After having a chaotic dinner, Angus, Jayna, and Anna go to Brigida's room. Initially, it is only Angus and Jayna that plan to visit her. But, the little troublemaker didn't want to separate from Angus and Jayna.
Moreover, she is still not completely healed yet. Although she no longer has a high fever, she still occasionally sneezes. Entering the dark room, they find Brigida covered with a rough blanket.
They could see her deformed skin and no longer reddish like being burned from before. Instead, they could see a yellowish thing like disgusting pus all over her body. This shows the sign of a third-degree burning wound.
This kind of wound will be hard to heal, even with the help of magic. Although it is not entirely impossible to fully recover her appearance, it is still hard. Moreover, Angus' fire contains the power of [Hellfire].
Ordinary healing spells are unable to revert back her wounded body. Her blonde hair also turns purple, which is its original color. Noticing Angus and everyone, Brigida moved her body and faced them with difficulty.
Aunt Extalia may not torture her during her interogation, but she didn't heal her wound either. Aunt Extalia only gives her some basic potion to keep her body alive and clean her so her injury does not get infected.
Brigida didn't immediately speak and kept looking between Angus, Jayna, and Anna. At this moment, Anna is unusually silent with a frown on her face. It is as if she is thinking something hard while staring at Brigida.
Ignoring the little troublemaker's unusual behavior, "Alright, speak, what do you want?" asked Angus directly.
"Ah.. Yes. I just want to know how you managed to control my artifact, even just for a moment." said Brigida.
After drinking Angus' potion last time, she could somehow speak normally.
"It is just one of my abilities." said Angus without explaining further.
"I see…" replied Brigida in a sad tone.
However, Brigida didn't ask further since she knew Angus didn't have any obligation to answer her question in the first place. Just meeting him for the second time is already good enough for her.
Seeing her gloomy mood, Angus begins remembering some information about her from Aunt Extalia. As Angus said before, Brigida truly surrendered and didn't hide any information about Nergal except the one restricted by the soul-bound contract.
Aunt Extalia finds Brigida's life story quite pitiful. She actually didn't like the Nergal royal family and its government. She even hates King Andvari. The reason she still stays in Nergal is because of her mother and her people.
Unbeknown to Brigida, her mother is actually already gone long ago and King Andvari deliberately hides this information from her.
Since Brigida is always busy training and going out on missions, she never gets the chance to learn this or see her mother in person for a few years.
Although Brigida is often branded as a musclehead and battle maniac, she is not a fool. Despite her status as an illegitimate child from one of King Andvari's concubines, she is the only one that inherited all his talent.
She knows if she reveals her bright mind, everyone will suppress her with her illegitimate child status. It is better to handle a musclehead than someone rather than a smart person.
However, she didn't want to be cast out for being useless. Therefore, she decided to pretend all this year and only show her fighting talent. She thought that by showing her fighting talent, her mother would get better treatment than being shunned by everyone.
For her, the most important person in this world is her mother, who always takes care of her during her childhood despite her weak body.
However, her mother also notices her child's situation and how everyone takes advantage of Brigida through her condition. To set Brigida free, she decides to suicide herself. Ironically, she learns about her mother's death from Roy's mouth.
Roy himself didn't know that Nergal was actually trying to hide this information from her. As one of the high-ranking people in the Heart Kingdom, Roy definitely knows some secret information about Nergal.
The tragic death of Brigida's mother is nothing surprising since King Andvari is a scumbag who sleeps with many women. Many rumors even say that he sleeps with different women every day. Some of these women are taken by force, including Brigida's mother.
Therefore, it is not rare for these women to kill themselves after being violated by King Andvari. Since the Heart Kingdom always pays attention to anything related to King Andvari, they also know Brigida's origin and her mother.
Initially, King Andvari thought that if Brigida kept doing missions for the kingdom, she would prioritize Nergal and eventually forget about her mother. However, King Andvari didn't expect her love for her mother to be so deep.
After hearing the truth from Roy, Brigida didn't react or get angry at Roy. She immediately tries to find the truth on her own. She secretly contacts her people in the Royal Palace where her mother is supposed to be staying.
When she learned her mother had died long ago, she was just surprised and shocked for a long time. At first, she tries to forget about her and move on like one of her subordinates dying during one of her missions.
Some good memories of the Nergal civilians that she helped all these years resurfaced, but her memories of her sickly mother also appeared. These two conflicted feelings keep rotating for hours before only leaving emptiness in her.
Unbeknown to her, she begins to feel sad and tears come out of her eyes. At this moment, She just feels nothing. Her love for Nergal is fading away before slowly being gone.
Then, she decides to leave Nergal and try to fight Angus. Despite Angus' young age, she knows he is a strong and talented combatant like her. She wants at least to fight such a person before truly gone from this world.
Unfortunately, she didn't expect that she would be completely overwhelmed by him. She couldn't even make Angus move from his initial spot.
She knows she may die from the battle as she sees what Angus did to Merra. However, she didn't care about her life anymore and decided to experience the best fight for the last time.
"Why are you not using your artifact ability during the fight?" asked Angus, trying to change the mood.
"I… I just don't want to use that ability in our battle." said Brigida.
From her information, Brigida's halberd artifact actually has a bizarre ability. It is capable of mind control. Using this ability, she could manipulate the decoy team and change with her double before fighting Angus.
Unexpectedly, She hides her weapon's ability from Nergal. No one will think such a sturdy and heavy Halberd artifact has the power to mind control.
Even though mind control has some limitations, it is still a dangerous and rare skill. Unfortunately, even if Brigida uses this weapon skill, Angus will still win easily.
As a magician, Angus's mind is strong and protected by the blessing of the Forgotten King. His mind power is also off-chart because of his intelligence.
"Seriously?" asked Angus back in disbelief.
"I.. I just want to fight you with my own skill. Not relying on mind control skills." said Brigida.
"I see. Then, what would happen if you somehow didn't fight me in the battle test? I could understand the battle test was just a coincidence. But, our order is also random. You could meet Aunt Extalia and get killed without being able to react like her opponent." said Angus.
"Then, so be it. In the end, there is nothing left for me." said Brigida in a gloomy tone.
Hearing this, Angus and Jayna could only sigh. They know that Brigida already didn't care about her life anymore. If it is not because she wants revenge on Nergal, she may already kill herself and follow her mother.
It is a tragic story and shows the dark side of a kingdom. However, Angus and Jayna could only feel pity for her. Since Angus is working at the Research Center, he already sees many similar tragic stories like this.
Personally, he didn't care too much about it. He knows there is nothing right and wrong in this world. It is the only action that is followed by a consequence. Angus also teaches Jayna some of his experiences about the real world.
Angus is not a saint and is far from a good person. As long as the others didn't disturb him, he didn't care about others. This is Angus' principle. As for Jayna, she is the fourth princess and one of the royalties in the Heart Kingdom.
Her true personality is as cold as ice. She only shows warm feelings for a few people like Angus and Anna. Besides these people, she will become a prideful cold princess.
Combined with her Fire Phoenix's pride, she may turn into that arrogant princess. Fortunately, Angus is always beside her and presses this side of her to become more humble. In front of Angus, she really couldn't become prideful.
Not only was she deeply in love with Angus, but she also couldn't beat him. Moreover, She also shows her embarrassing sight to him almost every night.