Chapter 118

Chapter 118

Roxana spoke in a voice that was as cold as sleet. “Nix, I guarantee that you are far weaker than I am. So weak in fact that I won’t even need to enlist the aid of my butterflies in order to destroy you.”

“Oh, don’t make me laugh!” The now enraged puppet practically spat the words at the Agrece, then quickly considered his current situation.

What could be happening out there that would prevent anyone from coming to check on the disturbance in here?

Even Dante, who Noel had specifically ordered to stand guard near the sitting room, had yet to even rattle the doorknob at the sound of the table crashing. Nix’s only salvation was the fact that the injury to his internal organs caused by his own spell had already begun to heal while Roxana chided him.

Despite her insults, his being a puppet allowed him to heal abnormally quickly. He cast a venomous glare at the golden-haired woman who had made a complete mess of him.

“Those eyes...” Roxana pointed at the bridge of his nose as she spoke. “I really don’t like them.”

Before he could register what she had said, she seemed to fly toward him. Since she had come up close and was glaring down at him, he instinctively cast his spell again.

And to his detriment, it yet again backfired. After spewing even more blood all over himself, the puppet turned away from Roxana reflexively.

“W... Wait!”

But before the puppet could finish his plea, she had already sunk her talons into his eye socket.

* * *

Everything had started around the same time Nix and Roxana had begun their conversation in the sitting room. The atmosphere around the Vertiums who lived in the rear garden was ominous and dreary. It was also so full of tension that a person sighing too loudly could have triggered a riot in their cozy-looking building.

Despite their numerous requests, Noel had refused to grant them an audience. He had simply sent along an antidote for the man his beloved puppet had tested an unknown poison on. Nix hadn’t been punished at all, so seeing him continue to walk about so casually made it clear that their young clan leader had zero intention of addressing the issue. Dante once again stepped into the role of Noel’s spokesman and apologized to them, while also assuring them that he would recommend the puppet receive the harshest of punishments.

However, by then the Vertiums knew better than to trust such an empty sentiment. They knew the Gold Master didn’t possess an iota of interest in the well-being of his own kin since his mind was solely consumed with thoughts of his dolls. Had that not been the case, a mere puppet would not have gotten away with acting so contemptuously toward them. Thus, they had collectively agreed that this most recent affront had been the final straw. After all, what would the other clans say if word got out that a doll of all creatures got away with poisoning a human?

Sure, Nix was special in that he could move and act without Noel’s bidding, but that was precisely what made him all the more dangerous since he lacked any concept of human morals. The way he had laughed after force-feeding that poisoned cookie to the innocent Vertium man was beyond distressing for the other clan members to watch. Thus, several of them decided to try once more to seek an audience with their leader. However, while en route to see him, they were forced to stop.

“Huh? Isn’t that the puppet?”

The figure who was half-hidden by a blossoming tree turned toward them. Upon recognizing his obscenely beautiful face cast in shadow, they began to holler.

“You bastard!”

“What are you doing out here?!”

“Wait! What’s that in his hands?!”

After taking notice of the puppet holding a mysterious object, the clan members immediately stopped yelling. Not only was the doll hiding something in his hands, but blood was also splattered all over the ground around him like red camellia petals.

He appeared to be holding one of their fellow residents of the garden annex, but the body lay prone in his arms like a corpse. Suddenly, it seemed as if ice was coursing through their veins as they beheld the doll smile twistedly at them under the spring sunshine.

“Whoops...” As if to add insult to injury, Nix removed one of his hands that had been sunken inside the person’s torso, which allowed even more blood to spurt out toward the sky and sprinkle the ground even more. “Guess you caught me.”

His nonchalant trill rang clear across the distance to torture their eardrums. The sight of his leisurely retreating back as he made his way out of the garden evidently set off the figurative eruption in the Vertiums’ minds.

“You rotten son of a b—!”

“Stop right there, you fiend!”

The angry mob began to chase after the puppet as he practically skipped away. All the while, a kaleidoscope of crimson butterflies hovered over the blossoming white trees and silently watched the entire affair. The time had finally come for the Gold clansmen who had felt wronged for so long to unleash the pent-up anger in their hearts.

Little did they know that what they had borne witness to was no more than a hallucination created by those very same butterflies. As their wrath brimmed over, they destroyed every last doll they encountered in the main manor.

“Where is Nix?! Bring him to us NOW!”

They had devolved into a stampede of fury and confusion that showed no signs of dying down any time soon.

It was the exact result Roxana had craftily engineered.

* * *

“Hmm... Sounds like things are finally getting started.” Grizelda stared over the wall surrounding the manor as though she could perfectly see everything going on inside.

Just as Roxana had suspected, her older half-sister had been loitering around the gold land borders. However, despite her comment, she could not actually see in detail what lay beyond the thick barrier.

“I came all this way thinking things were going to get interesting, but now I have to wonder if there’ll be anything left for me to do...”

She hadn’t heard from her younger sister since crossing into the Vertium territory, so she had been waiting on the outskirts and using a spell to conceal her presence. Without warning, an unknown man came into her view. He was incredibly swift and moved without making any audible sound despite being in the thick of the forest.

Grizelda supposed his stealth was an attribute of being a trained assassin. He was the sort of man Lante Agrece would have recruited on the spot. She focused on him for some time as he surveyed the surrounding area as if searching for something he had lost. Then before long, he frowned to himself since his search had proven fruitless.

“Um... Lady Grizelda? Might you still be here?”

The Agrece woman involuntarily jerked backward at hearing the stranger address her by name. Rather than immediately deactivate her concealment spell, she decided to observe him more closely for a bit longer. He had an eye patch identical to the man she had seen leaving the Agrece compound the night of the Pedelian invasion.

He must be a Pedelian. Upon recognizing him, Grizelda felt it was safe to step out of her magic circle to address him. “Did Cassis send you here?”

* * *

Dante was the first to receive notice of the mayhem.

“They’ve what?!”

He had been waiting outside of the sitting room for Nix’s signal, but the sound of the raging mob charging toward the manor proved far more urgent. He dashed to look out of the nearest window and was shocked at the scene below.

“Where is Nix?!”

“Bring him to us NOW!”

The Vertium clan members were on an all-out killing spree slashing and tearing apart every doll in their path.

“Go tell the master what’s happening. Hurry!”

“Yes, sir.”

Upon sending the nearest doll to notify Noel of the riot, the steward raced down the nearest flight of stairs.

Knock, knock.

“Master Noel.”

“Come in!” The young leader was waiting in an empty room not too far from the sitting room he knew Roxana was having tea with Nix. “What is it? Did Nix send you?”

He stopped his pacing in anticipation of the doll’s answer. However, to his dismay, the doll shook his head.

“No, Master. Dante sent me.”

“Huh? What for?”

“Your relatives residing in the rear garden are demanding Nix’s head and are destroying all of us in the meantime.”

“They’re what?!” His orange hair rushed forward in a furious blur. “W-Why are they after Nix?”

The truth was, he already had a fairly good hunch as to why his fellow clansmen were up in arms. The day prior they had once again sought an audience with him. He also knew that Nix had fed one of them some sort of poison, but he had also provided the man with the antidote. Thus, in the Gold Master’s mind, the whole affair was settled.

“I’m not quite certain, Master, but they do seem extremely angry.”

Unable to decide what to do next, Noel questioned the doll again.

“Where’s Dante?”

“He went down to try and speak to them.”

“Just how many dolls have they destroyed already?”

“When last I counted, they had dismantled roughly fifty of us, Master.”

“That many already?!” Noel’s emerald eyes bulged as if he had been physically struck by the shock, but that look was almost immediately replaced by a scowl as the indecision drifted from his thoughts. “Those bastards! Don’t they know you dolls weren’t designed for combat?! How can they attack such harmless things?!”

Evidently, he had completely forgotten his own murderous rampage against the helpless dolls, whose only crime had been waiting on Roxana Agrece when she first arrived.