A Runaway Villainess, Now Healing In An Enemy Country - Chapter 63

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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 63】

“Cough…”

What just happened? Was I cut? Where? How much? Is it a deep wound? Is it dangerous?

Why. Why are these two attacking me?

[‘Ally’ cuts ‘Irene’s’ right arm.]

It seemed they had no intention of waiting quietly for me to grasp the situation.

Pressing my chest with my right hand, I rolled my body to avoid Ally’s fierce blade.

Whoosh!

The sound of wind cutting through the air was sharp. If it had connected, my arm would have been severed without mercy.

“…”

The flowing blood pooled like a small puddle at my feet.

The bleeding was quite severe, but fortunately or unfortunately, the nerves seemed damaged, so there wasn’t much pain compared to the wound.

I stood at a distance from them, drawing up mana to stop the bleeding at the wound site.

Stay calm. First, I need to think… I need to think.

[‘Nishe’ recognizes ‘Irene’ as a gladiatorial opponent.]

[‘Ally’ recognizes ‘Irene’ as the lord’s aide.]

Right after the new sentences appeared, intense killing intent emanated from the two who had shown no particular expression.

“…Ally! Nishe!”

A metallic sound burst from my cracked throat.

I suspected it wasn’t of their own will. They must be being controlled by the ‘text’. That was the only way to explain this situation.

Brainwashing? By what principle? How can I break it?

‘…I don’t know.’

I don’t know.

My heart was beating roughly and it felt like blood was draining from my entire body, making it hard for reason to keep up.

I shouted as if scolding myself.

“Get it together!”

The sharp auras of both people pierced my skin pointedly. If they attacked together like this, I definitely wouldn’t last long.

Since I couldn’t properly counterattack.

“Please listen to me!”

[No one can hear ‘Irene’s’ voice.]

Bang!

The barrier I barely managed to deploy blocked Nishe’s sword energy. My blood-soaked hand trembled madly.

How long can I keep blocking like this?

Perhaps because my calculations weren’t perfect, cracks already appeared in the barrier. I drew up mana again while stepping backward.

But it was meaningless. Before I could repair the defensive magic, Nishe closed the distance instantly and swung his sword at me with a hardened expression.

Clang!

The barrier immediately cracked apart.

“I told you to get it together…!”

“…”

Then, around him as he raised his sword again, papers were fluttering and circling.

So noisily that I wondered why I only noticed now.

‘Individual pages… torn book pages?’

As soon as I finished recognizing that, the letters carved on the book pages read themselves automatically.

[A gladiator slave from the desert. Nishe, who flowed into the Empire’s black market mixed among refugees’ belongings, learned the sword before words.

If he didn’t win today, he would die tomorrow, so the boy took others’ lives to survive. Until he grew up and cut off the head of the master who led him to hell.]

“…What.”

Meanwhile, the aura-laden sword fell fiercely. The barrier at its limit finally shattered completely.

Nishe continued his attack. His swordsmanship was so irregular that it was difficult to track the trajectory.

Crash!

The moment I barely deflected the blade with a mana bullet.

‘Oh no. My back… is exposed.’

My nape felt cold and I ducked almost instinctively. A sword that emerged from behind without any presence barely grazed my head.

It was a precise and clean ambush aimed at my neck.

“Ally…”

Around her too, torn book pages like Nishe’s were dancing and floating.

[An assassin from a small borderland at the southern edge. When her younger brother, who worked as a knight’s page at the lord’s castle, was falsely accused and only his head returned, she became an assassin for revenge.

The lord involved and all those connected to the incident had their throats cut in their beds. The assassin’s blade that came with the night was persistent.]

…What is this?

Whether fact or fiction, this wasn’t content I wanted to know in this way. I didn’t want to peek into their past and lives like this.

I…

Swoosh!

While I hesitated, my lower back was cut. Lightning-like intense pain came briefly, but afterward I couldn’t feel much sensation.

My head was pure white and my vision was bright red.

My thoughts wouldn’t connect and kept breaking off. There were too many things I didn’t know, things I couldn’t understand.

“Hey…”

But if there was one thing certain.

I was angry. From my toes to the top of my head, enough to consume my entire body and still be uncontrollable.

“Come out.”

When my anger exceeded the critical point, I became calm instead.

Why doesn’t it hurt that much even after being injured like this?

What is this space that feels so unreal?

While being so desperate to kill me, why doesn’t that text control me directly?

…Maybe it can’t?

I formed a hypothesis. I stood upright without dodging or blocking the sword flying toward my vital point anymore, and shouted loudly.

“Don’t hide and come out right now!”

Swoosh!

At that moment, Ally’s sword cut my neck, but not even a hair was cut. The previous wounds also healed cleanly as if I had never been injured.

Right, this isn’t a real place.

‘It’s inside an illusion.’

Once I realized it, Nishe and Ally’s swords couldn’t hurt me. They suddenly collapsed like puppets with cut strings.

“How regrettable. Just a little more and it would have succeeded.”

Rustle!

With the sound of pages turning, ‘Lishie’ appeared. Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the spiral staircase, she closed the book in her hand and said.

“I was here from the beginning.”

An unnaturally expressionless face. An arrogant gaze looking down from above. Golden eyes gleaming brightly with hatred.

Though it had Lishie’s exact appearance, it was something that didn’t look like that child at all.

I understand well.

“…You’re that ‘demon’ parasiting on Lishie.”

With something like that inside her body, she had no choice but to go mad.

I didn’t know the cause, and there was no physical evidence. However, I could be certain that thing was the demon Lishie had spoken of.

It was also possible to speculate that the one who had bestowed sanctity upon the people in the streets was not Lishie, but that thing. That being was likely the true identity of the intense sense of wrongness I had felt then.

She threw the book she was holding into the air and retorted.

“Demon? You’re the demon.”

I had heard similar words before.

The day I went to check on the World Tree’s condition. What that mad tree had said while throwing rotten branches at me.

It too had called me a demon.

“Are you also one of those thought-forms? Of the god who supposedly died.”

Though it was a perfectly logical deduction, she snapped back as if she had heard the vilest curse.

“Do not equate me with those filthy fragments.”

Rumble—

The bookshelves that had formed stairs rearranged their structure in orderly rows and columns. The endlessly stretched bookshelves moved upward and forward, densely filling the maze-like walls.

She sat in the empty air high above, looking down as she introduced herself.

“I am the master of all life.”

Brilliant light pouring down from the high ceiling fell like a halo above her head.

“The one who writes the fate of the world.”

As she lightly waved her finger, golden letters rose from beneath my feet. Like shadows that couldn’t be shaken off.

[‘Irene’ cannot be loved by anyone.]

[‘Irene’ will be hated by those she loves most and betrayed in the most miserable way.]

[‘Irene’ dies eternally in despair.]

“And this is the fate I have written for you. Deviation from this path cannot be tolerated.”

“…”

Fate. I already knew a concept similar to this.

In the world of a novel I had read in my previous life, I had been reincarnated as the villainess who appeared there, living a life according to the original story.

‘A novel…’

Books were everywhere around me. The smell of paper and ink that wafted through the air suddenly hit me as nauseating as the stench of blood.

So, could this mean, perhaps.

“…Are you saying you wrote my life? Right now.”

“But you ran away and ruined the story.”

“Don’t deflect. This damn fate, this story—I’m asking if you’ve been interfering with my life all this time.”

“Then would you despair for me?”

She asked with a face like wax.

“If I told you that I was the cause of all the hatred you’ve received throughout your life, how far could you fall into despair?”

“…What?”

“What would it take to make you collapse so completely that you’d never be born again? Answer me. I want to give you a truly magnificent misfortune.”

The golden letters beneath my feet surged as if they would devour me.

[‘Irene’ will be hated by those she loves most and betrayed in the most miserable way.]

“Belmayer will eventually betray you too. Just as everyone you’ve loved until now has done.”

“…”

“Even if you find another sanctuary, it will be the same. You will be hated and abandoned. As many times as it takes, as long as you live.”

In this moment, scenes flashed through my mind. Twenty-two years of life. What I had left behind in the Empire. What I couldn’t have despite my efforts.

My whole body was too cold, and I felt too nauseous.

My stiff tongue barely managed to move.

“…How? Why… to such an extent.”

“That question is meaningless.”

Then the demon-like god spoke.

“I am perfectly right, flawlessly good, and I myself am the world’s balance, law, and completion.”

…Ah,

How unreasonable.

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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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