At the weakly uttered words, Eustia hugged me again lest I fall, and said.
"Even if it's a contract."
So he was telling me to stop nagging and follow.
No wonder Eustia looked great, so I rubbed my eyes again and again.
Even though I eat well and sleep well these days, I must have covered my eyes when I see such a thing.
Perhaps because I came through the maze in the garden, there were leaves on my hair and clothes.
Oh, of course I wasn't.
I was busily removing the leaves from Eustia head.
He had a reason to leave the easy way and come to the maze.
'It was to get away from Ferze.'
As expected, it was like Eustia.
There were many thorny vines in the maze where natural poisons grew.
Because of that, Eustia walked through the maze hugging me, and unlike me, who was fine, his uniform was torn in several places.
Still, he has a natural appearance, so even if he took away the clothes of a vagrant, he would look like the lord of the north.
'It's amazing. Maybe it's because I passed the garden, it smells like flowers.'
I couldn't explain why, but his arms were warm.
It was more comfortable compared to Sharkis.
Could this be the difference between a father who is skilled in holding a child and an older brother who doesn't know how to hug?
'Doesn't it hurt even if it's scratched by poisonous thorn?'
I scratched my cheek while looking at Eustia. It wasn't my biological father, but there was a part that looked quite similar to me.
'You are immune to poison like me.'
That was also a fact I learned recently.
Is it because the cause of the young age was poison?
I asked the physician who examined me once why I was immune.
The physician only repeated the answer with a puzzled face that I had a peculiar constitution.
'Maybe he doesn't know the answer?'
Anyway, it's better to have immunity than no immunity.
With that thought in mind, I leaned against Eustia's arms.
It was as comfortable as lying on an armchair. So I didn't want to get out.
I just pray that Ferze, who entered the maze together, will not get lost.
Hearing the sound of swinging a sword in the distance, I wonder if the Grand Duke is pruning in someone else's garden.
Or maybe even having a fight with Visenna knights.
Come to think of it, Ferze has been quiet lately.
He'll never die after he almost got poisoned.
Anyway, except for forgetting my main job as a Grand Duke - mainly war - I thought it was because there were no major problems.
"Keeek—!"
The screams of poisonous herbs that had become monsters could be heard from far away.
'My dear, only the gardeners of Visenna will die.'
I swallowed a light sigh.
Now, I was holding my breath and looking around because I wondered where Eustia was going.
Eustia began to walk towards the outskirts of the castle.
I didn't have anything to say, so I looked around and a nice voice pierced my ears.
"I do not reject those who have come to Visenna."
Those words made me a little more scared than I was.
You can enter at will - you basically had to be good at one area - because you have to die to get out.
This was the unwritten rule of Visenna.
He opens the door of Visenna while alive and closes it when he dies.
Simply put, the Visenna family is a prison that is hard to escape even if you die.
I know that the contract was written to break that unwritten rule, but Eustia's words changed.
It was also a villainous attitude.
I have to say thank you for that. Three years later, if I could turn back time, I thought that I would grab my neck and meditate.
"Wow, I'm excited. It's a life-long contract, Elegant."
Lightly shedding a soulless response to please Eustia.
So where are we going?
It was before I even asked Eustia. A bird bigger than the wolf-type monster that was trying to eat me was in front of me.
"Heuk!"
I swallowed a short breath.
When I looked around, I found myself out of the maze garden and outside Grandeur Castle.
"It's a sparrow that I raise."
When I showed a sign of fright, Eustia uttered an absurd word.
Anyone can see it's a wyvern, right?
Before I could say anything, Eustia, who held me in his arms, easily sat on Wyvern's body.
"You should get used to sparrows from now on, Ciel."
It's a sparrow...... I mean, it's not.
As I found out later, the nickname of the male wyvern he was raising was tweet tweet.
And I was riding on the tweetering back with Eustia.
Holding on to a very unreliable support.
As soon as we sat down, the giant Wyvern stood up and flapped its wings.
At that moment, I jumped over the horizon in a blink of an eye.
Hwiing. I closed my eyes tightly and screamed as the strong wind slapped my face.
"Kyaakkh!"
I'm afraid of heights!
Maybe I'd rather hang on to the 6th floor tower!
Instinctively, I stretched out my hand towards Eustia.
"Let me down. Uh-huh!"
The wyvern with a twisted personality resembling its owner laughed while revealing his teeth.
Even though it was a monster that could not speak, it seemed that he noticed that I was afraid.
Perhaps it wasn't an illusion, but even though Eustia didn't hold the reins strongly, the Wyvern unleashed the reins and began to soar higher into the sky like a mad dog.
"Freya-sama. Please let me have a long, healthy life....!"
My prayer was swallowed by Wyvern's fierce wings.
You can board, but you can't get off, a hooligan.
Wyvern, whose real name is Tweety, seemed to be chattering like that.
The owner of the Tweety was Duke Eustia, but I have seen it in the original story that Sharkis often rides it.
If you ride the monster, you can reduce the time it takes a week from Visenna territory to the Imperial City to three days. But surprisingly, the shortest distance was different.
It was a way to ride in the sky where magical powers called the Heavenly Way were concentrated.
It was also the route the duke often took when he threatened the Imperial family.
"The secretariat of the Imperial City will close at 6 p.m., so we have to hurry. Ciel."
I couldn't understand what he was saying because of the sound of wind in my ears.
My soft eardrums were about to be shocked by the wind.
With Eustia's light hand gesture, the surrounding air calmed down.
There was still a strong wind outside the transparent barrier visible to the naked eye.
I asked with a short breath after I belatedly understood what he said.
"If we go tomorrow....."
I almost bit my tongue while trying to ask.
Eustia looked at me and asked if that was nonsense.
"There's no tomorrow."
There's nothing wrong with being a day late!
I held back my tears and wrapped my arms around the Duke's neck.
I'm not in a hurry to apply for adoption, but why should I go now?
Frightened, I grabbed Eustia's hair, which loosely held the Wyvern's reins.
And poured a light curse inside.
From now on, you will only eat mushy cookies forever.
Perhaps because he had noticed my thoughts, Eustia, who was holding me tightly with one hand, smiled.
"This is the sky. If you fall, you can't even find a trace of the body."
I pretended to be a mistake and stopped trying to squeeze his hair.
You could have just told me to stay put. Why do you scare me like this? You told me to trust and follow you!
"Good kid, Ciel."
I stopped rustling, and the corners of the Duke's mouth drew a graceful arc.
As expected of my stepdad. Eustia Visenna was an incomparable villain.
*****
I was now in the Imperial Secretariat with Eustia. But things weren't very good.
"It's slow to handle things considering that both hands are running properly."*
At Eustia's gentle words, the face of the secretary who was sitting opposite him turned white.
There is such a saying in the world.
If you want to see the true face of a person, see how he treats his subordinates.
To be exact, he wants me to see his work.
In that sense, Eustia Visenna was the worst boss.
The misfortune among misfortunes is that his behavior when he does what he calls his subordinates and his behavior when dealing with the Imperial family, which is his superiors, is not much different.
He was, in some sense, a consistent man.
My stepfather, Duke Eustia Visenna.
Surprisingly, the laws of the Djibril Empire were difficult.
In order to prevent the aristocrats from easily adopting children, they had to apply for adoption at the secretariat in the Imperial City.
Although the original structure was difficult, the family law became stricter after the establishment of the Visenna family.
Fortunately, the quick-witted secretary did not ask the question such as 'how much money do you have,' 'Do you have a wife,' or 'how many children do you have?', but it took quite a while to apply for adoption.
It has been three hours since Duke Eustia visited in person.
The secretary was weeping even though Eustia had not yet committed the evil deed.
It was when I was looking at the secretary shaking his hands, perhaps because his life depended on it.
"Can't?"
Something seems to be wrong with the magic registration system.
Eustia's mood, which he thought would naturally work, fell sharply.
The secreyary was looking for the cause with a nervous attitude. Eustia looked down at him.
Is this really a complaint?
I felt a little sorry for the fact that my stepdad was a terrible complainant.
It's not that I couldn't stand it if the adoption process was not completed within today, but anyway, it happened because of me.