TRSTD 08

Chapter 08

Claude did not hesitate long before coming to a conclusion.

“Acklein will completely follow your words from now on.”

Knowing full well the weight of the meaning contained in those few words, Arina pushed forward the paper envelope she had brought from the temple.

Claude obediently took out the paper inside the envelope and examined it.

One was a contract brought to solidify their cooperative relationship, and the other was…

“A notice of annulment?”

“I am giving this to you because I believe it is right for the household head to hold onto it.”

“No, but you…”

As he hesitated with his trailing words, Arina grasped the main point instead.

“I have no intention of receiving the Acklein family name. Therefore, I hope you do not harbor any suspicions about the reasons why I am helping you.”

Claude quickly countered those words.

“The annulment and that are two separate matters. How do you intend to settle the profits your family has gained up until now through the relationship between you and Lucius?”

“I think this incident is enough, isn’t it?”

To her counter-question, Claude could not refute and tightly closed his mouth.

Just as Arina, feeling frustrated with him for staring intently only at the annulment notice without reading the most important contract, was about to say a word:

“This is a matter we must also hear Lucius’s opinion on.”

Arina felt doubtful at Claude’s unfamiliar attitude, expecting him to readily accept it.

“Even without explicitly asking, the Young Lord would probably sign it the moment I showed it to him, saying it’s for the better.”

“How do you know that?”

“I said that based on the behavior he has shown so far.”

Arina, rebutting firmly without losing a single word, looked around her anew.

Lamian and Alberto, who were just as shocked as Claude upon seeing the notice of annulment, looked at it closely and then shifted their gazes back forward.

“I bring this up while we have the opportunity, but aren’t I an unwelcome person not just to the Young Lord, but to Acklein as well? Since we happen to have the people here who were most hostile to me, why don’t you ask them?”

Of the two who were singled out, Lamian burst out with his grievance first.

“When have we ever been hostile?”

“If you keep telling lies like that, the Lord will not save you when you are in crisis, Adjutant.”

Lamian broke out in cold sweat and merely chewed his lips, while Alberto bowed his head deeply until it almost touched the floor.

Seeing that, Arina shook her head slightly.

“Right now, Acklein needs to hold onto me somehow, so I assume you won’t accept the annulment right away. Therefore, His Excellency should hold onto it for one year first.”

“Is there a reason you specifically single out one year?”

“It’s a secret.”

Arina smiled, spreading her index finger over her lips.

“If I tell you everything, wouldn’t I be at too much of a disadvantage?”

Claude’s smooth brow crumpled severely.

“You say you won’t accept Acklein, but it seems you must want something else from us besides that.”

“Right now, it would be trust and consideration.”

Arina’s expression, once glancing at Lamian, was more excited than ever. The relaxed smile of one who had seized the upper hand lingered on her lips.

“In any case, please take care to ensure that I am not hurt for a year. Despite appearances, I am quite soft-hearted.”

Everyone present glanced at each other, wondering if what they had heard was real.

Cutting off that subtle atmosphere by clapping her hands, she gradually moved on to the main point.

“In a week, an inspection from the temple will arrive here. The investigator in charge happens to be Mira Astro, who holds the same rank as me, so if there is anything that might possibly cause a problem, please tell me.”

At those words, Lamian turned his head sharply toward Claude with a pale face. He wanted to say something, but as if it were content he could not utter, he only opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish.

Claude sighed softly, pinching his brow as if things had become troublesome.

“Tell me everything related to that woman.”

“Ah… Understood.”

Though she felt uneasy about something that seemed shady, Arina was not overly worried since she could roughly guess what they were feeling guilty about.

She had also thought up a corresponding alternative plan in her own way, after all.

However, when she encountered an unexpected object in an unexpected place that Lamian led her to afterward, the confidence she had filled herself with leaked all the way down to her toes in a single rush.

“Even for me, this is difficult to cover up.”

Arina said with a straight face. Lamian accepted it readily, as if he had anticipated her reaction to some extent.

“We are well aware of our wrongdoings, too. But it couldn’t be helped for the Young Lord’s sake.”

Nodding in understanding, Arina looked at the dagger with its white blade and the glass bottles with a hopeless expression.

“Even so, stealing holy artifacts and holy water cannot be forgiven.”

“Stealing, you say? Those are items obtained through a strictly legitimate transaction!”

Lamian, raising his voice out of a guilty conscience, was glared at fiercely by Arina. If a knife had been gripped in her hand, the hostility was so vivid that it looked as though she really would stab him.

“Which damned bastard sold these off?”

Frightened in advance by her momentum, he said hesitatingly:

“It, it is the Saintess.”

“…Do you really want to go to hell because of that tongue? If you wish, I can send you right now.”

At the last remark, Lamian violently flinched his body.

“It’s the truth. Here is the transaction statement as well.”

With that, the documents he pushed forward began to make her eyes, skimming over them rapidly, churn in turmoil.

Vivienne Chevalier, that crazy woman had gone as far as doing this.

For a saint to sell holy water for private purposes was a flagrant illegal act. However, the person who purchased it deserved to be punished just as much.

A person who couldn’t possibly be unaware of that acting so openly like ‘I committed a crime’ was just so absurd and infuriating.

However, what left her even more dumbfounded was the true identity of the holy water that the saint had sold off for a thousand gold pieces per bottle.

There were a total of four colors for the caps of the bottles containing the holy water.

Red, blue, green, and yellow.

The grades increased in that order, and since the top-grade holy water Arina made was green, the yellow above it was a mark indicating that the saint had made it.

Therefore, naturally, the saint’s divine power should have been contained within it, but in reality, someone else’s entirely different power was inside.

Arina tasted a sip of each of the 10 bottles of holy water and deduced who that person was.

Liliana.

Thinking of Liliana, who was a flower of the same god as herself and enjoyed the trust of the Chevalier family, Arina let out a small sigh.

“Have you been giving these to the Young Lord periodically to suppress his berserk state?”

“That is correct.”

Then the cause of the catastrophe that occurred this time might have been triggered because he drank something that was not the saint’s holy water.

Arina harbored a single question in this regard.

Judging by the fact that my divine power worked, Liliana’s should have been able to suppress the demonic power as well. Why did he suddenly go berserk this time?

She needed to accurately know the cause of the problem to establish a more thorough countermeasure.

Quickly realizing that this was not something she could solve by worrying all by herself, Arina turned back to Lamian.

“I need to see the Young Lord.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, but right now the Young Lord’s condition…”

“Then go ahead and get caught so that your whole family can face the judgment of the law.”

When she told him that she had already given the annulment notice and could escape collective punishment, Lamian’s face turned bright red.

“Is that why you declared the annulment?”

“There’s that meaning to it, too.”

“How can you make such an innocent face… This is a betrayal!”

“Think whatever you like.”

Saying it was a waste of time to deal with a guy like this, Arina practically ran out of the room where the holy artifacts were hidden.

Lamian, quickly following at her heels, said in an irritated voice.

“The Young Lord’s room is right over there.”

The place he pointed to with those words was an iron door not far from the storehouse.

All sorts of impure thoughts raced through Arina’s mind as she came to an abrupt halt in her tracks.

…No way.

Soon, she glared sidelong at Lamian as if looking at human trash.

“I am truly deeply disappointed in Acklein. So much so that I regret wishing I had just left you all to smash to pieces.”

“Originally, he was supposed to dig a tunnel in the back mountain and live by himself, but we barely persuaded him and put him in there, so please don’t misunderstand.”

Leaving behind the man who beat his chest, saying they were even more upset, she went to the room in question.

Seeing the iron door, similar to the torture chamber she had been dragged to previously, made her stomach feel twisted.

Arina calmed her breathing for a moment and pounded on the door with a thud-thud.

“Young Lord, it’s Aria. I will excuse myself for a moment.”

Growing impatient, she turned the doorknob without permission. Fortunately, as if it wasn’t locked, it opened with a creak.

Inside the desolate space containing only a bed and a desk, reminiscent of a prison cell, a faint sound of breathing rose low.

“Young Lord Acklein.”

“……”

Did he die?

The moment she tried to step inside to check, Lamian grabbed her arm and stopped her.

“He is someone who usually cannot fall asleep. It seems he finally managed to fall asleep with difficulty, so let’s leave without disturbing him.”

“I don’t have time for that.”

Arina ruthlessly shoved the man who kept interfering with her business outside and slammed the door shut with a bang.

Locking it with a latch so he couldn’t get in at all, she heard him pounding on the door from the outside to open it. Completely ignoring this, she slowly approached the bedside.

“……”

Her red eyes stared intently at the body rising and falling rhythmically.

“I know very well that you aren’t sleeping. So wake up. I have a very important question.”

“……”

Staring daggers at the opponent, who kept his eyes tightly shut and showed no movement whatsoever, Arina struck home with a sharp remark.

“Demons do not have the desire for sleep, so they do not sleep. Humans with as much demonic power as a demon, just like you, are the same.”

The opponent still gave no answer.

It was the moment she grabbed his shoulder, wondering if there was something wrong with his body.

Slap.

“……”

Arina rubbed the stinging back of her hand and stared straight into the blue eyes glaring at her from within the darkness.