Chapter 117

Chapter 117

Splatter.

The now thick, light brown liquid spread over the white linen tablecloth. But that wasn’t all. Nix knit his brow in utter bewilderment as he noticed tiny, dark clumps scatter onto the soaked fabric.

The poison he had mixed into the tea had reacted with the sugar cubes Roxana had piled in, reducing them to small, black globs. After seeing that the previous poison had taken no effect on her, he tried using a different one that day. Despite having proven that there was nothing wrong with it after forcing it down the throat of that human Vertium, her encroaching departure made him careless.

He had yet to consider the fact that she was simply far more knowledgeable about poisons than he was. From the smell alone she could name which toxin he had added to her tea. His face suddenly hardened upon seeing the wasted poison strewn about in tiny mounds without any chance for him to prove if they would have been effective. Judging from his uncharacteristic speechlessness, it seemed he was incapable of coming up with a believable excuse.

“I’ll admit you are a very skilled liar for a puppet. A one-of-a-kind doll even.” She had no mercy as she derided him. “Actually, no. A more apt description might be to say you are a... ‘defect,’ no?”

Nix’s eyes were quickly overcast in darkness. Those had evidently been the precise words that could pierce through his shell and straight through his heart. “A defect, you say? Me?”

“That’s right. Of course, I know you think you are something far grander and more unique.” With her every word, the metaphorical gash she had inflicted on the puppet only worsened. By now the mental wound she had inflicted was oozing with a dark, sticky venom known as doubt. It was a toxin Nix had no knowledge even existed. “But honestly... I think it would be most accurate to refer to you as Noel’s accidental ‘success.’ I mean, you’re essentially a sort of mutant or, dare I say, a freak.”

Indeed, her words were repeatedly biting at him and helping the doubt venom to spread throughout his reanimated body.

“I think the real reason your master prefers you over the other puppets is simply that you are in fact different from the others and therefore more amusing as a plaything. I strongly doubt it has anything to do with you being important to him, or due to some innate quality you possess.”

Roxana had ruthlessly and effectively pierced yet another layer of the golden-haired puppet’s newly discovered self-doubt, which he himself was still in the process of trying to comprehend.

“It’s tragically obvious what end you’ll meet once he tires of you. Oh my! Certainly you haven’t been thinking all this time that you’re some sort of exception or that you’d be spared, have you?”

Suddenly, the scene of the head Vertium destroying doll after doll in the banquet hall merely a few days prior came rushing back to him.

Now her voice, sounding beyond reasonable, was penetrating the deepest depths of his mind. “Your inevitable fate will be to get tossed out like yesterday’s rubbish just like any other broken doll. Much like what happened to the original owner of that body. I suppose it’s your unlucky fate to be abandoned then thrown away without an inkling of hesitation on the part of your masters.”

There wasn’t so much as a hint of uncertainty in her chilling pronouncement. It felt to Nix as if an icy-cold serpent was slithering over his skin and eyeing his flesh with its blood-red gaze for where it could sink its venomous fangs next.

Having endured about as much abuse as he could manage, the puppet finally spoke up. “How... How dare you? Not a single person or puppet has ever had the audacity to say such rubbish to me without suffering my wrath.”

The puppet’s face was no longer that of an amiable host, but more akin to that of the sharpened edge of a blade.

“Have you just about finished with your crackpot analysis? Or do you have even more crap to spew?!”

This more genuine side of Nix didn’t bear a single trace of his feigned youthful innocence, nor did it resemble Achille in the least. She finally felt satisfied, but at the same time, she found herself wondering how futile it all was.

“Just when did you realize I had added the poison to your tea?” He had decided to openly address the matter now that he was no longer hiding behind the façade.

“Since the very first time you served me this sh*t you continue to call tea. Now, I have a question of my own. Was it your idea to poison me? Or were you just following your master’s orders?”

“Why ask me that? You’re more than capable of finding that out for yourself. After all, you seem to know so much about everything else!” His retort was vicious, but even she acknowledged that he wasn’t wrong.

“And did I hear you correctly earlier? You were debating whether or not to kill me?”

Although he had pretended to be unscathed by her remark at first, her words had obviously struck a nerve with him.

“Honestly! Is such conceit solely a human trait? It truly is astounding that a mere mortal like yourself thinks she could ever kill me.” He proceeded to laugh sarcastically while continuing to mock the level-headed Agrece. “And what if you succeed? What then? Do you think you can just waltz out of here?”

But her response let him know that he was indeed in over his head. “That’s precisely what I think. I can’t imagine it would be all that difficult.”

Ah, you think so? Well, I hope you can still say that after I bash that unfounded pride out of your gorgeous face!

“Oh my... Don’t tell me you’re relying on those little demons of yours to do the work for you?”

She admitted to herself internally that his mirth was rather eerie.

“Or are you relying on that little ear accessory of yours?”

Before she could see what he intended to do, Nix’s hand rushed at her with lightning speed.

Clang!

Something sharp flew past her to nick her earlobe. The accessory fell in pieces, then blood began to trickle onto her shoulder. The dagger Nix had flung was lodged in the wall behind her menacingly.

Despite the surprise attack, Roxana’s face showed no signs that she had been injured. In fact, her gaze remained calm as if she were waiting for the puppet to answer his own question. Then the puppet grinned as if some brilliant epiphany had just occurred to him.

“I bet those earrings were the reason the poison didn’t take effect.” He was starting to piece together the theory based on the fact that he had noticed her wearing the same pair every day since her arrival. “Well, no matter what sort of stunt you pull, you’re still just a pathetic human who has no idea what she’s gotten herself into. All you have to defend yourself are those earrings and your dainty, little butterflies!”

For the past few days, he had merely pretended not to notice her accessories in order to nurture her false sense of security, but now he found it increasingly preposterous that she was acting as if she had the upper hand.

“I had planned to not rough you up too much since Noel wouldn’t like it if your body became mangled, but... I’m sure he’ll just be glad that he can keep you here.” Nix’s eyes gleamed with murderous intent.

Before Roxana could summon her butterflies, the puppet began to activate a spell to ensnare and suffocate her like prey.

Flash!

The violet glint in one of the puppet’s eyes began to swirl as the magic circle activated. But the next moment, it was he who was doubled over and spewing blood, not the Agrece.

“Ergh! Blegh...”

Now crimson liquid was soaking into the white tablecloth to mix with her tea from earlier, as well as staining the puppet’s shirt. He covered his mouth with his hand while glowering at her. It was clear that behind his furious expression he was struggling to comprehend what had gone wrong. In a flash, Roxana kicked over the table.

Wham!

Clatter!

He just barely avoided being struck by the flying pieces of broken furniture and glassware.

“How curious...”

The sound of her heels as she approached the befuddled doll seemed to be so overwhelming that his feet seemed rooted in place.

“I wondered how you were managing without an amulet or anything when it was clear you were employing sorcery of some sort. So it was just you. Or rather... That eye of yours is how you use sorcery.”

Nix used a wall to push himself up and brace for a fight, but before long he was coughing and sputtering more blood everywhere. Upon realizing that even the wall was failing to help him stand up, he discerned that he had probably suffered damage to his internal organs when his spell rebounded. This is all because my spell failed. But why?

“Oh dear... You seem surprised.”

Throughout the entire ordeal, she was the only one of the two who didn’t appear the slightest bit ruffled. Despite having thrown a dagger at her and slicing away a few of her hairs before nicking her ear, that was about all the damage she had suffered. She took this as an opportunity to throw his own words back at him.

“I can’t help but wonder where you got the silly idea that all I had in my arsenal were these earrings and my butterflies. If you feel up to it, I invite you to try attacking me again. Of course, I must warn you that you might not survive this much pain a second time.”

How is this possible? I gave those worthless dolls specific instructions to ensure her earrings were the only magical items in her possession, so why?

“J-Just what did you do?”

“Well, if you think all your little scheming is how you discovered the secret of my earrings, you’re sorely mistaken.”

By now, he was beyond livid and almost began to cast the spell again, but caught himself just in time. He really couldn’t afford to risk sustaining a potentially lethal blow due to his uncertainty about where she was drawing her power from.

What he had failed to realize was that had he stuck to trying to detain her without resorting to physical violence, he wouldn’t have provided her with a spell to reverse against him. But the problem was that all her cruel taunting and goading was riling him up so terribly that he felt he had no choice left but to kill her or else explode himself. That, of course, was in itself yet another pitfall in her devious plan.

“If anything, you should be thanking me for wearing them in plain sight for you and your subordinates to see them. I never thought you’d actually try to take credit by bragging about noticing them like you uncovered some well-hidden treasure. You really are a fool.”

She looked at him with the same sort of disdain one might reserve for when they find a crushed roach under their shoe. The puppet felt the inside of his stomach do cartwheels while his head reeled from being on the receiving end of her elegant contempt.

“Haa... Nix, you really are like a mutt incapable of thinking clearly because there’s a bone in your mouth.”

A sly smile played at the corners of her lips as his blue eyes seemed to flare up with rage. “You... You wretched b*tch!”

But she ignored his outburst. “I had hoped you would have caught on by now. Don’t you find it odd that no one has come to check on things in here even after all the ruckus we’ve made?”

It was only then that he did in fact realize that something was indeed off, but it was too late.

“Surely you have noticed the commotion in the distance, yes? Don’t tell me that you’re so wrapped up in your pain and anger that even that slipped your attention.”

Even inwardly, he hated having to acknowledge that the Agrece vixen was right. A rather boisterous commotion was indeed audible from the other side of the sitting room door. In fact, it was so chaotic that he couldn’t believe he had failed to notice until she pointed it out to him.

“Oh! And I might as well clear this up now. It seems you’re under the impression that I can’t kill you without using my demon monsters.” Roxana’s scarlet eyes creased with amusement. “I must admit, I haven’t heard anything so humorous in quite a while. It really is laughable how even you don’t realize just how pathetic you are.”

Then in an instant, she peered at him through razor-like slits.