Abandoned Empress's Survival Manual Beside the Male Lead - Chapter 10

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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 10
* * *
“Did you see it? What the Grand Duchess is wearing on her hand.”
The maidservants whispered as they scrubbed at one of the few intact windowpanes in the corridor.
“Of course I saw it. Heavens, it must be a gift from His Highness.”
“The previous Grand Duchess only received one after she had Gaisel, you know.”
“But Gaisel’s legs are…….”
“Don’t you dare speak of it! If word of that reaches the Duke’s ears, you could be cast out of the castle entirely. In fact, don’t so much as mention Gaisel’s name ever again!”
…….
The maidservants fell silent at once.
They pressed their lips together and bent their attention back to scrubbing the windows with renewed vigor.
* * *
“How strange.”
Sherkan, despite his Barbarian image, held quite conservative views when it came to the Gonet Duchy’s traditions.
‘In the source material, they said it stemmed from an inferiority complex born of his mixed Barbarian blood.’
He grasped at every scrap of honor he could gather.
He clung to every courtly propriety that came with the title of Duke.
He seized upon it all with brutal eagerness.
Anything that might fill the gap left by his inadequate bloodline.
So in the source story, he held a grand ceremony to marry Ayu and become Grand Duchess, and held yet another separate ceremony to present this ring.
That scene had stuck with me as one of the most stunning, beautiful moments in the whole narrative.
‘So why did he just hand it over so carelessly?’
Was it simply an inevitable difference between Ayu and Lorelthiana?
“Hmm.”
I held the ring up to the blue sunlight.
Above the three nested bands grew golden leaves and platinum leaves, each engraved with a different grain, studded between with diamonds like dewdrops.
As I tilted my hand slightly, the light scattered.
It felt like holding a small garden rolling in the palm of my hand.
‘What a fitting name.’
This ring was called the Garden of the Grand Duchess.
Not the “Garden of Gonet,” but the “Garden of the Grand Duchess”—a name that carried within it the pride of recognizing only a single ducal house across this vast continent: Gonet alone as the family of dukes.
It was a jewel of that significance.
To be honest, not even the Northern Kingdom possessed a gem of such rarity.
‘Only the Pasa Empire would have something like this.’
A sudden thought occurred to me—that Sherkan seemed to enjoy adorning me.
‘Surely he doesn’t think of me as just a dress stand or a jewelry box?’
I laughed at the silly notion.
But then I felt a strange warmth creep over me.
To think a single ring could lift my spirits like this.
‘Well, what can I do about it.’
The truth was, I’d always welcomed kindness from others.
And this sort of unconditional generosity was almost unprecedented since I’d inhabited Lorelthiana.
Perhaps I’d grown spiritually colder, struggling to survive in this vast Imperial Palace where every step was like treading on thin ice.
The warmth the male lead casually offered felt like relief settling into my bones.
Especially now that he’d given me this ring—he wouldn’t send me back again.
Deep within, I felt reassured.
“Grand Duchess. Did you sleep well last night?”
“Are you warm enough? We’ve had water heated for your bath.”
“This morning I gathered a basketful of flowers. They’re drying in the sun now, so you should be able to float them in the tub in at least three days…….”
I found this ducal residence remarkably cozy and perfect.
Of course, it was a bit shabby in places.
And burdened with enormous debts.
‘Not to mention I never expected my own worth to be so high.’
Would Lorelthiana’s price have soared so high if the previous empress hadn’t made such unexpected moves?
My head ached thinking about it.
Sherkan had never asked me to repay my worth to him.
Not yet, anyway.
‘What if things go wrong later and he demands I repay it?’
It was a harsh thought, but hardly nonsensical.
Hadn’t he flown into terrifying rages before and stormed off without warning?
He came back and asked if I was still angry, as if nothing had happened.
A typical temperament that would wear anyone’s nerves raw.
‘It’s not for nothing that he’s tagged as the psychologically unstable lead in the original.’
That was true.
In the original novel—in *Beside the Male Leads*—Sherkan had been marked with that very tag.
Because he suffered periodic episodes.
This was, of course, the fault of his predecessor.
The previous Grand Duke had sought to strip away Sherkan’s Barbarian traits, asking the temple to perform a Purification Ritual.
That ritual stretched on for ten long years, and by all accounts, it was excruciatingly painful.
Whether it was trauma from those days, or simply a naturally foul disposition taking root, Sherkan had grown into a man in whom not a shred of gentleness could be found.
‘Impossible to pin down.’
As for me, I’d navigated carefully enough in the Northern Kingdom and the Pasa Imperial Palace alike.
Especially among the haughty concubines, I lived in constant dread of having my tongue cut off.
But Sherkan of Gonet was, how should I put it.
Different in grain.
Where the wicked and cruel concubines inspired fear through malice, he did it through something else—a quality that simply diminished you in his presence.
In any case, until he met Ayu, that was what Sherkan was.
Brutal, merciless in slaughter, vicious, and cold as a Grand Duke.
‘I can’t build my life on someone else’s heart, not knowing when it might shift.’
So I had to earn a great deal of money.
Of course, I’m the sort of person who knows how to repay a debt!
I’d planned to discharge the debt for saving my life by keeping this duchy from bankruptcy.
But since I never knew when Sherkan might tire of me and cast me out, I needed to set aside a substantial nest egg as well.
‘I’ve burned through all the cards I’d been saving to prevent the Northern Kingdom’s collapse, and now they’re being used for Gonet.’
However….
There was one fatal disadvantage: the Gonet Duchy’s lands were not as fertile as those of the Northern Kingdom.
The Northern Kingdom, blessed abundantly by the Saint, boasted fields and forests, mountains and waters all supremely rich and fertile.
It had truly become a land blessed by the gods themselves.
The Gonet Duchy was entirely different.
The land was barren, and the weather was cold.
‘But there are plenty of mines.’
In the original work, Ayu uses these mines to earn a staggering fortune.
All of it knowledge taught to her by her mother, the Saint.
‘What choice do I have? I’ll have to draw from them early.’
Farming was too difficult here.
After finishing my bath and slipping into a soft cotton nightgown, I made my way to the window.
“My lady, the weather has turned quite pleasant.”
“Autumn has ripened so beautifully.”
“Though it does get cold at night, which is a shame.”
The maids chattered away, and I gazed out the window with a smile.
The undulating green mountains stretched on endlessly.
‘It’s unfortunate that most of that is the Iron Mine.’
Iron ore had to be surrendered to the state.
“Isn’t it cold at night for you?”
“We have quite a bit of firewood.”
“That’s a relief. Do you purchase it?”
“No, my lady. We take turns climbing the back mountain to gather kindling.”
“Because there aren’t enough servants in the castle?”
At my question, the maids’ expressions grew cautious.
“That may be so, but please don’t worry. We lock the gates firmly every night, and besides, the Grand Duke didn’t take the two knights with him this time.”
“Right.”
For some reason, this castle had not a single male servant.
Only fifty comely maids.
And since Sherkan didn’t trouble himself with the lower staff, he hadn’t left any knights to help with security either.
‘Weren’t they afraid?’
With no one to guard them, just the fifty of them in the castle.
It occurred to me that huddling together to sleep was probably as much about fear of the darkness as anything else.
“I should ask the Grand Duke to keep the two knights posted here at the castle permanently.”
“My lady?”
“Is that something you can ask him to do?”
“I’m afraid of the dark, you see. I’ll need a knight standing guard every night.”
I spoke as casually as I could manage, and the maids’ eyes went wide.
A flicker of joy and relief crossed their faces.
‘And if Sherkan tells me not to talk nonsense and drags the knights away with him…’
There was no helping it.
When that happens, I’d have to melt down every coin I own and sell it just to hire servants for the night watch.
After the maids warmed my bed thoroughly and left, I opened the window wide and gazed out at the night.
‘All that iron out there, and none of it mine. What a waste.’
What good was an abundance of iron?
Every last scrap had to be surrendered to the crown.
The Gonet Duchy wasn’t an independent state, after all. It belonged to Gaiard Kingdom, the only realm to rival the Pasa Empire.
Of course, now that the Pasa Empire had crumbled, Gaiard Kingdom would declare itself an empire before winter’s end.
‘In any case…’
Smuggling iron would be high treason.
That’s why what I truly wanted was the ‘waste’—the refuse discarded from the Iron Mine.
Worthless as dirt or gravel now, but in the novel’s ending, it’s what the heroine Ayu transforms into Black Gold.
‘Ayu will figure it out on her own.’
I may lack courage, but I’m no fool either.
I devoted three years to Ayu and the Northern Kingdom’s royal house, only to be discarded like a rag in the end.
I started by groveling to Ayu, but over time I’d grown to feel a surprising sisterly affection for her.
‘None of it mattered in the end.’
Ayu abandoned me.
I’d begged her just once—begged her to stop Father, the king. If that wouldn’t work, I’d pleaded for even a few months’ delay.
Ayu only wept and whispered apologies.
I pushed the bitter memory to the back of my mind, drew the curtains closed, and lay down in bed.
When would I be able to visit the Iron Mine?
* * *
The next morning.
“Good morning, Grand Duchess. Did you sleep well?”
“You’re up early. Shall I help you wash?”
After washing my face and teeth, I sat at the vanity and the maids began combing my hair.
The dowry Sherkan had sent from the Northern Kingdom—if you could even call it that—contained quite a few precious items after all.
Among them were several ribbons in lovely colors and fine velvet.
The maids were busy adorning my hair with a few of them.
I sat lost in thought about the money problem, when…
‘What is it?’
I suddenly noticed something strange in the maids’ expressions.
They exchanged subtle glances with each other.
I caught it only because I was painfully sensitive to the way people looked at me.
I shifted my eyes slightly and asked.
“Has something happened in the castle?”
The moment I spoke, the maids jumped and dropped the comb.
“Oh!”
Their exaggerated reaction sparked something in my intuition.
“What is it? Has someone important arrived at the duchy?”
“……!”
When the maids hesitated, I rose from the vanity at once.
“Since you can’t speak, it seems someone of rank has indeed come. I should greet them myself.”
“No, Grand Duchess!”
The maids dropped to their knees in shock.
At their trembling voices, I found myself surprised in turn—until one maid whispered urgently from the floor.
“The truth is… the truth is, Bridget the head maid has just returned from the Elder Council…”
For a moment, I doubted my own ears.
“Bridget?”
“The head maid is a stern woman, so we were startled for a moment. Please forgive our rudeness, Grand Duchess…”
I raised one eyebrow slightly.
Bridget—that Bridget?
The cruel, vicious head maid who tormented Ayu mercilessly in the original novel?

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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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