Chapter 141

“What is this again?”

While tending to the garden, I discovered something strange.

The windows of the room that used to be a storage area were completely blocked.

It was clear that the curtains inside hadn’t been drawn.

It seemed like something was blocking the windows with wooden boards from inside.

Had the duke been up to something in the storage all night?

“Right. I have the master key now.”

The master key that the butler copied for me.

He had given it to me, saying it was bothersome to keep giving me the keys every time I went to clean the office.

I wondered what was up with the butler, who usually followed the rules so diligently.

When I asked him why, he said that since the duke would generously forgive me if I caused any trouble with the master key, it would be fine…

It seemed the butler was already treating me like the duke’s mistress.

“Hm. The storage is definitely this way.”

It was a room I had rarely visited.

A dark room that I had to enter a corner of, even when I reached the end of the corridor.

Just as I was about to insert the key into that door,

“Noooooo!”

“Stop!”

Crash!

In an instant, I was grabbed by both shoulders from behind, accompanied by a loud sound.

When I turned around, one shoulder was held by the duke, and the other shoulder was held by the leopard.

Seeing both of them with pale faces urgently trying to stop me was unfamiliar.

I hadn’t seen these two together lately, and it seemed rare to see them so in sync after such a long time.

“Why are both of you acting like this? Is there someone inside that you’ve kidnapped and locked up?”

“…”

“…”

It was a joke I had made.

But when both of them kept silent without a hint of humor, I realized.

Ah, I had hit the nail on the head.

*

“Can I organize the situation a bit?”

“I would appreciate it. We need to confirm whether Miss Julia understands the situation fully.”

“Alright. Go ahead.”

For the first time in a while, the leopard and the duke stood side by side in a rare scene of camaraderie.

But before I could feel moved by it, I sighed deeply when I met the eyes of the man whose limbs were bound in front of me.

“Isn’t this because Father Alexander figured out my identity and brought him in before I could cause any trouble…”

“Perfectly right. You understood accurately.”

“…”

I felt my head might explode.

It was a very simple situation, yet why was my mind so complicated?

The reason was also simple.

The decision-making power had been passed to me.

“I thought, can’t someone take care of this without me knowing…”

A chilling sensation momentarily shook my mind.

I wished that before I had to shoulder this troublesome task, the duke or the leopard had dealt with it already.

Then I could have caught up to the situation late once again and comfortably blamed them for doing such a thing without telling me.

I found myself thinking in such a passive and selfish way.

I’ve become weak, not just in body but in mind…

That realization was creepy.

At this rate, I would become a parasite relying on the duke and the leopard both physically and mentally, and I was terrified.

“And I will decide what to do with Father Alexander.”

“That’s correct.”

“So it has come to this.”

The duke answered nonchalantly, while the leopard huffed discontentedly but nodded in agreement.

Now that I thought about it, both of them had changed a lot.

In the past, they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill Alexander.

I didn’t know what had changed, but they were trying to give me a choice.

And here I was, trying to abandon that right and fall into dependency…

It was truly pathetic.

“Hmm!”

“What, what is it? You surprised me.”

Slap, slap.

I slapped my own cheeks to gather my thoughts.

Right. This is my job.

My recklessness had led to Alexander noticing, and everything he would expose would be related to me and Tia.

But the damage from that exposure wouldn’t just fall on us.

The duke who hid us and the hero who deliberately stopped searching would also have to face the church’s wrath.

The decisions I would make from now on must consider all of this.

“Huff…”

“Julia! What are you doing?!”

I immediately approached Alexander and removed the gag from his mouth.

Even though Alexander was free to speak now, instead of begging for his life, he simply looked up at me quietly, keeping his mouth shut.

There was nothing else he could do.

We all knew that promising not to report to the higher-ups after freeing him wouldn’t be kept.

Despite that, Alexander was hoping for a life-saving chance with a look in his eyes.

Please, let me live…

“I can’t let Alexander go like this.”

“Just as I thought! You know how to make the right decisions!”

The leopard couldn’t hide his joy as he fidgeted.

It seemed he really wanted to kill Alexander.

I could understand why.

It made sense.

The leopard valued me and Tia more than his own life.

The journey to get this far must not have been easy for him either.

Before my right to decide was passed on to me, he would have argued that it was better to secretly kill Alexander and dispose of him in the back mountain.

“Wait. I only said that I can’t let Julia go. I didn’t say I’d kill him.”

“Hey. No way…?”

The duke pointed out the flaw in my words.

He was right.

The leopard’s wish wouldn’t come true.

I wouldn’t kill Alexander.

I wouldn’t kill him, yet wouldn’t just let him go either.

In an instant, the realization dawned on the leopard, distorting his expression.

“Are you saying you’ll keep Alexander here alive? That’s no different than killing him! The church will notice the saint’s search supervisor is missing and suspect us the same way!”

“No. There’s one difference. At least my hands won’t be stained with blood.”

“Is that really what’s important right now?!”

“Perhaps you don’t understand, but it is important to Julia.”

“Is that really a subject you should be discussing now…?”

“Both of you, quiet.”

It was getting noisy.

It was hard to concentrate.

I stopped the two arguing and focused on the divine power within me.

Finally, the great ocean inside me began to swirl.

“Julia. What are you doing right now?”

“I told you. I can’t let Alexander go like this. Otherwise, Tia and I, both the master and you will all be put in danger.”

“Are you planning to erase my memories?”

“…!”

The moment Alexander whispered that, the eyes of both the leopard and the duke widened.

That was the answer.

I hadn’t expected Alexander to figure it out first.

“Miss Julia, I believe you are misunderstanding something. The notion of erasing bad memories as commonly suggested pertains to one’s own memories. A strong defensive mechanism operates against the minds of others, making it impossible to restructure memories through magic.”

“Magic knows no limits. I learned that theoretically, anything is possible as long as there is enough divine power and a desperate wish.”

“You remember well.”

As Alexander smiled, the duke and the leopard glared at him discontentedly.

“Alexander, you’re not going to attempt a miracle to erase your memory, right?”

“No. I won’t. That would be betraying the church. Moreover, if I erase the wrong memories and lie, Julia won’t have a way to verify it.”

“That is true. Then it falls to me to do it.”

I got a clear answer.

I had to do it.

No one else but me.

I placed my hand on Alexander’s forehead, who was quietly bound, and concentrated even more.

I was about to break open a realm that had long been considered impossible.

Ordinary desperation wouldn’t do.

But did I cherish Alexander’s life enough to turn the impossible into the possible?

Thinking in such a manner made my answer somewhat ambiguous.

I definitely hoped Alexander would not die.

He was a teacher who had personally taught me miracles, though sometimes frightening and utterly incomprehensible.

And he was also a teacher who helped Tia, who couldn’t control her power.

I would recall that memory.

Imagining the guilt I would feel when I killed Alexander.

Imagining the sense of loss.

Then, the divine power that had lingered inside me began to flow outward gradually, with a bright light pouring out from my entire body.

“This is… what…”

It was unbelievable.

The duke and the leopard could do nothing but watch the scene in front of them, wide-eyed.

The choices presented to them were only two.

Kill Alexander or let him live.

There was a method to keep him alive but locked away, but that was fundamentally no different from killing him.

However, Julia had created an entirely new option.

An option no one had ever imagined.

An option to edit someone else’s memory and make them forget what had long been deemed impossible.

Of course, changing memories wasn’t difficult in itself.

Opening up the heart and altering the fundamental mana circuits of a human would make sealing memories a trivial task.

In fact, Aerial’s memories were sealed that way.

But that was only possible because she was the body of the holy maiden cursed with eternal life; a regular person would die the moment you touched their heart.

In that regard, Julia’s idea was truly revolutionary.

To forcibly erase memories without inflicting a single wound on a person.

Perfectly, leaving behind not even unstable fragments of memory like hypnosis.

It was truly a “miracle.”

Julia was now attempting to realize that miracle, pouring forth an immense amount of divine power.

“Is there really that much?!”

The leopard’s mouth dropped open as he observed the divine power streaming into the air in real-time.

Even a fraction of that divine power wasted due to Julia’s lacking skill would exceed all the divine powers of the church’s clergy by far.

Then how much divine power is truly being concentrated?

Julia’s vast divine power had been known since she was Aerial.

Yet now, it felt as if she were drawing water from an infinite ocean—an awe-inspiring sensation.

“There are limits to magic, but there are no limits to miracles.”

Julia was trying to prove that saying true right now.

With a divine power close to infinity, she was accomplishing the impossible.

She was restructuring reality as she wished.

“Julia. Thank you…”

Right after Alexander murmured with a near-smile, almost inaudible voice, the light filled the room.

The duke and leopard, who had squinted their eyes, could see Julia breathing heavily in front of the unconscious Alexander.

She had succeeded.

I felt an instinct that this was indeed a success.

And at the same time…

“How far can Julia’s miracle go?”

I felt an ambiguous sense of fear.

Perhaps Julia might be a far more dangerous existence than they had ever considered.

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