"Wonderful." Paul also broke into a relieved smile, as if the scheme to replace Stonefield had never existed.
He took a step forward, his tone turning friendly, even tinged with a trace of complaint—as though chiding an elder who was being overly cautious:
"Honestly, Sir, I really don't understand… why would you suspect me?"
"According to family custom, something as important as signing a contract with Illari should have been entrusted to me from the start."
"If you had done that, then all of this today… this farce, these deaths, would never have happened."
He spread his hands, looking innocently at him as he said:
"We would have completed the replacement plan together. I'd still be your most capable assistant. Illari would be alive, making more Poppets. Those distinguished guests would be perfectly replaced before dawn… Everything would have gone smoothly. Instead of ending up like this—"
Paul let out a heavy sigh, speaking with deep regret:
"Mutual ruin."
William's smile abruptly vanished from his face, and he fell into silence.
In that long silence, the only sounds in the hall were Chris's labored breathing and the faint, distant dripping of water from some unknown place.
At last, William spoke slowly, his voice so low it sounded as if it had been squeezed up from deep in his chest:
"Why did I suspect you?"
He lifted his head, looked at Paul, his eyes complicated:
"Because you're too much like me, Mark… too much like I was when I was young."
"So I know, if I were in your position, faced with such a heaven-sent opportunity, what I would do."
More importantly…
He worried that after his death, Chris would be unable to keep Paul in check, and would instead be toyed with by this assistant who excelled at disguises and at seducing people's hearts.
The young Chris might have ambition and brains, but his methods were nothing compared to Paul, whom William had personally trained.
William glanced at his grandson; in his gaze were worry, scrutiny, and a deep, helpless resignation.
When he planned to "test" Paul, he had already prepared himself to break this sharp blade.
But he hadn't expected that although Paul, as anticipated, failed the test, he himself would end up forced into submission as well.
Paul knew what William had left unsaid, so after a long moment he too let out a soft sigh, a relieved smile appearing on his face.
"So that's how it is." He nodded. "Then… given how things have turned out, it may not be ideal, but at least we haven't sunk to the worst possible ending, have we?"
He took out his pocket watch and glanced at the time—less than four hours remained until dawn.
"Sir," Paul's tone was as composed as ever, "without Illari, who's going to extract memories for the remaining guests and infuse them into the Poppets? We don't have much time."
William was silent for a moment, then said slowly:
"I know a few Wizards I've worked with before. As long as they're paid, they'll do anything. Their skills vary, but Memory Magic is likely their specialty."
He gave Paul a look:
"It'll just cost us a hefty price. And the risk will be higher."
Paul smiled, once again wearing the proper respect and efficiency of an assistant:
"Money's not a problem, Sir. As for risk… I imagine when faced with death, they'll be as obedient as Illari was."
William nodded and slumped back into his wheelchair, exhausted:
"You're right. I'll have someone contact them in a bit."
For now… he needed to rest for a while, even if only for a few minutes.
The tense atmosphere suddenly, strangely eased, even took on a kind of harmony.
As if the gunshots, the deaths, the standoff, the threats just now… had all been nothing but an overly vivid nightmare.
Chris stood off to the side, watching his grandfather and Paul, and felt a wave of intense bewilderment.
—So this is the game of power? No eternal enemies, only eternal interests? A moment ago they were at each other's throats, and now they can shake hands and make peace?
It was as though only he still remembered the drawn swords and taut nerves of a moment before.
William and Paul had clearly reached some sort of tacit understanding. Paul turned, ready to arrange the next steps. At the same time he raised his hand, voice lifting as he addressed the Poppets in the hall:
"Return to your seats and wait for further instructions."
The Poppets swayed, and the Vampire and Werewolf Poppets closest to them anomalously stepped forward.
Chris's heart clenched. Sir William frowned and looked over, while Paul also froze for a moment, then raised his voice again:
"Back to your seats! That's an order!"
The Poppets began to move one after another, but unlike their previous neat coordination, they now looked like a batch of old machines with poor signal reception.
But Chris's sharp eyes caught that it wasn't that the Poppets didn't understand the order—on the contrary—
Their eyeballs were rolling unusually flexibly. As they shuffled along, they kept glancing at one another, as if silently exchanging some opinion.
Chris's scalp instantly prickled; he reflexively gripped Sir William's wheelchair tight and slapped the button to raise the barrier!
At that very instant, a Werewolf Poppet walking past Paul suddenly twitched, its body almost turning into a blur—
"Squelch!"
A sound extremely soft, like slicing into a watermelon.
Paul's head flew free, and just before the barrier rose, it thudded into Sir William's arms.
His eyes were stretched wide, filled with utter shock. His lips moved, as if trying to say something, but no sound came out.
The severed neck was cut with uncanny smoothness, the wound as if scorched by high heat—there was no fountain of blood, only dark red liquid slowly oozing out.
The barrier reformed, and Chris let out a tiny breath—only to see the old man in the wheelchair suddenly stiffen.
Sir William lowered his head, meeting Paul's eyes that refused to close in death, feeling the viscous blood soaking through his trousers and trickling down his pant legs.
Time seemed to freeze in that instant.
For the first time, Sir William's face showed absolute horror.
His mouth gaped to the limit, yet no sound emerged. His eyes, driven by sheer terror, seemed about to pop from their sockets, his pupils dilating violently, his heart pounding furiously against his ribs!
"Ugh… huh…"
Chris heard a strange gasping noise.
He knew he ought to do something… at the very least to throw that head out of his grandfather's arms, but Chris's whole body was shaking; he simply couldn't move.
No matter that he'd handled vast assets before, no matter that countless families and businesses had been driven to ruin by his family's expansion, Chris still couldn't face this kind of primal, blood-soaked terror.
Sir William's hands trembled; before he could do anything, a lifeless ashen pall spread from his neck upward at a speed visible to the naked eye, drowning out the last trace of color.
His heaving chest suddenly stilled. His head lolled to the side, and he collapsed in the wheelchair.
Sudden death.
The ultimate fright detonated a heart that had long been fragile beyond repair.
Chris stood there, stunned.
His mind was blank, unable to process the successive, utterly unimaginable upheavals before his eyes.
He looked at his grandfather's slack corpse, looked at Paul's severed head still locked in a stare with the dead old man, then looked at the other side of the barrier, at that… Werewolf Poppet slowly straightening up.
It slowly turned its head, and those eyes that should have been set with gemstones or some sort of crystal were at this moment fixed on Chris.
Then it bared its teeth.
The Werewolf showed a grin of extreme danger and sheer malice.
That smile was twisted yet vivid, completely different from its previous stiff, mechanical, doll-like look.
It was laughing!
And in the hall, the more than two hundred Poppets also began to move slowly, their limbs unnervingly nimble.
[—We've been tricked! We've been tricked! We've been tricked! We've been tricked! We've been tricked!]
The one who truly deceived them wasn't Paul, nor Grandfather, nor the foolish Illari, but these Poppets that had been pretending all along!
The horrific truth roared through Chris's mind. His pupils lost focus, as if even his heart had forgotten to beat.
In the silence, only a single, not-yet-coagulated drop of blood fell from the Werewolf Poppet's claws onto the marble floor.
"Tap."
A soft sound.