Abandoned Empress's Survival Manual Beside the Male Lead - Chapter 42

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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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Episode 42
The lamps on the battlefield are crude. Poor-quality oil leaves them soot-laden, their light dim and murky.
That murky glow cast shadows across the boy’s beautiful face. It was the sort of light to make one drowsy, yet it seemed to have no effect on Sherkan whatsoever.
Beneath hair the color of dark ash, crimson eyes rested quietly upon the letter, unmoving.
Eyes too deep to belong to a boy who rolled across battlefields, too silent to belong to youth.
Sherkan tapped the edge of the letter with his fingertips.
On this short, simple letter, only a single name had been inscribed with care.
[From: Lorelthiana.]
[Sent by Lorelthiana.]
[Lorelthiana sends this.]
[Written by Lorelthiana.]
[Lorelthiana.]
The way she wrote her name changed each time. It was, absurdly, a kind of sincerity.
The ink had long since dried. Nothing transferred to Sherkan’s hand.
Yet his hand could not leave that single elegant name.
He feared that if he lingered much longer, something would begin to stick to his skin.
If he kept doing this. If he did this for long enough.
“You know how to cry?”
“That’s why I told you to run away quickly.”
“Ayu might kill you…….”
Knock, knock.
The sound of knuckles on the door shattered his long reverie. Sherkan opened his mouth.
“Come in.”
“Your Highness.”
One of the Gonet Knights. Given the nature of a battlefield—where servants could not be brought along—the knights’ personal attendants were squires, and Sherkan’s regular attendants rotated among full-fledged knights.
The knight skillfully trimmed the lamp’s wick, refilled the pitcher with hot water, and checked the sword’s condition.
Two sword blades had shattered today. Four yesterday, ten the day before.
And on the first day, twenty swords had been ground to dust.
Which meant Sherkan’s condition was…….
The knight glanced at the bandages wrapped around Sherkan’s forearm. Blood was faintly seeping through.
How many times had that arm’s bandages been changed today? He’d lost count after ten.
“Your Highness, would it not be better to change the bandage before you rest?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Sherkan’s expression turned dismissive, and the knight swallowed a sigh.
Was it really all right?
Could a body endure such abuse?
Could he truly survive it again?
The doubts of his subordinate knights were inevitable. There was no other order across the continent that wore warm blood across their entire bodies year-round like the Gonet Knights.
‘Monsters pour forth without end.’
And yet Sherkan always survived. Even if he had to bite monsters apart alive, he persisted.
His inborn strength was formidable, but it was something else that drove him forward—a desperate grip on survival itself.
Sherkan clung to this world like a monster clawed up from the depths of hell, enduring tens of thousands of acts bordering on suicide, determined to live.
“Your Highness, shall I organize the letters?”
“Yes.”
The knight placed the silver box on the desk.
Sherkan sorted through the letters with indifference. Very few came from Gonet Castle; far more arrived from the Gaiard Empire and the military command.
Organizing the letters that accumulated daily was itself a task.
“There’s a letter from Erihi, Your Highness. Where should this one be kept?”
“Just throw it in the bottom somewhere. I won’t open it twice.”
“Shall I use it as kindling?”
Even the Emperor’s personal correspondence—if it was not vital—would be checked and immediately tossed into the cooking fire. This was one of the most dangerous battlefields on the continent. Baggage could never be carried in excess.
“Do as you like.”
Sherkan answered carelessly, resting his cheek on one hand as he gazed down at a few thin letters.
To the knight’s eyes, none of them looked important, and so he assumed they too were only good for kindling.
And yet…….
Sherkan placed those thin letters in the very top compartment of the silver box. Above the Spoils List that the Gaiard Emperor himself had written and sent, he placed them, then closed and locked the box with utter indifference.
Click.
“Your Highness, one letter remains.”
A single thin letter lay on the desk.
The knight assumed Sherkan had simply forgotten it.
No matter what, a wound that severe would shake even someone as inhuman as he seemed.
Or so I’d thought.
Sherkan’s hand reached for the paper before the knight could move.
The oil lamp had been refilled, and so it burned brighter than before—bright enough that the knight could make out the short, delicate script shining through the thin page.
The message was so brief it could be read in a single breath.
[Would it be possible to see you at the Imperial Palace then?]
Sherkan’s face remained utterly blank. He simply stared down at the letter. The already quiet tent seemed to grow even quieter.
The knight held his breath. In the stillness, only the soft crackle of the lamp’s burning wick could be heard.
Sherkan suddenly folded the letter in half. Then in half again. And once more.
The creased edges looked sharp as knife blades.
When the letter had been folded down to the size of a fingernail, Sherkan brought it to his mouth and swallowed it whole.
“M-my Lord?”
The knight was bewildered, but Sherkan’s expression remained unmoved.
If anything, something strange flickered across his lips—something too faint to be called a smile, yet too full of joy to be called a sneer.
The knight knew his master’s temperament well and possessed enough sense not to ask foolish questions. He simply lowered his head as though he’d seen nothing.
“Go. Tidy up and then leave.”
“At once.”
“And…”
The young Grand Duke—possessed of a face that would never tire of even unto death—
threw himself onto the camp cot and issued his orders.
“In four hours we resume the pursuit. Have the vanguard of the 1st Expedition Army standing by at two fifty-five. Check our remaining Holy Water stores and make certain we have at least fifty bottles secured.”
The knight’s eyes instinctively fell on Sherkan’s forearm. A word of protest rose to his throat, then was swallowed back down.
Yes. This young lord would survive this too.
Though what drove him to struggle so desperately, the knight could not fathom—yet he would prevail nonetheless.
“At once.”
Sherkan covered his eyes with his uninjured hand.
The knight dimmed the lamp’s brightness and withdrew. The night wind swept past without lifting the heavy canvas of the tent.
3. How the Retired Empress Expresses Her Anger
These days, Gonet Castle had become the most coveted destination for produce merchants.
All because of eggs. Those infernal eggs!
Whatever feed they’d been given, these eggs were monstrously large—and their yield kept increasing until now over a hundred were sold in a single day.
Though the price was five times that of ordinary eggs, merchants scrambled desperately to procure them.
It was because no one had ever tasted eggs so delicious.
They had no fishy smell whatsoever, and their flavor exceeded all imagination. When fried in butter or lard, they possessed an extraordinarily rich, savory taste with just a hint of sweetness.
Moreover, their remarkable size made them a striking decoration when served boiled on a noble’s table.
The high-end restaurants catering to the aristocracy waged daily battles over access to them.
Yet no restaurant owner possessed the temerity to approach the Grand Duke’s house directly to propose a private sales arrangement—nor did the other nobles willing to pay premium prices, for that matter.
In these lands, indeed across the entire continent, no noble dared rank themselves higher than House Gonet.
Thus, each dawn, baskets of warm eggs were traded at exorbitant prices. Once, rival merchants had come to blows over the baskets and were permanently barred—after which everyone became extraordinarily careful.
And yet the Grand Duke’s house had made it clear they had no intention of selling eggs to the outside market.
The produce merchants felt they might prostrate themselves before those baskets in prayer.
The poultry yard was not the only new hotspot. The stables had also become a place of fascination.
The servants ladled gruel into the troughs and gossiped among themselves.
“But do calves usually grow this fast?”
“When they first arrived they all looked so scrawny and weak. They must have been malnourished, so they were probably full-grown cattle to begin with, right?”
“That doesn’t make sense. The livestock merchants aren’t fools.”
Listening from a distance, I could not help but chuckle to myself. One of the calves, blessed with endless applications of the Breeding Order, had already yielded a full bucket of milk just today.
‘But I’d better be careful about this.’
If things grew and thrived too quickly across the board, people would begin to suspect Black Magic—so I needed to moderate things appropriately.
‘If only I had a field.’
Plants were far less likely to draw suspicion of Black Magic than animals.
Even if they grew splendidly, a simple explanation would suffice.
What was I to do?
The spirit appeared only in my dreams?
The Sun Spirit favored only me, did they?
Hah!
I was in good spirits, channeling the Breeding Order over the feed trough of the newly hatched chicks, when—
Scratch.
Scratch-scratch.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
“……?”
Erihi appeared from nowhere like a thief, stealing up beside me.
“Your Grace, there’s something urgent I need to discuss with you.”
“Hmm?”
“Would you care to dine out this evening?”
“Dine out? So suddenly?”

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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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