When facing a wild beast, your fear is its greatest reason to lunge and tear into you.
Just like Karen now: before this young girl, if he showed the slightest cowardice or displayed the mindset and behavior of a normal human being, what awaited him would be a fate akin to that of her elder brother.
She was a beast.
And this damned study was like a cage, locking him in alongside her.
Karen swore that after this was over, he would immediately study the Church of Order's God's Servant spells. No—since he had been able to awaken a corpse even before his purification, why couldn't he try higher-tier magic?
Spells for God's Revelation, God's Shepherd, or even an Inquisitor!
Even if learning them ahead of time carried immense risk, it was still better than his current predicament, wasn't it?
In truth, Karen had little reason to complain about his own laxity. He had only completed his purification yesterday, and this little beast had barged in today.
His sole bit of slack was probably sitting down at the desk this morning with peace of mind to eat a breakfast that wasn't even that good.
Beyond that, he would have to add a secretary's desk right next to his in the study. Even if he were merely sitting here trimming his fingernails, Alfred would have to sit there and keep him company.
Judia walked up to the desk.
Before pressing the call bell, she smiled.
Then she turned her head to look at Karen.
Karen caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, but simply continued tugging at his clothes with his fingers.
*Ding...*
Judia pressed the bell.
Standing outside the door was Boge, Rank One in the family faith system.
Karen doubted the boy was any match for this mad royal girl.
When Boge saw another person inside the study, he visibly froze. He had been standing outside the door the entire time—how had someone slipped in without his knowledge?
"Go fetch me a change of clothes. Princess Judia's drool got all over mine."
"That's not true! You're clearly the one who likes tasting my spit."
After her coy pout, Judia flashed a lovely smile at Boge, who remained frozen where he stood.
"Young Master, the Master wishes to ask if you would like to attend the cemetery ceremony shortly."
"I won't be going."
"Very well. I will go fetch your clothes, Young Master."
A short while later, Alfred walked in holding a set of clothes. Before crossing the threshold, his expression was solemn; once inside, his professional, restrained smile returned.
"Young Master, your clothes."
"Mmm, quite a distinguished manservant, too." Judia took the initiative to step up beside Karen and crouched down, wrapping her arms around the legs of the seated young man. "I'm even starting to wonder if there's some kind of story between you and your manservant."
"Leave the clothes on the desk and step outside."
Alfred set the garments on the desk and asked with a smile, "Young Master, do you not require your subordinate's assistance in changing?"
"No need."
Karen shook his head, lightly patting Judia's little head at the same time.
"I want to experience what it feels like to have a princess dress me."
"Very well, Young Master."
Alfred walked out of the study, stopped at the doorway, turned around, took hold of the double door handles with both hands, and pulled them shut.
*Click.*
The instant the door closed, Alfred seized Boge by the collar, lifting the youth's feet clear off the floor.
"What on earth were you guarding, you useless piece of trash!"
Spitting the venomous curse under his breath, Alfred threw Boge directly to the ground.
Boge scrambled to his feet at once. "I don't know! I was outside the door the entire time. I have no idea how the princess got in. I only thought something was off, which was why I made sure to tell you, sir. The Young Master should be all right, shouldn't he? Didn't you just go inside and check on him?"
"All right?" Alfred kicked Boge again, sending him tumbling across the floor.
The "radio" demon in Purr's words was respectful only toward supreme beings. In reality, he was an aberrant demon of equal standing with an ordinary Judge of the Church of Order, possessing his own autonomous circle of existence!
"The moment I went inside, that girl deliberately clung to the Young Master's side, terrified I might suddenly strike at her! She was using the Young Master as a hostage, and you call that all right?"
Knocked down again, Boge immediately clutched his chest, scrambled back up, and asked, "Please tell me what I should do now!"
"What else can we do?" Alfred took several steps back and leaned against the wall. "Wait for her to come out on her own."
Boge asked, "Should I find the Master and tell him to ask Prince York to come over?"
"Do nothing. Don't make unnecessary moves." Alfred took a deep breath and warned, "When you have lost control of a situation, doing nothing is the only way to preserve the baseline. Any reckless move made in panic will likely only make matters worse. Since the bell was rung to let you inside earlier, it proves the situation remains under the Young Master's control. Let us... place our trust in the Young Master."
"Understood. Thank you for the guidance, Mr. Alfred." Clutching his chest, Boge bowed to Alfred.
Alfred glanced at him. "Set up a desk for me in the study later. From this day forth, I will remain by the Young Master's side at all times."
***
Inside, Karen took off his soiled coat and handed it to Judia.
Judia took the coat, set it on the desk, then picked up a clean garment and walked over. Spreading its sleeves wide, she asked, "I'm curious."
"Curious about what?"
Karen slipped his arms into the sleeves, putting the garment on, then stood facing Judia and gestured for her to fasten the buttons.
Judia reached out to do so, continuing, "Curious whether you were merely putting on an act in front of me just now—whether everything before was completely fake."
"Yes, it was all an act," Karen answered frankly.
"Oh?" Judia continued fastening the buttons. "If it was an act, your acting talent is truly remarkable. You ought to be the lead actor at the Royal Grand Theater in York City."
"Having already made a choice, repeatedly probing is quite pointless," Karen said.
"Mm, that makes a lot of sense."
With the front buttons fastened, Karen turned around to let her smooth out the back.
Exposing his entire back to her without reservation, Karen continued, "Once you've made a choice, see it through. More often than not, whether the destination is right or wrong doesn't matter; that's only for others to see. All you can truly experience is whether you like and enjoy the scenery along the way."
"I understand."
Judia let go. "This part is all smoothed out too."
Karen turned back around and adjusted his cuffs himself.
"At first, I thought you were just cleaning this study. Then I realized you weren't. After that, I thought you were merely a core member of the Allen family, but now I see that isn't it either. You are the current master of this Allen study. How strange."
"Is that so strange?" Karen smiled. "Your threshold for curiosity must be exceptionally low."
Judia pinched her skirt and gave Karen a curtsy. "I'm very curious: if I walk out of this study alone right now, will an attack ordered by you be waiting for me? Is that a possibility?"
"That possibility is about the same as your possibility of wanting to eat me when you first climbed through the window."
"Then how can I possibly walk out?"
"What do you think?" Karen finished straightening his clothes completely. "You can ask yourself what made you abandon your plan to eat me."
"I can tell you a secret—a secret the Gloria Royal Family holds against the Allen family."
"Speak."
"The Gloria Royal Family is preparing to make a move against the Allen family."
"Then why not right now? Your brother Henry would make an excellent pretext for a frame-up."
"Because the timing isn't right. My great-grandmother's health is deteriorating; she is dying."
"She could die at any moment. Given her age, that's hardly surprising."
"Yet she obtained a method to endure—to extend her life. What's more, once successful, this method can bring about a tremendous elevation to the Gloria family's standing."
"Care to be clearer?"
Judia pointed toward the portrait of Count Rekar. "Count Rekar once gave half a nautical chart to my Gloria ancestor as... payment for services rendered in bed."
"Mm."
Karen found nothing strange about that. Pirate tales never lacked nautical charts, and such charts were never whole.
"Over a century ago, the Gloria family and the Allen family jointly assembled an expedition fleet, pieced their respective halves of the chart together, and followed its guidance to unearth a mysterious treasure. On that voyage of exploration, the fleet suffered devastating losses. Only the Allen flagship returned, while the Glorias were completely wiped out."
Karen's heart stirred slightly. Was that expedition where the Allen family retrieved the God of Light's finger?
"Yet the truth is, a Gloria ancestor who took part in that adventure didn't die. He drifted across the sea, survived, and ended up washed ashore on a deserted island. Over the past century, alongside the expansion of colonial campaigns, an exploration team under the Department of Mining finally arrived on that island twenty years ago. They discovered that ancestor's remains inside a cave. Beside the skeleton lay a box, and inside the box was a single black seed."
"You're making this story far too long," Karen reminded her. "Perhaps in the future, I can teach you how to tell a story without boring your audience."
Internally, however, Karen reasoned that if the Allen family had brought back a god's finger from that joint expedition, then the seed that the Gloria ancestor had protected until his dying breath could hardly be ordinary.
"In the grand theater, there are actors who specialize in storytelling shows. They perform almost every day, talking about utter nonsense, yet hordes of people buy tickets every day just to hear them."
"Very well. If the opportunity arises, I will go listen at the grand theater. But as for you, right now..."
"Great-Grandmother plans to grace the Allen family with her presence before she dies. It is an honor bestowed upon vassals; wherever the Queen visits, it is considered a blessing, a collective glory for an entire town or even a whole city."
"And then?"
"Great-Grandmother will die at the Allen family estate. That seed will sprout within her body, and on that night, everyone throughout Allen Manor will perish. But Great-Grandmother will obtain rebirth. Officially, of course, she will have passed away at Allen Manor, and her remains should stay there as well. Outsiders might not realize this, but the Gloria family only dares to protect itself and never dares launch proactive attacks outwardly. The Church keeps an exceptionally tight leash on the Vien royal house. The royal family can play among themselves on their own territory, but the moment they expose any ambition, they will inevitably face suppression from the Church. Fortunately, this method can circumvent the Church's suspicions toward the royal family. Outsiders won't suspect that the Gloria family wiped out the Allens."
"Be specific."
"As for the specifics, even I don't know them," Judia explained. "Great-Grandmother is the one swallowing the seed, not me."
"Why choose the Allen family?"
"It should be the result of the family's research. That seed was once tainted with blood—the blood of an Allen ancestor from a century ago."
"What?"
Judia shrugged. "Is that so hard to understand? Both sides formed a joint expedition, but when it came to dividing the spoils, a violent fight broke out. Since the Allen flagship returned, it means the Gloria ancestors lost the clash. Thus, the ancestor who jumped into the sea with the seed, drifted to the deserted island, and ultimately died must have carried the final hopes of every Gloria on that fleet. But that seed must have been stained with Allen blood—perhaps during their mutual slaughter, or perhaps someone dripped blood onto it beforehand to claim ownership sooner. In short, the results of nearly twenty years of research by the family show that when this seed sprouts, the nourishment it requires must come from the Allen family. In fact, that research was practically concluded ten years ago; the specific application methods and taboos were already clear back then."
"Then why drag it out until now?"
"Because Great-Grandmother fears death. Holding the highest status, she chose all sorts of ways to stall and obstruct the arrival of this plan. Now, it is because she feels she truly is on the verge of death that her hope of gaining rebirth through this seed has solidified. Great-Grandmother is the matriarch of the Gloria family and the sovereign of the Kingdom of Vien, its dependencies, and colonies. When she doesn't want to die, no one can rush her. Not only that, but in recent years, the Raphael family's encroachment upon the Allens has grown increasingly severe. Fearing the Allen family would fall into utter ruin, the Gloria family even went out of its way to suppress the Raphaels. After all, Allen Manor was the place of awakening Great-Grandmother chose long ago. In the near future... let's see, Brother's body certainly won't be found."
Judia patted her belly.
"Yet according to tradition, the funeral will definitely be held at Allen Manor. When the time comes, Great-Grandmother, as the Queen, should personally come to offer condolences for her great-grandson. If she chooses to stay the night at Allen Manor, it will mean she has made all her preparations. Well, mostly psychological ones—because even after years of deduction and analysis by the family elders regarding the consequences of swallowing that seed, there is only one seed after all, making experimentation impossible."
"If the seed's nourishment requires Allen blood, doesn't the Gloria family also have..." Karen looked at Judia.
Judia pointed toward Count Rekar's portrait. "Actually, my direct lineage does not descend from Queen Gloria III. Gloria III never bore any children for Count Rekar. In truth, by the time Queen Gloria III was with Count Rekar, she had already lost her fertility. Although history records her giving birth to several more children after that, they were merely other children from within the family placed under her name."
"Oh? Then you..."
"However, Gloria III's daughter, Princess Lucen, did bear a child for Count Rekar."
The mother, as Count Rekar's lover, bore no child, yet her daughter did?
Then again, placing oneself in that era, what secular morals would an unscrupulous pirate overlord possess?
Perhaps his lingering attachment and loyalty to his family were all he had retained; for the vast majority of his life, he had been a scoundrel doing scoundrelly deeds.
"That branch didn't manage to cultivate very good results; only two individuals ever reached Rank One. But as you know, the Glorias often mingled together, mixing this way and that, carrying a bit from here and a bit from there. Royal inbreeding in particular is so rampant that people often aren't even sure whether their parents are truly their parents. Take me, for instance: Prince York is my grandfather, but he is also my father, hehe."
Karen swallowed hard.
With a family mixing together like that, they would either breed brain damage or mental illness.
Evidently, Judia belonged to the latter. Fortunately, thanks to his past life, he had ample experience dealing with such individuals.
"I should carry a tiny trace of Count Rekar's bloodline, and through a stroke of fortune, I actually succeeded in awakening. Hehehe, do you know what rank I currently hold in the Allen family faith system?"
"Rank Two?"
"No, Rank Three."
Karen suddenly felt that Old Anderson could very well take his three sons and jump off a building. The main family had worked up to this point and reached Rank Three at best, yet a young child of an outside clan had reached Rank Three at such a tender age!
"Now that I've told you this, when I walk out of this study, will you order your people to attack me? That manservant of yours is quite formidable; I might not be a match for him."
Karen shook his head.
Compared to the prospect of the entire Allen Manor being used as sacrificial offerings, this little girl was far less pressing.
Most importantly, Karen detected a... peculiar impression from her narrative: when recounting matters regarding the Allen and Gloria families, her stance did not sit with the Glorias at all.
Judia twirled in place a few times, her skirt fluttering.
At this moment, she truly looked like a young girl of her age, her face radiant with an uninhibited smile.
Finishing her spin, she produced a letter from her bosom and handed it to Karen.
Karen reached out and took the letter.
"What is recorded in this letter is precisely what I just told you."
Surprised, Karen asked, "So you scaled the wall and entered this study just to leave this warning letter for the Allen family's patriarch?"
"Yes, exactly."
"Why?"
"Why?" Judia asked with a smile. "What rank are you in the family faith system?"
Karen shook his head, noting a detail: could Judia not tell he was a God's Servant?
Perhaps because his purification process was unique, he naturally concealed the aura of a God's Servant?
As for why Purr, Alfred, Old Anderson, and the others hadn't noticed this "concealment" ability, was it simply because they clearly knew he had completed purification and thus naturally overlooked it?
Judia spoke: "Then you wouldn't understand this feeling. Once you awaken the Progenitor's bloodline, and as your rank in the family faith system continues to rise, you feel a natural affinity toward the Progenitor, toward your own blood."
Judia pointed up toward Ancestor Allen above the desk.
"I can clearly feel that he is my true origin."
Immediately after, Judia turned to face Count Rekar's portrait.
"The Gloria family is not my home, nor do I share the slightest emotional bond with Prince York. In my perception, my father—is him!
"Do you know why I ate Henry? Henry was actually useless and knew none of the family's secrets. I'm different. I enjoy the treatment accorded to a Gloria genius, so I know far more than Henry ever did.
"I've seen Sister Eunice several times. She used to accompany her mother, Madam Jenny, into the palace often for afternoon tea with Great-Grandmother.
"I loved looking at her, staying close to her, because she gave me the feeling of family.
"It's just that the fallen Allen family never conducted a bloodline test on her, all so they could marry her off at a good price.
"Yet I firmly believe that since she gives me that feeling, it means she must be just like me, possessing an exceptionally rich aura of the Progenitor's bloodline.
"Ah, she is my sister—my beautiful sister. She is so gentle and moving.
"Henry actually dreamed of marrying her, of defiling my sister! He was eating shit in his dreams!
"What's more, I noticed that perhaps because of me, the family seemed to entertain the idea of facilitating this marriage—letting Sister Eunice marry in before arranging that major event, thereby preserving one more Allen bloodline for the family.
"So I seized an opportunity to kill that foolish brother of mine who dared to crave a swan's flesh, and stuffed horse dung into his mouth while I was at it, to let him know what he truly deserved to eat.
"Though what you mentioned earlier was truly brilliant—Great-Grandmother's undergarments! Hahaha, now that would have been a true classic!"
"You killed Henry because he wanted to marry Eunice?" Karen asked.
"Yes, exactly. Even though I've only exchanged a few simple pleasantries with Sister, whoever dares defile my beautiful, sacred sister—whichever foul man dares marry her—I will kill him!"
"..." Karen was speechless.
"All right, I've finished speaking. With the filthy, foolish Glorias plotting to use my Allen family as sacrifices, how could I possibly sit by and do nothing? Of course I had to come give a warning first.
"This is the Allen family's Allen Manor, and it is also my manor, my home, even if I haven't truly lived here for a single day.
"Well then, I shall leave this study now and return to the side of Prince York, who is both my grandfather and my father."
As Judia walked toward the study door, Karen called out to her:
"Wait..."
Judia stopped, turned to look at Karen, and asked, "Wait for what?"
"I'm certain that just moments ago, you truly wanted to eat me. My surname is Allen, and I sit in this study. If you consider this place your home..."
"Those who fail to awaken the Progenitor's bloodline are all outsiders in my eyes. The others, even if bearing the surname Allen, are merely strangers to me. In fact, seeing them carry this surname makes me rather uncomfortable."
"Very well, I understand."
"No, you don't," Judia said with a chuckle. "Right now, I'm even beginning to wonder if you might be a beguiling aberrant demon. Yet I can't detect any aberrant demon aura on you. Still, earlier, you truly made me lose myself in your words. You are a very interesting person. No, exceptionally interesting."
"Is that so..."
Judia tapped her forehead with a finger and said, "Even now, I haven't completely emerged from your enchantment.
"Because I've begun to look forward to it—look forward to you truly taking me to meet my father one day, so that I can personally confide my loneliness and grievances to him. I want so badly to act like a normal little girl, acting coquettishly before Father.
"You were right: whether the destination is right or wrong no longer matters. Even if everything you told me was a lie, my heart is already brimming with longing.
"Tell me, will that day truly come for me?"
"It will."
"Then I shall look forward to it."
"Yet you still haven't told me why you wanted to eat me. You can't possibly want to eat every ordinary person surnamed Allen."
"Because you are simply far too good-looking. In the palace, there are plenty of handsome men, and plenty of handsome men who aren't quite men, but I have truly never seen anyone more handsome than you."
"..." Karen remained silent.
"I believe many women would take a liking to you and fall for you because of your looks."
"Actually, not really."
"Well, I do. I like you, and I like your handsome face. There are many ways to like someone. For me, liking someone means wanting to eat him up, so that you can be with me forever."
"That's not a very good habit," Karen said.
"Yet it is undeniably the simplest, most direct habit, completely free of any lingering emotional trouble. I've long grown sick of those romantic plays they constantly perform at the grand theater."
"Understood."
"Actually, I still feel a bit of regret in my heart. After all, whether I ate you or not wouldn't have affected my ability to leave the letter on the desk. In fact, twisting your head off and leaving it on the desk with the envelope held in your mouth would have commanded the family head's attention far more effectively, wouldn't it?"
"Life is beautiful because of its regrets."
Hearing this, Judia nodded and asked, "May I leave now?"
"You may. Also, thank you for your warning."
"I am merely acting on behalf of my own family. There is no need for an outsider like you to thank me."
Judia opened the study door, exchanged a glance with Alfred standing outside, and left with a faint smile.
Alfred did not stop her. Instead, he stepped into the study immediately.
He saw his young master standing before the portrait of Count Rekar, raising a middle finger at the painting.
"You... beast."
Chapter 98