Chapter 62

Turning back, I pulled out a dagger I had tied to my thigh with my left hand.

The dagger, which cut through the air like flowing water and aimed at the opponent’s neck, was blocked in the air without cutting off a single hair of the opponent.

“Ah, this.”

As if they had expected me to attack, the opponent held my arm so leisurely to block the attack.

Immediately I thought of the next best thing.

I’m going to grab his arm, twist it, and kick him in the stomach- Oh, wait a minute.

“… Caesar?!”

“Shh.”

I was shocked when I belatedly checked the other person’s face.

I mean, why are you here when you’re supposed to be at the Cathedral with Yulika?

“Wow. I had a chill on my back. I’d truly almost died.”

He skillfully snatched the dagger from my hand.

“What are you doing here!?”

“Don’t worry. The crown prince has returned to the imperial palace after receiving a very urgent report that ‘there was a sudden conflict with the barbarians in the frontier area’.”

Whirl. After Caesar turned the dagger several times in the air, he directed the handle toward me.

Still puzzled, I took the blade and strapped it back to my thigh.

“But are you going to be okay?”

“I’ve prepared it with Marquis Ben. I intentionally spilled the news to Brande. By now, the imperial carriage carrying Hamilton must be rushing towards the imperial castle.”

Ah… Hamilton.

He didn’t like this plan but still got caught up in it.

Come to think of it. I’m still very upset at Hamilton for telling Caesar about our meeting.

It serves you right!

“Do you have any more questions?” Caesar smiled and tilted his head to the side.

He had a completely different expression from that Caesar’s, who was cold and brutal when we’d met in the temple a while ago.

‘This is the Caesar I know.’

Looking at that expression, I feel somewhat reassured.

“No more question.”

“All right. Then…” Caesar stretched out his arms toward me.

“Let’s hug.”

I laughed as I put back the candlestick and leaned in his arms.

As soon as his collar touched my cheek, he hugged me tightly. I snuck into his arms almost as if I were buried.

‘He feels very thin.’

Is it because of heartache?

Well, it was said he was even doing the emperor’s work these days.

“Eat more.”

Caesar brought up what I wanted to say first.

“You look like you lost weight. What if you die like this, Helena?”

“People don’t disappear that easily.”

“Where does all the sugar you eat disappear to?” Caesar chuckled softly. His cheeks tickled as his body shook.

“All right, that’s enough for now.”

He slowly released me from his arms. But I could feel I wasn’t the only one who was disappointed.

I waited for the following words, still clutching his sleeve.

“So, you secretly infiltrated the Dracoism meeting?”

Ugh.

I raised one eyebrow and looked up at Caesar.

“You’re not going to nag me here, are you?”

“I have to point out what I have to point out. Otherwise, you’ll jump into dangerous things on your own again. Just like now.”

Caesar pinched my cheeks slightly before releasing them.

“Please discuss first, Helena.”

“I can’t help it. I can’t even get close to you right now,” I said out of frustration.

I regretted saying that immediately because Caesar’s eyes shook so clearly, even in the darkness.

He let out a forced smile, erasing my guilt.

“… Please tell Leonard or Hamilton. It’ll eventually reach me as well,” he said after a while.

“All right, I’ll do that.”

It was just an oral promise, but I thought it would be fine if this could give him peace of mind.

Caesar smiled softly at me, nodding his head.

“Well, shall we go find Dante Renatus then?” He raised the tone as if to evoke the atmosphere.

I laughed out loud at the lively tone that didn’t fit the place.

***

The coffins preserved in the Cathedral differed from burials and were usually made of sarcophagi.

“It’s more of a work of art than a coffin,” I muttered as I scanned the various coffins lined up on either side.

Stone carvings of people carrying coffins on their shoulders, engravings of the life of a reclining person on the side of the coffin, adorned with gold…

I was tongue-tied at the splendor.

“Seriously, why make the box where a dead body is kept so glamorous?”

“Sometimes I’m surprised by your insensitiveness.” Caesar let out a bitter laugh at my grumble.

“It’s hard to tell which one of Dante’s coffin is.”

No name tag was attached to the coffin, so it was impossible to know unless you opened it one by one.

Wait a minute. Can we even know even if we opened it?

No matter how much embalming was done, the body must’ve been distorted and shriveled.

‘My mummified body… Now that I imagine it in detail, I don’t want to see it.’

Ummm. I spontaneously groaned.

“All we have to do is check the coffin’s lid,” Caesar murmured as he examined a sculpture carved into a nearby coffin.

“The coffin’s lid?”

“Yes. The lid is carved with the whole body of the owner.”

My face crumpled automatically. All I could think about was Such bad taste.

“Most of the bodies here are men, so we should be able to find it in no time.”

“The coffin’s lid. So do I have to climb up people’s coffins one by one?”

Identifying the coffin’s lid with a normal human height was difficult. I wish I had a footrest or a ladder, but there was no such thing now.

“We can check it without climbing up, right?” Caesar refuted my concerns in a light tone.

“What?”

“What is your height plus my height?”

That’s right. As long as Caesar hugs me up, it’ll work out.

“Oh, I see! Then I’ll ask you a favor, Caesar!”

“That’s not it, Helena.”

“It’s not?”

“Come on, say ‘Hug me, please,’ with a lovely expression on your face.” Caesar raised his chin and began to make strange demands on me with a triumphant smile.

What’s wrong with this guy? Did he become weird after not meeting for a long time?

“Umm… I’ll be grateful if you can… hu- lift me.”

“That sentence won’t work.”

And becoming trickier.

Why are you so persistent with that one sentence?

Well, I’m as persistent because I’m too shy to say that one sentence.

I stuttered again, barely enduring the burning of my face.

“H-Hug… Do I really have to say this?”

“Hurry up, Helena.”

“Kugh… Hug me… please…”

“Hmm. That’s 90 points out of 100. Still 10 points short, I’ll let it pass because you’re cute when you tried.”

“Thank you. Damn it.”

“Come here, come here.” Caesar smiled and held out his hands. I was still angry, but we didn’t have time, so I approached him without hesitation.

Caesar immediately grabbed me and made me sit on his shoulders.

“Hey, is it not heavy?!”

I was surprised that I was lifted so easily.

“It’s heavy, but it’s okay because it’s Helena.”

“What kind of logic is that? Say it’s light right now.”

“It’s so light that I don’t feel any weight at all.”

“Great. Let’s move forward.”

After relieving the tension with a light joke, we began to carefully examine the coffins at the very end, one by one.

As Caesar had said, the coffin’s lid was embossed with a figure of a person lying down.

Most of them are old adult men, so such a coffin was passed by without having to look closely.

“Neither is this… Mm, not this either.”

“You still haven’t found it? I think I’m about to have a problem with my shoulders.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. If it’s too hard, should I lift you instead?”

“… I will do my best to endure it.”

Caesar refuted my remarks in a sullen voice. Perhaps he didn’t want me to lift him because it’d be humiliating.

It was harder than I thought to find Dante’s coffin by relying on candles in the dark underground.

Still, after carefully examining them one by one, I finally found a sarcophagus with a familiar face.

“This is it…!”

It’s my face.

I’ve been lying there with my eyes closed since 500 years ago.

Even though it was made of stone, the appearance was so real that there was no difference from the real thing. I felt like I’d be able to feel body temperature when I touched it.

‘It feels weird.’

Watching my dead body lying as if sleeping, as a completely different person felt weird.

Caesar got me down. We had to calm down for a while before opening the coffin lid.

No matter how big our guts were, facing a corpse directly required some determination. Especially if it was my own body.

“… Are you ready, Helena?”

“Yes.”

“All right, let’s open it.”

Because it was a sarcophagus, the lid’s weight was enormous, and it was not easy to open even with a lever.

Still, the upper part of the coffin was pushed back by a span.

“Hey, it’s open,” I said, rubbing my trembling arms. I thought it was fortunate, but Caesar frowned.

“It was so much easier to open than I thought,” He whispered.

“Apart from the weight, it mustn’t have been opened in hundreds of years. Didn’t it open more easily than expected?”

“Right. Come to think of it. It doesn’t smell that much either.”

No matter how embalmed the body, the smell should appear when you open the lid.

However, there was hardly any odor inside the coffin. There was only a faint smell of dust.

‘Anyway, we’ll have to check it out.’

I strode to the front of the open coffin. I thought it would be better if the body were completely rotten, and there was no way to do anything about it.

But before I could look inside, Caesar grabbed my shoulder and stopped me.

“I’ll check it out.”

Apparently, he didn’t want me to see the body.

In my previous life, it was my daily routine to see bodies lying around in battle.

‘Well. Still, seeing my body in person might be a little off-putting.’

I decided to accept Caesar’s consideration and took a step back.

After taking a deep breath, Caesar took the candlestick from me and proceeded to the front of the coffin.

He stood on tiptoe and peered carefully into the small crevice.

“Can you see it?” Standing behind him, I hurriedly asked impatiently.

However, there was no response even after a long time.

As Caesar looked into the coffin for a long time, there must be something nice. He moved the candlestick from place to place meticulously.

“What’s the matter?”

After a long time beyond nervousness, I finally asked with an ominous feeling.

And finally, the answer came.

“… Nothing.”

“What?”

“There’s nothing,” Caesar turned to me and said. Are you kidding me? I was about to say. But his stiff expression made me sure it wasn’t a joke.

“I want to see it, too.”

Eventually, I hung on to the coffin and looked inside.

“… How did this…?”

Caesar was right.

There was nothing in the coffin. Not the body. Not the linen cloth that the body was wrapped in. And not the things that would’ve been buried together. There was nothing.

“Is the coffin opening easier because someone had already opened it once?” I turned to Caesar and asked. He didn’t answer, just frowned.

“Now… what?”

My stupid question sank into a heavy silence.

I felt like going crazy.

Myself, where did you go?