Swiftly making his way to a nearby village, the mage Karman employed the miniature teleportation stone twice more, traversing until he stood at the very cusp of Wintersnow's dominion.
"Grrrk!"
His body protested vehemently, and blood spilled from his mouth.
Wiping his bloodstained lips with his sleeve, he crumpled onto the frigid, unyielding earth.
He calculated that this distance ought to confound his pursuers.
'Damn it. What the hell, what the hell!'
Rather than accomplishing his objective, he had barely escaped without even glimpsing the face of his quarry, despite enlisting skilled mercenaries who were supposedly assured.
He had dispatched four robust mercenaries as effortlessly as tearing through paper.
Karman still couldn't fathom what he had borne witness to. It was an accomplishment that defied mere expertise.
It demanded inherent strength, acutely honed vision, and exceptional swordsmanship, all synergized.
A convergence of qualities one might only encounter in the realm of fantasy or materialize as an inconceivably improbable coincidence.
'But hold on, within the North, only one individual possesses such prowess. Someone capable of achieving that.'
Duke Wintersnow.
If anyone could elude the Demon King's curse and staunchly safeguard the North from demons, it was him.
'Unbelievable! So, I was clashing against the Archduke of the North?!'
To be exact, he hadn't truly engaged in combat; he had barely managed to flee while the mercenaries met their demise.
Still, he found it inconceivable that he had confronted an individual even the Emperor himself would tread lightly around.
A chill of dread crept down Karman's spine.
'Did he catch a glimpse of my face? Damn it. I need to escape the north promptly.'
However, he lacked the funds to depart from the North, the place he had come to call home.
He had intended to depart from the North with the proceeds from this undertaking, savoring a leisurely existence, but it all unraveled.
'This is all due to that young Duke!'
He couldn't comprehend why the Duke had materialized at that precise juncture.
Incapable of suppressing his ire and still clenching his fists against the rough cobblestone, Karman was suddenly struck by an unforeseen notion.
'...Hold on a moment.'
Couldn't he simply assert that he had executed her?
After all, she was merely a recently adult woman, correct?
If they demanded proof in the form of her remains, he could claim he had incinerated her in a conflagration. Presenting the remains of another individual with similar height and build should suffice, even if it wasn't her.
It wasn't as if this scenario hadn't unfolded before.
Karman had a history of fabricating false reports. Constructing a believable scenario and providing credible evidence was an art he had mastered over time.
'Why didn't this cross my mind earlier?'
It was remarkably straightforward, and given the absence of witnesses, complications were virtually nonexistent.
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BL999DP
العاطفية*Don't vote on chapters. She'd transmigrated inside a game, not as a protagonist, but as a demon king (Lv.999). "How could such a terrible demon come from our family!" Being born a demon was enough to be disowned from the family for 10 years, and...
