Our guy collapses back onto the soft bed, finally feeling totally relieved. In the end, things did not go that terribly.
But Anne immediately leans in dangerously close, asking why he looks so incredibly tense. What really happened? Did something go down between him and the princess in that locked room? She remembers, after all, how the princess whispered that she wanted something warm.
He quickly denies everything. He swears there is no way he would do something that bold. He would get sliced into tiny bits.
Anne just laughs. She tells him to go ahead and drink the weird medicine while it is still warm.
But the exact second he takes a sip, he instantly gags. It tastes horrible. He asks what the heck that nasty stuff is.
She calmly explains it is a tonic to help him recover and rebuild his lost blood supply.
Then we cut to three nervous maids standing right outside the bedroom door, whispering about how whenever he eats something sour, he usually whips everyone in sight. But today he is acting super strange. They start wondering if they should run and report this behavior to the madam.
But he just commands the three of them to stay put and not say a single word. It was just some regular medicine. Then he aggressively chugs the whole bowl on the spot.
The terrified maids close the door, a little spooked.
He sits there looking deeply confused, right up until he suddenly throws it all back up. It looks exactly like he vomited straight crude oil onto the floor. And the absolute worst part, he has to drink that vile thing two more times if he actually wants to fully recover.
Anne casually mentions she can whip him up some pancakes and even steep a little tea. She hands him a slice of cake. He thanks her, saying she is way too nice. He even suggests a raise.
She dips into a small curtsy. She appreciates the kind compliment, but she has to go finish her daily chores. On her way out, she tells him to check the nightstand.
The letter is there. But then Moon suddenly calls out, asking her to wait a second. Earlier she mentioned he already swallowed down that sour medicine four times. How is that possible, if he freezes up the second it touches his mouth?
She answers calmly. She puts sugar in her own mouth, and passed it over.
He relaxes for half a second. Then the image clicks inside his head. He fully processes what actually happened.
Now he screams into his pillow, but truthfully he is lying there all cozy on the bed, thinking that if something like that happened with his big sis, life might not be so bad. But then he remembers he also kissed Celia.
That is when he grabs the letter. It says she now considers him half a man. He sighs in relief. Crisis averted.
A little while later, his mom gets super emotional. She is so relieved he made it out alive after things got insanely dangerous. He downplays it, saying it was nothing serious.
She tells him to go look in the mirror. A massive crater in his chest.
He shrugs, calling it just a scratch. As long as he survived, he is completely fine. His dad totally agrees. A heavy scar is basically a medal, because Moon saved the princess and completely avoided the massive disaster this whole thing could have turned into.
Honestly, there is not a single normal maid in this entire world. Even the one standing right next to him now looks like a towering warrior.
Moon says he wants to know everything that went down.
His dad explains that three assassins were captured. It took serious effort to make them talk, but eventually they spilled some intel. Turns out they were never trained warriors or professional killers. They were actually just cult followers of someone called the Withering King.
Moon is completely confused. He does not remember that name ever popping up in the original story.
His dad explains this guy is an ancient dark god, responsible for countless horrors. And if the price is high enough, his loyal followers will take any job. They would even kill their own parents.
But his dad tells him not to worry. He gave the order to wipe those people out completely.
Moon is stunned. His mom reminds him that his father earned his current rank through pure military merit.
Bold as always, our boy says he is proud to be his son. It is well deserved. What he really wants to know now is if they figured out who is truly behind all of this.
His father, however, says no. Every captured hunter was bound by a strange curse. The exact moment they even tried to speak the target's name, they burst into flames and died instantly. The black market was wiped out, but zero real evidence was left behind.
Moon finds it super interesting that his dad destroyed the black market. That also happened in the original book. In the story, they killed his absolute favorite. But favorite for what, exactly? Furious, the father sent the royal knights. They burned the whole city to the ground. That massacre in Cyrus lasted three months. Even the sewers ran red. At least this time the chaos ended much more quickly.
On the other hand, this was a huge event for Ariel in the story. It was a major growth arc for her, a classic protagonist moment. She fights off tons of enemies and her aura evolves significantly.
But now that development will never happen. All of it changed because he gave a maid two days off.
Later that night, everyone in the house just tells him to get some sleep. But he does not have time to rest, because the storyline just keeps going off the rails. And the worst part, the more things change, the less he can rely on what should technically happen based on the original book.
So he puts together a pretty complex plan. Survive. Avoid that awful ending where he gets tied to a table and violated. Get stronger. And above all else, stop trusting the stupid book.
He sits there thinking it through, then admits that now makes zero sense. He needs to be a lot more cautious. The truth is, he still does not know exactly who that person was from his vision. She did not seem like Ariel, and it was not Celia either. So who the hell was it?
He drops onto the bed. No point overthinking it right now. The priority has to be getting stronger. As the son of a duke, he has plenty of resources to build real power. The only problem is that all of it is just too conventional.