The Missing Servant
“Disappeared, you say?”
Irene’s eyes widened as she listened to the fortress staff members who had come looking for her.
“Yes. Miss Wilhelmina has been missing since the day before yesterday, so I wonder if something happened that day. Do you perhaps remember any incident from that day?”
The fortress staff carefully questioned Irene about her whereabouts that day, explaining that Wilhelmina’s pair had filed a missing-person report because she had not been seen for two days prior.
“I know this is unpleasant, but please bear with us. We have asked the same question to all the purifiers besides you…”
“Oh, it’s not that. It’s only natural to investigate when a person goes missing.”
Irene’s expression had hardened from genuine surprise.
This had never happened in her previous life.
Anyway, so many things had already changed that comparing it to the past felt pointless, yet she had not imagined even this.
“Two days ago I had gone to pray for the victims who perished in the dungeon along with the other purifiers. I was with everyone from morning until evening, and the temple priests would have seen me as well. Michael saw me too.”
The staff members had never suspected Irene of any wrongdoing from the start.
Yet when Michael’s name came up, their faces looked genuinely apologetic.
They asked only a few more formal questions before quickly leaving.
The moment they were gone, Reina who had been with her in the room clicked her tongue.
“Disappearance in the fortress? With the way things have been lately, maybe she quietly went home?”
“No way.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She hates the house so much.”
She was the one who had worried that an old man who wanted a purifier might sell her off. Yet for her to go home?
That was impossible.
‘But aside from the house, I don’t think there’s anywhere else Wilhelmina would go.’
She had not been on good terms with the knights she had once been paired with, and apparently she had been on the verge of breaking with the current one too.
She had reported it properly, yet her pair seemed rather relieved.
‘I heard she had been staying beside the princess all this time. Has she really fallen out with the princess too?’
But even if she had quarreled with the princess, she would not leave the fortress.
“Why are you taking it so seriously, unnie? Let’s think about our next plan instead.”
“Mhm.”
Listening to Reina who had started calling her “unnie” so casually these days, Irene nodded.
Lately the fortress had been trying hard to recover from the shock of the distortion dungeon.
Above all, people could not just rest because new dungeons kept appearing.
If they left a dungeon alone, monsters would pour out from it.
Normally they had been in a frenzy to enter the newly generated ones first, either to obtain rewards or just to clear them.
But with so many capable pairs having perished and so many still unable to shake off the nightmares of that day, the number of people in the fortress who could properly go out to exterminate was now far too few.
Because of that, Michael had become even busier.
He had been hurrying around as if the tragedy of the distortion dungeon was his personal responsibility.
Thanks to him, his already lofty reputation had now truly pierced the heavens.
Thanks to that…
Even after nearly two weeks inside the distortion dungeon with Irene and Michael, and even after they had declared that purification had been completed, no one seemed to believe they had mixed their bodies together.
‘Is this good or bad?’
Irene absentmindedly touched the nape of her neck, which Michael had so persistently kissed inside the dungeon.
‘People will never know the other side of Michael.’
The devout holy knight would show an entirely different face when the two of them were alone.
His voice calling her name would still be calm and respectful, but his hands would become rough and his waist merciless.
And when he begged her by calling her name, even more so.
“Haa…”
Irene felt her body grow hot without realizing it, accompanied by an unexpectedly rising breath.
Inside the dungeon, he had never let her out of his arms except when eating and sleeping.
Naturally, he had kept her deep inside him.
Even when they slept, he had kept her in his mouth, so whenever she woke up she had immediately reached climax.
‘And yet when we returned to the fortress he hasn’t even come looking for me.’
She knew he had been busy cleaning up the numerous dungeons that had been generated with the other knights.
But unlike the head that understood, the emotions moved of their own will.
So…
‘I feel so irritated I could die.’
Her own body was heating up just from thinking about it.
Yet he, who had left her alone, went about his business outside without a care and did not come to her.
Suppressing her grumbling, Irene looked at the papers scattered on the desk.
The list of newly generated dungeons and their locations, the roster of newcomers to the gathering, and the results of new tests written by the Hand of Appraisal, among other things.
To anyone looking, the enormous table covered with papers would seem like the busiest person in the fortress.
Irene picked up the paper with the dungeon list written on it.
At that moment Reina beside her lifted the paper underneath and handed it over.
“This too. It’s all a list.”
“Huh? Is this also a list of generated dungeons?”
Irene looked at the new list in surprise.
“Why has it increased so much?”
“How would I know that?”
Reina shrugged with both hands raised as if she really did not know, and Irene pressed her hand to her forehead.
“No, it’s not that…”
She knew that dungeons generated more as the weather warmed.
But what she meant by that now was that the number had increased compared to her previous life.
‘I remember this clearly. Today marks exactly three months since then, so the quarterly settlement must have been issued.’
She had been remembering the number of dungeons that had occurred from the beginning of the year up to today, broken down by grade.
Yet compared to her previous life, the number had almost doubled except for the upper-grade dungeons.
“The fortress staff said the same thing as you. They say this year has especially many dungeons.”
She said it in a joking tone while muttering to herself.
“If this keeps up, won’t the world be filled with dungeons?”
“…”
It had been said in jest, yet Irene could not smile.
Up until now the only thing that had changed from her previous life was whether artifacts had appeared or not.
Yet now the number of dungeons had changed so drastically.
‘If it continues to increase at this rate…’
They might truly reach their limit with just the pairs in the fortress.
“That explains why Michael is so busy.”
With the number of dungeons increasing to this extent, he had no choice but to run around twice as hard.
Yet he had been muttering that he did not know why he was not coming without realizing that.
Irene was about to feel a little guilty when Reina stared fixedly at her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Unnie, what happened with Michael-nim in the dungeon?”
“Eh? U, um? What are you suddenly talking about?”
“Before entering, you seemed to struggle calling Michael-nim by name, but now you call him so easily.”
Reina laughed as she added that she would never call Felix by the title Felix-nim either.
“Because there were so many dangerous things in the dungeon, we got closer… There was really nothing special!”
She waved the paper she had been holding in front of her face while saying that.
At that moment a voice came from behind with a presence.
“As I said, we have indeed become much closer.”
Irene turned around in surprise. There stood Michael, the traces of the dungeon still clearly on him.
He smiled brightly and said,
“There was really nothing special.”
The moment Irene heard his voice, she felt it.
Michael…
‘He’s sulking!’