Chapter 13
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 13
The woman, who had been cowering behind a single door just moments ago, had changed. Her face, once so pale it seemed drained of all life, was now flushed a deep red. Her focus flickered, lost.
“Hah…”
Her breathing was slow, yet ragged.
Oscar had been puzzled by the brothel owner’s determination to keep the woman he’d spied through the crack in the door. He’d felt the same when he heard the price she’d paid. He’d wondered what use anyone could have for a woman who couldn't even meet his gaze, especially at such a price.
But seeing her like this, he thought he could almost understand.
Oscar straightened and looked back at the brothel owner.
“You’ve done something foolish, haven’t you?”
The brothel owner, trembling, crawled toward the bed. She had never regretted her own command—to begin the woman’s training tonight—more than she did in this moment.
The woman was curled up on the bed, letting out a faint moan.
One look was all it took to know the aphrodisiac had spread throughout her entire body.
It was a state where the mind sinks below the surface while the five senses sharpen and rise. In this condition, the entire body becomes an erogenous zone. It would flush red and moan at the slightest touch. In this line of work, they called a person in such a state an “instrument.”
It was the perfect state for “training,” but for the brothel owner, whose life now hinged on the woman’s condition, every moan felt like it was chipping away at her own lifespan. She frantically explained the situation to Oscar.
“Uh, well, it’s not a serious drug. It just… makes the bo-body a little immobile and heightens the senses…”
“Bring the antidote.”
Her words were cut off so sharply it felt like a blade to her own throat. Tears streamed down her face.
“I’m sorry, there’s n-n-no antido—agh…!”
She clutched her stomped-on hand and bowed her head. The gaze on the back of her neck felt heavier than the pressure on her hand.
“It’s not a lethal drug! I gave her a mixture of one drop of Elos and one-and-a-half drops of Exlos. I-It wears off naturally over time.”
“Anything else?”
“No, I didn’t give her anything else. Absolutely not!” she pleaded desperately. “She was in training. It would be a loss for me too if something went wrong with her, wouldn’t it? Please believe me. I swear it will wear off naturally with time…!”
“How many hours?”
“B-Between seven and nine hours. She’ll come to her senses by tomorrow morning! Please, believe me.”
“……”
The smell of cigarette smoke returned.
She knew instinctively that her life was once again under review.
Will he kill me after he finishes that cigarette? The terror was so extreme her mind went blank.
Thump.
A cigarette, its ember still glowing, was dropped beside her prostrate form.
She didn’t dare look up at Oscar, her eyes fixed on the cigarette that had fallen beside her. The thin trail of smoke was reflected in her despair-filled eyes. She couldn’t breathe as the Wolves began to move around her, as if they had been waiting.
Silent tears poured down.
Her miserable, mud-caked life flashed before her eyes. Just when things were finally starting to look up.
Even so, her lips endlessly begged for her life.
Please spare me, I was wrong, please spare me.
The fear of death made her lose all sense of time and space. Like a broken machine, she repeated the same words over and over.
How long had she been begging?
“You should’ve known your place. Then things would’ve been nice and easy for everyone.”
At the sudden words, she creakily lifted her head to find a Wolf glaring at her, his red eyes laced with annoyance. He lowered himself as smoothly as a settling shadow to meet her gaze.
“You said seven to nine hours, right?”
As if mesmerized, she nodded. He straightened up with the fluid grace of a wolf uncoiling, then stamped out Oscar’s still-lit cigarette.
“Don’t wander off. Stay put. Finding you would be no trouble at all, but if you make us look, we’ll be collecting a finder’s fee on top of everything else.”
“…Yes, yes…”
“Try to live a good life. Be good.”
After offering the incongruous advice, the man gave the room one last look before disappearing through the door.
She sat there in a daze, then unconsciously touched her own neck.
But her relief at being alive was fleeting. If, by some chance, the woman didn’t wake up… A deep chill seized her on that summer night, and she dry-heaved until her stomach ached, though there was nothing left to bring up.
* * *
The elite agents of the Reinhardt Marquisate were commonly known as the Wolves.
Once the private soldiers of the family back when Reinhardt was a border county, they gradually retreated into the shadows as the years passed. More dangerous, more clandestine missions were assigned to them: espionage, disruption, assassination, search and retrieval.
As they began to carry out such missions, they went from being knights to agents, and then, at some point, they came to be called Wolves.
The Wolves have but one goal: to be loyal to the master who took them in and raised them.
They belong to no nation or people; they belong only to Reinhardt. Reinhardt was their nation and their people, and their master’s goal was their own.
This grotesque loyalty meant that anyone who failed to develop such devotion was never called a Wolf. They were simply expelled—or disposed of.
How many Wolves there were, where they were, and what they did—all of it was a secret. After the king of their own nation, Luxen, betrayed them, even he no longer knew of their existence. Most people were completely unaware the Wolves even existed.
However, a few had been revealed to the world.
A prime example was Simon von Bernheim.
Simon, with his blond hair and red eyes, was a rare case among the Wolves—he was of noble birth. Furthermore, he was famous for his flawless execution of tasks, both publicly and internally.
Publicly, he served as Oscar’s secretary and a director at the Reinhardt Steel Company. Internally, he was responsible for commanding and coordinating the agents within the marquisate.
“Have a doctor on standby. If the woman’s condition hasn’t changed by five o’clock tomorrow morning, bring me the brothel owner.”
“Yes, sir.”
After giving orders to his subordinates in the corridor of the royal suite at the Ritz Hotel in Pelfe, Simon quietly opened the suite’s door and entered.
The sound of running water suggested Oscar was bathing. The Wolves moving about inside approached him silently.
“We’ve secured the key.”
Simon calmly examined the key his subordinate handed him.
“A duplicate is already prepared; it just needs to be engraved. And these are the Certificate of Key Acquisition Rights and the Identification Papers.”
Simon’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the documents.
“I can't make out this script at all.”
“Yes, sir. They say that’s why the Pelfe Bank put things on hold.”
Simon returned both the key and the certificate with instructions.
“Make an exact copy, and bring me a translation. Leave the key by the bed for His Excellency to see.”
“Understood.”
“Copy the Certificate of Key Acquisition Rights as well. When the duplicate key arrives, put it back where the original was without arousing suspicion.”
“Yes, sir.”
Simon gestured for his subordinates to leave. Then, he walked past the busily moving Wolves toward the room with the open door to check on the woman’s condition.
The woman who had become a Living Key.
Considering Pelfe’s banking laws, it would be extremely troublesome if she were to die or lose her mind.
Simon pushed the shoulder of the woman, who lay curled on her side. Devoid of strength, she moved at even the lightest touch.
Beneath the hazy moonlight, her breath, flowing past vivid lips, seemed to shimmer like a heat haze. Simon gazed into her blankly open eyes and clicked his tongue softly. He then ordered the men standing guard outside her room to leave. It was not a wise choice to leave a woman in this state in the care of rough field agents.
Just as he confirmed she was alive and stepped out, Oscar emerged from the bathroom, wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants.
“We’ve secured the key, the Identification Papers, and the Certificate of Key Acquisition Rights.”
The Wolf who had been placing the key on Oscar’s bedside table immediately brought it over and presented it to him. Taking the key, Oscar stared at it, turning it over in his hand before asking, “What’s her name?”
“……”
“The woman. What’s her name?”
His sharp gaze shifted from the woman’s room to Simon.
“The Identification Papers are indecipherable. That’s why the Pelfe Bank put the matter on hold.”
“Find out what the Pelfe Bank and the King of Pelfe are up to. Bring me a translation of the identification papers within a week.”
“Understood.”
Oscar started walking, the key in his hand. He heard Simon leaving the suite behind him, but his attention was focused solely on the object in his palm.
The key.
The cold, hard metal was smaller and plainer than he had expected.
There was a time he would have overturned the very bottom of the ocean to find this. When he’d been tearing the world apart looking for it, it was nowhere to be seen. Where the hell had it been hiding all this time, only to show up on its own now?
“Well… I suppose it’s a small price to pay for being stabbed in the back by a fool.”
Muttering to himself, Oscar stopped at the doorway.
His cold, blue gaze, which had been fixed on the key, shifted forward.
Beyond the wide-open door was the woman, bathed in moonlight, unaware of the state she was in or who had brought her here. Between them, only a helpless darkness drifted.
After a brief pause, Oscar began to walk again.