I Thought Your Friend's Sibling Wasn't a Girl? - Chapter 97

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 97
At first, Arle thought Sirius was seeing illusions. He’d been told something serious happened during the field training exercise, so perhaps the shock had induced some temporary delirium.
That was all the Count thought—until he realized that no treatment, regardless of what was tried, yielded any improvement. If anything, the condition only worsened.
“The Red Stone. I have to find it. Find the stone and those people, or rather, that person, ugh—”
“Sirius, please! Please, come to your senses. Stop this!”
“I have to find it, I must find it—”
The Red Stone. Whatever it was, Sirius raved about it without even recognizing his own parents.
In the end, Arle had no choice but to resort to drastic measures: confine him to this place until they could find the cause.
Locking away his own son with his own hands, pressing him down to sleep each time he woke and caused a commotion—it was agonizing, tearing at his heart. But there was no alternative.
No one could be allowed to learn of this.
The servants were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, and Sirius took a leave of absence from the Academy. Arle was not unaware of what a leave of absence meant when graduation was so near, but there was no choice.
He locked Sirius’s door and posted guards at the windows and entrance. Otherwise, Sirius would leave his room daily and dig up the earth in various corners of the estate.
“Has the Page Ducal House responded? Still nothing?”
“……Yes. They have sent no response save to say it is not contamination from Demonic Magic.”
Not contamination.
Even after seeing Sirius’s condition, the one sent by the Page Ducal House had said as much.
But if it wasn’t contamination, what else could it be? Mere madness?
No. That couldn’t be right. This was contamination, unmistakably. Contamination from Demonic Magic.
In the heirlooms passed down through the Arle family for generations—in records documenting the age of heroes—Sirius’s condition was written of as ‘contamination.’ The Count’s suspicion was entirely reasonable.
“Contact the Imperial Court.”
“Pardon? But the Page Ducal House—”
“Contact them at once! What kind of father stands idle watching his son waste away? Contact them now. Tell them I will lend the Sacred Artifact.”
It was a kind of betrayal.
He had turned not to his own house—the guardian line that controlled Demonic Magic and sealed the Demon King’s Authority—but to the Imperial Court.
To report this to the ‘Imperial Court.’ To report the existence of contamination caused by Demonic Magic to the throne and seek assistance.
Had the Page Duke learned of this, he would have retaliated, calling it madness.
‘But what of that?’
Had the Page Duke not betrayed him first?
He had obeyed every command without question. He had taken on every trivial task, made himself the right hand of that house, offering up so much of himself. How much had he given?
And this was the price of his loyalty? The Count felt a profound emptiness wash over decades of devotion.
A simple request: save his child. Free him from this contamination. Apply the very thing that house did best—the Control of Demonic Magic—to his son. Even that request had been refused.
The Emperor had been well pleased by his ‘betrayal’ and promptly lent him Helios, a Sacred Artifact imbued with the power of Purification.
It would soon be over. If he could only use this artifact, if he could purify the contamination, Sirius would be restored.
So for now, he simply had to keep this hidden from the Knight Order members who’d brought the artifact. Then everything would be cleanly resolved.
That was certainly what he had thought.
Until Sirius unexpectedly awakened and, overcoming even the powerful sedative, escaped to the outside.
“Count! Count, something terrible has happened! The young master is nowhere to be found!”
“What? What are you saying? The guards—”
“All of them……have been found unconscious. It appears they fell to the young master’s magic.”
He had to find Sirius before the guests at the Guest House discovered him. If he didn’t, if that happened, they would certainly notice—
……that Sirius was contaminated. But—
“It’s clearly contamination.”
“I’m inclined to agree. Though the symptoms differ somewhat from Demonization.”
Too late. A hollow sigh escaped between Arle’s lips.
* * *
Signs of contamination.
Hadn’t such incidents become rather frequent of late? Olivia watched the Count’s irregular breathing and took a step back.
She had sensed something amiss with Sirius since the field training exercise.
“He hasn’t been this violent for very long.”
“Hm?”
“This is just rumor, but apparently a few months back he snuck out of the Academy at night and got into a scuffle with someone passing by.”
Sirius’s demeanor had seemed unusually brutal.
“……He came out of it worse, I heard. For a while there was quite the gossip about it at the Academy.”
“……And then?”
“Well, I can’t say for certain if that was the reason, but from that point on Sirius became noticeably more savage. Like someone desperate to crush anything he could see.”
If she recalled correctly, his behavior had begun changing right after encountering some mercenary company.
Daisy’s rambling came to mind as well. She’d said he seemed to improve briefly, but grew worse again after entering the training grounds.
Fragmented memories swirled through Olivia’s mind.
If she could just assemble them correctly, a clear picture would form. But some crucial piece seemed to be missing, making inference difficult.
And besides, Sirius was searching for the Red Stone—
“A Sacred Artifact seemed like it might help. So……”
“Wait, just a moment.”
The Red Stone.
“The Red Stone Mercenary Company? That was the name?”
The Red Stone Mercenary Company. That was the name of the group she had faced a few months ago during her first mission.
When she’d first heard the mercenary company’s name, something about it hadn’t felt unfamiliar. Only now did she realize: she had heard it before, in passing.
The Red Stone Mercenary Company collected Mana Stones. Most particularly, they preferred to harvest Mana Stones from demonized monsters.
“The Red Stone Mercenary Company.”
“What—my lady, how do you know the name of that mercenary company?”
“Commander, Senior. I don’t think this is just ordinary contamination.”
They had used power obtained from Fragments to control people. That power was the Demon King’s Authority—and even if it was only a sliver of strength, such a formidable power made it all too easy to contaminate a person.
The chaos that had occurred before the exercise, Sirius’s strange behavior, and the way his consciousness had vanished as though completely consumed by the power—
“Sirius encountered the Red Stone Mercenary Company. That’s where this began.”
“Wait, you mean……”
“It’s a continuation of that incident.”
Desperai. They were connected to this.
The fact that something strange had occurred suddenly during the exercise had timing too perfect to be mere coincidence. It seemed far more plausible that this was a carefully laid trap, woven over a long time.
She didn’t know their aim, but if Desperai was indeed involved in this matter, then—
“Olivia.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Well done. I understand very clearly what you’re trying to say.”
Yugin looked squarely at Olivia as he spoke.
It wasn’t only Yugin who understood; Sena and Luka both gave short, grave nods.
“What are you talking about? Sir?”
“Nothing in particular. I simply have a vague notion of where this is heading.”
“Commander Dignitas! Wait, please. Do you know something? I’m begging you!”
“The Sacred Artifact should be effective. I’ll provide more details once we’re certain of a few things.”
Yugin withdrew his hand from the Count’s grasp and gave his shoulder a brief pat. The Count’s eyes were bloodshot with desperation, but Yugin’s assurance that the artifact would be effective seemed to provide some comfort; he said nothing more.
“I beg you, with all my heart.”
“Do not worry.”
“Please, save my son.”
All trace of authority had vanished from the Count’s face. A father’s anguish—nothing more—remained as Arle desperately seized Yugin and his companions.
Yugin looked down at the Count without answering. A flicker of discomfort crossed his expression, but it faded so quickly that there was no way to be certain it hadn’t been a trick of the eye.
“It’s quite late.”
The night was indeed very late. A restless night that had seemed like sleep would never come grew deeper still, carried along by the troubled thoughts of all gathered.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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