I Became the Narrow-Eyed Villain in a Dropped Novel

Chapter 109:

Silence fell in the hut.

Kaseph stood still with his back bent as if he had said all he had to say, and Til glared at Kaseph as if asking if he had anything more to say.

While the two were having a staring contest, my gaze was on the map.

The scorch mark Kaseph had just left started at Ruhindorf and connected to several warehouses marked with question marks.

It was a shape closer to a spider web than a fuse.

If they were casting a curse from afar by setting up relay stations, isn't there no reason for it to be in such a shape?

“Is that it?”

“I think I answered your question accurately.”

“Isn't there anything like how to stop it?”

“Didn't I say that their plan is a novel and bold method?”

“To put it simply, you mean you don't know a sure way.”

Kaseph nodded at my sarcastic summary.

“In Kranacht, the means were unusual, but the basic structure was simple. So all we had to do was destroy the medium and the place. This time, the structure is unstable, so it's hard to predict what will happen if we touch it wrongly.”

“Speaking of the structure, I wanted to ask, why did they spread out the relay stations so uselessly like that?”

“A good question. That's what we have to figure out from now on.”

In the end, he's saying he doesn't know.

And he can still call himself the top expert on curses?

As I was contemplating how to say this indirectly, Til charged in refreshingly on my behalf.

“So Kaseph of the Hellfire is nothing special. If you're going to make excuses that you don't even know this.”

“It's not that I don't know. It's just that I can't figure out the reason.”

“That's the same thing.”

“Wasn't your father a Duke? Is the level of Imperial education just that low, or was he just not interested in his child's education?”

“What did you say, you bastard?”

A sigh escaped me as I saw the heartwarming scene of the Eight Council from the novel unfolding before my eyes.

It was funny when I saw it from afar, but being in the middle of it drained my energy.

“You mean it's possible to do it that way, but there's no reason to?”

“That's right. It's not usually necessary to choose an unstable structure while conducting an experiment that must have failed hundreds of times, casting a curse from afar. Do you understand now, Til.”

Ah, if I leave them alone, it's going to turn into a fight.

It's up to them to have a life-or-death struggle, but I had no intention of cleaning up the aftermath.

“So we just have to raid all the suspicious places you've marked?”

“It's not that simple. I don't know what kind of structure it is, and I don't know what problems will arise if we touch it.”

“Don't we lack the time to figure out the structure?”

“That's true, too. That's why I think the operation you proposed is quite good.”

“You mean the one about deliberately causing a commotion.”

I was just thinking that it had become unnecessary because of Kaseph's sudden visit.

Kaseph, who brought his hand to the map again, tapped the connected warehouses.

“Even if they've dispersed them, there's bound to be a central place. Especially to stabilize the unnecessarily complex structure even a little.”

“I may not know about the other places, but the place that serves as the center can never be moved, can I understand it that way?”

“That's right. In theory, that is.”

Although the clause ‘in theory’ was attached unconvincingly at the end, it was worth racking my brain to come up with the plan.

“If we find the center, we can prevent something like what happened in Kranacht from happening. Secondly, we'll be able to identify the epicenter of the curse.”

“That sounds like we can't identify the epicenter until then.”

“Correct. For now, we don't know where the curse is being cast from.”

In the end, the fact that it was a race against time didn't change much.

A fight of whether they finish their preparations first, or we find it first.

“That aside. I'm surprised, Count.”

“About what.”

“That you're paying so much attention to a matter of this level.”

“It's an incident that happened in the Empire, so isn't it natural for me to look into it?”

As I quickly retorted, Kaseph didn't object further.

An indescribable emotion was felt in his eyes beyond the mask, but it disappeared in an instant, making it hard to recognize.

“Anyway, it means we can start smashing things up from this evening, right?”

The awkward moment ended thanks to Til's energetic words.

As Til started to make a plan, pointing at the half-burnt map, I sat there smiling faintly as usual.

My face was held up straight, but my gaze was not on Til, but somewhere else entirely.

180 chapters until the end of the world!

On the status window that was loudly informing me that I only had 30 chapters of my life left.

***

After the status window popped up an alarm saying we had entered an important turning point, there were two major changes.

One was that the chapter progression had become faster.

I had expected this to some extent.

Originally, it would be the point where the protagonist and Blaiher would be fighting constantly with the Empire, but since that was omitted, it was possible for the 150th chapter to come a bit faster than originally planned.

The problem was Valheit's death probability.

After reaching 30%, there was no change at all.

To be precise, there were times when it went up occasionally, but it never went below 30%.

‘Does this mean it has reached a limit.’

A 30% chance of dying was by no means a low number.

I had to bring it down to at least single digits to be able to catch my breath.

If it was systematically blocked from going down, there must be a way to unlock it.

The most suspicious thing was, of course, the turning point notification that had appeared before.

The notification popped up when I found out about Ruhindorf and the curse, so if I solve this incident, there will surely be a change.

The problem was that it didn't tell me exactly how to solve it and what I needed to find out.

‘It must mean that Valheit's death and the curse they are experimenting with now are related. For now, catching those Raven bastards is the priority.’

It wasn't a problem that would be solved by thinking about it complexly right now, so I had to solve the problem at hand first.

“Ede, you can come out.”

Ede, covered in leaves and dirt, stuck her face out from the thicket.

She looked like someone who could be believed to be a farmer living here.

“I'm sorry, I was late helping out with some village work.”

“I understand that you went in to monitor Ruhindorf and how you ended up doing volunteer work.”

“Um, it's a process of building trust! I didn't help without any reason.”

Ede scratched her head as if embarrassed.

Well, it was a hundred times better than being on bad terms, so I decided to let it go.

“How is the village?”

“It's just a country village. A place where grumpy people and people who endure day by day live together.”

“Was there anything suspicious about the furniture workshop.”

“No. I went in a few times at night to check for a hidden basement or a secret space, but there was nothing. I just came out after smelling a lot of wood.”

Ede may seem goofy now, but in the original story where she chose the path of an avenger, she was the character with the sharpest eyes and intuition.

Even if she exerted only half of that sharpness, she would have found the secrets of a shabby country workshop tens of times over.

“Was there really nothing suspicious at all.”

“Um, if I have to force it, the workshop owner is having the time of his life because a lot of orders have come in recently? He kept saying he was tired to death, but his face was full of smiles.”

Did the wholesalers really buy the furniture in bulk?

I was thinking that they might be moving something strange by disguising it as such ordinary trade.

“I'm telling you just in case, but for the past two days, the only cargo that went in and out of the workshop was wood and furniture. There were no strange transactions.”

Ede added, as if she had read my mind.

Does that mean there's no one involved from inside the village?

“Good work. Return and join up with Til by tomorrow morning.”

“Ah, there's one more thing to report before that.”

“Didn't you say you didn't find anything suspicious inside Ruhindorf.”

“Yes, not inside the village. But there was a strange person who came from outside the village.”

A strange person?

The first thing that came to mind was the Raven, but it was unlikely that those who used local wholesalers because they didn't want to reveal themselves would openly show their faces.

Hugo from the Three Blades was still staying near the inn, observing the situation, so he didn't even go near Ruhindorf.

Then who could it be?

“A person who was clearly a noblewoman came to the village for the reason of travel.”

“The timing is strange, but that alone is not enough to be suspicious, is it?”

“If she were an ordinary traveler, I would have thought so too. According to a grandmother in Ruhindorf, she wandered around the stream for days and then said she would stay in the village after seeing me, isn't that strange.”

It was certainly strange.

There was also the possibility that she had figured out Ede's identity.

“Does she seem like a Raven?”

“That's the problem, it didn't seem like that either.”

“Then the Three Blades or….”

“No, it wasn't that kind of gloomy ahem, secretive feeling. It was more of a radiant feeling, should I say.”

It really seems like a passing traveler.

I was about to just say I understood and move on, but I decided to trust Ede's intuition shown in the original story and ask one more time.

“What was her appearance and characteristics?”

“Orange hair, very old-fashioned clothes, a smile that puts your mind at ease, and she was a radiant older sister who looked like she wouldn't get a single speck of dirt on her even if she was outside all day.”

“I wasn't asking you to recite your personal crush.”

“But it's hard to describe it more accurately than this.”

I let out a bitter smile and shook my head as Ede protested as if she were being wronged.

I don't know the circumstances, but she seemed like a kind, orange-haired young lady who was passing by.

Wait, orange hair….

“What was her name?”

“She told me, but it seemed like an alias. Anat? It's a strange name, isn't it.”

It was a relief that Ede had no idea who the commander of the Eight Council was.

If she knew, she would have already spread rumors all over the place.

Why did she come?

It was strange to say it was to meet Valheit like before.

At such times, the Commander had thoroughly met Valheit alone.

She was a person who did not easily show herself before others.

“W-was that useless information?”

“I don't know yet. Let's just keep it in mind.”

She's a person who can take care of herself.

I'm curious why she came, but it's a problem I can look into after the curse incident is over.

Suddenly, a faint acrid smell brushed the tip of my nose.

As I turned my head in the direction the wind was blowing, black smoke was soaring into the sky in the distance.

“What's going on? I hope it doesn't interfere with our work.”

“Ah, you don't have to worry. It's a fire we started.”

“A fire? We did?”

Ede stared back and forth between me and the smoke, blinking her eyes as if she had no idea what was going on.

The black smoke grew larger and larger, and now even glimpses of red flames began to appear.

“Please go back and spread this rumor in Ruhindorf.”

I smiled at Ede, who was still staring at the pillar of smoke, unable to tear her eyes away, as if she still didn't understand.

“That Demons plundered the wholesalers and burned their warehouses.”

“Demons?”

“Yes, those very scary Demon raiders are coming, so be careful.”

I looked at the smoke again.

Now that I had put fire into the rabbit hole, it was time to wait for the rabbit to jump out.