MBMP 09

Chapter : 09

My body stiffened and froze as though I had witnessed something I was never supposed to see.

But the strange feeling lasted only for a moment.

“Long time no see, Hwižel.”

The corners of Calian’s lips curved smoothly into a gentle smile.

I watched the change with a slightly dazed feeling.

The angel was back.

‘Did I… imagine it?’

While I was trying to collect myself, Calian held out his hand to Louise.

“We met once in Abuye a few years ago, didn’t we? Have you been well?”

Louise slapped Calian’s hand away with a look like she had bitten into something rotten.

Calian looked hurt, and despite my heart pounding, I felt offended.

Why won’t you shake my brother’s hand?!

“Enough with that. Little Winyak. Who is this child?”

Louise’s golden eyes turned toward me. She lifted my chin with her fingertips.

Forced to look up at her, I saw her eyes narrow suspiciously.

“You seem rather close to the heir of Winyak.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Who exactly are you? You don’t even flinch when facing the head of a Transcendent family. And you even know the appearance of a shapeshifter that hasn’t been officially revealed yet…”

Oh my gosh. They haven’t announced that she’s a jaguar to the continent yet?

Ah, come to think of it, this meeting was probably the first time the new head of House Hwižel was appearing in an official setting.

But there were plenty of excuses I could make.

I glared sullenly at Louise, who had started stretching one of my cheeks.

“I heard it from our family head. Is that strange?”

“Your family head?”

“Lord Oen Winyak.”

After all, rumors traveled freely among the Transcendent families.

Louise shrugged.

“Well, let’s say that’s understandable.”

“Huh?”

Before I knew it, she had grabbed my other cheek as well.

Louise Hwižel pulled both of my cheeks outward.

“How dare you think of climbing onto the back of a family head?”

There were thorns in her voice. Apparently, that was what had really gotten on her nerves.

But you were the one who let me ride you! If you didn’t like it, you should’ve shaken me off!

As my expression grew increasingly sour, Louise’s brow furrowed along with it.

“And on top of that, you’re so bold and clever. So why on earth would you tell such an obvious lie—”

“Ah—”

Louise’s words were cut off at the waist by a perfectly timed voice.

Calian let out a long sound that could have been either a sigh or a groan, then draped an arm over my shoulders and rested his chin on the top of my head.

His expression was hidden in my blind spot. His voice that followed was filled with boredom.

“You talk too much, Hwižel.”

“You’re quite a man of few words yourself, Winyak.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Calian chuckled and lowered his head toward my ear.

Then he whispered playfully,

“Rosi. She’s kind of noisy, isn’t she?”

“……”

I couldn’t answer right away because of the strange feeling that had been bothering me since earlier.

The sword aura that had been faintly drifting around us until just moments ago had completely disappeared.

So completely that it was suspicious.

Since Calian was resting his chin on my head, I could faintly feel the movement of his lips.

I needed to know what he was saying.

Even if only to dispel this uncomfortable feeling.

The tiny movements transmitted through my head were enough.

I focused on the shape his lips and jaw were making.

She’s my precious treasure.

Don’t pay any attention to her.

There was nothing particularly suspicious about those words.

Calian called me all sorts of things every day—my treasure, my princess, my rose, my cutie, and so on.

Besides, whenever I fawned over someone other than him, he openly became jealous.

Then am I just being overly sensitive?

Is he simply upset because Louise Hwižel pinched my cheeks?

‘Or could it be that today is… “that day”?’

I tilted my head back as far as I could.

“Cal. Are you all right—”

I tried to look up at him, but I couldn’t because he was leaning his entire weight against me.

Calian lightly tapped my red hair, which was braided into two braids, with his fingertips and murmured lazily,

“Your brother’s tired, Rosien.”

“Tired? Ah, right. You couldn’t sleep, could you?”

“Yeah. I’m hungry too, and sleepy. I want to go back to the mansion now. Okay?”

Let’s go already.

There was a hint of childish whining in Calian’s voice.

Neither his manner of speaking nor his behavior seemed noticeably different from usual.

‘Maybe I was just being too sensitive…’

Well, considering that he was already frail and had spent an entire night enduring that horrible threat without sleeping, it was only natural that he would be exhausted.

He hadn’t even eaten anything all day.

At that point, my opinion of Delphiam had officially dropped into the negatives.

You bastards! Fine, kidnap someone if you have to, but at least make sure they get fed!

After Calian Winyak and the unfamiliar girl went upstairs, a ridiculous laugh echoed through the drainage channel that had fallen silent for a moment.

“Ahahaha, seriously. I can’t believe this…”

Louise stared into the darkness of the sewer and spoke bluntly.

“Come out now. Kirges. We need to talk.”

After a brief silence, something rustled.

A figure emerged from beneath the low ceiling.

It was Regina.

Louise’s golden eyes briefly shifted toward the area behind her.

Her animal eyes, several times sharper than those of a human, caught sight of another figure lying on the floor of the drainage channel.

Even when she saw the pathetic state of the captain of the Imperial Guard, whom she knew personally, Louise showed not the slightest disturbance.

“I clearly objected. It seems the Winyak heir really is a little… deficient.”

“Did I know that was what you meant, Hwižel?”

Apparently, she had meant that his character was severely lacking.

Louise and Regina simultaneously recalled Calian Winyak’s final appearance.

As he left the drainage channel with the panting girl, he had turned his head toward them.

With the sunlight pouring through the entrance resting above him like a crown, the boy had smiled seductively and waved at them languidly.

Even after witnessing his true nature with their own eyes, they had been momentarily spellbound.

It was an extraordinarily sensual sight.

A wicked Satan wearing an angel’s shell.

That was how Regina defined him.

And once they got out of here, she decided she was going to chew Oen Winyak out thoroughly.

Crazy bastard. Couldn’t he have explained things properly?

‘Just what the hell is he raising his son to be?!’

Louise’s blunt voice brought her back to reality.

“What did you promise the little Winyak?”

“…An alibi. I’ll erase the Emperor’s and the captain of the Imperial Guard’s memories and make sure they never speak of what happened here today.”

“Nothing too extraordinary. Understood. We’ll cover this up. In any case, we need the little Winyak to suppress that. There will be another opportunity later.”

Regina nodded.

No matter how desperately they needed a way to calm the rampaging holy relic, they couldn’t very well hand an invincible weapon to a madman with their own hands.

“We’ll keep watching for now. More importantly… Hwižel. That red-haired girl from earlier.”

Louise, who had been about to walk away as soon as their business was finished, stopped.

Regina hesitated for a moment before carefully asking,

“The little Winyak called her Rosi, didn’t he?”

“Rosien. Apparently, she’s a disciple of Winyak and was given the family name.”

“Winyak gave a child that young a share of the Guardian Star’s blessing?”

The selection examination for becoming a disciple of Winyak was famous for its brutally high difficulty.

Furthermore, Winyak was a family that strictly adhered to hereditary succession. It was extremely rare for them to grant the Winyak family name to someone outside their bloodline.

Then did that little girl named Rosien possess extraordinary abilities—enough to catch the eye of the head of the family?

‘Her mana certainly was difficult to gauge.’

From what Regina could estimate at a glance, the girl’s mana seemed similar to Winyak’s, yet rather than being linear, its structure was closer to a woven net.

A net-like structure was one of the defining characteristics of Kirges mana.

And then there was the spell the girl had engraved upon the captain of the Delphiam Imperial Guard.

Regina’s gaze shifted toward the unconscious man at her feet.

‘This is a high-level mind-control spell that interferes directly with the mind.’

Regina carefully separated the command from the captain’s forehead.

Calian Winyak is a weakling who hides his strength.

If you touch him, you’re dead.

“……”

She had no idea why the girl had bothered to implant such an obvious command…

But the spell the girl had engraved in less than a second was excessively flawless.

Even Regina—the head of Kirges and widely regarded as the greatest sorcerer of the current era—would never have noticed it without examining it carefully.

Regina’s black eyes grew hazy.

She had suddenly been reminded of a girl who had displayed similarly insane talent twelve years ago.

‘Rosietti?’

In truth, Regina had thought of her from the very moment she heard that young voice calling out for her brother.

A once-in-a-generation genius who could freely draw upon the power of the stars, a girl with an adorable face and proud green eyes.

A sorceress who had once been the strongest candidate to become the next head of Kirges.

Kirges’s mutation.

A blessing from the entire universe.

Rosietti Kirges.

Within Kirges—a collection of people who spent their days staring through telescopes and researching the coordinates of stars—she had been practically the only child who actually knew how to use her body.

Then was her skill with sorcery merely ordinary?

No.

By the young age of seventeen, she had been capable of wielding more than fifty different spells.

It had already been twelve years since they had lost that girl whom every member of Kirges admired and envied.

‘I thought I would never see her again.’

But for the first time, the possibility that perhaps she had been wrong crossed Regina’s mind.