Everyone Was Obsessed With Me After I Became the Youngest Princess Favourite - Chapter 196

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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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“Oh, Mother, I…”
…how did I end up at the Marquis’s Residence?
I couldn’t bring myself to voice the rest of my thoughts aloud.
I had simply wanted to see Lucio’s face upon hearing the joyful news.
The sudden rush and the dizzying events that unfolded in an instant flickered before my eyes.
Without thinking, I squeezed my eyes shut, and then a low voice reached my ears.
“You’ve grown up, our daughter.”
Feeling a pang of guilt, I opened my eyes, and even in the darkness, I could faintly see Mother smiling.
‘Lucio must have brought me here to the Marquis’s Residence himself!’
I wanted to believe he had smoothed things over on his own, but my family was far too perceptive about my affairs to have missed what lay between us.
‘Of course, they wouldn’t know exactly what happened…’
I was tensing my shoulders, dreading the probing questions that would surely come next.
Unexpectedly, Mother rose from her seat and spoke.
“Get some more rest. We can talk when morning comes. I have… much to tell you. But I think it would be better to do so tomorrow.”
Much to tell me?
‘Could it be about Lucio?’
My heart raced like a child caught in mischief.
Just then, Mother’s face turned toward the doorway and was illuminated brightly by the moonlight.
“Mother?!”
Startled by her pallid cheeks devoid of color and her reddened eyes, I called out to her, and in that moment, the incident with Clara—which I had completely forgotten—flashed through my mind.
“Did the Countess perhaps come here?”
Given what had happened to Clara, it was obvious she would have come to the Marquis’s Residence and caused trouble.
Whether my suspicion was correct, Mother hesitated.
“…Let’s talk tomorrow.”
Her voice sounded so exhausted that I could only nod in response.
As the door closed, a sigh escaped me involuntarily.
I immediately lay down on the bed and curled my body.
“Ugh.”
In truth, I had pretended to be fine in front of Mother, but since waking, my physical condition had been poor.
The mana and demonic energy I had forcibly suppressed at the Imperial Palace were raging fiercely within me.
‘I had anticipated some pain, but…’
I never expected my heart would ache this severely, as though burned by fire, even after losing consciousness.
‘If Raezl knew, he would leap up and call me a fool.’
In truth, absorbing mana that wasn’t one’s own into one’s body was generally impossible.
However, the demon and I were exceptions, as we shared the same mana…
When I had decided to absorb all the mana contained in the demon’s artifact to destroy it, I was grateful for that fact for the first time.
Then suddenly, a violent fit of coughing erupted, and dark red blood splattered from my mouth.
Followed by a pain that felt as though my organs were being twisted.
‘It’s burning!’
My entire body burned as though I had submerged myself in boiling lava.
At the same time, negative emotions—anger, resentment, sorrow—poured down upon me.
It seemed to be the influence of demonic energy accumulated over long years.
As my emotions wavered, controlling my mana became impossible.
Sensing the precursor of a rampage, I quickly summoned the glass dome I had placed on the desk.
As I brought the snow flower close, my mana seemed to settle, and the terrible pain—like being branded by a hot iron across my chest—appeared to fade somewhat.
However, fearing I would fall into nightmares again if I drifted off to sleep like this, I closed my eyes and tried to think of something else.
Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult. The face I had seen just before losing consciousness came to mind.
‘…Lucio, you must have been so startled.’
My family would have been too, but Lucio, who witnessed me collapse right before his eyes, must have been truly shocked.
Yet even as I worried for him, I soon found myself pounding the blanket in shame—I had fainted during our very first kiss.
‘Why did my condition have to be so poor at that moment!’
Of course, I understood Lucio’s actions, born from the joy of liberation from the demon’s relic.
The sudden kiss was unexpected, but it felt as wonderful as tasting chocolate for the first time—my entire body trembled with pleasure. And above all, his unforeseen confession of love made my heart race as if it might burst.
Yet even so, the embarrassment would not fade.
‘I should have stopped before losing consciousness.’
The moment I saw the transparent teardrop hanging from the corner of Lucio’s eye, my heart ached beyond words.
Simultaneously, I felt a strange exhilaration—knowing that this man, who had always built cold, rigid walls around himself, harbored such vulnerability beneath them, and that I alone had witnessed it.
Caught between the desire to wipe away Lucio’s tears and the urge to make him cry further, there was only one action I could take.
Close my eyes.
Perhaps it was the memory of the rapturous moment that followed.
Where Lucio’s lips had touched burned as if branded.
Trembling slightly at a heat distinctly different from the painful warmth that tormented me, I spent the night groaning in discomfort, yet I never once regretted what happened that day.
* * *
At that moment.
The man, who had been sitting with his eyes closed, slowly opened them.
Earlier today, he had noticed the relic that had been in the Imperial Palace suddenly lose its power and vanish.
There was only one human in this world capable of such a thing.
Even as he thought she had done something foolish again, he found himself anticipating it.
How much pain and suffering would she endure this time.
But contrary to his expectations, he felt no fracture in her soul.
Why was that? It should have been agonizing.
It was something given to humans long before the Empire was even founded.
Its masters had changed countless times, and it had shed blood beyond measure, carrying a hatred so profound it defied words—surely it possessed demonic energy no human could bear.
“Yet still…”
Your soul has the strength to endure.
Or perhaps you’ve grown stronger in my absence.
As the man with the peculiar expression lightly tapped the table.
A knock sounded.
With permission granted, Rope, an executive of the Guild, entered and bowed.
“Master, they’ve arrived.”
And before the words had even finished, a woman in a black robe strode into the room.
“Did you send this to me?”
The woman thrust an invitation she’d been holding toward me, her voice sharp with accusation, and I found myself momentarily at a loss for words.
Hair as black as the deepest night and eyes the color of blood. Pale skin that seemed devoid of all warmth.
The man before me possessed a beauty so otherworldly it seemed he didn’t belong to this realm, and he radiated an inexplicable pressure.
At that moment, the man regarded the woman with an indifferent expression before rising slowly and moving toward the upper seat at the table.
In that brief span, the invitation in the woman’s hand burst into flames and vanished in an instant.
“…A mage?”
“Sit.”
When the man gestured to the chair across from him, the woman—who had been momentarily stunned—erupted in fury.
“How dare you! A mere Guild lackey presumes to command me!”
“If you have no intention of concealing your identity, remove that robe first and sit properly while you speak. I have no interest in conducting business with someone who can’t even observe basic courtesy.”
The woman flinched at his equally sharp retort, her fists clenching so tightly she looked ready to storm from the room.
Yet she soon removed her robe roughly and sat down in the chair.
The woman’s hair was a blazing crimson—the very symbol of Imperial blood.
Serphin glared at the man before her, breathing heavily.
Days ago, she had been raging drunk until dawn, only to wake as evening fell.
Clutching her throbbing head, her hand fumbled across the table beside her bed for water when it brushed against something strange.
An invitation.
“Your Highness, I swear no one entered your bedroom!”
“No one came and went? Then how do you explain this?”
It was enough to make the dead weep.
The Maidservants of the Princess Palace normally kept their distance to avoid drawing unwanted attention, yet they remained stationed outside her bedroom all day, terrified of missing her summons. That day had been no exception.
But the Imperial Princess, armed with undeniable evidence, had tortured the attending Maidservants to the brink of death, and nothing changed.
Her fury then turned toward the Imperial knights tasked with protecting the Imperial Palace.
What had they been doing while some unknown intruder brazenly came and went from the Imperial Palace itself—from the Princess Palace bedroom no less?
They would bear full responsibility for their failure in duty.
Serphin silenced forever those who knew of the shameful fact that her palace had been breached.
Thus a bloodbath swept through the Princess Palace, and Serphin, feeling not the slightest guilt and considering it a natural course of action, made one correction with a displeased expression.
The intruder who had invaded the Princess Palace without permission and left the invitation was not some unknown assailant.
Remarkably, the intruder who had revealed their identity was none other than the Information Guild—Terenthium.
It was a place Serphin had heard of before.
An information guild spanning the entire continent, renowned for its unparalleled information-gathering capabilities and guaranteed results on commissions.
Like the rumors that they were everywhere and nowhere, Terenthium’s headquarters location remained unknown, and it was said they held everything in their hands—from the lighthearted jokes of commoners to the fatal secrets of high nobility.
Commissions could only be undertaken through operatives of different ranks depending on the guild’s classification system, making it a closed and mysterious organization.
Though the Emperor of the Laksten Empire was the master of the continent, rumors circulated that Terenthium actually ruled it in practice—which meant she, as the Imperial Princess, could hardly harbor favorable feelings toward them.
Serphin asked sharply.
“So what was your intention in leaving that in my palace?”
In truth, even asking this question wounded her pride.
She had assumed it was deliberately exaggerated gossip spread by information brokers to inflate their own worth.
I couldn’t help but acknowledge their uncanny abilities—they had slipped past the Imperial Palace’s walls and left an invitation in my bedroom without a trace.
At the same time, curiosity consumed me.
Why had they made contact with me? Or, to be more honest, what was written in that invitation….
“To place in your hands exactly what you desire, as stated in the letter.”
The man answered tersely.
But at his response—as though he had read my very thoughts—Serphin faltered, her gaze fixed upon him.
“Ha! Your arrogance knows no bounds. Do you truly know what I desire?”
The moment those clipped words left her lips, the man’s unsettlingly crimson eyes curved with something akin to amusement.
The man’s lips moved with deliberate slowness.
“Whatever it may be.”
It was a remarkably brief answer, yet his words carried the seductive whisper of temptation itself—as though spoken by a demon.

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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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