“Waaah, moooom....”

“If you had a smiling face, you’d be even more beautiful. What a pity about that expression.”

He’d wanted to apply this liquid when the boy was grinning wide, too.

The Viscount of Orléans raised the brush toward the child’s face, regretful. He waited until the very end, but as expected, it was another failure this time too. It made his insides burn.

“Hah.”

“......!”

In that moment, an unfamiliar laugh.

“Been a while since I’ve seen such a fresh, inventive psychopath.”

The Viscount of Orléans’s face stiffened at once. An unexpected voice had sounded in this secret place—where no one but himself was supposed to be.

The only adult who could enter here was him.

“W-who are you?!”

He turned his head sharply—and saw a man leaning at an angle against the window.

A gray mask covered his face, so he couldn’t see his features properly, but the oily smile exposed at the edge of his mouth grabbed the eye.

“Me? I’m someone who came to do a job I was hired for.”

“Hired?”

The masked man strode a step closer.

Though he hadn’t been directly threatened, the Viscount of Orléans unconsciously stumbled back.

The man’s tone was extremely polite, but the viscount’s instincts were screaming.

That ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ bastard is dangerous.

“The parents of the kidnapped children hired me. They asked me to find their child. And... to find the one who kidnapped my child and make him suffer something worse than death.”

“That can’t be!”

The Viscount of Orléans shouted, flaring up. The children he’d brought here were all of lowly status.

Some were orphans, and some had parents—it didn’t matter.

Even if a child vanished, that would be that. There wasn’t a single household among them with enough breathing room to cling to it.

They were all people barely getting by day to day!

“And yet you’re talking about a hired job...!”

A smile spilled from the masked man’s mouth again.

“Being poor doesn’t mean you give up your child easily. Some people will stake their entire fortune and their life to find their child.”

In the man’s hand, a sharp-looking dagger had appeared before he knew it.

It was only a dagger, but the moment he saw the blade, the Viscount of Orléans felt a terror like he was about to die and hurriedly screamed.

“I—I gave them a new life! A life far more beautiful and sacred than that lowly existence!”

At those words, the man’s smile turned even brighter.

“Yes. I’ve heard your bullshit loud and clear.”

THUNK!

“AAARGH!”

The casually thrown dagger buried itself straight into the Viscount of Orléans’s instep.

His creeping retreat stopped dead—and instead, a hideous scream burst out.

“Don’t worry. The client made a request, so I won’t let you die easily.”

“S-s-spare me!”

“......?”

“God’s pardon!”

“...God’s pardon?”

“I—I have an indulgence!”

When the man hesitated, the Viscount of Orléans raised his voice, as if he’d found his chance.

“Yes! An indulgence! I bought God’s pardon for as many children as are here!”

“.......”

“J-just because I brought those children here, you can’t punish me!”

The man let out an incredulous laugh.

“I heard rumors, but... it was real?”

God’s pardon—so-called “indulgences.”

Something the temple sold: a kind of certificate given to those who had committed sins. You paid the temple a set amount and received absolution for one specific sin.

Of course, it wasn’t publicly known, and even within the temple, it was something only high-ranking insiders knew.

And yet the Viscount of Orléans was bringing up that “indulgence” as if it were nothing...

The Imperial Family really might be involved.

There was a rumor going around lately among people with money.

“I already received absolution for my sins from God! Who would dare punish what even God has forgiven?! I have no sin at all!”

Those who received so-called “God’s pardon” would have things smoothed over by the Imperial Family even if they committed crimes and got caught.

The viscount lifted his voice, sounding even more aggrieved.

They said that if you received God’s pardon, you could go to heaven no matter what sin you committed. Wasn’t that exactly what the priest he dealt with had said?

And he’d even said that even if the viscount were caught, he’d secretly get him out.

“Incredible.” 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

The masked man sounded genuinely impressed.

“To think you bought indulgences for the price of so many lives. The temple must’ve loved you.”

A bright smile appeared at the man’s mouth again.

“But what should we do? I have absolutely no intention of handing you over for trial.”

“W-what?”

“Didn’t I say it a moment ago?”

As the Viscount of Orléans flinched, the man leaned in closer, speaking as if whispering.

“The most painfully.”

“......!”

“The most miserably.”

“I—I...!”

“Dying after a trial isn’t painful at all.”

The Viscount of Orléans staggered, trying to flee backward. But the man’s hand was faster.

“AAARGH!”

In an instant, the man yanked the dagger from the viscount’s foot and drove it deep into the Viscount of Orléans’s chest.

“Should I go buy an indulgence too?”

Hearing the man’s teasing voice, the Viscount of Orléans lost consciousness.

Chapter. Black Stone

“Did you hear about the Viscount of Orléans?”

“I saw it myself in the plaza!”

“They say it was unbelievably horrific.”

“At first everyone thought it was just a new statue.”

On the final day as the Harvest Festival ended, the capital was thrown into an uproar because of the Viscount of Orléans—found in the center of the plaza.

He was kneeling on both knees with a sword driven into his chest, and his body had stiffened hard, like stone.

“They said he was still alive when he was found.”

“Right! Even looking like that, he was still breathing!”

People who saw the viscount—without a single intact spot—were all horrified. Because his expression was so grotesque.

His mouth was stretched into a bright smile, but his eyes were bulging, and his face was twisted tight with agony.

And all over his body, papers were plastered on—dense with the crimes he had committed.

What made people recoil even more was that the Viscount of Orléans was still breathing.

Of course, not long after he was found, his breath finally stopped.

“So noisy.”

“.......”

“Why?”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“What was?”

“It was you.”

At the sound of countless people chattering in the café, Jainer—quietly drinking coffee—stopped his hand.

But only for a moment.

As he looked at Camilla sitting across from him, his eyes folded prettily.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because you weren’t in your room that night.”

“You came looking for me at that hour?”

As if Camilla’s act of coming to find him late at night pleased him greatly, Jainer’s smile deepened.

“Dorman said you went out and weren’t there.”

At that late hour. She’d wondered what was going on and waited all night, but he didn’t come back.

From the look of it, he only returned at dawn—and that morning, the Viscount of Orléans was “put on display” in the capital plaza and the whole city erupted.

“Dorman did?”

“Th—!”

...Dorman, sorry. Looks like you got marked again.

His mouth was still smiling, but in that instant his eyes narrowed—Camilla saw it clearly, and in her mind, she prayed for Dorman’s peace.

It seemed Jainer didn’t like that Dorman had immediately told someone else about his movements.

“It was you, right?”

“Probably.”

Only then did he admit it was his doing.

“What happened?”

“A job.”

“The one you mentioned before?”

When Jainer first appeared at the Sorpel estate, he’d said something in passing.

That he had an urgent job he’d recently taken, and that it was hard to come and go from the empire anyway, so it worked out perfectly.

“You said it was a bad person?”

He had definitely said that then. Not an ordinary murder job—rather, a job asking him to punish a villain who’d committed crimes.

“The parents of the missing children hired me.”

“Yeah, that’s a bad person.”

From what she’d heard, the number of children the Viscount of Orléans kidnapped wasn’t a joke.

They said there were an unbelievable number of “statues” found in his home.

“Why put him on display in the middle of the plaza?”

“They asked me to kill him in the most painful and cruel way.”

So I gave him death as slowly as possible.

“When you kill a lot of people, you know... you learn the spots where you can inflict maddening pain and still keep them from dying easily.”

The place he’d stabbed the sword into the Viscount of Orléans’s chest was exactly that kind of spot—where life didn’t end right away, but horrific pain kept surging nonstop.

With the sword still stuck there, he meticulously applied the same liquid that the viscount had used on his victims—the liquid that turned them into statues.

“He seemed like he wanted to make a smiling statue, so I granted his wish too. A final act of kindness, you could say.”

Before his face fully hardened, he personally shaped the viscount’s mouth into a smile as well.

So a truly grotesque statue was completed, but still.

“Seemed enough to decorate the festival’s finale, didn’t it?”

If he’d had time, he would’ve applied the liquid thicker and more meticulously and made him into a harder statue, but—well. It couldn’t be helped.

Watching Jainer smile brightly like a child begging for praise, Camilla could only keep letting out sigh after sigh.

“It was more than enough to blow away the festival mood.”

“Haha.”

“They said there were children who survived.”

“I heard they’re being treated at the Papacy right now.”

“Is treatment even possible?”

For the first time, Jainer wiped away his smile and gently shook his head.

“They say it’s difficult.”

Out of all those countless statues, only three children were still alive.

But of those three, one child died while receiving treatment.

“They say the remaining two are in bad shape as well. They’re barely keeping them breathing, but there’s no way at all to loosen their hardened bodies.”

“What even is that liquid?”

“They say it’s extracted from a plant that grows in the desert. There’s no antidote.”

The children’s bodies were still hardened.

Unable even to properly lie down, they were living in suffering worse than death.

“I should’ve killed him more miserably.”

He’d thought the Viscount of Orléans’s death was horrifying enough.

But now, looking at this, he started to think the man had died far too comfortably.