The first floor on the east side was a warehouse for storing furniture, the second floor housed rooms for the coachmen, grooms, gardeners, and male servants, the third floor had rooms for the head maid, the maids, and the head chef, and the fourth floor contained the butler’s room along with a few vacant guest rooms for entertaining less respectable visitors.
Wooden furniture and carpets were undoubtedly the best accelerants. By the time the maids woke up, flames had already engulfed the entire first floor on the east side. Most of the coachmen, grooms, gardeners, and male servants on the second floor had escaped from their rooms. Some even tried to rush back into the mansion to fight the fire. However, these men were quickly directed by Tobias’s personal valet Petty to fetch water and extinguish the blaze.
Tobias’s mansion did not have a running water system, so fighting the fire required drawing water from the well.
Anyone could see that the blaze was too fierce to be put out with a few buckets of water. But when Petty said he would lead the new gardeners and grooms up the western staircase to rescue people, the male servants assigned to fetch water no longer hesitated and obediently went to draw water and put out the fire.
The western staircase was already filled with thick smoke. Under Petty’s directions and leadership, these burly gardeners and grooms—with wet cloths wrapped around their mouths and noses—quickly reached the fifth floor.
They drew poisoned daggers from behind their waists and from their boots, revealing their true faces: a gang of cutthroat thieves who lived by the blade.
These thieves had been hired by Tobias from out of town through Petty. These illiterate thugs had no idea that behind the door ahead lived an earl, not the “kid from a relative trying to inherit our master’s position since he has no son,” as Petty had described.
“—Master.”
Sensing the disturbance, the captain of the guard drew his sword with one hand and held it vertically before his eyes.
“Kill the enemy. No need to worry about me.”
Ulysses took a revolver from an exquisitely crafted leather pouch and began loading bullets into it.
The door creaked open amid the smoke. The moment the leader stepped into the room, Ulysses shot him in the head. The shot was completely unexpected; before the thieves could figure out how their vanguard who had kicked open the door had fallen, the sword-wielding captain of the guard charged forward and cut down two thieves in one go.
The maids on the third floor could barely breathe anymore. Some tried to jump out the windows, but the window frames were heated red-hot like branding irons. One maid’s palm blistered instantly just from touching the frame.
“Let us out… please let us out…”
“God, God, where are You? Please save Your faithful servant! Oh, God—”
The floor was about to give way. Amid hellish screams, the maids who had frantically pounded on the door to escape no longer even had the strength to cry. Their throats were hoarse to the point of bleeding, and the tears streaming from their smoke-stung eyes evaporated instantly in the heat.
“Are we really going to die here today? Why… we didn’t do anything wrong…”
“…We may not have done wrong, but we knew full well that Master… we knew Tobias had done wrong and pretended not to know!”
One maid curled up in the corner and broke down sobbing loudly. “My brother, my father—they hunted werewolves for Tobias for money! Those werewolves hadn’t done anything; they just lived quietly in the mountains and forests! But they killed those werewolves! Killed those werewolves!!”
“Not just your brother and father. My father, my brothers too—”
The maid at the door staggered back a few steps and collapsed to the floor. The door, scorched hot as an iron plate by the fire, could no longer be approached. The maids’ hope of escape was cut off; no one could rescue them from this scorching inferno.
“God, my Father in heaven, if You truly exist, I am willing to pay any price for You to show Yourself, please—”
“You’d better mean that—you’ll pay any price.”
The gentle female voice sounded like an auditory hallucination. Just as all the maids thought their ears were playing tricks, the voice rang out again.
“All of you, get away from the door!”
The voice was so commanding that the maids instinctively obeyed.
Boom!!
Amid the wildly dancing crimson flames, someone kicked open the locked door.
Pointed triangular ears, a long snout, steel-like sharp claws, and thick gray fur covering its entire body.
Ye Tang lifted her skirt and curtsied gracefully to the maids stunned by Lang. “Please remember the promise you just made, or else—”
Leaving those meaningful words, Ye Tang led Lang to the next room. The maids jolted to attention and rushed toward the now-open doorway.
Lang kicked down door after door, while Ye Tang continuously replenished the water on his fur using a water pouch—no helping it, fur was flammable, and if Lang’s fur dried out from the heat, it would scorch at an alarming speed.
By the time the third water pouch was empty, Lang had reached the doors on the fourth floor.
“You—you are…!”
Lorena nearly died of fright at the sight of Lang. But when she saw the butler Hans slung over Lang’s shoulder, she mustered some courage.
“You—you’ve come to take revenge on Tobias? Tobias has already fled through the back door. Please, please spare Hans…”
Ye Tang and Lang exchanged a glance.
The elderly butler Hans on Lang’s shoulder had already passed out from the smoke by the time Lang and Ye Tang found him. Lang was simply carrying him out.
“Madam, does this butler mean more to you than your husband?”
Lorena froze, tears falling from her eyes. “…Yes! Hans watched me grow up; he’s like my brother, my father! After I gave birth to my daughter, he was the only one who cared about me and her! I—I can’t lose him!”
Before Lorena finished speaking, a burning wooden beam collapsed from above. Lang dodged with Hans on his shoulder, then grabbed Lorena like a sack and leaped out.
Lorena was utterly stunned. But in that split second, she noticed that Hans, slung over Lang’s shoulder, had woken up and was looking at her with tears in his eyes.
“Madam, remember what you said.”
Lorena, thrown onto the grass, heard Ye Tang say this.
“Mother! Hans!”
The little girl, held by the head maid and surrounded by the other maids, jumped down from the head maid’s arms the moment she saw Lorena and Hans. She ran to them on her short legs and threw herself crying into their arms.
“With that, everyone should be rescued now, right?”
Lang patted his singed tail. A patch of it had burned bald.
Ye Tang leaned in with a smile to comfort him. “That battle scar looks pretty cool.”
“…”
Beneath the thick, singed fur that smelled of scorch, a certain werewolf’s face heated up. Fortunately, the blazing mansion ahead was too bright for anyone to notice the werewolf’s abnormality.
“But there’s one last thing we need to do.”
Ye Tang changed the subject, and Lang nodded.
“I agree.”
…
“Tobias Gordonworth, did you really think you could escape?”
Tobias’s heart turned ice-cold when he saw Ulysses emerge from the shadows.
He had just opened his mansion’s back door, intending to flee, when countless gun barrels pointed at his head.
The uniformed Queen’s Gendarmerie formed an impenetrable layer of shadow, surrounding Tobias’s mansion. The captain leading them was none other than a traveling merchant Tobias had seen before.
Kneeling at the door with trembling raised hands, Tobias heard Ulysses’s youthful voice drawing near.
“Don’t worry. To the public, I’ll announce that Baron Gordonworth died in an unfortunate accident. I’m sure Her Majesty the Queen will understand my decision.”
Click—
The sound of a revolver’s cylinder being closed after loading bullets.
A cold point pressed against the back of Tobias’s head.
Tobias, snot and tears streaming down his face, squeezed his eyes shut.
The gunshot rang out, but Tobias’s life remained. He incredulously opened his eyes again and looked back to see that Ulysses’s gun barrel had veered off.
The bullet that should have bloomed a flower on Tobias’s head had struck right beside his hand.
“—Lady, what is the meaning of this?”
Ulysses’s voice was as cold as a sword reflecting sharp light.
Ye Tang, who had picked up a stone for Lang to throw, smiled and removed her hood.
“Earl, didn’t you say that if I was telling the truth, I could ask you for anything at any time?”
“I need you to let Tobias Gordonworth live now.”
…
“Master, is this really okay? Agreeing so readily to that village girl’s request…”
Butler Evan whispered in Ulysses’s ear.
Ulysses shrugged. “What’s wrong with it? I want to see what she’ll do.”
Ulysses’s personal valet, the captain of the guard, and the gendarmerie captain who had coordinated inside and out with Ulysses all fell silent at once. Everyone pondered the same question: since when was the earl so accommodating?
…
Gray, dumped in the warehouse on the first floor of Tobias’s East Corridor, had several patches of fur burned bald. Seeing his companions holding back laughter, Gray let out a long howl and roared at them. “What are you looking at?! You’re all the same aren’t you?!”
“Hahahahahaha!!”
Thus, Gray’s companions laughed even louder.
“Sure, we’re all in bad shape, but no one got it as bad as you, Gray—even the fur on your balls got burned off!”
“Hahaha, oh god, Eva would never swoon over you looking like that now!”
Their hearty laughter made it hard to imagine that this pack of werewolves had been paralyzed with werewolf-specific drugs just a day ago. Lang chuckled dryly outside the door, then knocked and entered.
“I’m coming in.”
At the sound of Lang’s voice, the werewolves instantly shut up. Gray, the leader, glared fiercely at Lang as he entered.
“What do you want? Come to play benefactor for humans and expect repayment?”
With a cold sneer, Gray slammed the table and stood. “Don’t think saving our lives makes us grateful to you! We werewolves will never submit to humans! Never!!”