I Thought It Was the Monster Duke's Fake Sedative - Chapter 124

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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 124
Between those frozen in confusion and Gemini, frozen in understanding.
Sepina smiled at Luciana with a bitter edge.
“So full of yourselves, and look at you both now.”
……
“A false true mate experiment subject and a false Divine Incarnation. Made for each other, aren’t you? Ha, it’s not even—ugh!”
Sepina’s final mutter was cut short as the Immunity Users completed their incantation, sending her back into unconsciousness.
The Immunity Users stared at Sepina with faces hardened by fury.
“What are you doing? Get her out of here!”
“Gag her mouth so she can’t spout more nonsense, and shove her in a corner!”
“Bind her tighter! This is vengeance for our families who were taken!”
In the midst of the chaos, Luciana remained silent, gazing only at the back of her own hand.
……
“Um, there—”
……
“Madam?”
Gemini watched Luciana carefully, consumed with worry.
And silently cursed Edward.
‘This isn’t my fault, is it?’
He’d assumed that by this point she would have confessed on her own that she was an experimentally created Divine Incarnation.
From what he could see standing beside them both, the bond between Edward and Luciana was genuine enough.
But looking at Luciana’s reaction now….
‘She never said a word about it.’
His careless slip of the tongue had wounded his precious experiment subject.
‘What kind of terrible parent and scholar have I become?’
Gemini stood helpless, seized with the urge to shred the handkerchief in his pocket.
……
Luciana clenched her fists hard, closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them and bit her lower lip tightly.
‘An experiment subject, she said.’
Edward. The same as her.
Thump.
A torrent of emotions crashed through her, and her chest ached.
‘Now it makes sense.’
Why she’d avoided him so deliberately.
Why he’d spoken of it all as though it meant nothing—
‘That’s why.’
Accepting it was not as difficult as she might have expected.
Not because the matter itself was insignificant.
Rather, the flood of emotion had crested so violently that she’d crossed into numbness.
Grip.
Luciana clenched her fists again, then released them, and rose abruptly from her seat.
“Gemini.”
“Yes, yes!”
Gemini flinched at her firm bearing and the weight of her voice, but Luciana continued steadily.
“I need something now.”
“Yes, just tell me what it is—wait, you’re not planning to hide here? What are you going to do?”
While Gemini asked in bewilderment, she drew something out and answered.
“I need to see Edward. There’s something I have to tell him.”
The object used to come here.
The Instant Teleportation Device that Gemini had given her.
* * *
Where is she?
Where is she?
I lost her.
She’s gone….
“…Shut up.”
Edward tried to silence the buzzing voices in his head.
Their interference was preventing him from finding Luciana.
“Quiet. Now. I need to find her.”
No.
You won’t find her, Edward.
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
The mocking echoes continued, as if to ridicule him.
Along with the screams of rats being hurled out the window before his eyes.
The next moment.
“T-the Duke of Teseron…!”
Sting.
With a sharp sensation blooming across his shoulder, Edward’s reason flickered back into focus, if only for a breath.
…….
Tremor after tremor.
As the Knight planted his blade into Edward’s shoulder and his arms shook like aspen leaves, the vibrations rippled through Edward’s entire body.
‘Irritating.’
So stop trembling.
No—why are you shaking like that in the first place?
The instant that thought crossed his mind.
“…Ahhhhh!”
His shoulder sealed itself shut in a heartbeat, hard scales beginning to spread across the flesh.
Ting!
The blade snapped in half and sailed through the air.
‘Ah.’
Only then did Edward slowly look down at himself.
One arm, one shoulder, half his face….
No—more than that. Half his body was sheathed in scales.
They were the largest scales yet to cover him, sharper than ever before, spreading across a wider expanse of skin than they ever had.
Shattered furnishings and tables lay scattered about, along with the doors to the Terrace.
As consciousness slowly returned….
he remembered that all of this was wrought by his own hands.
Somewhere along the way, he’d spiraled into Rampage, and now he stood across from the Knight amid the ruins he’d made of everything around him.
And the reason was simple.
‘She was—’
Luciana had vanished….
‘Luciana.’
The instant her name bloomed in his mind, the reason that pain had clawed back into him began to slip away once more.
‘Where is she?’
Where did she go?
They hid her from you.
They took her away from you.
‘How do I get her back?’
You won’t get her back.
‘…Shut up.’
The giggling voices of children mocked him and drove him forward.
You were helpless. All they had to do was take her.
Just as Sepina said—because you’re a fake.
‘Please, just shut up.’
But the voices did not relent.
Ah. Poor Edward.
After enduring and surviving all of that, this is what you’re left with?
Exposed as a fake to the one thing most precious to you, only to lose it all over again.
Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.
His mind, crammed full of noise, ceased to move.
His vision, too, turned pure white.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
“Good heavens! A m-monster, a monster…!”
“A dragon?! This can’t possibly be the form of a Monster!”
The voices directed at him were deafening.
Those same voices that had only ever pushed his back when they needed him, cowering behind him while they spat his name—all of them.
The days when they’d beaten him with a whip and taught him that even those voices had to be protected, that he was forced to venture out and save the world—all those days came rushing back, throbbing at his temples, tearing through his mind.
‘Stupid Edward.’
And no matter what, the most precious things slip through your fingers like this.
‘You… stupid fool.’
The voice that had been crashing loudly through his mind, driving him forward, and his own voice cursing himself—in the moment they overlapped perfectly.
Edward understood.
Those voices had been his all along.
‘Ah.’
Then his ferocious nature stirred.
The most vicious and violent essence writhing within him.
Crash!
The moment he swung his arm, something caught roughly against his fingertips and flew.
It was the Knight who had driven a blade into Edward.
Thud-thud-thud, slam!
“Ugh, argh!”
“Ahhh!”
As the Knight struck the wall and fell unconscious, the screams around him only grew louder.
“What do we do, what do we do!”
“We don’t have Holy Power to counter this!”
“If we strike his neck—”
Those who had held him up as a hero now treated him like a monster, like a creature beyond the veil.
Edward stared blankly ahead.
If he couldn’t get her back anyway….
…then let it all perish.
The world, everything else—none of it mattered.
Without Luciana, it was all right to destroy it all….
‘Yes.’
That’s what he would do.
With that resolve, Edward moved without restraint.
Piercing screams!
With each movement, cries erupted from every corner, moans filled the air.
As if his mere motion was something grotesque and revolting.
It was then.
“Edward!”
At the voice that came like an auditory hallucination, Edward’s body trembled.
“Edward!”
‘Luciana.’
The desperate cry overwhelmed his mind completely.
To Edward, lost in madness, that voice seemed….
…to be asking him to kill everyone here for her sake.
‘I understand.’
He was going to do that anyway.
Edward was drawing up the magical force within himself to obliterate the Banquet Hall itself.
“…Ugh!”
Something made a sound against his raised arm.
It was the voice he had been desperately seeking.
Immediately after, reason whispered.
It wasn’t a hallucination.
It never was….
“…Luciana?”
Whoosh.
The moment he spoke her name, his vision snapped back.
Drip, drip.
The sound of water droplets from somewhere and the metallic scent awakened his senses.
When he lifted his head, he saw.
…….
Luciana, her expression as though she had steeled herself, was holding him tightly.
“Luciana.”
Overwhelming relief flooded through him, and as he pulled her close in return, Luciana released a breath that sounded almost like a sigh.
“Are you all right?”
…….
“Even if you’re not, you need to be all right quickly. I have something to say to that Duke.”
“…Something to say?”
As Edward answered a beat too slowly, Luciana shook her head firmly.
“You’re speaking slowly—you haven’t come back to yourself yet, have you?”
“…No.”
“No? You clearly haven’t come back.”
Even her irritated, grumbling voice was the Luciana he knew.
Edward had been about to speak.
I thought I’d lost you.
That they’d stolen you from me….
It was then, as he lowered his head to say these things.
Luciana reached out and cupped both his cheeks in her hands, holding him still.
“Look at me. Not anywhere else.”
“…….”
“And snap out of it. We need to talk.”
Something about the gesture caught at his chest.
The hands framing his cheeks were trembling ever so slightly.

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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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