Chapter~09
“There was an orphanage in a remote mountainous area like this.”
Led by Duke Ellard, the Rexion Knights arrived in front of the Tesar Orphanage.
The moment they entered the grounds, an eerie atmosphere hung in the air.
Weeds had grown wildly.
An old swing, rusted with age, produced an unpleasant metallic screech whenever even the slightest breeze blew.
It was such a bleak and desolate place that one could hardly imagine children living there.
The duke gazed at it coldly before opening his mouth.
“Bring the director.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
A short while later.
“I-I had no idea such an esteemed person was coming.”
A shabby-looking man hurriedly rushed out of the orphanage.
The man could not even properly meet the duke’s eyes.
He merely moved quickly at the duke’s command to check the children, gathering them in the snow-covered yard.
The practically half-naked children trembled and kept their heads lowered.
Before the frowning duke could say anything, the director abruptly lifted the thin children’s arms and teared up.
He claimed that the children were struggling to survive day after day on the meager subsidy provided by the state.
At such an obvious display, the duke said nothing and quickly surveyed the children.
As expected, Diana was not there.
Ever since he realized that the child’s disappearance had been the work of a kidnapping ring, he had thought there was no way she would be in an orphanage like this.
Even so, he felt deflated.
Then, suddenly, the duke sensed something strange about the director.
The man acted submissive and frightened while blatantly seeking patronage, and despite claiming to worry about the children, he had driven them out into the freezing cold.
“You.
“Have you ever seen a silver-haired girl with blue eyes?”
At the duke’s question, the children visibly flinched.
One child who had cautiously raised their head out of curiosity quickly averted their gaze.
“Didn’t he ask you?
“Answer him, now!”
When the director pressed them, the oldest-looking child spoke.
“I’ve never seen such a girl.”
“If you lie to me, I will never forgive you.”
“I-It’s true.”
At the child’s trembling voice, the duke’s expression grew even colder.
The director got goosebumps at the sight, but once again put on a shameless expression.
He had spent half of everything he had earned so far to purchase anti-detection artifacts and had installed them in the attic and his safe.
He was confident that even Duke Ellard and the Rexion Knights would never find the evidence of child trafficking and slave trading.
Then it happened.
Boom!
Before the search could properly begin, the mana in the air suddenly fluctuated violently, and Bianca, who sensed it first, rushed forward.
“I can sense a flow of mana.”
“I see.
“Director, I may look around the orphanage, correct?”
Before the director could even finish nodding in bewilderment, the duke turned his gaze away, and the search party began moving in perfect order.
At that moment, an ominous premonition swept down the director’s spine.
—
“……What is this?”
Bianca, who had followed the flow of magical power and arrived first, froze at the unexpected sight.
At the sight of a child lying collapsed on the ground, she could not move even a finger.
“Commander!”
One of her subordinates who had accompanied her brought her back to her senses.
“I can sense mana coming from that child.”
At his words, Bianca sensed mana so pure and powerful that she wondered how she had failed to notice it until now.
The force of mana that the child could not control was flowing from her body.
However, the magical power was twisting wildly out of control.
‘There are no other entrances nearby, so she must have fallen from upstairs.
“But she has fewer injuries than expected.
“Did she unconsciously use magic to protect her body as she fell?’
It was uncommon, but there were children like that.
Children who, before properly learning magic, lost control because they could not handle their own mana and caused it to run rampant.
The problem was that at this rate, that tiny body might simply explode.
Overcome by the thought that she had to save the child somehow, Bianca approached in a single stride and reached out her hand.
At that moment, the knights surrounded the area around the backyard, and Duke Ellard arrived with the director following behind him.
The moment the director spotted Ria lying collapsed on the ground, his face turned pale.
He had clearly blocked the window with several layers of boards.
How had she gotten out?!
And moreover.
“Daddy!”
At the unexpected voice, Duke Ellard immediately raised his head.
It was Diana’s cry after spotting the duke.
She had been silently watching the situation with her mouth covered after unfamiliar people appeared following Ria’s jump.
The moment the duke spotted his daughter, whom he had never dreamed he would meet here, he held his breath in relief.
But that lasted only a moment.
His expression hardened frighteningly.
Diana was poking her head through the dangerously broken window.
She looked ready to jump at any moment, as though asking him to catch her, and the duke immediately opened his mouth.
“Diana, don’t move.
“Wait there.”
At that moment, the director’s face, which he had thought could not possibly grow any paler, turned almost as though he were on the verge of suffocating.
“Cough!”
Just then, with Bianca’s help, Ria managed to calm the rampaging mana and coughed.
“……!”
Barely regaining consciousness and blinking her eyes, Ria froze when she saw a pair of icy blue eyes.
Although they were the same color as Diana’s, whom she had spent several days with, instinctive fear made her mouth move on its own.
“P-Please save me.”
At those words, Duke Ellard, whose handsome features were as beautiful as a statue’s, frowned.
Her heart sank with a chill.
‘A frightening man.’
Everyone in the empire knew the rumors that Duke Ellard was cold-blooded, but Ria knew better than anyone that the rumors were true.
Because she had experienced it herself.
In her previous life, after executing the director on the spot, Duke Ellard returned to his territory without saying a word, leaving behind the children of the Tesar Orphanage who had merely watched Diana’s danger and ultimately remained silent.
He took only Jack, the one child who had protected his daughter.
With nowhere to go, the orphanage children became vagrants and wandered around until they eventually joined a gang of beggars.
Ria was no different.
She spent her days shivering in the cold, begging all day only to have everything taken by the gang leader, while going hungry.
One day, she was falsely accused of stealing something.
She had hated the thought of another day coming so much that she had run away, gasping until her lungs felt like they would tear apart.
‘I can’t go through that again.’
This time, she would never anger him.
But what she needed to do right now was—
“Jack is…… upstairs.
“My friend is hurt.
“Please help him.”
“Did this man do that to him?”
When Bianca, who was standing beside her, asked, Ria’s eyes widened.
The woman had reddish-brown hair tied up high and looked strong yet kind.
Ria felt considerably more at ease at the sight of her and unconsciously nodded before speaking.
“He always yelled at us, and he said he was going to sell all of us as slaves!”
“Slaves?”
She was already speechless at the evidence of abuse that had been revealed.
But slavery?
Bianca’s expression became incredulous, and the director’s face turned deathly pale.
“That’s a lie!”
He desperately reached out to cover Ria’s mouth.
As the large hand approached, Ria squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the pain that was sure to come.
“Aaaagh!”
At the same time, a scream erupted from the director.
Ria stared blankly at the large back blocking her view.
At a glance, it seemed that the director’s wrist, caught by the duke, had been twisted completely backward.
At that moment, the tears that had gathered in her eyes finally fell.
Ria hurriedly wiped them away.
‘I wasn’t startled.
“I’m not afraid.’
The duke’s anger was not directed at her.
But…… she still could not completely relax.
“Child!”
Leaving Bianca’s call behind her, Ria began running toward the orphanage yard.
Just as in her old memories, she saw the children standing in a line, barely clothed as though they were being punished.
Feeling a dull ache in her heart, Ria began digging with her bare hands beneath the tree where she had left a mark beforehand.
“Sis!”
A moment later, Bianca and the knights appeared, along with the restrained director and Duke Ellard carrying Diana in his arms.
Ria felt relieved when she saw Jack being carried away by the knights.
Then, seeing the pale expressions on the children’s faces, she felt a heavy sense of responsibility.
“What is this?”
“It’s a secret ledger containing records of all the transactions the director made involving the children!”
The director, who had been certain that no evidence would ever be found, recognized the familiar cover of the documents Ria held out to the duke.
He panicked, screaming and thrashing about.
In the end, the knights even gagged him.
The children’s eyes filled with confusion as they watched the director, who had exercised absolute power over them, being subdued so effortlessly.
Ria, who had already experienced those feelings herself, cried out desperately.
“There are also many records of embezzlement and other corruption, not just slave trafficking!
“The director never treated us like human beings.
“The children pretended not to know about Dana, but they only did that because they were threatened……”
The longer Ria’s explanation continued, the grimmer the expressions of everyone present became, not just Bianca’s.
The duke’s eyes, in particular, were frighteningly cold.
“Yes, just as you said, the children told me they had never seen a girl like Diana.
“So you.
“Are you saying that the children are not at fault?
“Regardless of the reason, those children lied to me.”
At his cold voice, Ria felt a fear that froze her heart.
But she did not avert her eyes.
How could she turn away when she already knew exactly what fate awaited these children and how they would live afterward?
“Please forgive us.
“We were scared.
“We’re sorry!”
Ria quickly fell to her knees and begged for forgiveness.
Tears burst from her eyes before she knew it.
As though the children had not been eating for free all this time but had learned to read the mood around them, one by one they followed Ria and fell to their knees.
They wept bitterly and begged him not to kill them.
Seeing the half-naked, emaciated children crying and begging to be spared, Diana seemed to be affected by their emotions as well.
Her lips trembled as she began to whimper.
The duke lightly pressed his temple and spoke in an irritated voice.
“Spare you?
“When did I ever say I was going to kill you?”
“……Hic.”
“I won’t kill you, so stop crying.”
“……Hic?”
“It means I forgive you.”
Only after hearing that all the children would be moved to another orphanage did Ria finally manage to stop crying.
Once the matter she had been so worried about was resolved, she stopped crying, but her entire body felt weak.
“Sis!”
Diana climbed down to the ground after hitting her father in the chest with her tiny, soft fists, as though finally reunited with him after struggling so hard to reach him.
Then she ran toward Ria.
“Sis okay?”
Diana’s large eyes were filled with tears as she examined Ria’s face and body.
Only then did the duke and the knights realize that the reason Diana had been whimpering was that child.
They also realized who had been taking care of their precious young lady all this time.
