Chapter 24: Telepathy

Castle first floor, dining room.

The battle between the ‘Pugilist’ and the ‘Detective’ had come to an end.

Dennis Sandek’s body collapsed to the ground with a thud.

Hermann shifted his gaze from the man’s body to the mastermind behind it all, Hannah Carter.

In a good mood, he spun the revolver in his hand, brought the gun to his lips like a cowboy, and blew on it lightly.

Then he aimed the muzzle at the Baron’s daughter and said breezily:

“Miss Carter, tell me, there are two guns here. Whose hand would you like to die by?”

“Mine, or Miss Moulton’s?”

With the situation firmly in their favor, the man with the vile personality seemed unable to hold back his true nature and began to joke, but…

This was a lie.

The truth was, Rosie Moulton’s pistol held a total of seven bullets.

After the encounter with Donahue Bobby and the feinted attack just now, it was already empty.

She was now just a delicate, weak, and easily killable, useless young lady.

As for himself, in order to make the act convincing enough to deceive everyone in the dining room, he had used the ability of a ‘Trickster’ to maintain the burned-face disguise for a long time.

His spirituality was already at rock bottom.

Moreover, the ‘Detective’ path was only passable in terms of combat; his fighting power was not that strong.

Even though he, as a “Trickster,” was likely one Sequence higher than Dennis, he was still seriously injured by the other party.

One of his arms was almost crippled, and in the end, he had only managed to win by a stroke of luck through trickery.

So, all his babbling and posturing right now was just to “sell a flaw” to Hannah Carter, to make it easier for her to run away quickly.

Hannah’s eyes swept coldly over Dennis’s corpse, the corners of her lips curling up slightly in a smile.

“I’d rather ask Mr. Rhys and Rosie.”

“When I become a ‘Forbidden Scholar,’ a Living Corpse, or a Resentful Couple.”

“Which one would you two rather become?”

The answer she received was an amber-yellow bullet.

Taking advantage of the moment Hannah was dodging the attack, Rosie, who was in a state of high alert, understood immediately.

She knew Hermann was providing cover for her.

With a small lift of her skirt, she immediately dashed towards the only available cover in the room: the overturned dining table.

Bang!

A teeth-grinding roar sounded in her ears.

It was the chair Hermann had thrown colliding with a fireball controlled by Hannah in mid-air.

The shockwave from the explosion rolled over, hitting Rosie.

The bone-chilling cold made her shiver uncontrollably.

‘This fire is actually cold!’

With her life on the line, Rosie couldn’t be bothered with much else.

When she was still two or three steps away from the table, she pounced like a hungry tiger, straight towards the great detective who was cowering there to avoid the attack.

“F*ck!”

Hermann’s expression changed, and he uttered a word that was not in the vocabulary of a noble young lady like ‘Rosie Moulton.’

But faintly, she could guess its general meaning.

‘Mm, it should be a catchphrase similar to ‘holy sh*t’.’

“Give me a hand!!!”

The young lady’s panicked cry came from beside her ear.

But with one of his hands broken and the other holding a gun, how could he spare a hand to pull up this young lady who had “tripped on flat ground”?

There was no choice but to be forced to act as a human cushion once again.

The two of them crashed together and fell to the ground.

Poor Hermann, his already overburdened and injured body was once again elbowed hard by his teammate.

What more could he say.

“Hiss…”

Hermann sucked in a cold breath, his expression contorting as the wound was pulled.

Then, a refreshing and elegant fragrance wafted into his nostrils.

It was a floral-scented perfume, very faint.

You could hardly smell it unless you were close, the kind you wear for yourself, or for someone exceptionally intimate to smell.

Yes, “exceptionally intimate,” just like the two of them at this moment.

Pain, softness, warmth—these were the pieces of information that registered in Hermann’s mind in stages.

The young lady’s body was delicate and weak, like a warm summer breeze, like the tide in July, enveloping him in sunlight, drowning him in the ocean.

It was intoxicating.

But then again, even a hundred pounds of cotton would still be uncomfortable when it smashed into someone.

The corner of Hermann’s mouth twitched, and he opened his eyes with a frown.

Rosie was about half a head shorter than him.

When she fell on him, her small head rested on his chest, her whole face buried there.

He tilted his head up slightly, and a tickling sensation came from his chin, light and soft, like a boneless little hand, teasingly caressing him.

The crown of the girl’s head was pressed against the man’s chin, and it seemed a little uncomfortable.

Her cool-toned tea-brown hair swayed back and forth in his vision.

Then, a small face, scrunched up from a bit of pain, emerged from his embrace.

It had to be said, this viscount’s daughter was truly beautiful.

No wonder she could make a name for herself in the capital, Bredek, on her looks alone.

It was rumored that a member of the royal family was ardently pursuing her.

And, her figure…

Well, due to reasons beyond his control, he had experienced it quite thoroughly.

Let’s just say, Miss Moulton’s future children would definitely not go hungry.

However, that had nothing to do with him.

Hermann just felt that this person, who looked so slim, was actually quite heavy, pressing down on him uncomfortably.

The straight man—no, the great detective Hermann couldn’t help but use his good arm to push the young lady on top of him.

“Still lying there? Why don’t you just take a nap?”

A somewhat unfriendly voice came from beside her ear.

Rosie opened her eyelids at the words.

Her misty-blue eyes reflected Hermann’s face.

His expression wasn’t too good…

Alright, it was a completely foul face.

That disdainful look was just like the one her old mother would give her at the dinner table after she had spent half a month on vacation doing nothing but playing on her phone and computer, just lying around at home.

Actually, even with Hermann acting as a human cushion, she didn’t feel much better either.

Back when she was a boy, roughhousing with a group of guys didn’t seem like a big deal.

Now that she was in a different shell, she could feel the difference.

Were all men made of bricks?

How was everything so hard?

His arms were hard, his chest was hard; the fall had left her dizzy and disoriented.

As her head gradually cleared, belatedly, Rosie became embarrassed again.

This stemmed from the unfamiliar sensation of pressure on her chest…

‘Holy fcking sht, I’ve really become a delicate flower made of water!¹’

‘What the hell is this?’

Alright, she now profoundly understood what it meant to be angered by embarrassment.

Rosie truly had the impulse to just disregard everything and curse him out, or simply get hands-on and give Hermann a good beating.

However, with her male mindset still dominant, she managed to suppress this thought.

It wasn’t that she, as a man, was particularly reasonable, but rather, she felt that acting like a little girl was somewhat demeaning.

Although their posture was intimately close, this man and woman, by a strange coincidence, had the same thought in their minds.

‘She’s so annoying.’

‘He’s so annoying.’

¹ Chinese idioms. “Made of water” is from Dream of the Red Chamber and describes women as pure, gentle, and delicate. Here, Rosie is sarcastically applying it to herself to complain about her new body’s fragility. “化骨绵掌” (Huà Gǔ Mián Zhǎng) is the Bone-Melting Cotton Palm, a fictional martial arts technique.