak.
The Grand Duke hoped that the Empress would not be too fragile and break so easily since he has so much planned for her.
This was not enough to repay them for Shuelina’s stolen spirit power and her pain as much as he used to think it would. The Grand Duke intended to let all those people pay dearly for what they did to his daughter – at any cost.
“I will come again tomorrow.”
The Grand Duke’s words filled the wizard’s eyes with fear.