Chapter 36

Bang! Bang! Bang! 

The sound of knocking on the door echoed once more, as if reprimanding her hesitation.  

“Is anyone inside?”  

Bang! Bang! Bang!  

“Open the door! The night is already over!”  

Bang! Bang! Bang!  

“Girl! I know you’re in there!”  

The village watch captain, the town healer, and even the village chief…  

Although the thick plaster walls and tightly shut window shutters made it difficult to discern the voices outside, Shati, who had lived in the village her whole life, could recognize whose voices they were.  

Ah, so it was the healer who had lent her this house, and the village chief who had detained Selma.  

Realizing this, Shati’s shoulders began to tremble. She couldn’t let them find out she had spent the night of Magiella so nonchalantly. Her hands instinctively flew to her face. 

What should I do? Should I go down? But outside, there was still that lord’s corpse… No, they might think I did this. But I didn’t… I need to explain…  

At that moment, a sudden rustling of fabric darkened her vision.  

“You’re not planning to go out looking like that, are you?”  

“Ah, well…”  

When she lifted what had fallen over her head, she saw Karel’s back. She had thought he was still asleep, but there he was, already stepping past her and out the door. His upper body was bare.  

The object he had thrown over her was none other than a tunic she had spilled beer on once. As for the “that look” he mentioned…  

‘Oh no.’  

Her clothes had already been torn to shreds, leaving her in nothing but a camisole Karel had hastily pulled from the wardrobe. It was far too loose for her small frame, leaving her chest half-exposed, and her body was covered in the man’s handprints and bruises.  

Shati’s face flushed red with delayed embarrassment.  

Meanwhile, Karel, wearing only hastily donned trousers, had already reached the first floor. His disheveled appearance made it clear that no one in this village was worthy of his respect.  

Shati threw on the tunic Karel had tossed to her and hid herself where she wouldn’t be visible from the entrance. She held her breath and watched what was unfolding below.  

Bang! Bang! Bang!  

“Open the door!”  

Clatter, clatter.  

“What’s going on? Why won’t the key work?”  

Clatter, clatter. Bang! Bang! Bang!  

As the commotion outside continued, Karel casually knocked over the furniture and decorations propped against the door and opened it.  

Technically, “opened” wasn’t the right word—he had practically taken the door off its hinges, considering he had already broken them earlier.  

With the door now open, the sharp winter sunlight streamed into the dim interior.  

“My lord…!”  

“Oh, my goodness, the young noble…!”  

The men gathered at the door gasped in shock.  

The men, who had gathered in a frenzy to seize Shati after finding Randolph’s corpse, were stunned twice—once by the sound of furniture breaking inside, and again by the appearance of Karel.  

“He’s alive…!”  

“Oh, thank goodness you’ve returned safely!”  

The flustered healer began to babble, but the village chief managed to interrupt with a more tactful response. Even so, their eyes were darting around nervously.  

It had been three days since the night of Magiella had passed and the sun had risen. As usual, the village watchmen had been patrolling the area to check for any casualties when they discovered Randolph’s corpse.  

Regardless of the local sentiments about Randolph among the villagers of Oedel, the fact remained that the lord’s son had died.  

The watchmen immediately reported this to the village chief. The healer, who had spent the night of Magiella in the village, and other elders were quickly summoned.  

Thanks to the freezing winds of Magiella, the wounds inflicted by Karel had been frozen solid, leading the villagers to assume Randolph had succumbed to the cold rather than a blade.  

At best, they thought the impudent girl had somehow managed to push him out of the house.  

Moreover, they hadn’t expected Karel or his unit to return, which explained their ghost-like reactions to his sudden appearance.  

Only then did their eyes fall on the wound on Randolph’s neck.  

The shadowy part of his neck bore a deep gash that had severed half of it. Though no blood flowed, the sight was unmistakable.  

The faces of the village chief and the elders turned pale.  

While their gazes darted nervously, Karel leaned casually against the doorframe, looking down at them with an indifferent expression.  

“Perhaps… perhaps…”  

It was the watch captain who finally mustered the courage to speak. He felt responsible for having relayed the tales of the earth spirits to the village chief.  

“Did… did you, my lord…?”  

“‘Did I,’ what?”  

“N-no, I mean… May I ask what happened?”  

A sneer played across Karel’s sharp features.  

The man before them was a corpse, sure, and the lord’s son at that, but he had also offended the living son of Montferdia. The men stammered and struggled to find their words.  

“Well, uh, I mean…”  

The men, now accomplices by association, fell silent. The watch captain, feeling cornered, quickly cobbled together a plausible excuse.  

“There… there was a body in the garden, so we just wanted to ask if you knew anything about it…”  

The roundabout question was crude and clumsy.  

Karel, of course, understood exactly what they were trying to ask. He replaced his sneer with a cold glare and replied curtly.  

“I asked to stay here, but I was refused.”  

“R-refused…?”  

In the northern regions, where the Gray Mountain Range loomed, it was unthinkable to refuse shelter to a traveler on the night of Magiella.  

Had the deceased not been the lord’s son, this would have been considered self-defense and dismissed.  

But the watch captain couldn’t conclude the matter on his own, not with the chief and the elders glaring daggers at him from behind.  

As the captain’s eyes darted nervously, Karel, as if bestowing charity, elaborated.  

“Thanks to the watchmen’s maintenance of the outpost, my unit had no trouble staying there.”  

“Ah, yes, the mountain lodge… Yes, our watchmen took care of it.”  

“But there was nothing to warm the body.”  

“To warm…?”  

“For instance, the Elplü whiskey you introduced me to during the departure ceremony.”  

The chief and the elders stiffened.  

Randolph had brought the whiskey to flaunt the wealth of the northernmost territory to the son of Montferdia, yet no one had forgotten how Karel had coldly dismissed it during the farewell banquet.  

“So I came down to the village to share a drink with him.”  

“…I see.”  

“Or.”  

At Karel’s languid tone, the men in the garden shifted their gazes again. Their attitudes had long since changed from when they assumed only a girl was inside.  

“Perhaps he got drunk, lost his way, and froze to death. That works too.”  

The men’s faces drained of color.  

In other words, Karel was offering them a story to explain the misfortune that had befallen Eldorff’s beloved third son.  

“Or perhaps he attempted to assault Montferdia’s woman and was punished for it. But that might sound a bit far-fetched.”  

“Y-yes, who would believe such a thing?”  

The chief hastily agreed.  

Though he ruled the poorest estate in Cambiano’s northernmost region, he wasn’t so foolish as to miss the point.  

In the northernmost part of the Kingdom of Cambiano, he ruled over a humble territory within the Northern Gray Mountain Range. However, he was not so ignorant as to lack awareness. He immediately identified the lifeline he needed to grasp. While he wasn’t sure how long that lifeline would last, he was certain it was the one he needed to hold onto now.

“Th-then we will…”

“Your Grace!”

Just as the village chief was about to cut his words short, the sound of horses neighing and loud voices erupted from outside the fence.

“You’re safe, aren’t you?”

“Well, we believed you would be safe.”

“Are you cold?”

It was Karel’s unit. They had spent three days and nights at the mountain outpost, and upon confirming the harsh cold had subsided, they descended to the village.

“Th-then we will take care of the body ourselves…” 

The village chief muttered in a trembling voice, urging the vigilantes to carry Randolph’s corpse. The body, already prepared on a stretcher, was carefully loaded with a crumpled appearance. Frozen solid, they handled it cautiously, fearing it might be damaged from too much force. After all, it was the corpse of the lord’s son.

The physician, muttering to himself as if contemplating how to write the death certificate, followed the procession. It seemed he didn’t care about the fact that the incident had occurred in his own home or that all his belongings had been destroyed.

The expedition members immediately recognized the identity of the corpse on the stretcher. Despite the face being blackened by frostbite, the physique, the luxurious clothes he wore, and the jeweled rings adorning his fingers made identification easy.

They, too, quickly grasped the situation.

“Did you stay here?”

“Go ahead.”

Winden, with hollow eyes, tried to quietly glance behind Karel but stopped himself from thinking further. Everything had already happened. There was nothing he could intervene in.

“I’ll go fetch some clothes.”

Disregarding Winden’s words, Karel entered the house without a reply.