For the Young Villain’s Happy Ending - Chapter 36

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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 36

Kevenriak vaulted through the window in a single bound, rushing toward the bench where Raina Hart sat.

“Is something wrong?”
“…Keri.”

I had never seen my master so visibly shaken before.
Though his expressions were more subdued than most, I knew him better than anyone else.
When it came to my master, Kevenriak understood him more intimately than any other soul.
In Raina Hart’s hand lay a familiar magical artifact—a glass orb.
It turned crimson whenever its owner faced mortal danger, remaining transparent in times of safety.

“It was still clear this morning….”

Now it swirled with crimson hues.
Whoever owned this orb had my master so deeply troubled.
Though I could not voice it to my master, Kevenriak was far more concerned with the identity of this mysterious person than with the danger itself.

“The condition doesn’t look good. Whose is it?”

I was intensely curious about whoever had unsettled my master so profoundly.
Raina Hart turned to face me and spoke.

“His Majesty the Emperor.”

***

….

Empress Tratsha’s upper body heaved with labored breaths, rising and falling in rapid succession.
Blood from the sword wound across her shoulder streamed down, staining her dress a deep crimson.

“Why—”

Tratsha gasped for breath as she opened her mouth toward the woman standing before her.
The first syllable of her question escaped, but the words that followed hesitated and faltered.

‘If I were to ask why she committed such an atrocity, would the perpetrator even be capable of answering?’

The First Empress Consort.
The answer would not emerge from her mind.
Empress Tratsha stared directly at the Empress Consort’s face.
The toxin of dark magic.
The First Empress Consort’s eyes had been stained with a murky, ominous hue.

“….”

The Empress Consort moved toward the Empress.
A chilling, squelching sound accompanied her footsteps.
Blood pooled around Empress Tratsha from the fallen bodies.

The Empress’s Palace.
Just twenty minutes ago, it had been a place of leisure where she enjoyed a massage said to be beneficial for the skin.
The First Empress Consort had led knights in an urgent search for the Empress.

“Your Majesty the Empress! You must flee! An army has invaded the Imperial Palace!”

As if to prove those words, screams of people, the thunder of hoofbeats, and the sharp cries of arrows and clashing blades echoed through the windows.
Listening to that cacophony reverberating through the building, Empress Tratsha clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her flesh.
How dare any army breach the Imperial Palace of the Betuzhenia Empire, the sun of the continent itself.

“Who in blazes could they be…!”

The security was not so lax as to permit an outsider’s intrusion in a single moment.
For twelve years, the defensive barriers had been reinforced with Raina Hart’s surprise attacks in mind.

“I do not know whose invasion this is. You must flee at once. We have already sent word to the Emperor through the Imperial Palace’s mages, so we must hurry!”

The Empress Consort urged the enraged Empress Tratsha forward.
The Empress’s maidservants hastily packed her belongings for escape. It was just as they were about to leave the chamber under the escort of the knights the Empress Consort had brought.
Empress Tratsha asked.

“…Empress Consort, why do your eyes look like that?”

The whites of both eyes, which had been perfectly normal just moments before, had turned a murky, dark color.

“Ah, my eyes…?”

The situation reversed in an instant.
The knights brought by the Empress Consort moved to attack the Empress.
The Empress’s Palace knights fell one by one as they clashed with them.
It wasn’t from outside. The invasion came from within.
The Third Prince’s army had stormed the Imperial Palace.
The First Empress Consort, who had lived keeping her head down to stay out of sight, and dared—
to raise a rebellion.

The Empress stared at the Empress Consort standing before her.

“So you’ve resorted to dark magic. Was your desire to place the Emperor’s crown upon your son’s head truly so consuming?”

The First Empress Consort’s eyes, consumed by the toxic corruption of dark magic even in their whites, gazed at nothing in particular.
Her trembling hands bore a sickly, darkened hue. Hands that had been perfectly sound moments before.
She was dying, poisoned by the toxin spreading through her.

“I….”

Whether driven by the dark magic or her own true heart, her words came out in fragmented gasps.

“I wanted to stand above you…above you.”

At the First Empress Consort’s gesture, the knight moved.
The blade turned toward Empress Tratsha with a cold gleam.
This is the end. This is my final moment.

Boom. Boom.

Beyond the ceiling of the Empress’s Palace, a sound echoed.

“Behold.”

Everything has gone wrong. My life cannot end like this. Vermin no different from the Fourth Prince daring to—!
The Empress cried out to the Empress Consort.

“Does heaven not weep when you commit acts beyond your station!”

The Knight’s raised blade hurtled toward Empress Tratsha at blinding speed.
And in the center of the room, a flash of magical light erupted.
Within that radiance, the Empress glimpsed the lavender hair she had dreaded throughout eight years of nightmares.

“Rai…n….”

But the Empress could not bring herself to speak her name in full.
The Knight’s blade pierced directly through her heart.
Empress Tratsha’s eyes widened as she stared down at the sword embedded in her chest, her lips moving.

“Cough.”

The sound of blood rising in her throat was the last noise to escape her lips.
As death claimed her, Empress Tratsha’s body plummeted into the pool of blood spilled by a lowly Attendant.
The Empress’s clenched fist slowly uncurled.
Like the power she had struggled her entire life to grasp, scattering into dust.
In eyes that had not yet fully registered the sight, the Grand Mage was reflected.

“….”

Raina Hart gazed silently at the motionless Empress.
Had I arrived too late?
I had departed Hibei immediately, but breaking through the teleportation barrier the Empress had erected in Jenia had consumed precious time.

‘Why….’

I fell into contemplation at the sight before my eyes.
It was not only the Empress who had fallen. Like the dream from last night, the Imperial Palace had become a sea of blood.

‘It wasn’t just a dream, Maverick.’

And yet.

‘It’s too soon.’

Twelve years since I entered this world.
During that time, I had come to understand something by occasionally observing the protagonists.
Major events occurred at similar times, even if certain settings diverged.
Six years before Tiernan Fargan became the leader of the Tunterra Survivors.
Five years before Vivian fell asleep in a carriage accident.
This year, when Kevenriak awakens as a tyrant, would be no different.
Even if the power of the original work existed and found another character to trigger the main event.

‘Why is something that should happen in winter occurring now, with more than half a year still remaining?’

This was not the original work I knew.
Why had the Imperial Palace become a sea of blood.

‘Explain yourself.’

A translucent window.
More precisely, to whoever was displaying that window to me, I demanded answers.
But my vision remained silent.
All I could still see were people who would never rise again, and the Empress, equally fallen.
A large hand covered my eyes.

“Don’t look, Master.”
“Keri.”

It was Kevenriak, who had insisted on coming along when word reached him of danger to the Emperor’s person.
Strangely, the moment I heard his voice, my confused thoughts seemed to organize themselves.

‘Keri didn’t consume the Imperial Palace.’

So I should calm myself. Even if the incident had occurred on schedule in winter, it would not have differed much from now.
What mattered was that blood did not stain Kevenriak’s hands.
For now, understanding the situation was the priority.

‘But…’

Had my disciple just shielded the Empress’s corpse from my view.
It was an unseemly sight for him to witness rather than me.
I moved to brush his hand away, then gave up and turned my body back.
My disciple had grown too tall for me to shield his eyes anymore.

“It’s fine.”

Instead, I grasped Kevenriak’s hand that had covered my vision and lowered it, then moved forward.
When we arrived through instantaneous teleportation, I had conjured vines through magic.
The vines rising from the ground had ensnared the few remaining Knights and the Empress Consort.
She had cast mind control magic on the Knights.

“….”

I observed the murky eyes of the Empress Consort held captive by the vines and asked.

“Your Highness the Empress Consort, what have you done?”

***

“Have you checked?”
“No. It seems the Emperor and the Third Prince aren’t in the Imperial Palace.”
“It’s not that they can’t be checked because they’re dead, is it?”
“Even the deceased can be checked. Within the Imperial Palace, the Empress, the Empress Consort, the Crown Prince, and this Imperial Princess have died.”

The topmost floor of the Emperor’s Palace, which overlooked the entire Imperial Palace.
At Zikhard’s words, I furrowed my brow.
So the Empress Consort had also perished.
Whether she possessed a Mana Heart in her body or had directly used dark magic—that was the problem.

“It must have been at least a year. How much dark magic did you use?”

The toxin had already seized both body and mind.
Judging by how she had managed to conceal it until now, the toxin must have risen to her face last of all.
When toxin manifested outwardly from the body, the location differed from person to person.
I had cut my palm and fed her my blood.
But the degree of infiltration was severe. It only managed to awaken her consciousness momentarily.

“R-Raina Hart. That woman. She approached me…!”
“…?”
“She said if I recited that incantation every night, my sons and daughters would never have to go to foreign lands!”

The Empress Consort, her mind now clear, poured out words to Raina as if emptying a vessel.
It was born from the fear of not knowing when she might be manipulated by the poison.
The First Empress Consort’s children were the Third Prince and the First and Second Imperial Princesses.
Eight years ago, when Kevenriak awakened to the 4th Circle, she had been present at the tea gathering.

“The Empress arranged my children’s betrothals without consulting me, according to her own wishes. She feared they would become obstacles to the Crown Prince.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I don’t know. Black hair… or was it brown hair? Around her eyes… ah. I, I…”

Then, tormented once more by the poison consuming her mind, her breathing ceased.
Her body could no longer endure the poison.

‘Four members of the Imperial Family within the Imperial Palace have died.’

It was not only the Imperial Family.
I gazed out through the window.
The path left behind by the Third Prince’s army was devastation incarnate.

“Zikhard, search the records for Duke Asperada as well.”
“Duke Asperada? That man doesn’t appear in them.”

Vivian’s father.
Maverick had clearly said he had sided with the Third Prince.

‘Is he moving with the Third Prince outside the Imperial Palace?’

In the original work, he was a bat-like man.
He chased after power wherever it could be grasped.
In the original work, he had supported the Crown Prince, but when Kevenriak became Emperor, he had tirelessly worked to connect his daughter Vivian, who awakened after seven years, to him.

“Master.”

I turned my head to the side.
The wound on my palm had disappeared. My disciple had healed it with magic.
Kevenriak gently caressed my now unblemished palm.

“Next time…”

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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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