Chapter 115: Catelyn’s Legacy
As days went by, the dark sky over Archester only intensified.
The Blackthorn Plague spread through the four corners of the old world, and the death toll rose dramatically. Vivian had to halt most of the work at ViTech headquarters until further notice.
Nations began to close their borders, and most trips to the New World were halted. It was said that Avalon was spared from the infectious plague, as the colonists there had applied strict rules to those who newly arrived, which ended up with some infected individuals being burned alive.
Within House Moore, Count Julian’s condition deteriorated; he grew more tired, and his cough intensified. With no cure available, the infected nobles became increasingly desperate amidst rising fatalities.
To encourage the search for a cure, the Moores offered a bounty, leading to an influx of charlatans and quacks at the mansion gates, even though that was not where the cures were to be submitted.
Vivian spent most of her days working on various tasks and tying up loose ends.
Valentine sent her a letter saying he had found a building in the city centre, which he had bought and begun renovating according to her ideas for his Galleria project, but the work had been halted by the spread of the infection.
Vivian also noticed that her brother, who had disappeared from the house after the scene he made when the management of the Moore Conglomerate was temporarily passed to Tristan Moore, was diverting a large sum of funds to open new clinics in the city’s impoverished areas. While it was unusually humane of him, Vivian realized he was supporting the Heroine girl in her efforts to cure the Blackthorn, something she would not oppose.
As for day-to-day life, Vivian would usually spend time with Isabella, but the latter mostly visited to see her new boyfriend, Morris De Brosa. Thanks to that traitorous best friend, Vivian had to keep herself busy by taking long walks around the mansion alone.
However, she never expected to find something strange in the westernmost hallway of a tower that had fallen into neglect, used only to store gardening tools. There, Vivian found a stairway leading to the top of the tower, to a room she did not think she had ever been in before.
She was repulsed by rats and cockroaches, and such old places were bound to be infested, but as she steeled her nerves, she fiddled with the lock on the door until her superior lockpicking skills prevailed.