The Villainess Returns with a System
Chapter 152: Arrest

Chapter 152: Arrest

"I don’t want to talk about it."

That’s all that Beatrix needed to say, but it was clear to Vivian that things had not gone as well as Beatrix had hoped.

Like Vivian, Beatrix was seventeen, too young, naive, and hopeful, even with her terrifying personality. If one shed all these layers, one would find just a normal girl who had built many walls around herself.

The previous night, Vivian and Beatrix had been sitting together the same way, and they had had a lengthy conversation. Vivian spoke about herself, and so did Beatrix, but every time Beatrix said something, Vivian seemed aware of her struggles in life and how she had become who she was.

There was a great deal of backstory for every villainess in the game that Nadia played. The writers seemed to have tried to humanize every villainess in some way in order to justify their villainy, but a lot of content was later cut and released in the guidebook of the collector’s edition, a common practice in the video game industry, even for a popular indie game.

For that reason, Vivian knew a lot about both Edith and Beatrix: their vices and devices, how each of them had become a villainess, and how they thought and acted with the heroine, at the very least.

While Vivian was a typical bully, doing pranks, making the heroine look bad, and using other girls to humiliate her while destroying her image in society bit by bit and waiting for her to make a single mistake in order to initiate her downfall, Edith was the type to dig into the past, find leverage, fabricate crimes, and even send assassins. On the other hand, Beatrix was rather unique, as her two routes, the brother route of Ronald and the fiancée route of Ian, were totally different from each other.

Ronald’s route was almost as easy as Valentine’s route, as neither ended up with the destruction of the route villainess. But with Ronald, Beatrix tried hard to push the heroine away from getting close to her brother without stating any reasons. At first, she used threats and became very dark, and in the latter half, when Ronald and the heroine were courting, she started using curses to separate the two. However, after some point, she stopped after getting confronted by her family.

As for Ian, Beatrix became a whole new animal, utilizing curses, poisons, and even monsters from the get-go.

Vivian soon understood that Beatrix was merely trying to stop the heroine from courting Ronald to protect, not her brother, but the heroine, for some reason; and when she failed, she gave up. As for Ian’s route, it was a total war of love rivalry, and upon failure, she suffered a Vivian-level of destruction.

However, since Vivian had intervened in these relationships, almost all the heroines’ routes were now open. So long as Edith and Beatrix were on Vivian’s side, she would guarantee their survival by dissuading them from getting in Matilda’s way.

It was the best course of action so far, since Vivian’s goal was no longer to take down the heroine, but to survive and maybe, just maybe, take down the seven charming princes.

Little did she know that having both Edith and Beatrix on her side was the only way to make winning that confrontation possible.

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While Beatrix refused to disclose the reasons for her return to the Moore mansion, it was easy for Isabella to figure it out by asking some of her contacts. Apparently, Ian Grayson had not even stayed with Beatrix other than for the ride to the Morgans’ mansion, then departed without looking back. He had been pressured by Lord Albert Morgan to come and pick up Beatrix from the Moores’ mansion.

There were rumors that Beatrix was greatly angered that he had refused to stay with her, to the point where she confronted her family for the first time in her life, and when they mentioned their debt to the Graysons for letting her become a sorceress, she took off her spell ring and threw it off. She was then assisted by her grandfather, the former count, Lord Benedict Morgan, to leave their mansion and go back to Vivian.

While it was a saucy piece of drama, Vivian stated that since Beatrix had agreed to join her gang and had come to her on her own volition, her privacy must be respected, and that Isabella should not do any digging unless there was a reason behind it.

Vivian ordered a room to be prepared for Beatrix and lent her Esmeralda for a day to help her settle in.

The next day, Vivian was finally able to return to work, and she headed straight back to the ViTech HQ with Logan, who seemed rather dazed.

Once Vivian asked about what was wrong with him, he told her the news that had just reached him the previous night:

"Last night, I got news that my friend, Eric, was suspected to be dead," he said.

"Suspected to be dead?" Vivian frowned as she turned to him, not knowing what kind of nonsense "suspecting" someone to be dead was.

"They found a body... mutilated... his face was destroyed. That was three nights ago. As they could not identify him and started noticing that he was absent, a knight errant from the Knights Hall came to find me, and I identified him as Eric."

"Oh! I am so sorry."

Vivian felt bad for Logan, and as she was sitting opposite him, she crossed sides and sat beside him, before gently passing her right arm behind his back and guiding his face with her left to make him lean on her.

After the encounter with Eric during the Dragon-Tiger incident, Logan had told Vivian about Eric, a friend he had made during their post-graduation tour as junior knights at the Isle of Sedus against the Adnan Empire. Eric had saved Logan from a janissary’s blade, and he had saved him in return from a Sipahi charge.

Losing a war comrade was something rough, and Eric had always been in contact with Logan, holding each other in high regard. Still, his murder was so brutal, it felt like he had been killed with a cannonball.

As Vivian comforted him, the two shared a warm, intimate moment, which eased his grief a bit, but fate would prove to be a cruel mistress, as she always is.

Just as the carriage stopped in front of ViTech HQ, the door opened, but rather than the usual faces of her guards and knights helping her down, there were multiple men dressed in black armor with swords drawn; at their lead was none other than Edmond Black.

Vivian’s heart almost jumped out of her chest, with Edmond glaring coldly at her before saying:

"Arrest the killer!"

They found out!

Vivian was about to reach for her guns out of panic, but Logan immediately restrained her and blocked the carriage’s door with his body, facing outward.

"What is the meaning of this?" Logan roared at Edmond and his Black Hand knights. "How dare you point your weapons at Lady Vivian Moore? This insolence is going too far."

As this was bound to turn into a bloody showdown, Edmond’s voice came as a cold, icy grip reaching for their hearts as he openly stated:

"For the murder of Knight Eric Buckley, Knight Logan Price, you are under arrest!"

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The previous night, as everyone was busy dealing with the aftermath of Beatrix Morgan joining Vivian and staying in the Moore mansion, one soul was left wandering unchecked around the place, taking notes of the servants’ positions and how active everyone was at that hour.

His steps were light as he shied away from light, his face uneasy, and his hands sweating. He knew the price of such actions, and he wanted nothing to do with them.

But orders were orders, and as soon as he made sure that everything was in place, he went ahead and walked to the front door, knocking on the door twice.

The sound did not travel far inside, but it alerted the nearest servant, and it was one of those new batches of maids that had lately been accepted by the head butler. They were young and still in training, and he knew just how to use that flaw.

"Hello," he said as the young maid opened for him.

"Hello," she replied with both a frown and a smile, a girl barely fifteen, but at the right age to be trained into a fine maid.

"I am Oliver; I do errands for Lady Vivian," he said with a meek smile.

"Aren’t you... The gardener’s hand?" the maid asked.

"And that too," he replied, then followed up immediately, "I was on an errand for Sir Logan, if you can deliver this to his room."

"I... I..."

As the girl seemed hesitant, Oliver narrowed his eyes before asking:

"You are not allowed up there, right?"

"Yes. The upper quarters are for official servants," the maid replied with an apology.

"Then call for Maid Emmeline, please. She takes care of errands when they arrive," Oliver said nonchalantly and turned around to wait.

"I’m sorry. I don’t know any Emmeline," the girl said and looked back.

Oliver turned to her, seeing her naive, freckled face, and smiled brightly before speaking:

"She works in the pantry south of the mansion. I’ll wait here. Tell Emmeline only, since Lady Vivian and Sir Logan like to keep their errands private," Oliver said with an index raised to indicate high importance.

"Right! I’ll go right away... just... wait here."

The girl turned heel and darted across the mansion, hoping to find the maid called Emmeline, and that was Oliver’s trick.

There was no Emmeline; there is Imogen, but he can say that he got the name wrong. Also, the south part of the mansion has no pantry. It is the south-eastern part, but he is a gardener, and he knows nothing of what goes on inside, so he cannot be seen as suspicious for being misinformed.

Still, that location and that name were the only things that would give Oliver full access to the mansion for the next five minutes, and he needed to act fast.

He already had a rough estimation of the interior’s layout from the maps he had studied before getting sent here, and in light speed, he slightly ignited his aura and stepped as light as a feather. Before he knew it, he was on the upper story, and he was in front of Logan’s door, who was absent that night.