Holy Night: My Husband is Definitely a Paladin - Chapter 171
Irene couldnât say anything for a moment.
She couldnât make sense of what Cynthia had just said.
ââŚWhat do you mean? No face? Then it wasnât Wilhelmina, was it?â
âThe back looked exactly like Wilhelmina, but the front was just⌠red. Isnât that strange? How can someone have brown hair in the back but red in the front? And where the face shouldâve been, it was smooth and shiny, like a red egg.â
Listening carefully, Irene felt herself lose all strength.
What was this, some sort of summer campfire ghost story?
âMaybe the maid was imagining things? Or perhaps the story got twisted into something scary as it spread around.â
âNo, thatâs not it. The maid who saw Wilhelmina kept talking about what she saw to everyone all night, and by morning, she ended up fainting.â
âSo thatâs how the rumors started.â
âIf she had only fainted, it might not have been such a big deal. But when people went to the spot where she claimed to have seen WilhelminaâŚâ
Cynthiaâs voice dropped to a whisper.
âThey found long red streaks of blood on the hallway floor.â
ââŚThere were bloodstains?â
âYeah. Thatâs whatâs causing all the commotion. Since morning, the fortress staff have been blocking off the area and investigating.â
The presence of physical evidence suggested it wasnât just a hallucination or a story blown out of proportion. Irene became lost in thought.
âNormally, the logical assumption would be that someone played a prank.â
But no matter how she considered it, she couldnât think of any reason for someone to pull such a prank.
Why would anyone mimic a missing person? If caught, theyâd immediately be suspected of involvement in the disappearance.
And it wasnât as if the prank was designed to make people believe Wilhelmina was alive. Instead, they conjured an image of a faceless ghostly figure.
No one would benefit from such a chilling prank.
âThen⌠what if itâs real?â
What if the creature the maid saw truly existed?
For a brief moment, Irene recalled the monster she had seen in the distortion dungeon.
A creature resembling gray clay. It had mimicked Michaelâs form.
âCould it be something similar to that?â
The thought made her shake her head.
That was a monster. This was the purifiersâ quarters, one of the most secure areas in the fortress.
Besides, monsters couldnât survive long outside of dungeons. Where in the world could a monster roam freely in a place like this?
âIâve heard it takes a tremendous amount of preparation to allow a monster to exist outside a dungeon.â
Scholars who studied dungeons in the past had discovered methods to achieve this, but those methods had long been forgottenâthere was no reason to keep monsters alive outside.
And even if such methods still existed, no sane person would harbor a monster within the fortress.
âIn any case, they say the trail of blood led out of a window and disappeared outside. No one knows what really happened, but theyâre warning everyone not to wander around alone.â
âGot it. Thanks for letting me know.â
Watching Cynthia shiver as if she had told a genuinely terrifying tale, Irene smiled faintly.
She figured the investigation would resolve the matter soon enough.
* * *
The next day, Irene was in her room examining the dagger.
âSome of the characters have changed, which looks like it might represent probabilityâŚâ
Comparing the paper sheâd received from the appraiser with the one she received later, she noticed several characters had been altered.
According to Michael, the dagger supposedly had a chance to kill its target instantly.
It was likely similar to the Ring of Infinite Healing, where the probability increased over time.
âBut⌠I canât read the numbers, so I have no idea what the actual percentage is.â
Had it been pure luck that the effect activated when Michael used it that day?
To understand its probability, Irene deliberately captured a large insect to test it on. Carefully, she tapped the tip of the dagger against the insect, counting each attempt.
On the first day, she tried a thousand times, and nothing happened.
The second day, the same. And the third⌠and the day after thatâŚ
She hadnât been able to conduct the experiment daily, but by now, it was the seventh day of testing.
