A Runaway Villainess, Now Healing In An Enemy Country - Chapter 4

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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【Chapter 4】

“Wow, dust.”

The Ancient Castle with frozen snow wrapping its outer walls in white.

The interior atmosphere was quiet and eerie like a place where ghosts lived. It was questionable whether people actually lived here, showing clear signs of long neglect.

‘The castle’s state is on par with my appearance… oops.’

I can’t keep going around looking like this.

Still, having rested a bit, my mana had recovered. I manipulated my sleeve cuffs while calculating my mana.

A red light sparkled like small fireworks, then in the next moment.

The old dress I was wearing transformed into something new, and I became clean from head to toe as if freshly washed.

Nishe, who had been leading through the dreary corridor, turned around.

“What, first time seeing a magical girl?”

“Tsk.”

…With reactions like this, there’s no point in making jokes.

I felt awkward and cleared my throat unnecessarily while following him.

After crossing long corridors and climbing stairs several times, when we reached the castle’s top floor.

Nishe finally stopped and pointed with his thumb at a door that looked extraordinary to anyone.

“Here. Go into the bedroom and wake up the lord.”

“…?”

“If you do that, he’ll grant you asylum.”

* * *

There’s no bolt from the blue like this bolt from the blue.

The Duke’s bedroom that I entered almost as if pushed.

“You want me to wake up the Duke? Suddenly?”

“You’re quite the accomplished mage, aren’t you.”

“That’s true, but what am I supposed to do? At the very least, you should tell me why he’s sleeping!”

“Magi. I don’t really expect you to wake him up either… just try using some fancy magic.”

Nishe left coldly after saying that.

Logically, this isn’t the kind of favor you ask of a noble lady from an enemy nation you just met, is it? Unless she were a saint.

If this were made into a game, it would be a terrible game that pushes you to fight the final boss without even a tutorial.

“…Sigh. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

If this works? I’ll live comfortably.

If it doesn’t? I’ll just make a deal as originally planned.

Still, I felt nervous. Probably because since entering this place, the magi felt chillingly strong.

‘Now, let me think.’

A Duke sleeping due to overflowing magi. And according to the original story, a year later he would go on a rampage and destroy the world.

Presumably, he would likely be asleep then too.

If so, then perhaps.

“If the Duke wakes up, will we move away from destruction?”

I approached the bed slowly while contemplating thoughts that held the world’s fate, then was soon silently shocked.

“Gasp.”

Correction. I was shocked while making a breathless sound.

Because an unrealistically beautiful man was lying there like a corpse in a coffin.

Brilliantly shining silver hair. Skin like transparent marble.

Perhaps because his pigmentation was too light? He felt more like a statue than a person, or like a ghost with form.

That face was fantastically beautiful as if sculpted by a god.

‘What kind of magi is this.’

Suffocating magi was forming him like cells. Natural discomfort and rejection crept up.

‘…But I should still do that.’

I’m not even a saint, yet I suddenly received a mission to wake the Duke – what other method could I think of?

It’s the very method that happened to Snow White who slept after eating an apple, and Princess Aurora who slept after being pricked by a spindle.

‘Since it’s a world inside a book, whether fairy tale or romance fantasy.’

It might be sophistry, but it was worth trying.

To wake the sleeping princess… no, the Duke who’s as pretty as a princess, I slowly lowered my head. Just in case, I also drew up my mana.

Flinch.

“Really, one in a million chance…”

…Wait, flinch?

His eyelids seemed to tremble. So slightly it could be mistaken for imagination.

Close enough that our noses could touch. His long eyelashes fluttered delicately like a butterfly emerging.

“…You.”

Cold silver-gray eyes captured me as if piercing through.

A sensation as if my heart stopped with a thud and all the blood in my body turned ice cold. Goosebumps spread along my spine.

The man who looked exactly like a moving statue spoke.

“Since when has there been a little rat in my castle.”

A tone that was cool without inflection.

It was a smooth and clean low voice, unlike someone who had been sleeping for months. Now that I looked, there wasn’t even any eye crust.

‘Northern Duke correction? How fierce.’

While I stared at him, having forgotten to breathe from surprise, I was also calmly impressed on one hand.

Come to think of it, the Duke’s name was definitely.

“I think it was Davuer… ah.”

The Duke frowned slightly.

Only then did I properly compose my face that had been thrust close and stepped back from him.

Then the Duke rose like a ghost and stood before me. He had gotten close again by the same distance I had stepped back.

“Answer me, mage of Hilvarsia.”

…He was frighteningly handsome.

‘His real identity isn’t something like a male god, is it?’

It looked even more so because he happened to be dressed in a tunic*. Though it seemed carelessly worn, it had dignity.

*Tunic: Ancient Greek clothing

If not for the seemingly endless deep and dense magi he possessed, I wouldn’t have thought he was a demon duke.

“I asked how you entered here.”

The Duke, who presented cosmic horror on a micro level, forcibly pulled me out of my wandering thoughts.

“Nishe… told me to wake you up, Your Grace…?”

“Not Giselle?”

“I’m not sure, but it did have the nuance that someone ordered it. Whether witch or beauty… there was no explanation to begin with…”

Somehow I feel like I’m tattling.

An unpleasant expression rose over the Duke’s delicate sculpture-like face. I explained like a thief with guilty feet.

“I didn’t particularly do anything, and when I got close, Your Grace suddenly opened your eyes wide! It’s quite mysterious.”

At this point, it was mysteriously frightening.

Even though I hadn’t done anything special, things kept unfolding smoothly every time I touched them, like toilet paper.

The Duke asked monotonously.

“Today’s date is.”

“Divine Calendar year 3196, October… 31st. Probably.”

“…Only 3 months.”

He seemed to think with his eyes closed for a moment, then looked at me with a flawless gaze and spoke dryly.

“Sleep won’t come.”

“…I see.”

What am I supposed to do about that.

“The reason seems to be because of you.”

It sounded vaguely romantic, but it didn’t come across that way at all. Rather, the back of my neck felt completely cold.

As I stood there bewildered, unable to grasp the meaning behind his words, the Duke extended his elegant fingers and lightly tapped my forehead.

And he commanded unkindly.

“Wait.”

It’s not like I’m some pet dog.

…is what I thought, but since he was the Duke and someone I needed to impress, a docile response came out.

“Until when?”

* * *

“Oh my, you really did wake up.”

The top floor of the Duke’s Castle, covered in white snow like a shroud.

The red-haired witch, Giselle, marveled at seeing her master appear in her office after such a long time.

Nishe, who had been lying on the couch, got up a beat late and silently greeted his master. For him, it was a very proper attitude.

Their master, Duke Davuer Winze Belmayer, leaned back on the couch his knight had vacated and said.

“Explain.”

As if she had been waiting, Giselle quickly picked up the conversation.

“You told us to bring the Saint, but we brought back a villainess instead. She requested asylum.”

She recalled the villainess she had seen through her ‘Sight’. Irene Baltres was a celebrity of the highest order in the Empire, one Giselle couldn’t possibly not know.

“Irene Baltres. The prospective Crown Princess, and a princess with a formidable Imperial Faction father.”

“And a major criminal who stabbed the Crown Prince and fled. We couldn’t bring the Saint because of her.”

Nishe added in a disgruntled tone.

He had received the mission to kidnap the Saint from the witch and departed for the Empire with Zephyrus, but had no choice but to return empty-handed.

Because an unexpected incident had occurred.

“Well. I didn’t expect the Saint would insist on treating the unconscious Crown Prince and get stuck in the Imperial Capital either.”

The rhythmic voice was cheerful.

Giselle was surprised first by the fact that ‘that’ villainess, who was obsessed with the Crown Prince, had directly attempted to assassinate him, and second by the fact that even the Saint’s divine power couldn’t completely heal the Crown Prince’s injuries.

And third.

“You saw it too, didn’t you, Master? That child’s soul color.”

“…Yes.”

Davuer, who slowly affirmed, recalled the soul like dawn breaking across the sky that the woman, precise as a wax doll, had harbored.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen such a beautiful summer sky blue.”

The current Belmayer Fortress, commonly called the Winter Castle.

Its members were those cursed by God due to the incident of ‘that day’ a hundred years ago.

Once human, but now called demons or monsters, they could see the essence of humans in the form of colors.

It was actually closer to feeling rather than seeing, with colors expressed differently according to the viewer’s standards of beauty and ugliness.

Nishe interjected.

“…It looked like green leaf color to me.”

“Oh my. Both colors we can’t see in winter.”

Giselle’s vivid bright green eyes curved in a smile. She continued speaking before her master could urge her on.

“I even saw the future in that child.”

Eyes that see all things.

Giselle, who possessed the ability of ‘Sight’, could see everything within her sphere of influence, and sometimes even glimpse the future.

Therefore, Giselle, who served as Belmayer’s chancellor yet was called a witch, spoke with confident tone.

“Irene will liberate you from the Magi, Master. And…”

“And?”

“She will become a Belmayer.”

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