Lillian swallowed hard as the tension reached its peak. The problem wasn’t just being kicked out of the knight order—if she wasn’t careful, she’d be sentenced to execution for murder. That couldn’t happen. Panic rose in her chest as she desperately tried to think through the situation.
‘It’s okay, there are no witnesses for now. If I handle this well, no one will ever know.’
The Rosetti family was poor, so they didn’t have many employees. The few that they did have were mostly from the village and walked to and from work. That meant, at this time, Seth was the only one left. But even Seth was unconscious, so she was safe from anyone witnessing her crime.
Lillian, in a rush, reached for Herbert’s leg. She planned to drag his body outside and bury it in the bushes. But as soon as her hand touched his leg, she froze, horrified. Tears of fear fell from her eyes.
"I can't do this!"
The feeling of touching a recently deceased body was unbearable. It felt like touching a piece of meat hanging at a butcher shop, with the blood draining out of it. The unpleasant squishiness and the blood oozing out like juice made her stomach churn. The warmth still lingering in the body made it even worse. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it any longer.
Moreover, even if she did, there were many issues. Herbert, an alcoholic, had a rather large and heavy body. Dragging him to the first floor and burying him in the grass would be a massive task.
Not to mention, the blood would bleed out, leaving stains all over the house. Cleaning up all the blood by morning seemed nearly impossible. Especially in a world where only candles illuminated the night and there were no electric lights.
Tears streamed down her face as she stared blankly at the body. If someone could just magically take care of the body for her, she felt like she would give anything in return. At that moment, a scene from Princess Aleina flashed in her mind.
‘Yes, that’s right! There’s one way…!’
Princess Aleina, the protagonist, had earned the affection of the male lead with her beauty. As is typical in romance fantasy novels, she was kidnapped by someone jealous of her charm. In the original story, Lillian, as Aleina’s bodyguard, tried to protect her but ended up gravely injured, only to be killed by the male lead in a fit of rage.
‘What happened next?’
Lillian racked her brain, trying to remember. The kidnapped Aleina was sold to a slave market, where she was bought by a cult that worshipped demons. They chose her as the perfect sacrifice to summon a demon, for demons favored beautiful virgins and brutal killings.
‘That’s right, Aleina witnessed the summoning ritual. The order must have been…’
Aleina, as the flawless heroine, made a deal with the demon right there. The summoned demon slaughtered everyone in sight but spared Aleina. Not only that, it even made a deal with her, despite her only having stared at the demon through her tears.
Anyway, at that point, Aleina hadn’t even arrived in Legonian yet. So maybe the demon would make a deal with her. And now, she had a body to use as a sacrifice! Why not give it a try? Given Aleina's case, as long as the price was right, the demon would probably be a good deal.
‘Right. Since it’s come to this… let’s just do it.’
Lillian bit her lip. Things couldn’t get much worse now. She had already killed someone, and from next week, she would have to resume sword training with Enrique. If she kept up her lie about partial memory loss, it was bound to be exposed. Even if she forgot, if her beginner skills were too obvious, she would raise suspicion.
In fact, in this situation, she’d be tried before even receiving the training. So what could she do? She had no choice but to gamble with a demon instead of a god. After all, the gods had never been on her side.
Lillian clenched her teeth and dipped her shoes into Herbert’s blood. Using his blood, she began to draw a ritual circle on the floor. As she worked on the rough magic circle, an ironic smile formed on her lips.
‘My goodness, this is disgusting!’
Just last week, she was just a regular aspiring actress in South Korea. And now, here she was, drawing a ritual circle with the blood of the man she had killed, trying to summon a demon. She couldn’t even believe the situation herself. It felt like she was trapped in a nightmare with no clear boundary between reality and fantasy.
Despite the grotesque nature of the ritual, the magic circle quickly took shape. Lillian dragged Herbert’s body to the center of it. The sacrificial body was now in place. The eerie and sinister scene of summoning a demon was complete. But somehow, Lillian’s expression was far from satisfied.
‘Something feels missing.’
Instinctively, Lillian raised her hand to her chin, then stopped. When Herbert had struck her earlier with the fire poker, her arm had been torn open. Blood was still dripping from the wound.
"Ah."
That’s when she realized what was missing. She quickly went to the center of the ritual circle and dripped her own blood onto it. The blood from the summoner would protect her from the demon’s wrath. She had nearly forgotten this critical step.
As soon as her blood mingled with the circle, the dark-red magic circle began to glow with a blinding light.
‘Did it work?’
Lillian hastily retreated behind the circle, watching as the ground seemed to split open. From the crimson gap, something began to crawl out. It was a grotesque sight, like something from a horror film. But what emerged was shockingly beautiful...
— "Krrraaaar!!"
An eerie, bone-chilling roar shook the air and reverberated through Lillian's very bones. She locked eyes with the demon’s bright red eyes, which were glaring at her from within the circle. What stood before her was an utterly terrifying demon.
At first glance, it looked like a muscular man. But the figure easily surpassed three meters tall, and his skin was dark red, glowing like lava. His claws, sharp as a beast's, and the large horns on his head added to his menacing appearance. To make matters worse, bat-like wings were spread out from his back, torn and ominous.
Lillian, watching with trembling eyes, soon realized something.
‘This isn’t it.’
A deep sense of disappointment filled her face. The demon described in Princess Aleina was not like this. His name was Iphos. He was supposed to be a beautiful, angelic-looking man with golden hair and red eyes. He was a demon, but he was weak to beautiful women, which is how he fell for Aleina.
Lillian had never liked Iphos much. He had a bit of a "chuunibyou" vibe, and the fact that he had repeatedly saved Aleina from danger made her dislike him even more. But she certainly hadn’t expected this.
— "Kyaaa!!"
The demon roared as soon as it locked eyes with Lillian. It seemed like it wanted to tear her apart with its terrifying claws. As Lillian watched the body of Herbert being trampled underfoot, she quietly thought to herself.
‘Maybe... maybe he’ll eat him?’
At least then, the body would be disposed of. After all, she had summoned the demon for that very purpose. However, the demon didn’t seem interested in Herbert’s body at all. If anything, it looked like a cumbersome stepping stone.
Lillian was frustrated. Why had she not anticipated the possibility of summoning a different demon instead of Iphos? After all, she wasn’t Aleina, and the demon she summoned could have been someone else. Nothing was going as planned.
She sank down to the floor, sighing deeply, and looked up at the demon before her. As the summoner, she had to do something about it. So, without much hope, Lillian spoke up.
"Excuse me."
— "Krrr..."
"Can you speak... human language?"
— "Kihih! Kyaaahhh!!"
Lillian politely asked her first question, much like a tourist asking if someone could speak their language.
But the demon in the magic circle didn’t answer. Instead, it glared at her with its bright red eyes, its vicious fangs flashing. Lillian sighed, touching her forehead.
"You can’t, huh?"
What kind of deal was she going to make with a demon that couldn’t even understand her? This was a complete disaster. This was exactly why you shouldn’t kill people without a plan. She had gone through all this trouble, summoned a demon, and now she couldn’t even communicate with it!
Just as she was about to collapse in despair, a faint, almost deflating laugh echoed from somewhere.
— "Puhut."
Lillian raised her head in surprise and looked around. But it was just her and the demon. Confused, Lillian was about to scrunch her nose in disbelief when, unexpectedly, the demon inside the magic circle suddenly started laughing, clutching its stomach.
— "Hoo, hahahaha! Oh, my stomach!!"
...What was this now?