Abandoned Empress's Survival Manual Beside the Male Lead - Chapter 86

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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 86
She held a tray in her hands. Upon it sat Sherkan’s evening meal.
Sherkan glanced at Beate and asked.
“Is Aslan badly hurt?”
“More severely than we’d hoped, Your Highness.”
Sorrow saturated Beate’s voice. Tears brimmed at the corners of her eyes.
Aslan had been attacked from behind at Banro today—struck by those wretches.
“The bone wasn’t exposed, was it?”
“No, Your Highness. Fortunately the muscle escaped injury, but the pain seems severe. He took the medicine prescribed by the medical officer and only now has fallen asleep.”
Sherkan released a low sigh.
Aslan was the vice-commander, but objectively speaking, his skill was not exceptional.
However, having been at Sherkan’s side since earliest childhood, he possessed an outstanding ability to coordinate with his movements.
Sherkan was second to none as a knight—the strongest on the continent, one might say.
Thus he preferred knights who could match his support well, even if their swordsmanship was slightly inferior, rather than those with middling skill.
Even the smallest mistake could cost one’s life in this Suppression Ground.
“Take good care of him.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Beate, answering obediently, set the tray down carefully on the table inside the barracks.
The diets of knights who exerted themselves heavily were never sparse.
Sherkan’s meal alone consisted of a whole roasted chicken, spinach sautéed in butter, potatoes boiled and mashed with cream, thick potato stew, and a large dark loaf of bread besides.
After setting down the tray, Beate did not withdraw. Instead, she rolled up her sleeves slightly, revealing white, delicate hands.
“Let me tear the bread for you.”
Sherkan’s brow furrowed.
“That’s enough.”
“Your Highness?”
“Since when have you done such things? Go look after Aslan instead.”
“But the medical officers are already with Aslan, so…….”
Beate’s hands, which had been reaching for the bread, found themselves with nowhere to go. She spoke in a forlorn voice.
“I only wanted to attend to your meal after such a long time, but it seems my clumsiness has offended you.”
Sherkan made no reply to Beate’s words and began eating his stew.
Beate remained standing, her expression wounded. Absorbed in his meal, Sherkan suddenly lifted his head.
“Why are you still standing here?”
“Your Highness, Aslan attended to your meals every day. I can do the same as I did before.”
Sherkan’s brow furrowed again.
“Have you ever attended my meals before?”
Beate answered urgently.
“Of course. Don’t you remember? When you went to Desinjon, we went with you.”
“……?”
Sherkan let out an involuntary, hollow laugh.
“You call that attending to meals?”
When he had first been dragged to Desinjon, Sherkan’s Barbarian blood had been far more dominant. He had despised cooked food and craved only raw meat.
It was little different from tearing into a beast that had just stopped breathing.
After such meals—if one could call them that—his entire body would naturally be filthy with animal blood.
It was Aslan who bathed Sherkan’s blood-stained body every day.
Beate merely left out fresh clothes for him and left, nothing more.
He still remembered her leaving the garments by the door and the sound of her feet fleeing without so much as a backward glance.
“Your Highness……. Why do you speak so coldly?”
Beate bit her lip.
“I was young then and foolish, and the blood of beasts frightened me too much to draw near. But I believed I was attending to your meals in my own way. Besides, now Aslan lies injured, so who else but me could serve you?”
Tears welled in her eyes—those eyes like sunset, so beautiful they could surely steal the hearts of countless knights.
“You are no less than a noble Grand Duke, Your Highness…….”
“Enough. Go. Keep watch over Aslan.”
Sherkan cut off her words without mercy, and Beate’s eyes reddened further with hurt.
All this time, Aslan had prevented Beate from drawing unnecessarily close to Sherkan.
Beate herself was well aware that Aslan had harbored feelings for her since childhood.
Of course, Aslan was hardly lacking in merit.
He was commander of the Gonet Knight Order, handsome of face, and gentle of temperament.
But even the evening star pales into insignificance beside the sun, does it not?
And their master, this young Grand Duke, was simply too perfect—drawing the hearts of countless women toward him endlessly.
Beate’s fingertips tingled.
At some point, all the vulgar traces unique to Barbarian Hybrids had vanished from him, and now Sherkan Gonet was nothing short of a perfect aristocrat.
Beate walked with deliberate slowness.
She kept hoping, even now, that Sherkan might change his mind and speak to her—but no voice came in return.
Before leaving the tent with reluctant steps, she glanced sidelong at Sherkan, her gaze heavy with longing.
Yet her hopes fell hollow. Sherkan Gonet was not looking at her. He seemed genuinely indifferent, merely continuing his meal.
Instead, it was Beate whose eyes lingered, transfixed.
His profile, leaning against the lamplight, was beautiful enough to raise gooseflesh.
Her master was terribly, impossibly beautiful.
Beautiful enough to flush her cheeks crimson.
Only after the tent flap had closed did Beate finally move.
Sherkan could not rest immediately after his meal.
After attending to several matters, reading yet another letter from the Emperor and burning it, and concluding tomorrow’s Suppression Ground council, only then could he collapse onto his bed.
It was already late into the night, and he could have simply slept where he lay—and yet….
“…….”
In an instant.
His heart began to pulse violently.
Once. Twice. Three times.
A sharp pain broke his breathing.
He exhaled long, rose from the bed, felt across his chest, then stripped away his shirt entirely and stepped before the mirror.
Each time the lamplight flickered, old scars appeared and vanished in the darkness.
Among them lay something that was not a scar.
A red Spirit Stone, not yet fully absorbed into his skin, gave the odd appearance of a stone lodged beneath the surface.
Sherkan pressed the Spirit Stone with his fingertip, its light wavering. It was a gesture utterly without hesitation—perfectly his own.
This tracking Spirit Stone continued to drink his blood.
Each time, a strange agony seized his chest as if being wrung in a fist.
Sherkan’s brow dimmed with a subtle wince.
Then a peculiar impulse took hold of him. In every impulse Sherkan felt, Lorelthiana always dwelt.
Sherkan gazed at the Spirit Stone.
This small, lukewarm stone could reveal one woman’s whereabouts forever.
Sherkan smiled suddenly.
“Mad bastard.”
Not possessing a fully human mind, he supposed, meant he could commit such deranged acts.
Sherkan dressed again and lay back on the bed.
Yet he did not fall asleep for quite some time.

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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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