Pfeil awoke to the sight of a dilapidated room.
“… I was careless.”
Ignoring the lacerations and dull pain assaulting his body, he stood up. Blood was flowing, but before stopping it, he searched for a certain person.
“Ernesta, are you not here? Ernesta?”
There was no reply.
This was the Kaif Family’s mansion, and Ernesta Kaif’s room, but there was no sign of anyone.
He had heard that Ernesta’s family was away in the Capital City on business, so he wasn’t worried. The problem, however, was Ernesta.
He searched her room thoroughly throughout the mansion, but could not find Ernesta.
“What happened to her?”
After drinking water in the kitchen, he borrowed a towel and began bandaging his wounds.
The lacerations were not deep, but because they were inflicted by Wind Magic, the bleeding showed no signs of stopping. He briefly considered cauterizing the wounds, but decided to take a hemostatic agent instead. He didn’t want to waste any unnecessary stamina.
As he wrapped bandages around his body, he recalled what happened just before he lost consciousness.
“Ernesta’s demeanor had clearly changed. Like—a manipulated doll.”
He had repeated many trivial conversations with Ernesta. She often spoke unilaterally, but for Pfeil, for reasons unknown, it was a pleasant time.
There was a sense of peace of mind there, the kind he felt in the mansion where he lived with Jared and the others.
Pfeil, who had been with Ernesta since morning, was listening to her in her room as usual. The conversations, which began with truly minor things, were all the kind of content that the former Pfeil would have ignored. However, he remembered that it was strangely pleasant to his ears.
But Ernesta’s demeanor changed completely.
Her smile vanished, and she became like a doll. It didn’t end there; she didn’t respond when he spoke to her, and after seeming dazed, she suddenly tried to leave the room.
Worried, he reached out to take her hand—and a wind blade attacked Pfeil, ravaging the room.
“She’s likely being controlled by some Curse technique. This must be related to the incident where Ernesta collapsed in Duke Rüdiger’s territory.”
There was nothing else he could think of.
He wanted to gather information, but time was of the essence.
If someone was controlling Ernesta, he was also curious about what they were making her do.
After finishing his first aid, Pfeil checked the number of knives he currently possessed. He regretted not having any arrows, but at worst, he would be no match for magic.
He had already broken Waalthe’s taboo. What was two or three more times? —He thought, with a composure the former Pfeil would not have possessed.
And then—
“Wait for me, Ernesta.”
The instant Pfeil left the mansion to search for her, with no clue where to start—
“Is that Jared’s magic?”
From the direction of the Alway Ducal Family Villa, he felt an immense surge of magic power being unleashed.
He felt the angry magic so intensely it was painful. He understood that some foolish person had angered Jared.
“Ernesta is probably there too.”
—Trouble seems to gather around Jared.
While thinking that the person himself would deny it if he heard it, Pfeil leaped, ignoring his aching body.
