For the Young Villain’s Happy Ending - Chapter 83

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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 83

‘I’ve lost my mind.’

After wrestling with the shameless thought for a long while, I finally rose from my seat.
The stagnant air of the Training Ground was surely the reason my heart wouldn’t settle.
A breath of cool night air seemed like it would help.

“Let me go upstairs.”

The air would be fresher from a higher vantage point.
I climbed the stairs, opened the window of the second-floor balcony, and stepped outside.
The pleasantly cool late-summer night air enveloped me.
The darkened sky above was brimming with stars, their light dancing across the heavens.
I was right to come out.

‘The night air is wonderful.’

I leaned against the balcony railing.
The star-filled night sky never changed. That was what made it beautiful.
No matter where I looked at it from, I could cherish every sky I once shared with you.

“….”

As I gazed upward, my wandering thoughts seemed to fade away.
Instead of the sorrowful present, memories of the past settled into my mind.
The ordinary days with my disciples—days I could now only long for.
As I smiled at those memories, regret suddenly pierced through.
I had been arrogant for most of the past fourteen years.
I believed I could make you happy.
I thought that as an Archmage, I could be a shelter for my disciples.

“If you’re by my side, Master, I’m happy anywhere.”
“When you said that to me….”

Raina Hart leaned her arm against the railing and murmured softly.
I should have run away when you told me to, to anywhere at all.
Taking my disciples and you far from the Betuzhenia Empire.
Would I have lived happily then, avoiding the original story?
You wouldn’t have gone mad, and Kin wouldn’t have died.

“….”

The end of that happy memory was nothing but reality.
Raina Hart gazed down at her feet—the cold, hard balcony floor of the darkened Imperial Palace.
Just then, shimmering light gathered beside her.
The aura of teleportation. It seemed you were coming to me soon.

“…Welcome.”

Raina Hart quietly spoke the greeting she so often heard from him.
This phrase always seemed to come from you.
Every time, Kevenriak Heteroven waited for me. Only now, having lost him, did I truly understand how precious that affection had been.

“Princess.”

Kevenriak Heteroven appeared on the balcony and called out to Raina Hart.
Raina Hart gently swung her wrist adorned with a bracelet as she spoke to him.

“It works remarkably well. This location-tracking bracelet.”

Kevenriak Heteroven had teleported using the coordinates the bracelet transmitted.
Though temporary, the feeling that I had become the place where he would return wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Kevenriak Heteroven asked Raina Hart, who had come outside.

“Why are you out here?”
“The night sky is beautiful.”

The current Emperor would not understand such sentimental words.
Yet Kevenriak Heteroven stood beside Raina Hart and leaned against the railing just as she did.
The Emperor gazed at the moonlit sky and murmured.

“Have you ever taken a night walk, Princess?”
“A night walk?”

Raina Hart dropped her pretense and answered.

“I’ve tried it before.”
“…You have?”
“Walking outside at night feels wonderful, doesn’t it?”

Kevenriak chuckled softly.
Of course. There was no way the princess would know about the night walks Raina and I used to take together.
The Emperor turned his head to gaze at her quietly, his arm still resting on the railing.
The sight of Vivian Asperada gazing up at the night sky resembled my dazzling Master, yet didn’t resemble her at all.

‘Vivian Asperada is not Raina.’

Kevenriak agreed with the voice of his subconscious.
She is not my Master.
The fact that I kept overlaying Raina’s image onto Vivian Asperada was surely nothing more than my own delusion born from longing for her.

“Princess.”

Kevenriak uncrossed his arms and placed his hand on Raina’s head.

“You did well today.”

At the Emperor’s praise, Raina smiled.
For a moment, her mind felt clear.
So he was using his healing power for her again. My disciple truly is kind.

“Your Majesty, are you happy?”
“…Why do you ask such a thing?”
“Just wondering.”

Not yet. Raina gazed up at the night sky.
Fourteen years ago, I watched a sky like this with you too.
Beneath black hair, blue eyes that sparkled in the starlight.
Those innocent eyes, which reflected everything with perfect clarity, seemed to perceive the world with a gaze untainted by any impurity.
I had said the stars would protect Kevenriak. Back then, I was so certain they would grant him a happy ending.

“Do you remember that day? I told Keri that I had commanded the stars to protect him…”

Raina Hart suddenly realized something was wrong and covered her mouth with her hand.
Why. Sounds that couldn’t escape her lips had come pouring out.
Even in Vivian’s dull body, the gravity of the situation was palpable. A chill crawled up her spine. An ominous dread seemed to consume her from head to toe.
Her mind went blank as she turned her head to the side.
Kevenriak Heteroven was curled up, letting out agonized groans. Clarity struck her like a thunderbolt.

“Keri!”

The affectionate nickname for my disciple flowed out naturally.
Only then did Raina Hart realize. What Kevenriak Heteroven had just done—placing his hand on her head—wasn’t a healing touch, but the breaking of a vow.

“Why—.”
“No, the princess is…”

Why he had released the vow binding her.
This was not the moment to ask him, not while he suffered like this.
Raina Hart cried out desperately toward Kevenriak Heteroven.

“Come to your senses!”
“The princess is….”

Blue eyes glimpsed between disheveled black hair fixed upon Vivian.
From the mouth of a monster with nowhere left to wound, despair poured forth as sound.

“I hoped you weren’t a liar.”

At those words, Raina Hart’s heart felt torn asunder.
The ground beneath her feet seemed to crumble away. The Emperor’s marsh that lay beneath the Imperial Palace pulled her down into its depths.

‘Keri.’

I see your despair with my own eyes.
A wounded beast drowning in the marsh cries out.
His eyes blazed with killing intent as he looked at her, then he restrained the arm that lunged toward her with his other hand. His nails dug into his own flesh.
Unable to merely watch this, Raina Hart tried to embrace him.

Whoosh!

“…Ugh.”

A powerful gust of wind shoved Raina Hart backward.
A sharp barrier of wind materialized between me and Kevenriak Heteroven. Blood trickled from the Emperor’s skin where the keen wind had cut him.

“Don’t… come closer.”

A threatening voice warned Raina Hart from beyond the wind barrier. He seemed to be desperately restraining himself, as though terrified of what he might do to her.
Mana enveloped the Emperor’s body.
In an instant, the Emperor vanished through spatial displacement, and the wind subsided.
The surroundings fell silent as if nothing had happened. The night sky watched everything yet remained utterly still.

“….”

Raina Hart stared blankly at the place where the Emperor had disappeared, overwhelmed by the sudden storm of events.
It wasn’t time yet.

“You still can’t hear my voice….”

Plip.
A tear fell from Raina Hart’s eyes, wetting the ground.

***

Kevenriak Heteroven reappeared outside Jenia.
In a small villa beneath the cliff where Raina Hart had once pleaded with me not to become Emperor.
It was the villa where the penultimate Emperor Cheinols Heteroven had once hidden away, and also the place where Kevenriak Heteroven had first met Vivian Asperada.

‘No.’
“Your Majesty, for someone who just stepped outside, there’s quite a bit of wind scent clinging to your hair?”
‘Vivian Asperada is not my Master.’
“There’s a wind scent coming from Your Majesty’s hair.”
‘The lady is a liar, just like all the others.’
“You must find happiness, Keri. You must.”
‘She’s trying to confuse you.’
“You deserve a happy ending….”
‘Don’t be deceived by liars, Kevenriak Heteroven.’

The voices of my unconscious mind, Vivian Asperada, and Raina Hart tangled together, clamoring in my ears.

“….”

Kevenriak Heteroven entered the villa.
The seven-circle barrier, layered in multiple dimensions, permitted only the Emperor’s passage.
With unsteady steps, he made his way to the chamber deep within the villa.
As he turned the doorknob, the space revealed itself.
Like Raina Hart’s room in Hibei, it was adorned with plants and furniture that exuded warmth.
Through the Emperor’s magic, the plants never withered, and a perpetual gentle light illuminated the space.

“….”

Kevenriak entered the chamber.
A place he rarely visited, for a monster like himself had no right to frequent it.
Yet now, he had no choice but to seek her out.

“Raina.”

A glass coffin stood at the center of the room.
Within it lay the Archmage with lavender hair.
As if caught in a slumber from which she would soon awaken, her closed eyelids held a faint glimmer of life.
Kevenriak knelt before the glass coffin and curled his body inward.

“…Was the specter truly Raina?”

He believed in the specter because it had no form. Those with form were the liars.
Raina was here.

“The Princess merely imitated Raina.”

Vivian Asperada was not Raina. It had to be that way.
Otherwise, what of you, lying within this coffin?
Breathing so faintly, yet still breathing.

Kevenriak prostrated himself before his Master’s coffin through the night.
Again and again, he suffocated the emotions that threatened to resurface from the depths of slumber.

“Raina.”

I will not love you.

“So please, do not die.”

The disciple, offering her life to her Master, pleaded desperately.

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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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