Shut up, brave man! I don't want to atone for my sins to you!

As long as she diverted Charles and Old Den's attention to the assassin, and then fast-forwarded to the "It must have been Victoria who did it" part, they would most likely start to join her in denouncing Victoria instead of dwelling on the fact that she almost died.

The rules of victory have been established!

However, reality did not unfold according to the script she had written.

On the contrary, Lao Deng, who knew her inside out, saw through her attempt to change the subject and exposed her mercilessly:

"So, since the assassin didn't carry a forbidden force field with him, why didn't you draw your wand and fight back against him? You're not going to tell me that you had completely exhausted all your magic power due to the continuous fighting at that time?"

Laceier was speechless and decided to play dumb:

"Yes, yes!"

"..."

If it weren't for the communication spell, Lao Deng felt that he might not be able to help but knock on Laci's head twice with his staff to wake her up.

After a long time, she was a little angry:

"You are just a priest in charge of healing in the Brave Squad, right? I have also seen the healing spells you improved. Because they are more efficient, they consume less mana. So how can I believe that a mere healing spell can consume all the mana of a witch like you?"

"There must be another reason," she whispered, but this time it didn't seem like she was talking to Rachel, but rather like she was reminding - or hitting someone else, "... a very simple reason."

But Lacie didn't want Lao Deng to continue.

"Stop," she said, "Okay, that's it. I'm fine anyway. Oh, thanks to your resurrection spell, I can stand here alive and kicking like this. I'm so grateful for it, so grateful for it!"

She was worried, so her words were incoherent and jumbled, like spaghetti mixed with No. 42 concrete.

But it's too late.

What she was most worried about happened - under Lao Deng's knocking, Charles beside her seemed to have noticed something.

So suddenly, her hand was grabbed.

Then the man approached her and pressed down on her. She was forced to retreat back in panic and was finally pinned against the wall, unable to move.

"Don't..." She begged in a low voice, "Old Deng is still listening! Why don't we hang up the call first?"

The hero's response was silence.

The witch lady was almost dizzy. She even began to struggle internally, wondering whether she should call him husband or master again, and temporarily give in and let the man in front of her let her go.

But before she could open her mouth, she heard the man whisper:

"Is it because of me?"

Then, the hero stretched out his other hand and gently touched the wound on her chest that almost took her life with his fingertips.

"Just like what happened with Diesel, because I was with you, you couldn't use magic to avoid the attack of the steam armor, so you were slightly injured..."

"It was the same then, wasn't it?"

He stared into the witch's eyes with his iron-gray eyes:

"Because I was there, because of my forbidden spell, even if you wanted to fight back, you couldn't cast a spell, so you...you almost died, right?"

[To be continued]

-

19. Keep talking tough

Like a soldier being called, Lacie stood at attention on the spot.

"Not the same!" she answered Charles, and even repeated it for emphasis. "How can it be the same?"

"Why is it different?" Charles pressed on.

"Because... because of that! Oh, the water is very complicated here. I can only say that whether you understand or not, it's useless to tell you, so don't ask..." Lacier began to speak without thinking, "Anyway, it's enough for me to know what's going on. You don't have to say it, only what I say counts!"

"Why?"

Charles' words, along with himself, came crashing down on Lacie like a landslide.

——This is what Lacele hates most about Charles.

"If you have something to say, can't you just say it nicely? Why do you have to do something violent? Get your big face back now!"

The witch lady, who was about to collapse, tried to push Ciel back in a panic while protesting in a low voice.

She didn't want Lao Deng to hear what she was doing.

Even if Lao Deng can't see the picture, this is embarrassing enough, okay? !

However, she was not able to achieve her wish after all.

She failed to push Charles back, nor could she hide the noise of her confrontation with Charles.

So Charles pressed her against the wall, looking down at her from above, and without saying anything, the feeling of oppression increased.

So Lao Deng on the other side of the communication spell started to play dumb: "What's going on? What happened? Oh, is the communication interfered because the technology is not mature yet? Why can't I hear your voice?"

Forced by Charles with no way out, Lacie had no choice but to admit defeat and gritted her teeth.

She thought to herself, "Okay! Lao Deng! If you are unkind, don't blame me for being unjust! When you are lying in bed, I will definitely remove your oxygen tube!"

In her fantasy, she attacked Lao Deng with heavy blows, but in reality, she could only obey Charles submissively.

With her back against the wall, she used her slender arms to try to hold Ciel's body apart. The witch was sweating profusely, but was finally forced to raise the white flag and surrender:

"I, I was wrong! I'll tell you! I'll tell you, okay?!"

Then Charles stopped.

"You say." He gave the instruction.

Lacele had no choice but to lower her head, not letting Charles see her face, and explained in a low voice with a groan:

"That's because... because I want you to... regret me for the rest of your life..."

"?" This answer caught Charles off guard, so he frowned subconsciously.

Lacier estimated that he probably didn't understand, so she continued to explain tremblingly:

"Who, who asked you to destroy the teleportation array that I had worked so hard to build? And you're a poor fellow who couldn't afford to compensate me. I was so angry at that time."

"So?" Charles roughly guessed what Lacie would say next.

And the fact is just as he expected -

Rachel added:

"At the time, I thought, no, I can't let you go so easily, so I disguised myself, changed from a witch to a priest, and successfully infiltrated your team."

"I will make you regret me forever!"

She repeated her ambitions and aspirations again, this time her voice was a little louder, and her tone could barely be considered to be close to the words "ambitious" and "passionate".

But this doesn't make her seem respectable at all.

Indeed, anyone with a dream is great, but dreams cannot be generalized. Miss Witch’s dream... only makes people think that she is stupid, but actually quite cute.

Miss Witch herself doesn't think so.

She recalled the dream three years ago. With powerful body language, she announced her original plan to the victim in a decisive manner:

"I disguised myself as a priest and sneaked into the brave team, making the damn brave fall in love with me, and then found an opportunity to fake my death, so that he would regret me for the rest of his life - and when you were stabbed, I took the knife for you, which was a perfect, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me!"

The brave man was silent for a moment after hearing this.

The witch originally thought that he would be surprised or annoyed, and she was even mentally prepared to be... punished.

However, the hero's reaction was surprisingly calm.

There must be something wrong when things are abnormal. The reason why the sea is calm is probably because it indicates that a storm is coming.

Lacie thought, oh no, my buddy won’t be able to get out of bed or walk tomorrow, right?

Thinking of this, her little face turned pale instantly.

Don’t do that kind of thing!

She wanted to beg for mercy, to Charles. She knew that guy would only respond to soft words and not hard ones. If she admitted her mistakes and acted softly and coquettishly, maybe Charles would forgive her...

As she was planning this, she suddenly felt Charles reaching out and holding her cheek.

He gently lifted her face and made her look at him.

"Rachel." Charles called her name softly, "Look at me."

"Eh?"

Lacele didn't understand what Charles was up to, but she still looked at him obediently.

The clear azure blue and the deep iron gray blended silently, just like two stars colliding silently in the vacuum. It was clearly blooming brilliant fireworks, but it was eerily quiet.

After a while, Rachel, who was almost in a trance, finally heard Charles ask:

"Is what you just said true?"

Lacey was stunned.

She automatically answered, "Of course," while trying to look sincere.

In order to hide her guilty conscience, she deliberately stared into Charles' iron-gray eyes - because she knew that many people did not dare to look others in the eye when they lied.

In that case, she would do the opposite!

But she had just stared into Charles' eyes for a while when she noticed a barely perceptible smile gradually blossoming in that guy's eyes.

Then he declared in an unquestionable tone:

"you are lying."

"?!"

Lacee was shocked.

She didn't understand how Ciel could see through it. She was obviously disguising herself very well, just like when she was in the Brave Team. She had lied to Ciel many times in the past three years, but had never been found out once.

She was a little sweaty.

But what if Charles was trying to trick her? Although she didn't think Charles was someone who could do such a thing, it was always better to be cautious, so she still had to finish the show.

"Why would I lie to you?" she simply asked, "What good would lying do me?"

She even considers the issue from Charles' perspective and explains the pros and cons to him:

"I've already admitted my guilt. I know the consequences of lying to you are very serious. I've already admitted my guilt with the intention of being punished by you. How dare you still doubt me? That's unreasonable!"

Lacie felt that her acting skills were top-notch, even beyond her normal level. Could this fool Charles?

But she didn't expect that Charles would defeat her with just one sentence:

"I've noticed for a long time that when you lie, you deliberately look people in the eye - you seem to think that this can increase your credibility, so you are lying."

"???"

broken.

Rachel thought she had rubbed out an insurmountable line of defense, but she didn't expect that Charles would easily deal with her at lightning speed.

At this point, she seemed to have no choice but to be tough:

"No, you don't look people in the eye when you talk to them! That's very rude, okay? This can't be used as an argument at all, I usually look people in the eye when I talk too!"

Charles did not refute her.

But he was not at all convinced by her.

Instead, he just sighed softly, even like when they were in the White Tower, when they slept together for the first time, and she was still stubborn before she did... that thing -

The hero asked in a calm tone that was very different from before, and did not seem angry at all:

"Are you still being stubborn?"

"..."

Laceel is about to have PTSD.