Salvation or Calamity
A post written years ago, its author long since deleted their account, with a grand total of three views.
On the surface it looked like a childish fairy tale, but the wording reeked of metaphor.
Enchant the bell with magic. So long as you tear out human souls and feed them to it, the bell will keep ringing forever.
"Perfect. Screenshot this right now and save it as a nuclear option for blackmailing those Bell Family bastards later…!"
I was busily congratulating myself on my villain-fleecing master plan and saving the screen when—
Clank—
The massive iron door of the solitary cell, sealed tight until now, groaned open with a heavy, grinding sound.
"Celia! Get out here. Your public defender has arrived."
The instant I heard those words my heart started hammering.
Finally! I get a lawyer toooo!
Humming under my breath, I practically skipped toward the door.
The visitation room door swung open and I strolled in with a leisurely smile.
"I've waited so long! My savior…?"
I froze mid-sentence.
There, buried so deep inside an oversized brown public-defender's robe that she looked like she was drowning in fabric, sat my lawyer—trembling violently.
Why the hell is she shaking? I'm not a man-eating witch or anything…
Messy brown hair stuck out every which way from the loose collar of the robe, and round glasses covered half her face. Behind the lenses I could feel a pair of green eyes staring at me. The moment our gazes met she flinched and dropped her head again.
"Nice to meet you. I'm the defendant in this case—Celia, proprietor of the Skill Rental Shop. Let's introduce ourselves properly and get along from now on, Counselor!"
Still avoiding my eyes, she slowly lifted her face. She swallowed hard, then pulled a business card from her robes with slender, shaking fingers and held it out to me. Her entire hand was vibrating without mercy.
"N-n-nice… to meet you…! I-I-I'm the one who… w-was assigned… as p-public d-defender for the f-first time… Tr-Trisha…"
"Ah, Attorney Trisha?"
"H-h-hik…!"
The second I repeated her name, Trisha sucked in a breath like she'd just been ambushed by a mugger. Her eyes behind the glasses darted in pure panic.
"I-I-I'm so sorryyyyy! I-I c-can't do this after all…!"
"Excuse me? Wait, hang on—"
Before I could even reach for her, Trisha clutched her briefcase to her chest like a life raft. Face on the verge of bursting into tears, she slammed the visitation room door open and bolted outside.
Her panicked footsteps faded down the corridor in a frantic clatter.
With a final clank the door shut, leaving me alone again in the empty room.
"…Huh? Hello…?"
I'm the one who should be panicking here! Unbelievable.
What kind of lawyer starts introducing herself and then just runs away crying mid-sentence? Am I really that repulsive?
I propped my chin on my hand and let out a hollow, incredulous laugh.
Trisha ran.
Someone might have been calling after her, but the sound never reached her ears. The only thought in her head was that she had to get away from that place as fast as humanly possible.
She had thought she was better now. She was wrong.
Once upon a time, the name Trisha had been synonymous with miracles at the Imperial Judicial Academy. She was no nobleman's daughter, no scholar's heir, no rich merchant's child. She was a girl from the slums who had grown up breathing dirt and dust.
But with a mind that never forgot a single thing it saw and a razor-sharp intellect, she had memorized tens of thousands of pages of imperial law and precedent and applied them flawlessly to every case. That was how Trisha became the first commoner ever to receive a full scholarship—and the top graduate of her class.
When the kindly neighbor who had treated her like his own daughter, Uncle Mikhail, became the client for her very first defense case, Trisha had been confident.
The true culprit who had embezzled the imperial mana-stone tribute was Fabian, the third son of House Bell. When the audit net closed in, he had simply pointed a finger at an easy commoner rickshaw puller to take the fall.
She had prepared a perfect defense scenario that tore every contradiction in the fabricated evidence to shreds.
Then, the night before the trial, her respected advisor walked into her study. The file he tossed onto her desk listed the exact location of the cottage where her parents lived and the routes her younger siblings took to school.
"Trisha, the law doesn't move by the letter alone. No commoner who crosses the Bell Family ever survives. Not even nobles do."
It was thorough, surgical blackmail.
The next day in court, tens of thousands of perfect defense sentences whirled through Trisha's mind. But the moment she met the aristocratic prosecutor's arrogant gaze and saw Fabian Bell's sly smile from the gallery, her heart began to race like a wild animal.
Her professor's words from the night before rang inside her skull.
No commoner who crosses the Bell Family ever survives. Not even nobles do.
Trisha couldn't breathe. If she couldn't even draw a normal breath, there was no way words would come out properly.
"Uh… th-that is… s-so… the d-defendant…"
She couldn't even remember what she said after that.
Uncle Mikhail was sentenced to lifelong hard labor in the mines.
And the real cruelty came afterward. His family—who knew nothing—arrived carrying potatoes and rye bread, tears streaming down their faces as they bowed to Trisha.
"Thank you for at least saving my husband's life, Counselor…"
If they had cursed her and slapped her face it would have been better. That pure, ignorant gratitude was the most vicious punishment of all—the price of betraying the truth.
From that day on, Trisha's heart broke completely. The moment she stood in court to defend anyone, the blackmail, the look in Uncle Mikhail's eyes as he was dragged away to the mines, and the grateful smiles of his family flooded her mind. Her heart hammered out of control, her breath locked, and with her breathing tangled she couldn't form a single coherent sentence.
It felt as though the entire world was condemning her.
Trisha, you have no right—
The empire's greatest genius top graduate crashed all the way down into a stuttering, cowering lawyer who couldn't even speak properly in court.
Trisha crouched in a corner outside the prison walls, fingers twisted white around the handle of her briefcase, gasping for air.
"S-someone like me… c-can't d-defend anyone…"
The once-brilliant lawyer's cry sank into silence. Tears dripped steadily onto her glasses.
It was the tragedy of a canary that had lost its voice after being caught in the snare of a vast conspiracy.
But she had no idea how darkly, how cunningly, the crimson eyes of the silver-haired witch watching her through the bars of the solitary cell were gleaming in real time.
I watched through the prison bars as my public defender pulled a full runner and started crying outside.
Well. I didn't exactly have a choice in the matter.
Sigh. When did the Imperial judiciary become this much of a dumpster fire?
Even so, that lawyer didn't look talentless. Somewhere deep in her soul something had been completely smashed—she was clearly suffering from a vicious mental wound.
This boss hasn't even shown her a single contract yet and she already bailed? No matter how far you run, you're still my exclusive slave attorney, kid.
I looked out through the bars and smirked.
The second that little turtle broke down, the initiative in this conversation had already slid cleanly over to me. My inventory was overflowing with completely deranged cheat-key skills designed to forcibly perform CPR on "geniuses with mental illnesses" just like her.
"Hmm… I've got points stockpiled to spare. Might as well level up while I'm at it."
The experience Beatrice had dumped on me from our first deal was flashing in an absurdly huge number. Without hesitation I tapped the Shopkeeper Authority Enhancement tab.
Wiiiiing—!
Massive consumption of Settlement Points and Debtor-Attributed Experience.
Shopkeeper Celia's level has been adjusted upward.
Mythic-grade Authority: "Omniscient Resonance" has been unlocked!
"Hell yeah! That's more like it! Business is all about gear and capital, right?"
The earlier gloom vanished and my mood soared again. I reached for the business card Trisha had left behind in the visitation room.
Fwoosh—!
Following the residual mana signature on the card, the new authority dragged Trisha's memories in wholesale. Commoner top graduate. The false charge against the neighbor uncle. The blackmail. The runaway heart and locked breath in the courtroom. And the completely ignorant gratitude of the neighbor's family.
A compressed summary played through my head in one continuous dump and finished.
"…Yeah. This is genuinely messy."
If Mikhail's family had resented her, she might at least have grown some poison. Instead, their sincere thanks had become the cruelest shackle of all, crushing her heart under pure guilt.
Uncle Mikhail was still grinding away day after day in the freezing northern mines.
On the other hand, my competitive spirit started twitching.
If I properly fixed this little turtle lawyer, led her to victory in my trial, and then smoothly filed for Mikhail's retrial… I could loot the Imperial judiciary and the Bell Family for everything they were worth while raking in massive bonus growth proportional to every villain's mental breakdown.
Ha…? This is a honey pot too good to pass up.
I immediately slammed my fists against the iron bars.
"Hey, Warden! Drag that runaway turtle lawyer back here right now! The Empire is constitutionally obligated to appoint me a public defender, you know!"