Using the kiosk system, I ended up returning to each safe room and looking over the mural one more time. It’d probably be best if I had been doing this from the beginning. I noticed a lot of details the second time through I might not have noticed before, and being able to order and tie all of the events together like that really helped. We had a mural on floor 1, 5, 9, 15, 19, 25, and 29. That’s seven parts of the story.
“Alright, so this is my best guess based on all of the parts. A long time ago, there was a young noblewoman and her best friend. They were one day attacked, but saved by a young hero. Both women fell for the hero, but he only had eyes for the common woman. Through various means, he was forced to marry the noblewoman instead of the one he truly loved.”
“That despicable woman! She should have just shared him!” Lydia growled.
“Eh? I would have poisoned her!” Shao said in surprise.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt“Shao! What did I say about killing other potential love interests?”
“Only cut them down emotionally?”
“Good girl!” Shao closed her eyes and smiled happily as Lydia patted her head.
Although it was better, I still needed to have a talk with Lydia about what exactly she was teaching Shao. Lydia pretended to be the guru of love, but her only training was in prostitution, and her first was me, and we’ve only been together for less than half a year.
“Anyway… none of that happened. The Hero ended up with the noblewoman. However, the commoner couldn’t stop loving him, and through various means became a maid in his castle. She managed to woo him into bed. Of course, the noblewoman eventually found out the truth.”
“And then she killed the man?” Miki asked.
“Ah? Murder!’ Faeyna gasped.
“Don’t spoil it for her, she hasn’t heard any of this before!”
“S-sorry.”
“First, she tried to make him jealous. She cheated on him. However, something unexpected came from that event. She became pregnant.”
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm“R-really?”
That was one of the details I had missed the first time through. The woman who was having an affair ended up pregnant from the affair. There were hints in the mural, but I didn’t really need them after seeing today’s mural. It showed a pregnant woman on horseback fleeing a castle, her hands covered in blood.
“So, the rest is as you said. She murdered the King, and then she fled.”
“Who is the Widow?” Lydia asked.
“Hmm? Wouldn’t it be the woman who murdered her husband?”
“Maybe…” Her hand touched the window of the castle in the mural, and I realized there was a very small blurry image that could be a woman watching her flee.
By the look of it, perhaps the woman who lamented was the commoner who had her lover killed so brutally. Sadly, I didn’t know, and I couldn’t even begin to guess how this lore was supposed to end. I didn’t know what it was that it wanted. It was a story about three people consumed by desire and temptation, resulting in the fall of a Hero. A lot of curses seemed to be caused by heroes. I wondered for not the first time if there was a connection.
“Let’s go. We’ll destroy this dungeon and find out the lore.”
I only wanted one DP. Wanting more was only falling into the temptation of this dungeon. Thankfully, the points shouldn’t be stolen away like in the last dungeon. I wasn’t ambitious; just one per person was more than adequate for now.