“Just… could you hug me a little warmer?”

Herdin seemed to understand her meaning and began to take off his coat. One, two pieces of clothing were removed, revealing a perfect body.

Eventually, with his lips pressed against hers, he embraced Blair with his hot body. Tears seemed to well up at the warmth of his skin against hers.

Soon, her vision began to shake again.

Blair desperately faced the warmth.
Soon, the view began to shake again.

Blair desperately faced his warmth.

Throughout the night, without missing a moment.

Rumors about Blair had been buzzing throughout the entire institute for days.

Even the back-alley pub was no exception. No, it was even more sordid since it was a gathering place for those who had lived rough lives.

Especially when the protagonist of those rumors was a woman.

“Did you hear the rumor? The Duchess is planning to bite the Empress’s neck?”

“That’s how it goes, even the imperial family is no different from ordinary households. A daughter getting infatuated with a man and betraying her mother, there’s no shortage of families like that.”

“Well, she is her mother’s daughter. Where else would the nature of a poorly bred bloodline go? She got involved with the Duke and got so infatuated that she even sold her mother.”

“In any case, women, if you treat them a little well—”

It was at that moment when the men sitting at the bar were gossiping and inflating dirty rumors about Blair.

Crack—

A glass shattered in Mikhail’s hand as he was serving cocktails in front of them.

Both his subordinates and the men in front of him were startled by the commotion and looked at Mikhail.

With the shattered glass in his hand, shards of glass, alcohol, and red blood were dripping.

“……Ah.”

Meeting the frightened guests’ eyes, Mikhail seemed to realize for the first time that the glass had broken.

“Sorry. The glass broke.”

However, there was no hint of remorse in his cold expression.

One of the men involuntarily flinched at Mikhail’s momentum and shouted loudly, attempting to conceal his own emotions.

“Hey, did you intentionally break the glass? What kind of customer service is this?”

One of Mikhail’s subordinates, sensing the uneasy atmosphere, quickly intervened.

“Apologies, sir. Our staff made a mistake due to fatigue. We’ll make a new one right away.”

Seeing his subordinate’s gesture, Mikhail left the bar and went upstairs to the second floor. Then, using his sacred power, he healed the wounds caused by the glass shards on his hand.

Just as he finished healing, he heard footsteps approaching from behind.

“Master.”

When Mikhail turned around, he saw one of his subordinates coming towards him. The subordinate paused when he saw Mikhail’s hand covered in blood.

“…What happened downstairs?”

“Nothing much. Just a minor injury. What’s going on?”

“We’re continuing the investigation into the forbidden grimoire you ordered back then. Since it involves forbidden magic, it’s challenging to gather information.”

Mikhail furrowed his brow.

On the day he went with Blair to the cottage in the woods, he had been investigating the dark magic circle he had seen from her.

If even she was unaware of its existence, there was a high probability that it was a dangerous magic circle planted with malicious intent.

He wanted to remove the ominous magic circle from her as quickly as possible, but gathering information was not as easy as he had anticipated.

“Anything, no matter how trivial, bring it as soon as you obtain it.”
“Ah, well……”

Mikhail looked at his subordinate with a puzzled expression as the subordinate, who didn’t back away immediately, took something crumpled from his pocket.

“It’s not a dark grimoire, but it’s related to dark magic, so I brought it just in case.”

The document he extended had a dark magic circle drawn on the front page, and below it—

… was written in neat handwriting. It seemed like the owner of the document had written it personally.

“Where did you get this document?”

“Some guy left it behind instead of paying for drinks yesterday. Seemed like a gambler. I picked it up on my way home early in the morning not too long ago.”

“You picked it up from the street?”

“Yes. At first, I didn’t know what it was and thought it might be an important document that could be sold for a high price. But once I realized it was a dark magic circle, I got scared and just handed it over instead of taking the money.”

Listening to his subordinate’s story and examining the document again, Mikhail, who had been scrutinizing the dark magic circle drawn on the front page, hesitated.

‘This is…’

It was the same pattern of magic circle engraved on Blair’s collarbone.