WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
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◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 94: The Cursed Mansion (3)
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"Uuugh!"
Lee Eunyheui came up from the underground prison and threw up everything she'd eaten into a corner of the bushes.
I walked up behind her and quietly patted her back.
"You okay?"
"Would you be, if you... ugh, okay..."
"Hey, hey! Don't talk!"
Head down, Lee Eunyheui kept retching without pause.
She didn't stop dry heaving until she'd emptied out even the stomach acid, right around the point where I started wondering if she might actually die from it.
The state of the cells she'd found underground had been, quite literally, a horror show.
"Damn it, I thought I was used to people dying by now."
Lee Eunyheui pulled out a water ball and rinsed her mouth, muttering to herself.
"Torture's different."
If murder was about researching how to end a life quickly and efficiently, torture was the opposite. It focused on keeping someone alive while sustaining the most agonizing state possible.
What had been done to Luria wasn't murder. It was torture.
"You okay?"
"That's supposed to be my line, isn't it?"
Looking at Lee Eunyheui's pale face, I honestly doubted whether she'd even be able to go to work after this.
"I'm fine, just a little disgusted."
"Guess you pulled an all-nighter after all."
"This much is nothing."
Lee Eunyheui wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and steadied her breathing.
A challenger who served a god and had been granted a status window had a body that worked differently from an ordinary person's.
Mentally, though, exhaustion was a different story.
"There was no blood spatter."
"Blood?"
"That scene. There was a smell of blood, sure, but I didn't see any."
"Maybe someone wiped it up? Anyway, I'm impressed you managed to notice all that in that state."
"You ever seen that woman scared of blood?"
At my question, Lee Eunyheui thought about it for a moment, then shook her head.
Rizu was a woman who found excuses out of sheer boredom to punish her servants.
Rather than being afraid of blood, she was closer to someone who wanted to see it.
"A woman who watches with wide, round eyes while gouging out a servant's eyes isn't scared of blood, not in a million years."
"Right, so there's no reason at all she'd bother going through the trouble of wiping up blood. Did you get a good look at the bodies?"
"You think I did?"
The moment Lee Eunyheui saw Luria's face and the pile of corpses, she'd clapped a hand over her mouth and bolted up out of the cellar.
"So? What about the bodies?"
"They looked like dolls."
It felt wrong to say that about a corpse, but they'd been clean enough, neat enough, that calling them broken dolls wouldn't have sounded strange at all.
Lee Eunyheui tilted her head, looking like she couldn't quite understand.
"Damn it, my stomach's turning again."
"You gonna report this?"
"Not today, at least."
The darkness faded completely, and a reddish morning sun poured down overhead.
After parting ways with Lee Eunyheui, I went back to my room, got ready a little earlier than usual, and headed outside.
The main house was already in a frenzy of early-morning cleaning.
"Oh, you're up early?"
Hiss came over from a distance, yawning and waving a hand.
"Couldn't sleep much. Not that early, really."
"Take it easy. People like us don't mean much more to the nobles than accessories or jewelry anyway."
Climbing the stairs, Hiss muttered it out like it was nothing.
Hiss had an easygoing personality, the kind of ordinary young man you'd run into all over this world.
Every offhand comment he made carried a strange weight all its own, even said so casually.
For someone who'd lived his whole life this way, it was simply how things were. Not even worth questioning.
"How did the young lady Rizu end up joining House Faillia?"
Hiss had been assigned as Rizu's bodyguard the moment she entered the Faillia household as its young lady.
His actual rank wasn't all that different from mine, but somehow he was tangled up in the mansion's security staff and its business, in ways I didn't fully understand.
"You know Lady Rizu's hometown is a northern village that belongs to the Faillia duchy, right?"
"Actually, it's kind of murky. Her village sits right next to Clensia territory. Go west from the village and you're in Clensia land, go east and you're in Faillia land."
It was the kind of mess that only happened because the village sat right on the edge, tucked into a corner nobody cared enough about.
Neither side wanted to make a bigger deal out of it, but neither side wanted to give ground either, so the village had been left in limbo for over thirty years.
The real problem was that the line wasn't clearly drawn.
The village split itself into districts by residence. Live on the east side, you paid taxes to House Clensia. Live on the west side, you paid taxes to House Faillia.
"Technically, administratively, it's supposed to be based on birthplace, not residence. But usually people are born near their own house, so it's never really an issue. Rizu's case, though, that one got messy."
Rizu's mother had gone into labor on the way back from a trip to the city, and gave birth to her right there.
"Rizu's family lived on the west side, in Clensia territory, but she was actually born on the east side, in Faillia territory. That's the thing, right?"
If Rizu hadn't been a Muel, or if she'd had an ordinary amount of mana, this would've stayed a funny little anecdote and nothing more.
"Rizu's mana output is genuinely absurd. Purely by volume, she beats Empress Ellin. There's no monster quite like that monster."
House Faillia and House Clensia were two of the empire's three great ducal houses.
Around the time it all happened, the Third Prince, then the leading candidate for the throne, had just married Ellin.
At the time, the final candidates for empress had come down to a young lady from House Clensia and a young lady from House Faillia.
"Duke Clensia has over thirty sons and daughters. That's just the officially adopted ones, so you can guess what's going on under the surface."
It was a method noble houses used all the time: gather up promising-looking children under the label of adoption, pit them against each other, and see who survived the competition.
"The problem was, Lady Rizu turned out to be way more talented than anyone expected."
Having that many adopted children meant there was already an internal hierarchy, a system all its own.
There was no reason a talent like Rizu couldn't win out against House Clensia's own children in that competition.
"At the same time, there was no reason she'd need to, either."
Because House Faillia was already there as an alternative.
And what House Clensia offered instead was the position of Duke Clensia's wife.
"His wife?"
"That way there'd be no need for competition at all. Except Lady Rizu was only ten years old at the time, and Duke Clensia was over a hundred and twenty."
Even setting aside whatever he actually looked like at that age, it was still way too much.
Back then, House Faillia had no one but Ellin, so naturally Rizu chose House Faillia instead.
"Duke Clensia just let it go?"
"I'd guess it was Lady Rizu who wasn't about to let it go."
"See, both sides kept holding onto their pride and leaving that village alone, and that's exactly what turned things into this mess. Even a border village, if it had belonged fully to one side, none of this would've happened. Honestly, I think Lady Rizu wasn't totally against the idea of becoming Duke Clensia's wife, either."
That wasn't a thought that should've come out of a ten-year-old's head.
A ten-year-old recognizing her own talent and value, and staking out her position accordingly, that wasn't something an ordinary child could pull off.
Faillia Duke understood that side of Rizu better than anyone.
"When he met Rizu, he made her exactly one offer. He'd wipe the troublesome village off the map for her. And that's how it happened. Ah, don't repeat that anywhere, by the way."
Having done a full loop of the mansion under the excuse of guard duty, Hiss belatedly realized he'd said way too much.
Hiss and I walked up to the door of Rizu's room.
For a brief moment, the scene from the cellar at dawn and what Lee Eunyheui had said flickered through my head.
You okay?
Okay, huh.
There was no way I could be okay.
I was just pretending to be fine.
If there was one thing I had confidence in more than anyone, it was bottling up stress.
It was also a bad habit, at the same time.
Hiss and I opened the door and stepped into Rizu's room.
"Good morning."
"Yes. Both of you."
Rizu, dressed in a red gown, black shoes, and dark jewels, answered with her gaze turned slightly aside.
Faillia Duke sat in front of her, drinking tea.
"I'll see you this afternoon, then, Father."
"Let's do that."
Rizu gave a small bow of her head and rose from her seat.
Rizu's schedule for the day included embroidery, imperial etiquette lessons, and social dancing.
"This afternoon's definitely supposed to be dress..."
"That's cancelled."
"Something come up?"
"Not that. We're visiting the Colosseum."
Faillia Duke's disturbing hobby was what the servants privately called the Colosseum.
After finishing the morning's schedule and eating lunch, we moved locations.
There, a space shaped like a genuinely small colosseum waited.
The whole thing existed for one purpose only, Faillia Duke's hobby.
An ornate chair and table sat in the spot with the best view of the stage.
The space was built for a small handful of spectators, and no one else.
"There's quite a lot of them today."
"They're the ones who arrived while we were staying at the imperial castle. I hear some are from the Liberation Army, so I'm looking forward to this."
"Oh my, sounds dangerous."
Nothing in the smiling Rizu's tone gave off even a hint of anything sounding dangerous.
Below the Colosseum stood around twenty fourth-class citizens.
Hiss nudged my side with his elbow.
I turned my head, silently asking what he wanted.
"Who do you think wins?"
"Doesn't really matter who wins, does it?"
At my answer, Hiss curled his fingers into a circle.
I glanced over at Rizu and Faillia Duke, seated a short distance away.
Neither of them seemed to care at all about our conversation.
"How much are you betting?"
"Depends on what you're putting up."
I scanned over the fourth-class citizens below.
Betting on something with zero chance wasn't worth it.
One of them caught my eye.
I held up two fingers.
"Two thousand?"
"That cheap won't cut it. Two gold coins."
"You've got some money on you, huh?"
One gold coin was a month's living expenses for an ordinary household.
There was no way Hiss, working as Rizu's bodyguard under House Faillia, was ever short on cash, but even so, that wasn't a small sum to throw around.
"Don't want it, don't do it."
"I'm the one who proposed the bet, aren't I? Fine, so who are you putting your money on?"
Without a shred of hesitation, I pointed at the corner.
"Yeah, that guy definitely looks decent."
Hiss nodded, looking at a large, hulking man.
"No, next to him."
"Next to him? Uh... you're actually betting on that?"
The man I'd picked had a build noticeably slighter than the other fourth-class citizens standing around him, plain to see at a glance.
"He's got that hidden-strength vibe."[1]
"Hidden what...?"
"Don't come crying to me later when you lose your money. I'm going with that redhead over there."
"What, so you also just picked the one who looks like an easy win."
"That one actually knows how to fight."
Come to think of it, hadn't Hiss mentioned some of them used to belong to the Liberation Army?
The redhead Hiss picked definitely had a solid build.
A bit on the short side, though.
"Still, not that one."
"You doubting my eye?"
"I'm telling you, it's not gonna work out."
"Why not just have them fight and see?"
Rizu, who'd been listening to the whole exchange, cut in with a smile.
Her fingertip landed first on the black-haired man I'd chosen, then on the redhead.
Rizu gave Faillia Duke a brief explanation.
"Seems my bodyguards made a bet on who'd win if those two fought."
"Oh, really? Then it wouldn't hurt to actually pit them against each other."
The moment Faillia Duke agreed, the space below burst into motion.
At the signal, the two men, who'd been hesitating, moved at almost the same instant.
"Hand over the two gold coins."
[1] "Hidden-strength type" — internet slang for someone who looks unassuming but is secretly a powerhouse, often used affectionately in gaming and web-novel communities.
Footnotes:
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