~Chapter 57~
The imperial family was the only bloodline that could use magic through the mana flowing in their veins.
To them, magic was their status itself.
“For the imperial family to suddenly lose the ability to use magic… this is an unprecedented emergency.”
“This is insane… what’s happening to us?”
“We need to check the old records in the library immediately!”
“Father, what will happen to us now—”
The princess and the third prince were crying, Leonard was cursing as blood dripped from his hands, and Prince Leonie, usually calm, was nervously fiddling with his glasses.
The Emperor finally roared,
“Silence, all of you!!”
It wasn’t just them who couldn’t control their anger.
“Be quiet! I can’t think straight!”
Such an incident had never happened during the Emperor’s reign. He couldn’t even recall any similar case from the past, and there were no proper records.
They couldn’t solve it on their own, but they also couldn’t let outsiders know. If it was revealed that the imperial family had lost the magic that defined their very status, the damage to their position would be catastrophic.
At the Emperor’s shout, the imperial family went silent.
“…Ha, this is maddening,” the Emperor muttered, rubbing his deepening frown.
“Think carefully. Has anyone acted unusually recently?”
Leonie shook his head.
The third prince and the princess both said no after thinking back on their actions.
Leonard also shook his head.
The Emperor’s expression turned cold.
“…So this is Damien’s doing?”
The Benedict family’s mana was tied to the curses absorbed by the Maledictus. The sudden disappearance of mana could mean a significant loss of curses from the Maledictus.
“And didn’t Damien already release curses at the banquet recently, which weakened our mana?”
“But Father,” Leonie pointed out, “we haven’t received any signal that Damien released curses this time.”
To prevent rogue Maledictuses from secretly releasing curses, they had long installed magical devices at the portal connecting to the Grand Duke’s estate. Those devices detected changes in Damien’s curses and would alert the imperial family immediately.
But this time, the devices had been silent.
“But if not him, then who else could cause this?” Leonard ground his teeth.
“It has to be him. We must interrogate him—”
Crash!
A teacup flew past Leonard’s ear and shattered against the wall.
Leonard froze.
“Leonard,” the Emperor said, his voice colder than ever.
“Answer me truthfully. Did you do something?”
Everyone stiffened.
No one could stay calm in front of the Emperor’s uncontrollable rage.
“You must have done something to provoke the Maledictus.”
Leonard couldn’t lift his gaze. The Emperor’s furious golden eyes were too terrifying.
“Otherwise, we cannot simply assume this was Damien’s doing.”
“…Father…”
“Did you provoke him?”
Leonard couldn’t answer. He couldn’t reveal his secret plan—to use the Maledictus’s cursed mana to secure the throne.
He had tortured people to extract pure fear and fed it to Damien to trigger a rampage.
He couldn’t admit any of that.
Smack!
Leonard’s head snapped to the side.
“Ugh…!”
He collapsed onto the floor from the blow.
“I gave you an opportunity at the banquet, and you failed. And now you dare bring disaster upon me?”
The Emperor looked down at Leonard like he was garbage.
“I told you not to provoke a Maledictus who had entered into a soul contract.”
The Emperor rang a bell.
“You are to be confined.”
“…What?”
Leonard’s face turned pale.
“Wait, confinement? I only wanted to weaken him for the sake of the imperial family—”
“We do not need a Benedict who lacks judgment,” the Emperor declared.
The door burst open, and the Emperor’s two closest attendants entered. They obeyed no one but him.
They wordlessly grabbed Leonard’s arms and began dragging him away.
“W-wait, Father! Please, anywhere but that place—”
“Send him to the underground prison,” the Emperor ordered.
Leonard’s golden hair, once praised as radiant as the sun, was now a tangled mess as he clawed desperately at the floor.
“Please, Father, I’m sorry! I was wrong!!”
But his cries fell on deaf ears.
He was thrown into a pitch-black underground prison—the same kind of place where he had once imprisoned and tortured others.
Back at the Grand Duke’s Mansion
“Ruby, do you know how many curses you destroyed earlier? One highest-level curse, twelve high-level curses, thirty mid-level curses, and countless low-level curses.”
“Oh…”
I knew I had destroyed a lot since the entire room was filled with curses, but I didn’t expect it to be that many.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Damien said with a smile.
“Yes… I didn’t think there were so many,” I admitted.
“That’s why I said the imperial palace would be in chaos. With that much gone, their mana supply is disrupted. They won’t be able to use magic for a while.”
Damien explained that even small reductions in curses—whether he released them intentionally or they naturally decreased—always affected the imperial family’s magic.
But this time, with an unprecedented amount gone, they wouldn’t be using magic anytime soon.
“And they won’t even know why. The magical devices at the portal will show I didn’t release anything, and they don’t know about your ability.”
I remembered Damien telling the imperial family early in our marriage that being with me reduced his pain from the curses.
He had never told them I could erase curses entirely.
“Magic is life to them. Thanks to you, they’ll be going insane for a while,” Damien said, clearly amused.
“That sounds wonderful,” I grinned.
“Yes. So, since we finished our bath, we can relax and tell scary stories for fun,” Damien said.
I hugged a long pillow and nodded.
After informing the servants that everything was under control, Damien and I stayed in his room talking until night.
It felt like a pajama party with friends—telling ghost stories until we got sleepy.
“How about we try that ghost story experiment? If we blow out 13 candles, a ghost will appear.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Damien agreed.
“And later, on another day, we’ll change the conditions a bit and see how to make it more likely for the ghost to show up.”
We kept talking about ridiculous things only horror fanatics could enjoy until we both drifted off to sleep.
That Night
Creak…
[“Ru… Ru… bi…”]
Something crawled out of Damien’s sleeping body.
