One Hundred Nights with the Devil - Chapter 33

While she was having absurd thoughts, the Duke began to speak.

“Miss Elena. I presumed you were an exorcist, is that correct?”

“Yes. That is correct.”

He presumed she was an exorcist, and understood her name correctly, yet he still didn’t recognize her……. As Elena nodded, feeling a sense of futility, the Duke’s face hardened.

“There were people who entered the castle saying the exact same thing as you. All three introduced themselves as exorcists of Eclard.”

Three exorcists who crossed the drawbridge saying the same thing as her. He seemed to be referring to the exorcists the Pope had sent, concealing the Devil’s descent in the West and attempting to clean it up on his own.

“Do you know what happened to them?”

“No one came out of the castle, and the path to enter was also blocked, so I presumed the exorcism failed.”

They must have met the cruelest and most horrific deaths. Instead of saying that, she redirected the conversation, pretending not to know. Then the Duke’s face hardened even further.

“Did you get possessed by the Devil?”

“No. I don’t know why you would think that. Nor do I know why you are angry with me, Duke.”

“Angry, yes. I am angry. You ‘presumed’ the previous three failed, yet you decided to enter this place?”

“Because that is my duty.”

Snap. The sound of the sofa’s armrest breaking was heard. As Elena looked up with a puzzled expression, the Duke—meeting her gaze—tried to suppress his emotions, evident by his whitened, tensed hands and his clenched jaw.

However, he could not hide the emotion that shone through his eyes.

“They all died. I murdered them.”

“……Pardon?”

“I mean, I killed hundreds of people who lived here, even the servants and the knights who followed me, all with my own hands.”

What was lingering in the eyes of the man who called himself a murderer was guilt.

“No one survived. I personally cut all their necks, and strangled them to death. People who called out to me, begging me to save them, with my own hands…….”

The debris of the broken armrest fell to the floor. The scene of blood being scattered over it continued slowly. The Duke glared fiercely at the floor, as if it were a punishment inflicted upon his own hands, or like a man who wanted to tear everything apart because even that wasn’t enough.

“I wanted to save at least one person, but I couldn’t save anyone. Even after begging and submitting, and gaining half of the day from the Devil, nothing changed. Every morning, all I could do was dwell on how many I had killed with my own hands the previous night and count the remaining numbers.”

Thud. Something red, whether blood or flesh, fell again. Instead of tracing its path, Elena looked higher, at the man’s hands. The undeveloped fingernails, stained with blood……. white and dark red things.

The moment her eyes met them, Elena realized what had happened in this castle.

The Devil who had given her a bathtub and vulgarly watched her was here. The Devil had…….

……devoured that beautiful and foolish man.

‘Since he couldn’t completely kill humans with Authority alone, he took over the Duke’s body.’

Elena recalled the story she had heard from the Devil of Swabia long ago. That due to the blessing of the Creator God Eclard, they could not perfectly murder humans with their Authority.

And so they were forced to use the long, boring method of torturing humans with Authority to make them kill each other or induce suicide.

However, the Devil here seemed to like that base method. Or perhaps, he liked the Duke’s body.

Thus, Dieter Laurencino Conrad, the Deposed Crown Prince and Duke exiled to the West, must have had to endure the screams and cries of the people begging him to save them. For one year.

Or perhaps a time dozens of times longer than that, until they all eventually died.

“The graves in front of the main building…….”

The Duke was greatly shaken by the single word Elena uttered blankly. It was the answer to an unasked question.

“All of them, by yourself, Duke? Did you make their graves alone?”

“……I know it was a useless act. I never once thought I could be forgiven with just that.”

Anguish was clear in the Duke’s words, which brought up the subject of forgiveness.

To dig the earth until dozens of pickaxes were worn out, bury the corpses whose necks he had broken with his own hands, and hold hundreds of funerals. And yet, to confess it as if he were a sinner.

Something hot and sharp surged up to her throat. Elena wanted to scream and spit it out. She wanted to yell and unleash it on him.

“I don’t know why you’re saying that.”

“Should I be proud?”

“Are you ashamed?”