A Strange But Effective Villainess Life - Chapter 66

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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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Chapter 66
“The time of Enes’s death.”
Everyone gasped at my words. I had expected them to ask something like, “Why didn’t you tell us properly about your nightmare?” But that wasn’t what consumed my thoughts. What drove me to madness right now was something else entirely….
“It’s so unfair…. I’ve been so unfair to her….”
If that dream was real, then what I wanted most was to clear my mother’s name.
“A death incident?”
“Lay her down quickly! Find out the time of death! Stay calm and follow protocol!”
When I visited the Imperial Palace Infirmary last time, I heard the physicians talking. The first thing doctors did upon seeing a corpse was to determine the time of death.
The three men grew suddenly agitated at the mention of Enes’s name. I continued speaking calmly, leaving them behind.
“That’s when she fell from the cliff, right?”
Kailon released a shallow sigh. Then he answered with a trembling voice.
“No.”
Julius tried to rise from the bed but shuddered again with a sound like “Cough!” It seemed the shock was considerable—after all, he had raised my mother as his own daughter.
I swallowed hard and asked.
“Then when?”
“…Two hours before that time.”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Joshua shot up and grabbed Kailon by the collar. Madness already flickered in his eyes.
“You bastard!”
Of course, Grandfather tried to step in as well. But he couldn’t bring himself to push away his sturdy grandson and grab his collar instead.
“Why… Why on earth!”
After that, it was chaos.
In any case, according to Kailon’s account… it meant that when the coachman Paul climbed the cliff with my mother, she was already dead. So it couldn’t be called a midnight flight. They had simply made it look like she died during a midnight flight at the discovered scene.
This was a murder.
“Enes….”
Grandfather trembled as he muttered.
“Then Enes… Enes….”
In the end, this was a carefully orchestrated crime. A meticulous crime executed using the personal physician who could manipulate the time of death.
“Brother, step aside for now.”
I slowly rose and spoke calmly.
“I still have more questions to ask.”
Tears began to flow from Julius’s red eyes. Lives ruined by that incident, families grown distant after a long winter—they were all gathered here.
* * *
Though I had ransacked his mind with Insight, Kailon knew very little.
“Why did you do it?”
“…Because of my family….”
One evening, Kailon said he received a note.
The moment he saw that note, the Ducal Residence fell into turmoil. Enes had gone out with the coachman Paul. And in less than thirty minutes, Enes and Paul had fallen from the cliff.
Enes was already dead, and Kailon became terrified of whoever was behind this—someone powerful enough to manipulate even the great Prelai Ducal Residence. In the end, Kailon saw Enes’s corpse and claimed that Paul died at the same time. Since Enes was already dead, he couldn’t risk putting his own family in danger.
“And in that note… there was hair from my wife, my son, and my daughter-in-law. That’s why I was even more afraid.”
Kailon said he wanted to quit as the personal physician of House of Prelai immediately due to pangs of conscience. However, his wife suffered from a rare disease that required significant expenses. And there was no place that paid as much as the Prelai Ducal Residence.
Kailon insisted repeatedly that while he had no intention of making excuses, it had been an unavoidable choice for the sake of his family. He added that he had planned to confess everything once his wife passed away.
“When I heard about Lady Kiana’s dream… of course I realized it was a similar condition to Julius’s…”
Kailon answered calmly.
“It seemed to be Enes’s dream, so I didn’t mention it.”
Julius and Joshua were absolutely furious.
Do you understand what you’re saying right now, you betrayed your master, do you know what you did to Enes and Kiana…
“But it’s true that Enes’s handwritten note appeared, and it’s also true that Kiana hasn’t been able to summon her Summoned Beast…”
I flinched and bit my lower lip. After all, Julius had summoned his Summoned Beast, and I hadn’t.
“I thought… if I just waited, Kiana would eventually be able to summon her Summoned Beast too.”
In the end, he had rationalized other things to bury one lie.
“Take him to the Prison.”
Grandfather glanced at my pale face and spoke coldly.
“I will interrogate him myself.”
Then he disappeared with Daram and Kailon.
Julius was already so enraged that he had lost consciousness. So afterward, only Joshua and I remained in the room.
“I, I…”
Joshua stood grinding his teeth, looking dazed.
“I’m sorry, Kiana.”
He swept his hair back with a confused expression and spoke quietly.
“I know you’re the biggest victim, and I should be comforting you…”
I looked at Joshua with vacant eyes.
“I’m sorry… But… I also need to… figure something out right now.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. You’re a victim too. Is there anyone here who isn’t a victim?”
At Joshua’s words, I pushed his back and spoke. I knew what he was trying to figure out.
“I have no intention of being comforted by a beginner, so use that time to learn more about Mother instead.”
Kailon actually didn’t know much. He had simply received instructions from someone to manipulate the time of Mother’s death, and out of fear, he had remained silent about everything that happened afterward. He didn’t even have the ability to trace who was behind it.
So even if Grandfather interrogated him further, it seemed like nothing more would come out. Joshua appeared to have decided to investigate the incident more thoroughly himself.
First, that note Mother left—the one about how the people of House of Prelai were terrible—was a clue. Whether she really left such a thing, or whether she was forced to write it under someone’s coercion.
In any case, Joshua was the best at gathering information in our household. It was a task that could only be entrusted to him.
I swallowed dryly, watching Joshua’s back.
“Piyak isn’t Melissa’s Summoned Beast! Piyak was originally Kiana’s Summoned Beast!”
Then was that dream also true? Just as Mother cried out in injustice, was Piyak originally my Summoned Beast?
‘So… so that’s why the delivery time got faster after coming to me?’
Once I started to doubt, there were facts that kept bothering me.
“Piyak is yours? I’m sorry… I’m just sorry for everything…”
Did Melissa know? Were those words I had dismissed as just treating her like a fool actually her way of saying she knew everything and was sorry?
Of course, stealing someone else’s Summoned Beast was unheard of. But when even the Crown Prince, who was supposed to be immune to poison, could be poisoned, I couldn’t dismiss it as completely impossible.
‘If that’s the case, then Melissa is truly remarkable. Even I have been thinking all this time that she was incredibly kind…’
My goodness, then she was far more vicious than me, whom everyone knows as a villainess. Because truly wicked people can even hide their own wickedness.
‘An unexpected rival…’
And so I found myself alone, except for Julius, who had lost consciousness.
I stood there in a daze for a while. My mind was a tangled mess. It was even more complicated because of this second life. After all, my previous life felt so absurdly meaningless in retrospect.
‘How could there be so many things I didn’t know?’
The moment when everything I believed to be true became a lie.
My family never abandoned me, Mother never committed infidelity, and my dreams were not meaningless desires. Were all my dreams truly real? Could it really be so? Mother never committed infidelity, and Piyak was truly my summoned creature from the beginning.
It was as if I had finally gained the certainty I had desperately longed for since childhood.
“We are bound by the ties of family, and that is all. So you are no different from my other grandchildren.”
Grandfather’s voice echoed through my mind once more.
‘So Grandfather… he truly believed I was the same, even if I wasn’t his biological granddaughter.’
In any case, my surname was Prelai.
For some reason, that earlier conversation felt like a blessing. It felt all the more genuine because I had heard it when I had no confidence in myself.
‘So now…’
I lowered my eyes and quickly began adding this new information to my plans.
‘Now let me think carefully about how I should act.’

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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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