Chapter 34
You foolish man. If you knew it was a foolish act, you shouldn’t have done it. If you couldn’t endure it, you should have given up. It was all the Devil’s fault, so you should have indulged in self-pity to your heart’s content. Why are you treating yourself as a sinner!
“Do you treat others so harshly, Duke? Do you believe it is right to behead those who lust after their kin and hang those who murdered their loved ones—both having fallen for the Devil’s temptation—for the crimes of incest and murder?”
“Do not try to fit me into such a generalization.”
“I am not speaking hypothetically!”
Elena cut off his protest with a sharp voice. She realized that her composure was broken, but she couldn’t help but unleash the emotion surging up inside her.
“I am speaking about what I have witnessed and acted upon.”
“What do you…….”
“You ask what I know. You ask whether I have experienced it. Yes—I have. In Esslingen. In Swabia and Hermann. And in Wellington.”
The Duke’s complexion changed completely. From displeasure to confusion, and then finally to the astonishment that was quite familiar to Elena.
“Are you the Saintess who returned alive from Esslingen?”
“Do you require proof?”
“I am not doubting you……. I am just perplexed. How did you come here? My uncle would never have allowed such a remarkable exorcist as you to come here.”
“…….”
Elena calmed her excitement. Now she felt she understood why he hadn’t recognized her. No, it even felt logical that he hadn’t recognized her.
But she couldn’t simply admit it. Not because of her pride, but because it would be awkward to explain the Emperor’s attitude. She couldn’t very well say, ‘Your uncle actually told me that if I go to Conrad Castle, I’d end up sleeping with you,’ could she?
She gave the most ambiguous answer she could.
“His reaction was not exactly positive.”
“You courted danger. Though your standing at the Grand Temple must be considerable, allowing you to suppress opposition, my uncle is not a man who fears God. He would have felt nothing about insulting the Saintess and inflicting harm upon you.”
Elena’s eyebrow arched slightly. She disliked the Duke’s certainty that she must have been harmed, let alone insulted, by the Emperor. After all, even if he was the Emperor, she wasn’t the kind of person to simply take such an affront.
However, the brief burst of anger soon died out weakly, like embers on a rainy day. This was because the Duke’s eyes were genuinely worried about her.
Truly, he was a strange person. He should only pity himself, who had been imprisoned all this time…….
“As you said, the Emperor did come to stop me, but nothing came of it. That’s why I’ve come all the way here, hasn’t it?”
Elena cleared her throat and soothed the Duke with a much gentler tone.
“Duke. What I want to tell you is that I have personally witnessed the thousands of sins committed by hundreds of people while confronting the Devil. But not one of them was accused as a sinner. Because it is unjust and foolish to accuse a sword of a crime simply because it was used for murder. Therefore, the acts you performed can absolutely not be considered sins.”
She saw cracks appear in the solid wall the Duke had erected at her gentle words. Elena anticipated victory. She reached out her hand to completely demolish his wall.
“Please do not call the atrocities the Devil committed with your body your sin. I will help you. With the Devil who devoured you, and…….”
“Miss Elena.”
“I will meet him and end your hell.”
“It is impossible.”
The Duke turned away from her gaze, which had finally reached him. The wall that had been precariously standing between them, threatening to collapse, rose high again and pushed Elena away.
“I have already taken measures to prevent you from meeting the Devil.”
“Measures? Surely you don’t mean you made a bargain with the Devil?”
“No. I pleaded. The moment I discovered you were craving the Devil in front of the castle, I begged the Devil.”
Ah. Good heavens.
“I paid a price to prevent the Devil from approaching you.”
“That’s why I couldn’t access the second floor of the main building.”
“Yes. When night falls, the Devil takes over my body, but fortunately for you, the body he inhabits is confined to the second floor of the main building and cannot move. For the time being.”
Elena sighed again. He confined himself? And he did such a thing for her, a person he didn’t even know?
“……What price did you pay for this foolish man?”
“Miss Elena does not need to know.”
“I must know. I am a Devil exorcist. Duke, save yourself from the pain you don’t need to bear. Please let me help.”
“Then you, too, will die by my hand. Like the people who tried to save me but were all eventually murdered by me. Like the exorcists who gave me hope, even for a brief moment.”
“…….”
“Miss Elena. Whether you accuse me as a sinner or grant me absolution in the name of the Saintess, it makes no difference. Because the possibility of me murdering you while my body is possessed by the Devil remains unchanged.”
The Duke sneered. It was a sharply edged smile that, far from reaching Elena, was self-lacerating, burying itself into the ground and wounding himself.
“Therefore, Miss Elena. Please do not drive me to despair any further with talk of helping. I beg you.”
The Duke clasped his hands together as if in prayer. The source of the desperation expressed by the bulging veins on his hands and the dried bloodstains clinging to them was neither pity for a woman he didn’t know nor goodwill seeking a reward.
It was the last desperate struggle of a man terrified in the face of a tribulation that had failed and been resigned to hundreds of times.
“I do not want to strangle your neck with my own hands, nor do I want to tear out your heart while you are alive. There are no more stones left to place on graves. So, do not seek the Devil. Do not attempt to test your own fate. Please, do not make me commit a new sin.”
“…….”
“I had finally given up……. I even felt a sense of relief, a despicable emotion like that, when I buried the last person I murdered.”
The Duke ultimately exposed his entire base self.
“I resent you. I resent you so much—you who obstinately came here and forced me to kneel before yet another sin, you who made me resist the Devil once again, even though I know it will fail.”
That was the first resentment Elena had ever faced as an exorcist.
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