He stomped on the hill he was sitting on with his heel and spoke.

 

“This is a gift from me, as thanks for showing me such an entertaining sight.”

 

At those words, Karlheinz lowered his gaze and examined the unidentified pile carefully. Though obscured by black mist, the shapes that occasionally appeared were clearly human arms and legs.

 

“Aha, so while the real culprit was right in front of me, I was suspecting my idiot brother.”

 

Marex had gathered at least thirty corpses into a single pile and was sitting on top of it.

 

“It could be, or it might not. Think whatever you want.”

 

On top of that, the black-haired man created another small mountain with just a few gestures.

 

This time, it was a hill made of the knights who had gone out to hunt the fishermen.

 

Yet even in the face of this silent threat, Karlheinz showed no sign of yielding and instead responded with a relaxed attitude.

 

“Haha, hahaha! The Tower Master who dabbled in forbidden alchemy is acting like an apostle of justice.”

 

Then his face hardened as he asked Marex,

 

“Do you know why I’ve been desperately reaching out to you throughout the hunting festival?”

 

He strode forward and placed his hand on the head of a dead knight. The corpse let out a grotesque sound and rose to its feet.

 

“It was to show you this.”

 

Marex remained expressionless at the sight before him, but he couldn’t hide the spark of interest that flashed in his eyes.

 

Noticing this, Karlheinz raised one corner of his mouth and asked,

 

“How does it feel to see the power you’ve longed for with your own eyes?”

 

“Well, from what I see, it looks like a power with rather low completion.”

 

At Marex’s reply, Karlheinz’s expression stiffened in displeasure. He lightly tapped the shoulder of the revived knight.

 

Then, light returned to the knight’s previously clouded eyes, and he even……

 

“I shall obey your command, Your Highness.”

 

He moved and spoke as naturally as if he had been perfectly resurrected.

 

Karlheinz turned away, leaving the knight behind.

 

As if all the courtesy he had shown until now had been purely formal, he spoke in an arrogant voice.

 

“If you wish, I can even show you the miracle of bringing back someone whose body has completely perished. Of course, on the condition that you join hands with me.”

 

At those final words, Marex’s pupils trembled slightly.

 

🦋

 

The next morning, as if to prove that nothing had happened the night before, her room was neatly organized.

 

‘Was that some kind of wild dream…? Has there ever been a dream this crazy?’

 

Renata, who had woken up disheveled, hung the dress she had roughly taken off beside the bed on a hanger and looked around.

 

If the scenes swirling in her head had truly happened, there should have been one shoe near the door and a jacket fallen under the bed.

 

But contrary to her worries, there was nothing around.

 

‘Maybe I drank too much and had a weird dream…’

 

Renata let out a big sigh of relief, then quickly washed up, dried her hair, put on a blouse and skirt, and finished preparing for work.

 

Since it was the weekend after the canceled banquet, there probably wasn’t much to do anyway.

 

‘It was a dream. Just a dream.’

 

With her mind in chaos, she deliberately moved even more busily.

 

Heading to her office, Renata pulled out her chair to read the daily newspaper and various newsletters on the desk and discovered something.

 

“Huh?”

 

A gift box was sitting alone on the chair.

 

Without much thought, she opened the lid and inside……

 

“…Haha.”

 

It was the shoe she had worn yesterday—the one that had come off and rolled across the floor.

 

In truth, ever since waking up, Renata had been gripped by anxiety that it might not have been a dream.

 

Her lips were swollen, and while all the clothes and accessories she wore yesterday were there, only the shoes were missing. It was strange.

 

‘…I must be crazy. Seriously.’

 

On top of that, the heat that had lingered in her mouth and the warmth of the body pressed against hers felt far too vivid.

 

If it had really been a dream, it wouldn’t feel like this.

 

Hoping desperately that it wasn’t hers, she examined the shoe from every angle, but it was all futile.

 

‘This isn’t the time to be in denial…’

 

She needed to think about how to handle this.

 

To do that, she first had to carefully review the sequence of events.

 

Who, when, where, what, how, and why…

 

‘His Highness and I, last night, in the bedroom…’

 

Just from the beginning, she already felt a strong pull at the back of her head.

 

Oh God. Why did you bestow upon the human world such a wicked thing as alcohol?

 

Holding the shoe, Renata sighed, laughed as if air had filled her lungs, then made a gloomy face again. She was the very picture of a madwoman.

 

Then she suddenly stopped all her actions, blocked by the question of ‘why’.

 

How on earth had she ended up spending such a chaotic night?

 

What had been the starting point?

 

Renata mostly remembered last night, but there were some blurry moments.

 

For example, when the alcohol had worn off a little, that part where the incident began didn’t come to mind clearly.

 

What kind of action had she taken then, and how had he reacted…

 

‘Ah, I think I remember something His Highness said.’

 

“Why are you doing this?”

 

“Do you even know what you’re doing right now?”

 

“You started it first.”

 

Uh…? Don’t tell me I…

 

“Goodness, haha, hahaha…”

 

So I did it. Yeah, I was the one. Why on earth did I do that? Why?

 

She had always responded defensively whenever the prince used his handsome face to bewilder her or acted in confusing ways, yet she did this just because she drank some alcohol?

 

‘But why did he go along with all of it…’

 

She was the one who stole the first kiss, but honestly, wasn’t the other party the one who responded passionately, and quite violently at that?

 

And she had some unfair points too.

 

She didn’t have big fantasies about a first kiss. No, to be honest, she had been too busy living day by day to even think about it, but still, she never expected it to be like this.

 

Was a kiss such an intensely lingering act?

 

When she closed her eyes, she could still clearly feel the sensation.

 

The way he greedily swept over and tried to devour her, moving purely on instinct as if he didn’t know how to do it properly.

 

‘How am I supposed to face His Highness now…’

 

Regardless of the process, she was the one who first committed the rude act, and he was the one who suffered it.

 

She knew the answer was to beg for forgiveness and crawl on her knees to pay for her sin in some way, but it was definitely not an easy path.

 

Fearing that if she stayed here, Theodore might come looking for her again, just like he had left the shoe, Renata hurriedly tried to leave.

 

However, her attempt failed.

 

It was because the headline of the newsletter on the desk was far from ordinary.

 

[Port Stained with Blood, Glimford – Whose Doing Is It?]

 

The sinking of a royal cargo ship, traces of magic, and the massacre of village residents…

 

There must have been something important to the crown prince on that ship, so the prince attacked it.

 

And upon receiving the news, the crown prince would have rushed to the scene, and the Tower Master who followed him would also have been there.

 

“What on earth happened?”

 

Judging that the situation was no small matter, Renata decided to set aside her personal feelings for now and inform Theodore of what had occurred.

 

She went straight to the prince’s office, the reception room he used for resting, and the garden where he had stayed to avoid the furious king’s summons, but he was nowhere to be found.

 

Only his bedroom remained. Her steps toward it were extremely heavy.

 

‘If I’m just careful, nothing will happen, haha…’

 

Repeatedly reminding herself that she was the root cause of the accident, Renata barely managed to stand in front of the prince’s bedroom door.

 

Steel herself, she knocked, but there was no sound from inside.

 

‘Is he sleeping? Or is he not here?’

 

After knocking a couple more times, Renata carefully turned the doorknob and peeked inside.

 

There was no presence at all, and the bed showed no signs of anyone having slept in it, but—

 

‘The window is open again…?’