I Became My Ex-Boyfriend’s Concubine - Chapter 98

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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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Episode 98

A moment earlier, in the Inner Chamber.
“What nonsense is this?”
Hyun could not hide his shock and bolted to his feet. Park Dae-young remained before him, bowing deeply and respectfully.
“How dare you speak such drivel in my presence.”
“My lord, I speak only truth before Your Highness.”
“Ha.”
A stifled laugh escaped Hyun’s lips—one of pure incredulity.
Here was a man who had spent years feeding honeyed lies to the Court, and now he dared to invoke the banner of truth to sway him to his will.
“You truly believe I would credit such an absurd claim?”
“Forgive me, my lord, but did not the Noblewoman herself confess why she clings so closely to Your Highness’s side?”
“……!”
Hyun went rigid.

“To be loved here—that’s my task. Only then can I leave this place.”

Those were the words Dan-bi had repeated to him like a refrain. That incomprehensible claim: she could not escape this world without his love.
Even as he could not bring himself to believe such an absurdity, he was the one who had chosen to keep her near; the gift of his heart had seemed to flow from his own will.
Yet now, considered differently, every thread of it traced back to that single utterance she had made.
“I sought to negotiate with the Noblewoman precisely to uncover what schemes lay hidden in her heart.”
“Schemes?”
“This humble servant had long harbored suspicion of the Noblewoman, who so suddenly displaced Your Highness’s other companions. Thus, I set a trap.”
Park Dae-young’s mouth twitched into something like a smile.
“A trap designed to spring shut should the Noblewoman stand against Your Highness.”
“And did the Noblewoman take the bait?”
To Hyun’s question, Park Dae-young offered no verbal reply—only a deeper bow.
“Forgive me, my lord.”
The meaning of that silence crystallized at once in Hyun’s mind.
Dan-bi had accepted the bargain concerning the Royal Seal.
Which meant—when one inverted the logic—that her motives for remaining at his side might not have been pure after all.
For what else could have compelled her to agree to such a perilous exchange: surrendering the very emblem of sovereignty to a subject?
His mind accepted Park Dae-young’s words readily enough, but his heart could not follow.
More likely, Dan-bi had merely feigned compliance to escape the predicament.
Yet he could not lay bare such thoughts before Park Dae-young.
Hyun suppressed the tremor that threatened to crack his composure and asked coldly, “There is still something I do not understand.”
One matter in particular continued to elude him.
How Park Dae-young had discovered that Dan-bi sought to depart this world was a question for later.
“How can the disappearance of this entire world hinge upon the Noblewoman’s departure?”
Park Dae-young’s lips parted at the weight of Hyun’s interrogation.
“This servant heard the Noblewoman speak these words herself, my lord.”
“She spoke of this directly……?”
“Yes, Your Highness. I heard her with my own ears—a private conversation with an attendant named Solm.”
Of course, it was a blatant lie.
Park Dae-young recalled the moment he had found himself standing before the Central Palace, against his will entirely.
His arrival there had not been voluntary.
‘Where……?’
Mere moments ago, he had been inside Bin-cheong. He had only shut his eyes for an instant, then opened them—and already he stood before the Central Palace.
It was not the first time this had happened.
Several times, he found himself thrust into unfamiliar places, consciousness leaping across space and time against his own intent.
As he grew to suspect Dan-bi’s unusual nature, he had begun to suspect that this world harbored secrets of its own.
But to lose consciousness again in such a manner……
As his shock subsided, he glimpsed her in the distance—Dan-bi, moving with hurried steps. Just then, something slipped from beneath the hem of her skirt and tumbled to the ground with a soft sound.
Curious, he moved toward it, but she had already vanished into the Central Palace.
Park Dae-young gazed quietly at what she had left behind.
‘An ornamental pendant?’
On the ground lay a single Yellow Ornament, discarded and alone. Park Dae-young bent down and retrieved it.

That was the moment.
Suddenly, black characters came flying into her vision.
Not just one or two.
So many characters flooded her sight that they darkened the entire world before her eyes.
Those bizarre characters streaking across her vision were speaking.
They told of this world’s beginning.
Strange scenes fragmented and swirled around her like a maelstrom.
Words tumbled from her lips without her will, hollow as a puppet’s speech.
Those days of meaningless motion.
Yet while others endlessly repeated the same soulless words, there was one being who moved this world by her own design.
Dan-bi.
From the moment she set foot in this world, everything that had been still began to move along an entirely different trajectory.
Witnessing those vast fragments, Park Dae-young understood with sudden clarity: the master of this world might be her.
And finally, between the dark characters obscuring his vision, a single bizarre sentence burned itself clear.

「Player: Dan-bi」

Player…?
Barely had he begun to panic at the incomprehensible word when another sentence blocked his sight.

「Main Quest Complete — Server Termination」

Termination?
The moment he turned over that strange word in his mind, it struck him like lightning—the warning Woo-sang had given him, the bizarre rumors he’d heard from the Geum-gun.

“A virtual world?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. It is said that this place is all falsehood.”

A virtual world, and termination.
Only then did he grasp what purpose lay behind her mysterious tightrope walk.
She had planted her feet firmly before him, swearing she would hand over the Royal Seal just before the Giuoje ceremony, yet from the shadows she had brought rain and thoroughly shattered his game without hesitation.
By deceiving both the monarch and himself, by upending this board, she had revealed one simple truth: she had another purpose all her own.
If the false world she spoke of was indeed true, and if the purpose she had hidden was connected to this “termination”…
It was dangerous.
If that was the case, then the termination those characters pointed to might be nothing less than the end of this world itself.
Before Dan-bi arrived, this place had been nothing but a dead world.
If it was an intricate game built for one woman alone, then the moment its mistress folded the board, this world would vanish without a trace.
So she was trying to leave this place after all.
That could not be allowed.
Park Dae-young had sought to seize the Royal Seal for one reason alone: to hold all under heaven in his hands.
But what use was seizing the Royal Seal if the world itself were to disappear?
He had to stop her from leaving this world by any means.
To protect the throne he would hold, he had already laid bare his dealings with Dan-bi to the king.
Watching the king’s composure waver at this shocking revelation, Park Dae-young was certain: her lingering at the king’s side held reasons that exceeded his own calculations.
‘What in the world is that secret?’
Park Dae-young’s eyes narrowed like a serpent’s, cunning and sharp. His cold gaze bore down from above.
“The Noblewoman told you this herself?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
A brief silence fell between them. The king offered no reply.
It was fitting that he should be silent. The king was no fool to be easily deceived.
Perhaps he had already seen through every word of his scheme. This was an opponent from whom one dared never lower one’s guard.
“Your Majesty!”
At that moment, the firmly closed door of the Inner Chamber burst roughly open, and someone called out urgently.
“I bring urgent news, Your Majesty.”
“Speak.”
A captain of the Geum-gun named Rang approached with quick steps and prostrated himself, bowing his head.
“We sent people to the Oon-cheong-gak, Your Majesty, but the Noblewoman is not at her residence.”
“Then where is she?”
As the king’s brow furrowed, Rang swallowed hard and raised his head.
“The Central Palace, Your Majesty.”
“The Central Palace?”
Hyun questioned this, taken aback.
The Queen Consort normally regarded Dan-bi as an eyesore. That Dan-bi would go there of her own accord seemed scarcely believable.
Hyun, setting aside Park Dae-young, who glanced sidelong at Rang, replied coldly.
“Are the Queen Consort and the Noblewoman having a private audience together?”
“Yes, Your Highness. However, it is not merely the two of them…….”
Before Rang could finish speaking, Hyun shot to his feet. There was no time to assess the situation.
As Hyun strode rapidly across the Inner Chamber, Rang swiftly pursued him.
“Wait, Your Highness!”
“I’m going to the Central Palace at once.”
Without so much as acknowledging Park Dae-young’s call, Hyun hurried out through the doors. Attendants rushed after him through the dark palace corridors, struggling to keep pace.
It was just as he burst into the courtyard of the Central Palace.
Crack!
A sharp sound pierced the air from beyond the wall. Without the slightest hesitation, Hyun changed direction toward the garden.
The moment he rounded the corner of the pavilion, his eyes fell upon a slowly turning head.
It was Dan-bi.
She lay crumpled on the ground, her hand cradling one cheek that had begun to flush a livid red.
“Your Majesty!”
The concubines gathered in the garden turned pale and rushed to the Queen Consort’s side. She, breathing heavily, looked down coldly at Dan-bi sitting on the floor.
“So a small advancement in rank has filled you with such arrogance that you forget your place, have you? Did you truly believe you could insult me—the head of the inner court—without consequence? Today I shall teach you once and for all to mind that disrespectful, presumptuous tongue of yours—.”
“What is the meaning of this commotion?”
At the low, cutting edge in that voice, even breath seemed to freeze. In the same instant, the Queen Consort’s fierce momentum shattered to silence.
The concubines, belated in noticing Hyun, swallowed their cries and hurriedly flung themselves prostrate.
“Your Highness……!”
“Your Highness!”
Then Dan-bi slowly turned her head. From her other hand, which could not conceal her cheek, drops of bright blood fell silently—plink, plink.
In that moment, Hyun’s brow contracted.
He strode toward Dan-bi with long, deliberate steps. The concubines, sensing the sovereign’s frigid approach, pressed their foreheads harder to the ground and bowed even deeper.
Hyun seized Dan-bi’s wrist with a rough motion.
“What exactly is happening here?”
“Your Highness!”
The Queen Consort then grasped Hyun’s sleeve in alarm. Her face, when he looked back, had already gone deathly pale.
“I… whatever could have brought Your Highness to come here? Was it to visit this concubine—?”
“The Noblewoman.”
Hyun cut off the Queen Consort’s words cleanly and turned to face him.
Then he tilted Dan-bi’s chin up firmly. Vivid fingerprints bloomed across her ashen face.
“I asked what happened.”
“It is…….”
Dan-bi’s lips moved slightly.
She made a subtle motion to hide her wound, but Hyun’s piercing gaze remained fixed upon the marks that would not fade.
“What on earth—”
He did not finish the sentence.
Dan-bi’s body swayed like a sheet of paper and collapsed. Hyun instinctively reached out, his arms wrapping firmly around her waist to catch her.
“The Noblewoman! The Noblewoman!”
But his desperate calls did not reach her; Dan-bi’s eyes fell shut, lifeless.

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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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