I Don’t Need a Dad Like This! - Chapter 74
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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<Chapter 74>
Cedric nervously bit his nails.
A lawyer desperate for money. Mercenaries who claimed they could help with a prison break. Even an actor who would play Serena’s double for money.
He had looked into various options, but no particularly sharp solutions had emerged.
“If I could somehow get Serena out… then the three of us, including Mother, could flee into exile.”
That’s when it happened.
“Young Master Cedric. Marquis Philip has come to visit.”
He let out a small gasp.
“What? Why?!”
“I don’t know the reason, but he said he has something important to discuss.”
‘What on earth does he want to talk about?’
Finding a decent lawyer was already like plucking stars from the sky because of his influence!
Should he say he wasn’t home?
But if he lied to Philip and got caught, he didn’t know what might happen to him again, like last time.
“…Tell him to come in.”
In the end, Cedric met with Philip privately.
“…What brings you here, Marquis Philip?”
“Why do you look so grim? Did something happen?”
“Many… things have happened.”
He’s asking like a snake when he already knows.
He wanted to throw tea at him, but he only swallowed a sigh.
Philip crossed his long legs and folded his arms, smiling broadly.
“Still, think positively, Cedric. I’ve brought good news.”
“…Good news?”
“The person who poisoned Ella. I found out who it was.”
“What?!”
Cedric jumped up without realizing it.
That’s right. Philip was both a victim of the carriage incident and a palace lawyer.
He was a man who could investigate anyone in the Chronos Empire if he set his mind to it.
‘Right. When it comes to Ella, we were both on the same side!’
Cedric, who almost shed tears, bowed his head with all his heart.
“This… I don’t know how to thank you. So who is the bastard who poisoned my lover? Whoever it is, I must get my revenge on that bastard before I die.”
“Revenge. You’d better not utter such dangerous words in front of me, a lawyer. Here, I brought the related materials, so read them.”
“Th-thank you.”
Cedric hurriedly read through the documents placed on the desk.
‘…The poison that killed Ella matches the poison that killed a child at an orphanage. And in Serena’s bedroom, components matching both drugs were…’
Blood vessels burst in his eyes as he read the words.
‘Components of… poison discovered. All three related to dark magic… blood components…’
Rustle.
The documents in his hands scattered into the air.
While Cedric’s face turned pale, Philip picked up the fallen documents one by one.
“What a wicked woman. Don’t you think? According to this investigation, she used her own brother’s lover as a sacrifice for dark magic. How can such a cruel person exist?”
“…Serena, my, my sister… that can’t be…”
“Additionally, Ella complained of stomach pain and died a week after Serena visited the prison. The same happened to the child at the orphanage.”
“…Stomach pain…”
“Yes. She felt severe stomach pain and coughed up blood.”
Listening to Philip’s explanation, he pictured Ella bursting into tears from stomach pain.
It was a horrific scene just to imagine.
But unable to understand, Cedric clutched his head.
‘Serena… offered Ella as a sacrifice to use dark magic?’
Is this something a human could do?
Moreover, Ella was the woman who had even gone to prison in her place.
When did pure Serena change?
No, wait. Maybe she didn’t change but was hiding it from the beginning?
When he was grieving over Ella’s death, Serena had personally comforted him.
With that pretty face, she whispered to me that it would pass someday. But she had actually poisoned Ella?
“…Serena… No. That can’t be…”
The hand gripping his hair trembled violently.
Hot tears flowed down, but he was closer to being angry than sad.
Cedric gritted his teeth until his jaw muscles tensed, then finally threw his teacup.
Crash!
“…I’ll check it myself.”
In the end, he decided to trust Serena one last time.
Even if the whole world turned their backs on his sister, couldn’t he as her brother, as family, believe in her once more?
“Ma-Marquis, the evidence you gave me could be fake, couldn’t it?”
“Well. Whatever.”
Philip nodded with an amused face as if watching a play, as if it didn’t matter to him at all.
* * *
At that moment, in the aristocratic prison of the Theodore House.
“…Why is there no reaction? The god surely heard my prayer and said markings would appear on my body within a few days.”
In the prison that Casselik had turned upside down, there was no longer even the common tea table chairs and bed.
But Serena didn’t care at all.
As long as she could become a dark mage.
“Count Greenlenton. When can I become a dark mage?”
She was sticking her head toward the hole she had hidden from the knights’ eyes.
“Things have gone wrong.”
The count’s expression was dark.
“What?”
“I’ll rescue you again soon. I need to get out first.”
Having made a quick decision, he unhesitatingly cut his arm with the pin attached to his button.
“What…!”
Serena screamed in surprise.
Bang-!
Someone roughly threw open the door and entered.
“Serena Mercilla. You are under emergency arrest as a murder suspect!”
They were Theodore’s knights.
“Murder… Kyaaah! It hurts!”
Serena, who had been bewildered, suddenly screamed.
They had grabbed her armpits and roughly dragged her.
Looking beyond the hole, Count Greenlenton had disappeared without a trace.
“What, where did he go… I said it hurts, it hurts!”
Her delicate screams echoed in the prison, but no one pitied or worried about her.
Soon Serena was shackled with both arms tied behind her back.
“I was staying still. Please don’t do this… I’ve been behaving since meeting Duke Casselik!”
Serena looked into each knight’s eyes with tears welling up, but they glared at her as if looking at an insect.
‘No one will listen to me.’
Only then did her heart begin to pound as she grasped the situation.
However, Serena’s true hell was just beginning.
As the shadowy, dark gates of the duke’s castle opened, intense sunlight struck her face.
“There she is! She’s the criminal who killed people with dark magic!”
“Wearing the mask of a Duchess while filling her own pockets with others’ blood!”
“Kill the criminal!”
Waaaah-!
Hundreds of gazes from those gathered in front of the door were glaring at her.
Before the startled Serena could even manage her expression, a knight pushed her outside.
Thud!
On the path toward the plaza, a tomato struck the back of her head.
When she turned to look, a group of commoners stood there sending her contemptuous stares.
This is a dream.
No, it has to be a dream.
I’m a noble person who treated even the heirs of high noble families like glass crafts.
There’s no way someone like me would be hit by a tomato from a commoner, right?
But when she came to her senses, she was standing barefoot in the middle of the Imperial Palace Courtroom.
“She really seems like a crazy person.”
“It’s shameful that I once had a crush on that woman and gave her flowers.”
“I told you so. I said something was suspicious from when she was sweeping through people at the banquet. She must have enchanted everyone with dark magic.”
In the midst of this, Serena, who managed to hear the unfair words, shouted.
“I didn’t enchant you with dark magic. You all liked me of your own accord. My face, my attitude, my way of speaking. You all admired everything about me!”
Bang, bang, bang!
At that moment, the judge struck the gavel to calm the commotion.
Then the Emperor appeared and opened his mouth.
“I thought there would be no dark magic while I was Emperor. But this woman has brought back the tragedy of hundreds of years ago. Serena Theodore.”
Serena looked up at the Emperor with a wronged and pitiful expression.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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