Chapter 103: A Special Relationship (33)

The Lightless Prison.

Swani looked at the youth who had been staring into the eyestalk in the jar for the better part of a day, tapped the table, and gave a small cough:

"Lord Herbert, regarding that letter you entrusted to me, I more or less have a result. Would you like to hear it?"

"Hm? Oh, alright."

Herbert, coming back to himself, set down the jar and nodded at the demon eyestalk inside; the eyestalk fluttered its eyelids in response.

Herbert: See you next time.

Eyestalk: Come play again~

The eyestalk, having been specially inactivated many times over, naturally had no consciousness, but Herbert always felt it should still retain the most basic reactions.

Could a new will have been born from flesh and blood?

Ever since he had mastered those near-taboo arts of flesh and blood, Herbert no longer found Swani's research here creepy.

Of course, it was still disgusting — just not as repulsive and aversive as before.

Madness and depravity were only the surface appearance; the essence here was still the pursuit of knowledge.

"Although you commissioned me to decrypt it, this isn't really my area of expertise, so the time spent consulting materials was a bit longer."

More than a week had passed since Herbert had made his request that day, and Swani had finally arrived at an answer.

Swani spread the letter out in front of Herbert, swept her palm lightly above it, and the text on the page rose into the air, beginning to rearrange itself automatically.

"I first tried thirteen traditional decryption methods, then compared them against some local folk decryption habits, and finally switched to eight magical decryption methods."

The text kept shifting and combining along with Swani's calm narration; some seemingly plausible phrases appeared in between, but each had a greater or lesser sense of something off.

Herbert narrowed his eyes at the sight, and the answer had already vaguely formed in his mind.

Sure enough, once everything settled back into stillness and the text fell once more onto the letter paper, Swani looked at him and spoke softly:

"The conclusion my current deductions can reach — this letter was not encrypted in any way."

There were no secrets in the letter.

Herbert, silent, shook his head, gave a soft sigh, and said lightly, "So that's how it is…"

Herbert was calm at heart about this result, not surprised in the slightest.

In fact, wouldn't it be stranger if there really were secrets in the letter?

The Silver-Winged Grand Duke could not have expected a youth who had never had any contact with decryption to think along those lines, nor could he have expected him to find a decryption master to help interpret it after receiving the letter.

That would be unrealistic.

But precisely because such a possibility was unrealistic, it gave people hope, made them want to try and chase after it.

Hoping that this slim possibility truly existed, hoping that some such hidden thing was waiting to be discovered…

Is he feeling disappointed right now?

Herbert felt the swell of emotion, shook his head, and couldn't help but laugh softly.

"Heh."

After delivering her conclusion, Swani had been quietly watching Herbert's expression; upon seeing him calm down so quickly, she raised an eyebrow inwardly.

The relationship between this father and son might be a little different from what she had guessed.

Although Herbert appeared to be on poor terms with his father, from his behavior Swani had her doubts about that.

If Herbert truly didn't care at all, he wouldn't have specifically sought her out, hoping to find some clue here.

But now, he could recover his composure so quickly… did he truly not care?

She thought it over quickly in her mind and decided to adjust her plan slightly.

"Ahem."

Swani gave a small cough and said slowly, "Aside from that conclusion, I also have a rather personal thought here. Would you like to hear it?"

"…Please, go ahead."

"Your father may have known the letter would be seen by others."

Herbert's brow furrowed.

Swani pushed the letter in front of Herbert and said, "The wording of this letter is stiff and unusually standard; there is no personal emotion mixed into the text at all — it is entirely a standard, formulaic reply."

"On the surface this seems unremarkable, but… is this really normal?"

She watched Herbert's reaction and continued:

"Dark elves don't have the kind of parent-child rearing relationship that humans do, and I don't have anyone I could call a father… but I think this may not have been his true intention."

"Precisely because he knew he was being watched, he could only try to protect you in this way — he didn't want others to think he still cared about you."

"I think he must love you."

When Swani finished, the room fell into dead silence.

Herbert blinked, his gaze a little odd as he looked at the expressionless dark elf, and said in surprise, "Swani, that doesn't sound like something you'd say."

All this talk of affection and love — that's not something a bloodless, tearless taboo scholar like you should be saying.

"Why shouldn't I be able to say it?"

Swani's cold expression didn't change as she countered, "In your eyes, was I really such a cold-blooded, heartless person?"

"Then perhaps I was mistaken."

Herbert shook his head, not wishing to dig deeper into this question, having no intention of discussing it with Swani, and simply moved past the topic:

"Thank you for your help this time. As repayment, what would you like me to do for you?"

Courtesy demands reciprocity — you come, I go.

One-sidedly seeking help only wears down the goodwill between people; mutual aid is the essence of human interaction.

Even if the value of the two sides may not be equal.

Swani didn't bother with false politeness and said directly, "There is indeed one thing I hope you'll agree to."

"When my family came here and you prepared to ambush them, could you possibly…"

She paused, looked up into Herbert's eyes, an unreadable gleam flashing through them, the cold corner of her mouth curving up slightly.

Sifanni laughed icily.

She said:

"Let me do it myself."

Cold-blooded and ruthless?

She truly was.

A lava hell.

Kreti watched the petite figure soaking in the lava pool with utter boredom, sighed listlessly.

"How much longer are you going to sleep…"

When she was awake, she found her noisy; but once she quieted down, she actually found herself missing it a little.

"Tch!"

Kreti, coming back to herself, clicked her tongue, shook her head hard, and slapped her own cheeks.

No no no… Kreti, you are a devil!

Snap out of it!

How could you miss a demon!!?

That's truly sacrilege!

If you keep falling like this, you'll end up in heaven in the future!!!

And just as she kept warning herself not to let her thoughts run wild, a strange sound came from the lava pool.

Crack.

The devil's expression froze for a beat, then she quickly laughed dismissively, walked to the edge of the fortress, and looked down at the demon girl slowly sitting up.

"Heh! You finally deigned to wake up, made me wait so long…"

And what answered her.

Was a fist-sized ball of lava.

Smack!

"Flora!!?"

Sanjiang short recommendation really came, feels a bit unreal.

This Sunday afternoon going on Sanjiang.

Really not easy—

I'll work hard to stockpile chapters! Wait for launch and explode with updates!

To celebrate, let me state the monthly-ticket extra-update rules for launch in advance.

After 2000 tickets, change to 100 monthly tickets = 1 extra chapter; after 5000 tickets, 50 monthly tickets = 1 extra chapter.

Charge charge charge~

I'm not afraid of more extra chapters, anyway I'm planning daily-ten-thousand-word explosive updates after launch, no matter how many owed chapters there are I can pay them all off clean!

If you dare, just work me to death—

Bring it on—

By the way, my launch thanks-speech is almost ten thousand words already… currently challenging the longest launch thanks-speech in history.

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(End of chapter)