Chapter 167: Corpse Demon

By now, dusk had already fallen. On one side lay the collapsed corpse, on the other stood Cecilia and Rita, sword in hand. Torn between the two, the three finally decided to invite Cecilia into the courtyard for the time being.

Just by looking at the size of the courtyard, it was clear this house was not small. Though this family now cowered and spoke in whispers, they could by no means be considered poor.

Entering the courtyard, the man glanced up at the almost entirely darkened sky and, unable to mind many formalities, spoke out.

“Your Highness, it’s already late. If you stay here, it may not be safe for you either.”

Cecilia, sensing the evasion and strangeness, found her official curiosity now mixed with a few seeds of doubt, so she answered, “Just say it. If there’s any difficulty, there will naturally be someone to seek justice for you.”

The man could guess the unspoken half of her words: if he truly had done something, there would be someone to seek justice for his dead daughter as well.

“Alright, alright, Your Highness.” The man finally gave up resisting, slumping heavily to the ground and raising his tired eyes to Cecilia. “I’ll speak.”

The man’s tale was brief, but easy to understand.

He had once been a merchant, bringing his entire family to the royal capital several years ago, hoping to make a name for himself here. So he purchased this residence, which was much cheaper than those elsewhere.

Not long after moving in, his daughter fell gravely ill and became bedridden day after day. At first, the family cared for her devotedly, wiping her body, preparing her meals, and keeping her company at her bedside.

That was all.

His daughter would always say, “It’s alright, as long as I see you all well, I don’t mind suffering a little myself.”

But as time passed, they gradually grew cold to her, using work as an excuse to come home less and less. The others, too, offered only the barest minimum care. Even when the daughter uttered those words to encourage them, everyone only found them grating.

Then one night, while tending to his daughter as usual, the man—having lost a great deal of money—snapped at her when she said it again.

“If you want to see us well, then hurry up and get better! Don’t be a burden on this family, it’s been years already!”

The next morning, the man found his daughter dead.

If things had ended there, it would have been nothing but a common tragedy.

No curse involved, no need for the Church’s intervention, nothing to justify such terror.

“What happened after that?” Cecilia asked.

“We… we buried her outside the city, in the graveyard beyond the royal capital. But then… she came back to find us!” The man stared in terror at the corpse still lying on the ground, his pupils contracted to pinpoints.

“She came back?” Rita muttered, but the woman heard her.

“Yes! Yes! She crawled out from the grave! Crawled back to our home! She turned into a monster! She wants to kill us all!” the woman cried, her face ashen.

“If she really crawled out of the graveyard, the Gravekeeper wouldn’t have ignored it,” Cecilia’s tone grew more disgusted. “I fear it wasn’t the graveyard at all—you simply buried her wherever you pleased, didn’t you?”

“Uh…” The woman was at a loss for words.

“You killed your own daughter, didn’t you?”

As Cecilia questioned, Rita finally understood the source of her disgusted expression.

To kill one’s own child by hand—indeed, that was revolting.

“No! It was me! I did it all myself!” the young man stood to argue.

“No, it was us, it was all of us, it has nothing to do with you, son!” the woman retorted.

Thus began a debate over familial guilt, each vying to shoulder the blame. Rita, however, cared nothing for the outcome, only finding them unbearably noisy.

“Enough.” Cecilia spat out the word quietly, and the others instantly fell silent.

Seeing no one spoke further, Cecilia continued.

“How you defend yourselves and how you are judged is a matter for the law. I am but a royal princess. What I want to know is, how did you know she would return for vengeance? And what were you so hastily about to do just now?”

“Ah, um…” The man stammered, but seeing Cecilia’s stern face, he gritted his teeth and spoke, “We had planned to burn her body.”

After their daughter’s death, they had hurriedly loaded her corpse onto a merchant’s wagon and buried it outside the city, as soldiers rarely checked the goods of city residents. There was little trouble passing through the gates.

That had been the day before yesterday.

Early yesterday morning, the whole family left home, but upon returning at noon, something felt amiss. When they opened their daughter’s sealed room, they found her corpse lying once more on her own bed.

Frightened out of their wits, they repeated the process, hauling her body out of the city and burying her even deeper.

Then came today. Early on, seeing the room empty, the family relaxed and went out. By dusk, the son felt something odd about the floor. At his urging, they lifted the floorboards—and found their daughter’s corpse hidden beneath.

Ah, a horror story. Quite terrifying.

“We checked! It’s Shigui! Our daughter was afflicted by the Ghoul’s Curse—she, she turned into a Shigui!”

Shigui—a special type of demon of unknown origin, transformed from human corpses. Not particularly dangerous, with a bit of intelligence, but not much.

It was said Shigui were a subspecies of the powerful northern demons known as Wights, though Rita herself had never seen one.

Cecilia summarized simply, “So, your plan was to burn her corpse?”

“Yes, exactly!” the man pleaded miserably. “We’ve told you everything, Your Highness, please have mercy, let us take her out of the city and burn her now!”

Since it was they who had killed her, once the Church was notified, the matter of the Shigui would inevitably come to light. But if they didn’t inform the Church, they couldn’t handle a Shigui themselves—hence their predicament.

A reasonable deduction, but also a problem: if the body were gone, there would truly be no evidence, and it would be difficult to judge their crime.

It was possible, too, that they had concocted this tale simply to destroy evidence—though that seemed unlikely.

“Lady Cecilia, if we do nothing, the family might be attacked by the Shigui. But letting them burn the corpse isn’t right either. What should we do?” Rita asked softly.

“Rita,” Cecilia seemed to have made up her mind, “do you think you can handle a Shigui?”

“I don’t think they’re as strong as the Star String,” Rita considered, then replied.

“Of course.”

“So, I can handle it.”

“Good. Tonight, you’ll be in charge of this corpse.”

“……” Rita nodded, then her mouth fell open. “Huh?”

Since she’d gotten involved, Cecilia intended to see things through.

Even though it was just a murder case, killing within the royal capital was a serious matter.

Escorted by others, Cecilia returned to the palace, while Rita took the girl’s corpse to contact the Sheriff.

The Sheriff prepared a special underground cell for Rita to watch over the girl—supposedly already turned into a Shigui—and sent several people to bring the three family members back.

Rita, of course, didn’t need to go with the Sheriff; her only task was to keep an eye on the Shigui.

Alone in the gloomy dungeon, looking at the girl’s pale face, Rita felt a chill in her heart.

But for a possible fight, there was no better place than a dungeon.

While waiting, Rita stared unblinkingly at the corpse, her attention drawn more and more to the wound on the girl’s chest.

Half out of curiosity, half out of caution, Rita opened the girl’s collar and began to inspect her body.

If she hadn’t looked, it would have been fine. But once she saw the wound, Rita was utterly baffled.

On the girl’s chest was a knife wound—surely the blow that killed her.

But more striking than the knife wound was the huge claw mark slashing across her chest.

It didn’t look like an ordinary beast’s scratch, but rather…

Rita glanced at her own hand and mimed the motion.

The size and pattern were almost identical… If it had been her own dream demon’s claws, they could have caused such an injury.

Though many demons had similar physical traits, the mere fact that a demon had appeared in the royal capital made Rita all the more wary.

As Rita bent closer to look, she suddenly felt the corpse twitch.

“Guh—”

A dry, hoarse moan—or rather, a roar—emerged from the girl’s throat, and she stood up in a twisted, unnatural posture.

At the very moment the girl rose, Rita slammed her head to the ground, producing a heavy thud.

She had to keep the body intact; otherwise, Rita would have drawn her sword long ago.

If not for this, Cecilia would have left the Shigui to the Church—it would have been far easier for them to handle.

“Alright, alright, calm down. You can’t outmuscle me,” Rita said, sitting squarely on the Shigui’s back, pinning its hands with her toes.

These monsters were stronger than most humans; even a long-bedridden girl turned Shigui was a bit of a handful for Rita, but only because she couldn’t hurt it.

If Rita truly fought in earnest, it would be over in no time. Shigui were strong and quick, and hard to kill a second time, but otherwise so basic it was almost laughable.

“Noooooooooooo…” The Shigui began to beg with a parched voice.

Shigui retained some of their memories from life—this much Rita knew.

But Rita had no intention of chatting with a Shigui in a creepy dungeon, so she didn’t respond at all.

“Save…save…”

So pitiful, begging for help even now?

No wonder, really. Killed by her most trusted parents, the resentment turned her into this wretched thing—it was rather pitiable.

“Save father…save mother…save brother…”

Rita’s frown deepened. Even if she didn’t want to listen, hearing the girl-Shigui’s pleas, she couldn’t help but feel some sympathy.

The girl-Shigui’s struggles grew more violent, but under Rita’s grip she couldn’t break free for even a moment.

All she could do was beg with her parched throat.

“I can’t go… They’ll all die… They’ll be killed… I have to protect father… and mother!”