I Was Just Having Fun With The Time Limit - Chapter 134

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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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The ordinary soldiers couldn’t properly see what was happening.
All they could witness was the Emperor flickering in and out of existence like some miraculous phenomenon.
“Hey, Lucain, is what I’m seeing normal? What keeps flashing like that? The afterimages are just piling up?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by piling up, but honestly, I have no idea either.”
“Right? It’s just whoosh, ugh, flash, swish, bang! Right?”
Whoosh-ugh-flash-swish-bang!
The description was bizarre.
Yet the soldiers couldn’t find any more appropriate words to describe the current situation.
Ron spoke to the fallen Sermon.
“Do you concede defeat?”
“I do not.”
Sermon rose again.
And the same situation unfolded once more.
“Do you concede defeat?”
“I do… not.”
The same situation repeated several times.
“Do you concede defeat?”
“I do….”
Thud!
Sermon collapsed.
The duel could no longer continue.
Armitel, who had been mediating the duel, threw himself forward to protect Sermon.
“The duel is over. The victor is His Majesty the Emperor.”
“No. The victor is Isabel.”
“…That is correct. Since she fought as the Black Knight, the victory belongs to Princess Isabel.”
Whether this could truly be called a duel was uncertain, but in any case, it had ended.
Ron spoke to the fallen Sermon, who could not rise.
“The loser must show proper respect to the victor.”
Sermon answered barely, breathing heavily, “I understand.”
Ron, confirming that response, nodded and turned away.
* * *
Isabel held Serna tightly.
“I’m sad that you’re leaving so soon.”
The Emperor and Empress had to depart immediately after the duel ended.
They said there were mountains of matters to attend to.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pouted and caused you to come all this way despite being so busy.”
Serna smiled warmly.
“Won’t you pout a little more for me?”
“….”
“I mean it sincerely.”
“…Really?”
Serna was sincere.
In truth, aside from Isabel, the other princes had never complained to Serna.
They didn’t need her the way Isabel did.
The princes were far too devoted to honing their own swordsmanship.
‘The other children never pestered me like this.’
Serna had always carried guilt toward her children.
That’s why it felt wrong to approach them when time permitted.
She feared it would seem as though she were merely seeing them because she had free time, rather than making time for them.
The children didn’t particularly need their mother, and she had never stepped forward to meet them, allowing so much time to slip away.
No matter how I rationalized it, I couldn’t become a good mother.
That’s what I had believed until now.
“Thanks to Isabel, I’m learning so much too.”
Isabel was different.
She always wanted to see her mother and spend time with her.
Through her, I was coming to feel many things.
‘My children need me.’
The other children didn’t lack the need for their mother’s love—they simply didn’t know how to ask for it.
Through Isabel, I was gradually coming to understand that.
Though I’m an undeserving mother, though I have been until now, though I was truly a terrible mother, couldn’t I become just a little, just a tiny bit of a better mother going forward?
I glimpsed a very small hope.
“But what if you end up whining that you miss Mother all the time?”
“Then I’ll just come visit every day.”
“Tch, you’re lying.”
My mind conjured up Serna’s specific daily schedule—her sleep time, work hours—and the travel time using the Teisabel transfer gate.
Serna’s words were realistically impossible.
“Then I’ll send your father instead.”
“Father?”
“Your father can barely do anything besides swing a sword. And when he attends meetings, everyone gets so frightened they can’t even voice their opinions. So he’s not really that helpful to state affairs.”
I had just spoken ill of the Emperor before the Emperor himself.
Only Empress Serna could say such a thing.
Isabel, feeling awkward for no reason, changed the subject.
“B-but Father is busy with his sword training, isn’t he?”
In fact, that was the Emperor of the Vilotian Empire’s primary duty.
Serna smiled brightly.
“Your father is the strongest person in the world even without sword training.”
At those words, Ron’s ears turned just slightly red.
Ron suffered from ‘a condition where he only responds to his wife’s praise, yet becomes flustered by that very praise,’ and as Isabel watched Serna and Ron in turn, she felt it once more.
‘Mother is the real power here.’
Before Ron and Serna left, Isabel spoke.
“Tell Brother Sermon as well.”
* * *
The next day.
Isabel found Sermon’s tent.
“Brother, are you feeling better?”
“He was careful to avoid the vital points.”
His entire body, including his face, was wrapped tightly in bandages.
He looked like a mummy, with only one eye barely visible.
Even with the priest’s treatment, he would need several days of rest.
Isabel sat on the edge of Sermon’s bed.
“That’s what sadness is.”
“What do you mean?”
Sermon had been openly discriminated against.
Their father had dropped everything upon receiving his daughter’s letter and came to discipline his son.
And he did it in front of hundreds of soldiers, no less.
Moreover, after the duel, he visited Isabel’s tent first instead of Sermon’s, offering comfort only to her.
Isabel naturally assumed her brother would be sad.
She wasn’t sure if it was the right approach, but she wanted to teach her brother—who had never learned sadness—what that emotion felt like.
“I’m in quite a good mood, actually.”
“…You’re in a good mood?”
“Yes.”
Sermon slowly raised himself up.
“You can sense others’ emotions through magic, can’t you?”
Sermon lifted his arm and extended his hand to Isabel.
His arm trembled from the severity of his injuries.
“Take my hand.”
“…”
Isabel grasped the tips of Sermon’s fingers.
The emotion was transmitted through his magic.
“You’re… really serious?”
It seemed sadness didn’t exist as an emotion for this man at all.
Isabel felt somewhat confused.
“Why are you so happy?”
“Because my Biological Father disciplined me. Mercilessly.”
“…I saw that too.”
That wasn’t a duel—it was a beating.
That’s why Sermon looked like this now.
“The truth is, I’ve never properly crossed swords with my father. Even when I attacked him with genuine killing intent, he always received my blows half-heartedly.”
Isabel listened silently to Sermon’s words.
The emotion she felt from Sermon’s fingertips was still joy.
“Mother cherished me no matter what I did.”
It was a story from childhood.
When Serna visited the Bladock Duchy and met Sermon.
“During those times, I tormented the servants and maids. It seems I did particularly strange things. And it gradually became more cruel.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure why. I simply wanted to.”
Isabel thought she understood.
Why Sermon had committed such bizarre acts.
He had said he didn’t hesitate to do things so cruel they were difficult to describe in detail.
‘He must have wanted Mother’s attention, even just once more.’
Sent to the Bladock Duchy immediately after birth, he had grown up there.
Sermon had never once been a son since his birth.
From the moment he was born, he was not a son but merely the future ‘First Shadow’.
‘The Vilotian Royal Family, giving no love to the princes and only making them compete for succession…’
When I read it as a novel, I thought it was simply how things were.
But living within it now, I realized it was truly a cruel place for the princes.
“Yet Mother never once scolded me for anything. I thought that was simply how it should be.”
But as time passed, younger siblings were born.
Michael in particular was a troublemaker in many ways.
“When Mother saw Michael kick a knight’s shin, she scolded Michael severely.”
“….”
“I was terribly envious of that.”
Sermon smiled faintly and asked Isabel.
“Why do you think Mother scolded Michael but never scolded me?”
“I don’t think it was because she didn’t love you, Brother.”
“I’m not sure what love is. But I know Mother is a very good person. She was the only one who opposed me being sent to the Bladock Duchy.”
“….”
“Mother did that because she felt sorry toward me.”
Serna lived carrying a great debt of heart toward her children.
If she had to name the children who weighed most heavily on her mind, it would be Kaman and Sermon.
Serna had been busiest when Kaman was young, and she had never been able to spend time with Sermon from the start.
“Because she felt so sorry, no matter how grave a mistake I made, no matter how badly I behaved, she simply held me. Though Father seemed to show little interest.”
“Brother, did you dislike that?”
“It seems I did.”
Sermon wished his mother would stop feeling sorry.
“Mother seemed deeply uncomfortable whenever she looked at me. Perhaps that is what you call sadness.”
He understood discomfort, but he didn’t deeply comprehend the emotion of sadness itself.
“But I hated seeing her like that. I’m not sure why.”
“It was because you hated seeing Mother suffer because of you, Brother.”
Sermon pondered for a long while before nodding.
“I suppose that was it.”
“That’s sadness.”
“….”
I still couldn’t quite understand it fully.
Yet somehow, this moment of conversation with Isabel felt unexpectedly warm.
‘Why am I discussing something like this with her?’
I couldn’t answer that myself.
Now that I thought about it, I’d never truly opened my heart and talked with anyone like this before.
Isabel’s voice reached me.
“So Brother wanted to be scolded. It must have felt like proof that Mother wasn’t sorry.”
And perhaps Biological Father sensed that feeling and scolded him even more harshly.
But I didn’t say that much.
Instead, I said something different.
“I’m upset.”
Isabel understood that deficiency manifests in countless forms.
Isabel herself knew this, as did Kaman and Sermon.
The strange behaviors Sermon displayed seemed to be evidence of that very deficiency.
“About what?”
“Where in this world is someone happy after being scolded?”
Just as being healthy and free from pain could be a joy for someone.
Being scolded by one’s parents could itself be a source of joy for someone.
Isabel squeezed Sermon’s hand tightly in hers.
“Then leave it to me from now on.”
“Leave what?”
“I’ll scold you properly, Brother.”
Isabel rose from her seat.
She placed both hands on her hips and put on a stern expression.
“If you do anything strange again, I’ll scold you very frightfully.”
“What?”
Sermon chuckled softly.
“Why are you laughing? I’m being serious right now. I really will scold you terribly. You might even cry later saying how scary it was. This is a real warning.”

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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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