For the Young Villain’s Happy Ending - Chapter 103

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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 103

It was the previous evening when Maverick had stayed at Asperada Duke’s Castle.
Left alone in the guest room, Maverick smirked to himself.

“Let me poke around a bit.”

Finding Raina Hart’s pursuit team—composed of Jasmine, Ban, Max, and Liam—was the commission his current clients had entrusted him with.
Maverick locked the door behind him and tossed out a sensory orb. The amber-colored sphere transformed into a beetle no larger than a fingernail before it took flight.
It was magic he frequently employed when surveying an area, allowing him to observe places his tall frame could never reach.

“With ability comes the luxury of sparing one’s body from labor.”

He didn’t need to move himself—a remarkably convenient advantage.
Maverick savored his tea while humming a leisurely tune. The amber beetle’s vision transmitted directly beneath his closed left eyelid, and thanks to the magic he’d woven together, sound reached his ears as well.
Yet despite traversing the entire interior of Asperada Duke’s Castle, he found no trace of Raina Hart’s disciples.

“They never entered the castle?”

He’d expected Ban—that tiger-blooded beastkin—to be here, though he couldn’t speak for the others.

“Sigh.”
“Sigh.”
“Sigh.”

The sighs of three clients getting free labor echoed clearly in his ears.
If he returned empty-handed, he’d appear utterly incompetent. That wouldn’t do.

‘I should uncover the true identity of Vivian Asperada.’

Just then, a servant arrived to announce that dinner was prepared. Maverick recalled the beetle, retrieved his left eye, and attended the evening meal.
It was a lavish banquet with an abundance of fine dishes befitting an honored guest. Maverick took his seat across from the Duke and Duchess.

“Have you still been unable to locate the young lady?”

As they reached dessert, the atmosphere shifted from dining to conversation.
At Maverick’s question, the Duke nodded reluctantly, while the Duchess could no longer contain her tears.

‘The Duchess seems to have more noble blood mixed in than the Duke.’

Watching Simona grieve as though she had lost a beloved daughter, Maverick found himself thinking precisely that. As night fell, he withdrew the emotion stone once more. A beetle scurried about within the castle walls.
Light seeped through the crack in the Duchess Asperada’s door. It felt as though something momentous was unfolding. Slipping inside, he found a maid kneeling before the Duchess Asperada.

“Sophie, did you touch the jewelry box?”
“N-no, ma’am. P-please forgive me. M-my mother said she needed money for medicine, and I… I lost my senses for a moment….”

Hmm. So the maid had attempted to steal jewels.
It was something that occasionally happened in noble households. Nothing particularly remarkable about it, so I might as well watch a bit longer.
The Duchess was generous by nature—she would likely dismiss the girl while providing severance. That was what Maverick thought at the time.

“Why would I blame you for opening a jewelry box that contains no jewels?”
“Ah…!”
“But a single card has gone missing.”

At Simona’s words, the maid’s face drained of all color. With her forehead pressed to the floor, she clasped her hands desperately, begging Simona for forgiveness.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m so sorry.”
“Sophie, can you read?”
“I-I don’t know anything, ma’am. Truly. The young lady-.”

The maid, trembling with fear and pleading for mercy with every word that tumbled from her lips, suddenly froze at the word that had escaped her own mouth—young lady.

“You saw it. Who else knows?”
“A…, ah….”
“You need not tell me yourself.”

Simona’s mana swept through each individual memory within the maid’s cells. Silenced by magic, not a single scream could escape the maid’s lips. Tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks.
A seventh-circle spell of the highest order—magic that probed the memories of the human mind.

‘Simona Asperada is seventh-circle? Why hasn’t she registered with the Mage Association?’

And then. Maverick closed even his right gray eye at the scene that followed. Yet it was scarcely an effective countermeasure. The vision from the emotion stone merely filled his darkened sight all the more vividly.
The Duchess’s shadow began to consume the maid.
Crunch, crunch.
When the shadow finished its feast, the room fell silent as though nothing had happened.
Maverick grasped at his racing heart.

“….”

Sensing something amiss, Simona’s shadow swelled and filled the room. As if searching for a witness. Maverick’s beetle pressed itself against the wall and held its breath. The shadow ceased its expansion just before the insect’s feet.
Maverick’s beetle remained motionless until Simona left the room.

‘There must be something related to Vivian Asperada in that jewelry box. Something worth killing a maid over.’

The beetle slipped through the keyhole of the safe where Simona had hidden the jewelry box.
Inside the dark safe, amber-colored wings glowed, illuminating the interior. The jewelry box came into view.
The design was distinctive. It bore the craftsmanship that had been fashionable when Maverick was young—the metalwork of Tunterra Empire artisans.

‘Indeed, I wonder what’s inside.’

Maverick’s beetle entered the jewelry box. And moments later, it shot out of the room like an arrow.

“My lord, are you well?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

Maverick answered the Knight from inside the moving carriage.
Even after leaving Asperada Duke’s Castle, cold sweat continued to drip down his spine.
He had endured through the night to avoid suspicion, but he couldn’t trust himself to last until morning.
The card that had been the reason Simona interrogated the maid was not in the jewelry box. Instead, a symbol he recognized had been engraved on the box’s bottom.

“Why did the Grand Mage’s Knights come looking for me?”
“I heard the Director took on the case of the Empress Consort from two generations ago.”

The box that Fontepon and Shukal had recently brought to me. The same symbol that had been engraved on the box discovered at the location where Raina’s coffin had been found.

“It is the symbol of the Shaaten, the ethnic origin of Her Majesty the Empress Consort.”

The symbol of an extinct people, an unregistered mage wielding the highest-tier magic, and shadow magic that was likely dark magic….

“I must inform His Majesty….”

Maverick muttered anxiously.
A monster was living in the highest reaches of the Betuzhenia Empire.

***

“Keri.”

At Raina’s call, Kevenriak spoke.

“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if I did it? You’re the Emperor now, and besides, magic and cooking require different innate talents….”

Kevenriak stood before the hearth, pan in hand, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows in a serious stance. His large hand gripping the pan’s handle made my heart flutter for a moment, but—

“Wow, is this…, a cookie? It looks like me…sort of….”

A distant memory surfaced vividly.
I shifted my gaze toward the cutting board. The precious steak meat gleamed with its marbling, speaking to me.
Look at my beauty. Isn’t it radiant? I’ll turn black soon, so take a good look.

‘Ugh.’

I simply couldn’t reduce such precious ingredients to such a pitiful state….
I tried to dissuade my disciple again.

“Keri, have you cooked before?”
“Have you, Raina?”

A direct counterattack came immediately to my direct question.
It was true that Raina Hart’s body had never cooked before. But I was not the person Kevenriak had known two years ago.

“I have.”

I had experience cooking meals in the Rebel Village and preparing food while camping with Tiernan. Though it was only baking bread in a pan or roasting meat skewers over a fire.
Seeing the reasonably edible results I produced, it was clear I had a talent for cooking. Warmth kindled in Kevenriak’s blue eyes as he watched my eager novice enthusiasm.

“Please, let me handle it.”

Kevenriak ignited the hearth with magic.
Contrary to my concerns, Kevenriak deftly added butter and rosemary that Vivian had given as a gift to the pan. Once it reached the proper temperature, he placed the meat on it. A satisfying sizzle rang out.
Meanwhile, another pan materialized beside him through magic. An invisible hand formed from Kevenriak’s mana was reducing wine and blending butter to create a sauce.

“…Keri?”

I wasn’t certain the cooking order was correct, but Raina Hart’s eyes widened in disbelief at my seamless technique. Kevenriak asked me a question.

“Do I still appear to you as that child who used to bake inedible cookies for you?”
“That is….”

Raina Hart stopped herself mid-sentence.
Perhaps it was because I possessed culinary skills superior to hers. Kevenriak seemed different from before. Raina Hart shook her head toward her disciple, who had become somehow unfamiliar.

“No.”

The fact that I felt a thrill in that unfamiliarity meant I was certainly not in my right mind.
At Raina Hart’s words that he no longer appeared as a child, Kevenriak smiled faintly.

“That’s a relief.”
“…?”
“Because now it feels like my words might finally reach you.”

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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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