The Magical Holy Woman Seraphina - Chapter 69

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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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Magic Saint Seraphina
Episode 69
“Judge, Judge Cameron!”
I patted the unconscious Judge Cameron’s cheeks to wake him.
He was so fragile that the moment I said, “I guess I’m getting weak too,” he fainted dead away.
“Justice’s Nostril Blocking!”
“Ughh….”
Poyong—delighted beside me—blocked Judge Cameron’s nostrils with his furry foreleg.
Unable to breathe properly, Judge Cameron’s face flushed crimson, his eyelids trembling, before his eyes finally snapped open.
“Ahhh!”
He scrambled backward in panic on his rear end—
“The Magic Saint?!”
—only to relax visibly the moment he saw me crouched in front of him.
The man really doesn’t understand the world, does he?
Not so long ago, he was plotting my imprisonment, calling for a mock trial. Now he’s relieved to see me.
Even when he was calling me a criminal and all that, apparently I’m better company than a muscular brute.
“Help! There’s some maniac here…!”
Judge Cameron clung to me desperately, thrashing about.
“What kind of lunatic! To me! To me!”
“What do you mean?”
“Wasn’t there some bandit-looking man here?! That man…!”
“Oh, this man?”
I twirled the Poyong Hammer and shifted back to my male form, then back again.
“Ahhh!”
Judge Cameron was practically having a seizure.
“You, you, you…!”
“Yes. That’s right. It was me all along.”
I added cheerfully, “Lucky for you—your worst nightmare doesn’t actually exist.”
“You…!”
“Shh. Listen to what I have to say first.”
I sealed Judge Cameron’s mouth shut with the Poyong Hammer.
“That’s your job, Judge. Listening to people and rendering fair judgments.”
So please hear me out.
I lowered the hammer.
With surprising presence of mind, Poyong withdrew his foreleg from the judge’s nostrils and clamped it over his mouth instead.
I spoke to the judge, his mouth sealed shut by a furry paw, eyes bulging:
“Esteemed Magistrate. Let me ask you to imagine something.”
What if I had been male?
What if some intruder had broken into your home under cover of darkness—and if that intruder, who today mercifully turned out to be the Magic Saint, had instead been a real muscular man?
What would you be now?
“Whimper!”
“Yes, chilling, isn’t it? Just to imagine.”
And if a middle-aged man like yourself was affected this badly, what about Eve, the victim that day? What about all the countless victims you’ve encountered since?
How did they feel?
“The reason I went out of my way to disguise myself and follow you, Judge, was simple.”
The dread that comes when the public authority meant to protect you fails. The sickness of being watched.
I wanted you to feel it once.
Just once.
“Now that you’ve experienced it firsthand—do you still think that case should have been dismissed?”
Do you still believe that?
“If I followed you for the rest of your life like this, would you release me unpunished just the same?”
Judge Cameron had no response.
(What, you think he can’t answer because Poyong has his mouth covered?
Shh.)
I tapped the Poyong Hammer against my other palm, speaking quietly.
“I heard the prosecutor handling Eve’s case filed an appeal.”
But here’s the funny part—the appeals judge is you again, Judge Cameron.
“That’s your good fortune, Judge. You have a chance to correct your mistake.”
I met his eyes directly.
“Sentence the perpetrator as harshly as you would have sentenced me in my transformed state.”
Don’t forget the fear and dread you felt today, Judge.
And remember this.
“The victim is just as promising a young person as the perpetrator.”
Cameron’s face had gone deathly pale, and he nodded frantically.
“I, I really made a terrible mistake. I’m reflecting on it, and I feel so sorry for the victim who was hurt by this wrongful judgment….”
Perhaps.
Though honestly, it sounded less like genuine remorse and more like he was scrambling to escape the current situation.
“Do better from now on. I’ll be watching.”
“I understand, I understand!”
“Tomorrow, review the case again. If you truly believe it was grounds for dismissal, then dismiss it again. If a judge who knows the law better than me sees it that way, what can I do?”
“No, no. I was genuinely mistaken.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that out of fear?”
“No… when I saw that the defendant was top of his law school class, I thought it would be a shame for such a brilliant young man to ruin his life over a momentary mistake….”
“You made a mistake, that’s the point!”
A sharp sound of impact.
Sigh.
‘If the judge gets injured, the appeal gets postponed anyway. I’ll hold back.’
I glared disapprovingly at Cameron’s bald crown for a moment.
“And Judge.”
“Y, yes?”
“You’re a member of The Men of the Center, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Stop pretending you don’t know. The Men of the Center. A social club that distributes badges marked with a white-haired eagle. You’re the lead member of that club, aren’t you?”
Recruiting members, arranging venues, booking hunting grounds—you handle all of it, don’t you?
I asked while spinning the Poyong Hammer in my hand.
The unexpected question seemed to blank Cameron’s expression.
“It’s a very secretive gathering. All that’s known is that it’s made up of a select few influential nobles, and aside from you, there are no publicly known members.”
I searched Cameron’s study while he was unconscious, wondering if there might be documents related to The Men of the Center, but found nothing.
Or rather, it seemed deliberately hidden.
Concealed so thoroughly that no one breaking into the judge’s study could ever discover the membership.
A gathering that secretive only made it more suspicious.
“Who’s the head of this club?”
If you won’t talk, I’ll make you. I tapped the Poyong Hammer against my shoulder as a threat.
The judge waved his hands frantically.
“I, I don’t know! I don’t know! I’ve never seen his face! There’s always a representative who comes instead! We always meet in the dark!”
Interesting. Very interesting.
“What does this representative look like?”
“Handsome.”
“Be specific.”
“His eyes are a deep red color…….”
“…His eyes are red?”
“Yes. Black hair, and overall very striking features….”
‘That’s the animal abuser. That’s who it is.’
I exchanged a glance with Park Yeon.
That’s right.
The Men of the Center were definitely the ones behind the attack on me.
Got them. Got these bastards.
‘They claim to champion strict meritocracy, but they can’t even hide their own identities properly, can they?’
I kept my face expressionless, suppressing the urge to cheer.
“Still, how can you be an active member of a social club and not know who the representative is? How did you even join in the first place?”
“I, I—”
“What?”
“I was summoned right after I became a solo judge!”
They called me to Charlie Park!
There, they blindfolded me and took me underground!
“They said if I did one thing for them, they’d accept me as a member and protect my back!”
At the time, my father’s business had just failed and our family was in dire straits, so I accepted the offer….
“In return, I’ve been able to climb to this position.”
“What did you do for them?”
“I can’t remember.”
A soft whisper.
The moment I lifted the Poyong Hammer in silence, Judge Cameron’s eyes went wide.
“I-I’m telling the truth! Must be my age—I can’t quite remember what I did back then!”
Hmm.
“There are no other members whose faces you know?”
“N-no, only small fry. Dead Ingrid, divorced men like Oblonsky. But even they didn’t seem to know the leader’s face. However.”
For a judge, he certainly does love saying “however.”
“However?”
“He told us to call him The Chosen One, or the Master of the World.”
……
What on earth—
Is this the new trend?
Calling yourself some lady-thief, or declaring with a laugh that ‘I am
The Chosen One,
the
Master
of the World’?
the
Master?
After that, I pressed him for more details, but got nothing but useless information.
“You’re not much help, are you.”
“Cough…”
Judge Cameron, hearing such words probably for the first time in his life, opened his mouth in shock.
“Well, there’s nothing for it. One last question.”
……
“When you need to contact him, how do you do it?”
“I-I leave a message in a designated room at the Blue Wall Salon.”
“When did you last leave a message?”
“Two months ago.”
“I see.”
“Is—is it over?”
“What? You want me to leave quickly?”
“N-no! That’s not what I meant!”
“I was joking.”
I want to leave quickly too.
“Do a proper job on the appeal hearing. I’ll be watching.”
With one final warning, I tucked the Poyong Hammer into my side.
“Lock the door after I leave. Don’t bother the butler—lock it yourself. Understood?”
I left his study and opened the front door of the house.
And there, about to knock, was Arden.
……
……
“…Hi?”

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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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