Chapter 76
“I was thinking of trying what Sethian used to do.” The thought of being rejected left him in a foul mood. As a result, his voice carried a sharp edge instead of its usual warmth.
But instead of being flustered, Joo Yi-Gyeol’s eyes grew calm, filled with a distinct sense of doubt. “Is that really necessary when you’re not even taking my vitality?”
Hearing his question, Zair’s eyes twitched as he grabbed Joo Yi-Gyeol’s wrist and pulled it away. In response, Joo Yi-Gyeol’s face displayed confusion that matched his skeptical tone.
“I can’t give you vitality right now, but since I’m practically your master now, shouldn’t it be fine to mix our bodies at least?”
“Mix our bodies...!” Joo Yi-Gyeol’s face flushed with shock, his eyes darting around in embarrassment.
“How... how do you even do something like that...?”
Joo Yi-Gyeol’s reaction was akin to an innocent young man unexpectedly hearing something obscene, but Zair couldn’t help finding it odd. His fingers brushed over the mark left on Joo Yi-Gyeol’s neck by Sethian.
“You’re telling me you didn’t mix bodies when you’ve got marks like this?”
“This is...” Joo Yi-Gyeol, his face reddening, awkwardly smiled as he withdrew his wrist from Zair’s grip. “He left it there on purpose.”
“On purpose?”
Joo Yi-Gyeol hunched his shoulders and gave a small nod. “If I have marks like this, no one will find it strange that I’m by His Highness’s side...”
Zair let out a dry chuckle.
Come to think of it, the memories brought by the crow only showed them kissing or leaving marks like these—never anything beyond that. Every evening, the windows would close, and the curtains would be drawn, making it impossible to see inside. Naturally, he had assumed that was when they engaged in intimate affairs. Not just him, but likely everyone guarding the castle had thought the same.
A bedroom where the curtains were always drawn at night.
The delicate young man staying in Sethian’s chamber, with visible marks left on his exposed neck and collarbone.
Just from those two things alone, anyone could easily assume that Joo Yi-Gyeol and Sethian were in a relationship where they mixed bodies.
The beloved attendant who served Crown Prince Sethian at night.
Anyone in Emerald Castle who had seen Joo Yi-Gyeol would probably have thought of him that way. It might have been surprising that Sethian cherished him and kept him in the bedroom, but no one would have questioned exactly who Joo Yi-Gyeol was or regarded him as suspicious. They probably just thought he was an innocent attendant who was good in bed.
The surge of curiosity and heat that had risen in him like he was momentarily bewitched slowly began to cool.
Judging by Joo Yi-Gyeol’s reaction, it seemed that despite everything, they had never actually mixed bodies. Thinking otherwise suddenly made him feel like he was the one being obscene.
‘Sethian didn’t touch him....’
The kisses were merely to exchange vitality.
The marks left on the body were just a device to make people assume on their own what kind of person Joo Yi-Gyeol was.
With this realization, both the fading marks and the absence of new ones made sense.
Perhaps at first, Sethian had been intrigued, but it was simply by soul magic that created a body based on information from the soul, and by the mass production of an army. Now, even that interest seemed to be fading; he gave vitality less often and no longer left marks on the body. It was like the boredom that naturally came over Sethian before long whenever he became interested in something.
Zair’s expression grew dull for a moment.
Thinking that Joo Yi-Gyeol was already something Sethian had grown tired of, perhaps that boredom had rubbed off on him as well.
He had coveted Joo Yi-Gyeol because he had abandoned his previous body and settled into a newly formed one, and because of the mass production of an army, but also because Sethian had shown such excessive interest that he even threatened the emperor to obtain the title of Crown Prince.
Now that one of the major reasons was gone, his own interest cooled just as coldly. The sexual desire that had been gradually swelling until just moments ago felt to have disappeared without a trace.
* * *
“Ugh...” A low groan escaped from Roa’s lips.
“Ughh...” With both hands clutching his head, Roa, uncharacteristically distressed, let out deep sighs and murmurs in frustration.
‘Sethian couldn’t have been the one to kill the First Prince....’ At first, dazzled by the forbidden art he had used for the first time and its result, he thought he had chosen the wrong side by a mile, but after thinking it over, he realized the Sethian he had seen so far wasn’t someone who would do something like that.
‘Unless he killed him without leaving evidence, or framed another sibling.’
Would Sethian, the only person in this country who possessed Idelo’s Flower, really use it to poison the First Prince? Even if he did, he would obviously have arranged things so suspicion would not point at him, so would he really have been caught this openly? Roa had not known Sethian for very long, but as someone who had been in active contact with him recently, it was hard for him to accept.
“Master, the materials you asked for...!”
“Ugh!”
Startled out of his thoughts by the voice from behind him, Roa shot up from his seat so abruptly that his chair clattered noisily to the ground.
“I told you to announce yourself before entering!”
The research room of the Tower Lord was soundproofed with thick iron doors and additional magic, meaning that the magicians in the Magic Tower had to infuse mana into an alarm device at the entrance to announce themselves. Holding a thick stack of papers, Eda pouted in response.
“I did. Twice.”
“When?!”
“Just now!”
Eda’s confident tone left Roa speechless. He had been so deep in thought that he hadn’t heard anything—something that happened far too often.
Eda dropped the stack of papers onto Roa’s cluttered desk with a sigh.
“What’s troubling you this time? Where are you stuck that you’re clutching your head and groaning like that?”
“I’m not groaning... It’s nothing.”
Eda squinted at Roa’s face before shrugging and heading toward the door.
“My job’s done, so I’m heading back to my lab. Don’t call me again.”
“Fine, I won’t, you brat.”
Even with teleportation magic, traveling from the archives far below to the top of the tower required three spells, so Roa had asked Eda to do it for him, and now she was flatly telling him to stop making her do it. Wasn’t that much something a disciple could do for her master? He pouted, then casually asked,
“What are you working on these days? That poison refinement magic you were working on before—is it done?”
“...Yeah, well... Lately, thanks to my esteemed master, I’ve become more interested in soul magic and body synthesis.”
At the end of her sentence, Eda muttered something about having a convenient test subject too, but Roa didn’t catch it.
Instead, Roa let out a bitter laugh. “Too bad. Just when you got interested, what’s going to happen to Lord Joo Yi-Gyeol...”
“What else is there to do? He just has to learn how to serve his new master, doesn’t he?”
As Eda left, a smirk curled on her lips.
The moment the door closed behind her, Roa exhaled a deep sigh and set his chair upright.
Sethian was one thing, but his immediate concern was Joo Yi-Gyeol.
No matter what, Sethian was still royalty and the only son of the late Empress. He wouldn’t be executed, just exiled.
During exile, aside from a few attendants and one or two close aides to assist him, everyone would be replaced with new people, so Joo Yi-Gyeol, who remained in the bedroom under the pretext of attending him at night, would inevitably be separated from him. Which meant he would no longer be able to receive vitality. Like now.
‘How many days could he last in that state...’
When Roa last checked, compared to before when he had been overflowing with vitality, he was now only at a properly maintained level, so based on that, at best it would be three or four days.
‘That is assuming he does nothing and stays still.’
Since Roa had assumed Joo Yi-Gyeol would never leave Sethian’s side anyway, he had taken his time, but in that state, he should have completed the calculations for how much would be shaved off if he frequently left his body. It was frustrating that he still couldn’t gauge it perfectly because he didn’t yet have enough data from his examinations.
Just as he was about to sit back down with a bitter expression—
“Ugh...!”
Suddenly, a chilling sensation gripped his throat.
It felt like one wrong move would be the end of him.
A tattered piece of paper was thrust in front of him. The message, scrawled in rough strokes, read:
—Stay still if you don’t want to die. I’m only here for a quick chat.
Holding his breath, Roa turned his head slightly. A small, wiry man had wrapped something thread-like around his throat. His emotionless eyes were definitely familiar.
But instead of being flustered, Joo Yi-Gyeol’s eyes grew calm, filled with a distinct sense of doubt. “Is that really necessary when you’re not even taking my vitality?”
Hearing his question, Zair’s eyes twitched as he grabbed Joo Yi-Gyeol’s wrist and pulled it away. In response, Joo Yi-Gyeol’s face displayed confusion that matched his skeptical tone.
“I can’t give you vitality right now, but since I’m practically your master now, shouldn’t it be fine to mix our bodies at least?”
“Mix our bodies...!” Joo Yi-Gyeol’s face flushed with shock, his eyes darting around in embarrassment.
“How... how do you even do something like that...?”
Joo Yi-Gyeol’s reaction was akin to an innocent young man unexpectedly hearing something obscene, but Zair couldn’t help finding it odd. His fingers brushed over the mark left on Joo Yi-Gyeol’s neck by Sethian.
“You’re telling me you didn’t mix bodies when you’ve got marks like this?”
“This is...” Joo Yi-Gyeol, his face reddening, awkwardly smiled as he withdrew his wrist from Zair’s grip. “He left it there on purpose.”
“On purpose?”
Joo Yi-Gyeol hunched his shoulders and gave a small nod. “If I have marks like this, no one will find it strange that I’m by His Highness’s side...”
Zair let out a dry chuckle.
Come to think of it, the memories brought by the crow only showed them kissing or leaving marks like these—never anything beyond that. Every evening, the windows would close, and the curtains would be drawn, making it impossible to see inside. Naturally, he had assumed that was when they engaged in intimate affairs. Not just him, but likely everyone guarding the castle had thought the same.
A bedroom where the curtains were always drawn at night.
The delicate young man staying in Sethian’s chamber, with visible marks left on his exposed neck and collarbone.
Just from those two things alone, anyone could easily assume that Joo Yi-Gyeol and Sethian were in a relationship where they mixed bodies.
The beloved attendant who served Crown Prince Sethian at night.
Anyone in Emerald Castle who had seen Joo Yi-Gyeol would probably have thought of him that way. It might have been surprising that Sethian cherished him and kept him in the bedroom, but no one would have questioned exactly who Joo Yi-Gyeol was or regarded him as suspicious. They probably just thought he was an innocent attendant who was good in bed.
The surge of curiosity and heat that had risen in him like he was momentarily bewitched slowly began to cool.
Judging by Joo Yi-Gyeol’s reaction, it seemed that despite everything, they had never actually mixed bodies. Thinking otherwise suddenly made him feel like he was the one being obscene.
‘Sethian didn’t touch him....’
The kisses were merely to exchange vitality.
The marks left on the body were just a device to make people assume on their own what kind of person Joo Yi-Gyeol was.
With this realization, both the fading marks and the absence of new ones made sense.
Perhaps at first, Sethian had been intrigued, but it was simply by soul magic that created a body based on information from the soul, and by the mass production of an army. Now, even that interest seemed to be fading; he gave vitality less often and no longer left marks on the body. It was like the boredom that naturally came over Sethian before long whenever he became interested in something.
Zair’s expression grew dull for a moment.
Thinking that Joo Yi-Gyeol was already something Sethian had grown tired of, perhaps that boredom had rubbed off on him as well.
He had coveted Joo Yi-Gyeol because he had abandoned his previous body and settled into a newly formed one, and because of the mass production of an army, but also because Sethian had shown such excessive interest that he even threatened the emperor to obtain the title of Crown Prince.
Now that one of the major reasons was gone, his own interest cooled just as coldly. The sexual desire that had been gradually swelling until just moments ago felt to have disappeared without a trace.
* * *
“Ugh...” A low groan escaped from Roa’s lips.
“Ughh...” With both hands clutching his head, Roa, uncharacteristically distressed, let out deep sighs and murmurs in frustration.
‘Sethian couldn’t have been the one to kill the First Prince....’ At first, dazzled by the forbidden art he had used for the first time and its result, he thought he had chosen the wrong side by a mile, but after thinking it over, he realized the Sethian he had seen so far wasn’t someone who would do something like that.
‘Unless he killed him without leaving evidence, or framed another sibling.’
Would Sethian, the only person in this country who possessed Idelo’s Flower, really use it to poison the First Prince? Even if he did, he would obviously have arranged things so suspicion would not point at him, so would he really have been caught this openly? Roa had not known Sethian for very long, but as someone who had been in active contact with him recently, it was hard for him to accept.
“Master, the materials you asked for...!”
“Ugh!”
Startled out of his thoughts by the voice from behind him, Roa shot up from his seat so abruptly that his chair clattered noisily to the ground.
“I told you to announce yourself before entering!”
The research room of the Tower Lord was soundproofed with thick iron doors and additional magic, meaning that the magicians in the Magic Tower had to infuse mana into an alarm device at the entrance to announce themselves. Holding a thick stack of papers, Eda pouted in response.
“I did. Twice.”
“When?!”
“Just now!”
Eda’s confident tone left Roa speechless. He had been so deep in thought that he hadn’t heard anything—something that happened far too often.
Eda dropped the stack of papers onto Roa’s cluttered desk with a sigh.
“What’s troubling you this time? Where are you stuck that you’re clutching your head and groaning like that?”
“I’m not groaning... It’s nothing.”
Eda squinted at Roa’s face before shrugging and heading toward the door.
“My job’s done, so I’m heading back to my lab. Don’t call me again.”
“Fine, I won’t, you brat.”
Even with teleportation magic, traveling from the archives far below to the top of the tower required three spells, so Roa had asked Eda to do it for him, and now she was flatly telling him to stop making her do it. Wasn’t that much something a disciple could do for her master? He pouted, then casually asked,
“What are you working on these days? That poison refinement magic you were working on before—is it done?”
“...Yeah, well... Lately, thanks to my esteemed master, I’ve become more interested in soul magic and body synthesis.”
At the end of her sentence, Eda muttered something about having a convenient test subject too, but Roa didn’t catch it.
Instead, Roa let out a bitter laugh. “Too bad. Just when you got interested, what’s going to happen to Lord Joo Yi-Gyeol...”
“What else is there to do? He just has to learn how to serve his new master, doesn’t he?”
As Eda left, a smirk curled on her lips.
The moment the door closed behind her, Roa exhaled a deep sigh and set his chair upright.
Sethian was one thing, but his immediate concern was Joo Yi-Gyeol.
No matter what, Sethian was still royalty and the only son of the late Empress. He wouldn’t be executed, just exiled.
During exile, aside from a few attendants and one or two close aides to assist him, everyone would be replaced with new people, so Joo Yi-Gyeol, who remained in the bedroom under the pretext of attending him at night, would inevitably be separated from him. Which meant he would no longer be able to receive vitality. Like now.
‘How many days could he last in that state...’
When Roa last checked, compared to before when he had been overflowing with vitality, he was now only at a properly maintained level, so based on that, at best it would be three or four days.
‘That is assuming he does nothing and stays still.’
Since Roa had assumed Joo Yi-Gyeol would never leave Sethian’s side anyway, he had taken his time, but in that state, he should have completed the calculations for how much would be shaved off if he frequently left his body. It was frustrating that he still couldn’t gauge it perfectly because he didn’t yet have enough data from his examinations.
Just as he was about to sit back down with a bitter expression—
“Ugh...!”
Suddenly, a chilling sensation gripped his throat.
It felt like one wrong move would be the end of him.
A tattered piece of paper was thrust in front of him. The message, scrawled in rough strokes, read:
—Stay still if you don’t want to die. I’m only here for a quick chat.
Holding his breath, Roa turned his head slightly. A small, wiry man had wrapped something thread-like around his throat. His emotionless eyes were definitely familiar.
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