Lillia was a royal guard maid in the
A royal guard maid was exactly what it sounded like — a maid who doubled as a guard. She spent her days performing the duties of a normal maid, but in times of crisis, she drew her sword to protect her master.
Lillia was faithful to her duties, and she handled her work as a maid without a single shortcoming.
However, as a swordswoman, she had all the talent of a junk drawer — a handful of nothing thrown together.
Because of that, when assassins targeted the newborn princess, she lost the fight and took a poisoned dagger to the leg.
The dagger had been coated in a toxin designed specifically to kill royalty.
It was a nasty poison — one that couldn't be dispelled by conventional antidote magic.
Thanks to immediate healing magic and a doctor who attempted to detoxify the wound, Lillia's life was spared. But the aftereffects remained. She could still go about her daily life without issue, but she could no longer sprint at full speed or pivot sharply with her footwork.
Lillia's career as a swordswoman ended that day.
The royal palace dismissed her without batting an eye.
It wasn't unusual. Lillia understood completely. When you lose your ability, getting fired is only natural.
She didn't even receive severance pay for the immediate future, but she figured she was lucky she wasn't secretly executed under the pretext of rear palace service.
Lillia left the capital.
The mastermind behind the princess assassination hadn't been found yet.
Lillia, who knew the layout of the rear palace, understood deep down that she herself could become a target.
Or perhaps the palace had let her go on purpose, hoping she'd lead them to the culprit.
She'd once wondered how someone from such an insignificant family had managed to get hired into the rear palace in the first place. But looking back now, they probably just wanted a disposable maid.
Either way, she needed to distance herself from the capital as far as possible for her own safety.
Even if the palace had released her as bait, she'd received no orders, so there was nothing binding her. She had zero intention of doing them any favors.
Taking connecting stagecoaches, she arrived at the frontier territory of Fittoa — a vast agricultural region. Aside from the fortress city of Roa where the lord resided, it was a quiet countryside covered end to end in wheat fields.
Lillia decided to look for work there.
That said, with her injured leg, she couldn't do any rough work. She might be able to teach swordsmanship, but ideally she wanted to be hired as a maid. The pay was better that way.
In this frontier region, there were plenty of people who could use or teach the sword. But educated maids who could handle the household duties of noble families perfectly were rare. Low supply meant higher wages.
However, getting hired as a maid for the lord of Fittoa or any upper noble of comparable rank was dangerous. Such people naturally had connections back to the capital. If it became known that she'd been a rear palace royal guard maid, she could end up used as a political chess piece.
No thank you. She never wanted to see eyes that looked like they were about to die ever again.
She felt sorry for the princess, but the succession struggles of royalty could go on without her involvement, thank you very much.
Still, a place that paid too little meant she couldn't even send remittances home to her family. Finding conditions that balanced both pay and safety was proving difficult.
After a month of traveling from place to place, one recruitment notice caught her eye.
In
Preference given to candidates with childcare experience and knowledge of midwifery.
Buena Village was a tiny settlement at the very edge of Fittoa territory. The middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere — rural didn't begin to cover it.
It was an inconvenient location, but that was exactly the kind of placement she was looking for.
And the employment conditions were surprisingly good for a minor knight.
Most of all, the name of the recruiter was familiar.
He was her junior fellow student at the dojo.
One day, this noble's spoiled son had shown up out of nowhere at the sword dojo where Lillia trained. Apparently he'd gotten into a fight with his father and been disowned. He ended up crashing at the dojo while learning the sword.
Though they practiced different styles, Paul had also trained in swordsmanship at home from a young age, and before long he'd blown past Lillia completely.
Lillia hadn't been thrilled about it at the time, but she'd since made peace with the fact that she simply lacked the talent.
Paul, brimming with talent, eventually declared he was becoming an adventurer and charged out of the dojo.
He'd been a whirlwind of a man.
It had been about seven years since they parted ways.
She never imagined the Paul she remembered would become a knight and get married...
She didn't know what kind of eventful life he'd led in the meantime, but the Paul in Lillia's memory was never a bad guy. If she told him she was in trouble, he'd probably help.
If he wouldn't, she could always bring up old stories. She had a few anecdotes that could serve as bargaining chips.
With that calculating mindset, Lillia set off for Buena Village.
Paul welcomed her with open arms. His wife
Lillia had been drilled with every bit of knowledge and technique in preparation for the birth and upbringing of a princess. Plus, she was a familiar face with a clearly documented background, so her identity was trustworthy. She was a godsend.
Paul even offered to pay her more than the original rate. For Lillia, it was the perfect arrangement.
The child was born.
It wasn't a difficult birth or anything unusual — it was a smooth delivery, just like they'd practiced back in the rear palace. There were no problems at all. Everything went perfectly.
And yet, the baby didn't cry.
Lillia broke into a cold sweat.
She immediately suctioned the nose and mouth to clear the amniotic fluid, but the infant just stared up at her with a blank expression, not making a single sound.
Could it be stillborn? The baby's face was that devoid of emotion.
She touched it. Warm. Pulsing with life.
Breathing too.
But it wouldn't cry.
A story Lillia had heard from a senior guard maid drifted through her mind. Babies who don't cry right after birth very often have something wrong with them.
Just as she was starting to think the worst — "Aaah... uwaah."
The baby looked at her and mumbled something in a dazed voice.
Hearing that, Lillia felt a wave of relief.
She had no basis for it, but something told her it was going to be okay.
--- The child was named
He was an unsettling child.
He never cried. He never fussed. You could argue he was physically weak, but at least he wasn't any trouble.
...That was what she told herself, anyway, and only at the very beginning.
Once Rudeus learned to crawl, he got into everything in the house.
Everything. Everywhere.
The kitchen. The back door. The storage room. The broom closet. Inside the fireplace. And more. She had no idea how he managed it, but he even made it into the second floor at one point. The moment you looked away, he vanished.
But for some reason, he was always found somewhere inside the house. Rudeus never — not once — went outside.
He'd sometimes stare out a window, but he was probably still scared of the outdoors.
When did Lillia start feeling an instinctive dread toward this baby? Was it when she lost sight of him and then found him again?
In most cases, Rudeus would be smiling.
Sometimes staring at vegetables in the kitchen.
Sometimes watching the flickering candle flame on the candelabra.
Sometimes gazing at underwear left out before laundry.
Rudeus would mutter something under his breath, then flash a creepily uncomfortable smile and laugh.
It was the kind of smile that triggered a visceral revulsion.
It reminded Lillia of the smile she'd seen on a certain minister she'd encountered during guard duty at the royal palace. The way his bald head glistened, his fat belly jiggling, leering at her chest with that grin — that was the exact same smile now appearing on the face of a newborn baby.
What was especially terrifying was when she picked Rudeus up.
He would flare his nostrils wide.
Hook the corners of his mouth upward.
Breathing heavily.
Press his face into her chest.
And then, his throat would hitch as he laughed — a strange sound somewhere between "fufi" and "ohoh" — as though he was trying to hide the laugh itself.
In that instant, an icy chill gripped her entire body. A chill so intense it made her want to hurl the baby she was holding onto the ground. There was nothing adorable about this baby. This smile was purely, utterly repulsive.
The same smile as that rumored minister who bought up large numbers of young female slaves — except a newborn was making it.
It was incomparably more disturbing, so much so that she felt genuinely threatened, even though she was dealing with an infant.
Lillia came to a conclusion.
Something was wrong with this baby.
Perhaps something evil had attached itself to him.
Or maybe he'd been cursed.
Once that thought took hold, Lillia became restless. She rushed to the tool shop, spent her meager savings on what she needed, and performed a warding ritual passed down in her homeland while the
Of course, she did all of this without telling Paul or anyone else.
The next day, Lillia picked up Rudeus — and realized it was all for nothing.
The creepiness was exactly the same as before.
Just the baby's expression alone was enough to set her on edge.
Zenith had even said, "When that child nurses, he licks, you know..."
Unbelievable.
Paul might be a womanizing scoundrel, but even he wasn't this unsettling. Even as a matter of genetics, this was too much.
Then Lillia remembered something.
Oh, right — she'd heard a story about something like this in the rear palace.
There had been an incident where a prince of Asura, possessed by a demon, crawled around the rear palace on all fours at night to facilitate the demon's revival. And a maid who didn't realize what was happening had carelessly picked him up, whereupon the prince stabbed her through the heart with a knife hidden behind his back.
How terrifying.
Rudeus was that. Definitely. Absolutely some kind of demon.
He was quiet now, but one day he'd awaken. And when the whole household was asleep, he'd pick them off one by one...
Oh no... she'd been too hasty. Clearly too hasty. She shouldn't have taken this job. Sooner or later, she'd definitely be attacked.
............Lillia was the type to take superstitions dead seriously.
For about the first year, she lived in constant fear.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted.
Rudeus's unpredictable behavior settled into a pattern. He stopped appearing and disappearing like a ghost and took up residence in a corner of Paul's study on the second floor.
The "study" was nothing more than a sparse room with a few books.
Rudeus would hole up in there and not come out. If she peeked in, she'd see him staring at the books and muttering something under his breath.
Not meaningful words.
They couldn't be.
At minimum, they weren't any language commonly spoken on the Central Continent. He was far too young to be speaking actual words, and she certainly hadn't taught him any letters. So naturally, he was just a baby staring at books and babbling random sounds. That was the only logical explanation.
If it were anything else, that would be the strange thing.
And yet, no matter how Lillia listened, those sounds always seemed to form coherent phrases. It looked like Rudeus actually understood what was in the books.
Terrifying...
She watched him through the gap in the door and thought.
But strangely, there was no revulsion.
Looking back, once Rudeus started holing up in the study, his nameless eeriness and creepiness gradually faded. He still smiled creepily on occasion, but she no longer felt disgusted when she picked him up. He didn't bury his face in her chest anymore. His breathing didn't grow ragged.
Why had she ever found this child repulsive?
Recently, she'd even started sensing a kind of earnestness and diligence in him — the kind that made her feel like she shouldn't interrupt.
Zenith had apparently felt the same thing. She'd suggested to Lillia that maybe they should just leave him be.
Lillia had thought it was an absurd suggestion at first. Leaving a newborn child alone was unthinkable — no decent person would do such a thing.
But lately, Rudeus's eyes had begun to show the color of intelligence. Eyes that just a few months ago had only reflected animal instinct now held a resolute will and a brilliance on the verge of full brilliance.
What should she do?
Lillia had knowledge but little experience, making it hard to judge.
Someone had told her that there were no right answers in childrearing — had it been the senior guard maid, or her mother back home?
At the very least, she no longer found him creepy. He didn't disgust her. He didn't send chills down her spine.
If that was the case, then there was no reason to interfere and risk unsettling whatever delicate balance had formed.
She'd just let him be.
In the end, that was the conclusion Lillia reached.