Touching the blood on his forehead and feeling the pain, Mathieu began to look for a way to treat his wound.
"There... are some… bandages in the bag," Lucian weakly motioned to the bag by his side.
Mathieu carefully took the bandages and cleaned the cut before bandaging his head, "Thank you," he said, his voice calm.
"Do you... remember anything?"
Mathieu was about to shake his head when he grabbed it in pain, clenching his teeth. When the pain subsided, he opened his eyes, "I'm Mathieu Duremont."
What a spectacle.
"What are... my favorability points at?" Lucian asked, trying to test out something.
He didn't see anything strange when he occupied Mathieu's body, but he did overhear Mathieu panicking over Celine's negative favorability points when he left Lucian's tent.
People really shouldn't be talking loudly to themselves. There were eyes and ears everywhere, no matter where you went.
"0/100," Mathieu said, looking at the spot above Lucian's head.
Lucian resumed his experiment with his silver stage, no longer able to depend on Mathieu's corpse to carry him around.
The man disappeared into the forest and returned with a big pile of firewood.
'So confident,' Lucian thought when Mathieu started to make a bonfire.
It could alert unwanted guests, but this Mathieu looked confident, like he knew what he was doing.
Maybe he had something up his sleeve, like sending a signal for Duremonts to come and save him? Whatever it was, Lucian decided to go along with it, only to end up being right about catching unwanted attention.
Like on call, Lorano Turan showed up with the intention to get some coins out of Mathieu, but ended up getting killed instead.
It was a bit anticlimactic, Lucian thought, as if Mathieu was toying with Lorano. He had a unique fighting style that Lucian couldn't recognize. It was able to overpower a knight of the same rank easily.
'Can you change Lorano into a shackled, Voice?'
These Mathieus were endangering Celine's safety with their strange prophecies, and they had to go back where they came from, dead or alive.
Mathieu extinguished the fire and dragged the body further into the woods, leaving Lucian alone in the cave.
'There are plenty of high ranked knights. Surely they will be able to deal with one shackled, won't they?'
Voice didn't have to be asked twice and changed Lorano's dead body into a shackled.
'That should keep everyone busy for a while,' Lucian thought, quite surprised by Voice's cooperativeness, 'You refuse to move into Jax's body, but have no problem spreading the shackled plague, huh?'
The shackled was of a high level, giving Mathieu with silver knight rank a hard time. It probably sought money and tried to collect as much of it as possible, and its greed didn't allow it to die peacefully.
Lucian wanted to test out a lot of things, but couldn't do so at the moment. He returned to forging his bones no matter how much he wanted to see Edmund die by the hand of his lackeys, thinking of making some parts of the prophecy come true.
'No time to waste. The sooner I can move on my own, the better.'
Lucian had to spend a lot of energy on healing and repairing the damage that was done to his bones.
Just like how he broke A's wrist like a twig, the knights were able to inflict a similar amount of damage to his bones.
He could deal with regular people, but not the elites that surrounded Celine's world.
The rise was nice while it lasted.
The crushing defeat after was painful to endure.
He had lost his parents, had lost their life savings, had lost his friends, had lost Seline, and now was losing Celine as well.
Every time, there was little he could do but watch as everything he loved was taken away from him, and he was powerless to stop it.
'How did I trust her less than I trusted him?'
Lucian counted the times Edmund made him doubt Celine's intentions, and he didn't like what the numbers showed.
He was angry at Celine for revealing their relationship to Edmund, but maybe it was the only way to protect their relationship.
Going against Lucian would go against Celine, and that was not a place Edmund wanted to be in. She was buying time for him to become more powerful to be able to stand next to her.
Lucian viewed Celine as a danger he had to handle when she was actually his only shield.
He heard flapping of the wings, followed by a loud thud and squawk, as if something big had landed on the ground.
The silent footsteps were getting closer, making the birds fly away.
'Celine?'
Lucian could recognize the sound of her light steps anywhere.
The footsteps stopped, and there was a moment of silence. She took a deep breath as she crouched down.
"Celi..." Lucian whispered.
"Shh," Celine shushed him, caressing his cheek with her thumb just to yank it away in shock.
His skin was boiling hot.
Lucian cooled down a bit, turning his head towards her hand, kissing her fingertips gently, "I'm sorry...for doubting you. You can punish me all you want..."
Celine's eyes were red, but she didn't cry. No, she was furious, "I will skin that bastard alive if it was him. He's already in my black book, but now he'll be in my death book too."
Lucian chuckled at her attempt to lift the mood, "No, it was─"
"You two," Edmund's voice came from behind, interrupting their conversation.
There was a sound of a sword being unsheathed. Edmund held it in his hand and pointed it at them, "There's no time to be lovey dovey. Let's go."
"He can't move," Celine said as she noticed the makeshift splints on Lucian's legs and arms that kept them still, "And I'm not leaving his side."
Edmund was about to protest when Celine stopped him.
"Move the camp closer to us," she ordered, standing up.
"What? Why not just order them to bring a stretcher and help him," Edmund said, "Out of my good will. Nobody will susp─"
"Nobody will get near him," Celine hissed, her voice threateningly low as she grabbed him by the collar, "Nobody. Do you hear me?"
Edmund gulped, nodding, "Alright," he said, "But you owe me one now."
Celine scoffed, her eyes narrowing at him suspiciously, "I owe you nothing," then whistled.
The knight with the cat appeared inside the cave, "My lady."
"Order others to move the camp closer to our location," Celine ordered, "There's some experimenting to be done."
"I'll get to it right away," the knight said.
He gave Lucian a quick glance before disappearing again.