Killing the Possessor - Chapter 136

[‘1 chapter’ remains until your stay expires.]

At first, I thought the timing was lucky. If I’d seen that message anywhere besides the detached palace, I’d be freaking out by now.

But pretty soon, I realized something was off.

“I’m already in the palace, though.”

A chill ran down my spine, and I felt the blood drain from my face. It wasn’t just a feeling—something was definitely, fundamentally wrong.

Why wasn’t the [Welcome to the Playfield.] message showing up? With only one chapter left, shouldn’t it have appeared by now?

My anxiety, which had eased a bit after meeting the Crown Prince, quickly flared up again. I was so on edge that I found myself biting my nails—a nervous habit I’d thought I’d long since broken.

What was I supposed to do? Where was I supposed to go…?

“What the, when did you get here? Where’s Yuli?”

Just then, Aveline came out of her room and glanced around before asking me.

Come to think of it, Yuli was nowhere to be seen. If she’d left the palace without a word, that was definitely suspicious. But with only one chapter left, it wasn’t exactly my top priority.

“I just got here too, so I’m not sure…”

Seeing how anxious I was, Aveline’s eyebrows twitched with concern. She paced between her room and the sitting room a few times, then finally seemed to make up her mind.

“I’m going out for a bit.”

“Excuse me?”

She was leaving? But this is the detached palace. Go out where?

“You don’t have to come. I’m just going to look for Yuli.”

“Oh…”

A proper maid would, of course, stick close to her mistress at all times and be ready to serve her needs. But in my current state—with only one episode left—I just couldn’t do it.

Maybe reading the distress on my face, Aveline left without asking any more questions. After she left, I sat on the sofa, fidgeting nervously.

I was too busy biting my lips, my legs shook even when I tried to keep still, and my eyes stayed locked straight ahead without so much as a blink, waiting desperately for the message I needed.

But it just wouldn’t show up.

“Is this not the playfield?”

Maybe, like the orphanage basement, I had to be in a certain room of the palace?

Panicked, I leapt up and started running around the palace like a madwoman. Guest rooms, the kitchen, the music room, the dining hall—I checked every single room, stepping into each one.

“Why isn’t it showing up?!”

But nowhere was the ‘playfield’. Where in the world was I supposed to go…?

“Ah!”

In my frantic rush, my sleeve got caught on a lace tablecloth, dragging it and knocking over all the items on the table. In a flash, the neat room was a total mess.

I could’ve just called a maid to clean it up, but with my nerves frayed as they were, the mess only made my irritation spike. At this rate, I almost wanted to smash everything in sight, not knowing if I’d be alive much longer.

As violent thoughts flitted through my head, my eyes landed on a jar of cookies that had tipped over.

Looking at the cookies reminded me of something Dahlia had said that morning, when she’d mentioned Resjul’s chocolates.

“I stopped a princess from stealing that chocolate and brought it to you myself.”

“What?”

“I don’t know which country she’s a princess from, but she’s a princess, okay? And would you believe it, she tried to steal the chocolate!”

“Princess… stealing…”

The way the mind makes connections is really mysterious. As soon as I considered the possibility that the princess Dahlia saw was actually Aveline, completely unrelated memories started surfacing.

“How many times do I have to say it for you to get it, idiot?”

“S-sorry…”

Yuli had sharply criticized Aveline’s walk—a scene that had struck me as odd, as if their roles had somehow reversed.

But if I added just one more hypothesis, these two seemingly unrelated memories suddenly made perfect sense.

“Aveline… is a possessor?”