I Don’t Trust My Twin Sister

“This is my wife.”

 

“…”

 

Me and Ian slightly opened our mouths. Wife? Wife? That woman who may be dead? She got up and walked over. The woman with her nervous expression flinched away, looking at me with her frightened face. Dermin smiled as he placed his hand on her shoulder and patted her gently. When I said something quietly in her ear, as if whispering that it was okay, she looked at me and bowed.

 

“…hello. This is Rodilla.”

 

“That’s a beautiful name. Is Rodilla a witch?”

 

She answered with difficulty in a timid voice, as if she was quite frightened. She looked at Dermin, wondering if it was okay to keep talking to her when she was almost sorry for even asking. He nodded at me.

 

“She said she wanted to come in person, saying she had a lot to say.

 

“…is that so?”

 

It seemed like she couldn’t open her mouth because there were so many people watching her. When I motioned for people to leave to listen to Rodilla’s story, her Ian moved accordingly and gave directions. The atmosphere seemed to have become chaotic, but the people who were with them quickly organized their materials and quickly left the room. The tense atmosphere from earlier calmed down a little. Dermin and Rodilla sat down on her chair, called her maid to make tea, and then adjusted her posture. Lee An stood obliquely behind me and looked at the two people. Rotilla looked back and forth between me and her husband, then at my husband, Dermin. She tilted her upper body back slightly at the sight. Is the current situation scary because of what happened, or is it because I am wary of Ian and I being nobles? Whatever she was, the fact that she was here now was enough to make me think that the path might open faster than I thought. Rodilla hesitates and she clings to Dermin. She slowly opened her mouth.

 

“…She said she would protect me if I told you all, so I came.”

 

Protect me? From whom? I glanced up at Ian and looked at him. He nodded her head calmly and then looked at her and said:

 

“I will use all the abilities of the Verdian family to protect the safety of Dermin and Rodilla. I swear on my name as Grand Duke Berdian.”

 

I didn’t mean to go that far, but the meaning would still have been conveyed. When I looked at Rodilla again, her expression relaxed slightly and she sighed. It was a deep sigh that let you know what had happened. After handing her the tea that her maid had just brought, she looked at Ian. He shook his head as if it was okay.

 

“Just have a cup of tea and warm up first. You don’t have to be so nervous. No one here will harm Rodilla.”

 

She looked at the teacup and hesitated. Do you think it was poisoned? Looking at her maid, her maid skillfully took a sip of the tea in her teacup. Rodilla, surprised by her actions, urgently shook her head and waved her hands.

 

“Oh, no! I didn’t mean to hesitate like that…”

 

“I know. I just wanted to put you at ease a little, so you don’t have to worry too much.”

 

I also tipped my teacup first. Tila watched this quietly, chewed her lips, and began to speak in a low, melancholy voice.

 

“…I am a witch. I think of myself as an explorer who breaks away from the academic background of an ordinary witch and studies more diverse and numerous things.”

 

“I heard. The work and research carried out by witches and alchemists is not bad or insidious, but is something that cannot be simply called a degree of study and is not yet well-organized.”

 

She nodded her head.

 

“Alchemists and witches study such subjects and compile information that was previously unknown to the world and publish them in books or papers. The world calls them taboo books and strictly prohibits their sale.”

 

It was something I expected, so I nodded slowly. In fact, there were other things she wanted to hear right away, but it was more important to tell her everything she was comfortable with, so she waited for now. Rodilla continued her story with a more relaxed and stable expression than before. As I let her carry the mood, telling me little by little her own story, her life as a witch and an alchemist, the words she had to speak slowly began to come out of her mouth.

 

“Our research often involves facing the wide world with a free-thinking approach or realizing things through direct experience. Since we do not have a lot of resources or a lot of support, it is important to realize things through one experiment at a time. However… They couldn’t do that there.”

 

“…If that is the place. “

 

A deep sigh and tightly bitten lips. She closed her mouth and rolled her eyes, thinking about something, but then she seemed to have made up her mind and slowly began to speak.

 

“It was hell. Literally hell. Hell where you can’t do anything and all your actions are restricted by oppression, violence, and coercion. Not being free is no different from death for us. It is literally a place of oppression and restraint. “It was a place where everything was enforced.”

 

She didn’t need to mention where it was so she knew where it was, so she didn’t ask unnecessary questions.

 

“We research and study many fields, but we are ignorant of areas that we are not interested in. Just as if you teach economics to someone who majored in biology and they don’t know anything, it’s almost like a different world for someone who studied minerals to create a bomb.” “It’s a story. No matter how much you study, you can’t understand it. That’s why so many people were forcibly brought there to work, but the results weren’t what they should have been.”

 

“So does this mean that we failed to create the Essence of Fire?”

 

“No, it was a success. They already had a set of recipes, so they used them as a basis and forced us to use them. We researched and modified the essence to create the essence. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an essence of fire that had some explosive power. It took quite a long time to create it. By the time I was taken there, the experiment had already progressed to some extent. It had probably been something that had been going on for years.”

 

It’s been so many years… As expected, I did it just in case. In the end, if the Korean traditional music Pencia family and the Piero clan hid it and the crown prince looked after it, it meant that this incident did not happen only recently. To what extent is the guess correct?

 

“…Rodilla.”

 

A long time passed. I couldn’t listen to everything she said leisurely. It may sound mean, but it can’t be helped. It was a matter of people’s lives at stake. He stretched out his arm and lightly covered her hand, lifting her eyes.

 

“I need your help there.”

 

“…”

 

“We are running out of time. It is a very important issue where people’s lives are at stake. You can tell without even hearing that Rodilla went through something painful and difficult. It would be impossible for me to understand everything she felt, but it was still painful. “I can at least know that.”

 

He shook her head gently and interrupted her again.

 

“But cruelly, I’m trying to bring back that memory. You can hate me or not, but please, for the sake of the lives of countless people, I ask you to speak up.”

 

She looked at her, her stern expression on her face. There are a lot of questions that need to be asked right now. It was also true that we had to hear and comfort them one by one about how they were able to come back alive, what all the burnt corpses there were, what their status was, and what they had been through. But that wasn’t the important thing. I needed to know right away how many bombs made from the essence of fire were there, where they were located, and what they looked like. Also important was how much explosive power there was. Therefore, although it was cruel, he opened his mouth resolutely without considering her mental stress.

 

“Essence of Fire, where is it?”

 

I asked, hoping she would know her answer. But unfortunately, there was no answer to that question. Rodilla bit her lip slightly as she shook her head.

 

“I’m sorry. I don’t know where Jeongsoo is either.”

 

“Oh, no. It’s not something Rodilla should be sorry about.”

 

As she let out a slight sigh, Rodilla tilted her head, narrowed her brows, as if she was thinking about something, and then slowly opened her mouth.

 

“Ah! But I know what it looks like. I was in charge of the final process.”

 

“Really?”

 

I guess that’s a good thing. I was at a loss because I didn’t know what it looked like or what it looked like, but just knowing what it looked like was quite nice. When I prepared my paper and pen and held it out to her, she skillfully drew her drawing and handed it to me.

 

“…square?”

 

When it comes to bombs, you tend to think of an oval or sphere, but it was square. My eyes widened in surprise at the strange appearance. When she handed Ian her paper, he also looked at her drawing curiously, raised his eyebrows, and then spoke to Rodilla.

 

“Is this… by any chance, an adhesive type?”

 

“That’s right. It’s not a bomb manufactured to be thrown, but an attachable bomb.”

 

Rodilla answered simply and then continued her explanation.

 

“I heard that bombs made by wizards are infused with mana, which heats the gunpowder and causes it to explode. But that’s not the case. Certain conditions have to be met.”

 

“What are the conditions?”

 

“People.”

 

“People?”

 

People? It was unheard of for a bomb to explode to be a human being. Usually, it was common to ignite gunpowder and then throw it to create impact. The method of use for bombs made by processing the essence of fire manufactured by wizards is the same. But what they manufactured was a completely different form. People are conditions?

 

“When manufacturing the bomb, what I was concerned about was its stability so that it would not easily explode due to external shock. We conducted numerous experiments to control it precisely, but in the end, we could not find a compromise. Should we make it unstable and explode at the slightest impact, or make it strong? The discussion focused on whether to add stability, and in the end, their opinion leaned towards the latter. That’s why the bomb must be operated by a human.”

 

So the condition is human? A ‘person’ who will add safety to the operation of a bomb that is relatively strong even against external shocks…?

 

“Wait a minute. Something’s wrong… no way.”

 

She nodded her head.

 

I guess not. People who are that cruel… Ian heard her click her tongue. Did he think the same thing as me?

 

“…The device is set up so that the bomb has to be directly impacted so that it explodes immediately.”

 

I left it.

 

“Then the person who shocked you…”

 

“They would have been caught in an explosion and would have died. The reason why they burned so many people who conducted research but did not kill some of them was simple. They needed someone to power the bomb, but with my own hands, I could kill others and myself. “There are no people who want to throw away their lives. That’s why we selected people selectively.”

 

Rodilla, quietly holding Dermin’s hand, laughed weakly. Dermin also laughed, but seemed quite angry on the inside. I had mixed feelings at the sight of his expression full of bitterness and Rodilla’s pain-sounding voice.

 

“It is a death sentence that can take the life of a family member or lover hostage.”

 

“…Trash.”

 

He quietly muttered, laughing at what they had done. It was really bad. What Beralt did was so unimaginable that I wondered if such trash could even exist.

 

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