In this slum where illegal extensions had been piled layer upon layer, the presence of a baby was by no means common.

The common belief that poorer areas naturally had higher birth rates because access to doctors and proper childcare was limited did not apply here. The environment was hardly suitable for raising a baby, and malnutrition or disease usually killed them quickly. Or else they simply disappeared one day before that.

According to the information network run by their associate Andrew, people here tended to leave the area the moment they decided to raise a baby. It was an understandable choice—no one could properly care for a child under the lights of an entertainment district. On the other hand, there were also cases where parents sold their children directly to black-market traders.

Some abandoned their humanity simply for money, but many others lived such hopeless lives that they chose to send their children away hoping they might at least become adopted into a wealthy household.

Of course, no one knew what ultimately became of those babies. If they were lucky, perhaps they ended up drifting through orphanages.

Separate from the harsh realities of Libertas, Judy simply loved babies.

“So babies live here too... that’s amazing. I guess the residential areas are crowded enough that people really do have children.”

“......”

“But what if there’s no mother? What if the baby’s alone at home? Someone could kidnap it....”

Leonardo could not say exactly why Judy liked babies so much, but he guessed she projected her own childhood onto them—or perhaps she cherished something she believed she could never have.

Judy had once been a lively girl who dreamed of building a small, cute family of her own. She was skilled at identifying medicinal herbs and fascinated by their uses, harboring ambitions of seriously studying medicine.

That was before she chose to take a potion she had created herself—one that made her body incapable of bearing life.

Fortunately someone must have come to soothe the infant, because the crying soon stopped. Judy seemed relieved, yet she did not climb down from the railing for quite a while. She kept peering through the drifting steam, searching for some sign of the newborn that might be hidden somewhere nearby.

At the same time, Leonardo’s gaze lingered longer than usual on the calves revealed beneath the hem of her lifted dress.

Her skin was already covered in small cuts from her usual clumsiness. Among them were scars she had tried to erase but never managed to remove.

The thin calf—slender enough to fit within one hand—was crossed by the marks of punishment. Flesh that had split and healed over and over again bulged unevenly along the scars.

Her thighs, just as thin, would reveal even worse injuries beneath the tattoos that concealed a brand.

The brand resembled an eye that would never close, a mark used by a certain family to secretly monitor those they oppressed.

The reason it had been burned onto the leg was obvious.

A slave trying to escape could hardly cut off their own leg.

Leonardo knew that symbol all too well.

Whenever Judy saw the branded eye, she would claw desperately at her own flesh as if suffering a seizure.

After she covered it with black ink the symptoms subsided somewhat, but the wound in her heart had not disappeared.

Among all his associates, Leonardo’s connection with Judy ran particularly deep. He had witnessed her suffering on more than one occasion.

“Judy.”

“Hm?”

At the quiet call, Judy turned around with wide eyes.

She was exceptionally small, with thin arms and legs that made her resemble a fragile little animal.

No one would guess that this chick-like girl—who looked as if she might break with a single push—was actually older than Leonardo.

Nor would anyone imagine that she had once wandered through slave markets before being sold as a servant, where constant violence and abuse forced her to conceive a life she never wanted.

Or that she had once mixed chemicals used to remove stains from laundry into alcohol, killing the entire household she served.

Or that she had then tried to kill herself by drinking the same poison, shocked by what she had done.

The truth of that day belonged only to Leonardo and Judy.

Leonardo remembered being the young first witness at the scene—dragging the trembling woman out with him and becoming her accomplice in that moment.

The woman, her eyes swollen from crying, had walked barefoot through snow and said to him:

“Don’t you want to make a family? You said you wanted to grow vegetables in a garden and live happily.”

“...Huh?”

“The moment we go to the Imperial City together, that dream will never come true. Are you really okay with that?” 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Judy blinked rapidly at Leonardo’s sudden question.

It was a memory she had long forgotten, and a shadow briefly passed over her usually cheerful eyes.

The golden gaze watched quietly, waiting for her answer.

Even Leonardo himself did not know what answer he wanted.

Judy’s eyes drifted down to the hand gripping the hem of her skirt.

She looked at the stubborn strength that had pulled her back from the gates of hell.

The divine intervention that had tightened the thread of her life and planted her feet firmly back on the earth.

Her expression went blank for a moment as her thoughts tangled.

Then she looked back at Leonardo.

Soon a bright smile appeared on her lips. As if nothing had happened, the darkness faded quickly.

Judy said,

“My dream is you. As long as I can help you, Leo, I’ll do anything. My life has belonged to you since that day.”

Despite the cheerful tone, it was an incredibly sincere confession.

Leonardo’s lips moved slightly.

But he could not answer.

Another person’s life was this heavy.

So heavy it pressed down on his entire body, making it hard to breathe.

And because of that weight, it could not be carelessly abandoned.

No matter what kind of relationship he might eventually have with the leader of the Emperor’s faction, he could neither stop what he was doing now nor dare to give it up.

Leonardo looked silently at Judy’s face.

Then he showed her the gentlest smile he could manage.

He released the hem of her fluttering skirt and stood up, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her backward.

Her feet lifted helplessly beneath the long skirt.

A moment later they brushed past the edge of the railing and landed safely on solid ground.

“Now get down. You can’t even fly, yet you climb up here without a second thought.”

“I can’t fly, but I’m not stupid enough to slip either! ...Ah!”

Judy suddenly remembered the laundry and hurried toward the basket.

“Ugh, if I don’t hang these quickly they’ll start to smell!”

She dragged the basket by its handle toward the railing and began hanging the remaining clothes along the empty portion of the line.

Leonardo grabbed the loose end of the rope on the ground and leapt over to the rooftop of the opposite building. Then he firmly tied the end to another steel beam.

The line was now much higher, forcing Judy to struggle a bit—but she had done this many times before, and soon she was jumping up and hanging clothes one after another.

Watching her, Leonardo let out a faint laugh and fell into thought.

The voice of the shop owner—who had likely become a star in the sky by now—suddenly echoed in his ears.

It could not be a coincidence.

I already carry so many lives with me... yet my own life rests in someone else’s hands.

Rubbing his dry lips, he looked up at the sky.

He murmured quietly to himself.

“How much did that old man see?”

“Hm?”

Judy turned around immediately at the small whisper.

Leonardo shook his head as if it were nothing—then paused and spoke instead.

“Judy. That contact network we have inside the Council... have they sent anything recently?”

“News from the Council?”

Unlike the upright Legion Commander, the Council itself contained all kinds of people.

As in any organization, some individuals secretly sold bits of internal information for profit. Of course, valuable information was difficult to obtain, and meeting someone with access to such information was risky.

So the intelligence they received was rarely very useful.

But it was still helpful for tracking current issues or the direction of ongoing investigations.

Leonardo and his group had been quietly gathering information about the Council for a long time.

After Leonardo’s release, they had even spent large sums buying information continuously.

Ironically, however, since then the only things they could obtain were trivial gossip—like who inside the institution had started dating whom.

After thinking for a moment, Judy answered calmly.

“There’s probably nothing important. Security tightened a lot after that incident, remember? We even agreed among ourselves to be more careful.”

Leonardo believed that tightening had been the work of the Legion Commander of the Agrizendro family.

He had likely taken internal measures to prevent information or rumors about “Leonardo Blaine” from leaking out.

Because of that, the only news Leonardo received about the explosion incident had been the Council’s official statements. He had never learned the detailed process that led to it being concluded as an “accident.”

“Hm. That makes sense.”

Naturally, it was also impossible to identify which subordinate had wronged him.

But in hindsight, it had been the right decision not to hear the truth about the incident directly from His Grace.

If Hugo confirmed for himself that no information had reached Leonardo’s side, then even if one of his subordinates suddenly died...

Hugo would have no reason to suspect Leonardo.