Finding Nosir

And now I feel like I shouldn't have said that after all. I mean, I said it to sound all cool and in that moment to look cool I forgot the fact that I was a modern day woman who had never got myself involved in any kind of altercation before and the most amount of bloodshed I have seen before was when I happened to fall off my bike and bled from my head. And for me to see all these people die right in front me… Well, it was never gonna work.

"What happened?" Jerome asked, as we walked towards the front garden where the execution was taking place.

"Hmm? What do you mean?" I asked, hoping that he wouldn't have seen my hands shaking.

"Well, you look nervous? Is it because they were all your people before?" He asked.

"Yea, something like that." I nodded my head in agreement because there was no other explanation that I could possibly give at that point.

"Hmm, I guess that's understandable. But you have chosen this path. And you have to see through it. There's no choice other than that." He spoke.

"I'm aware of that. I'm very much aware of that." I replied.

I mean, it's not like I don't know that. Like, this is not a game or something that I'll think of taking the pacifist path once just so that I could die and try again. There's no retries in this case. I have to pull through an absolute masterclass for me to survive. And to do that, I have to be as ruthless as I could possibly be.

"Good." It seemed like he was satisfied with my reply right there.

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It was as I expected. Around twenty odd people on their knees begging for mercy when they saw my glimpse. Well, they could've got that if I was the real Nosir. However, I have to survive. I can't let myself like Nosir did. I can't die once again. Who knows what might happen if I die once more? I guess it would be fine if it was a loop of transmigrations or something, but for some reason my mind keeps telling me that it's not gonna be the case and that I have to do my level best to survive in this life and I'm just gonna listen to it than my heart this time around.

"What are you waiting for? Do you expect me to forgive these people—the people who willingly betrayed me on a daily basis? What have you taken me for? I mean, if that's what you think, give that sword to someone else and throw yourself into the frey as well." I spoke to the soldier who was waiting around.

"No, my Lord. I was just waiting for you to give orders." The soldier was visibly frightened at that point.

"Oh, is that so? Kill them then." I ordered and the soldier didn't spare one moment to get on with his job.

It seemed like he was well trained in the art of killing, because every single one of his slices through the people were as clean as it could be. While he himself looked graceful doing that, the entire situation was just a mess. Blood was spraying all over and some just happened to splash over me as well. I felt like I would just straight up vomit at one point, but I just clenched my fists hard enough to stop something like that from happening.

Anyhow, the fact of the matter is that it was gruesome. Gruesome to the point that I can't even explain. And I know for a fact that this has been etched into the memories of every single servant of mine who is still a spy and just happened to escape this scenario due to mere luck. I just want to see if they still wanna try spying for their masters.

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And the answer was they didn't. It seemed like my plan worked! Literally every single spy that was left in my house decided to confess their sins and pledged allegiance to me and promised that they would work as double agents. It's not like I trust them or anything, but I believe they are aware that if they get caught lacking, they're probably going to die and it's gonna be way more gruesome deaths than the others suffered. So, yea. I kinda hope that they don't screw it up for themselves and die in vain.

With that being settled, I decided to do a bit more of a soul searching. Look, Jerome is great and all, but I can't be reliant on someone else to find myself. I mean, if I did that, then I'm just going to find the version of myself molded by that particular person. And that's not who I wanna be. I wanna know who the real Nosir Albius was. Why did he do the things that he did? Why didn't he covet the throne? These were things that Jerome can't answer me and something that I have to find by myself.

And for that to happen, I need to find something close and personal like a diary. But upon checking my entire room, I found nothing of that sort… which makes sense, if you ask me. I mean, a Grand Duke shouldn't just have his deepest secrets just lying around casually, right? But not getting that means that I just have more work to do.

Now, I can be sure about one thing. It has to be in his room. I mean, it's a diary. No one places their diary in the library or something. And that means that there has to be a secret compartment of sorts somewhere in this room that stores my diary. And seeing how there is a bookshelf here and knowing most of the author's obsession with making the secret compartment somewhere in those structures, that was obviously my initial target. And I wasn't wrong about that one but. There indeed was a secret compartment in the bookshelf under the visible bottom compartment!

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