Adrian’s lips quivered, with no expression on his face.

“He might know what I’m going to do next. He must be burning with a sense of mission to revive Eleonora Asil. As long as he has a nucleus with my soul body in it, he, too, is me… It doesn’t matter if he’s real or fake. Now, what’s the point of all that? Eleonora, who he will revive anyway, will also be a clone.”

Noah thought of something while she listened to him: if he was sinking into extreme torpor and depression due to the unstable soul division, she should first retrieve the nucleus from his clone.

“Then, the problem is him.”

When she made an eye gesture to Muell, he, who understood perfectly, dragged in the blood-soaked Adrian from the next room. Unable to look in that direction, Noah gave orders.

“Muell, take out the nucleus.”

With no hesitation, he put the words into action. Nearby there was a grueling, crackling sound.

A startled look fell over Adrian’s expressionless face. The spot on the clone that Muell attacked was the left side of the chest, the exact spot a heart would have been if he were a real human being. Piercing his hand through the blacked-out Adrian’s chest, Muell wiggled his hand around before pulling out the nucleus, which was about half the size of his hand.

As soon as the soul was yanked out of the body, Adrian’s clone slowly began to fade away. The surface of hard scrap metal–not soft human flesh–rubbed against the floor, creating a dreaded noise that nobody wanted to hear. Blood vessels turned into thin cables and sprung up.

“There are no more clones left to make your plans come true. Right?”

The nucleus that Muell dropped into Noah’s hand pulsated like crazy. Unlike Eleonora, it hadn’t been out of the body for that long, so it was still radiating heat. Noah broke the crystal relentlessly.

“The replica project is over. It’s not you but me who decides whether to revive Eleonora or not.”

Though invisible to the naked eye, very light and low-density energy slowly permeated Adrian’s body. The torn wound on the clone filled the purest and most meticulous dragon’s magic. It started to heal. A light was seen gradually returning to Adrian’s green eyes.

Noah stressed each word as if to engrave the letters on his still blank face.

“And I guess you kept forgetting that you don’t have the right to end your life on your own. How many crimes have you committed? How many victims were there in your research in Harrell? It can’t end this easily. Shouldn’t you at least stand on trial where I stood?”

“…When we go back to the capital, I won’t have a chance to deal with myself completely…”

“I told you. I’m the one who decides that.” Somehow Noah’s anger surged the more she spoke. She stared at him and chit-chatted away. “So until I come looking for you again, sit still and think about how long you will be swayed by Eleonora.” She stared at him straight in the eye as she continued, “If she has been doing it for fifteen years, you’ve done enough. So don’t think aimlessly, think about how you can reduce your sentence.”

Adrian didn’t reply to that. That was the last thing that she could say to him. But maybe the words ‘you’ve done enough’ had been directed toward herself.

After tying a magic rope around Adrian’s body a couple of times, Noah left the detention center with her back to him.

***

Getting rid of Adrian and Eleonora. 

Immediately after leaving the detention center, Noah fell deep into thought. Wouldn’t she have the right to celebrate the end of their lives as she had been caught up in their dramatic games for months? The problem was how she would accept Kyle. Noah carefully opened her mouth while looking at the creases on his face.

“Hey, Kyle. About Eleonora.”

Kyle, who was properly dusting off Muell’s overalls, looked back at her.

“Originally, the rights to dispose of her should have gone to you, a dedicated investigator.”

“That is right,” he replied as a matter-of-fact.

“But can you lend them to me for a little bit? Eleonora’s right of disposition. And Adrian Rossinell’s right of rescission. There’s an ending I really want to see when I go to Tezeba. After seeing just that, I’ll kindly turn them in at the Protection Bureau.”

Honestly, she thought that it was inevitable even if it didn’t work out. Because Eleonora Asil and Adrian Rossinell were already criminals who could remain on death row five times, and Kyle, who was merciless with criminals, seemed to be uninterested in their stories at all. Just by the look of his frown at what she was saying…

“Isn’t that illegal or something?”

“No, never!”

“Then is it dangerous?” he inquired.

“It’s not that either,” Noah hastily replied.

“Then we’re settled. Do as you wish.” But his answer was unexpected. Surprised, Noah asked back, “Settled? Really?”

“You have to do it if you want to. You are the one who overpowered Adrian Rossinell and found Eleonora Asil anyway. Of course, only within the territory permitted by Laurent’s imperial law.”

“Uh…”

“What’s that reaction? Don’t tell me that was illegal?”

As Noah’s jaw fell open at his random question, Kyle raised his eyebrows. She shook her head right away. “No! That could never be! I’m just surprised. I thought you wouldn’t trust me.”