Chapter 190
He might have placed his hopes on the fact that even if he had violated the pure Arzeletta, he had never tried to harm her.
Hypocrite!
“Hmph, hmphh.”
Yoseph banged his head on the stone floor. Red blood flowed from his forehead, which was immediately split open.
The animals that were trapped in the iron cages, waiting for their death, jumped around in surprise at his strange behavior.
He wanted to smash his stupid and useless head and just die right here.
Without Arzeletta, Yoseph could no longer live for even a single day.
…But he still had work to do.
Yoseph raised his bleeding head. The butchering knives that had been broken in by his hands were arranged by size.
Yoseph had never learned swordsmanship.
Jumping into the enemy line and bravely fighting the enemy was also a thing that was far from him.
However, for Yoseph, using a knife to slice the body of a living thing was the most familiar and easiest thing to do.
Yoseph approached the workbench with his eyes blazing. He grabbed a well-sharpened knife as if he was grabbing an axe.
If the man who was called the greatest Holy Knight in history, the representative of God, was to have his limbs cut off by a mere butcher with a lowly knife used for animals, that would be a well-written ending indeed. Like an ancient tragedy sung by a great poet.
Bloodshot eyes stood out in the hunchback’s eyes as he gripped the knife.
The Lord is the culprit.
Surely, Arzeletta is in the Lord’s castle.
Otherwise, she could not have disappeared without a trace like this.
Yoseph gripped the knife handle wrapped in leather. He was no longer afraid of anything.
He planned to kill the Lord and die on the spot himself.
“Promise.”
“……!”
In that moment, he recalled his conversation with Arzeletta. Yoseph flinched in surprise.
“No matter what happens, you must not throw away your life.”
“Arzeletta.”
“…Promise.”
Clang. The knife fell onto the cold floor. The startled animals once again cried and jumped around inside their iron cages.
“What did you just say?”
Ragnar, who was sitting at his office desk, asked back.
“A slaughterhouse?”
“Yes, My Lord.”
Ragnar placed the quill he was holding on a tray. Wolfram, who was relaying the message, also had an expression as if he was a little bewildered.
A lowly butcher had come to confess a sin.
Anyone was free to request an audience with the Lord, but it was Yoseph, of all people. He was someone who had lived his entire life in the territory and had not revealed his existence for even a single moment. He walked by hiding in the shadows even on a busy street during the day.
Furthermore, to be precise, he did not request an audience, but said that he was coming to confess a sin. Unlike a request for an audience, which could be rejected, this was an expression of his will to definitely meet the Lord and state his purpose.
“What did he say?”
“He says that he lost a butterfly. The one that you entrusted him with…”
“…A butterfly?”
Ragnar let out a hollow laugh.
There were an overwhelming number of people who tried to meet Ragnar and talk to him one way or another. This excuse was more pathetic than any other one he had heard until now. A butterfly that he had never entrusted to anyone. A butterfly…
“……!”
A butterfly?
“What should we do?”
Wolfram asked the Lord, whose eyes had stiffened in that moment.
The knight Wolfram, too, was of noble birth and had a strong class-oriented disposition. At the same time, he also had the virtue of not making premature judgments about matters he did not know about.
That virtue allowed the butcher’s message to reach the supreme Lord.
“Let him in.”
Wolfram’s eyes widened for a moment, but he quickly erased his surprised expression and straightened his back. Behind Wolfram, who disappeared with a polite bow, Ragnar slowly clenched his fist.
There was only one being that a butcher would call a butterfly.
“Get down on your knees.”
At the knight’s sharp command, Yoseph prostrated himself on the floor.
The marble floor of the office reflected his posture, where he was prostrated flat in front of the man of power, more clearly than a mirror.
His hunched back was trembling. It must have been because of his fear of standing in front of the Lord.
“Please command, My Lord.”
Wolfram requested of Ragnar and took a step back.
Ragnar, still sitting at his high desk, looked down at the butcher. Yoseph’s back, which he was seeing in the daytime sunlight, was much bigger and more bizarre than he remembered.
Yoseph, who was cowering in a servile manner and trembling in fear, looked more shabby and cheaper than a crumpled piece of tissue paper thrown into the office wastebasket.
“Raise your head.”
Ragnar commanded. It was a nobleman’s articulation that would have been difficult for Yoseph to even hear normally.
The butcher, who had bowed his head like an animal at the cold and smooth command, raised his head.
Ragnar’s brow slightly furrowed.
The emotion that was reflected in the butcher’s eyes at that moment was not fear or servility felt in front of a man of power.
It was desperate will and… hatred.
Ragnar lowered his cold, violet eyes and tilted his head.
The lowly butcher was not hiding his hatred for him. It was by no means a common occurrence.
Ragnar suddenly recalled that he had heard this hunchback’s name quite a bit through Arzeletta’s mouth.
It was something he had not even been aware of in that moment.
Because in the moments he was staggering from the ecstasy that the existence of Arzeletta gave him, he could not properly hear any words.
“You have something to say to me?”
Ragnar asked. There was not a hint of wavering at the fiery hatred that was being directed at him head-on.
Yoseph clenched his fists tightly. Thick veins stood out on the back of his hands, which were hideously calloused and full of scars.
“I have committed a mortal sin, My Lord! I have lost the thing that you, My Lord, entrusted to this lowly person!”
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