Disqualified as a Villainess - Chapter 31

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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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#31.

“Prince Jeriel.”
As Octavia entered the Healing Chamber carrying flowers, Prince Jeriel hastily pulled the blanket over himself.
“Y-you really came? Did you see the ceremony too?”
“You promised, didn’t you?”
Octavia sat at the edge of the bed and offered him the flowers—a knockout rose with a deep cherry-red hue.
Prince Jeriel flinched as he accepted them, shrinking back.
“Lady, you can’t get close to me.”
“Why not?”
“It’s contagious. Besides my Uncle and the priests, no one wants to touch me.”
Octavia gently patted the back of Prince Jeriel as he huddled beneath the blanket.
“I’m fine. I’m a non-ability user, so the power of chaos doesn’t affect me.”
“And… it doesn’t look hideous?”
“Come on, I saw it earlier—it’s not hideous at all. You just looked like a calico cat.”
At Octavia’s casual tone, Prince Jeriel peeked out with only his crimson eyes visible, studying her.
“Really?”
“Look at this.”
She lifted a small wooden ornament from the table, displaying it in her palm.
Shimmer.
The small wooden ornament had transformed into a wooden cat figurine with calico markings.
“Isn’t it adorable?”
“Is that transmutation? But you’re a non-ability user—how did you do that?”
“There are tools that allow ordinary people to use simple abilities.”
Octavia showed him a small toy transmutation device.
Beneath the blanket, Prince Jeriel touched the wooden cat figurine and nodded.
“It’s cute.”
“You’re just as cute, Your Highness.”
All children are beautiful and precious beings, after all.

“Teacher!”
“Teacher, look at this! Make a dandelion here!”

Octavia smiled, recalling the children from the facility in her past life, who had chattered like baby birds.
Gathering courage, Prince Jeriel pulled back the blanket slightly and asked.
“Lady, your name is Octavia, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“I write really well.”
Prince Jeriel offered a childlike boast without context, writing Octavia’s name in his sketchbook and showing it to her.
“Your name combines the number eight and the word ‘journey,’ doesn’t it? Father told me that eight is a number symbolizing infinity. My name means the angel of January.”
Octavia, now learning the meaning of her own name, gasped in wonder.
“Wow, you’re so smart. Your handwriting is so neat and beautiful too. Since the Prince wrote it, I should frame it nicely and hang it in my room.”
Embarrassed by the praise, the child let out a small laugh and rubbed beneath his nose. His honey-colored hair, spilling out from beneath the blanket, trembled softly.
“My older brother writes even better. He studies well, he’s athletic, he’s healthy, and….”
Prince Jeriel was speaking about his older brother, Prince Lucas.
At twelve years old, he was intelligent and excelled in many ways, but he was only a Grade 6 ability user. Even if his abilities grew, he would cap out at Grade 5.
Prince Jeriel, who had awakened at the youngest age as a Grade 3 with a rare ability, had been pushed down in the line of succession, earning him the epithet of the “unfortunate prince” in society.
“I love my brother, but after Father passed away, he started hating me. Actually, I think Mother started hating me too.”
As if all his accumulated loneliness and sorrow had finally surfaced, the sound of sniffling came from beneath the blanket he had pulled over himself.
“Father died because of me.”
He had been attacked while traveling to the Former Duke’s Kingdom of Origin.
Octavia’s heart grew heavy watching the child blame himself.
“Parents are beings capable of dying in place of their children—that is the love they possess. Your Highness should be grateful that you survived; they would never hate you.”
“Then why doesn’t she come see me?”
“Adults have their circumstances. Even if they cannot express it or cannot meet you, the fact that they love you does not change.”
Octavia was accustomed to comforting lies, though this was not entirely false.
She had witnessed the Crown Princess lingering nearby, biting her lip before turning away.
Princess Dekima, having lost her husband the Duke, had to live as a ruthless wielder of power rather than as a mother, and in the original work, after the child’s death, she would endure tremendous regret and the agony of loss.
“Octavia, if you have no other obligations….”
Prince Jeriel, who had burrowed back under the blanket, extended his hand through a gap.
“Come visit me often.”
His voice carried a childlike whine at the end. Octavia grasped the small hand without hesitation.
“Can I come whenever I miss you?”
“Yes. Later, when I grow up, we’ll be the kind of people who marry each other.”
The child’s voice, speaking with the future as a premise, sounded somewhat excited.
She recalled the children who had never grown into adulthood and had departed.
Future presidents, teachers, soldiers, scientists….
Children filled with dreams had vanished behind the curtain.
Octavia carefully drew Prince Jeriel, who was smiling beneath the blanket, into an embrace.
She felt a startled tremor from beneath the blanket and the warmth of the child’s body.
“Later, show me what kind of adult you’ve become.”
She whispered uncertain hope to the child once more.
‘Rather than despair for long knowing from the start that it will shatter, it is better to live with hope and break at the end.’

Favorability increased [+300]

***

「A miracle befalls Chloe Arsenes, the low-rank consecration mage who saved Princess May. The advent of the next generation Saint?」

Chloe, who had ascended from rank 9 to rank 2 overnight, became the talk of the city.
Rank was the very ladder of status and position.
She had risen from a low-rank consecration mage wandering between the Plague Zone and Contaminated Zone to become a high-ranking clergy member of the Holy Temple.

「If one maintains the order of the heart even in darkness and does not lose faith, one can receive the guidance of the God of Order.」

The Holy Temple Society seized this opportunity and leveraged it for religious propaganda.
Her meteoric rise stirred jealousy and admiration among many, and became a beacon of hope for lower-rank ability users who had resigned themselves to their innate limitations.
‘Finally, my prayers have been answered.’
Chloe’s deep violet hair fluttered in the wind as she stood before the Holy Temple.

“Rank 9? Utterly useless! No better than vermin!”

Her life as a member of a fallen house and a rank 9 ability user had been far from easy.
The lowest-tier ability users and Holy Ability Users could not apply for official missions.
It was a shameful stigma so degrading that even her own family treated her as a failure, preferring to lie and claim she was an ordinary person.
Memories threaded with discrimination, poverty, deprivation, and suffering seemed to drift away on the wind.
‘I will never return to that mire.’
It would be foolish for one born from the mud to be choosy about the means and methods of escape.
That is why she had won Dominic’s heart and secured a stepping stone to climb. Whether he had made a deal contingent on his engagement to Octavia mattered not.
To escape the abyss, one must ultimately trample over another—she knew this better than anyone.

“Chloe, you have endured your trials and earned the love of God, thus gaining your freedom.”

I never doubted my mother’s prophecy that I would gain a holiness stronger than anyone else’s.
‘If I save Prince Jeriel this time and earn recognition….’
As Chloe stepped into the Holy Temple, clutching her necklace tightly, she stopped upon spotting an elegantly dressed woman and several handsome men.
It was Octavia and her two older brothers.
“My secretary apparently went home alone? She did the same thing last time, you know? Have me escorted home. It’s on your way anyway.”
Samuel frowned as he looked down at Octavia.
“I already told Lothear to go ahead. And what business do you have at home? Going in and out as you please—you’re absolutely willful.”
“What business? I need to ask Father for money for lobbying.”
Vittore’s expression wasn’t particularly pleasant either.
“Lobbying? More like you heard about new jewelry and need money. And what did you do at Uncle’s house that he’s sending messages begging us to take you?”
Chloe knew that Octavia didn’t have a good relationship with her family.
Yet despite their seemingly harsh demeanor, there was no hatred or contempt in her brothers’ eyes when they looked at their youngest sister.
“Oops.”
The way they caught their sister when she nearly stumbled trying to keep up with their brisk pace, then slowed their steps for her sake, said it all.
‘Is that what family is?’

“Look at this worthless insect of a girl rising in the world. I’ll specially become your escort knight. Who knows—maybe I, having joined the Holy Knight Order, can seduce some clergy or wealthy women to help you.”

Chloe, remembering her own vicious older brother, looked down at her worn coat and shoes with scuffed soles.
From her perspective, Octavia had everything.
Everyone said Octavia was incompetent and disliked by her family, yet no one dared openly antagonize her.
Because ultimately, she was protected within the embrace of family.

“Are you truly sorry? Blocking your path starts from now.”

It was pathetic how she, possessing everything I lacked, threw a tantrum over losing a single man.
Beyond her outbursts directed at me, I simply despised her.
Money, family, reliable allies—such things were hardly wasted on someone so contemptible.
“Priest Chloe, you’ve arrived.”
Watching the senior priests welcome her, Chloe’s lips curved upward in a subtle smile, her thoughts scattering.
“You’ll be overseeing all consecration ceremonies from now on. Lower-tier consecration practitioners are common enough, but you’re the only one with second-tier consecration abilities.”
I felt the cold gaze of the priest who had previously handled consecrations, but I paid it no mind.
“This is where you’ll be staying.”
High Priests of second tier and above didn’t occupy mere rooms—they commanded entire individual buildings.
I stepped past the guiding priest into a structure so lavishly appointed it seemed excessive.
Gleaming marble floors, pillars carved with meticulous detail, a ceiling fresco bearing the touch of a master, intricate sculptures as if welcoming those who pass through heaven’s gates.
Things that had never existed for me before now greeted me.
All except for one unwelcome remnant.
“Wait, I’m not finished preparing yet.”
It was the High Priest who had originally occupied this space. The guiding priest’s irritation flared.
“What are you doing? If you’ve been demoted to a lower priest, leave at once.”
“How convenient. When were you so respectful and flattering? Now you’ve completely changed your tune overnight.”
“Of course I have. You have only your insufficient faith to blame. Stop spouting nonsense and get out!”
The High Priest, shoved down roughly, muttered in hollow despair.
“I don’t want to go to the Monastery. It’s no different from a brothel. The more one purifies the sin of filthy lust, the more the purifier’s body rots.”
In the Temple, one was revered as a noble figure conveying holiness, but the moment one was cast out to the Monastery, one became nothing but a tool for the wealthy to exploit their holy power for pleasure.
This was how those who lost their holy power were treated.
The High Priest, rising alone, cast one last longing look at the place of glory before departing.
I watched the defeated priest’s retreating figure.
‘Without the strength to protect, one is destined to be plundered.’
The world lacked space for everyone.
Rather than become the plundered, I chose to stand as the plunderer.

“Chloe, I’ll make you Queen.”
“To do that, you must save Prince Jeriel with your own strength, not anyone else’s.”

Suddenly, Dominic’s words from before I came to the Temple echoed in my mind.
When I was ninth tier, he never made promises about the future.
I heard a desolate sound and turned toward the corridor where wind was blowing.

***

Octavia had come to meet someone.
“Hello?”
The person she greeted was the handsome priest hidden by May in the Handsome Man Facility, a member of the Ginesa Royal Family descended from the blood of the Kinesai Apostle of betrayal.
“Would you be willing to help me, Priest? If you refuse, I’ll expose your existence to the outside world and have you executed.”
She was the type of person who would exploit anything—whether it was assistance or coercion—without hesitation.

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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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