The Devilish Duke Can’t Sleep

Proofreader: somnium

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Will spring come?

“Your, Excellency…… you should…… run away…….”

Lena was worried about him as she was losing her consciousness.

“Lena, don’t worry.
Because all the monsters were eliminated.
Does it hurt a lot?”

Kahel had to struggle quite a bit to suppress the magical power that was about to run out in anger.
That anger was directed solely at himself.
His precious maid, the cute little rabbit, suffered hardships by these filthy monsters because of him and no one else…….

“If you go to the castle, you can get treatment right away because there is a doctor on duty.
Hold on, Lena.”

Kahel took off his coat and wrapped it around Lena’s ice-cold body.
But even at that moment, Lena grabbed Kahel’s arm and said urgently.

“On the neck of the monster…… a necklace…….”

“What?”

“The monster…… some woman’s…… voice…….”

That’s all Lena could endure.
Lena, who had been tormented by the pain, cold, and fear, was relieved of her tension, and soon lost her consciousness.

* * *

Margella, who cast magic stones on the monsters and remotely controlled them so they could use magic, fiddled with the crystal ball with a strange expression.
And after a while, Leonard, who received an urgent message from Margella, entered the cave.
He must have gotten tired from activating the magic circle by forcing his magical energy into it, but at this dawn he was dressed in a way that even a single hair wasn’t messed up.

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“What’s going on, Margella?”

“Ah, Your Excellency.
Sorry for disturbing your rest.
But something very interesting happened.”

 

“Interesting?”

“Yes.
It’s very, very interesting.
Unknown at all…….”

Leonard sat down elegantly without showing any rush.
Whenever Margella said something ’interesting’ was going to happen, he would get excited.
As far as he knows, no priest or scholar in the world has sought the truth more than the warlock, Margella.
Everything she researched and revealed its identity was giving Leonard great help.

“How interesting is it this time?”

“A mysterious power has appeared, Your Excellency.”

“Hmm? Mysterious power?”

“Until now, the only power we knew were the magical powers of the two Duchies, the Queen’s power to subdue the Duchies, and the holy powers possessed by some priests in the temple.
However, some force that does not belong in any of the categories has just interrupted the start of the magic circle.”

“What? It’s not magic, but it prevented the black magic circle from starting?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.
And the one who used that power…… is the woman the Duke of Luave had.”

That surprised Leonard more than the discovery of a new power.

“Woman? Kahel was with a woman? No, wait.
I don’t quite understand.
No matter how much he relies on Calia, it can’t suppress all the devilish power that comes out of him.
Wouldn’t she be insane if a woman was by his side like that?”

“She has a very sane mind, and even though her life is in danger, she tries to save the Duke of Luave.
I don’t know what their relationship is, or what that woman really is.”

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“Is she a priestess?”

“As I said before, she is not a person with known powers.
So the probability of being a priestess is low.”

Her words were almost certain as Margella was originally a priestess.
Leonard’s expression, which was always full of leisure, hardened at once.

 

“Has Kahel’s devilish power faded? What happened?”

“That’s something I don’t know.
There are endless interesting things happening in this world.
Anyway, for the first monster attack this year, just finding out about the woman’s existence, it has yielded a great harvest.
Oh ho ho!”

Margella laughed happily, but Leonard’s expression did not change easily.
There were quite a number of people who knew that Kahel’s magical power was enormous, but only a few knew exactly how great it was.
And Leonard was one of those few.

Kahel’s magical power is amplified even more when he uses it, but thanks to the nature of his devilish powers, he was forced to bound it up to some extent.
But if his demonic nature is gradually fading, that would be a big deal.
Even if Santella had to face Kahel with all their kin, it was uncertain whether they would be able to defeat Kahel, who poured out all of his magical power.

‘Nope.
That can’t be.
I never felt the curse was broken.’

Leonard was the head of the Duchy of Santella, so he was very sensitive to the flow of magic.
If Kahel’s devilish power had faded, he would have felt it, too.
If that’s the case, then the woman Margella mentioned had a unique constitution, or…….

‘Maybe she’s a more troubling problem than Kahel.’

Leonard wrinkled his brow as he looked at the magic circle with his cold eyes.

* * *

Phil, a resident of Sharden Castle, has been troubled for a very long time.
This chaos, however, was the first time since the monsters appeared in Sharden.
And it was the first time that the Duke of Luave, whom he served, had looked so impatient.

It was still a bit early, but the fact that a monster had already appeared, and that it appeared beyond the barrier was not at all worrying.
As long as Kahel Luave is in Sharden, no monsters can go down to the village.

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But when the very same Kahel Luave emitted a dreadful energy and ordered that his maid be treated right away, he felt like he was going to die right in front of Kahel.

There were three gruesome cuts on her back, as if they had been scraped by a crude rake, and although the wounds weren’t deep, it was closer to a tear than to a cut, and she seemed to be in severe pain.
It was fortunate that the maid had lost consciousness.

Phil tried his best to treat her, but he couldn’t even do that.
To heal the wound on her back, of course, he had to take off her top, but Kahel insisted that only the back of it be cut with scissors and treated.
He said that he would have to take off the entire top anyway to get the bandages on, and Kahel threw his axe eyes to have Phil let the other maids do it.

Moreover, throughout the treatment, he doesn’t know how much he struggled to calm his trembling hands as Kahel watched by his side.
Fortunately, the treatment ended well, and Phil thought that if he had slipped in anyway, his head would have fallen off.

“Do you think Lena will be okay?”

When Phil came out of treatment, the chief maid Marianne asked with a worried face.

“Well, it’s not a life-threatening injury.
It will be better if you apply the medicine for a while and let her rest well.
It looks like it’s going to scar, but her life is safe, so I have to say she got lucky.
Because if they really wanted to kill her, they wouldn’t have cut her back a bit, but their nails would have dug right into her heart.”

At Phil’s explanation, Marianne trembled in horror.
It was the first time a human had been attacked by a monster since the monster first appeared in Sharden.
Seeing the scar on Lena’s back reminded her of the terrifying reality, and everyone in the castle, including Marianne, turned pale.
Of course, it was Kahel who had the palest face.

“Well…… How is His Excellency doing?”

“Whew, don’t even talk about it.
If the treatment had been a little clumsy, my neck might have been blown away.
I don’t know what the hell happened, but I feel…… Huh, well, I know this is nonsense, but I have a feeling that spring will come to Sharden soon.”

“Yes? Are you saying that monsters can even manipulate the weather?”

“No, never mind.
I was so nervous and I got hot.
Hohoho!”

Marianne frowned as if he was talking nonsense, and Phil burst out into a friendly smile and then walked away.
She frowned, knowing it was something no one would believe, but Phil smiled secretly as he recalled the nervous Kahel like never before.

Duke Kahel Luave, the heir of great magic, who had been prophesied that he would lead the glory of the Luave family, but was publicly called a monster because of his immense power and mysterious devilish power, watched the pretty maid with a very desperate look.
To the point that she wondered if something went wrong with the maid, he might have gone wrong, too.

‘But…… It’s strange that he can’t have romantic feelings even once at that age.’

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She smiled warmly, wishing that spring would come to Kahel, who had only been like winter in Sharden.

* * *

As the maids wrapped Lena’s upper body with bandages and went out, Kahel, who was walking around in the parlor, approached and sat down by the bed where Lena was sleeping.

The scent of blood still lingered around.
Lena’s face, who fell asleep on the white bed sheet, was paler than the cleanly washed bed linen.
Her lips, which had always been the color of a soft apricot, were bluish, and her well-groomed dark brown eyelashes did not move at the border of the tightly closed eyelids.

“Lena…….”

Kahel called her quietly, knowing she was in a deep sleep.
Of course, Lena didn’t even move.
He knew she was just sleeping, but her blood-drained face looked as if she had lost her life, and he kept calling her name.
So that she might be able to hold her breath in this world, so she won’t disappear…….

Yes.
It was definitely a feeling close to fear.
From the first time he saw Lena’s neck grabbed by the Sevchek, he couldn’t be more calm at all.

Like any other time, about four Sevcheks, he would have sneered at them no matter how many hostages they had.
And the monsters that escaped through the magic circle would not have been cut out as they were, but would have been removed after identifying their identities a little more and exploring the magic circle.

But that time, he couldn’t afford it at all.
To make sure Lena was safe, he had no choice but to kill them all because he had only thought of her.
He only hoped that she wasn’t hurt, and even though she had suffered so many wounds on her slender body, she told him to run away.

“I’m sorry, Lena.”

For an innocent woman who had lived in Kerouac, where not even small monsters appeared, it would have been a daunting task just not to lose her mind.

Even the people of Sharden who are accustomed to monsters, there are many people who are shocked and stunned whenever the monsters appear, but Lena was not only dragged by them, she was even injured.
His breath choked at the thought of how scared she must have been in the meantime, and how much she resented him for taking her there.
Kahel seemed to understand what it meant to be charred inside.

Fortunately, there was no harm to her life.
If Lena had become critically ill, Kahel would not have been able to stop his rage.
Even if it’s an anger directed at himself.

After blaming himself for a long time, there was no way to contain his feelings of regret, so Kahel began to make promises to her as she slept.

“When we return to Ardennes, I will call a priest who is famous as a healer right away and treat you to be as scar-free as possible.
You should also change your bed to be a little softer.
There is no need to go to the market for a while.
Just…… just stay by my side.
I’ll buy you anything you want, whether it’s a dress or jewelry, so just get well and get better.”