The Nymph Wants to be Plundered - Chapter 116

As she silently placed her hand near her heart, Cassis spoke.

“It’s alright.”

“…Your Majesty?”

Thinking he was speaking to him, Laocon asked in return.

“Ah. Yes. I’m fine. I’ll be alright. I have to be… alright.”

Evelyn nodded slightly with a sad smile. She thought they had exchanged a private signal, but unfortunately, that was a miscalculation. The elf girl who sat parallel to her but at a distance had apparently overheard, and she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, let me go now, I can see clearly, I can hear! Why is a mere nymph having a private conversation with His Majesty the King! This is terribly wrong, I tell you!”

“Be silent, Lya! If you don’t quiet down, regardless of the trial’s outcome, you’ll be punished with forced labor!”

As the judge’s cold rebuke cut through the audience, Evelyn’s mind raced. Lya. The name of that elf. Even thinking back now, she had never heard it before. She was an elf who had never been mentioned in any conversations Evelyn had overheard while going around with Ruba.

The trial began amid complete silence. Evelyn could barely breathe comfortably and tried to understand every word coming from the mouths of the elves, not herself. But it wasn’t as easy as she thought. It was because of Lya, who kept struggling to tear at the armrests restraining her and shouting whenever she got the chance.

Only after the exasperated judge called the guards again to firmly press down on her shoulders could Evelyn fully understand the exchange of words.

“Lya, do you admit your crime?”

“Kuughk…!”

Perhaps due to causing such a commotion in less than an hour, foamy saliva dripped greedily from Lya’s mouth. Drip, drip. Because the courtroom was quiet and the amount was substantial, the sound reached Evelyn’s ears clearly. Along with it, cold sweat seeped from the nape of Evelyn’s neck.

The girl, Lya, glared with her eyes wide open, panting angrily.

“This is unfair…!”

“Tell us directly what is unfair.”

“I merely fulfilled my duty as a watcher. You’re all being de, huuk, deceived! That child! How could I stand by while that detestable nymph trampled the sacred grounds with her dirty feet? Moreover, rumors abound that this nymph constantly bothers His Majesty the King, who is very busy, increasing his needless work!”

The judge, seated higher than King Cassis, continued.

“Lya, let me point out the errors in your statement. First, you were only a watcher trainee, not an officially authorized watcher. Second, the nymph Evelyn did not trespass on the sacred grounds without permission. Third, His Majesty the King, as the guardian of the World Tree and protector of Jupiter, rightfully bears the duty to care for nymphs.”

“Of course.”

Laocon, standing to Cassis’s right, nodded repeatedly as if agreeing with those words. However, Iel, standing on the left, merely looked back and forth between the judge and Lya without giving any bodily signal.

“That’s not true. I may not know about the rest, but the trespassing on sacred grounds is clear. I saw it, I tell you I saw it. If I hadn’t shot arrows to stop her, surely…!”

Lya kept her mouth wide open as if the judge were telling lies, frantically denying everything.

“There is truth in what you just said that the nymph did not enter the sacred grounds. What would have happened if you hadn’t shot the arrows? Doesn’t that mean she didn’t go there after all?”

“T-that…!”

The truth she had known even before being imprisoned in the dark, gloomy dungeon. However, a grave charge that must exist if she were to pin the blame on the nymph she had tried to eliminate.

As Lya’s words caught in her throat as if a walnut were stuck there—having believed her own lies to be truth for the sake of her innocence—Cassis finally stepped in. Looking at Evelyn with eyes brimming with indescribable emotion, he asked.

“Evelyn, it’s your turn to defend yourself, so speak directly. Did you trespass on the sacred grounds without permission?”

The distance between them was quite far. Both could see each other, but it was even further than the distance to Lya, who was restrained on Evelyn’s opposite side.

Yet Evelyn was not afraid. She could feel it. Even without any part of their bodies touching, not even that intimate place, this warmth that felt so comforting and the sense of security that made her body relax… she was thoroughly protected by him.

Evelyn, caught in the illusion that her now-healed lips were becoming hot as they had been when they split and bled, trembled slightly but spoke with composed words.

“That day, I hurriedly ran there thinking I wanted to see my tree that was planted in the sacred grounds.”

Lya convulsed and screamed.

“W-what? That can’t be. How dare a thing like you claim your tree was planted in the sacred grounds. Don’t talk nonsense. That’s gibberish, gibberish…”

“Silence!, continue.”

“Yes. But I knew that entering without anyone’s company, h-hmm, would be no different from trespassing. When I actually reached the front of the sacred grounds, I thought I couldn’t break a rule I clearly knew and commit a mistake, so later… I was just turning around to come back after getting permission when suddenly arrows flew from the other side.”