IMDCA 11

Chapter 11

The Blood-Dyed Count’s Estate

The Heresy Relic Management Bureau, softly bathed in the warm afternoon sunlight.

Although lunchtime had long passed, René was still at her desk, anxiously gnawing at her nails. On her narrow desk sat a thick black uniform coat, neatly folded, occupying its place prominently.

From the time she had left work yesterday until she returned today, René’s mind had been filled entirely with the chilling command Duke Kael had left behind.

‘Come up to the Director’s Office as soon as you arrive at work. Alone.’

At the feeling that Duke Kael’s low voice was right beside her ear, René momentarily shuddered.

‘In the end, is he going to say I should work as his direct clerk in the Director’s Office? Even Head Clerk Oscar wouldn’t be able to stop him again, would he……?’

René groaned and clutched at her head. But there was no way not to go.

He was the Empire’s greatest warrior—one flick of his finger could send her neck flying—and also her superior, the one holding her paycheck.

In the end, René, as if resigned to her fate, hugged the Duke’s coat and moved her heavy feet like a cow being dragged to the slaughterhouse.

Knock, knock.

“……This is low-ranking clerk René Argen. I’ve come to return the Director’s coat…….”

“Come in.”

Duke Kael’s low voice came through the thick door.

As René carefully opened the door, Kael—sitting cross-legged in the center of the spacious Director’s Office, flipping through documents—raised his red eyes. The moment she faced him, René unconsciously drew in her breath.

Even though dazzling afternoon sunlight was pouring through the window, around Kael alone an oppressive aura swirled as if deep night had fallen. Overwhelmed by his suffocating presence, René hastily set the Duke’s coat down on the sofa beside her.

“Th-then, I’ll be returning to my post now…….”

“Go get your coat. We’re going out.”

René’s body, which had been turning to leave, stiffened at Kael’s voice cutting her off.

“……What?”

“We’re going to the main estate of the portrait that went berserk in Zone 3 yesterday—Count Vladimir’s residence.”

Not just any outside work, but going directly to the Count’s estate where the portrait containing an A-grade curse had been? And with the Monster Duke, no less? René jumped up with a face gone pale.

“D-Duke! I am merely a low-ranking clerk. Yesterday the curse rampage stopped by coincidence…….”

“You are the sole witness who beheld that A-grade curse rampage. Whether it was a miracle or a coincidence, the one who survived seeing that curse with her own eyes is the right person to write the report.”

“But in principle, on-site investigation should be conducted by the elite escort knights or professional inquisitors, as far as I know…….”

“Additional outside-work allowance beyond base pay.”

Kael tossed out the bait indifferently without taking his eyes off the documents. René’s rapid-fire excuses were snipped clean off.

“Plus a special commendation bonus given under my authority.”

Gulp.

The sound of René swallowing was unusually loud in the quiet Director’s Office.

Money was as fearsome as an evil spirit’s curse.

To secretly leave the Empire while evading the heresy inquisitors’ barrier required an enormous amount of bribe money. The capitalist circuitry in René’s head began whirring furiously.

“Since it’s the source of an A-grade curse, I can also apply for the hazard pay issued by the Bureau, correct?”

“……That’s right.”

“I’ll grab only my coat and be right back, Duke!”

Watching René’s retreating figure as she bit her lip with grim determination and scurried out like a squirrel, Kael could not hold back the corners of his mouth curving upward. That brazen attitude—trembling with fear one moment, then sparkling at the mention of money.

“Taming her won’t be as difficult as I thought.”

Clatter, clatter—

A massive black carriage bearing the ducal crest began gliding smoothly toward the outskirts of the capital.

Opposite Kael sat René, shoulders hunched tightly, staring blankly out the window to dispel the awkwardness.

“How much do you know about Count Vladimir’s family?”

Kael, arms crossed and eyes closed, suddenly asked. René, flustered, fumbled out the imperial noble register she had memorized.

“Um…… I know they are a family with deep history, and the Empire’s breakwater, boasting impenetrable defensive power.”

“On the surface, yes.”

Kael’s red eyes gleamed coldly as he cast his gaze out the window.

“Their true power is not military might but ‘barriers.’ A special power that grants absolute authority within their domain, mediated by the family name, signature, and crest. Those acknowledged by the Count’s family are thoroughly protected, and the power of those they reject can be suppressed.”

René unconsciously swallowed dry saliva. According to Duke Kael, the inside of the Count’s estate would be effectively a small kingdom ruled by their own rules. An impregnable fortress that even the imperial family could not easily send troops into. How had a family with such tremendous defensive power come to be devoured by that dreadful curse?

‘And that portrait even had a curse defense mechanism on it.’

Kael glanced at René, whose face had grown serious as she sank deep into thought, then closed his eyes again.

Count Vladimir’s family. The imperial family had always wanted to keep the power of that barrier beneath its heel, but the Count’s family had been guaranteed independence on the condition of maintaining perfect neutrality. That is, until recently.

An incident had occurred in which the benevolent and widely respected First Crown Prince died suddenly. There was no physical evidence of assassination, but everyone in the Empire tacitly named one person as the culprit.

Second Crown Prince Albert von Edelgard—a man of cruel disposition who would gladly kill even his own elder brother to seize the throne.

After that incident, the Count’s family began secretly lending strength to Ian, the Grand Duke—the Emperor’s cherished illegitimate son. From then on, the Crown Prince must have resolved that if he could not bring the Count’s family to his side, he would erase them from this world entirely.

‘It is certain that Crown Prince Albert is connected. But how on earth?’

Vladimir’s barrier is optimized not only against military force but also against magic. A curse invading from outside would have been detected the moment it touched the barrier’s surface.

‘That means it gnawed its way in from the inside…….’

The only existence in this Empire capable of freely entering and exiting that meticulously guarded Count’s estate and burrowing into its blind spots is one.

‘The Temple.’

If they were in league with the Crown Prince, temple priests could have come and gone from the Count’s estate under the pretext of blessings and prayers, planting curses through the barrier’s minute gaps. Instead of breaching the barrier’s great wall, they would have slowly injected poison into the mud supporting the wall to bring it down. But there Kael’s question coiled once more.

‘Suppose the priests pushed the curse in on the Crown Prince’s orders. Then whose work is the double curse on the portrait confiscated yesterday?’

It was not a curse meant simply to destroy a family. It was a siphoning formula—utterly vicious in its selfishness and greed. If it was not the temple’s doing, then who on earth had planted a curse formula of that caliber? Kael, unable to grasp the true nature of the mastermind, furrowed his brow.

Soon Kael’s gaze landed on René, who was fidgeting across from him while watching his mood.

‘That is also why I deliberately brought this brazen clerk along.’

This grotesque situation, where the Crown Prince’s curse and an unidentified dark magic of siphoning were entangled. He had a hunch that the only key capable of piercing the essence of that complex curse was this low-ranking clerk.

Kael wanted to test what René would see in the heart of the Count’s estate, and how she would react.

“We have arrived, Duke.”

At the coachman’s voice, the carriage came to a smooth stop.

As René struggled, her feet caught in the hem of a coat as big as her own body, Kael—who had stepped down first—clicked his tongue and approached her.

“Ah!”

Before she could even scream, Kael’s large hand swept around René’s waist and lifted her. René’s small body rose lightly into the air like a feather and landed on the ground outside the carriage in a single breath. It was less an escort and more the handling of a piece of luggage, but René’s heart pounded madly at the scent of Duke Kael that had suddenly drawn close.

“W-why all of a sudden!”

Clutching her chest, which would not easily calm even after landing on the ground, she raised her head—and that was the moment.

“Eek……!”

A short scream, as if her breath had stopped, burst from René’s mouth.

Jjit—.

From deep within her eyes, a terrible pain surged up as if a red-hot iron skewer were stabbing through her brain.

René reflexively clutched both eyes and staggered. The witch’s instinct—the “Eye of Valea”—was being forcibly opened before the Count’s estate.

To an ordinary person’s eyes, it was merely a quiet noble estate with its gates firmly shut, but the Count’s residence reflected in René’s vision now was nothing short of a giant altar burning in the fires of hell.