9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 183 - The Abyss (4)
Author: Dawn
Johann slowly walked in. Wearing what looked like sweltering Ossel uniform, clutching something in his hand.
“I greet Your Excellency the Supreme Leader.”
As he saluted, Kruger nodded slightly and asked.
“So, you’ve finished the investigation?”
I already knew that Johann had received orders to dig into my background. After all, Kruger had told me himself.
“Since I can’t read your memories, this was the only way, wasn’t it?”
He had said it teasingly.
What choice had Johann made after reading my letter? At least he should understand that exposing everything here would be self-destruction.
Johann reported in detail where he’d gone and whom he’d met, without sparing me so much as a glance.
To summarize Johann’s account,
Lucas Redan had lived a trash life, and the grinding poverty that tormented him wasn’t his family’s fault.
Well, if you call stupidly getting backstabbed by your butler a fault, then it was a fault.
‘Ho, interesting. So I had such tremendous wealth.’
I perked up my ears as if listening to someone else’s story and mentally commented. It really was someone else’s story after all.
‘I have plenty of money now anyway. My parents’ wrongful deaths… may they rest in peace.’
The fortune the steward had embezzled was regrettable, but it wasn’t mine to begin with anyway.
‘More importantly, it seems the Queen didn’t know about that situation. If the steward hadn’t betrayed them back then, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten caught up in this insane business.’
At this point, it was all pointless speculation.
“Lucas, you were quite naive at times, weren’t you?”
Kruger looked toward me with apparent amusement.
“To fall for such an obvious scheme.”
“Yes, I was young and foolish then.”
I replied listlessly.
“So what happened to that butler?”
“Executed on the spot.”
Johann politely answered Kruger’s question.
“I sorted through the fortune he’d embezzled and returned it to state ownership.”
“Hmm, Lucas. Aren’t you the rightful owner? Of the mansion and fortune alike.”
“If war had broken out, it would’ve been requisitioned anyway, so what does it matter? Besides, if I’d lived well-off, I wouldn’t have become a civil servant or risen to Your Excellency’s side.”
“True enough. For you, money is merely a means. By the way, Colonel Werner, what’s that in your hand?”
Johann held out a strangely shaped object.
About the size to fit in an adult man’s palm, roughly cube-shaped if you had to categorize it. The color was bright red. A liquid that looked like blood sloshed within the transparent crystal.
Crystal branches surrounded a core floating in the center, intertwined in geometric structures.
“According to Tobias Heiman, it’s a royal treasure. It flowed into the Redan family during the revolution, but after the Redan couple died, no one knew how to open it, so they kept it buried away.”
Kruger took the strange object.
From my peripheral vision, it seemed designed so the crystal branches could be rotated like solving a puzzle. Like a cube, essentially.
But without any letters or pictures as hints, it was hard to guess what it was for.
On two opposite faces were small keyhole-like openings, but there were no keys to be seen anywhere.
Kruger observed the cube, slowly rotating it.
“Not so simple.”
He stretched out his hand, and with a flash of light, a long sword appeared in the air.
Gripping the sword, Kruger muttered an unfamiliar magic incantation. When nothing happened, he struck the cube mercilessly with the blade.
Clang!
When the blade touched it, it made a sound like striking metal. Of course, not even a scratch appeared on the cube.
“It seems only royalty can open it. Come here, Lucas.”
I approached the armchair from the corner and knelt.
“I know nothing about it.”
“Seeing it might jog your memory.”
The moment I grasped the cube he held out, suddenly spike-like thorns burst from the keyholes, piercing both mine and Kruger’s hands.
“Ah!”
Drops of blood trickled along the shining crystal branches.
Flash!
Light flickered before my eyes.
Blood Pact
Remember this, you
You shall protect your pact partner from all threats
You cannot harm them with your two hands, two eyes, one mouth
If you break the pact, you shall share fate with your pact partner
The noble curse shall continue
Until you die
Until the pact bloodline is severed
The branches rotated mechanically as they opened, and golden light particles gathered here and there, forming letters.
Still holding the cube with both hands, I stared blankly at the incomprehensible characters.
Heat rose in my body.
In an instant, events lined up in sequence in my head.
My overloaded brain spun furiously, finding the optimal answer.
I finally understood everything.
“Your Excellency.”
My voice came out trembling, utterly powerless.
“Your Excellency.”
I took a deep breath and whispered.
“You cannot kill me.”
***
The moment I gripped the cube, one memory came clearly to mind.
Lucas was about seven years old.
The night his grandmother was dragged away by Ossel and returned covered in blood. Lucas, who had fallen asleep exhausted from crying, suddenly woke to pain spreading through his fingertips.
His father was pricking his fingertip with a large needle. Though startled Lucas wailed, his father wouldn’t let him go.
Beside them, his mother gripped Lucas’s hand tightly and caught the drops of blood in a glass cup. Then she held the violently sobbing child close and comforted him.
Lucas suffered from high fever for days, tormented all the while by nightmares.
Nightmares where grotesque monster-like Ossels dragged his grandmother away to trample her, and the large needle stabbed all over his body until he was covered in blood.
After exactly five days, Lucas woke with half his face paralyzed, but looked at his parents with brighter, more alert eyes than ever before.
“I want to join the Kruger Youth Corps! Please buy me a uniform!”
That was the first thing Lucas said with an innocent smile.
His parents, who had been shedding tears of relief beside his sickbed, were horrified, and Lucas could never remember.
Not his grandmother being dragged away, nor his fingertip being pricked with the needle.
‘I don’t give a damn about Lucas’s sad backstory.’
I focused on the characters before my eyes. The truth that memory pointed to was clear.
Probably both the King’s blood and Kruger’s blood had been absorbed into that cube.
Blood Pact.
‘You’ was Kruger.
‘Pact partner’ was the King.
That was the natural interpretation. Kruger had been knight commander, with the duty to protect the Berg royal family.
The curse would continue until ‘you’ died, until ‘the pact bloodline’ was severed.
Combining that…
‘That night, when the King died, Lucas must have been connected as the new pact partner. His parents must have applied or inserted blood into the cube. The fact that it opened the moment both mine and Kruger’s hands touched it makes it certain.
The thorns that burst out to draw blood? Does it operate on blood? Or maybe it’s a procedure to verify the rightful owner.’
Such a massive realization made my head throb, and my whole body ached from the intense tension.
‘Was it like final insurance for their precious only son? As Ossel’s threats intensified, they prepared for the worst case. Using business failures as an excuse to secretly siphon money while preparing to relocate to Rubellia… Though it fell through due to the butler’s betrayal.
Maybe they intended to tell him about the family secret and this magic in Rubellia. Before that, no matter how you looked at it, Lucas was completely obsessed with Kruger, so it would’ve been impossible.’
My headache grew worse.
“What an interesting object.”
After what felt like an eternity of silence, Kruger spoke.
Time had stopped at some point. Everything was frozen, with only Kruger and I moving in this room.
The clouds outside the window, Eve and Johann, even the gold dragon Chryseus.
My hand fell away and the light faded once more. Kruger examined the cube while muttering.
“Lucas, do you know? I couldn’t kill the King. Because of this very pact. But the King committed suicide before my eyes, and rumors spread that I’d assassinated him.”
“Perhaps Your Excellency spread those rumors yourself.”
“Ahahaha!”
At my response, Kruger burst into slightly more animated laughter.
“That’s right, I did.”
“You must have thought the pact was severed when the King died.”
“Exactly.”
“And you had no idea the King had secretly smuggled out this… evidence of the pact to pass it to someone of royal blood.”
“Right, I learned that just now.”
“I can’t imagine how it ended up in the Redan family’s hands either.”
I asked in a whisper.
“When did you realize? That a new pact partner had appeared.”
“Of course, you’d be curious about that.”
Kruger sank deep into his armchair and spoke languidly.
“When you were trapped in this castle’s underground dungeon, nearly dying. I faced death’s door alongside you then.”
He rolled up his trouser leg. From ankle to knee, black crack-like marks bloomed like flowers. Like tattoos.
“Tetanus…”
“Yes, identical to your tetanus scars.”
“But I don’t have scars.”
When I’d fainted and been hospitalized, the healing mage had cured the tetanus and erased the scars too.
“Pacts are curses, Lucas. Once made, wounds never disappear.”
The blackened leg looked eerie rather than hideous.
“I was trapped for five days. Why did you push it to the limit? Both me and yourself.”
“I was curious.”
Kruger rested his chin on his hand and replied nonchalantly.
“You would have done the same. Could you have resisted that curiosity about whether the curse would really kill me? Though I had other purposes too.”
To make me submit…
Hatred immediately surged up, but I didn’t get angry or throw a punch.
Questions came first. Along with the hatred, intense curiosity gripped me. Just like he’d said.
“Your Excellency, do you remember? When I was at the border unit, you tried to have me killed. To create justification for invading Cortana.”
“Of course I remember.”
“But at the last moment, you saved me. I thought it was because I’d read your mind, that you’d become interested in me. If I had died at Ferint’s hands then…”
“I would have died too, Lucas.”
Kruger’s voice was monotonous.
“Your reasoning is correct. I’d forgotten the pact then. It was just that neither you nor I were destined to die.”
“Then why did you send me to war? If I’d been hit by a bullet or bomb, you wouldn’t have remained unharmed either.”
“Same thing. I was curious.”
He leaned toward me.
“I never ordered your death, nor deliberately left you in a situation to die. You were safely protected among countless soldiers. So there was absolutely no chance you’d die. But I certainly did thrust you into war. So how would this ‘curse’ judge that?”
“How was it?”
“That too was treated as betraying the pact. Quite troublesome magic. Every time you stood at life’s crossroads, I had to feel inexplicable pain. Quite amusing, don’t you think?”
“Not amusing.”
At my firm answer, Kruger laughed loudly.
“Ahahahahaha! Do you resent me then? That’s why I saved you, by sending Ferint instead to protect you.”
I recalled the nuclear explosion the Batalland archmage had unleashed. Ferint had all protected me then. On Supreme Leader’s orders, they’d said.
I’d thought Kruger had accepted my suicide attempt as some kind of battle of wills, but there was this twist.
‘Fuck, how embarrassing!’
My face burned with shame as I hung my head.
All this time I’d thought I’d done well surviving under that crazy dictator. That I’d succeeded at precarious tightrope walking. That I’d fooled and outmaneuvered that bastard.
How arrogant that thinking had been.
Once I realized it, only hollow laughter remained.
Kruger simply couldn’t kill me. He’d kept me alive because he didn’t want to share destruction with me.
Why keep someone who raged about killing him close by? The doubts I’d occasionally pushed down came flooding back.
I’d just thought it was because he was crazy. Because he was interested in me. Because he knew I couldn’t lay a finger on him anyway, so he acted so complacently.
But that was only half the truth.
He couldn’t eliminate me. Instead he tried to monitor me. To prevent me from dying at will!
‘I was completely dancing in his palm!’
Expression management was becoming harder.
‘Fuck, this really is a community of fate.’
That bastard couldn’t kill me?
That meant nothing to me.
After all, I didn’t care if I died, or suffered worse than death, as long as I could snap that bastard’s neck.
And if Kruger came at me with the same ‘you die, I die’ mentality, that would be the end. I’d obviously get cut down in one second.
Conversely, I could never kill a genius knight who wielded magic freely, Kruger. At least not with my strength alone.
Commit suicide and aim for mutual destruction?
But I had no idea what judgment this ‘curse’ would render.
‘Then…’
I raised my head with an expressionless face. Kruger was looking down at me.
“Surprised, Lucas?”
“Yes, Your Excellency. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t surprised.”
When I answered calmly, a subtle smile returned.
“But think about it. Nothing has changed.”
“That’s true. But I’ve learned a new fact. Your Excellency absolutely cannot kill me. Unless you’re prepared to die.”
“Right, a trivial matter.”
Kruger replied lightly and held out the cube.
“Treasure it carefully. Don’t let another royal descendant steal it away.”
Says the one who killed them all.
I suppressed the complaint trying to slip out and politely accepted it again.
Flash!
And once more, light flickered before my eyes.
Author's Thoughts
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Dawn
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