OHNIR - Chapter 102
Chapter 102: Discussion
After embracing for a long time, Kelusta snuggled into the other’s arms and whispered, “I have something to show you.”
Gloria let go, watching as the girl before her pulled a leather-bound book from the bag she’d brought. The cover bore no text and had few decorative patterns; it was almost excessively plain, as if privately bound.
Kelusta stroked the journal’s cover and said with a sigh, “I don’t want to lie to you, Lux… Even though you’ve been so honest with me, I still have a secret I can’t tell you right now.”
She looked up, appearing somewhat forlorn. “I hope you can forgive me for keeping it from you.”
Gloria paused, her brow furrowing slightly.
Just as Kelusta held her breath, incredibly nervous at Gloria’s expression, the other woman suddenly smiled. Her gaze was reassuring as she looked at the tense, brown-haired girl. “It’s alright,” she said softly. “I know.”
“…Huh? You know?” Kelusta looked up in astonishment, bewildered. “You… what do you know?”
She couldn’t remember ever revealing the System.
“—Old Sy, if Lux found out about you…” she said to the System, her voice strained.
“Then you’ll die a horrible death, temporary host,” the System said sympathetically. “If you mention me, there’s no escaping confessing to that string of male capture targets… Ugh, I don’t even want to think about it. I’ll just pray for you.”
Kelusta was speechless.
Her mind reeling as if struck by lightning, her thoughts in a knot, she stared at Gloria as if facing a formidable enemy. She was already seriously considering whether her tombstone should be carved in a round or square shape.
Gloria, however, simply raised an eyebrow, seemingly surprised by her dramatic reaction. She reached out and pinched Kelusta’s cheek, smiling. “What are you so nervous about? You silly girl, you always act without thinking ahead. I’ve known you had a secret for a long time.”
“…” Kelusta blinked, staring blankly. “I… I don’t remember…”
“Forgotten?” Gloria smiled and offered a reminder. “Then let me give you a keyword—the tea party.”
Kelusta froze.
The tea party…
She had willingly walked into a trap for a mission, accepting Starangui’s calculated invitation to that noble tea party. There, by the swan lake, she had confronted the fire mage Avia, who was acting on Starangui’s orders, and then—
Then, relying on a mission reward from the System, she’d successfully avoided disaster.
The key point being, “from the System.”
“…”
Back then, Kelusta and Gloria weren’t very close. Her plan was just to make Gloria and Satrick suspect the other had given her the Anti-Magic Halo, thereby clearing her own name.
But she’d forgotten that if Gloria had paid just a bit more attention to this commoner girl, she would have surely realized that Kelusta had never accepted anything from Satrick, let alone a magical item of such power.
“…So the reason that incident never caused any trouble was because you were secretly taking care of it for me?” Kelusta stared intently at the elegant ducal daughter before her, asking hesitantly. “To help me keep my secret, you admitted that you were the one who gave me the item that could resist magical attacks, right?”
Gloria smiled and nodded. “Yes,” she said gently.
“Avia Charles may be arrogant, but she is the daughter of a marquis and genuinely skilled in magic… At the time, you were just a first-year student who had only recently enrolled and had never learned how to use magic, yet you were able to block Avia’s attack with your bare hands. It must have been because you had some kind of powerful magical item.”
“At the time, I had caught the eye of only two people who could possibly possess such an item—Satrick, publicly, and you, privately,” Kelusta said. “Satrick seems generous, but he’s actually a total cheapskate… A little digging would have revealed that his attempts to recruit me were all talk; he never gave me anything of value.”
Her analogy for the prince was so amusing and apt that Gloria nearly laughed out loud.
“Correct.” The poised ducal daughter suppressed her amusement, nodded, and said lightly, “Therefore, the only possibility was that you obtained the item yourself—through some unknown, mysterious channel, wasn't it?”
“…Yes.”
Kelusta pressed her lips together and gave an affirmative answer.
“It’s alright, Ruth. Everyone has the right to protect their own secrets.” Gloria took a half-step forward and put her arm around the anxious girl. “And I will fully support your right to do so,” she said warmly. “When the day comes that you’re ready to tell me, you can share your secret with me then.”
Kelusta wrapped her arms around Gloria’s waist, tilting her head up slightly with a faint smile and nodding firmly in her embrace.
“This is for you, Lux.”
She handed Clara’s Journal to Gloria. “It’s a relic of the Goddess of Light, Clara, that I got from my ‘secret’.”
“The Goddess of Light?” Gloria was taken aback. She accepted the journal and remained silent for a long while before opening it and beginning to read quietly.
Kelusta watched her girlfriend nervously. She saw Gloria’s slender, willow-leaf brows furrow deeper and deeper. Her heart skipped a beat, afraid Gloria had noticed some crucial detail she had missed. “Is something wrong?” she asked quickly.
“…”
Gloria was silent for a moment before handing the journal back, looking slightly embarrassed. “The script from the age of the gods is quite different from modern writing, and my knowledge in that area is rather poor… Perhaps there are some translation books in the study. Otherwise, would you mind waiting while I go look for one?”
“…” Kelusta said guiltily, “Oh, I forgot about that.”
She pouted, stuck out her tongue, and took Gloria’s arm sheepishly, her face filled with embarrassment. “No need, I just forgot for a moment… Right now, I’m the only one who can fully understand this journal. Sit down, I’ll read it to you.”
Gloria understood it was because of that “secret,” so she didn’t ask any questions and readily allowed Kelusta to push her back into her seat.
“Ahem, I’m starting.”
Kelusta cleared her throat and, like someone telling a bedtime story, began to read slowly under Gloria’s watchful gaze:
“To—my little moon.”
“There are two key points.”
After listening, Gloria used her quill to circle two words she had jotted down on the back of a document.
“The Dark Mark, and… a spell to absorb divine power.”
She had reached the same conclusion as Kelusta.
“I thought so too,” Kelusta said, nodding in agreement. “From the first letter and the clues revealed later, I think we can venture a guess… the ‘Dark Mark’ was a spell the Dark Goddess Talebris created and practiced on her own, but the Goddess of Deceit witnessed it and managed to alter it without her knowledge.”
It was always so much easier when smart people talked to each other.
The moment Kelusta proposed this theory, Gloria immediately understood what she was implying. She frowned and continued, “Are you suggesting the Goddess of Deceit provoked Talebris before her death to trick her into using the ‘Dark Mark’ on her?”
“It’s highly likely,” Kelusta said calmly. “Perhaps the tampering the Goddess of Deceit did to this curse is the fundamental reason her soul has not been extinguished to this day.”
“…”
Gloria pursed her lips and nodded lightly. “That makes a lot of sense.”
“Based on the contents of the journal, we can see that the ‘Dark Mark’ is a key clue.”
Kelusta continued, “But as of now, there are no records of such a curse in the Nobili Kingdom… In fact, you could say we know very little about any of the dark-faction gods under the Dark Goddess.”
“That’s true. Humans are a light-faction race, and after so many years, it’s natural that not much information about the Dark Goddess would have been preserved,” Gloria said. “But just because the Nobili Kingdom doesn’t have it doesn’t mean all information about this curse has vanished from the continent.”
“There is another place—one where, because their civilization hasn’t developed as much, they have preserved more detailed records than the Nobili Kingdom. Furthermore, since their race originally belonged to the dark faction, they would have the most extensive research on the Dark Goddess or the Goddess of Deceit.”
They looked at each other, seeing the exact same understanding in the other’s eyes.
“—The Continent’s Edge,” Kelusta said. “The territory of the demons.”
As she finished, her gaze drifted involuntarily to the pile of documents on the desk. Her eyes lit up with excitement. “By the way, you just said the Goddess of Deceit is having you screen candidates for a spy to send to the Demon Realm, right?”
Gloria had already confessed everything to her fiancée-to-be, including the work she was currently undertaking.
Her original intention was to just pick a reasonably suitable candidate and be done with it. But now, this spy clearly had a much more important mission, so the choice of candidate had to be considered much more carefully, not as casually as she had first thought.
“Yes, I’ve already decided on a few potential candidates.” Gloria’s brow was furrowed, and she sighed faintly. “But now it seems that the loyalty and personal abilities of many of them are no longer adequate… I’ll have to re-screen them as soon as possible.”
She helplessly poked Kelusta on the forehead, feigning annoyance. “You wicked girl, always finding more work for me.”
The poke made Kelusta lean back, but she was quick enough to grab Gloria’s fingertips. She widened her eyes and protested, “How am I making more work for you? I should be saving you trouble!”
“Saving me trouble?”
“Of course,” Kelusta said with a grin. “Because I’ve already picked the perfect candidate to send to the Demon Realm for you!”
“Oh?” As if not expecting such a reply, Gloria couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, a look of surprise on her face. “Who is it?” she asked, intrigued.
“Musen, from the Holy Light Magic Academy,” Kelusta said, her eyes curving with a smile. “He’s not only a wind mage with considerable potential, but also a… descendant of demons who has been hiding in the Nobili Kingdom for years.”
“…A descendant of demons?” Gloria’s eyes widened in astonishment. She repeated, “Musen… that sounds familiar. I feel like I’ve heard that name somewhere.”
“We saved him before,” the brown-haired girl said nonchalantly. “Besides, he has something of a reputation at the academy… An orphan with black hair and black eyes, no surname, and a solitary nature—it’s never easy for someone like that to be treated as an equal by their peers.”
“So he’s that first-year ‘Unclean One’,” Gloria said, her eyes narrowing. Her tone was unreadable. “I’d assumed it was just a baseless rumor, slander, but I never expected he was actually a demon hiding in the kingdom.”
“He was abandoned before he could even form memories; he doesn’t even know his own identity,” Kelusta said hurriedly. “And in our interactions since, I’ve constantly been telling him to believe in his ‘human identity.’ I’m certain of it, Lux. If we’re going to send a spy who is loyal enough, sharp enough, and won’t be easily suspected by the demons… then Musen is without a doubt the best choice.”
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