News that Ex had been arrested on charges of demon worship and conspiring to rebel against the Empire spread across the entire nation in the blink of an eye, almost as if everyone had been waiting for it.
Along with it, everything Ex had done until now was twisted into something meant to condemn him.
The incident at the demon mansion, which the Imperial Family had covered up, was suddenly distorted into a story where Ex had orchestrated the entire affair from the shadows.
Every incident Ex had caused at the Academy was repackaged as part of some dirty scheme to seize control of it.
Even his contact with the Imperial Prince and Imperial Princess became proof that Ex had been carrying out missions for the revolutionaries in preparation for a rebellion against the Empire.
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that, Milia!!”
With the festival underway, this was a time when the Empire's entire administrative force needed to be mobilized. Darius had been working in his office when Milia brought him the unbelievable news.
Anyone who heard such rumors, with no way of knowing whether they were true or false, would have been dumbfounded.
But no one found them more absurd than Darius himself.
“He risked his life going into that death trap to break His Majesty's curse! He survived a demon attack, lost his voice because of it, and still kept faith with us… and you're telling me that man did this?!”
“Please compose yourself, Your Highness. Every circumstance and every piece of evidence uncovered so far points to Ex as the man behind it.”
“It's obviously the Imperial Princess's goddamn scheme!!”
Darius raised his voice in fury.
Milia silently endured his anger.
Looking at her, Darius clenched his teeth and forced himself to decide what needed to be handled first.
“Enough. I'll deal with Ex later. Arrest the Imperial Princess immediately! His Majesty's curse has grown even wors…”
“Were you looking for me?”
At that moment, the office door opened and someone walked in.
Darius's eyes narrowed into a vicious glare.
“Imperial Princess. You have some nerve showing your face here…!”
The person who had appeared as though she'd been waiting for the perfect moment was Beatrice.
“I came to clear up a few misunderstandings concerning me.”
As always, Beatrice concealed all her schemes and machinations beneath a radiant smile, then let them slip from the tip of her serpentine tongue.
“I have only ever acted as a member of the Imperial Family who cares for this Empire, seeking to apprehend those who would bring harm to our nation. And now, I'm finally prepared to tear out every last root of that corruption.”
“Funny. You don't seem willing to confess that you're the root of it all…!”
“Baseless suspicion wounds me, Brother. If you truly doubt my words, why not use the magic devices in this room?”
“I've already been using them this entire…!”
That was when Darius saw a result that sent a chill crawling down his spine.
None of the magic devices used to determine truth or falsehood were reacting.
It wasn't that they had judged Beatrice's words to be true.
They weren't reacting to her words at all.
‘What the hell…’
The devices merely sat there in complete silence.
And to Darius, that silence felt so unnatural and so cold that it was almost deafening.
Then, in that silence, he suddenly remembered the warning Ex had once given him.
‘You shouldn't put too much faith in magic devices. Any enemy worth worrying about will think about how to neutralize those devices first.’
Darius bit down hard on his lip.
Those devices, capable of exposing lies quickly and effortlessly, had always been one of his greatest weapons.
And now that weapon had been rendered useless.
“Well? Was I lying?”
Seeing Darius's reaction, Beatrice gave him a mocking smile, almost as if she were enjoying herself, and pressed him for an answer.
“…What did you do?”
“I'm only stating a very simple fact, Brother.”
An ominous light gleamed in Beatrice's eyes.
“I'm telling the truth. That's all.”
Darius wasn't stupid enough to believe that blatant lie.
Beatrice was an exceptionally gifted mage. Of course she would have prepared some countermeasure against magic devices designed to detect falsehoods.
But without evidence, he couldn't simply have her arrested.
The Empire and the Academy had both opened their doors for the festival, and the streets were packed with citizens.
If word spread at a time like this that the Imperial Princess had been arrested despite being innocent, the fallout could spiral beyond anyone's control.
‘Is this what you've been hiding for…?!’
Still, now that she'd finally shown herself, she couldn't simply run away.
Darius slowly forced himself to calm down and recalled the secret about the Imperial Princess that Ex had told him.
“You're aware that His Majesty's condition has become extremely grave.”
“Has it? Oh my… I should go see him as soon as possible.”
“I've heard you always carry a necklace set with a red gemstone.”
At those words, Beatrice's smile stiffened slightly.
Then she murmured, “I see…” before letting a faint smile return to her lips.
“Is there some problem with my taste in jewelry?”
“There's something I need to verify. Hand it over.”
If that red-gem necklace truly was the source of the curse eating away at the Emperor, then Darius had to deal with it here and now.
Even if it earned him every accusation imaginable, this was one thing he absolutely had to do.
Having guessed what he meant, Beatrice let out a quiet sigh, reached into her clothes, and took something out.
It was the necklace set with a red gemstone.
“It truly is heartbreaking to be suspected like this. But if surrendering even a treasured possession will clear away your doubts, then I suppose I have no choice.”
Beatrice obediently held out the necklace.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
Milia accepted it cautiously, never lowering her guard.
Under that razor-sharp vigilance, the necklace was passed all the way to Darius.
The moment it reached him, Darius placed the red-gem necklace inside the damaged holy relic he had nearby.
If the necklace really was the source of the curse, there should be some kind of reaction.
Even if the relic couldn't break the curse itself, there was no conceivable reason the Imperial Princess should be carrying around an object imbued with a curse.
If anything happened, anything at all, it would give him a foothold to resolve the chain of events now unfolding.
But the result was nothing like he had expected.
“Who told you that necklace was cursed?”
Beatrice smiled in a way that sent a chill through him, as though she had anticipated every last step.
“Do you really think I'd walk around carrying a cursed object?”
There was no curse on the red-gem necklace.
***
The guards dragged Ex to the Imperial Palace's underground dungeon, a place said to be reserved only for the most heinous criminals.
Restrained so thoroughly that he could barely move, Ex was stripped of any ability to use his powers and thrown onto the freezing stone floor.
Then someone entered the cell where he was being held.
“It's unfortunate things had to turn out this way, Ex.”
Ex raised his head and looked at the person standing before him.
“Or should I call you Mephisto instead? You have so many names that I'm hardly sure what to call you anymore.”
As expected, it was Beatrice.
“Ah, I heard you'd lost your voice. There's no need to struggle trying to answer me. I'll do all the talking.”
Beatrice made a small gesture.
A translucent barrier spread around them, cutting off sound, sight, and everything else from the outside.
“Now then. I suppose you deserve an explanation for how things came to this.”
Only then did Andras reveal her true colors.
“To tell you the truth, I did trust you. A little, at least. You were competent enough to earn that much. You successfully took control of the Ring Circle, managed to get close to the Imperial Prince, and even gave me the rather useful idea of bringing His Descent into the Empire.”
The smile vanished from Andras's face.
“But I don't need some ‘competent subordinate.’ All I need is a fucking dog that does exactly what it's told. Competent people have a habit of getting too full of themselves, climbing higher than they should, and eventually betraying you. And sure enough, that's exactly what you did.”
The necklace with the red gemstone, the one containing the weakening curse.
Andras hadn't shown it to him thoughtlessly.
It had been a test of her own devising, born from someone who had already experienced betrayal once before.
“Even if that hadn't happened, you were always going to end up here. Your disappearance in the Ancient Ruins threw a major wrench into my plans. Well, if you really had been my subordinate, I wouldn't have thought twice about using you however I pleased. But even that part was a lie.”
Andras leaned closer and whispered into Ex's ear, her voice thick with hatred.
“Isn't that right? Demon of Lies, Berith.”
Ex weakly closed his eyes.
Andras had discovered that Ex was the one who had called himself Berith back at the mansion and made a fool out of her.
“How long did you think you could keep deceiving me?”
Andras's murderous voice slipped sharply into his ear.
“Yes, I'll admit it. You nearly had me fooled. The way you kept wagging that treacherous tongue of yours was almost frightening. But did you really think I was some brainless idiot who would hear your words and never bother thinking for herself?”
“…”
“I have absolutely no intention of ever being the one who loses. Maybe, in your own way, you were just struggling desperately to stay alive. Though… even if you hadn't been Berith, I was planning to do this from the beginning. If you really had been ‘Mephisto,’ you would've gladly accepted being sacrificed.”
“…”
“You've got that look on your face. Wondering how I found out?”
Andras took obvious pleasure in Ex's piercing glare and spent a long moment laughing to herself.
Once her laughter finally subsided, her voice turned cold and merciless.
“Even if you've become mute, I'm not stupid enough to tell you that much. This is all I'm willing to say.”
Andras dispelled the magic surrounding them and once again adopted the elegant tone and bearing befitting Imperial Princess Beatrice.
“Every charge against you is backed by evidence and witnesses. Your execution date will be decided soon enough. I may not have much direct authority in such matters, but sending one lowborn commoner guilty of treason and demon worship to the execution grounds within a week is certainly within my reach. So please, make good use of what little time you have left…”
“There will be a trial. By my authority.”
A voice came from beyond the cold iron bars, cutting between Beatrice and Ex.
Beatrice immediately guessed who it belonged to.
She barely managed to keep her expression from hardening as she turned around.
“Brother Darius, if you insist on protecting a traitor so openly, won't that put you in a rather difficult political position?”
The owner of that voice was the man who currently held the greatest authority in the Empire.
Darius could feel the intense hostility hidden behind Beatrice's smiling face.
He had seen that dagger-sharp gaze countless times from his political enemies.
“A difficult political position? I'm merely taking the bare minimum measures necessary to ensure an innocent citizen isn't executed unjustly. Especially when the charges are conspiracy to rebel against the Empire and demon worship.”
Darius knew full well that what he was doing was a gamble.
Normally, he was a man who gathered accurate information before making any judgment.
This time, however, he had no such luxury.
In a situation where he couldn't tell what was real and what was fabricated, where he couldn't see even an inch ahead, only two choices remained.
He could stand aside and let Ex become the enemy of the entire Empire before being put to death.
Or he could secure Ex, even if doing so meant sacrificing his own political power.
And Darius chose to throw himself into the dangerous gamble.
“Why are you in such a hurry, Imperial Princess? If he's truly as great a criminal as you claim, wouldn't it make more sense to keep him alive and extract information from him? What you're doing has no logic behind it. It simply looks like you're desperate to have him executed even one day sooner.”
“Is it so strange to punish a criminal? Those who rot the Empire from within through demon worship cannot be punished quickly enough. The people are already crying out for this criminal to be condemned. If the Imperial Prince himself intervenes to delay his punishment…”
“It sounds like you'd like to say I'm the one behind everything.”
“That wasn't what I meant. Hehe…”
A quiet yet immense silence settled over the cold dungeon.
Beatrice wanted Ex dead as soon as possible.
This wasn't merely a matter of personal emotion.
She knew what Ex was capable of.
She also knew what he really was.
And the final deciding factor behind all her choices had been the message sent by an Archdemon from the Deus Theocracy.
‘Gremory. It's unfortunate I didn't realize you'd already infiltrated this place, but the information you brought me will certainly be put to good use.’
Gremory had brought the information that ‘Ex is Berith.’
And the Archdemon Baal had given the order, ‘Kill Berith.’
Andras could never dare defy the command of Baal, king of demons.
One way or another, she had to kill Berith and send him back to Hell.
‘There can't be a single flaw in my plan.’
She had never imagined Darius would interfere here.
It was difficult to understand what had suddenly gotten into a man who almost never doubted others.
But if the man who effectively controlled the Empire chose to act, then a trial was inevitable.
Still, it didn't matter.
“You're going to regret that decision, Imperial Prince.”
Even if there was a trial, nothing would change.
If anything, it was a perfect opportunity to weaken Darius's political standing.
She would drive that arrogant, foolish young Imperial Prince straight into despair.
“Then I wish you good health.”
With an ominous smile, Beatrice left the dungeon.
Darius watched her disappear before releasing a sigh that could have been either regret or relief.
“I hope you don't make me regret helping you.”
There was no question who those words were meant for.
Ex slowly nodded.
For now, this was enough.
Everything was proceeding exactly as he'd expected.
–TL Notes–
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