The Evil Deeds of Count Ernest

Translated by: ME

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*****

「Even if we ignore what has been said so far, your treatment of her was atrocious... but on top of that, you lot were spending the family fortune like water while she suffered. I have all the evidence.」

「To think you would stoop so low as to comment on how another family spends its coin...! Besides, we weren't the ones bleeding the estate dry, it was my sister! Buying nothing but expensive magical artifacts...」

Following Eides’s words, a man who appeared to be his seneschal stepped forward briskly, carrying two thick ledgers. Eides took them, casting a look of utter exasperation at Count Ernest—my father.

「Quite. I see expenditures for dresses and jewels, and yes, the costs for magical artifacts are accounted for as well. However, I have here the official account books for the House of Ernest, sent to me from a certain source... and there are 「two versions」 with conflicting amounts.」

The moment the realization hit him, Father’s face drained of color. Several people in the surrounding crowd who caught the implication began to cast cold, judgmental stares his way.

(Double-entry bookkeeping.)

Eides had said they were sent "from a certain source"... but the one who had anonymously slipped those ledgers to him was Wellmy.

Lola’s primary duties had involved organizing receipts into the ledgers, ghostwriting Father’s letters to the estate governors, and acting as a filter for their petitions—deciding which requests were necessary and which were frivolous.

In short, she handled almost every aspect of a lord’s work that didn't involve social functions or face-to-face negotiations.

Maintenance and management are thankless, invisible tasks, yet they are vital to the survival of a domain. While Goldray the butler had helped her to some extent, he had his own duties to attend to and couldn't slip in and out of the detached building all that often.

That was around the time Lola’s sleep began to suffer.

The reason Wellmy knew this was because she had been assigned a portion of that work under the guise of "practice for household accounting." Wellmy’s honest impression at the time was that compiling only fragments of the income and expenses felt like a redundant waste of effort.

It would be much easier to organize if everything were in one place, so why not just let her compile and check the whole thing from the start? It was that very question that led Wellmy to a realization.

(Is there a reason they can't let my sister see the whole picture...?)

With that thought, she intentionally slipped a receipt that had been routed to her into the pile destined for her sister.

She had assumed that if anything seemed off, Lola would mention it to Goldray. However, just in case, she kept a close eye on her sister’s movements... and saw her emerging from the detached building without being summoned.

A chill ran down Wellmy’s spine.

She rushed to the study where her father was and engaged him in idle chatter. Just then, Lola appeared and stated that there were two tax revenue documents from the same source, but the amounts were different.

(I knew it.)

Father was skimming off the top of the income. Once Wellmy was certain, she flashed a condescending smirk at her sister before Father could get a word out.

「My, sister. Do you truly believe it's your place to stick your nose into Father's business as the Lord?」

(Please, don't say another word.)

She had prayed for that from the bottom of her heart.

If she happened to sour Father’s mood to the point where he cancelled Lola's enrollment in the academy, then this time her sister truly would be trapped here forever, left to wither away.

It had been a miscalculation on Wellmy's part that Lola would actually come to confront Father. As expected, though Wellmy’s intervention had softened the blow slightly, a panicked Father flew into a rage. 「Don't you ever set foot in the main manor again!」 he roared at Lola.

After that incident, Father seemed to become a bit more cautious, but since he didn't appear to suspect Wellmy, it was a simple matter to pull out the older ledgers and make copies.

Lola, who was now solely responsible for processing all accounting, petitions, and reports, didn't have the time for such things, and the "real" ledgers—the ones without the fabrications—were being routed to Wellmy.

Thus, it became Wellmy’s job to gather evidence for when the time finally came.

「The handwriting in the authentic version of these ledgers belongs to you, Wellmy Ernest.」

Eides spoke with a thin smile, piling on his words like a predator cornering its prey.

「...You knew, didn't you? You knew your own father was guilty of tax evasion and filing false reports.」

「I-I knew no such thing! Besides, there's no way Father would ever do something so dreadful!」

She was quite good at playing the fool.

Moreover, Wellmy already had a general idea of what Eides was going to do. After all, she was the one who had pulled the strings behind the scenes to ensure that the truth about her sister’s situation and the ledgers reached Eides’s ears and hands.

「'No way,' you say? And yet, every one of those magical artifacts Lola was supposedly buying on her own was of unknown origin, and there are traces that every single one of them was 'cursed'... Furthermore, we have confirmed that the purchaser was a middle-aged noble-looking man, short and stout with a small mustache.」

Eides paused for a moment.

「The curses have been lifted by someone's hand, however. I wonder just who those curses were meant for? The heir to the Countdom was changed quite recently, was it not?」

This time, the very atmosphere of the room shifted.

The curious interest in how this would end turned into a heavy air of condemnation as the guests realized the full extent of the Countdom’s cruelty toward Lola. Even Father, foolish as he was, seemed to realize the gravity of the situation. Pale-faced, he tried to protest.

「Wh-what... i-it wasn't me! Don't look at me!」

A middle-aged noble-looking man, short and stout with a small mustache. The description fit Father perfectly, to the letter.

(That tone and attitude are as good as a confession, you know?)

Supprossing a laugh, Wellmy countered.

「Wh-what if my sister was the one targeting Father?!」

「Impossible. The maid and the butler have both testified that those items were all found in Lola’s room. Those are artifacts that exert their influence simply by being placed in a location.」

It was only natural, given that they had been trying to kill her sister. After all, the person who had been lifting the curses from those artifacts—which the butler had received and been ordered to place in Lola’s room—was Wellmy herself.

While she lacked the "Purple" eyes that could master all magic, or the "Gold" of offense, or the "Silver" of healing, Wellmy possessed vermillion eyes, which boasted the highest aptitude for what is known as auxiliary magic.

She had feigned incompetence at school, but she had practiced curse-breaking magic desperately from the moment she saw the first artifact intended to kill her sister. By now, she was capable of breaking almost every curse known to man.

Because she had been handing the items to her sister only after the curses were broken, Lola had suffered from frequent bouts of poor health shortly after entering the academy, but that was no longer an issue.

And of course, cursed artifacts were illegal.

Eides was showing no mercy in laying everything bare. It was exactly why Wellmy had chosen him to be the one she entrusted her sister to.

「You have committed a foolish crime, Count Ernest.」

The Magus Lord, who was said to hate society and women. He was the very man who loathed such things, the one who had risen to the top by deciphering the structure of cursed artifacts to crack down on them, leading the reformation of the Ministry of Magic.

His reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness among the public was merely a story spread by nobles who had lost their means of cursed assassination because of him.

Wellmy knew.

Despite having met him only once at a social gathering, she knew he was not the man the world believed him to be.

*****

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