Chapter 2.2
Feeling antsy, she lifted her head to look around for a way out. Then she paused, seeing a faint light in the distance, and narrowed her eyes. It was not a torch. Perhaps it was a wand since it was widely known that this was a forest that was home to a fairy. I heard that it hates humans though. As soon as it sees one it puts a curse on that person.
How a drowning man feels when he catches a straw, Emma’s whole body–covered in rain and muddy water, starts to tremble. She was scared to her core, but if she was bound to die, whether she went this way or that way, wouldn’t it just be better to get killed by a fairy? She limped with a determined face toward the spot where the faint light shone.
Huh? Emma managed to get to the place where the light had led her, but she hadn’t expected to find a house in the middle of the deep forest. Am I just seeing things? Even though she frantically rubbed her eyes, the building in front of her was still a house. It wasn’t just a shabby house, but a solid stone building. Although it was a single-story, it was a decent-looking mansion.
Even if it was located in the city center, she could not imagine it in such a place. So it was a little, no, very strange. Squinting her eyes, she saw that it was an oddly shaped mansion. Unlike its smooth appearance, the windows were all blocked, the divided garden was left unattended, and not a single horse was tied to the mountain-shaped stable. Even the shed, which was far off to the side, looked empty.
She wondered if it was perhaps a hunting lodge or a summer villa. At first glance, it looked like a summer villa that belonged to a wealthy noble family. Where is this place? Emma tried her best to figure out exactly where she was now standing. After more than a day’s drive from Summerville, a busy city near King’s Island, she must be somewhere north of Polarville, but unfortunately, she couldn’t figure out the exact location. And after waking up, she’d also wandered through the forest for over an hour so that didn’t help much either.
Maybe it belonged to the famous aristocrats bordering the Perrigans, like Count Edner or Count Van Wert. The two well-known families, with border properties, naturally came to mind. The Edner family were great nobles of vast territory and power, and the Van Werts were weaker and less experienced than them, but also a historic family, best known for being members of the Margrave.
The two families had been the shield and sword of the Kingdom of Berken for hundreds of years, responsible for keeping the threat of all kinds of monsters at bay.
Oh, and there is Baron Muns too. There were other less prominent aristocrats on the outskirts of the Perrigans. Baron Muns, in particular, was thriving from commerce and trade because he was adjacent to the border. So the building in front of Emma may be the Muns family’s mountain retreat because money was flowing to them now.
It most certainly didn’t appear to be a military facility, operating with a guard post, nor did it resemble a barracks to house troops. The finishing material was too luxurious at first glance. It couldn’t be a fortress to defend against monsters either, because it looked more decorative than practical, and it had the appearance of nobility.
Emma had grown up in Summerville, a fairly busy small to medium-sized city near King’s Island. Although there were no great aristocratic families under the direct control of King’s Island, rumor had it that the aristocrats of the island were absurdly wealthy, and Emma had witnessed several luxurious golden carriages heading for the island before.
She concluded that this place must be a mountain retreat for the aristocracy. No one else could afford to build a magnificent mansion in the mountains like this and she wondered who was inside it.
Holding her breath, she carefully snooped around, studying the surroundings. The building, trapped in the darkness, looked dreary as if it were under a curse too. The windows were all blocked with shutters, but a faint light was visible near a small window close to the roof. Thank goodness it wasn’t a fairy’s home. Those who were not human didn’t depend on light, so at least the person inside had to be a human and not an evil fairy who played tricks on humans and enjoyed causing terrible misfortune for them. However, it was too suspicious of a mansion to approach too quickly.