[Don’t, it doesn’t seem right to leave right now!]
A soft, lodious voice sounded in her head.
[Yeah, there’s sothing weird. Why else would she have left you alone and gone out?]
[Let’s think for a mont, Klara.]
Agris, Ifril.
The two Elentals that had ford a contract with her.
Being Greater Elentals, they were adept at detecting danger. Hearing what the two Elentals were saying, Klara nodded.
“......It’s a trap.”
It made sense when she thought about it.
Hadn’t that Beast Rosemary infiltrated the Empire and eroded it? No way would she have left her this carelessly.
Besides, she also needed to see her sister. Rosemary seed to know where Klais was so she shouldn’t even dream of escaping before she saw her.
Back to her senses, Klara returned to the bed and lay down.
“.......”
As she fiddled with the microfiber covers while thinking about so things–
Her body trembled more and more.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of this situation or that it was cold beneath the covers.
Torture.
Her body would occasionally go out of control due to all the torture.
Right now was one of those tis.
“Ughh....”
The mories of being tortured surfaced one by one. In the blink of an eye, Klara was breathing harshly.
She sat crouched with the covers over her head, her arms and legs curled in to protect her head and vital organs. It was an instinctive move.
But her shoulders didn’t stop shaking, and her breathing beca increasingly labored.
And just as she was about to black out–
[Are you okay?]
[Breathe in slowly, then breathe out. You can do it, right?]
Klara took deep breaths so as to not fall into panic, expelling all the carbon dioxide trapped in the alveoli.
Clear head, calm heart.
“Hic, sniff.......”
She wanted to see her sister.
Klais was here, apparently; she might even be right next door.
Or she could be locked up in a basent sowhere suffering torture worse than what she had been put through....
Even if it was before she died, she wanted to see that sister one last ti.
She wanted to see her and hold her cheek. Would it be okay to be a little greedy? She’d wish for nothing more if they could have a simple al together.
Yes, they’d catch up while they ate. Is father doing well? she’d ask, and tell her with a smile that I was actually alive. Then finally tell her that she loved her over and over again, yes, just like.......
Click.
“Oh, so you didn’t run away.”
A Beast entered making a aningful face. It was Rosemary.
Having pulled in a four-tiered food cart with delicate hands, Rosemary put down dishes one by one on the desk and sighed as if she was relieved.
“I forgot halfway, was nervous that you might’ve taken off.”
“Excuse ?”
“Nothing. But what’s wrong with your eyes? Were you crying?”
“I didn’t.”
Dignity, she first had to maintain her dignity.
Klara answered petulantly as she wiped at her eyes with her sleeve.
“You’re trying to get , aren’t you.”
“Nah, of course not.”
Rosemary smiled mysteriously.
There was no way to tell if she was being sly or she was smiling because she was truly stupid. It was probably the forr.
“Ah, if I knew, I would’ve used Scope.”
“And what does that an....”
“Alright then, let’s eat.”
Rosemary took out one dish after another from the cart.
With every lid she opened, the aroma that wafted and rich visuals captivated the five senses.
Starting with the main dish which was smoked duck and stewed horned chicken, toasted ham sandwich with its crispy texture and a carrot salad topped with fresh vegetables.
Sushi made with yellowtail amberjack acquired with difficulty from Kaurelia’s oceans, and honey tomato spaghetti with round atballs.
Along with that, she’d brought string carrot stir-fry and a carrot sandwich as side dishes.
The appetizer was carrot soup, and there was carrot juice for dessert.......
Wait a minute.
Sothing was weird.
“W-why are there so many carrots......?”
“Beta-carotene.”
“What?”
“Eat it if you want to get healthier.”
Rosemary waved carrots cut into sticks and put them down on a plate.
Klara’s brain froze for a second, then she soon snapped out of it and ca up with one possibility.
Yes, she got it.
This was food torture.
The latest, humanitarian torture of driving a person insane by eventually feeding them only one kind of food!
“Why, you’re not going to eat?”
Rosemary picked up her fork while smiling wickedly.
It had been a while since she served food to a human so she had decided to prioritize quality over flavor, and nutrition over quantity.
In fact, if one looked at the nu she laid out, they’d know that it was strictly for the purpose of Klara’s recovery.
“Damn it....”
Not that Klara could know Rosemary’s intentions.
However.
For Klara, who had only been rationed one piece of bread a day, there was no other choice.
**Rosemary’s nursing(?) paid off.
It must have been only a few hours.
She was full and warm. Klara naturally fell asleep, and Rosemary locked up all the windows and doors from the outside in the anti.
This wasn’t to contain Klara, but rather to protect her.
The day that Gilach discovered that Klara Hasfeldt was currently in Quartus’ room... it would be the end of both of them.
They’d be lucky if they were only skewered with the hook, but judging from his savage personality, it was obvious that sothing unsettling would happen.
But.
So what?
“I just need to not get caught, no?”
Rosemary was calm and collected.
As much as Gilach’s hooks were closer in proximity, the nuclear weapons that Aether made were terrible enough to bring about the mass extinction of the world.
To be honest, as long as she didn’t get caught, Aether was far scarier than the yellow-eyed elf. She had no doubt about that.
Anyway, the plan that Rosemary ca up with to stop the world’s destruction was compact in many ways.
The first step of that plan started with a body.
“Oomph. This should be good, right?”
She collected a few bodies of Elental Mages that had been lying around Sector Zero.
Those who had not survived the torture. Those who had fallen victim to Gilach’s hooks. Ones who had starved, gone mad, or died of blood loss.
“Sorry, but there’s no ti to send you off properly.”
Rosemary did a comparison analysis of the bodies she had brought.
“Damn it, they’ve all been ripped out.”
There had to be traces of Elentals in order to pretend that it was Klara’s corpse. Most of them had already been eaten by Gilach.
The only thing there was was a tiny bit of residual thoughts. If she gathered these, then she should be able to imitate it sohow. Except she’d need a lot more corpses to go this route.
“How annoying.”
Rosemary moved quickly, since she had to grab whatever scraps she could before Gilach returned. After she absorbed the Elental fragnts in a specially-made bottle, she incinerated most of the bodies.
“Let’s see.... Is there any one that’s decent?”
She looked around and collected another decent corpse, one that had a similar physique to Klara’s. The hair was different, but she could fake that.
Rosemary lit a stick–Goldenstein. A cigarette that supplied several tis the amount of mana compared to regular mana grass.
“Huu.”
The arm that was hit by White Night was trembling. A technique that left aftereffects even on a machine. Honestly, wasn’t this also partially Aether’s fault?
There wasn’t ti for random thoughts. Rosemary took out her staff, then raised her violin and tuned the strings.
[Legendary Innate Magic ─ Requiem]
[The Third Movent ─ Variation]
The ‘Variation’ movent that tuned souls and faked corpses.
While it wasn’t a good spell for combat, it was extrely useful for infiltration purposes, especially for faking the death of a public figure and such.
Rosemary played with focus, and a beautiful tune began to flow. A viscous lody like molasses wrapped around the naless female corpse.
But it was unstable sohow, the feeling of sothing being slightly off. She would’ve been disqualified in the preliminaries had this been a competition.
“Ah.”
In the end, she lost her strength and hit the wrong note.
And her entire body loosened in fatigue. The mana that had filled her lungs was dispelled at once, the consequences of attempting magic.
“This fucking.......”
Rosemary’s tired gaze moved to the hand holding the string. Her right hand trembled like a drug addict’s.
It was the aftereffect of White Night.
To properly use Requiem, she had to play the movent without going off-tune.
But she’d been pierced through the arm with White Night, and she couldn’t play with a hand like this. Being able to walk wasn’t everything.
Right now, for the first ti in her life, Rosemary felt a great sense of debilitation.
Even so, how was it that she couldn’t use her own Innate Magic?
Like this, she was just ‘miscellaneous monster 1’ rather than an executive of the Demon Army. There was nothing good about her except for the fact that she had yellow eyes. Scope? What would be the point in using that here!
And ‘Requiem’ wasn’t even an instant spell. It didn’t cast as soon as mana was used, but only activated after she finished playing as well.
“Fuck, this won’t do.”
She tried a few more tis, but only exhausted herself. Too much mana had gone in and out of her body. She was tired, wanting to go to bed and rest.
Rosemary lowered the string and let out a sigh.
She moved the well-covered body over onto a stretcher. It couldn’t be helped. She’d put this in the closet for now and use it later.
Gilach might be coming back soon.
Ah, there he is.
After checking his location with Scope, Rosemary put the string away.
She figured it would take about a month for her body to recover, and the plan she had co up with would also take a month. It was perfect.
She might have screwed up at the end, but extracting Klara right now was still the best decision.
Why, because she was going to send her to Aether soon.
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