Disqualified as a Villainess - Chapter 41

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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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#41.

Second Interrogation
The Second Sin

Confined within the Inspection Bureau Detention Cell, Uriana gazed up at the faint moon glimmering beyond the bars, her voice a solitary murmur.
“Spring in my life was fleeting indeed.”
The freedom she had tasted after severing her chains by killing her Uncle was far too brief.
On the surface, her Uncle had been a decent man—one who had taken in his orphaned niece after she lost her parents.
But the truth was far darker: he had worked a seven-year-old girl as a servant, denying her meals, subjecting her to relentless abuse.
He had intended to exploit her mysterious beauty until she was old enough to sell to a wealthy man’s household as a concubine.

“Pretty things like you are useful to everyone, man or woman. I can sell you for a handsome price.”

Was it fortune or misfortune that she awakened to her sacred nature and came to live under the name Uriana?
The reality of the Temple, which she had believed to be a path guided by God, fell short of her expectations.
In those days, only Saint Candidates existed, making it a place rife with political strife among them. As a result, many Priests perished like shrimp caught in the crossfire of whales’ battles.
Most were orphans or commoners without protection.
Even in that serpent’s den where they consumed one another’s tails, there existed those she could call friends.

“I’m leaving first, Uriana. Take care of yourself.”

When one Saint Candidate was excommunicated and all her affiliated Clergy were expelled, she was separated from her closest friends.
One friend died on the streets; another went to the Monastery of Night.

“Uriana, wouldn’t you like to see your friend?”

When Uriana came of age, her Uncle showed her hell instead of resorting to mere threats.

“This is what happens when those in power fail at politics.”

As his niece closed her eyes, turning away from the horrific Abyss, he whispered to her.

“You have a patron who favors you, you see. Becoming a Saint is already out of reach, so shouldn’t you play your cards wisely?”

He was acting under the direction of the Noble-born Saint Candidate to whom Uriana belonged.

“Isn’t it better to become a pet performing tricks than to die on the streets as an unwanted wretch, or live as livestock?”

With no choice before her, she became the hands and feet of the Saint Candidate she served, doing whatever was demanded of her.
No—she had compromised herself in every sordid way imaginable, all to preserve her wretched life.
She had even made contact with the Chaos Forces to taint the sacred essence of a stronger Saint Candidate.
That continued until Uriana manifested her formidable sacred power and ascended to sainthood.
She often wondered why someone as undeserving as herself had ever been elevated to the ranks of the holy.

“Uriana, please don’t send me to the Monastery of Night. I’ll become your hands and feet now. I’m quite useful, aren’t I? And there’s all the history between us…”

The Saint Candidate who had sold her own clergy to patrons and treated them like tools remained despicable to the very end.

“From now on, you must spend worship time directly with your patrons. Pitifully and sacredly.”
“You wretch who couldn’t even touch the hem of my garment! I’ll expose every filthy thing you’ve done!”

No matter how cunning or resourceful one might be, inferiority in power meant the end.
She was dealt with at the level of her Uncle.
Her Uncle, now the sole keeper of the Saint’s weakness, not only seized every advantage but wielded her as he pleased.

“Those new recruits under you are quite useful.”
“The condition for Uncle taking money was that you wouldn’t touch my subordinates, wasn’t it?”

She had no desire to repeat the same cycle, to subject others to what she herself had endured.
Using her saintly authority, she had severed the desires and vices rooted in the Temple, yet she could not eliminate the very foundation of the “Night Monastery” where the powerful gathered.
Thus it remained the final abyss toward which those who had lost their sacred essence were drawn.
‘Well, perhaps it was inevitable for touching what should never be touched.’
On the day the friend she had rescued from the Monastery lost her life in her Uncle’s hands.
Before Uriana, who had slain her Uncle with her own hands, an entity claiming to be a Savior appeared.
True to the saying that Chaos Demons wear the guise of angels, it was a lovely boy dressed in beautiful clothes.

“Do you desire freedom? I can help you.”
“What price do you demand for this offer?”
“We are not demons. There is no price for goodwill. Only—please help the chaotic Savior who will appear in the future.”

Whether he was truly a demon or not didn’t matter.
In truth, nothing mattered if it meant protecting what remained.
If abandonment and drift were the price for failing to protect anyone, could this be called complete freedom?
I had never been free, not even once in my entire life.
‘A chaotic Savior….’
Uriana, lost in regretful reminiscence, lifted her eyelids at the sound of footsteps.
“Saint. Or rather, I’ll just call you Uriana now. Let me ask you directly without preamble.”
Beyond the iron bars, Chloe appeared, draped in a black cloak.
Beneath hair that gleamed pitch-black in the darkness, her green eyes reflected a cold, crystalline light.
“I heard that in the past, a Saint Candidate you served weakened another Saint Candidate’s sanctity. You’re entangled with the Chaos Forces as well, aren’t you?”
Uriana’s lips, which had been staring with an expressionless face, drew taut like a bowstring.
“So you’ve reverted to being the lowest trash you always were? You came here thinking I did this?”
Since there was no longer any reason to maintain dignity, Uriana laughed openly and brazenly.
In contrast, Chloe’s expression remained composed.
“If you refuse to atone until the end, you won’t be able to escape the honor execution—the most shameful death. Wouldn’t it be better to survive, even if it means going to the Monastery of Night?”
“Do as you wish. It’s you who struggles to survive that I pity, not me—I have no lingering attachment to life.”
Uriana had no intention of ever revealing that her miracles were the result of demonic engineering enhancement technology.
She knew all too well how agonizing it was to live a life withering away from addiction to possibility.
It was her own form of loyalty to Octavia, and the last petty malice she would indulge.
“I see.”
Chloe’s eyes turned cold and sharp as she spoke.
This was her true face, the one she hid behind a gentle mask before others.
“Chloe, you too were shackled by the chains of family and lived as a slave, didn’t you? In the end, you’ll make the same choice I did.”
Chloe gazed quietly at the former Saint, who now poured curses from lips that once spoke blessings, and released a low sigh.
“Your composure suggests you know something I don’t. If I’m being honest, I’ll spare the children who served you. This is your last chance to negotiate.”
Uriana’s face drained of color in an instant. She swallowed the sharp, blade-like agony of silence and opened her mouth.
“May you forever covet a seat that isn’t yours and perish in anguish.”
Uriana, who had survived the fierce machinations of the Temple for so long, already understood that those children were dead.
There could be no negotiation, only threats, over the lives of the living.
“You knew. How fitting for someone who lived her entire life in the Temple—your instincts are sharp.”
Chloe covered her mouth and let out a small laugh.
“I’ll take your exemplary end as a cautionary tale. I hope you live long and endure.”
It was a curse Chloe bestowed upon the Saint facing the honor execution—better to die quickly by stones than to suffer a slow, agonizing death without even a sip of water.

***

Days later, in the Square.
The Square had become a sea of humanity—crowds gathered to condemn the Saint who had received a sentence of public shame. Dragged to the podium of disgrace like a target, she knelt bound in rope.
“Murderer! Blinded by power, you even slew your own blood!”
“You sold your body and soul to greed! Divine punishment will find you!”
The people began spitting upon and hurling stones at the one they had once revered without reservation.
Behind the crowd—whether driven by glee or fury, it was impossible to discern—a black vehicle sat motionless.
It was the car carrying Kelsedny Admiral.
“Sir, shall we depart now to keep to your schedule?”
Serkan, seated in the driver’s seat, turned to glance at the back seat as he spoke.
But no answer came.
The Admiral gazed out through the car window with eyes that held a peculiar pensiveness.
More precisely, he was watching the woman struck by stones in the midst of frenzy, overlaying it with memories of the past.
He was recalling that winter when the coup known as the “Jewel’s End” had occurred. Even the mere recollection brought the chill of those days surging forth.
That winter, Arseno had slaughtered every member of the Imperial Family save Kelsedny.
Since the Emperor at that time had acknowledged even the children he had fathered with his concubines and their offspring as legitimate heirs, there were more than twenty illegitimate royal children aside from Arseno and Kelsedny, born of the Empress.

“I found it deeply irritating that he would name even the dogs he kept after jewels, placing them on the same level as myself.”

This was the reason behind Arseno’s massacre and his reclamation of the throne.

“The common holds no value.”

As an aging lion yields authority to a younger, stronger one, the Empire followed the law of survival of the fittest, and the ministers had cloaked the usurper’s abnormal ideology in the guise of “bloodline purification.”
It was when Kelsedny, who had been commissioned as an officer at fifteen and was serving in that capacity, witnessed the Imperial Family members displayed in the Square like exhibition pieces that he learned of his brother’s ascension.
Among the concubine’s children, there was one young prince who had followed Kelsedny with particular devotion.

“Brother, let’s play rock-paper-scissors and race up the stairs.”

He was about the same age as Prince Jeriel. The child bearing the name of Phosphophyllite, the jewel with the weakest hardness, had been remarkably poor at rock-paper-scissors.
Though I had bristled at the sight of offspring multiplying at breeding rates, all for the purpose of producing strong descendants, that child had done nothing wrong save for being fragile enough to shatter.
The citizens had clucked their tongues at the Emperor’s cruelty in displaying the corpses of his own parents and siblings, yet they hurled stones at those very corpses without hesitation.
All while spouting convenient rationalizations about preventing unqualified illegitimate children from holding dominion.

“Let’s bet on who gets hit the most!”

The Admiral, recalling the sight of ignorant children laughing alongside adults as they hurled stones, drew his lips taut.
“How relentless.”
Back then, after brushing away the shadows of the past, he had habitually tapped his knee with his fingers.
Whiiiing—!
An elongated object sliced through the air, its trajectory suddenly twisting before plummeting vertically toward the Saint.
Boom!
With the explosion, thick smoke billowed forth, obscuring all vision.
Soon, those who had inhaled the smoke began coughing, tears streaming down their faces from the intense pain.
“Aagh, it burns! My skin is searing!”
“Cough… I can’t… breathe…!”
“It’s the death fog scattered by the Chaos Demon!”
Wasn’t it just something like pepper gas?
The Admiral, immune to tear gas, opened the car window and stared toward where the tear gas canister had come from.
“Sir. I’ll go down and investigate, hck—tear gas….”
Serkan, who had inhaled the acrid smoke directly through the window the Admiral had opened, covered his mouth and groaned.
“A rare sight indeed—conducting chemical and biological defense training while wearing stars. This is not the work of the Chaos Forces.”
The Admiral, who had exited the car while gently mocking the general, saw a vehicle sliding toward him at high speed.
“But why is my car over there?”
It was his new car, which had gone missing after Octavia’s visit.

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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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