Chapter 23

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Translator: Harry Potta

Chapter: 23

Chapter Title: Is This Hell?

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“There’s no way to hunt it down right now.”

The butler shook his head as if it were absurd, and Kaiyan bristled.

“Are you telling me it’s impossible to my face?”

He was like a living god in Rowen territory.

“Find it.”

“My lord.”

“Find it, no matter what it takes.”

The doctor fidgeted in distress.

“Even with medicine, there’s a proper window for treatment.”

“Are you saying it’s already too late to cure her? That you’ve been tending to a patient—my people in my castle—with such half-hearted effort?”

“N-no, not at all! Absolutely not.”

In truth, Clodel was intimidated by Kaiyan’s tone and cowed by his presence, but he wasn’t speaking any harsher to her than usual.

The young lord, rough around the edges, was belligerent and prickly about everything.

There were a few elderly women who pitied him, thinking it was understandable after he’d suddenly lost both parents, become head of the house, and marched off to war. The rest revered even his abrasive personality as “befitting our lord.”

In any case, the doctor felt a chill of fear that if he couldn’t procure the medicine or heal Clodel, he’d be chased out of the lord’s castle on the spot.

“The illness has progressed so far that time is of the essence, and you’re asking me to fetch an ingredient that can’t be found...”

“You haven’t even tried, and you’ve been flapping your gums in front of me for a solid ten minutes.”

“This is too much! My lady was so clearly ill, and you, my lord, who were right by her side, didn’t notice?”

Unable to bear the injustice any longer, the doctor glared at Kaiyan with resentful eyes and shouted.

“She’s so weak she hasn’t an ounce of flesh on her bones—how could you not see it?”

Kaiyan clamped his mouth shut.

He’d pushed a woman on the brink of death until there was nothing left to squeeze out of her.

What galled him was that he’d never seen other women undressed, so Clodel’s frail state hadn’t struck him as unusual.

From the first time he’d laid eyes on her, he’d only thought, She’s skinny, so slender, and that was it.

His mood sank further at the doctor’s accusation, and he shot the man a glare.

“Looks like I’ll need to find a new resident physician for the lord’s castle.”

“Gasp!”

In the end, worn down by Kaiyan’s barbed prodding, the doctor staggered weakly out of the study.

“What will you do, my lord?”

“The capital might have it.”

The capital of the Oberon Kingdom was about a week’s ride by horse and carriage from Rowen.

“She’s spitting blood and has a month to live, you said.”

Clodel had never revealed when her illness had started.

But since she’d hidden it until it was discovered, the disease surely hadn’t progressed much further.

A round trip to the capital would take two weeks.

Perhaps Kaiyan could cut it down to ten days.

He was lost in such thoughts when—

“Kyaaah!”

A woman’s scream pierced the quiet castle, sparking sudden chaos.

“What’s going on? So noisy.”

As he scowled, a servant hurried over and whispered something to the butler.

“My lord. The lady has collapsed.”

Before the words were even out, Kaiyan shot toward Clodel’s bedroom like the wind.

“Miss! Miss!”

Whether she’d been trying to feed her medicine, the floor was a mess of spilled liquid and scattered gold dust.

Hanna, who had frantically cradled the collapsed Clodel on the floor and patted her cheeks, crawled over shattered bowl shards without a care, clinging to the hem of Kaiyan’s trousers.

“Please save her, my lord. Save our miss. Don’t let her die like this. I’ll serve House Temneth even in soul after death. Please.”

The blood trickling from Clodel’s mouth was different from the dark clots she’d coughed up before.

It wasn’t the congealed, diseased gore gnawing at her insides.

It looked like the hot, vivid spray from a fresh stab to the heart.

Not old, pooled blood from within, but her life’s essence, still red and vibrant, spilling from her unconscious little body with every ragged cough.

“Clodel.”

Kaiyan called her calmly.

“Open your eyes.”

She didn’t so much as twitch.

“Clodel!”

Even shouting her name louder, the woman who’d just been needling him with “Can’t change my burial plot, can you?” or “It’s fine to move rooms” said nothing.

The doctor, summoned back after bolting from the study, fumbled to check Clodel’s pulse in a panic.

“Oh no. This is...”

Kaiyan shot him a murderous glare at the ominous groan.

“A week. At most a week. There’s no way to...”

Kaiyan carefully lifted Clodel into his arms and stood. Even unconscious, her body heaved with shallow breaths that ended in coughs, so he laid her gently on the bed.

“I’ll go myself.”

“......Pardon?”

“What?”

The doctor and butler blurted in unison.

“The water buffalo. I’ll hunt it.”

The butler jumped at Kaiyan’s words.

“Absolutely not, my lord.”

“No such thing. If I can’t catch it, no one in all Oberon can.”

His words brooked no argument, but the butler tried to dissuade him anyway, unable to bear the thought of their precious young lord charging into a wild water buffalo herd.

“You have no heir yet.”

“Of course not. With my only wife in that state, it’d be weirder if I did.”

Kaiyan’s eyes, fixed obsessively on Clodel, were bloodshot red.

“I’m going now.”

With that, Kaiyan urgently summoned the knight order.

The elite knights, assembled on short notice, couldn’t fathom what their lord was up to.

“We got called out in the middle of the night to fetch medicine for that Vermonte wench?”

“Nah, couldn’t be. Just a rumor gone wrong.”

“Our lord loves hunting so much.”

“Crazy. Why hunt wild water buffalo? Ugh, think I drew the short straw.”

Let them chatter among themselves—Kaiyan donned his full heavy armor for the first time in three years since returning from the battlefield.

It was late night; the gatekeepers, who’d closed the gates, hurriedly lit torches and lowered the drawbridge at the lord’s command.

“I-I want to go too.”

Hanna approached hesitantly, her face streaked with tears and grime.

She wore trousers scavenged somewhere, like those for male servants, with her belongings bundled in a cloth and tied securely to her back.

“I’ll get the medicine for miss. Sob.”

At Hanna’s sudden appearance, the knights hoisting shields the size of her torso onto their horses turned bewildered eyes to Kaiyan.

That’s when Kaiyan did something unexpected.

Thud. Thud.

With his gauntleted hand, heavy as a lump of iron, he patted Hanna’s shoulder gently.

Hanna looked up in surprise.

“Stay by your miss’s side. In my place.”

Daring to meet Kaiyan’s gaze for the first time, Hanna bowed her head deeply and retreated into the castle in a hurry.

Soon, with a boom, the drawbridge slammed down, and Kaiyan led his men out the gates.

The wild water buffaloes lived not far from Rowen Castle.

Whether that was fortunate or not.

A day’s hard ride away lay a vast grassland where the herd roamed in massive, jet-black droves across the open plain—no need even to search.

Kaiyan observed the buffalo herd with cold eyes.

If someone had once hunted one for medicine, then surely he could too.

When Kaiyan set his mind to something, nothing was impossible.

Not even saving a woman whose thread of life was fraying.

“My lord. The traps are all set.”

A knight, covered head to toe in yellow dust, reported while panting.

“Form up.”

The elite knights, who had moved as one with Kaiyan on the battlefield for five years, took their positions in perfect order.

“Loose.”

The massive archer beside Kaiyan, built like a giant, nocked a spear-thick arrow onto his enormous bow and drew it toward the sky.

Screeeeech.

The launched spear thudded into the center of the herd. By luck, it impaled a buffalo on the first shot.

As the pierced beast thrashed, the startled herd bolted in one direction. The ground trembled under their hooves, kicking up yellow dust clouds.

“Charge!”

Kaiyan spurred his horse toward the whirlwind of grassland dust.

Is this heaven?

That was the first thought in Clodel’s mind.

She’d read it in a book once.

Some eccentric counted out of curiosity: a person breathes over twenty thousand times a day.

Every inhale and exhale had felt like a knife scraping her chest, so that meant over forty thousand pains a day, at minimum.

It hurt so much she just wanted it to end.

Her life hadn’t been long, but it had been successful enough.

She’d become a duchess of noble blood, and though illness kept her from properly sightseeing, she’d even secured a burial plot beneath an amazingly grand castle.

Not that she’d avoided wandering around solely to dodge quarrels with the maids.

And she’d been able to send food to the starving children of Valmond territory.

Kaiyan had promised to support her cause—ten wagons per time—so three hundred wagons to Valmond.

After she’d worked the fields herself, Duke Vermonte had carted off thirty wagons’ worth, enough to feed the entire territory for a month. Three hundred would sustain them for ten.

This was a pretty decent life, all things considered.

She just wished Hanna wouldn’t cry.

Slowly, the thought surfaced: she should have properly told Hanna that Duke Vermonte’s wishes no longer bound her to Valmond.

The lady of the house’s spot in the underground crypt here had a lovely pink-tinged rose marble tombstone. Not bad at all. Though she’d never gotten to see that blue diamond, in the end.

“......If only he keeps his promise. To the children...”

Then she could close her eyes in perfect peace.

“Unbelievable.”

A cold snap made Clodel open her eyes.

“First words after waking: are you seriously doubting I’d renege on some paltry food shipment?”

Her eyelids quivered.

She’d thought it was heaven. Was this hell instead?

Kaiyan, clad head to toe in pitch-black garb utterly unlike any heavenly image, scowled down at her in clear displeasure.

Hic.

Startled beyond measure, Clodel began to hiccup.

“Doesn’t hurt.”

No pain meant she was definitely dead, so why was Kaiyan...

“Good to hear it doesn’t hurt.”

As he rose from his chair, the door opened, and Hanna rushed in, beaming at her.

“Miss! You’re awake!”

“Uh... uh...”

Clodel felt dazed. Her mind refused to think straight.

“How’s your body feeling?”

“F-fine...”

She’d survived?

Kaiyan’s icy voice came from above her head.

“You look disappointed you didn’t die.”