/
This time, I woke up more naturally.
As I touched my forehead out of habit, I noticed that it was a bit damp, but it wasn’t drenched like the last time.
I sighed.
“What on earth is going on with me?”
If it was really a dream, I couldn’t perceive the meaning.
The thing that I couldn’t understand the most was that I was always the third party in the dreams.
I couldn’t let out any voice and I could only see the shown scenes.
“Mikel . . .”
I once again said the familiar name out loud.
It was surely a familiar name.
The name was already brought up in the previous dream.
Mom clearly said something back then.
“If you’re that free, you better look for Mikel Jayhorn’s trace.”
She said that looking for him was more important than eliminating Zen.
My heart grew uneasy at the voice that was vividly replayed just like the dream just now.
It felt like I was coerced that these dreams were real, that I shouldn’t treat it as a simple dream.
“Anyway . . .”
I looked for water reflexively because my throat was cracked and tingled.
The moment I reached out to the table, I saw a familiar flowerpot so I flinched.
After drinking the water, I made sure of it once more.
“Why is Adel . . .”
The table had nothing but a glass of water on top of it before I slept.
In addition, the fact of ‘the growth’, which was so faint that it couldn’t be known unless with Jeremy’s observation, was different this time.
“It really grew.”
It wasn’t the size of a fingernail, but a hand, to boot.
In the middle, there was already another small bud popping out.
Wasn’t this an uncanny story by now?
I only thought of it as weeds that grew on the soil.
What on earth was the true identity of the sprout I found in the hallway of this Duke’s mansion?
I looked down at it with a doubtful look, but Adel that had grown didn’t move at all.
Holding the flowerpot with a plant pretending to be a normal sprout, I carefully opened the door.
As I opened the door at dawn, the knight on guard outside the door was surprised.
“Sir Lloyd.”
“You woke up early, my Lady.”
“Was there anyone entering my room at night?”
He blinked at my question, then scratched his head.
“I don’t know for sure since it hasn’t been long since I changed shifts with the other knight, but I didn’t hear about such a situation from him. Is there anything wrong?”
“. . .”
Then, did that mean this pot had feet?
Even if someone broke into my room, there was no reason for them to move Adel, which was in Jeremy’s room, to my room.
It was even more impossible for Jeremy to put this without saying anything considering his careful personality.
“Nothing. It’s fine as no one came to my room. I asked because I felt I slept too soundly.”
Leaving Sir Lloyd, who was tilting his head, behind, I walked the hallway.
If I think about it, both times I dreamed was when Adel was in the room.
Even if I thought it was a coincidence at first, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy the second time.
However, Jeremy said he never dreamed, so I couldn’t conclude that Adel had something to do with the dreams.
“. . . Did someone curse me?”
Well, that might be the case with the nightmares, but who would make a curse that made the pot keep coming to my bedside?
Was it really a curse though?
* * *
I realized it as I finally reached before Jeremy’s room.
“Why are the knights only on tight guard in front of my room?”
Even though this was in front of the prince’s room, there was only one person protecting this place.
I took a glance inside and I saw Jeremy, who was still sound asleep.
I put Adel on his bedside, and when I was about to leave, a familiar book caught my gaze.
“He’s still looking at that, huh.”
A farming method book he bought at the bookstore that didn’t seem to help.
I tried to walk past it without thinking much, but then something popped up in my head.
“Ah.”
I quickly left Jeremy’s room and returned to my room, then I rummaged through the pile of books in a corner.
There were books, which I planned to read but I haven’t read, piling up.
“I’m sure it’s around here . . .”
While I was fumbling around the books, I got a catch of a book with clear crests drawn.
As I quickly opened the first page, the name of the author, which I was desperately looking for, entered my eyes.
[Mikel Jayhorn.]
Given that not only the first name but also the last name matched, he must have been the same person.
It wasn’t a common name or surname.
Who was this person that he kept appearing in my dreams?
Most likely, he was the man who was being chased and fell down the hill.
That desperate face, which lingered vividly in my memory, was surely one that I had never seen.
I had learned about the tale of this empire founding numerous times in history class.
Furthermore, I didn’t think the thin book, which is organized to be easy to read, would contain anything special.
Even though I thought so, my hand flipped the pages.
[The founding of the empire was accomplished with three men led by the Emperor.
The loyal and faithful Bolton, the just and careful Miller, the smart and ambitious Hastings.
In the beginning, humans lost their land to a race other than humans, and they were so weak that they could not even survive properly.
The reason why they were able to be the supreme creature of all beings was because they borrowed the power of God.
After the empire was built, ‘the Emperor,’ who completed the world of humans, was wary of the power of God.
The heads of the three families sealed the God with the help of the saintess and locked him in a ruin.
The God that was locked under the ‘ruin’ was angry with them, and that anger . . .]