“No, don’t even think about such reasons. It’s simple: when I strike, you take the hit. With good luck, you might avoid one or two blows. If you endure well until I get bored and want to stop, your precious family might somehow continue its lineage, but I’m a persistent person with plenty of time, so I’m not sure that will happen.”

He patted the Marquis’s shoulder lightly a couple of times. It was mockery rather than encouragement. 

Licht, who had boarded the carriage after Serena, got out again before closing the door, seemingly having remembered something. Without hesitation, his outstretched hand grabbed the Marquis’s chin.

“Urgh!”

“And you and Cecil, you two would be better off not appearing before my eyes again. If the day comes when we meet again, you’ll spend your entire life realizing what a blessing death would be.”

Licht could easily send them to hell. With just a slight touch to their desires, he could make father and son point swords at each other, or make them cling to each other disgustingly. An even filthier hell awaited them.

Licht’s gaze fell on the Marquis’s hand that had struck Serena. Just thinking about Serena being hit made his grip on the chin tighten involuntarily.

“Gu-guh, aagh.”

It felt like his jaw would break. The Marquis struggled to remove the hand but it was futile. Should he just finish him off now? 

Despite watching the Marquis writhing in agony, Licht’s expressionless face showed no emotion.

“Licht.”

Serena quietly called him from inside the carriage. Clicking his tongue, Licht released the Marquis. Even if she hadn’t stopped him, he had no intention of killing him right away. 

Such a comfortable death would be a luxury for the Marquis. And even though Serena had steeled her resolve, seeing her father sent to hell right before her eyes would still hurt her.

When he entered the carriage, leaving the Marquis couple behind, he saw Serena sitting rigidly, looking straight ahead. She must have heard the Marquis’s screams from inside but deliberately avoided turning her head in that direction. Pleased by this, he sat beside her.

The carriage slowly began to move. He pulled her still-tense shoulders into his embrace.

“Is it difficult? Tell me anytime if it’s painful. I won’t do anything if you don’t want me to.”

“No. I decided to leave everything to you. And you’re right. I should get it all back.”

What she had lost wasn’t money or possessions. If she hadn’t met Licht, her entire life would have been trampled under the feet of the Bluebell family for their glory. 

Fortunately, she escaped before that happened, but no one could compensate for her childhood that left no happy memories.

Even if they had used and manipulated her, the ending might have been different if they had at least apologized or, with their last bit of conscience, quietly let her become independent. But no one in the Bluebell family apologized to Serena, and they rejected her final request not to marry.

“You’re doing well. Keep being greedy like that. Everything you want will become yours.”

“Yes. That’s why I’m thinking hard right now.”

“About what?”

“About which research to start when we return, where to go with Licht next, and how to fill myself again.”

Though it wasn’t as painful as before when she wanted to die, Serena still occasionally felt a great sense of loss. She had overcome days when she couldn’t find the strength to get up after falling, and now she was gradually beginning to find the courage to move forward.

“You still don’t really understand what love is, right?”

“But if you tell me to bring it to you, I’ll give it to you.”

Now, instead of saying love was fiction or that he didn’t know what love was, Licht only gave her the answers she wanted. Serena smiled with satisfaction at his perfectly trained response. 

Perhaps if this man continued to talk to her like this by her side, she felt a vague expectation that it might be possible to rebuild herself from now on.

Licht didn’t need to worry about what love was. After all, she would demand everything from him, and he would have to give everything of himself.

“If my greed makes you happy, I’ll constantly insist you give me everything and be very demanding. If that makes you happy, and if you give everything to me because of it, that’s love for us.”

She craved to devour all the pleasures that existed in the world greedily, and longed for the most ecstatic cl*max on the bed that Licht would bring. If her overflowing desire pleased him, Serena resolved to gladly become the most terribly greedy person in the world.

* * *

Whether it was thanks to her time at the academy, or because the southern climate suited her better from the start, Serena adapted surprisingly well to the Duke’s mansion. 

When she first arrived, her bloodless white skin made her immediately recognizable as a northerner to anyone who saw her, but living in the south gave her a healthy complexion.

The clothing she always wore, which had been suffocatingly proper, naturally became lighter and more comfortable. Serena, who had believed all her life that she preferred achromatic colors, discovered that she actually liked vibrant, colorful dresses.

She ate seafood well but still preferred meat, and she preferred fruit over meat.

Her addiction to the written word remained uncured, but she had begun reading poetry collections written by troubadours and novels filled with exciting romance.

“Be careful coming down so you don’t get hurt.”

“Did I arrive on time?”

Serena dismounted from her horse, almost falling into Licht’s arms.

Another hobby she had discovered was horseback riding. 

Though she had been skilled at riding since her academy days, she had mostly traveled by carriage afterward, so Serena didn’t know she had a talent for horseback riding. 

It was impossible to know since the north was too cold, and she rarely engaged in outdoor activities due to her busy work at the research institute.

But after coming to the south, the spacious riding ground that Licht had prepared helped Serena discover horseback riding as a new hobby.

Tomorrow was finally the opening day of the magical engineering research institute that Licht had been creating. She had specially requested to look around the completed facility before the opening.

“Oh, didn’t you say before that the goal was to create small, trivial, but fun magical tools?”

The facility was much better than she had expected. Although Serena was going to be the director of the institute and had definitely participated in the initial planning, the scale far exceeded what they had discussed.

“That was the plan, but things got a bit bigger? We can’t let the people who came over from the Bluebell Institute sit idle, so I thought we should also cover the fields they were handling.”

“The Marquis must be furious.”