“……”
Parit’s eyes, clouded with age, flickered with a shifting light, as if his mind was churning and pulling, trying to comprehend the meaning of Enya’s words.
Who are you?
He was definitely Parit. Lucia was naturally Lucia.
So what did she mean?
Parit pondered hard, struggling to understand the thoughts of this non-human being.
But Enya seemed to have no intention of explaining…
Lucia’s mind was also unsettled. She kept wondering what was going on. First, they were made to wait here, and after arriving, Enya adopted this posture and questioned who they were.
She was undoubtedly Lucia. How could that be false?
Enya’s pale golden eyes swept across the entire guest room, finally settling on Wendy. Seeing Wendy’s utterly confused expression, she smiled slightly, then turned to Parit and Lucia.
“You say you are Parit?”
“You say you are Lucia?”
“…”
Enya’s questions were very strange, like this from the start. These weren’t questions meant to be answered. This kind of inquiry was closer to an accusation.
Enya wanted them to answer that they were not themselves, but someone else.
Unreasonable.
Those four words were Parit and Lucia’s shared impression of Enya at this moment.
Yet Enya acted as if there was no problem, as if this were perfectly normal. Her demeanor was extremely confident, enough to make one doubt oneself.
Even Wendy was starting to think, ‘Am I myself?’
‘Weird.’
Enya seemed to be losing patience. The smile faded from her face, her beautiful eyes fixed intently on the two standing figures.
Her thin lips parted, and she spoke.
“You are very confident. What makes you think you are ‘Parit’ and ‘Lucia’? You are clearly thieves.”
“…”
Enya’s words left Parit and Lucia silent. But the following sentence made their expressions grow even more grave. Enya slowly stood up, her voice cold as she said,
“Do you dare to tear your faces off?”
“I have all the memories!” Lucia shouted. Her initial fear of Enya had transformed into a slightly deranged hatred by this point. After saying that, she bit her thin lip tightly.
“Memories? Heh heh heh…” Enya let out a scornful laugh. “Since when do memories equal a person? What do you say, thief?”
“But I am Lucia!”
Lucia could no longer restrain her emotions. She rushed quickly toward Enya but was blocked and pushed back by Wendy, nearly falling to the floor. Fortunately, Parit beside her caught her in time.
“You say you are, so you are?”
Enya raised her chin, her beautiful eyes narrowing slightly, looking coldly at Lucia who seemed to have suddenly gone mad. This posture was the epitome of arrogance.
At this moment, Parit, who was supporting Lucia, looked at Enya. He hesitated but finally spoke his mind.
“What does it matter? We have the memories, the same appearance. It doesn’t matter at all. We are them!”
“Doesn’t matter?”
Enya opened her slightly narrowed eyes, tilting her head as she stared at this old man. Her voice was devoid of any emotion, icy cold.
“Doesn’t matter?”
It was an interrogative retort, carrying a pressure that made Parit’s heart tremble. Even Lucia, who was ready to erupt into madness beside him, involuntarily stopped her struggling movements.
Parit gulped, swallowing saliva to ease the dryness in his throat, but the effect was poor.
The sense of urgency and danger came from the soul, manifesting as extreme tension in both body and mind. They possessed the memories, so they naturally knew this beautiful woman before them was a foreign race wearing human skin, someone they absolutely could not contend with.
Parit gave himself a brief moment of internal self-reassurance, then mustered his last bit of courage and spoke to Enya.
“Lady Ain, your goal is to obtain the wealth of the Lily of the Valley Chamber of Commerce, isn’t it? Everything else is simply unimportant, right?”
“So you don’t need to be so serious, to get so worked up over the so-called Parit and Lucia. It’s completely unnecessary. We possess the same memories and appearance as them. We can still help you obtain everything from the Lily of the Valley Chamber of Commerce.”
“Oh, right! They hid something. It’s a heirloom of the Lily of the Valley Chamber of Commerce. Only the person holding that item is the heir. That Parit kept it on his person. I can present it to Lady Ain with both hands right now!”
This old butler, unlike before, actually showed a hint of fawning. However, his skill at flattery was clearly not very deep.
Enya’s expression showed no change whatsoever. The aura around her didn’t fluctuate in the slightest. She continued to stare at them with that cold gaze.
After a while, Enya turned her head away and let out a soft sigh.
“Boring…”
After sitting back down, she glanced at Wendy beside her, who looked like she understood nothing. In her heart, she had a slightly different perspective on the matter of having Wendy learn human language and culture.
Seeing Enya sit down, Parit and Lucia felt the pressure on them dissipate. A feeling of joy, like surviving a catastrophe, washed over them. Both of them were now soaked in sweat.
But just as they relaxed, their minds easing, they heard Enya say something they couldn’t understand.
They didn’t understand, but Wendy did.
What Enya said was—
Wendy, go tear their faces off for me.
“Huh?”
After hearing this, Wendy felt extremely strange. ‘Have things among humans reached the point of tearing faces off?’
The thought of having to tear their faces made Wendy extremely reluctant. It would get all bloody. Definitely disgusting.
‘Master, you’re too cruel…’
Wendy’s pair of beautiful, emerald-green eyes fell on Enya. Enya narrowed her eyes and shot her a fierce glare back.
“I tell you to go, so you go. Stop talking nonsense! If you don’t do it, plenty of others will!”
“…”
In an instant, Wendy’s little face scrunched up.
Enya’s gaze turned unfriendly.
Wendy panicked, quickly straightening her posture and puffing out her chest.
“Yes, Master!”
Even though she had agreed, she was still unwilling. She walked over to Parit and Lucia, who were currently feeling relieved. With her left and right hands, she reached for the spot below each of their ears.
Her slender nails dug in, and she ripped off two human faces.
“Ah!!”
“Ah!!”
“Eh??”
Three exclamations were heard. The first two were from Parit and Lucia. The last one was from Wendy.
Wendy’s small mouth formed a perfect ‘O’. In one hand and the other, she held a human face-skin, the skin still frozen in an expression of shock. And the two people before her—from the originally refined and capable old butler Parit and the somewhat pretty, long-black-haired young maid Lucia—had transformed into two relatively ugly, completely different-looking strangers.
They were also a man and a woman. The man was a gaunt, sallow-faced youth who looked chronically malnourished. The girl was in a similar state, different in both appearance and figure from the previous person.
After their true faces were revealed, they reacted differently. The gaunt youth wore the disappointment of someone waking from a beautiful dream. The girl, however, lunged frantically to snatch the face-skin from Wendy’s hands.
“That’s mine, that’s mine! Give it back to me!”
In the gaunt girl’s eyes, there was boundless hatred for Wendy, and for Enya as well. But what was she, anyway?
She was merely a lowly commoner, an embodiment of ugliness and filth.
That’s what she believed herself to be…
In Enya’s eyes, she was nothing but a pitiful person who had been played with.
Looking at the girl’s current appearance, Wendy felt extremely puzzled. Elves could smell the ‘scent’ of a soul, but she hadn’t known Lucia and Parit, so she hadn’t detected anything wrong.
But seeing this girl’s behavior, Wendy now understood. These two hadn’t just stolen someone else’s identity; they had wanted to steal someone else’s life.
Wendy pouted slightly and spoke to the two people before her.
“This kind of behavior is not good.”
“Give it back!”
The gaunt girl was already hysterical. She lunged desperately at Wendy, but Wendy merely took a light, graceful step to the side, dodging the attack. The girl missed and fell heavily to the floor.
She scrambled up from the ground, her eyes never leaving the face-skin in Wendy’s hand—the one identical to Lucia’s face.
“You damn bitch, you filthy whore, give it back to me…”
Finding she couldn’t snatch it, the gaunt girl began cursing Wendy with filthy vocabulary. Wendy didn’t understand a single word.
Wendy declared righteously,
“This is theft! Where I come from, it’s absolutely forbidden!”
The Elven Kingdom was a country with a very low crime rate. The reason it was low and not zero was because they were living beings too. Although their desires weren’t as complex as humans’, they still existed, enough to make them commit illegal acts.
Beside them, Enya frowned slightly. She glanced at the gaunt girl, and the girl was sent flying backward as if struck by an invisible force, slamming into the wall.
The youth who had tried to play Parit saw this and was also greatly frightened. He hurriedly knelt on the floor, shouting,
“I don’t want it! I don’t want to be Parit anymore! I don’t want to be the butler! I’ll leave right now, I’ll leave right now!”
As he spoke, he got up and ran toward the door.
Enya didn’t even look at him. The moment he was about to grasp the doorknob, his whole body seemed to lose consciousness, collapsing limply to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Wendy’s eyes widened in shock. Because in her perception, the gaunt youth’s soul had simply vanished.
What happened?
‘Was it eaten by Master? But do Dragons eat souls?’
Just as Wendy was lost in confusion, the gaunt girl who had slammed into the wall and fallen heavily to the floor had now gotten up. She had just lifted her head when she saw Enya standing before her.
The girl struggled, her voice hoarse as she screamed.
“Give… it… to… me!”
“Tsk tsk.”
Enya clicked her tongue and sneered.
“Pitiful.”
After experiencing a few days of life as Lucia, the gaunt girl could no longer return to the past, could no longer be herself.
Wendy cast a curious glance, wanting to see how Enya would handle this human female. She wanted to learn some advanced experience.
But Enya didn’t do anything to the girl. She gave Wendy an order.
“Hold onto those things in your hands.”
“Okay, Master.”
Wendy was a bit puzzled but unconditionally obeyed Enya’s command, tightly gripping the two face-skins in her hands.
Rolled into balls, clenched in her palms.
Seeing her do this, Enya didn’t say anything more. Silently, she led Wendy toward the main door of the guest room.
Outside in the corridor, many people were already standing on both sides, as if they had been waiting there for some time.
The most eerie thing wasn’t their presence, but the fact that everyone here now wore the exact same expression.
Their eyes were hollow, soulless, fixed intently on Enya and Wendy. Surrounded by this eerie crowd, Enya and Wendy walked out onto the street. The street was also packed with people.
“Hoh?”
Enya asked a question to the black dragon Pandrake, who was currently squatting in the library within the Sea of Consciousness. ‘Does this scene look familiar?’
Pandrake remained silent as always, but this time, the silence…
Was a bit deafening~
Enya sneered coldly and clenched her fist.