Chapter 26
Chapter 26
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 26
Chapter Title: Illusions in the Storm
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Flash.
Lightning struck. In an instant, a blinding flash illuminated the forest where even moonlight barely penetrated.
The wind revealed the man's smooth forehead, stubborn eyebrows, and cold eyes.
Before him writhed a massive centipede monster, its head severed.
Rumble.
Only then did Lennox lift his head, as if suddenly coming to his senses.
But he wasn't surprised to find himself standing in the middle of the monster forest.
Lennox thought of a certain woman who hated storms.
"When will you come back?"
It wasn't easy to notice that Juliet feared thunder and lightning.
For one, Juliet Monad was bold to the point of being fearless.
And in the North, heavy rain accompanied by thunder and lightning was rare.
The season for major typhoons was usually summer, but by then, they would be staying at the summer villa.
However, that was only his memory. Juliet's memory would be different.
The position of Northern Duke wasn't given easily, and he had often left her alone.
"There's supposed to be a typhoon soon. So...."
If she had begged him not to go, or asked to take her along, or whined for him to return early, he might have noticed sooner.
"Please be careful......"
That was all she could barely manage to say after hesitating to speak.
'Foolish...'
In that regard, Juliet was frustratingly rigid.
She was the woman who could overturn the expressions of the North's conservative, almost spiteful great nobles without changing her own face. So she couldn't possibly fear ghosts.
She just didn't want to be caught being like a child, hating to be alone on stormy nights.
Lennox had only learned of it quite recently.
Rumble.
On nights when thunder roared fiercely, Juliet would keep the lights on all night, curled up alone.
"Then it would be hard to sleep."
She flinched at his casual remark and reluctantly turned off the light. It was closer to trauma than fear.
Only then did he recall that a massive storm—one of the worst, countable on one hand—had raged on the day her parents died.
She never showed it, but on thundering nights, her pale face pretending otherwise as she desperately burrowed into the blankets was rather endearing.
So he pretended not to notice as well.
He had wondered what Juliet did alone on nights he wasn't there, unable to sleep.
But he never asked.
He just guessed she kept all the lights in the room on all night waiting for the storm to pass, or called the maids to stay up.
He neither wanted to know more nor needed to.
Flash.
When lightning struck again, Lennox spotted gaunt white bones at his feet.
The forest floor was piled with what were clearly human bones.
Not all the skulls rolling at his feet belonged to unfortunate travelers who had lost their way.
The polluted forest's influence wasn't limited to grotesque monsters.
The fog itself exuded toxicity.
Strangely harmless to animals, this poison induced hallucinations in humans, creating an effect eerily similar to intoxication.
Few knew this fact, but the North had many mountains and thus many such polluted forests.
While subjugating monsters in Northern territories, dealing with territory folk addicted to these hallucinations was one of the ducal knights' duties.
Lennox suddenly grew curious.
Neither the monsters' poison nor the toxic fog from polluted forests affected his body.
What about his mind?
He had entered such forests countless times but never once hallucinated.
In the damp fog, Lennox peered piercingly beyond the pitch-black forest.
Soon, amid the dark trees where nothing should be visible, a hazy, smoke-like figure emerged.
It started with fluttering hair and skirt hems, soon forming the complete shape of a woman wandering alone uneasily through the dark woods.
A familiar silhouette appeared vividly before his eyes, but Lennox didn't even crack a smile.
It was a bit ridiculous. Was it something you could see just by wanting to?
Lennox wondered if he was truly hallucinating or if it was just his imagination.
Rumble.
The woman, who had been glancing around with a frightened expression, suddenly turned toward him.
Spotting him, her face lit up as if by magic.
The next moment, as she ran toward him, Lennox instinctively reached out with his empty hand.
"Jul...."
As if she might really leap into his arms.
But like a ghost, she passed straight through him and ran to his back. Turning around, he saw her embraced by an unseen face.
Rumble.
Thunder crashed again, but the barefoot woman on tiptoes, clinging to her faceless partner, no longer looked scared.
She looked like the happiest person in the world.
Smiling brightly with a face she had rarely shown him.
As if waiting, she looped her arms around her secret lover's neck, smiling with her eyes, begging for a kiss.
Then, leaning her cheek against the faceless man's chest, she whispered lovingly, sadly, intimately.
"I'm pregnant."
Her prim lips, obedient to him, seemed to move.
"So let's run away, the two of us."
Clang!
Something clashed against his blindly swung sword in anger.
Seeing the small spark, he guessed its identity and nocked an arrow with his hand.
Thud.
With a dull sound, the arrow flew, and the monster's body collapsed.
It was a bronze deer, a common low-grade monster in the forest.
The only difference was that it was pure white. Such mutations in polluted forests were hardly surprising.
It had probably hidden somewhere and charged out upon seeing the centipede in the forest's center die.
Lennox looked down coldly at the fallen monster. Red blood spurted from the white deer's nape.
The vision of the woman flickering before his eyes had long vanished.
"This isn't yours."
But unlike the silent mouthing of the hallucination, the fresh-smiling Juliet had clearly said that to him.
Normally, he would have doubted the truth of those words first. He rarely lost his composure.
But his faltering reason clouded his judgment.
He hadn't timed it to cut her off precisely. Yet he believed without doubt that she would let go first.
But.
'So you had ulterior motives after all.'
Lennox's lips twisted cruelly.
He could have grabbed her if he reached out. That mere butterfly. Juliet's illusions didn't work on him anyway.
He had only been shaken by the tears from Juliet, who had never cried before him.
Clink.
The necklace in his grip clinked against itself.
This flashy necklace, called the Tear of the Sun, was worth ten mansions.
Yet Juliet had taken nothing. As if anything connected to him was repulsive, no matter how valuable.
The white deer, throat pierced and twitching, finally went limp in death.
'What should I do with you?'
With a cooled mind, Lennox thought.
But he still hadn't realized he was hoping for something from Juliet he had never given her.
* * *
"My lord...."
Hardin, who had been waiting outside the Black Forest with the horses, flinched upon spotting the duke slowly emerging.
Hardin, with his dark skin from southern immigrant stock, was the leader of the elite knights loyal only to the duke.
A faithful vassal who carried out his lord's orders without batting an eye, but even to him, the duke covered in monster blood looked eerie.
Not only had he emerged unscathed from a colony of mutant monsters, but he was dragging out a bloodied white deer.
"M-my lord."
Hardin awkwardly opened his mouth, trying not to look at the dead deer.
Normally, delivering such news wasn't his duty.
It was for the secretary Elliot or other knights. But he was the only one beside the duke now.
"...A message just came from the imperial palace. The lake has turned red."
Near the capital's imperial palace was a sacred lake restricted from entry.
This ordinary-looking small lake was revered because it foretold disasters.
Every few decades or centuries, when the lake turned red, it was an omen of dire calamity.
For such an ill omen to appear the day after the grand New Year's banquet. It was no wonder the emperor panicked and urgently contacted Duke Carlyle in the dead of night.
"My lord?"
But Lennox Carlyle, tossing aside his prey and wiping his hands, showed no interest in omens or disasters.
Casually wiping the blood trickling down his chin, the duke asked indifferently.
"Which side is the Monad count family on?"
Forgotten Juliet