About Becoming My Ex-Husband's Mistress - Chapter 198

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Side Story 8. Like a Beast Enslaved Only to Instinct
“There may be a problem with the ingredients.”
The Mage examining the materials pointed to a brown bean and furrowed his brow.
“Mage Tower Master. That’s a cacao bean.”
Doubting whether I’d heard correctly, I asked for clarification.
“A cacao bean? The ingredient for chocolate?”
Duke Jester also nodded after examining the powder.
“Yes, it’s definitely a chocolate ingredient. But there’s no way this should be in a frog curse spell, is there? Why is it here? Wait a moment.”
Upon checking the grimoire, Duke Jester let out a soft laugh.
“The ingredient here is listed as ‘kakarobin’…”
At those words, another Mage retrieved a green powder from a shelf on the wall.
“This is kakarobin. How on earth did this happen?”
No matter how carefully I examined the materials Duke Jester had brought, I couldn’t find any green powder.
“The names are similar…… Did someone misread it perhaps?”
Duke Jester, having voiced his confusion aloud, turned toward the door.
“Check whether the grimoire and materials match. I’ll go verify his condition and return.”
At Duke Jester’s command, the Mages began verifying whether the grimoire and materials matched.
After checking for quite some time, Duke Jester returned looking utterly bewildered.
“His eyesight has deteriorated so badly that he misread the characters. He’s not even a curse magic specialist, so he used the wrong ingredients. It seems he got caught by a different spell instead.”
At those words, laughter erupted among the Mages.
“Before the regression, he lived so arrogantly.”
“He was originally quite incompetent.”
“With different wealth comes different aging, it seems.”
The atmosphere was so light that I couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. But it was only brief—I felt a strange energy coursing through my body.
At the same time, my eye level began to shift.
“Oh, something feels strange. I think I’m getting smaller.”
It was true. Duke Jester and the other Mages seemed to grow taller and taller. The furniture around us was also rising higher.
Even the clothes I was wearing grew increasingly loose. The sudden change was bewildering and frightening.
I wondered if I was transforming into a frog.
“Oh, what do I do?”
Duke Jester’s and the Mages’ eyes had grown enormously large. Their expressions were soon painted with shock.
The curse spell Rozette had cast upon me manifested, throwing the Mage Tower into emergency.
The prevailing opinion had been that the spell wouldn’t last long even if it activated. But now that everyone had witnessed it activating, the Mage Tower couldn’t remain quiet.
“Priscilla!”
Upon hearing the news, Luderne Sellen rushed over in alarm with Walter.
“Husband.”
I turned my head to look at Luderne Sellen from where I sat on a sofa in one corner of the Mage Tower, eating a macaron.
“What do I do?”
After confirming my appearance, Luderne Sellen blinked his eyes repeatedly. He seemed unable to trust what he was seeing. Walter wore a similar expression.
Luderne Sellen’s lips trembled before he finally approached and took my hand.
“Priscilla, is that really… you?”
I rose from the sofa and stood before the mirror. I had already confirmed my transformed appearance countless times, yet I felt compelled to verify it once more.
I was dressed in a crimson one-piece adorned with large floral patterns.
My pale skin, emerald eyes, and honey-blonde hair tied up with a red ribbon remained unchanged. I lifted my hand and touched my face.
Delicate, fern-like fingers and soft, rounded cheeks.
A height that barely reached Luderne’s knees.
“Y-yes.”
I gasped in surprise at my own response and covered my mouth with my hand.
What had just emerged was unmistakably a lisp. A sigh escaped me involuntarily.
As unbelievable as it was, I had been transformed into a child of merely three or four years old.
“….”
Luderne gazed at me for a long moment, his eyes trembling visibly, before dropping to one knee. He lowered his body further to meet my eye level and carefully extended his hand toward me.
“Good heavens, Priscilla. A curse, of all things.”
“Y-yes?”
“I have beheld five adorable children.”
“F-five?”
Luderne pinched my cheeks, leaving me utterly flustered.
“W-what are you doing?”
My words tumbled out in a slurred stream. Luderne’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and his lips trembled with barely suppressed mirth.
“I have never seen a child quite this adorable.”
* * *
“Oh my? Your Majesty the Empress. My, how remarkably youthful you’ve become in my absence. Tee-hee.”
That was what the retired Menglow Breeze said upon seeing me seated upon Luderne’s lap. She had come to the Mage Tower after receiving an urgent message that I had been subjected to a magical attack and required assistance.
Since witnessing my transformation, Luderne had not left my side for a single moment.
“While it is fortunate that the Empress was merely turned into a child due to a faulty frog curse potion rather than something worse…”
After observing me for some time, Menglow suddenly swallowed hard and glanced nervously at Luderne. She raised her withered hand as though to reach out, hesitating—clearly yearning to touch my cheeks.
“Absolutely not.”
At Luderne’s firm refusal, Menglow clicked her tongue in disappointment.
“Tsk. The certainty is that if left as you are, you will remain in this form for the rest of your life.”
At those words, the Mage Tower erupted into chaos. The alarmed Luderne immediately ordered the discovery of a method to dispel the curse upon me.
Menglow began discussing various approaches to curse removal with Duke Jester, and soon offered a hopeful perspective.
“Nevertheless, since it is a curse, we should be able to find a method. Please wait a moment.”
What a tremendous relief.
I leaned against Luderne’s chest and checked the time. It was soon to be tea time.
Shortly, the servant attending to the Mage Tower brought tea, desserts, and a newspaper.
My teacup was filled with rose tea—a fragrant variety I preferred.
Yet the moment I lifted the cup to my lips as I normally would…
“Blegh.”
Without thinking, I spat out the tea I had taken into my mouth. The tea that had smelled so fragrant moments before now tasted bitterly unpleasant.
“Does the tea taste strange?”
When Luderne tasted his own rose tea in response to my question, he merely shrugged.
“It tastes the same as always.”
I handed my teacup to the servant.
“It tastes strange to me.”
After heaving a deep sigh, I spotted chocolate among the desserts. It wasn’t something I usually ate, yet today it called to me irresistibly.
“Have my tastes become childish? I think I’d prefer chocolate to tea today.”
As I spoke to Luderne, the servant quickly placed chocolate on a plate and handed it to me. Since I’d grown smaller and could no longer reach the table easily, she was being attentive.
“Thank you.”
The moment I put the chocolate in my mouth along with my thanks, the sweet flavor melted across my tongue, and my mood lifted instantly.
“Goodness, this chocolate is absolutely delicious.”
I devoured every piece of chocolate that had come as dessert while sitting there. My spirits lifted so much that I found myself grinning, and Luderne, looking equally pleased, turned to the servant.
“Send someone to fetch the Head Chef.”
When the Head Chef soon arrived and bowed, Luderne pointed to the empty plate.
“This chocolate that was served—you made it, didn’t you?”
“Pardon?”
The Head Chef startled visibly, his eyes darting about. His reaction seemed oddly evasive.
“Surely… it wasn’t you?”
At Luderne’s follow-up question, the Head Chef broke into a cold sweat and withdrew a handkerchief to dab his brow.
“Y-Your Majesty. I made everything myself originally, but the chocolates served recently… I did not make those.”
The Head Chef hesitated nervously, then swallowed hard before confessing that he’d been purchasing various products manufactured by several small vendors.
“You see, with the recent implementation of the minimum wage guarantee law…”
The minimum wage guarantee law had been enacted to protect the poor from exploitation and inadequate compensation in their labor.
The Head Chef shrugged.
“As wages at the Cacao Farms rose, raw material costs increased dramatically as well.”
Since farm wages had been absurdly cheap before, the law had profoundly impacted production sites.
The production costs for chocolate manufacturers and chocolate prices themselves had skyrocketed temporarily, needless to say. But when that happened, common folk’s consumption plummeted significantly.
Following market economics, chocolate prices fell again, and now they were selling at a slightly higher price point than before.
However, profits had diminished, and with commoners having experienced the price barrier, their consumption hadn’t recovered. These were difficult times.
“Following proper procedures to verify safety and quality before purchasing posed no problem, so I decided to support them by purchasing from these vendors for the time being.”
He emphasized safety, explaining that he conducted thorough quality inspections before purchasing.
“And we also conduct internal inspections. Furthermore—”
Luderne raised his hand, cutting off the Head Chef’s words.
“I understand, and you did well. But I’m curious—who made this?”
“In this process…”
The Head Chef, who had trailed off, finally found his voice again.
Once verified, the chocolates weren’t classified by vendor name but rather sorted by their ingredients and stored in dedicated containers.
In other words, it became impossible to know which vendor had made the chocolate.
However, there had been no problems thus far. This was the first time anyone had asked about the source.
The Head Chef bowed his head, perspiration dripping freely.
“Still, it must be from a vendor in the Capital. If you grant me time, I will find out.”
Luderne dismissed the Head Chef with a nod, then murmured to himself.
“I cannot lower the baseline wages… It seems we’ll need to increase chocolate consumption. Perhaps it would be wise to invest in that industry.”
An idea suddenly struck me.
“Darling! Weren’t you looking for something we could use as the origin story for our festival?”
“That’s right.”
“What if we held a chocolate festival every year?”
“It’s a good idea, but…”
I understood why he trailed off.
To establish it as a proper festival, we would need a fitting legend behind it. Simply creating a festival to support a chocolate business would lack sufficient justification.
“If we commission research into chocolate’s history, wouldn’t we naturally uncover a suitable origin story?”
“That could work. Let’s try it.”
Just then, Duke Jester and Menglow arrived and bowed respectfully.
“The curse placed upon the Empress appears to be more easily dispelled than we initially thought.”
“That’s welcome news indeed. What is it?”
Menglow beside him chuckled softly.
“There’s always been one particular condition that proves remarkably effective in breaking curse magic.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————