Chapter 77
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Deep into the night, in a guest room of Marquis Fernandi’s castle.
Marquis Fernandi was gazing with sunken eyes at Kaiden, who was lying lifelessly.
His insides were in turmoil.
Suddenly, Damian had appeared, dumped the nearly dead grand duke, left strange words, and vanished somewhere.
“One red-haired girl will come soon.”
“It would be best if you hoped that child is your only granddaughter.”
“If not, then you and I, and everyone here, will all go to Charlize’s side together.”
It had already been over 20 years since Charlize died. And now a granddaughter?
Did that mean Charlize had given birth to a child?
If so, where had that child been and what had she been doing all this time? What had Damian been doing? Saying “go to Charlize’s side” if she wasn’t his granddaughter—did that mean die together? Why couldn’t he be certain it was his own child?
His eyes were directed toward Kaiden, but in reality he wasn’t seeing him at all. In the marquis’s mind, questions were endlessly chaining together.
“How about that guy?”
“Damian!”
Damian appeared without a sound. Magic? Since teleportation magic had been sealed within the marquisate, Marquis Fernandi was startled and stood up from his seat.
“How did you get in…!”
No, that wasn’t it.
Through this series of events, the marquis had realized something.
Damian was not an ordinary human.
That suspicion hardened into certainty because of Damian’s appearance. If he had aged normally, he should have been in his mid-40s. Yet he looked exactly as he had over 20 years ago when Charlize first introduced him.
“…Where have you been all this time.”
The marquis asked through gritted teeth. He was angry at the man who had vanished without a single proper explanation. This wasn’t a question limited only to the current situation.
Where had he been 20 years ago, and where and how had his daughter died?
He had hired all sorts of detectives, mages, and tracking experts to search, yet how had there been no trace for three whole years?
But Damian ignored the marquis’s question and muttered while looking at Kaiden.
“He’ll die soon.”
As those words said, Kaiden’s condition was poor. The marquis found this absurd as well.
He had been suddenly told to take care of the grand duke, and when he looked, the grand duke’s breath was on the verge of stopping. What on earth had happened to reduce a sword master to this state? The marquis wanted to hear the full story.
Literally everything.
“I asked where you’ve been all this time.”
Though fury rose to the top of his head, the marquis barely suppressed his voice because of the patient. Damian rolled his red eyes and looked at the marquis.
Seeing it again, it was eerie. No human could escape the passage of 20 years.
“I traveled around the empire.”
“…You traveled around the empire with Charlize?”
“Yes.”
“…You mean you never settled down?”
“There were too many annoying flies.”
“…….”
Was he referring to the people sent to find the two who had run away?
“Charlize was curious about the sea.”
The sea.
In an instant, Fernandi was taken back to the past.
On a summer day with sunlight pouring down. The marquis was strolling along the castle walls with young Charlize. Walking the walls built along the eastern waterway in summer offered a magnificent view of the lush forest at a glance.
Young Charlize looked up at him and asked.
“Father. Is the eastern waterway the sea?”
“Haha, no, my dear. ‘Suhae’ means a sea of trees. It’s a term for a vast forest.”
“Then what is the sea?”
“Hmm… it’s a blue expanse made of saltwater. When the sunset falls, the sparkling waves are truly splendid.”
“Does it have an owner?”
“Hm? The sea has no owner.”
“Then I want to become the marchioness of the blue expanse!”
The marquis’s face crumpled miserably.
He remembered the past when, every time Charlize asked when they would go see the sea, he had been too busy to give a proper answer and only promised “next time.”
Painful guilt overwhelmed him. But before he completely collapsed, there was something he absolutely had to know.
He moved his throat and barely opened his mouth.
“Where… how did she die?”
It was the cause of his daughter’s death that he had wondered about for 20 years.
“South of the capital. It was bandits.”
“What…?”
Damian said while looking at Kaiden with sunken eyes.
“Humans vanish so fleetingly in an instant.”
“…Just, just to bandits!”
In the end, the marquis shed tears and let out a roar that rose from his guts.
“What were you doing!”
Damian muttered with an expressionless face.
“Indeed. What on earth was I doing? Ah, if those demon bastards hadn’t been annoying, I would have stayed by Charlize’s side the whole time. Or should I not have dressed Charlize and the child in expensive clothes? But it was only for a very short moment. Why did I have to lose everything? Where did Roselyn go? Is that child really Roselyn?”
Damian was muttering endlessly like someone who had lost his mind. The marquis, face wet with tears, tried not to miss the incoherent words he was spitting out.
It seemed the reason Charlize became a target for bandits was the expensive clothes.
When high-ranking nobles went out to the marketplace, they always had to bring escorts. Or wear clothes that commoners would wear. The anger surged again at the fact that even such basic precautions hadn’t been followed.
However, the marquis had no time to be angry.
He had said “demons.” One of the marquis’s suspicions had been confirmed. Damian was connected to demons. He might even be a fairly high-ranking demon.
“What is your true identity?”
“I am Charlize’s husband and Roselyn’s dad. Yes, since I’m the dad, I have to find Roselyn.”
It seemed difficult to get a proper answer from him, whose mind was slightly unhinged. The marquis decided to resolve another question.
“Who is Roselyn?”
He swallowed.
“…Is she perhaps my granddaughter?”
Damian’s words suddenly stopped. He looked at the marquis with a blank face. After a brief silence passed, he slowly opened his mouth.
“Yes.”
The marquis’s fingertips began to tremble. Charles had given birth to a child.
“…Why did you lose her?”
“I wasn’t by Charlize’s side.”
“…….”
It seemed the child had been with her when Charlize was attacked by bandits. Piecing together the circumstances, Damian had discovered the body after Charlize died, and by then the child was already lost.
The marquis clutched his head with trembling hands.
“Why, why did you do that? Why weren’t you by her side!”
A man over sixty wailed and suffered. Learning after 20 years that his daughter’s cause of death was so futile and heartbreaking.
And she had even given birth to a child, yet lost her. It was so outrageous that his anger exploded. This couldn’t happen in the world.
After crying for a long while, the marquis lifted his head. He glared at Damian with eyes that wanted to tear him apart.
Now that he knew the details of the past, he had to know about the current situation as well.
“Why is the grand duke like this?”
“He’s a hostage.”
“A hostage? Hostage for whom?”
“A hostage for the one who might be my daughter, or might be your granddaughter.”
“What does that mean…?”
It was the strange talk he had been saying since earlier.
If she was his daughter, she was his daughter—why this lack of certainty? The grand duke of Baltstein, who was limp and powerless, and the talk of him being a hostage. It was finally time for the gaps in the patchy story to be filled.
“Marquis. Do you know Merien?”
In the Gratier Empire, not knowing “the wastrel knight Merien” meant you were a spy. The marquis asked with a feeling of disbelief.
“Why are you asking about Sir Merien…?”
Damian showed a bizarre smile.
“That child might be my daughter, you see?”
“What…?”
The marquis slowly opened his mouth.
The red-haired knight Merien… my granddaughter…?
“The bracelet she was wearing is the bracelet I gave to Charlize.”
Damian lifted and showed a small bracelet with one black gem attached.
“She said she had been wearing it since she was so young she couldn’t even remember, so she didn’t know who gave it to her.”
The marquis’s heart pounded fiercely.
It was a fact known to all imperial citizens that Merien was an orphan from the slums. If, truly, she was Charlize’s daughter….
“But I’m suspicious. She might have said anything to save her mate.”
Marquis Fernandi looked at Kaiden following Damian’s gaze. He was in a promised marriage with Merien.
He didn’t know exactly what had happened. However, the marquis knew what he had to do.
“I’ll look into Sir Merien’s background.”
Damian smiled with rounded eyes.
Click.
Marquis Fernandi closed the door and went out. The demon king Damian had also vanished before anyone noticed.
In the room, only Kaiden, barely clinging to life, lay like a corpse.
At that moment, Kaiden’s finger twitched faintly.
No one saw that movement.
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