Chapter 116

No matter how much I retraced my steps, I hadn’t done anything to reveal myself. Yet, his gaze was so fierce that I almost mistook myself for having poisoned the tea.

Just as my palms began to sweat from the tension, the leader who was glaring at me spoke.

“You brew tea well. You will be assigned to me from now on.”

“Excuse me? Yes! Thank you.”

His words made the tension from his hostile look seem unnecessary.

He sipped the tea continuously, apparently satisfied with the tea I served, but his brow furrowed more with each sip, suggesting that was just his natural expression.

I secretly sighed in relief and refilled his teacup.

A little while later, the Pope appeared from behind the butler who opened the main conference room door.

He was the same Pope from the video orb that was distributed throughout the Empire.

The person we had judged to be a fake.

I examined him, seated at the head of the table. Sure enough, his eyes were unfocused, just like the Emperor when he was under hypnosis.

‘As expected, this person is a puppet. Then the true Pope must be inside this room.’

True to a hypnotized person, the Pope merely sat blankly, neither touching his tea nor initiating the meeting.

No one seemed to find his behavior strange. As if his only role was to sit there quietly, the leaders naturally began the meeting among themselves.

The main person leading the meeting was the second-in-command Spinelle tribesman seated in front of me.

“We anticipate the Eclipse Duchy’s offensive will begin in earnest after noon tomorrow. The Imperial Family won’t be able to assist them due to the monsters emerging in various regions.”

“We can overcome the crisis once we deal with the Silver Wolves?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

The topics of the meeting ranged from the Silver Wolf Knights camped near the territory to the affairs of Count Laurel’s family.

“What progress has been made in finding Count Laurel’s direct descendant?”

“It has been confirmed that there is no one other than Iris Laurel, the former Count’s daughter.”

“Haa.”

At the sudden mention of the name, Iris and I briefly met eyes before looking away again.

I listened closely to every detail of the meeting and carefully observed the people gathered in the room.

The information from the meeting was less helpful than expected, and as long as the fake Pope was here, the true Pope who controlled him must also be present.

Since the initial goal of infiltration was to identify the Pope, we needed to achieve that goal and escape quickly.

I kept a close eye on the second-in-command, who was leading the meeting.

‘Could he be the actual Pope?’

Although he was seated before the fake Pope entered, it was possible to cast hypnosis from a distance.

In the current situation, it seemed highly likely that the person seated in front of me was the Pope.

As I grew suspicious and examined him more closely, I suddenly felt that his behavior was odd.

Looking around the conference room, everyone was clearly reporting to the second-in-command. Yet, for some reason, they occasionally glanced nervously elsewhere while speaking.

‘What is it?’

I followed their subtle glances and saw the Pope, who had entered and hadn’t uttered a single word, with a vacant expression.

His eyes were so unfocused that it was hard to understand why they would be nervous about him.

Then I realized there was one more person standing behind him.

It was Butler Vegner, who had brought the fake Pope into the conference room and was attending to the puppet-like leader.

“…”

He still wore the foxy expression he had earlier in the day. It was a cheerful smile, yet it felt somehow chilling.

Once I detected something strange, every small gesture of the butler seemed full of hidden meaning.

As there was nothing else to examine about the others, I quietly observed only the butler through my peripheral vision.

And finally, I became certain that he was the true Pontifex.

“Let’s conclude the meeting here for now. We will reconvene tomorrow morning…”

The second-in-command opened his mouth, seeming to wrap up the long meeting. But midway through his sentence, he looked at the butler.

Butler Vegner subtly nodded at the second-in-command, and only then was the meeting concluded.

“…conclude. Everyone, please handle your respective duties well.”

“Yes.”

This was clearly unnatural behavior. Throughout the meeting, all the butler had done was attend to the fake Pope, and he hadn’t uttered a single word.

Yet, everyone was mindful of the butler and observed him cautiously. After the meeting ended, the Spinelle tribe leaders even bowed their heads to greet the butler, not the Pope.

This was not the treatment an ordinary butler would receive.

‘If he’s the real Pope, it makes sense.’

Since even the non-Spinelle leaders left without greeting the fake Pope, it seemed to be common knowledge that he wasn’t the real leader.

After all the leaders had left and the Pope also walked out listlessly, the butler commanded the remaining maids to clean up.

I, along with the other maids, tidied the conference room appropriately, and as they were leaving, I subtly pulled Iris and separated from the group.

“Iris, did you see?”

“Butler Vegner, you mean?”

“Yes. It seems he is the true Pope.”

Iris also seemed to have caught the strange atmosphere inside the conference room and narrowed the suspect down to the butler.

We wandered around the mansion looking for Butler Vegner.

We were almost certain in the conference room, but we needed clearer evidence.

As the butler, he was constantly darting all over the mansion. Although we often lost track of him due to his constant movement, our disguise as maids made it natural for us to walk around.

After finding, losing, and following him a few times, the butler’s suspicious behavior appeared around the time evening turned to night.

“Chacha! Over there!”

Looking where Iris pointed, the butler had entered a certain room.

I recalled the interior layout in my head and frowned.

“Isn’t that the Count’s bedroom?”

It was as Iris said.

The former Count Laurel died in Iclea, and no one had succeeded the countship since. In other words, the room was ownerless.

If the room the butler entered had been the office, it would not have been strange. The office was likely where documents related to the territory were piled up.

But he was entering the bedroom? That wasn’t a logistically sensible route.

‘Cleaning… probably not. That’s the maids’ job.’

A busy butler wouldn’t likely care about an ownerless room that much. He also hadn’t brought any cleaning tools.

Nor was he coming out after going in to fetch something, as he hadn’t reappeared yet.

‘Is he perhaps living in that room?’

I thought that if the butler truly was the Pope, he might be using the Count’s room, the best in the mansion.

‘But would he do something so obvious, even setting up a fake Pope?’

While the leaders were mindful of the butler, the other servants I observed were not.

Their attitude toward the butler was quite normal. The content they talked about the Pope also referred to the fake one.

With the answer not forthcoming, I waited for the butler to come out and racked my brain.

“What are you two looking at here?”

Just then, a voice that shouldn’t have been heard came from behind us.

Iris and I were startled and stumbled backward.

We turned around on guard.

The one who spoke to us was Butler Vegner, who had just entered the bedroom.

He had clearly gone into the room and hadn’t come out. Yet, he was somehow standing behind us in a neat posture.

I was reminded of Roon, whom I had seen in the Emperor’s audience chamber. She, too, didn’t seem to move, yet she was suddenly in front of me in the blink of an eye.

I clenched my fist tightly.

‘I found him.’

The most certain proof that the butler was the Pope.

The conviction that he was the one controlling the fake Pope.

‘This butler. He’s a human-shaped monster.’

I grabbed Iris, sent her behind me, and slowly stepped backward.

Vegner watched us with his usual slick smile, then asked with a very curious expression.

“Oh dear~ Did I scare the two of you again? Lady Chacha, Lady Iris.”

“…”

His bloody-red eyes watched us, curving slyly.

A tense atmosphere flowed between Vegner and us.

Since he was a human-shaped monster, I wouldn’t have time to react if he truly decided to attack.

As I stood frozen, watching for an opportunity to escape, Iris suddenly reached out her hand from behind me.

Shatter.

The gem on the earring clipped to my ear instantly broke. The earring emitted a flash of light, and my vision was instantly washed in white.