"Hiss... i-intelligence?"

Ariel had only just sucked in a sharp breath, and now she almost choked on it herself.

She stared at the man in shock.

"Where did you get intelligence like that?"

"I know you’re shocked. Shocked that I could know everything about you so thoroughly and so clearly. But you can forget that little trick of fishing for information."

The man sneered disdainfully.

Unlike those brainless cultists, the people of the Salvation Society had long since stopped falling for ridiculous little tricks like that, where someone got provoked a bit and ended up spilling everything in two or three sentences.

They were rigorous.

Ariel: "..."

The night was still deep, and darkness blanketed everything.

That eerie silence was like a curtain draped across the entire ducal estate. Ariel understood that for the other side to launch an attack aimed at the ducal estate like this, they had to have come prepared.

But for some reason, a strange emotion rose in her heart.

So strange that even she could not quite understand what exactly she was feeling.

Yes, there was no denying it. The guy in front of her really did value intelligence.

From what he had just recited, it could be said that he had included every last thing anyone could gather about Ariel Bugaard’s first half of life in meticulous detail. Aside from a few things she regarded as secrets and would never casually reveal to outsiders, there was basically nothing missing.

The other side had clearly carried out extensive and painstaking investigations, conducted a systematic analysis, and even made tailored preparations for her various traits... without slackening in the slightest just because she was young.

But the only problem was...

Wasn’t this intelligence just a little out of date?

Only a few months?

Didn’t they know that for her, a few months was already enough time for a complete, earthshaking leap in strength?

Time was tight. Not a second could be wasted. Every time she finished doing anything, a whole pack of old monsters would be right behind her trying to kill her. Who exactly was going to give her the leisure to level up slowly?

...Still, after thinking it over carefully, Ariel had to admit she could not really blame them for the delay in their intelligence. Among the opponents she had faced before, people this rigorous were already rare. It was just that over these past few months, she had infiltrated the Abyss alone. In that godforsaken place, she had practically been cut off from the world. No one else could have casually gotten their hands on her latest information.

"What? Did we scare you?"

Seeing Ariel standing there in a daze, the man assumed she had been frightened by his rigor, so he leisurely adjusted his loose necktie. On his gaunt, withered face that looked as if it had been squeezed dry, he forced out a kindly smile and said,

"But please rest assured, Miss Ariel. We don’t bear you much ill will. As long as you’re willing to come with me, I absolutely won’t hurt you."

"Who exactly are you?"

Ariel frowned. "And what do you mean by come with you?"

"Who I am isn’t important. You can call me by my codename—Dog Lover Bukadi. As for what for... I simply hope you can go have a little reunion with your very best friend." Bukadi said.

"Very best friend..."

Ariel’s eyes flashed, as if she had realized something. Her voice turned cold.

"You want to go after Liya?"

"Smart!"

Bukadi applauded. "But being smart is completely useless, you know. In the face of absolute preparation and absolute strength, that clever little head of yours won’t do you a bit of good."

"Is that so?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Ariel glanced aside, wondering whether Muen knew Liya was under attack...

"Heh heh..."

But in Bukadi’s eyes, the meaning of Ariel’s sudden distraction was completely different.

This genius girl from the intelligence file... was scared, wasn’t she?

Bukadi sneered.

"Trying to get someone to save you? I’d advise you to give up that idea."

"Oh?" Ariel arched a brow.

"And what exactly do you mean by that?"

"It’s simple. Surely that clever little brain of yours can work it out, can’t it? This is the ducal estate. Since we came in, that means we made complete preparations. We won’t leave behind a single flaw. We even have several backup plans."

Bukadi looked utterly sure of himself as he said, "So why do you think we wouldn’t have made preparations on everyone else’s side too?"

"Hiss..."

Ariel sucked in another sharp breath. Perhaps she was too shocked, because even her voice trembled slightly.

"You can’t mean..."

"That’s right!"

Seeing that she was no longer capable of causing any real trouble, and thinking he might as well crush her mentally while he was at it, Bukadi stopped being so evasive like before and bared his fangs in an open grin.

"Not just you. We also sent people after the two other important figures in this ducal estate—Muen Campbell and that maid An. And we sent the people best suited to deal with them!"

...

...

Scrape... scrape... scrape...

A sharp grinding sound echoed through the lonely, cavernous kitchen.

There was no candlelight, no magestone light, only a few faint strands of light reflected in from the corridor outside the door, falling across that slender, upright back and instead adding an eerie strangeness to it.

It was an extremely gloomy, chilling sight. If someone had made a rubbing of it, it would absolutely have been fit to serve as the cover of some horror anthology.

But in truth... An was simply sharpening her knife alone.

At such a late hour, the other maids of the ducal estate had naturally already gone to sleep. Only An, while cleaning up the dishes from the candlelit dinner, had taken the opportunity to sharpen the kitchen knife she used most often.

Lately, she had been chopping things too hard. The blade had begun to curl.

"It seems my control still isn’t good enough."

After carefully polishing it for a while, An ran a finger along the edge of the blade and said with ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) slight regret,

"Otherwise, I wouldn’t need to sharpen it specially."

As the young master’s personal maid, this kind of shortcoming was something she had to make up for as well. Otherwise...

Thunk!

Suddenly, the freshly sharpened kitchen knife came chopping down hard from An’s hand. The sharp edge embedded itself deeply into the chopping block, even cutting into the stone counter beneath it.

The slight emotional fluctuation from earlier gradually disappeared. An opened her eyes, and they were still as an ancient well.

"To think that at a time like this, there are still bugs sneaking in."

An said expressionlessly,

"It looks like the ducal estate really does need a thorough cleaning. There are always bugs showing up lately. What a nuisance."

"Hm?"

A voice of surprise suddenly appeared in the kitchen, which until that moment had contained no one but An.

A vague outline emerged from the shadows, then gradually solidified. A hunched figure stepped out from a corner about ten meters away from An, one slow pace at a time, a golden cane tapping rhythmically against the floor with crisp knocks.

"Sharp senses for such a little girl."

It was an old woman on the verge of death. The wrinkles on her face circled her layer after layer like terraces. Her brows and hair were all white, and she looked as though one foot had already stepped into the coffin.

But her eyes still shone brightly, holding a brilliance not inferior to that of the young.

"So Lord Arthur was right. You look like nothing more than an ordinary maid, but you’re not simple at all."

"Who are you?"

An asked coldly. "The ducal estate shouldn’t have invited a guest like you."

"Heh heh... a guest? Sadly, I’m only an ordinary old woman, an old woman people call Madam Serwyn."

Madam Serwyn smiled mildly.

"And naturally, I wasn’t invited. No one who comes uninvited in the middle of the night is any sort of guest. Only a villain."

"Is that so?"

An raised a brow.

"For a villain, you’re fairly honest."

Clang—

Steel sang softly.

In that instant, An did not hesitate in the slightest. A blade of steel condensed, pierced through the air, and shot straight toward the old woman’s vital points.

At this distance, at this speed, if she were truly only an ordinary old woman, there would have been absolutely no chance of survival.

An was not the sort to show mercy to the old or the young.

But...

"This is..."

An’s gaze tightened slightly as she looked at her own hand.

The kitchen knife she normally used was visibly staining with dark red rust at a speed the naked eye could follow, then rapidly breaking apart and rotting away...

In the blink of an eye, all that remained in An’s hand was a wooden handle.

"Heh heh... so it really is the Steel Divine Favor."

Madam Serwyn was completely unharmed, because the steel flying toward her had also rusted and rotted away in an instant, turning into a spray of scattered iron dust.

"Lord Arthur’s intelligence truly has never been wrong. Who would have thought that an insignificant little maid on the surface in the ducal estate would possess a powerful god-given force like the Steel Divine Favor? If someone else had come instead, they really might have fallen to an ability like yours..."

Madam Serwyn paused.

"But sadly, the one you met was me."

"Magic?"

An made no effort to hide the surprise in her voice.

"That’s right. Magic."

Madam Serwyn said, "There are two kinds of mages in this world. One kind constantly accumulates knowledge, endlessly studies more powerful spells, and pursues ever-higher ranks. The other kind trains a single spell to the absolute extreme, honing it until it becomes as natural as instinct.

"Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Broadly speaking, most mages in this world belong to the former kind.

"And I... belong to the latter."

Madam Serwyn struck her golden cane hard against the ground. With a heavy thud, dark red traces of rust began spreading across the floor.

Everything was rusting. The metal objects suffered worst of all, like ice meeting flame, losing all of their properties in an instant and turning into ordinary iron dust and ash.

"Heh heh... the Steel Divine Favor is certainly powerful, but unfortunately, a single type of power is always easy for people to find a way to counter. Perhaps because of so-called true love, you were willing to lower yourself to the role of a maid in the ducal estate, but that also doomed the rest of you to stop growing.

"So..."

Madam Serwyn split her lips in a grin. Perhaps because she had lost most of her teeth already, that smile looked especially eerie.

"When someone like you, who relies so heavily on the power of your Divine Favor, runs into a natural enemy like me... what exactly are you supposed to do then?"

...

...

"Hah... as expected of Zagu. If I’m fighting him one-on-one right now, I basically still have no chance of winning."

Muen opened his eyes and looked toward a sky where no stars were visible anymore.

Whether it was because the Black Book had grown stronger, or because this time he had collected enough information fragments related to Zagu, the Zagu recreated inside that consciousness space felt almost exactly the same as the real Zagu to Muen.

So there was nothing surprising about the fact that he had lost this simulated battle. After all, even with Ariel helping, they had only eked out a miserable victory. If he really had to fight one-on-one right now, he was still clearly inferior.

"But then again, only if the opponent is strong enough do you even qualify for a life-and-death fight, right?"

Muen rubbed his temples, smoothing out the agitation in his mind left behind by the battle just now. His thoughts had already shifted from the fight itself to wondering whether Ariel and An had gone to sleep yet.

If they had not...

Could he maybe take advantage of the fact that dawn still had not broken and do something fun...

"No, no. If this keeps up, my days and nights really are going to get flipped around."

Muen shook his head hard and quickly crushed that line of thought. If he went this far without restraint, he really would start looking like some lustful idiot who thought with his lower half—

"Hm?"

Muen suddenly frowned.

"What’s that scent?"

He sniffed hard. Amid the faint floral fragrance of the courtyard, he caught a completely different perfume.

It smelled like a woman’s scent, but richer. Judging from Muen’s experience, it definitely did not belong to Ariel, who never wore perfume, nor to An, who never liked scents that were too heavy.

Which meant...

"Who’s there?"

Muen narrowed his eyes. "Come out."

"My, I’ve been found~"

On the railing not far from Muen, an incomparably beautiful silhouette had somehow already appeared. A sexy woman with alluring long wavy hair and revealing clothes sat sideways there, and as the light shifted, an enchanting face flashed into view now and then.

Sultry.

The moment he saw her, those two words appeared in Muen’s mind.

Unlike Anna’s charm, which she wielded with perfect control, what this unfamiliar woman displayed now was pure, unrestrained sultriness. It was like a violent tornado, as if it could rush straight into the depths of your mind and seize your soul in one fist.

"As expected of the legendary duke’s son. You really are extraordinary~"

The woman had the habit of drawing out the ends of her words, and her voice carried the same boneless, melting softness.

"I really thought I’d be able to hide a little longer~"

"Who are you?"

Muen frowned. His brain had already begun automatically filtering out that syrupy voice, and his mind had long since entered its most vigilant state.

"Don’t be nervous, don’t be nervous. Let me introduce myself. I’m Lucy. Other people call me Lucy the Perfumer."

The woman covered her mouth and laughed sweetly.

"I’m not a bad person. And I’m not here to fight Young Master Muen, either. On the contrary, I very much want to develop a truly remarkable connection with Young Master Muen~"

"A connection?"

Muen’s expression turned strange.

He thought to himself that she was an unknown woman of unknown origins and unknown identity, sneaking into someone else’s house in the middle of the night and talking about developing some kind of connection...

Was she insane?

"What, could it be that Young Master Muen, who in the rumors is absurdly promiscuous and straddling more than a dozen boats... though not actually that many, but still tangled up ambiguously with several women... is afraid of a weak woman like me?"

Lucy crossed her long legs and let her fingertips drift over the swell of her chest, one that, aside from that Saintess, lost to no woman at all.

And around her, some special fragrance imperceptible to ordinary people mixed into her normal perfume and gradually spread, slowly wrapping itself around the man not far away.

Muen’s breathing suddenly grew heavy.

"Come on~ dear Young Master Muen, I really just want to do some loving things with you. I’m sure you like that too, don’t you~"

Seeing Muen beginning to sink into it, Lucy stretched out both arms further, longing on her face, eyes hazy, like a delicate flower ready to be plucked at any moment.

...But deep within that flower, there was a coldness full of thorns.

Lucy sneered inwardly.

Heh... under the double temptation of beauty and specially prepared potions, how could some stinking man possibly endure it?

Even if his reputation had changed somewhat, and even if his strength had undergone a world-shaking transformation in just two years... in the end, he was still that lustful playboy all the same.