"!!!"
Baron Gramir!
Were she not a Spectator, she'd probably have panicked on the spot. Instead, Audrey replied with an innocent, carefree smile: "I wanted to ask Papa for a dance."
"Oh."
Baron Gramir smiled faintly, took Audrey's pale wrist, and bowed at the waist. "Might the lovely lady honour me with a dance first?"
She smiled radiantly. "Of course."
The two stepped onto the dance floor together and began to move to the strains of a waltz.
Bernadette, disguised as Baron Gramir, was a former princess and the daughter of the man who "invented" the waltz — naturally, she was well-versed in the dance. Audrey even more so; she'd been trained in every aspect of a noblewoman's education from the moment she was old enough to understand.
But the more skillfully her partner danced, the more Audrey's heart raced. The more certain she became that this was absolutely not Baron Gramir. So his sudden invitation to dance — did that mean he'd realised she'd seen through his disguise?
What do I do?
What am I supposed to do?
If I scream, I definitely won't be able to escape. But if I do nothing…
Maybe I could pray to Mr. Fool for help? Right — and there's the Lord of Chaos. If I recite Their Honorific Name, it should draw Their gaze… But unless They can directly intervene and take down Qilangos, I still can't get away.
Her thoughts were racing when, suddenly, his mouth drew close to her ear: "Miss Hall, you've figured out my identity, haven't you?"
"!!!"
Seasoned Spectator though she was, Audrey very nearly burst into tears at that moment. But she fought desperately to control her emotions, squeezing out a smile: "Whatever do you mean, Baron?"
Bernadette studied her quietly, smiling but saying nothing.
Vincent remarked inwardly: You know, your humanity must be absolutely overflowing at this point for you to be this wilful. What's the point of teasing a young girl like that?
Bernadette chuckled softly. "I came here just to look around anyway. I'm bored with nothing to do — is it wrong to have a bit of fun? Besides, it's a good lesson for little 'Justice' here: don't treat the world of Beyonders like a game. One careless slip and it's your life."
A pause. "I forgot to ask — how did you know Audrey had seen through my disguise?"
"I noticed some subtle changes in her expression. Combined with how invested she's been in the Hanged Man's commission and her Spectator abilities, I made a few reasonable inferences. Turns out I was right." — The real reason, of course, was that in the original novel, this was exactly how Qilangos's cover got blown.
Qilangos had at least spent several days familiarising himself with this Baron before taking his place. Bernadette knew absolutely nothing about the man, and on top of that she'd just had a close encounter with Audrey — it would have been a miracle if she'd actually fooled her.
"So, have you made up your mind? Are you going to move against the Duke?"
"Let's wait for him to show himself."
Bernadette didn't answer directly, but Vincent suspected she planned to use her Prosecutor abilities to observe what crimes Duke Negan had committed, and use that as the basis for whether or not to act.
If that was the case, the Duke was almost certainly a dead man tonight. Vincent refused to believe that a man who'd been a duke for decades, who controlled the largest territory in Loen, who was simultaneously the leader of the conservative faction, could possibly have clean hands.
In fact, scanning the ballroom, apart from the young noblewomen, there were precious few people present who didn't carry some form of serious crime on their shoulders.
"Well?" Bernadette addressed Audrey again. "Have you figured out what to do?"
"…"
Seeing the amusement in her counterpart's eyes, Audrey felt her panic ease considerably. She couldn't say why, but she had the distinct feeling that this "Qilangos" harboured no ill will toward her — it felt more like… he was toying with her.
The thought genuinely caught her off guard. After all, Mr. Hanged Man's intelligence hadn't included that particular detail.
And besides — hadn't Qilangos come here to do something that would catapult him into the ranks of the Four Pirate Kings? How did he have the leisure to waste time teasing her?
This led Audrey to wonder: Could I have been wrong? Is this person not Qilangos after all?
And yet — he'd already admitted he wasn't Baron Gramir.
Just then, a ripple of movement passed through the crowd nearby. A man in an immaculately tailored dark-blue admiral's uniform emerged — overweight, corpulent, a broad smile on his face, champagne glass in hand, clinking with guests on all sides and chatting amiably.
Bernadette gazed at him in silence. Unsurprisingly, she saw virtually every crime imaginable written on the Duke's person: murder, sexual assault, blasphemy, war crimes…
Of course, given Bernadette's personality and how she operated, she wouldn't normally kill someone simply because of their crimes. She was a pirate, not a paladin of justice. But today, these crimes happened to give her a reason to act.
No matter how suspicious the priest was, no matter how strange his request, no matter how likely there was some unknown plot behind all of this — she simply wanted her father's belongings back.
And beyond that, she hoped to learn more about her father from the priest's mouth.
She lightly patted Audrey on the head, then released her hand and melted into the crowd. A swipe across her face transformed her into Qilangos's appearance. She removed her jacket, stepped clear of the throng, and looked at Duke Negan. In a clear, crisp voice she declared:
"You are guilty."
"You have murdered. You have committed blasphemy. You have violated others!"
Her voice cut through the music and the chatter, reaching Duke Negan's ears with perfect clarity. He turned a cold stare toward Baron Gramir. "Who are you? Do you have any idea what you're—"
Before he could finish, a bone-chilling aura suddenly engulfed him.
As a former Admiral who'd launched numerous wars and caused untold slaughter, Duke Negan knew exactly what that meant. Without a moment's hesitation, he stumbled backward, screaming: "Save me!"
Squelch!
A line of blood sprayed from his throat. Duke Negan's head — frozen in an expression of terror and bewilderment — toppled from his shoulders and hit the floor with a dull thud, rolling toward the crowd.
"!!!"
After a beat of stunned silence, screams erupted. The scene collapsed into absolute chaos.
A man in gold-rimmed spectacles standing near the Duke first looked mildly surprised, then shouted: "Seize him!"
But Bernadette had long since vanished from sight. Using Shadow Jump, she left the ballroom with ease. Publicly assassinating a duke who had no demigod protection was, for a Sequence 3 Beyonder, laughably simple.
Audrey stared blankly at the blood pooling on the floor, at the head with its frozen, wide-open eyes only a short distance away, and felt her knees go weak. She truly hadn't expected that the Qilangos who'd been discussed at the Tarot Club for weeks would appear before her like this.
He'd danced with her, unhurried and at ease. He'd even teased her. Just as she was beginning to wonder whether Qilangos might not match Mr. Hanged Man's description at all —
He'd calmly turned around, walked up in full view of everyone, uttered a few words, killed Duke Negan, and strolled away.
It wasn't Audrey's first time seeing a Beyonder in action, but it was her first time witnessing a Beyonder kill someone. Fear, dread, tension — and a sliver of curiosity.
"Ahhh!!!"
"Ahhh!!"
Then she heard the screams around her and realised she was being far too calm. She quickly opened her mouth wide, screamed, and ran toward her father — all while thinking: I need to pray to Mr. Fool immediately and tell Mr. Hanged Man that Qilangos has surfaced.
Equally bewildered were Xio and Fors. The moment Duke Negan was killed, the pair's first thought was that someone was coming for them, so they'd bolted for the exit.
But they'd barely made it out of the villa before remembering Audrey was still inside, and rushed back in a panic — only to find the whole thing was already over.
The two of them looked at Audrey, who was putting on a masterful performance of a frightened young lady seeking comfort in her father's arms, and thought in unison: Women really are born actresses.
Unfortunately, it seemed they were not.
Meanwhile, after the kill, it had taken Bernadette less than half a minute to leave the scene. She'd calmly changed her clothes and shifted back into Natasha's appearance.
Vincent said: "From the moment Duke Negan appeared to the moment you killed him with the Words of Order — less than thirty seconds. You really are decisive."
He added with a note of regret: "Shame we didn't have time to gather his criminal evidence properly. If we'd done a full prosecution before the kill, it might've helped with the potion—"
He cut himself short. "Wait — that's not right!"
He checked again several times before stammering: "The Prosecutor potion… it's completely digested."
Bernadette had felt it too. She frowned. "Because of Duke Negan?"
"Maybe partly. But…"
A scene from the original novel flashed through Vincent's mind. "Remember what that priest said before he disappeared? He said… what we needed, he would return to us by other means."
"So he was talking about our plan to use Qilangos to digest the potion?"
As the King of Angels of the Spectator Pathway — still carrying vestiges of the Ancient Sun God's divine standing — the Priest could force-digest a Sequence 7 potion as easily as breathing. And it wasn't even purely forced, when you thought about it.
Bernadette's expression turned grave — not because someone had helped them digest the potion, but because this stranger clearly knew they possessed the Broker Pathway, which existed outside the twenty-two known Pathways. He knew they were currently Sequence 7 Prosecutors. He knew exactly how to digest the Prosecutor potion.
She felt rather as though she'd been stripped bare.
So who was this being, exactly? Another evil god?
Tch. Why did I say "another"?
It had only been a few days since their encounter with the Primordial Demoness.
Vincent had the same thought, and the pressure weighed on him like a mountain. Starting from the Little Snake, then the True Creator, then the Primordial Demoness, and now the Priest — there was no way the single shadiest character in the entire original story, the Evernight Goddess, didn't already know about all of this. He simply refused to believe She was in the dark.
Good grief — She's probably been quietly digging traps for me this whole time.
In that case… all I can do is grovel at the speed of light.
Just as these jumbled thoughts swirled through his head, Vincent suddenly heard a prayer emanating from the Nation of Disorder. He couldn't make out who it was, but it was clearly a man's voice.
But right now, all three of his Blessed "employees" were women.
"Someone's praying to me. I'm going to the Nation of Disorder."
With that, Vincent shifted his consciousness to the great stone dais within the Nation of Disorder and walked to the ancient scale, extending his spirituality into it. Instantly, a golden mist surged forth and a figure materialised within. Then came a familiar voice:
"Help me! Lord of Chaos! Please — help me!"
Vincent's eyes went wide: the person praying through the golden mist was unmistakably Klein.
To be continued…
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