A Demi-Human from Kaigansa

Footsteps echoed in the darkness as Miel walked Artie to the dungeons. She was looking around as much as she could, just so she could have an inkling of what to expect inside. Moreover, she needed to find a way out without hurting the guards that they passed by. Most of them didn't really know why Miel had come with the archduchess instead. Was she here to interview the woman who tried to kill her?

Based on Callum and Dragen's conversation earlier, the woman would be burned in the execution grounds at sundown. Now that Artie had entered the dungeons roughly less than an hour before the execution, she only had a few minutes to spare before the knights would take the woman to be burned alive.

Miel held onto a cell door, but he didn't open the lock. He only turned to Artie who was staring in the direction of the occupied cell. In just one serious look on Artie's face, he could tell that the archduchess had come here to find her… to talk to Jillian, her assassin.

"Lady Shen, you need not cause trouble if you wish to see her." Miel let go of the cell door. "Please, I find it wrong to lock you up willingly. Can you just stay here and spend the night? It's warmer out here than inside the cell. You can opt to stay next to the guard as well so there would be a torch to warm you with, Lady Shen."

"...have you talked to her earlier? This… assassin?" Artie didn't pay attention to what Miel was talking about. She was more curious about the woman. The System gave her a task to save the woman, and yet that very person tried to kill Artie. She needed to know why she must save this woman at least. If the woman caused trouble to Ellis Plains soon, wouldn't that be akin to shooting her own foot?

Miel pursed his lips. He didn't want to speak about Jillian. The memories of his childhood would only flow through, and it was not worth the things that he would lose if he decided to shelter the criminals of the capital. One angel was enough to hide.

He then shook his head and spoke in a rather stern tone, "Lord Ellis spoke to her earlier. He had decided to burn her at the stake. Lady Shen, if you had designs on making contact with her, I would be forced to lock you up. Please, do not make me do such a thing."

"Hoooo? Is that you I hear, Miel? You brought someone?" A woman's laughter echoed from a faraway cell. She seemed to be the assassin Artie was supposed to save. "Hahaha, what's their crime this time? Are they also here for killing the archduchess? Or was it because they spited the archduke? How hypocritical… he kept on imprisoning assassins and hired guns. Aren't you supposed to be rotting in these cells along with us?"

"!!!" Miel gasped softly. He then pursed his lips again and kept his words to himself. However, he was worried about Artie's thoughts. She… wouldn't think less of them, now, would she? Then again, he could always make it sound like death was always an option to him and to the archduke.

It's not like she hadn't seen Larkin and Miel kill someone in plain sight. However, there was this ugly connotation that this woman was trying to imprint on her...

However, Artie didn't cower or even flinched when she heard about it. Not only was she exposed to games with such conspiracies and killings, but she was also aware of those similar situations in real life. The Shen family wasn't a small-time family that could only kiss some other families just to stay in power; they grasped onto power themselves. That in itself was a bloody street.

If this assassin thought Artie was afraid of blood and dead bodies, she was very mistaken.

Artie walked towards the cell, even without the light coming from Miel's lantern. She stopped right in front of the cell in the pitch-black darkness, but her vision was slowly adjusting. She stared down at the woman bound in chains. Jillian wore nothing but her undergarments to keep her from storing weapons even if she was thoroughly incapacitated by the heavy links.

As if Jillian could see her, the assassin's eyes stared straight at the angel's gaze.

["Oh, this Lady Artie Shen is every bit of Kaigansan descendant as he had said. Mixing the blood of the elves with the blood of the demons… what kind of abomination are they planning?"] Jillian's face was making a rather smug grin, but the tone of her thoughts was of anxiousness. ["Miel had been poisoned by the Ellis nobility. I don't care how many lies do I have to craft, but I will make sure he will leave this cursed family..."]

"Are you going to stare at me the whole day, Lady Shen? Heh, what am I saying? I will be executed in a few minutes. Guess I won't be here to accompany you all the way, Lady Shen."

Jillian laughed, but her thoughts were all about what seemed to be a conspiracy being committed by House Ellis. Artie only frowned as she weighed the pros and cons of all the kinds of actions that she could go with. This time, she wanted to think about them carefully. 'Does… Larkin know about the lies being fed to these people? Assassins from the capital are being mobilized by someone. That person could be someone influential...'

Artie then finally chose to extract more information. She asked Heaven's Creation to see if there was a record of this woman in Miel's Nobility Cheat Sheet, but the woman was no noble. The angel could only probe into this case on her own. "Say, where did you hear about me being Kaigansan?"

"Huh?" Jillian was shocked. She had never mentioned anything about Kaigansa during their conversation or with the archduke earlier. How come this lady know that Jillian only heard about her being Kaigansan? ["No, this should be a ploy. Everyone in the capital knew that the archduke's second wife was a demi-human from Kaigansa. She wouldn't be able to trick me into submission through this one."]

'System, is that my fault? They actually believe I'm from Kaigansa because of that profile page I made?' Artie was shocked for a different reason.

[Angels are ethereal creatures whose individual existences are left unrecorded. Only the perception of the world could be written down using Heaven's Creation. Should you wish to change the contents of your page, you must change the world's perception and knowledge.]

Artie nodded even if Jillian refused to answer her. She actually nodded at the system before squatting down before Jillian, a smile curling her lips. "Look at me, do I look like I will harm you? Tell me, who sent you? I want to meet him."