A Korean Office Worker Who Became a Nuisance Villainess in a Zombie Story - Chapter 25

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Praha cradled the limp Yusara in his arms, steadying her.
His mind had gone blank.
“A physician, a priest, or perhaps a mage. Actually, all three. Or maybe I should just—”
The Crown Prince, who had shown not a flicker of emotion when punishing his own cousin, now stammered and lost his composure entirely.
In the meantime, people who had heard the news came rushing over with questions.
“Your Highness! What on earth has happened—”
“Has Consomme not returned?”
“What do you mean about corpses walking around?”
If I may be so bold, Your Highness, is it not possible that you and your party experienced some form of hallucination?”
“But the blood and wounds are real—”
The chatter swelled and overlapped.
How had this happened, what had everyone been doing while things spiraled like this, what had he been doing, what was this, what was that.
Don’t you see the blood the princess is bleeding right now?
Desperate to shout, Praha turned to Yujein.
“Your Highness!”
“Lady Yujein.”
Praha cut off whatever question Yujein was about to ask.
“Forgive me, but could you treat the princess’s wounds?”
“I was just about to suggest that! Is the princess injured?!”
“I’m not certain.”
She had seemed fine just moments ago.
‘Perhaps she was hurt this time too and simply hid it.’
The thought sent ice down my spine.
Even unconscious, Yusara’s fist remained clenched tight, blood seeping from her palm. When I carefully pried it open, I saw a long gash carved across her hand.
It was the mark left by my magical rope.
‘I gripped it far too hard.’
I had squeezed the rope—which responded to its master’s will—with excessive force. The wound had formed during that brief moment when she returned the rope to me.
I didn’t need to ask what had driven her will to such intensity.
Her trembling palm.
As I carefully supported that hand, I blinked.
‘So small.’
Her hand was impossibly small.
Was it only her hand? No.
Her scraped forehead, her exposed shoulders, her scarred arms and the oversized military boots on her feet, her slightly parted lips and blood-spattered chin—everything about her was far too small.
Yusara’s height was nearly 170 centimeters, but from my perspective, that was only slightly taller than a fifteen-year-old child.
‘This tiny person.’
Had acted without the slightest hesitation.
I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to do something for Yusara.
To take her home.
To brush her disheveled hair back into place.
I want to lay her down safely in the Crown Prince’s Palace, summon every physician from the Imperial Palace for examination, and then wait anxiously, pacing back and forth before the door.
The impulse to lift my head surged forth without restraint.
“…It’s not working well. I’m sorry…. It seems the Heavens didn’t grant me healing powers after all.”
Damned Heavens.
“It’s not Yujein’s fault.”
“For the rest, we’ll need to rely on physicians or magical power. …I’m pathetic. I wanted to be of some help to the Princess.”
“Please don’t say such things. We returned alive thanks to Yujein.”
To be precise, we returned alive thanks to both Yujein and Yusara.
Praha, who glanced at the dejected Yujein, adjusted the limp Yusara in his arms and spoke rapidly to the Attendant standing beside him.
“Take Mascarpone and Yujein to be treated. Don’t forget Dazling either—bring him for medical care. Cyprus will… handle things on his own.”
With those words, he left the room.
Since the aged palace physician was nowhere to be found no matter how long he waited, he planned to search for him personally.
The Attendants scrambled to follow after Praha in an unprecedented turn of events—the Crown Prince himself moving to find a physician.
Praha spoke as he walked.
“Effective immediately, the Empire enters wartime alert. Inspect the bodies of all who enter the palace. Focus on bite marks and scratches. Isolate anyone with wounds, and deal with any resistance according to imperial law. And….”
Praha’s pace was so swift that the Attendants following him had to nearly run to keep up.
“Summon Marquis Diane.”
I can’t hold her too tightly. She might break.
Was she always this small?
“The Marquis’s youngest daughter, Consomme Diane, has died. He must be informed.”
What had I truly thought of the Princess until now?
“The Princess is injured and has lost consciousness, so she’ll receive treatment at the Imperial Palace first. We’ll send someone to the Duke’s residence as well.”
So I…
hadn’t thought of her at all.
The Princess Yusara was outside my sphere of concern.
Praha cradled the limp Yusara’s head gently.
* * *
When Praha thought back on it,
the Princess had seemed strange at some point.
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when. He’d never paid that much attention to her.
‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
She’d insisted on following along to the gathering, yet remained silent throughout the afternoon.
‘The Princess was hurt too, weren’t you? When you fell together with Yujein earlier.’
She was so quiet that even after being injured, she said nothing.
Praha was curious.
‘Injuries are something you can mention. Why didn’t you say anything?’
The answer came simultaneously with the question.
‘She was afraid of being abandoned.’
The Princess herself knew best that everyone in the group disliked her. She feared that if she made a fuss, she’d be cast aside.
“I’ll only trust Lord Dazling. He’s the only one who worried about me here, isn’t he?”
With that, I couldn’t possibly refute what the princess had said earlier.
What had left an impression on Praha was this:
A person who had suffered injury yet remained silent about it for fear of being abandoned—yet she unhesitatingly threw herself into another’s crisis.
“Hey!”
The princess had turned back without hesitation to retrieve me when I’d fallen behind alone on the Second Floor of the Villa.
“So let go! I’ll do it!”
She’d helped Papri, who’d been stirring discord with the group since earlier.
The princess’s jaw clenched tight as she wielded her shield bare-handed, without even a single glove, striking down corpses.
She didn’t expect others to save her life, yet she saved others without hesitation.
“The weak come first!”
When the princess screamed those words with her face twisted in determination, Praha felt as though someone had struck the back of his skull with an axe.
“….”
Praha, his brow furrowed, tilted his head as if gauging the condition of the back of his own head.
‘Ever since then, it feels like an axe is lodged in my brain.’
From the moment the princess cried out like that.
In Praha’s life, where being weak meant being trampled—such a person.
Someone who spoke such words as though they were obvious….
‘Did the princess really just shout back then?’
Didn’t she cleave my skull in half with an axe at that very moment?
As if someone had declared they would now carve this person into my mind by force.
As if they’d split my head in two, commanding me to remember this moment for the rest of my life.
‘This is strange.’
Something feels strange.
This was completely different from the affection I held for Yujein.
If what I felt for Yujein was curiosity toward a saint, reverence, intimacy, tenderness—then this was like….
‘Flame.’
No. Wildfire.
Burning endlessly, consuming everything around it.
And I was leaping into it.
Even knowing that once the fire catches, there’s no stopping it.
“Your Highness! Is it true that Lady Consomme has met with an accident?!”
The Knight Commander hurried after Praha, who was striding purposefully toward the physician—if one was even coming.
“If that’s the case, Your Highness, forgive my presumption, but….”
“There is no body.”
“But Your Highness… your daughter died overnight, yet there’s no body? Marquis Diane won’t accept this.”
“That’s why we’re summoning him to the Imperial Palace to explain.”
Praha’s brow twisted.
His daughter was dead.
A child who had been perfectly alive just yesterday.
There wasn’t even a body.
They simply told me to believe that he was dead.
How could anyone accept that?
Who could have imagined that their child—one who had gone to the Villa with the Imperial Family—would return dead?
The Marquis Diane’s loss could never be compensated.
‘I shouldn’t have let Papri go so easily.’
Perhaps I should have dragged him back and thrown him into the Marquis’s hands.
If the Marquis had witnessed Papri’s transformation with his own eyes, he would have understood.
If only there weren’t the risk of the plague spreading throughout the Imperial Palace, I would have done exactly that.
“Then what of Papri? According to Your Highness’s words, the Artificial Island is now an extremely dangerous zone. Sending Papri there is no different from a death sentence.”
“Papri is already infected. It’s the only way to safely isolate the source of infection.”
“The authority to execute members of the Imperial Family rests solely with His Majesty the Emperor. Even Your Highness the Crown Prince cannot—”
“Papri defied my orders as commander during a situation equivalent to wartime, and used Imperial citizens as shields to save himself.”
“….”
“The Imperial Family exists to protect the Empire’s people. Papri abandoned the primary duty of the Imperial Family, so execution is warranted regardless of infection.”
The Knight Commander could not refute the Crown Prince’s logic.
The Imperial Family sacrifices their lives to protect the Empire’s people.
An ideology that no one actually upholds, yet once invoked, no one can argue against.
The Knight Commander said only one thing.
“You will face considerable political burden from this decision.”
“I don’t care.”
‘It’s nothing compared to the burden she’ll carry.’
At the thought that suddenly crossed his mind, Praha lowered his gaze.
No matter how great a burden I take upon myself, it could never match the weight of guilt that Yusara would bear for losing a comrade before her eyes.
‘…This will be her first time experiencing something like this.’
“Your Highness.”
“Enough. Say no more.”
“….”
“I take responsibility.”
I know what it’s like—I who have rolled across countless battlefields.
I know the anguish of watching comrades die before your eyes, of being forced to witness it.
I know what it feels like to return to camp after battle, only to discover that someone who stood beside you moments ago is now gone.
What if I had done better?
What if I had acted differently then?
When such thoughts arise endlessly.
Especially when you cannot even find the comrade’s body.
‘If Yusara blames herself for this…’
I will do whatever it takes.
Even though I don’t yet know her heart, I want to step forward first and tell her it wasn’t her fault.
“Praha.”
Someone came to stand beside Praha, who was biting his lip.
It was Grand Duke Cyprus.
Cyprus let out a soft laugh at Praha’s annoyed glance and thrust something toward him.
“You left this behind.”
It was a magical rope.
“The Knight Commander was stammering about it. He kept saying you just left without even taking the rope. What should we do with it? It’s the Crown Prince’s possession, and all that.”
“….”
“You seem distracted. Is it because Yusara is hurt?”
“Yeah.”
I gave a curt reply and continued walking.
Where in the world was the physician? Had they been injured too?
A mere rope—was that really what mattered right now?
I turned my back on Cyprus, whose narrow eyes darted between me and the princess, and headed toward the staircase.
“You’re not taking it?”
“No.”
You take it.
Behind me as I descended two steps at a time, Cyprus called out.
“Praha! You must have so much to do!”
“I’m doing it now.”
“Should I take Yusara instead?”
“Get your arm treated.”
That grotesque, dangling limb of his.
Cyprus didn’t pursue me further, but I could feel my friend’s gaze clinging persistently to my back.
I didn’t like it.
[Imperial Palace]
(Temporary) Safe Zone entered.
Survivors: Yusara, Yujein, Praha, Grand Duke, Dazling, Mascarpone

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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