Don't Be Holy! - Chapter 50
He left it vague. He didn’t want to spread potentially false information and cause confusion, but Petro, having never seen Rubel speak so ambiguously before, tilted his head slightly in confusion.
“Well, I’ve never heard of such things. And as for other ways to determine if someone is a witch…… well, I suppose this could be one method.”
Saying this, he pointed to the corpse placed in front of the grave. There lay Hecate’s pale body, which hadn’t decomposed despite being dead for a year.
It was already a well-known tale that witches’ corpses don’t decay. Since Rubel was well aware of this fact, he wasn’t surprised to see Hecate’s corpse looking as if she had died just hours ago.
“What’s that?”
However, what did surprise him was the presence of another woman’s corpse.
Rubel slowly examined the woman’s appearance. She was a sophisticated-looking woman with brown bobbed hair who seemed to have lived in the capital.
“They say it was found beneath Hecate’s grave.”
Petro answered as if he had been waiting for the question. Rubel carefully examined the woman’s corpse as he spoke.
“Was she killed by Hecate?”
“That’s unclear. However, since there are no external injuries, it adds more weight to the theory that she was killed by magic.”
Rubel’s brow furrowed deeply.
Everything felt tangled, making it impossible to properly distinguish the beginning from the end.
It had been about three months since Rubel had raided the group of witches in Albarm.
After many sacrifices, Rubel had learned that the witches had developed magic that could neutralize the Divine Empire, and that it had originated from a witch named Hecate.
However, since Hecate wasn’t cooperative in attacking the Divine Empire, the Alphadem (a term for witches who cooperated with Albarm) had planned to send witches to steal it.
Based on this information, Rubel had come to where Hecate was, investigated her grave, and discovered traces of another witch. He had thought that the witch either killed Hecate or came after her death but hadn’t yet discovered what the magic was.
And until just now, he had been certain that witch was most likely the woman called Eir.
But the sudden appearance of this sophisticated witch with bobbed hair raised the possibility that it might not be the case.
Rubel lightly pressed his throbbing temples before standing up.
“First, let’s identify who this witch is. Jade? Take the body to the capital for investigation.”
Although they had captured some Alphadem witches, they had all committed suicide so quickly that no information could be extracted.
The priority now was to check if there had been a woman matching this description in the Divine Empire. While witches could change their faces, making identification difficult, a dead witch’s face showed their true form, and quite a few had been identified through this method of thorough investigation.
Rubel decided to send Jason on this task first.
***
“I-Is he gone?”
Wrapped in a blanket and curled up in the corner under the desk, Eir carefully raised herself at the quiet surroundings.
Her head peeked out above the desk. Eir’s green eyes rolled around intensely as she surveyed her surroundings.
She was certain someone had come in to talk with Rubel, and then there had been the sound of a door followed by silence.
But would Rubel really leave so easily, just leaving Eir behind? After treating her so roughly while suspecting her of being a witch?
Thinking back to that moment again brought tears to her eyes from shame and grief. Eir deliberately maintained a composed face as she wiped away the tear tracks on her cheeks.
Looking carefully, the shadows moving across the curtains suggested that Rubel had left men stationed behind.
Eir carefully crawled to the window and slightly opened the door.
Having been pounced on by Rubel as soon as she regained consciousness, she had no idea what was going on. From what she’d briefly heard when her savior knocked on the door saying “Commander…….” or something, it seemed Rubel’s reinforcements had arrived.
‘Right. Of course he called them. Monsters appeared and people were in danger. And like a fool, I didn’t even realize that and dug up the grave.’
Eir bit her lip bitterly at this thought.
She shouldn’t have used her divine energy trying to save them then. Instead of monsters, she had inadvertently summoned Rubel Shinote, calling death upon herself.
Who could have imagined he would be so certain she was a witch?
Moreover, no matter what Eir said, he showed no sign of reconsidering or wavering in his conviction.
