Abandoned Empress's Survival Manual Beside the Male Lead - Chapter 63

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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 63
Since the Saint appeared, the Great Temple’s influence had soared to the heavens.
Even before, the Great Temple had wielded considerable power as the continent’s sole religion, and now it received vast sums in donations and numberless privileges.
The most renowned of these was the Pilgrimage Site it offered.
Pay the enormous sum the Great Temple demanded, and you could live within their territory, cut off from the outside world.
Not even Sherkan could retrieve someone who had fled to the Great Temple’s protection.
Of course, the price varied by station.
From a beggar they demanded an emperor’s ransom; from an emperor, the price of selling the entire continent.
In truth, throughout history, few had ever successfully entered beneath that extraordinary shield the Great Temple offered—
And she despised him so thoroughly.
Was it truly the case that she would go to the Great Temple, a place she had always dreaded, simply to escape from him?
Aslan rushed forward and cried out in alarm.
“Your Majesty! No! Absolutely not! Your Majesty, you have already completed all the rituals—you are a perfectly ordinary person now! No one is trying to flee from you!”
Sherkan simply strode forward. The weight of a single muscular knight clinging to him seemed to affect him not at all.
“Your Majesty! Please, compose yourself! The Grand Duchess has merely received the Spirit’s Blessing—why do you believe such a thing? Your Majesty is no longer as you were in childhood!”
Sherkan laughed slowly.
“No?”
Cold sweat drenched Aslan’s entire body.
In a blink, Sherkan slammed Aslan hard against the ground.
“Ack—!”
Sherkan didn’t so much as blink as he walked on.
Spirit’s Blessing?
It was nonsense of the basest kind.
Sherkan was the Grand Duke of Gonet. No matter how low his station had been before, he was now the legitimate Grand Duke.
High nobility had always shared secrets the common folk knew nothing of.
Spirits were not benevolent creatures toward mankind.
Graciously predict ore veins for someone?
Had they done so, Lorelthiana would have been dead long ago, delivered as a corpse.
Yet he did know that cursed being showed a modicum of forbearance toward its contractors.
That was it.
Lorelthiana was direct lineage of Laround.
What did it matter that she dwelt in the Deposed Concubine’s Palace?
What consequence was an unloved princess?
No matter what station she held, her worth remained unchanged.
It had been so from the beginning until now.
Lorelthiana was the bearer of a noble bloodline worthy of recognition by the National Treasure of a fallen empire—a being he could never dare so much as glance upon.
It had always been so.
From the very first time he saw her.
“Why Lorelthiana? Why Lorelthiana? Why must it be Lorelthiana?”
Her voice, overheard from hiding back then, echoed in his mind.
Lorelthiana had been a solitary princess, hugging her knees in a decrepit Separate Palace, while he was still a beast wearing Beast-kin skin like a borrowed husk.
Yet she had seemed endlessly alone.
Like someone cast into a boundless sea, uncertain what to do.
And yet.
As if she had died once and returned to life, an inexplicable, fathomless depth filled Lorelthiana’s eyes.
To one who had always wished for death, Lorelthiana kindled an intense yearning.
He wanted to draw near.
He wanted to ask.
How could the fog of death wrap around her entire being so completely?
And yet somehow shine so brightly, like the dawn?
* * *
Three years prior.
Lorelthiana’s narrow, neglected garden was filled with bushes stripped of their blossoms and large dogs.
The handmaids whispered among themselves.
“I hear they ran short of flowers for the Saint’s birthday party. So they cut every rose from this Separate Palace?”
“And it’s not just once or twice either. That First Princess really is something—she keeps growing roses to humor the Saint, doesn’t she? Such persistence.”
“Well, what can you do? Behind closed doors, she bullies Princess Ayu often enough. If you’re going to put on a good act, at least do it consistently.”
“She flatters, she puts on airs, and meanwhile she’s still of royal blood—which gives her that First Princess pride. That’s why she acts this way.”
“Her way through the world is half-hearted, her heart is petty. That’s why she’s stuck as a back-palace princess.”
The handmaids laughed cruelly as they scattered moldy meat and bread to the dogs loitering in the garden.
“Why on earth does she keep so many dogs in this ramshackle old place?”
“You’re new, so you wouldn’t know. The princess Ayu loves small, cute puppies and kittens, doesn’t she? But people who don’t know her think she just likes any rare dog, so they send these great hulking beasts too.”
“Then why not dispose of them?”
“Most of them have been. The especially rare ones were sent to the Crown Prince, but these? You could say they’re more like crumbs that fell off the bread wagon.”
The three or four dogs occupying the small garden were hybrid breeds with wolf blood running through their veins.
For ordinary nobility, they would have counted as rather presentable gifts, but in the Northern Kingdom Royal Family, rare animals were something in abundance.
Ayu received so many rare creatures each month as gifts.
Ayu didn’t want them, the Crown Prince wouldn’t spare them a glance, and these dogs had been filtered through the disposal candidates again and again until they ended up here.
Sherkan, sprawled atop the roof, rested his chin on his folded hands and peered down below.
With his ash-colored fur hanging thick and shaggy across his entire body, anyone who saw him might mistake him for a great mop.
Of course, no one in this palace had yet noticed Sherkan’s presence.
He had come here following the high priests.
By this point, Sherkan’s Purification Ritual was nearing completion.
The Saint had happened to hold a celebration feast to commemorate her descent, and the high priests had been invited.
The high priests had brought Sherkan here in hopes that the Saint’s sacred power might purify the filthy Beast-kin blood flowing through his veins more swiftly.
“Because the princess Ayu keeps so many adorable puppies, she decided she wanted dogs too and pestered for them.”
“Heavens, doesn’t she realize that only makes her look worse by comparison?”
“She doesn’t realize, which is why she lives as she does. Tsk, tsk. The kitchen staff actually likes it, though. They say it’s convenient for disposing of spoiled food.”
“I need to catch someone important’s eye soon and escape this wretched place.”
“They say the princess Ayu’s chief lady-in-waiting has quite the influence now. Word is she wields more authority than the King’s chief steward himself.”
In the space the attendants left behind as they withdrew, whispering among themselves, Sherkan saw her.
The princess, concealed behind a trimmed hedge, crawled out from her hiding place.
The platinum-haired princess emerged with a sullen expression, her hair catching on the cut branches and giving her a fair bit of trouble in the process.
Then, muttering like someone possessed, she whispered to herself.
“Of all people, it had to be Lorelthiana. Of all people, it had to be Lorelthiana. Of all people, it had to be Lorelthiana…”
The princess, her hair disheveled, watched the dogs wagging their tails and rushing toward her, smiled, then let out a sigh.
“How am I supposed to tell them to get rid of all the dogs Lorelthiana already brought here…”
She unwrapped the cloth wrap she had brought, and out came a large loaf of bread.
“Tada. Don’t I look like Jean Valjean?”
It was clearly very old, the sort of bread even the servants wouldn’t eat.
But at least there was no mold on it.
It was the only uncorrupted food in this shabby garden.
The princess tore up the bread and distributed it among the dogs, who ate it with delight.
As she tore apart the dry, hard bread and handed it out, she looked happy.
Though all she possessed were a few abandoned dogs and old bread.
Wrapped in poverty and death itself, the princess looked far too content.
Sherkan spent the entire day staring blankly at that woman.
“Woof! Woof!”
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
He had not anticipated that the sharp-nosed dogs would recognize him and start barking the moment he let his guard slip.
Sherkan reflexively moved to hide himself, then hesitated.
He was curious.
Would this princess scream when she saw him?
Would she immediately cry out for the guards to seize him?
He was neither dog nor wolf, but merely the grotesque form of a Beast-kin monster.
Then, the bright blue eyes of the princess startled by the sight of Sherkan closed for a moment, and she sighed.
And then she spoke words Sherkan could never have imagined.
“Why is that puppy crying?”
Sherkan shuffled backward hesitantly.
“Come down. When did you climb up there?”
He did not, of course, come down. He had been fleeing for some time now.
Did she just call him a puppy?
Did that even make sense?
He had seen his own reflection in the pond, and from every angle he was nothing but a monster.
He walked on all fours like a dog or wolf, but his form was profoundly grotesque.
From far away, one might mistake him for a large dog, but the moment one drew near, they would scream.
Sherkan’s body was twisted.
He was a monster.
And so…
It was clear.
That woman had to be mad.
After so many years confined to that back room, madness was inevitable.
Just as he had gone completely mad in the Great Temple.
That was what loneliness was.
It drove sane people to ruin; how much more so for someone like him—not even sane to begin with, and hardly human at all.
Yes, that had to be it…….
Into his aimlessly drifting, solitary heart came an unexpected relief.
He had thought he would be lonely forever.
A foreign thing adrift in this world, unique and alone, for all eternity.
But the memory of the past grew hazy, then faded entirely.
* * *
Sherkan opened his eyes, then closed them again.
What existed in this place now was only himself wearing a human form entirely, and the barrack of the Subjugation Ground, drenched every day in a staggering amount of blood.
Sherkan seized his sword like a madman. He did not hear whatever Aslan was shouting.
In his mind there was only Lorelthiana.
Only one line from the letter she had sent him flooded through him, persistent and relentless.
[Will I be able to see you at the Imperial Palace then?]
The shoulder pauldron Sherkan had been gripping began to warp.
“Your Highness!”
He did not hear Aslan’s voice.
His ears rang and his heart thundered so hard it terrified him.
Then
you
will I see?
Will I be able to see you then? Will I be able to see you then? Will I be able to see you then? Will I be able to see you then? Will I be able to see you then Will I be able to see you then Will I be able to see you then Will I be able to see you then Will I be able to see you then Will I be able to see you then Will I be able to see you then Will I be able to see you then
Will I be able to see you
then?
“Yes…….”
She had drained his mind with that letter, displayed it so plainly.
So in the end, she too had found him—this Beast-kin hybrid—repulsive.
He had been better off when that mad woman mistook him for a beast.
Back then, she had not run from him even when she saw what he was. She had even stroked his head.
That was when he had deceived himself.
He had completely forgotten that people despise Beast-kin hybrids far more than they do some rare four-legged creature.
Yes, so that was it—she was trying to flee from him.

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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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