Chapter 53

At the sound, Arthur and Grace simultaneously turned their heads towards the wall of the carriage behind which the coachman was located. Arthur briefly cleared his throat, refined his voice, and replied to the outside.

“Do that.”

“Yes, Duke!”

Then the horseman’s cheerful voice came, and the carriage carrying the two began to move slowly.

In the slow-moving carriage, Grace stared intently at Arthur, who was sneakily avoiding her gaze, then sighed briefly.

Arthur trembled at the sound of Grace’s overtly frustrated sigh, but seeing him like that made Grace suddenly burst into laughter.

It was because it was somehow funny that this man, called the Cursed Duke, withdrew his body at the sound of her sigh.

‘Oh my. If you’re that much intimidated by me, I don’t think I should interrogate you anymore.’

Grace got up from her seat with a bitter smile and crept over to Arthur’s side. After that, Grace leaned her head on Arthur’s shoulder and spoke as Arthur nervously chased her with his eyes as she approached him.

“Then I’ll give you some time to choose what to say. By the way, I also have something to say to the Duke.”

“……what.”

“I’m not going to tell you until the Duke tells me.”

As Grace spoke teasingly, Arthur’s gaze sank as she leaned on his shoulder and he looked down at Grace.

It was similar to Leon’s, who was intimidated. While secretly thinking it was cute, Grace reached out and tenderly stroked Arthur’s lower jaw, which was not covered by the mask, and said.

“I’m kidding. When we arrive at the mansion, there will be only the two of us left. I’ll tell you then……… So please tell me then, Duke. What conversation you had with Your Highness about, and what happened.”

“…..My Lady.”

“Our promise, you didn’t forget, right? We decided not to hide anything.”

Grace said, looking straight into Arthur’s eyes, who still seems hesitant to bring out his innermost thoughts.

Just as she wanted to open up and discuss all the secrets and facts she had and found out, he also wanted to do the same.

Arthur, who was silently looking into Grace’s straight eyes for a moment, soon smiled faintly and nodded.

“…….All right. I will tell you everything without hiding.”

“Good. Then I will be waiting for you.”

With a satisfied expression on Arthur’s answer, Grace leaned on Arthur’s shoulder like a cute cat and dug into his arms.

[T/N: Awwww…. Meow~ Meow~ =￣ω￣=]

Arthur lowered his shoulder so that Grace could lean more comfortably, placing his arms around her. Then he looked down at Grace’s smiling face comfortably in her arms for a long time.

As the carriage drove towards Felix Castle, Arthur and Grace leaned on each other and spent a quiet time.

───※ ·❆· ※───

In the beginning of the continent, there was a God who created the world.

He was the one who filled the empty world with light, darkness, and life.

The great God, the father of all life, had a son just like him. He was born with all the powers of God, so all living things considered him as inferior to God.

The people of the continent of the beginning built temples for them, the God and the son of God, and prayed for wealth, health and good fortune to them by offering the most precious things they had.

The son of God loved those who had the same shape as himself, and he granted their wishes whenever he could. God praised such a son but did not forget to always leave one warning.

‘Take care of humans, but don’t trust them. They are beings born with a mixture of light and darkness, and are not sincere beings like you and I.’

At the stern warning, the son of God nodded silently, but he could not take the advice deeply.

If he doesn’t believe in those who resemble God the most and are closest to God, then who do you believe in? He couldn’t understand.

Then it was one day.

In the days when there was a long and boring peace. It was when the son of God, who was bored because his father, God, was immersed in darkness for rest, stepped on the continent of the beginning to examine humans.

Among those who were busy offering their crops, a beautiful maiden as pretty as a jewel caught his eyes. The moment he saw her, God’s son, who was obsessed with the intense desire for her, personally appeared in front of her and asked her, who was in fear.

‘I want to grant your wish. Tell me if you want something.’

Then, in a voice trembling with fear, she carefully said her wish.

‘Let me have a child who resembles you, Almighty.’

God’s son, who had already been a slave of lust, was willing to comply with her wish, and she had his child.

Exactly nine months later she gave birth to a child with divine powers. Like a child of God, the child was able to create light, move darkness, and have the power to save and kill life.

Humans shudder by its exceptional ability. Humans are said to resemble the shape of God, but since they were duller than God, they believe in the crude power of a human being who inherited the blood of the son of God that was visible. Rather than believing in the strong power of an invisible God.

So the humans worshipped the child like a God, and no longer offered sacrifices or prayed to God. Even that was not enough, humans destroyed temples and ridiculed humans who worshipped gods.

God, who returned from rest in the darkness, saw his son’s foolish work and was enraged. He could not forgive the humans who dared to despise the power of God, and trust and serve only crude power.

Therefore, God imprisoned his son in the darkness, who was engulfed in desire and granted the maiden’s wish carelessly and cursed humans.

‘Whoever has the power of magic, whoever challenges the divine authority of God with that intensive power, the stronger the power he has, the greater the curse will be.’

‘Also, I will curse the current royal family who have been revered like a god for their crude power. So that they will never again challenge the power of the god, the child with the deepest blood of the wretched human king will receive divine punishment and die.’

The solemn words of God went straight to the humans.

The son of the maiden and the king of humans, who had challenged God with his crude power until now, received a cursed oracle and died on the spot.

At the miserable death of the king, his queen and his sons were devastated.

The moment they announce to people that the great king died under the curse of God, the king’s authority will fall, and the authority that they enjoyed as a royal family will also disappear.

After constant discussions over the body of her husband and their father, they decided to keep it a secret that God had placed a divine curse on the king and the royal family. In addition, they deprived the youngest son and their clan of the royal status and sent him out of the castle because he resembled the deadest king among them.

According to the curse of God, the king’s youngest son and his family will die from the curse in the near future. In that case, they were afraid that the people would know that the prince and his family who resembled the king had met another tragic death. And that the people would also know about the curse of the royal family.

The royal family, who hid the secret of the curse, set up the prince as the king, who inherited the blood of the king the thinnest among themselves. And in order to escape from the curse, he tried to dilute the curse dissolved in the flowing blood by using a commoner, not a royal family, as a queen.

Fortunately, the child born in the queen’s body did not inherit the cursed blood of the first king strongly. And they seemed to have completely escaped from the curse of God through the efforts of the royal family to dilute the blood flowing gradually thereafter.

But there was something they overlooked.

The power of time and oblivion, the most powerful weapon of God, and even the son of God has been dragged in, overlooking how strong the power of “greed” is.

As time went by, the powerful blood of the cursed first king gradually diluted, and the families of the first king became similar to ordinary commoners.

They fought wars of conquest with the strong power of blood with the commoners, and became the imperial emperor, forgetting the curse flowing in the blood and pursuing the “strong power flowing in the blood” again.

To obtain and maintain a wider territory, more gold and wealth, and a higher honour, a stronger power was needed than now.

Therefore, the foolish clan of the first king carried out in-marriage and inbreeding despite the efforts of their forefathers who laboured to dilute their blood by marrying with other clans.

And that was not enough, they even conferred the title of ‘Duke of Alberton’ to the clan of the youngest son of the first king, who had been expelled from the royal family, and even actively married them.

As a result, the blood thickened as they wanted, and the more it did, the stronger the power of the first king hidden in the blood appeared. They did not hesitate to conquer and dominate others, and their power grew even more.

And.

At the same time, they faced it again.

He who has been sleeping quietly for hundreds of years. Finally opened his eyes again to their greed, under the Curse of God.