Chapter 58: Margareta's Little Secret
"Brother! What are you doing! This gentleman is an expert in lifting curses; he's here to help you!" Margareta knelt before Niren in the gloomy, dense woods, her voice hoarse from crying.
"Lift the curse? What's the point now!" Niren spat out a fractured tooth and spoke with bitter hatred.
He hadn't died, and his neck didn't even have a scratch. There was only a two-finger-wide red welt on his face.
After his mastery level reached the Expert tier, Arthur's sword seemed to have a life of its own. When Niren lunged forward, ready to die, Arthur countered with a twist and a flat slap of the blade, knocking the hunter violently back to the ground.
It didn't even delay Arthur from finishing the sigil with his left hand; a pigeon-egg-sized fireball now hovered in the air, ready to unleash flames at any moment.
"If you want to fight me, you'd better change into a werewolf first." Despite Niren's uncooperative behavior so far, Arthur's tone remained light.
He had captured the werewolf, guaranteeing at least ten progression points this time. If he was lucky, he might even lure out Rience, who had been plotting against him, and take him down.
Margareta, however, grew tense again: "Please, don't kill my brother! He is innocent! The Village Chief forced him to do all the bad things!"
She seemed to have forgotten the scene just seconds ago when Niren shot an arrow at her.
The foolish girl was even crawling toward him on her knees, apparently trying to kiss Arthur's boot.
Arthur was disgusted and quickly backed away: "Get up! Don't kneel! What kind of behavior is this!"
He shouted several times before he finally managed to stop Margareta's absurd gesture. She raised her head, smiled through a face covered in snot and tears, and asked:
"You aren't going to kill my brother anymore?"
Arthur almost choked: "Why do you keep thinking I want to kill your brother? Do I look like some kind of murderer?"
It was meant to be an exasperated remark, but Margareta nodded: "My brother's hair is all bristled up. That means you've killed far more people than he has."
What kind of nonsense is this…
Arthur was about to refute this ridiculous claim when Niren chimed in, adding fuel to the fire:
"I thought I had killed enough people, but I didn't realize you'd killed more and with greater ruthlessness. Go on, do it. I accept my death at your hands!"
What is wrong with this family! Can't anyone just speak normally!
Arthur was enraged by the audacity of these two. He balled his fist and punched the tree trunk Niren was leaning against:
"I said I'm here to lift the curse! Why does neither of you seem to understand that!"
Cr-crack…
The small tree had already taken a solid impact from Niren earlier. Now, enduring Arthur's angry punch, it couldn't hold up any longer and tilted precariously before falling down.
Arthur looked down at Niren:
"The sorcerer who turned you into a werewolf and I have a score to settle. I heard he hasn't been treating you well either, so no matter what, you should be on my side."
Even after such a straightforward pitch, Niren remained tight-lipped, offering no answer.
Margareta anxiously urged:
"Brother, what do you still have to worry about?! If you won't talk, then I will!"
Following that, no matter how sternly Niren glared at her, the girl poured out everything she knew.
Three years ago, the villagers of Big Black Tree were gathered together, sighing as they did every year, worried about the tax collector's impending arrival. Rience walked in carrying a human head.
The head, naturally, belonged to the tax collector.
For reasons unknown, the Prince of Maribor had completely contracted out the governance of the territories outside Maribor City. The contractors only needed to pay a fixed tax sum to the Prince; any remaining tax revenue could be kept for themselves.
Naturally, these contractors exploited the tax districts ruthlessly. Every year, there were villages where people were pushed to the brink of survival.
Therefore, although terrified by the sight of the tax collector's head, the villagers were also secretly a little pleased. They allowed Rience to take the Village Chief away under the pretense of "discussing business."
Rience left after his discussion with the Chief. The villagers all assumed it was just another dirty job, perhaps intercepting a down-on-his-luck noble or robbing a specific wagon passing through at a set time.
But as Niren's sister, Margareta knew the truth. Rience, in collusion with the Village Chief, captured Niren while he was hunting in the forest and used a strange and wicked ritual to transform him into a werewolf, intending for him to specialize in hunting tax collectors.
Life as a werewolf was not easy, and the full moon nights were even harder. Niren collapsed after only one transformation.
He tried to run away, but no matter how far he fled, he would always wake up in the patch of woods where the curse was first cast. Margareta, who accompanied him once, described it this way: 'As soon as we left the village boundary, my brother became like a different person. He only knew how to walk back, and I couldn't pull him away.'
Hearing of Niren's lack of cooperation, Rience visited Big Black Tree Village again. He transformed his hand into a glowing-red iron claw and savagely tortured Niren. The werewolf's powerful self-healing ability became an incredibly vicious curse. Far from being able to die, Niren couldn't even pass out until the break of dawn, when Rience finally left, satisfied.
From then on, Margareta began searching for a way to lift the curse. It wasn't until recently that she heard a shirt made from parsley leaves could break the lycanthropy curse.
"Do you know what I felt when I finally finished making a parsley shirt, only for Hanna to take scissors and cut it into pieces, snip by snip?"
The sun was already setting, and the tears on Margareta's face were colored red by the evening glow:
"I always thought I not only had a brave brother but also a gentle and virtuous sister-in-law. But I never imagined she would personally destroy my brother's hope of becoming normal again, just for the sake of an easier life!"
Her gaze fixed on Niren: "Brother, I don't blame you at all for shooting an arrow at me, truly.
"I blame Hanna. She knew how much agony you suffered every day. She heard your desperate howling in the woods during the full moon, yet she did everything she could to obstruct me from breaking your curse!"
Arthur was thoughtful: "So, you replaced the parsley leaves in Hanna's clothing with the leaves of Trefoil?"
Trefoil, Arthur realized, was the plant he had seen in the vegetable patch the one that looked like parsley but had a different scent.
Margareta nodded, acknowledging her actions.
With that, the cause of Hanna's death became clear. The hunter's wife wore leaves that offered no repellent effect and consequently died tragically at the hands of her transformed husband a truly bitter irony.
Arthur sighed: "I've dealt with Rience before. He's a deeply vicious man. Perhaps Hanna was threatened into doing that…"
Margareta looked sadly toward Niren: "I know. That scumbag would definitely have said he'd kill our whole family if Niren's curse was lifted. "But so what? Rather than watching you suffer in agony every day, I'd prefer you to be human for a few days, and then I'll die with you!"
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