WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 95: The Cursed Mansion (4)

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Both men had swords in hand, but the fight was one-sided from the start.

The black-haired man threw his sword away the moment it began.

He dodged the redhead's attack while the man was still thrown off, closed the distance, and slammed him to the ground.

Then he snatched up the fallen sword and drove it into the man's chest.

The whole thing took less than ten seconds.

Hiss fished around in his pocket and flicked two gold coins my way.

I reached out and snatched them out of the air.

Like Hiss said, the redhead wasn't bad at fighting.

If his opponent had been anyone else, he might've won a round or two without much trouble.

The reason I picked the black-haired man was simple.

He'd been carrying killing intent.

Under normal circumstances, throwing away your sword and charging in bare-handed would've been reckless to the point of suicide.

Only two kinds of people could pull that off.

Someone consumed by revenge, or someone whose goal wasn't a fight at all, but murder.

"Ohh."

Faillia Duke's interest sharpened on the black-haired boy.

"One more round?"

"No!"

Hiss looked seriously sulky about it.

The Colosseum didn't wrap up until evening had nearly settled in.

Out of the twenty, four survived.

The man I'd picked was one of them.

"Four should be plenty for tonight's dinner."

So the rumors were true.

Just as Faillia Duke moved to rise from his seat, Ifeseph stepped over and whispered something to him.

"Bring him up."

"What's going on?"

"That black-haired young man wants to see me. Skill like his, no harm in getting a look at his face."

Not long after, the man came up with Ifeseph.

The young man rose from where he'd bowed politely.

His gaze fixed on Rizu.

So that's whose grudge this is.

I quietly rested my hand on the sword at my waist.

"Lady Rizu, do you happen to know a woman named Serka?"

"Who's that? Never heard the name."

Rizu tilted her head, a hand pressed to her cheek.

Her eyes drifted back to where Lee Eunyheui stood.

"Sounds like the name of a maid we had before."

"Is that so? I really can't seem to keep names in my head."

At Rizu's words, the young man's eyes trembled, his face going rigid.

"If it's not too much trouble, could you help find Serka?"

Rizu stared at him with a look that said, why would I?

"She's, she's my only sister."

Rizu let out a faint sigh and turned her eyes back to Lee Eunyheui.

Lee Eunyheui hesitated, clearly caught off guard.

"As far as I know, Serka went back to her hometown."

It was Ifeseph, the steward, who answered.

Lee Eunyheui had seen what happened to Luria with her own eyes. There was no way she didn't understand exactly what "went back to her hometown" really meant.

"Serka never made it back to her hometown."

"Must have wandered off somewhere, then. We're not obligated to confirm whether a girl who quit made it home safely. Is that all you have to say?"

"...This isn't over."

"It's not just Serka! People have been disappearing from House Faillia left and right lately! And it's all, all of it, it's all because of you!!"

The man jabbed a finger at Rizu, killing intent he'd been holding back finally spilling out.

A dagger he'd kept hidden in his coat swung toward her.

I drew my sword, and the two blades collided with a ring of steel.

The man's grip nearly failed him, but he clamped down and held the dagger fast.

It would've been kinder for him if he'd just let go.

I twisted my blade slightly and cut through the dagger and his arm together.

"Why! Why are you doing this!! Aaaaah!"

Ifeseph and Faillia Duke's guards moved to shield the duke, while Hiss pulled Rizu back.

Blood poured from the severed arm and soaked the floor dark.

Disgusting.

It wasn't the ruined body that disgusted me.

It was this whole situation.

Rizu, smiling as the man screamed.

And me, forced into a position where I had to kill the man standing in front of me.

This young man's anger wasn't just his own.

It was the anger of everyone who'd been trampled for having no mana, for not belonging to the ruling class of nobles.

The Sky Sword caught the sunset light, its surface glowing red as I raised it.

The blade passed through the man's chest and split his body open.

He collapsed into the pool of blood he'd spilled.

Time, which had seemed to stop, started moving again.

The sun slid behind a cloud, and darkness crept in.

Rizu let go of the hand she'd been gripping, Hiss's.

Hiss quietly set his hand on my shoulder.

"Good work."

I sheathed my sword without a word.

"Thank you for saving Rizu."

"I just did what needed doing."

"Still, you didn't have to kill him. Shame, I was starting to like him."

Faillia Duke walked past me and looked over the young man's face, eyes still open in death.

That lunatic, seriously.

It wasn't just Faillia Duke.

The other guard nearby had been shooting me a sharp, pointed look for a while now too.

"Father, Luin's still new, that's all. He did this out of overzealous loyalty to me. Won't you forgive him?"

Rizu lifted the hem of her dress slightly and bowed her head.

"Hmph, wasn't planning to scold him anyway."

"That's a relief."

"Still, the fact remains he saved you, so I'd like to reward him. Come to my study once dinner's over."

Once dinner was over meant practically the middle of the night.

Now wasn't the time to be picky about the details.

"You went way too far."

I washed down some bread I'd grabbed from dinner with a swallow of milk.

Lee Eunyheui, who'd come straight to my room, scowled the moment she saw my face, saying she'd seen something she really shouldn't have.

"How can you just eat bread like nothing happened?"

"Why are you nagging me about it? Should I just starve instead?"

"That's not what I mean! Do you even understand what you did today?"

I set the empty milk glass down on the small desk.

"I know."

"So I'm saying you went too far! You didn't have to kill him like that!"

"And if I'd just left him?"

"Dying early is better."

Lee Eunyheui's eyes wavered.

She looked like she had something to say but couldn't quite get it out.

I swallowed the last piece of bread and walked over to her.

"He probably didn't want to die like that either."

"That's the kind of thing you only get to think if you can die cleanly. You know that too, don't you?"

"Without you and me, he couldn't have laid a finger on either of them. Probably wouldn't have mattered even if the guards attached to them weren't there either."

On the surface, Rizu and Faillia Duke just looked like nobles who liked their luxuries.

If I hadn't killed him, he would've been captured and put through every kind of torture imaginable.

Judging by the state of that dungeon, this wasn't the first time they'd done it.

"If that happened, being alive wouldn't even count as being alive. In the end he'd be begging for someone to just kill him. Better to die easy while he still could."

"I... still don't really get it."

Lee Eunyheui let out a long sigh.

It wasn't like I'd reached this conclusion in a day or two myself, either.

Silence settled over the room.

Lee Eunyheui and I turned toward the door at almost the same instant.

She glanced around and ducked into the nearby wardrobe.

Footsteps stopped outside, and someone knocked.

It was Ifeseph, the steward.

I cracked the door open and stuck my head out.

"What is it?"

"The duke is calling for you."

Right, he'd said to come to the study.

He hadn't given me a time even after saying "once dinner's over," so there was no telling exactly when he meant.

"I'll be right out."

Ifeseph took one look at my rumpled clothes and said he'd wait, then shut the door.

Lee Eunyheui opened the wardrobe and stepped out.

I signaled with a rough hand gesture for her to slip out after I left.

She caught the meaning and nodded.

I straightened my clothes in front of the mirror as best I could and left the room.

Ifeseph led the way with a lamp toward Duke Faillia's study.

First time I've actually been to the study.

The study sat at the deepest part of the main residence.

Ifeseph knocked quietly.

"Come in."

Ifeseph opened the door, gestured for me to go in alone, and stepped back.

Duke Faillia's study was larger than any personal space had any right to be.

It could've passed for a small library without anyone blinking.

Candles along the walls lit the interior bright.

"Sit, make yourself comfortable."

I sat on the sofa set off to one side of the study.

Duke Clensia was supposedly over a hundred years old, but Faillia Duke's age wasn't far behind him either.

Looking at him, though, he could've passed for an ordinary man in his mid-thirties.

Igerus's request had been to find whoever inside House Faillia had broken their taboo.

Counting the people of the duke's house, there were only two candidates besides Ellin, who was up at the royal castle.

So which of them had broken the taboo?

Duke Faillia, seated across from me, offered up some hollow flattery.

"Thank you again for saving Rizu. As you can see, she's a very delicate girl."

My idea of "delicate" and the duke's idea of it seemed to be two entirely different things.

"If there's anything you want, name it and it's yours."

"In that case... do you happen to know someone named Kale?"

"Seems like today's just full of people looking for someone."

"I heard he's from the Western Guard Division same as me, and that he was serving as your bodyguard until not long ago."

"Ah! That fellow! Wasn't sure who you meant at first. I remember him. Bit of a shame he didn't have your sharp head on his shoulders, but a decent one nonetheless. He's up north these days."

The answer came out rehearsed, like he was reading off a script.

I pulled a sealed letter from inside my coat and set it on the table.

"This is from Kale's parents, sent to the Western Guard Division. Looks like they write to each other regularly, but they probably don't know he took a bodyguard post with your house. Could you pass it along to him?"

Faillia Duke's expression shifted, subtle but unmistakable, at the sight of the letter.

"Hmm, now that you mention it, Ludie asked about a fellow named Kale once too. Guess that boy really does have a knack for making friends. So, should I take this as a favor you're asking of me?"

"If you'd like, I could even arrange for the two of you to meet."

"If you're planning to transfer him north..."

"Ha ha ha, why go to all that trouble? Just call him back."

Kale was alive?

While I turned that over in my head, Faillia Duke settled in right beside me without missing a beat.

Sure enough, I felt an uncomfortably heavy, cloying stare on me.

When I deliberately looked away, he grabbed my arm like he'd made up his mind about something.

After a fair bit of tug-of-war, I gathered the nerve to turn my head.

"Whether Kale comes back to the capital or not depends entirely on you. No matter how many times I look, those eyes of yours just get to me."

Faillia Duke's hand crept closer.

I slapped it away, breathing hard.

"Y-you crazy woman! Seriously!"

"Woman? I'm a man. If you'd like, I could..."

"Damn it, shut up!"

I kicked Faillia Duke's body and shot up off the sofa.

I rested my hand on my sword, staring into the deep dark at the back of the study.

"Why don't you come out already?"

Footnotes:

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