WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 93: The Cursed Mansion (2)
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Bathing in blood to stay young, drinking it to gain eternal life. Rumors like that were common enough.
Lee Eunyheui still seemed to be taking the blood tonic thing carefully.
"I'll look into it for now."
"Wouldn't it be faster to just report it to the guild and get the records pulled?"
"No, I can handle that much myself. If it's going to look suspicious either way, better to do it on my own."
"Just make sure you send the report."
That closed out tonight's conversation.
The next day, a set of newly ordered handmade furniture arrived, and the whole household was in an uproar from the morning replacing the furniture in the room.
Rizu had another reading circle with a different set of noble ladies, and in the late afternoon took lessons in ballroom dance and flower arranging.
Unlike yesterday, the mansion carried a slightly restless energy today.
"What's going on?"
"The Duke's coming back from the imperial capital."
Of all the timing, I'd walked in right when Faillia Duke had gone off to the capital.
The distance wasn't even that far, and he'd only been gone two days, but the whole mansion was making a fuss over it.
"Ah."
I sensed movement down the hall.
Someone was approaching at a very fast pace.
This doesn't feel good.
The door to the room where the flower arranging lesson was underway swung open, uninvited.
In this enormous mansion, only two people could walk into any room without permission.
Rizu, supported by Lee Eunyheui, rose from her chair.
"Father! You're back?"
"Oh! My beautiful daughter! Rizu!"
Rizu broke into a bright smile and hugged Faillia Duke.
The baroness who'd been seated in front of Rizu stood and offered her respects.
"Did you have a safe trip?"
"Of course. Ellin insisted I bring a whole pile of gifts back for you."
"Oh, sister did?"
"Couldn't be helped this time, but next time let's go together."
"I'd like that."
"Did I interrupt the lesson, by any chance?"
Faillia Duke looked at the baroness, and she shook her head.
"Not at all. We were just about to wrap up."
There was still over an hour left in the lesson, but she wasn't so tone-deaf as to say that out loud.
Unlike Rizu, who looked far more beautiful in person than in her photographs, Faillia Duke looked almost exactly like his photos.
"I'll handle the rest myself."
"Understood."
"Let's go. Father, I've had fresh tea and refreshments prepared."
At Rizu's word, the maids behind her, Lee Eunyheui included, sprang into motion.
Rizu and Faillia Duke sat together in a suitable room, drinking tea and chatting.
"This is Luin, the new bodyguard."
"Ah, I did hear about him. Skilled, they say. That Ludie, I kept asking him to send someone over and he kept dodging me, and here he was preparing talent like this all along. Ha ha ha."
At the Duke's words, I clenched my jaw and forced an awkward smile.
"So the rumors were true, one eye covered. Had an accident as a child, I hear?"
"Yes."
"If the chance comes up, I'll look into ways to fix that eye for you."
What a completely pointless thing to worry about.
Because, strictly speaking, the reason my eye ended up like this was your fault.
I shot a glare at Lee Eunyheui, who was holding back laughter behind me, then gave a measured answer.
"I appreciate the thought, at least."
A while later, gifts sent by Empress Ellin arrived in the room.
Looking over the pile of luxury items one by one shifted the topic of conversation.
"Damn old geezer."
"Kkkk. Ha ha ha ha ha!"
"Funny? You think this is funny?"
"But... heh heh, seems like the old man really has taken a liking to you."
"Aaaargh! I can't hear you!"
I clapped my hands over my ears and tried my best to ignore the current situation.
After laughing for a good while, Lee Eunyheui's expression suddenly turned serious.
"You were right."
"Muels aren't the only ones who've disappeared from this mansion. Over the past few years, quite a lot of people have left with one excuse or another. Even counting the ones who quit normally, the numbers don't add up."
"Do you know what happened to them?"
"I don't know that much. Doesn't seem like the other girls know much about the ones who left, either. And Luria quit today."
"Who's Luria?"
"The blonde girl. The one Rizu spilled tea on."
Sounded like the one with gold hair.
"Quit, how?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. According to Steward Ifeseph, something came up at home and she had to leave the job. Apparently she even got a severance payout. Didn't feel like the kind of atmosphere where I could ask more."
Lee Eunyheui still wore an unconvinced expression.
Steward Ifeseph was the kind of person who looked at non-Muel employees like bugs, more or less.
A maid who'd been cleaning the stables suddenly claiming something came up at home and quitting, and getting a severance payout on top of it? That was too clean an excuse.
"Sounds like this happens fairly often."
"When was the last time you actually saw Luria? Did anyone see her leave the mansion, anything like that?"
"This morning. I went to check on her because I was worried. Apparently she went home sometime in the afternoon... but she seemed completely fine this morning. Didn't feel like someone who had a family emergency waiting for her."
"So nobody actually saw her leave."
"Not for certain, no."
"Nothing to lose by looking into it, so let's go check."
"How exactly are we supposed to find a girl who already said she quit?"
"All we need to know is whether she's inside the mansion grounds or not."
If she'd already left the mansion, that was out of our jurisdiction.
Between everything happening inside, I already had a headache without worrying about the outside too.
"Hey, you have any idea how huge this mansion is?"
"You don't trust me?"
There's really no need to cut me off that flatly.
I ignored Lee Eunyheui's still-suspicious glare and activated Mana Detection.
Damn, this place really is stupidly big.
I steadied my breathing and slowly widened the range.
Flames of various sizes bloomed into view one by one, centered on the mansion.
Luria was a Third-class citizen.
Unlike Fourth-class citizens, who couldn't even use artifacts and carried no mana in their bodies at all, Third-class citizens held a faint trace of mana.
I didn't remember Luria's name, but I'd memorized her mana signature, which was how this was possible at all.
"Meditating?"
"Don't interrupt me... wait, huh?"
I released Mana Detection and steadied my ragged breathing.
Faillia Duke's House was wrapped by forest on its outer edge, a short distance from the capital.
If it had been to the south where the capital sat, maybe, but sensing Luria's mana in the middle of a forest to the north made no sense at all.
"I found her. But..."
"You found her? What the hell are you? What skill did you use?"
"More importantly. If you found her, you found her, what's with the 'but'?"
At my confused reaction, Lee Eunyheui pointed toward the northern forest a short distance from the mansion.
"The forest?"
"Yeah. There... never mind."
Luria's mana had been unbelievably faint.
That mana flickered like a candle about to go out.
Like it was burning the very last of itself.
Personally, I couldn't help thinking that even if she was alive, she might not really be alive in any way that mattered.
No need to say that part out loud.
Lee Eunyheui looked ready to sprint into the forest right that instant.
"Lead the way."
I crossed the forest together with Lee Eunyheui.
There was some distance to the northern forest, so we moved fast, and Lee Eunyheui kept pace without a hint of fatigue.
Not bad at all.
Unlike Yu Jihan, Lee Eunyheui wasn't a follower, so I couldn't pull up her status window, but her stats clearly looked solid.
Which god does she serve, I wonder.
Challengers of the tower served all kinds of gods.
She wasn't officially one of mine, sure, but it'd be a lie to say I wasn't a little tempted.
That bow.
The dark red bow she'd briefly shown me back when we met Ludie had looked like a pretty solid item at a glance.
Given the look of it, chances were high it hadn't come from some stage but had been a gift from a god.
Lee Eunyheui cut ahead of me.
The direction was right, so I had no particular reason to stop her.
Not until I sensed something, anyway.
Tak.
I closed the distance fast from behind and grabbed Lee Eunyheui's arm.
"What are you do... mmph..."
"Shh."
I pulled Lee Eunyheui with me and hid up in a tree thick with leaves.
A moment later, Lee Eunyheui's eyes widened at something she spotted in the direction I'd turned my head toward.
Good eyes, too.
I only knew because of Mana Detection, but this was a distance an ordinary person had no business seeing clearly.
Whether it was a passive skill or not, Lee Eunyheui's eyesight was clearly a cut above normal.
Footsteps, slow and deliberate.
The small point of light gradually grew larger.
Rizu, dressed in white, approached.
Holding a lamp, Rizu walked straight in the direction where Luria was.
Rizu disappeared into the forest.
I couldn't see her from where I was, but Lee Eunyheui kept her eyes fixed on Rizu the whole time.
"Ji..."
I clamped a hand over Lee Eunyheui's mouth again.
Distance or not, there was no guarantee sound wouldn't carry.
Lee Eunyheui herself had eyesight that made no sense, after all.
Rizu's mana lingered in one spot for quite a while.
Lee Eunyheui tapped the back of my hand with a finger.
At first I thought she was just frustrated at being muffled, but I soon realized she was trying to communicate something.
What is this girl even doing?
What Lee Eunyheui was tapping out was Morse code.[1]
I had no idea how Lee Eunyheui even knew Morse code.
Lee Eunyheui and I kept ourselves as still and silent as possible in the dark.
I curled my fingers into an OK sign, then tapped the back of her hand in return.
《Wait.》
At the end, I tipped my finger downward to signal that Rizu had gone into the basement.
《Basement.》
Lee Eunyheui nodded.
We held our position, breath held.
By the time the morning sun started to rise, Rizu moved again.
She walked back toward the mansion, calm as ever.
《Time.》
I signaled to Lee Eunyheui again.
With the sun coming up, we needed to finish our business and get back as fast as possible if we wanted to avoid raising suspicion.
Unlike me, the bodyguard, Lee Eunyheui, the maid, had an earlier start to her mornings.
《50 minutes.》
Lee Eunyheui and I bolted toward the spot where Rizu had been standing at almost the same moment.
Lee Eunyheui dropped down from the tree and scanned the area around her.
She kicked aside a patch of underbrush with her toe, revealing an iron handle.
Pulling on the handle opened a massive door leading down underground.
"Luria's down here, right?"
I gave a small nod instead of answering.
Unfortunately, I could no longer sense Luria's mana at all now.
The stairs went down far deeper than I'd expected.
"Looks like a prison."
"Seems that way."
Underground, a long row of disused prison cells stretched out before us.
The number of them looked to be at least in the hundreds.
"An unused underground prison, huh."
Not exactly a pleasant place.
Lee Eunyheui pulled something out of her item inventory.
A small round light appeared above her shoulder.
"Oh, that looks handy. What is that?"
"You don't know this?"
"Porongi."
"Don't go giving a random glowing blob a pet name..."
"It really is Porongi! A specialty item made by Lumo, the god of light!"
"Wait, hold on. The god of light is Lumo?"
"Isn't the god of light Lux?"
"Who's that?"
Lee Eunyheui tilted her head, saying she'd never heard the name.
Something's different here?
Thinking about it more, I realized I never actually had any proof that Lux was the god of light in the first place.
I waved it off, saying it wasn't important.
Lee Eunyheui inspected the endless row of cells.
"Guess we'll have to head back and come again tomorr..."
Lee Eunyheui, turning her head toward one of the cells, grabbed the hem of my clothes.
Her face drained of color, her hand trembling.
I turned my head, and Porongi's light lit up the inside of the cell.
There lay Luria's corpse, brutally killed.
[1] Morse code — an international system of dots and dashes representing letters/numbers; here used as an improvised silent signal, tapped by hand rather than transmitted electronically.
Footnotes:
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