Chapter 85
Before the mansion was bathed in light.
Sylvia was in the middle of acting spoiled in her one and only older sister Idella’s room.
“Mom, that’s too much! You want me to call that half-blood my sister? You of all people, Mom?”
What Sylvia was complaining about was none other than Florencia’s recent stance.
Florencia, who had been on the front lines of abusing Renoa, had abruptly done a complete 180 overnight.
She had sided with Renoa rather than Sylvia, her own daughter, in their argument.
The shock Sylvia had felt then was beyond words.
“That evil witch must have cast some nasty spell on Mom.”
“Well... it was weird, all right.”
Idella felt the same way.
For a moment, it was enough to make her think that it wasn’t Duchess Florencia at all, but something wearing her face.
“I heard she even knelt to her? She must’ve been so shocked she was out of sorts for a bit. She’ll be back to normal soon enough.”
“I guess so?”
“Yeah. So don’t worry too much.”
She had to.
Even if a knife were pressed to her throat, Sylvia would never call Renoa her sister.
Thanks to Idella’s reassurance, Sylvia felt much more at ease.
She leisurely sipped her tea, savoring the fragrant black tea.
“Hm?”
Light was streaming from somewhere.
Idella lowered her gaze.
Layered geometric patterns and spell formulas had appeared at her feet.
“A magic circle...?”
The instant Idella recognized the magic circle, a pillar of light swallowed the room.
“Kyaaah!”
Sylvia’s scream rang out. The blinding light bleached their vision white, and both of them reflexively raised their arms to shield their eyes.
Before long, the mass of light dispersed as if it had never been there.
“W-what was that?”
“Beats me...”
Idella frowned.
The magic circle engraved into the mansion floor, and the wave of mana that had just brushed over her skin.
To think a magic circle of such enormous scale had been inscribed inside the mansion.
‘Did Father do this? Or my brother? Or was it someone else?’
As befit a mage, Idella calmly analyzed the situation without panicking.
-Crash!
Then the maid standing beside her dropped a plate.
The plate shattered, scattering shards everywhere.
Idella, who had been concentrating, jolted hard.
“Jeez, you scared me.”
“......”
“What are you standing around for? Hurry and clean it up. It’s dangerous.”
The maid bent down and began clumsily picking up the shards. Then she pricked her hand on one of them.
“Hey. You’re getting blood on the carpet. Can’t you keep your head on straight?”
“......”
The maid gave no reply.
Idella, looking displeased, shook her head and turned back to her thoughts.
What had that magic just been?
She couldn’t sense any change at all.
But once again, her thoughts didn’t last long.
-Sshk!
“Aagh!”
A searing jolt of pain swept over Idella.
Turning her head, Idella found a shard of glass embedded in her shoulder, with blood running down from it.
The maid who had broken the plate had stabbed the broken glass shard into Idella’s shoulder.
“You... what the hell do you think you’re doing!”
Idella violently swung her arm and shook the maid off.
“Kyaaah! O-older sister! B-blood! There’s blood! What are you! Who are you to stab our sister? Guards! Guards!”
The door opened, and the guards came in.
“That woman attacked Idella! Take her away, now!”
“......”
“What are you standing there for? Can’t you hear me? I said take her away, quickly!”
Even with Sylvia’s urging, the guards didn’t react. They held their ground in silence.
That gave Idella a sense of déjà vu. The guards’ behavior overlapped with that of the maid from just now.
Her skin turned cold.
The pain receded.
“Sylvia.”
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
“What do you mean, all of a sudden...?”
The moment Sylvia looked puzzled.
The guards all drew the swords at their waists at once. They kicked off the floor and charged.
“Kyaaah!”
A shrill scream burst from Sylvia.
Idella gritted her teeth through the pain and flung mana into the air.
Just before the guards’ blades came raining down over their heads.
-Snap.
The guards froze in the very posture of thrusting their swords.
Idella didn’t stop there.
Ignoring her injuries, she sent the maid charging at her with the glass shard in hand flying with a gust of wind.
“Aaah! Kyaaah!”
Sylvia kept screaming, covering her head.
Idella pulled the shard out of her shoulder.
“Ugh...!”
Fresh blood gushed from the wound as the shard came free.
Idella immediately poured mana into it. She froze the wound as emergency first aid.
“S-sister. The people suddenly...”
Sylvia approached Idella in tears.
It was definitely an abnormal situation.
Whether maid or guard, they had suddenly attacked as if they were completely different people.
Had they all gone crazy?
Or were they trying to stage a coup?
The mysterious magic circle flashed through Idella’s mind.
It started happening after that activated. There was no doubt that the magic circle had made everyone like this.
“Let’s get out of here for now. It’s dangerous to stay alone together. Let’s find Cassius or Father.”
Idella took Sylvia’s hand and left the room.
Outside, a scene straight from hell had already unfolded.
People she knew from everyday life were smashing furniture with bloodshot eyes and stabbing utensils into one another’s throats.
“Hiiik!”
Sylvia spotted a corpse lying at her feet and screamed again.
“Don’t look down. Keep your eyes forward and run.”
Idella gripped Sylvia’s wrist so hard it seemed it might break as she cut through the chaos.
She was just about to round the corner leading to the central hall.
-Flash!
A ferocious flash that seemed ready to burn their eyes out exploded straight ahead.
A spear of lightning pierced the corridor and rushed toward them.
“Kkh...!”
Idella hurriedly raised a mana barrier.
It clashed with the blue lightning coiling toward them like a snake.
But the barrier she had raised in a panic couldn’t fully withstand that firepower.
-Boom!
The barrier shattered in an instant.
The aftershock of the blast that swallowed the barrier and surged forward engulfed both of them.
“Aaaagh!”
Sylvia’s scream ripped out. Idella, too, was tossed roughly along the corridor floor with a muffled groan.
“Kkh...!”
Idella’s vision flickered wildly. Even the shoulder wound she had frozen to stop the bleeding burst open.
Hot blood once again smeared the nape of her neck.
Amid the prickling numbness that struck her whole body and the reeking stench, Idella forcibly pushed herself upright.
Through her wavering vision, someone was approaching through the thick cloud of dust.
Idella could tell who it was without even seeing.
Because she knew all too well who made blue lightning his specialty.
“Lowell...”
The second son of Edelheid.
Her one and only younger brother, Lowell.
“Little brother? Why are you doing this? It’s us! Me and Idella!”
But there was not a shred of agitation to be found in Lowell.
“Little brother...?”
“It’s meaningless, Sylvia.”
The eyes Lowell fixed on his older sister and younger sister held no emotion, just like everyone else’s.
A second bolt of lightning was crackling into shape at his fingertips.
“Sylvia, listen closely to what I say.”
Idella once again froze the wound on her shoulder with ice.
“Go find Cassius or Father. Right now.”
If those two were mages of that caliber, they wouldn’t have fallen prey to this mysterious magic.
They would surely still have their minds intact and be looking for a way to deal with this situation.
“I’ll keep him occupied here, so run without looking back.”
“B-but, sister? How am I supposed to go alone? And what about little brother?”
“He’s no longer the Lowell you know!”
The rebuke was as cold as frost, with none of her usual warmth left.
Lowell was also a genius mage who had inherited the blood of Edelheid.
He was on a completely different level from a few servants or guards.
In her injured state, protecting Sylvia while facing him was nearly impossible.
“Go. Remember this well. You mustn’t trust anyone except Cassius and Father. Understood?”
“B-but...”
“Go!”
Idella ruthlessly shoved her panicking younger sister away.
Then she immediately drove her mana up in a burst.
“I-I’ll bring them back right away! Wait just a little, sister!”
Sylvia ran off in the opposite direction, leaving Idella behind.
Then another flash burst. The shock rocked the mansion.
***
“Huff, huff.”
Sylvia ran alone through the corridor.
She had already kicked off her shoes. She’d long since thrown propriety aside, too.
Her heart pounded as if it would burst and her breathing was tight, but Sylvia couldn’t stop.
“Brother Cassius! Father! Where are you!”
They had to find those two as quickly as possible. Only then could they bring the crazed Lowell back to his senses.
But the road to finding them was extremely rough.
Every time she turned a corner, servants biting at one another and soldiers locked in combat blocked her way.
Sylvia held her breath and fled along the edge of the corridor, avoiding their eyes.
To find someone who could solve this situation, she held her breath and crossed through the scattered corpses.
-Thunk!
“Hiiik!”
A shrill scream burst from Sylvia’s mouth. Something had tightly clamped around her ankle.
Losing her balance, Sylvia fell flat on the floor and turned her pale face back.
The one who had grabbed Sylvia was the gardener.
The gardener, with blood frothing in his mouth, was gripping Sylvia’s ankle roughly.
With a giant pair of shears lodged in his back, he looked almost like a wind-up doll.
“Let go! I said let go!”
Sylvia kicked the gardener’s face with her other foot, as if trying to crush it.
But as if he couldn’t feel pain, the gardener didn’t budge.
Instead, he even reached out his other hand to seize Sylvia’s calf.
“I said let go of this!”
Mana flashed at Sylvia’s fingertips. A blade shot out, skimming the floor.
-Slash!
A chilling slicing sound.
The gardener’s wrist fell away with a thud.
The sight of the severed wrist still clutching her ankle made her gag, but Sylvia swallowed it down and shook it off.
She got to her feet on the blood-soaked floor and sprinted madly forward again.
How long had she been running like that?
Sylvia’s pace visibly slowed. Her body, unused to exercise, had almost no stamina left.
She was barely forcing her legs to move while fighting the urge to collapse right then and there.
But no matter how much she searched the mansion, she couldn’t find Cassius or the Duke.
‘What if those two had been taken down?’
Then how was she supposed to deal with this situation?
Idella?
Lowell?
With Sylvia at her mental limit, ominous thoughts kept going through her head without end.
“Mom... will Mom be okay?”
The rest of the family were mages, but Florencia was just an ordinary person.
The moment she met even one mad soldier, she’d have a hard time staying alive.
The thought that her mother might be in danger made urgency overtake fear.
Sylvia changed direction. Putting off finding her father for later, she headed blindly toward the inner house where Florencia’s chambers were.
She arrived in front of the duchess’s reception room.
Oddly enough, this area was as quiet as death. A silence untouched by the bedlam swallowing the mansion.
Before she could even think it strange, Sylvia felt relief first.
“Mom.”
Carefully, she opened the door.
In the middle of the room.
There was a familiar figure.
Florencia, wearing her usual elegant dress, not a single strand of hair out of place.
“Mom!”
At the moment she found family amid her extreme fear, Sylvia burst into tears.
Even as her legs gave out and she staggered, she hurriedly ran toward Florencia.
She rushed into Florencia’s arms.
“I-I’m so glad. I’m glad you’re safe, Mom. Everyone in the mansion has gone crazy...!”
Sylvia sobbed in Florencia’s arms.
Florencia gently patted Sylvia’s back.
That alone was enough for Sylvia to quickly calm down.
She quickly calmed down.
Quickly.
Quickly...
‘Huh.’
Suddenly, Sylvia thought.
“Mom... why are you so cold...?”
Sylvia slowly lifted her head. She met Florencia’s eyes.
Florencia was wearing the same elegant smile as always. The Florencia Sylvia knew.
Only, her eyes had lost focus, and the light in them was gone.
They were exactly the same as the eyes of the madmen she had seen on the way here.
“Ha, haha...”
Sylvia gave a stiff smile.
Tears streamed down.