BANG!!
Morian"s head smashed into the hard, cold stone floor. Her teeth came loose and her nose bone broke. The girl pressed her kitchen knife against Morian"s neck next.
Accompanying the chilling sensation, the neck skin split apart slightly, and blood began dripping out between the cold metal and human flesh.
Morian had studied human anatomy so she immediately realised that even a small resistance would result in her artery being cut wide open.
She was suppressed even before she had enough time to s.h.i.+ver from fear.
The Imperial Prince looked at the platinum-haired girl with a surprised expression, then walked over to Morian.
"Man, that surprised me."
The boy looked down at the captured Necromancer, "Morian", with a slightly fl.u.s.tered expression. Her shaking eyes alternated between the prince and the girl.
They both were carrying icy-cold glares.
Morian quickly looked around her vicinity and saw the villagers standing nearby. Having found out that she was the Necromancer, their eyes were just as cold, containing clear hints of killing intent, too.
Obviously, they hated her for utterly destroying their village and ruining their lives, that"s what.
Morian found them far more terrifying than the boy prince or the girl. She gritted her teeth. She had been captured in the end. At this rate, she"d die for sure!
"S-spare me."
The villagers would not let her live. Well, she was the culprit who caused the deaths of all their loved ones, after all.
If she wanted to live, she had no choice but to request the Imperial Prince. Even if she sounded shameless, she needed to beg for leniency here.
"What do you mean, spare you? You were busy trying to kill me, you know…. You getting tortured before being burned at the stake wouldn"t be enough to make me feel happy here."
The Imperial Prince lightly waved his hand.
The girl must"ve understood what his gesture meant, because she began pus.h.i.+ng Morian"s head down even harder against the ground as if to protect the prince.
It felt as if Morian"s skull might shatter from the sheer physical force alone. Such strength couldn"t possibly have come from the small hands of a young girl.
‘Oh my G.o.d?! Who is this girl? Where is she getting this monstrous power from….??"
Morian couldn"t budge an inch anymore. It was clear that her opponents didn"t plan on letting her off the hook. Without a doubt, she"d be reported to the Theocratic Empire. That there was an a.s.sa.s.sin daring to harm the grandson of the Holy Emperor.
She became desperate after thinking about her future. She wasn"t just any other criminal, so if the Holy Imperial Family got a hold of her, it"d not end with her simply dying.
"Please, I beg of you. Let me go."
The corners of the Imperial Prince"s lips twitched. "Why should I? I finally caught you after going through so much c**p, so I won"t do that. There"s no reason to spare a d.a.m.n fool who tried to kill me earlier, anyway."
Morian gritted her teeth. She needed to survive. In order to do that….
"If you let me go, I"ll tell you everything. I"ll tell you who ordered me to kill you. Aren"t you curious about that?"
"Kill me?"
The Imperial Prince looked stunned by that revelation. But then again, this particular Prince already had no chance at becoming the successor of the Holy Emperor. He had been basically abandoned by his family.
So, it was a little wonder he"d be surprised to learn that he became a target for a.s.sa.s.sination.
Hope began blooming within Morian"s heart after seeing the changes in the Prince"s expression. If she played her cards right, then she might get to seduce this naïve young boy again and escape from this situation.
Because, she already had charmed the boy once before.
"T-that"s right. I was told to seduce you, and make it look like you killed yourself…."
"It wasn"t suicide???"
The Imperial Prince seemed flabbergasted, but regretfully, that was all - he might be confused by these revelations, but he showed no signs of being willing to let her go.
This wouldn"t do. This much wasn"t enough to convince him. She needed something far more stimulating…!
Morian quickly recalled the reason why the Imperial Prince had been exiled in the first place. He was just a naïve, immature kid, yet his interest towards women was in full swing. He was dumb, and he was easy to seduce, too.
That"s why….
"You were interested in me, weren"t you? I shall become your slave. If you want, you can do whatever you want to my body….."
…She should seduce him.
He was a boy going through p.u.b.erty. He"d definitely show a reaction when a healthy and slender beauty seduced him.
"….Not interested in fooling around with a 60 year old granny."
Morian bit her lower lip. She was currently in an aged state, so that response was not that surprising. She couldn"t seduce anyone with her current appearance.
In that case, she should try that…!
"I, I won"t tell anyone. I won"t tell anyone about the ‘magic" you used earlier!"
This boy, he summoned zombies.
She wasn"t sure how he did it, but well, if the rumour of the Holy Emperor"s grandson summoning a bunch of zombies got around, then never mind the grandson in question, even the Holy Emperor would feel the heat!
If she used that fact to negotiate with him, then…
"Ahh, that"s right. This b*tch, she ‘saw" that, didn"t she?"
The glare in the prince"s eyes grew even colder.
Something went wrong just now. Morian needed to retract what she had said or else. Just as she hurriedly opened her mouth, his shovel was forced inside her jaw instead.
Morian"s trembling eyes were now looking up at the prince.
"I advise you to reply promptly to the questions I"m going to ask you now. If you get it, blink once," said the boy.
Morian blinked her terror-filled eyes.
"Three months ago. Were you the one who hung me up on the tree?"
She blinked her eyes once.
Back then, she seduced the Imperial Prince and lured him into the forest. The dumb prince fell for it and followed after her. She then subdued the foolish prince who showed up all alone and hanged him on a tree, thereby making it look like a suicide.
In case something unexpected happened, she even confirmed that his heart stopped beating, too. She left after feeling confident of his death, yet somehow, the Imperial Prince had revived.
Paladins soon showed up afterwards to protect the boy, thinking that he had tried to kill himself. They stayed around for a month to guard the monastery, but fortunately enough, the Prince couldn"t remember a thing and Morian was able to escape from suspicion.
Even after the Paladins went away, she remained under the radar for the next two months to avoid further suspicion.
And the result of all that was this.
The Imperial Prince sighed in relief. "So, that"s what happened." He formed a bitter grin and threw out the next question. "The one who wanted me dead, you know who it is?"
Morian remained still for a bit there, her eyes wide open.
She didn"t know who it was exactly. However, she could speak about the organisation she was a part of, instead.
The Imperial Prince seemed to have read her mind, because he raised the shovel up a little. "Oh? In that case, what is it that you wanted to tell me, then?"
Now that her mouth had become less restrained, Morian was able to speak what was in her mind. "The organisation I belong to."
"What is that?"
"It"s the Black Order. They ordered me to a.s.sa.s.sinate the seventh grandson of the Holy Emperor."
The answer came out way too easily. In fact, it was even more suspicious precisely because of that.
"That came out way too easily. And I don"t believe you."
"Rather than being caught and tortured by the Theocratic Empire, being honest is far more preferable," said Morian.
The Theocratic Empire"s ‘Heresy Inquisitors" were basically a bunch of inhuman demons. They were supported by not some piffling little organisation, but the entire Empire.
As far as human physiology was concerned, they possessed far more intimate and detailed knowledge than the Necromancers who dealt with death itself.
Such as, how to not kill a person while still inflicting maximum amount of pain, or how not to destroy one"s mind while still placing the poor person in the maximum load of stress, etc, etc….
Their mercilessly cruel, evil torture methods were infamous for making 99 out of 100 confess to their crimes.
They would torture you until they got the exact information they wanted, and then, start performing strict and precise live experiments until the victims" vitality ran out.
Basically, they were worse demons than Necromancers. Beings at odds with the holy men and women of faith, in other words.
"You want me to spare you with only that??"
"Please let me go. I beg of you. Once I"m certain of my safety, I shall provide you with all the info on the Black Order. I"ll report back to you on who wanted to kill you."
"Who"d be dumb enough to believe that?!"
This had to be a lie - that"s what the Imperial Prince thought.
"If you want, we can perform the Soul Contract. I mean, it"ll get troubling for you if your magic is known to other people, right??"
The Soul Contract. A type of pledge that Necromancers made while using their souls as collateral. A promise would be made by risking a certain amount of one"s remaining life span, and in case the promise was broken, the contract ensured that one"s soul would be torn to tiny little pieces.
Morian, now in the appearance of shrivelled-up granny, pleaded with him desperately.
The Prince looked at her and nodded his head as if he too agreed with her sentiment. "Right, if that gets known, things will become annoying for me, too."
"Y-you see? Soon, Paladins will show up here after realising that something has gone wrong."
It would be infinitely more preferable to kill herself rather than get caught by those b*stards.
"Let me go before they show up, please. If I were to get dragged before the Inquisitors, they will find out the magic you have used, and…."
"Annnd, that"s why it"s dangerous to let you live. My bad, but why don"t you just die?"
Morian"s expression hardened.
The young Imperial Prince was grinning. The way the ends of his lips curled up, now that was definitely not a smile of a devout cleric who wors.h.i.+pped a deity. No, that was a cowardly, vulgar smirk belonging to a devil.
This b*stard, he never planned to let her live from the beginning.
"You son of a b*tch!! You used Necrom….!"
before she could finish her words, the shovel smacked her in the face once more. Blood danced everywhere. She didn"t die, though.
The Prince looked down on the dazed and bleeding Moiran and spoke out loudly. "I shan"t be the one to judge you, but my fellow villagers will."
He then stepped aside. Even the platinum-haired girl released her grip on Morian.
Before long, villagers approached her from all sides. She looked at their expressions and her own complexion paled greatly.
"P-please, s-s-spare…..!"
She was gagged, then got dragged out from the cave. Eventually, the group returned to the monastery. And the remainder of the villagers were informed of her evil actions.
The enraged people stoned her mercilessly. Once she became a broken wreck, they tied her up and dragged her back to the forest, before dangling her up by her neck and abandoned her to her death.
Some time later, starving beasts pa.s.sing by tore into her and devoured her.
Three days later, she herself became a zombie. Still hanging on the tree, she flailed about ungainly.
The Imperial Prince looked at that spectacle and clicked his tongue. "Even if this is a fantasy world, the medieval setting sure can be scary."
The zombified Morian dangling by her neck continued to flail away while howling out loudly.
Without a cleric performing the purification ceremony, she"d have to remain as an undead for decades, maybe even for hundreds of years.
This was the fate waiting for a Necromancer who relied on magic of death.
"That"s too bad, though. I wanted to find out what that Black Order thing was all about, but oh well."
If only he possessed a skill to chat to souls like a real Necromancer, that could have been real nice. Unfortunately, he wasn"t blessed with such a skill.
It didn"t matter at the end of the day, however - he was still an Imperial Prince.
Since he was banished to this place, his influence as a potential successor to the throne had pretty much disappeared. Even then, some still made a move to eliminate him, fearing that even his current status posed some threat to them.
In that case, he could certainly think of a few likely suspects.
Such as….
"My brothers, huh."
His siblings from the Holy Imperial Family, eligible to inherit the Holy Emperor"s throne - it was possible that they were targeting him.
"D*mn, how brutal. I didn"t expect to get tangled up in a power struggle…."
The Imperial Prince clicked his tongue again and shook his head.
Nevertheless, the curtains on the Witch Morgana incident had closed with this.
They were in the northern frontier"s Land of the Dead Spirits. The time for the ‘Tide of Death", capable of waking up the instincts of the dead, were upon them once more.
Charlotte grew interested in the boy referred to as the Imperial Prince.
During the defence against the zombie horde, and during the ma.s.s funeral, she observed him from a faraway distance.
She heard about his stories. One of them being, while she was still unconscious, the prince took care to perform a solemn funeral for her deceased parents.
She quietly watched the boy prince tirelessly perform ma.s.s funeral throughout the night. Even when everyone was dog-tired, he didn"t rest and continued to work. He prayed with great care so that the dead souls could find some peace in their afterlife.
Seeing him like that, she felt this frustration well up in her chest. This boy saved her life. And he was also another type of a saviour, who saved her parents by performing their funeral.
"What kind of a person is the Imperial Prince?"
Charlotte"s question was answered by the older girls and aunties of the village.
He was a mangnani, a maggot, an irredeemable trash, a dumba*s who killed himself after failing to seduce a woman. All sorts of criticism aimed in his direction were whispered into her ear.
She frowned deeply after hearing them all. That was not what she wanted to find out. Charlotte ended up glaring at the village"s women folk.
"Well, it does feel like he"s changed since three months ago, actually."
"Yeah, he performed my father"s funeral with such care back then, too."
"Right, he even saved everyone this time, didn"t he?"
They were grateful towards the Imperial Prince-nim. And also, seemed to be relying on him, too.
Charlotte recalled the time she supported the Prince-nim back in the cave.
"He was so small and young."
Indeed, his figure felt tiny and very light. He was even more immature than she was, with a face that looked younger, too. Yet, with such a small body, he fought off against that huge bear. Even though he was injured badly, he tried his best to rescue the kidnapped woman.
‘He"s actually very caring."
But then, that woman named Morian betrayed his faith in her. She lunged at the boy prince and tried to kill him.
Charlotte stepped in to stop that.
It all happened in the moment, really.
By the time she had regained her wits, she was already leaping high in the air, grasping the woman"s hair, and slamming the head down on the floor. She even pointed the knife at the woman"s throat, almost slicing it wide open.
She herself was shocked by her own agile movements.
‘Was my body this light from the beginning?"
As it turned out, the woman was a Necromancer. She spoke to the Imperial Prince.
Charlotte couldn"t understand what they were talking about, but she was sure of this female Necromancer targeting the Prince"s life. And for that purpose, many, many villagers had to die.
The Imperial Prince didn"t forgive such a person.
In the end, Morian was hung by her neck in the forest while still alive.
It was truly a gruesome fate.
That"s how the incident came to an end.
Charlotte and the rest of the villagers began rebuilding the village and hunted down the still unaccounted-for zombies. Then, helped the Imperial Prince and performed funerals for the dead.
When the situation had normalised somewhat, the farmer Gril came to speak to her.
"Charlotte, if it"s alright with you, why don"t you stay in my place?"
He smiled awkwardly and asked her. She had no place to stay anymore, so she nodded her head to express consent, but still, she looked in the direction of Imperial Prince in the monastery.
"Is there anyone there to help the Imperial Prince-nim?"
"Helping his highness? What…. Ahh, you mean as the gravekeeper?"
She shook her head.
She didn"t just mean as the role of gravekeeper, but someone to clean the monastery, managing it, as well as to perform other sundry ch.o.r.es.
Wasn"t such an environment just too unforgiving for a young prince to live alone? Shouldn"t someone at least try to lend him a helping hand?
"Ah, you wish to work as a maidservant."
Charlotte nodded her head.
But Gril was forming a troubled expression. "The thing is, the Paladins told us not to place a servant near him. The reason being…."
….Because he was a mangnani. He was exiled so that his personality might change for the better.
The Paladins said that having a maidservant would only cause the boy to become even more arrogant, rather than reflect on his past and grow remorseful about it.
Gril pondered the situation for a moment, before addressing Charlotte once more. "There is one other way. Maybe it might work if you decide to become a nun."
"A nun?"
"Well, it"s a monastery, right? If you enter it to study the religion, then the Paladins might not mind it."
Charlotte nodded her head.
Next day, she went back to the monastery.
The Imperial Prince could be found in its library, scanning the written records recovered from the Necromancer"s cave.
"How complicated. At this rate, I"ll get a.s.sa.s.sinated for sure. Without a s.h.i.+eld to protect me, I"ll definitely get killed. My skill proficiency, I must…."
A s.h.i.+eld?
Not only that, a.s.sa.s.sination??
Charlotte approached the boy prince. He flinched grandly after sensing the presence of another human, and sneakily hid the book.
She tilted her head and stared at him.
He replied to her with a heavy frown. "What"s this? Why are you here? I don"t have any funerals scheduled today, so why can"t you let me take a break for at least one single day?"
"I wish to pay my debt."
"What debt?"
She inwardly went, ah, I made a mistake. ‘Debt" wasn"t the right word to use here.
She should"ve said the grace he had shown her….
While regretting her choice of words, Charlotte tried to open her lips again.
"Wait, are you talking about back then?" Said the prince.
He looked really surprised just then. For some reason, he quickly retreated and sneakily reached out to his trusty shovel, too.
Why was he reacting like that, though?
Ah, perhaps he still had unfinished business he needed to attend to?
"It"ll be better to forget about the past, alright? I mean, our first encounter wasn"t all that memorable as an experience, right?"
As expected of the Imperial Prince, his heart was secretly gracious. He was even telling her to forget about the favour he had shown her. But, how could she dare to do that?
He had saved her life and ensured that her parents could rest peacefully, after all.
"I wish to serve you."
"Eh?"
"And, also…."
Charlotte recalled the word ‘s.h.i.+eld".
She remembered that this boy prince had been exiled here. And not to forget, that Necromancer spat out the word ‘a.s.sa.s.sination", too.
Someone was trying to murder this young prince. Without a doubt, his banishment had to be that someone"s underhanded tricks, as well.
There was no way that a prince like this boy could be a mangnani.
Charlotte"s gaze s.h.i.+fted towards the books lining up the bookshelf.
[The Imperial Swordsmans.h.i.+p Tutorial]
[The Imperial Self-Defence Technique and its Rules]
[The Method to Mobilise and Control Divinity for Paladins]
There were several books here.
A s.h.i.+eld…. He was searching for it.
He was searching for someone to protect him.
However, if she came out and say it, he"d reject her. Because, it"d be a dangerous task, that"s why.
"I"d like to offer my services to this place as a nun."
That didn"t mean she should give up, though. No, she definitely wanted to protect this person.
In that case, she should masquerade as a nun, instead. As a nun, she should study the religion and train herself so that she may protect him when the time comes.
A young girl may not be able to properly defend an Imperial Prince, but still, she should give it her all regardless. Besides, a nun might be able to switch to a Paladin by learning swordsmans.h.i.+p.
That would be the only way for her to repay the kindness shown to her by protecting the boy prince who had no one to rely on.
"That"s why…."
Charlotte smiled at him.
"…I"ll be in your care."
< 011.="" imperial="" prince="" is="" hunting="" a="" witch="" -4=""> Fin.