Chapter 55

‘I have no idea what’s going on, but it’s a win for me, isn’t it?’

Now I could control both Bluewin and Brown. This curse was a ‘pressure type.’ Right now, the two of them must feel as if they were being crushed under immense gravity.

Bluewin, his face flushed crimson from the rush of blood, shouted out.

“What’s…the meaning of this… what are you doing?!”

“Yes, what are you doing? A mage from the Tower, sneaking into a drug den like this.”

As I placed my hand on my hip, Bluewin, even in the midst of all this, could only stare at me in disbelief. Meanwhile, Leonard was inspecting every corner of the room before he turned to me and spoke after picking something up.

“It’s a neutralizing incense.”

“Take it along with the narcotic incense from outside.”

Hearing my words, Bluewin’s expression shifted in an instant.

“Wh, what are you planning?! Just kill me already!”

“Now, now, what a dreadful thing to say. I might cripple someone, but I don’t kill!”

“Are you… trying, t-to toy with us?!”

“I’m just going to take the neutralizing incense and the narcotic incense to the Magic Tower. Then, I’ll show them to the Central Circle mages and the Tower Master.”

“….!”

“….!”

Bluewin and Brown’s eyes went wide with shock.

‘Why are the guilty acting so surprised?’

I gave a sweet little smile.

“The Tower Master will investigate the purified incense, and it won’t take long to prove that you two are behind all this.”

Leonard hummed thoughtfully, nodding his head.

“Well, that’s unfortunate. There’s no escaping death now.”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll die quickly. But if they decide to use you as test subjects, or start torturing you to find out who was pulling the strings…”

“It’d be quite dreadful. What a pity…”

When Leonard and I put on suitably sympathetic expressions, Bluewin and Brown went stiff with fear. Brown, in particular, was trembling uncontrollably.

“L-Lady, please! Wh-what do you want, ugh, me to do? I’ll tell you anything, just please…!”

“Brown! Just because you grovel, doesn’t mean she’ll, kuugh, actually let us go… There’s no guarantee of that!”

“Criminals from the Tower, ugh, they sometimes get turned into test subjects! You know what the Tower Master is like!”

‘Well, he certainly did look like a mad scientist.’

Brown was one of the Tower Master’s closest researchers, so he probably knows exactly how terrible it was to end up as a test subject.

“You idiot! Because of the human rights laws, uugh, any human experimentation beyond the legal limits is forbidden… Uugh!”

“Within those limits, he’ll do anything! Do you want to end up parading down the street in a dress, lace headband, and fishnet stockings, clutching a bunny doll?!”

Huh?

“Do you want to become a case study for the correlation between shame and magic power?!”

“….”

“That lunatic would even make you go to your class reunion with your first love there! Uugh-hiic!”

Despite the fact that he could barely form words under the curse earlier, with all that pent-up frustration, he was perfectly articulate now.

‘How much has he been holding in…?’

At Brown’s outburst, Bluewin’s face turned to stone.

Even Leonard, apparently unable to hide his sympathy, nodded and muttered, “A class reunion… That’s a bit much.”

Brown looked up at me and shouted.

“I’ll do whatever you ask, beat me, kill me, anything you want! Just please, my Lady, don’t hand me over to the Tower Master! Pleeeaaase!!”

…If he was that terrified, why betray him in the first place?

︵‿୨ ₊‧꒰ა ୨ৎ ໒꒱ ‧₊ ୧‿︵

This was their story.

“So, Bluewin and Brown, you’re brothers?”

“Yes. The second and third sons of a poor country family. We’ve got fifteen younger brothers, too. Sometimes, honestly, I wonder if our parents are actually rabbits. Even rabbits can’t have this many kids at once—mmph! Mmph!”

Bluewin swiftly silenced his younger brother’s enthusiastic rambling by covering his mouth with his foot. Their wrists and ankles were all tied up, just in case they tried to attack us.

Either way, I was grateful he shut him up.

‘I almost had to listen to the tragic history of Brown’s family, starting from their great-great-grandfather.’

Bluewin spoke up irritably.

“…To sum it up, we were desperately poor. That’s why we applied to the Academy.”

“But the tuition there must have been a fortune.”

“We were aiming for the merit scholarship. The amount is something a commoner could never hope to get.”

That was what set these brothers apart.

It never once occurred to them that they wouldn’t get the scholarship.

‘They really are both geniuses, I’ll give them that.’

“So, if you managed to get the scholarship, you could send money home.”

At that, Brown’s eyes flashed.

“Send money home? Absolutely not! Our eldest brother would snatch up every bit and waste it on some idiotic business scheme!”

“So what did you do instead?”

“We saved every coin, worked ourselves to the bone. Even after graduation, neither of us had any connections, so finding a proper job would be nearly impossible. But then… that bastard—!”

Madness flickered in Brown’s eyes.

“Our eldest brother, that lunatic, ran off with the landlord’s wife!”

“….”

“Of course the landlord went absolutely mad! You wouldn’t believe how much he bled us for compensation. He even doubled the tenant’s rent! That damn cheating bastard… That’s why Bluewin here absolutely hates cheaters!”

Both brothers’ eyes burned with fury.

“That s*n of a b***h… If I ever catch him, he’s dead…”

“He ran off with the landlord’s wife, who’s nineteen years older than him and left the whole family in this mess?! Bastard…”

Ah, cheaters really are the bane of humanity.

I deeply understood how the brothers felt.

“So, when do we get to the part about you becoming junkies?”

“Junkies? We may sell the stuff, but we don’t use it! Please, let’s be precise and say ‘how we ended up making it’ instead!’

Wasn’t making it even worse?

When I shot them a look of utter contempt, Bluewin muttered, “That idiot…” under his breath before he parted his lips again.

“Shut up. Every time you open your mouth, this takes twice as long.”

“And whose fault is that?! If you hadn’t taken Lord Orsen’s hand back then, we’d just be seventeen poor siblings stuck with a cheating bastard for an eldest brother!”

“What else was I supposed to do? Even if we scraped together every last coin, there was no way we could pay the landlord’s demands for compensation!”

“So you took his money and let him curse you too? All because of you, I—!”

“Oh, and who was it that went running to Cleas Orsen, saying, ‘I’d make a much better informant. My brother’s got the personality of spoiled food and will be kicked out in no time’?”

“What was I supposed to do?! You were practically on your deathbed!”

“Unbelievable, and you still think you did the right thing?! Did I ever ask you to die with me? All I ever wanted was for you and the others to live well… That’s all…”

“Why are you always like this… brother…!”

“Oh, you idiot…”

‘…What on earth are these two?’

Why have they suddenly turned into model brothers?

I stared at them. If they weren’t tied up, they’d probably be hugging by now.

“So, if I understand correctly… You’re turning society into a trash can just to save your own family?”

“How can you reduce our tragic story to that…”

Brown looked at me as if I were some heartless witch, devoid of blood or tears.

“Abrakita Trap Davia.”

“Gghk!”

“Kuhuk!”

I recited the curse’s control phrase and got to my feet.

“Just because you’ve got a sob story doesn’t make you any less of a criminal.”

Brown and Bluewin had no reply to that. Seeing them like that, I murmured, “Trap Kip’tel Davia,” reciting the control phrase to ease their pain.

“But one thing’s clear. You two don’t have a shred of loyalty to Cleas.”

Brown, still groaning from the pain, managed to speak.

“I-Is that why you caught us? Because we weren’t loyal to your beloved fiancé?”

I shouted, my face full of contempt.

“What are you talking about? That’s exactly what I like to hear!”

“…Excuse me?”

“My original plan was to capture you and use you as witnesses to Cleas’s crimes. But now that I see you have absolutely no loyalty to him, I’m thinking of using you for something else.”