Chapter 37
“Then I’m going!”
[Be careful on the way. And you have to be back before the sun sets. Got it?]
“Yeah! I’ll definitely persuade Dio! Thanks for the snacks!”
Lucian, carrying the snacks Ria gave him, quickly left the mansion.
Ria waved at his back, full of excitement. Kaiser slid up to her side.
“Are you really going to let Lucian persuade Dio? What if he actually does?”
[That won’t happen. It’s too absurd a story to believe.]
“Poor Lucian. Does he know you’re already sure it won’t happen?”
[What’s with you? I told Lucian to persuade Dio. Bringing Dio here is entirely up to Lucian’s ability now.]
Kaiser stared at her in disgust, asking if that was something she could even call words.
“You’re worse than me.”
[Thanks for the compliment.]
Kaiser fumed, asking how she could never lose a word, and Ria left him behind and went into the mansion.
[While Lucian is in the village, let’s prepare for what’s coming soon.]
“……So you weren’t just coaxing him for no reason?”
[Of course not. If he stays in the mansion, he’ll notice something strange quickly. Up to now, we’ve been lucky.]
“Why not just tell him? It’s not like you disappear forever—you’re only gone for half a day.”
[Even if nothing happens, I don’t want to make Lucian anxious. If he finds out I might disappear, Lucian will live every day in anxiety. You don’t want that either, do you?]
“……Ghn. If you say it like that.”
[Thanks for understanding. Alright, then—shall we begin?]
What the two of them had to do was identify anything strange based on Ria’s diary.
Ria had handed it to Kaiser thinking it might be better if someone else looked at it than if she double-checked it herself, but—
“Ugh. Why do you have so many insults about me? So you’ve been cursing me like this the whole time.”
Kaiser sulked, bristling at the unfiltered writing in the diary.
[Stop looking for weird things and check properly.]
“Yes, ma’am, this petty little lizard will take care of it.”
Even while pouting and grumbling, he soon focused. After some time passed like that—
They couldn’t find any particular gain. They only confirmed what they had already found before.
“It’s certain that the residents went missing during the period when you had no consciousness.”
[As expected…….]
In the diary, after seeing a human vanish in a day, Ria wrote that she judged them dead a few days later and organized their belongings.
Now that she thought about it, it was very suspicious, but back then, Ria naturally accepted their disappearance as death. Why?
“Let’s see. There were five humans you wrote about in your diary. Do you remember all of them?”
[Of course. Every last one of them was a weirdo.]
They were all masters in one field. But for what reason did they come to live in this mansion, only to disappear overnight?
“I checked the dates the humans entered the mansion, and not one of them stayed longer than ten years.”
[What? Really?]
“Yeah. Minimum three years, maximum nine. Without exception, when the last digit of the year was ‘7,’ they all vanished.”
[…….]
“And look at this. This line in particular bothers me—what do you think?”
Ria looked at the line Kaiser pointed to. The very next day after the fourth human disappeared.
Ria thought he had died and cleaned up his room.
……
What’s gotten into a clean-freak human.
The bedding is disturbed, and objects are scattered like they were swept down by an arm.
Like someone struggling right before dying.
……
In an instant, her blood ran cold. When she looked at Kaiser, he nodded.
“This wasn’t just ‘missing.’ He was kidnapped.”
[……My god.]
“It doesn’t look like there was a full-on fight there. At minimum, I think he was kidnapped, or maybe murdered. What do you think?”
[L-let’s check the others too.]
They checked the other four residents too, but they couldn’t find anything as distinctive as the first one they mentioned.
“The others didn’t realize they were about to be kidnapped or murdered, but this guy knew someone was after him. Do you remember anything about him?”
[……He was the only one who had martial strength. A weapon master. The weapons in the training ground storage are all his weapons.]
“Oh, really?”
[When he was inside the mansion, he never carried a weapon. Of course, for the first year after he came in, he carried at least a dagger.]
After sensing there was no threat inside the mansion, he gradually began leaving his weapons in the training ground or storage.
He had a longing for martial arts, but as the years passed, he seemed to give up on something, and he slowly stopped taking up weapons.
[He shouldn’t have been someone to fall so easily.]
It was over a hundred years ago now, so her memory was hazy.
“……You said you gathered up the things those humans used, right?”
[Huh? Y-yeah, that’s right.]
“Were there any diaries among them?”
It was an idea she hadn’t even considered. Ria quickly turned her memory over and spun her thoughts.
[Not all of them wrote diaries, but…… two—no, three of them did!]
“Good. Then let’s check those.”
Ria went to storage and found their diaries.
And as they skimmed through them, they learned a shocking truth.
“So it was basically exile.”
[It says they fell out of the Emperor’s favor. Looking at this, it seems like they were framed and punished…….]
“Why exile them here instead of prison?”
No matter how they thought about it, it was strange. If the accusation was serious enough, it meant someone wanted to erase them immediately—yet the punishment was too light.
There were no other residents, but they received regular supplies, and aside from being cut off from society, there was no harsher penalty anywhere.
“The weapon master guy—whatever he was called—his aura was sealed.”
[The others didn’t have martial strength, so it doesn’t seem like they had that kind of restriction, but…….]
So his aura was sealed, and that’s why he resigned himself.
The weapon master, looking at his weapons with loneliness, suddenly came to mind.
“Ria, look at this.”
Kaiser called Ria as he read the weapon master’s diary.
“He was attacked while writing.”
The diary’s last entry wasn’t finished. It cut off mid-sentence, and this was written.
……
I sense a suspicious presence. In the seven years I’ve lived in this mansion, not once has anyone broken in.
It can’t be a mere thief bold enough to rob an imperial-owned mansion. It must be someone sent on orders.
Damn it, strange smoke is coming in—
……
That was the end. From the mention of smoke, it was certain someone used it to knock him out or kill him.
“This is a problem.”
[……Lucian might be in danger.]
Ria and Kaiser met eyes.
“The timing is different every time, but all of them went missing in a ‘–7 year.’ That means it was planned.”
[And they seem to have some martial capability too. Otherwise there’s no way they could kidnap even a weapon master.]
“When was the last human resident before Lucian?”
[……Around fifty years ago.]
“Then that human also evaporated overnight.”
If it were one or two, maybe. But every resident suffered the same thing and vanished.
And between each incident there was at least twenty to fifty years’ gap.
That was enough time for several human generations to pass, yet they all suffered the same thing—it was chilling.
“This has been going on for over two hundred years. It means some organization, not an individual, has been doing it across generations.”
Kaiser said the same thing, as if he felt it too.
“All of these guys were framed and exiled here. From that, there are two possibilities we can infer.”
One: the imperial family is behind it.
Two: perhaps Lucian can avoid the chain of kidnappings.
[Because the ones who sent all the residents here were the imperial family, the ones who kidnapped or killed them were also the imperial family?]
“Right now, that’s the most plausible, isn’t it?”
[Then why do you say Lucian might be able to avoid it? Because he wasn’t framed and exiled here?]
“Right. And no matter how abandoned he is, Lucian is still a prince. It seems not many people know he exists, but even so, they can’t kidnap or kill him carelessly.”
[It’s subtly similar—sending someone here as punishment, and sending Lucian here using a spirit marriage ceremony as an excuse, but…….]
“Seeing that Lucian is still alive, the imperial family probably never intended to kill him from the start.”
[Huh? How can you be sure?]
“Because Lucian is the Crown Prince’s twin little brother.”
What does that have to do with it? Kaiser explained the twin folklore he’d learned.
“In this empire, the perception of twins is extremely bad. They say when twins are born, the household is shattered, bad omens pour in, and nourishment that should have gone to one is split in two, so you absolutely have to kill one.”
[What? That’s ridiculous! There’s no way!]
“It’s basically treated as established fact. And they say they usually kill the younger twin. But look at Lucian. He’s alive.”
She’d thought it was strange that Lucian had been left alive and neglected, but to think that kind of reason was hidden…….
[……Then the imperial family truly never intended to kill Lucian from the start?]
“Right. Even if it’s the imperial family, if people find out the Crown Prince has a twin, many will see it as ominous. And yet they kept hiding Lucian’s existence, raised him, and in the end, didn’t kill him and sent him here, didn’t they?”
[Maybe sending him here was to keep him alive.]
“For that, they sure left him like it didn’t matter if he died.”
[……Even so, there’s no guarantee Lucian will be safe. What if Lucian gets kidnapped the same way those residents did?]
“Then what are you going to do? Send Lucian outside?”
[That’s…….]
“Don’t worry—just trust me. I’ll dig up your secrets, and I’ll keep Lucian safe too.”
At that point, she had no choice but to trust Kaiser.
Ria hardened her face and organized everything they’d found so far in her head.
[……Kaiser, maybe this is connected to the basement.]
After thinking, Ria finally said what she hadn’t been able to spit out.
[I’d lived here for three hundred years and thought there was nothing about this mansion I didn’t know. But just like all of this, the one thing I don’t know is the basement.]
“……Hearing you say that, it really is strange. Maybe the ones who kidnapped the residents came in through the underground. There was a big tunnel in the basement.”
[Do you know where it leads?]
“No. I didn’t check. But it definitely looked like a tunnel connected to somewhere, like a mine. And…….”
Kaiser clutched his throbbing head. What happened in the basement two years ago was trauma for him too.
But he hid it, and forced himself to recall what he had seen right before he collapsed.
“The magic circles drawn on the floor and the door. They’re definitely linked. Probably…… the type where if you offer a sacrifice on one side, it gets absorbed to the other.”
[Are you sure?]
“I’m 99% sure.”
No matter how much he wanted to forget that day, he couldn’t forget that magic circle.
To be more certain, they’d have to go down and check, but…….
“There’s no rule saying the same thing won’t happen again.”
[I’m not asking you to go that far. I don’t want you getting hurt either.]
With a bitter smile, Kaiser said thanks for understanding.
Because of that, Ria could see the parts she hadn’t noticed before, and the things she newly realized.
[Maybe the missing residents were offered as sacrifices to that magic circle.]
“Isn’t that going too far?”
[No. Think about it. You said the blood powder you collected from the magic circle belonged to multiple people. And the time periods were all different.]
Maybe there were even more victims than the residents they knew about.
If that magic circle was made to offer sacrifices, that is.
[Disgusting bastards. What kind of bullshit are they doing in my mansion?]
“That door with the same magic circle. It must be to maintain something beyond it. Should we go down once…….”
[Kaiser.]
Kaiser looked at Ria.
[Don’t do anything dangerous. What I want is everyone’s safety, not digging up secrets at the cost of taking risks.]
“……Yeah. Then I won’t.”
[Still, I learned far more than when I was pondering alone. For now, what we need to be most careful about is…….]
“Possible threats against Lucian, and the basement.”
[Right. And while we’re at it, when I disappear, check what kind of irregularity happens. You’re a great dragon, so you can do it, right?]
Kaiser lifted the corners of his mouth, crossed his arms, and said proudly,
“Of course! I am a genius of the century! The red dragon Lord Kaiser!”
Ria and Kaiser exchanged looks and grinned.
