I Thought It Was the Monster Duke's Fake Sedative - Chapter 126

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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 126
There had been his reasons for it then.
He needed to be prepared for when the Grand Madam or those like her might grow greedy for experiments again.
But the Grand Madam had ended up coveting control of Teseron instead of reviving the Laboratory, so in the end it had come to nothing….
The trap-setter had walked straight into his own trap.
‘Somewhat inconvenient,’ Edward thought flatly.
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘I can just remember the layout well enough and avoid them.’
Or alternatively, he could deliberately trigger the traps and let himself be buried beneath the collapsed Laboratory.
He remembered the rumors that the ground where that Laboratory stood was where an ancient Monster slumbered, and that option didn’t seem so bad.
For a creature like himself, it might be better to sleep that way.
Like that ancient Monster buried there forever.
He had been genuinely considering it when the noise came.
“…Sir!”
“Come out!”
From a distance, loud voices grew steadily closer.
Bang!
Before he could even react, the door flew open.
Edward went rigid at the sight of the figure storming in.
“Luciana?”
He had specifically instructed the servants and attendants to keep her away from this area.
‘Dangerous,’ he thought.
Edward glanced between Tepe and Gorgo, silently ordering them to seize her and usher her out.
But his trusted men betrayed him with swift, merciless efficiency.
“Come to think of it, we haven’t been able to train since arriving in the Capital.”
“Let’s go together.”
“You two….”
“We’ll be going!”
Whoosh!
True to their reputation as his finest knights, Tepe and Gorgo departed at speed that would have impressed royalty.
Sophie and Clara, who had followed along pretending to stop Luciana, gave fist-pump encouragement before slamming the door shut behind them.
Thud!
…….
In the room where now only two remained, there was nothing but scattered luggage and silence.
“Luciana.”
He meant to tell her it was dangerous and to leave at once.
But before the words could come, Luciana approached him with fierce, burning eyes, her strides purposeful.
“Luciana!”
“So you make a mess and it’s not okay for me to come to you first?”
“…That’s not what I meant!”
“Then I’m going to the Duke!”
Even as Luciana rushed toward him, Edward kept tensing the hand he’d extended, resisting the impulse to reach for her.
Her small feet, which she had apparently run here barefoot, were grimy with dust—it pained him to see.
He was dangerously close to abandoning all restraint, throwing himself before her path, and laying his hands down like a carpet for her feet.
He tried to steel himself and retreat into the corner, but Luciana gave him no opportunity.
A rush of warmth.
As her scent reached him—that fragrance he had yearned for and ached over these past days—Edward’s entire body tensed.
Those were the same notes of longing and tenderness he had been drowning in.
His body, enchanted by it, ignored the rational warnings to retreat and froze in place.
Crack!
Her palm struck both his cheeks firmly—a sound sharper than the impact itself warranted.
The slap was earnest enough, but Edward’s mind was seized by another concern entirely.
“…Luciana!”
If striking his unyielding frame with that small, delicate hand had injured her again—
Seized by a dizzy panic, he caught her wrist without thinking.
Crack! Crack!
Luciana’s palms struck both his cheeks again in rapid succession.
“…You’ll hurt yourself!”
“Why should it matter! You’ve already hurt me!”
At her words, as Edward’s vision began to swim and he felt himself drawn toward her side, Luciana quickly added something more.
“Not that! You broke my heart!”
Ding.
Edward froze as though his strings had been cut, the words striking him like a bell.
Luciana breathed in ragged gasps.
The memory of the New Year Ceremony made her dizzy all over again.
“Hurry! We have to get back now! We’ve already lost so much time!”
The Capital and the Village lay at considerable distance from one another.
Moreover, the Mobile Magic Device that Gemini had given her operated on a charge—once depleted, it wouldn’t function properly until the magical energy had fully restored.
Because of this, they couldn’t reach the Banquet Hall directly; instead, they had to cover the distance in short hops, using the device again and again to reach Edward.
“Move faster!”
“I—I’m going as fast as I can—ngh….”
Even as she wrung Gemini’s magical power dry, Luciana felt her heart hammering with anxiety.
Some instinct whispered that something terrible was unfolding—a premonition that thrust aside the shock of everything she’d only just learned.
When they finally reached the Banquet Hall, she thought her heart would stop.
“…Edward!”
…….
“Edward!”
In the center of the shattered, collapsed Banquet Hall.
Edward stood among the ruins, his body half-covered in bristling scales, his eyes wide and vacant with lost reason.
“Run!”
“Someone help!”
The screams of fleeing people seemed to strike at some old, buried trauma.
Yet rather than stiffen in place or collapse under that weight….
Luciana kept her eyes fixed on Edward, standing perfectly still.
His condition was catastrophic enough to demand it.
The hair she’d styled so carefully that morning hung limp now, half-obscuring his eyes; the finely tailored clothes were torn to shreds.
His hands, which had been swinging wildly to demolish the building, wept blood that regenerated just as quickly, the flesh cycling between raw and scaled.
“Get away!”
“That’s no ordinary monster!”
“Fetch an executioner! Someone like that could sever the neck cleanly!”
The knights, overwhelmed by Edward’s suffocating killing intent, abandoned any thought of saving the civilians—they were too busy fleeing for their own lives.
‘I’m terrified.’
This wasn’t the Edward she knew, and the wrongness of it chilled her to the bone—but….
‘…still.’
She couldn’t leave him here.
Not while those people around her spouted absurd solutions about severing his neck and letting it fall where it may.
‘Why did this happen?’
Could it be because I disappeared?
Or did something go wrong because I couldn’t stop Sepina in time?
A thousand thoughts screamed in her chest, but one thing rang clear.
‘I have to stop this.’
She couldn’t leave him like this.
If her absence was the cause, then showing him her face again would bring him back.
No matter how frightening he looked, no matter how much menace poured from him….
He was still her Edward.
So then.
‘I have to let him know.’
That I’ve come back.
That your Luciana is here.
She wanted to hold him. She wanted to reach for him, terror or not.
She wanted to ask him—even if he hurt her in his madness, even if she had to hold him down—whether there wasn’t something they needed to say to each other.
And in the end, she did it.
“…Edward!”
“I told him to come to his senses, not pass out! Physician! Is there a physician here…!”
Though she did sustain some injuries, the fact that Edward regained his reason the moment he saw her was, one might say, an encouraging outcome.
‘…The problem was that Edward lost consciousness right after.’
Rather than summoning a physician, Luciana desperately held back the knights who wanted to throw him in a cell, and sent for Tepe and Gorgo instead.
By the time she’d spirited him away to the Townhouse, she was completely exhausted—but relieved.
When he woke, they could finally talk.
Yet this was how he chose to treat her upon his return.
You won’t even look at me for days, and now you want to leave!
Luciana seized Edward by the collar, her eyes blazing.
“The more I think about it, the more infuriating it is. You’re really going to avoid me over something so trivial?”
“…It wasn’t trivial that I hurt you….”
“Don’t you have anything to say to me? You must have something!”
“Luciana, I….”
“If it’s because of the Experimental Subject, just say it already!”
Before Edward, frozen by her outburst, Luciana let loose words she had held back for days.
She had spent the past several days carefully organizing everything she wanted to say to him, her thoughts arranged with deliberate logic.
But the moment she saw his face, all that composure crumbled.
“Were you laughing at me while I worked so hard preparing a Ritual that won’t even work? Did you find it amusing?”
“…That wasn’t what I meant.”
Watching him deflate at her words, looking so pitiful—like a dog that had taken a swat on the nose—she found him unbearably endearing, and she was furious at herself for thinking so.
Luciana felt her resolve weakening in an instant. She shouted at him to get out, forcing steel back into her eyes.
Then she opened her mouth and cried out again.
“What’s so important about any of this anyway!”

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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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