I Will Become the Ex-Wife of the Beast - Chapter 1

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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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1. ……That’s how it came to be, they say.

So here’s the story.
An old man wanders into the territory of the Grand Duke who guards the North of the Empire, and after angering the Duke, he ends up offering him one of his daughters.
There are two reasons why a Grand Duke of his stature would bother taking a bride from a lowly minor noble’s family. The first is to escape entirely the watchful eye of the Imperial Authority. The second is that he was cursed and bore a hideous appearance.
Even for a Duke who was a war hero and wielded enormous power, it was only natural that no decent noble house would hand over its daughter.
In the end, the old man swallowed his tears and sent his eldest daughter to the Duke, and amid the harsh, barren life of the North, the cheerful, bright-spirited eldest daughter… struck up an affair with one of the Duke’s knights.
“Hm…”
From here, the story diverges from the one everyone knows.
The eldest daughter, Eliya, being as cheerful as she was flirtatious, falls into a passionate, thousand-year love with one of the Duke’s knights and sets the whole North upside down.
The old man had sent his eldest daughter away for exactly that reason. She’d been involved in countless flings, big and small, with the village men, so there was no suitable match to be found for her, and he badly wanted to be rid of her.
But as the saying goes, what leaks from a gourd inside leaks outside too. In the end, Eliya incurred the Duke’s wrath, and in keeping with his infamous reputation, she was beheaded, while her entire family was seized by the Duke’s army, which swept in in the dead of night, and flayed alive.
Wounded once again, the Duke grows into a true monster, but, as is the protagonist’s privilege, he finds true love.
The beautiful and virtuous heroine, Cecil, sees the true worth of the Duke, shares body and soul with him, and in the end the Duke is freed from his vicious curse and returns to his original, beautiful form.
That is the general content of the story as I remember it.
“…Ahh.”
Clutching my head, I let out a groan of anguish.
What kind of worthless, dog-bone of a story is this… I’d curse it out, but then again, this is the first and last adult novel I ever paid full price to read.
But what’s truly tragic isn’t how depraved this story is. It’s that the moment I came to my senses, I found myself inside this very story.
And not even as the heroine, nor as the eldest daughter Eliya.
Right inside Bella’s body, the younger sister of Eliya, the one who was going to be flayed alive for the crime of being her sibling!

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‘Beauty and the Night Beast’.
Embarrassing as it is, that’s the title of the novel I read.
It was a full-blown adult novel that had set the industry ablaze, with a touch of bleakness mixed in. Well, no wonder, since the male lead was none other than a beast who had conquered the entire continent and shut himself away alone in the North. Stuffing a man with that much blood boiling in him into such a place, it’s no surprise his instincts would seethe in that particular direction.
His name was Duke Kiers Valencia.
A name that was perfectly fitting for a male lead, he was the Emperor’s half-brother. Blessed with noble blood and outstanding talent, he had survived countless brushes with death since childhood. Once he could wield a sword, he was openly driven onto the battlefield, but it was from that point that he earned his true renown.
Having conquered West’s Aren and South’s Pelona, and allowing not a single blade of grass to survive, he reached a turning point in his life in the North.
Had he merely taken that land, the Emperor’s throne would have fallen to him as well. But as if fate had conspired against him, he ended up under the Grand Mage’s curse at the very end.

“Kiers! For the crimson you’ve spilled across the continent, your sins shall be repaid with suffering that will never end!”

Put another way, this rather grand yet vague curse meant that every curse had come to him through his face.
In truth, the Duke boasted such staggering beauty that anyone who saw him once would be haunted by him even in their dreams. Some even said that Emperor Cassellini had driven his half-brother Kiers onto the battlefield partly out of anxiety that his fiancée, Roena, might fall for him.
They say one man’s misfortune is another’s happiness, after all.
With the Duke cursed, there was no better news for the Emperor. Forgetting how he’d once driven him to the battlefield, he blamed everything on Kiers, insisting that he must have behaved badly enough to deserve the curse.
On the surface, they said he should govern the North and discipline his body and mind, but in practice, there was only one meaning. Simply put: go quietly live out your days there and die.
And so Kiers became the ruler of the North.
The man who once commanded the entire continent squandered his life on hunting and drink, and though he married for the first time, even that was swept up in scandal, plunging him into even deeper despair.
In the process, he unleashed a bloody vendetta against his first wife, Eliya, and her family, and his revived madness prompted the mobilization of the Central Military Command, but unfortunately, by then Eliya’s family had already become nothing more than hides.
“…I’m going out of my mind.”
Restless, I was rubbing my dry face when I plucked a leaf from my hair.
All of this came rushing back to me the moment I tumbled down the hill after coming to gather firewood in place of my older sisters.
My name is Bella.
The name alone is nothing but sweetness, but by my standards, that’s not being good, it’s being foolish.
Instead of my sisters, who were drowning in luxury and indulgence, I always took on the unpleasant chores for the sake of peace in the household. Even today, gathering wood was supposed to be the job of my second sister, Melanie, but she burst into tears, moaning that her legs hurt, so I came out in her place.
Still, because of that, I struck my head and recovered my memories from my previous life. I don’t know whether I actually died and slipped into this book, or whether I somehow fell in, but one thing is clear: I am living inside a book.
And not just any book, but as the former wife’s younger sister of a male lead who dies after being flayed alive.
“Haa…”
Honestly, what kind of life is this?
Being stuck with a family that treats me like a doormat for my whole life would be infuriating enough, and on top of that, I’m not even going to live long.
It’s certain the author drew inspiration from ‘Beauty and the Beast’, but because the whole thing was built around adult content, the severity of the punishments was on another level. To emphasize the male lead’s savagery, nobody dies a gentle death.
But what wrong did I ever do?
Frankly, the eldest sister at least had her affairs, while I did nothing but work until my hands were raw. Even so, up until the second sister, the family had kept up appearances as nobles, but the trading ship my father had invested in sank the year I was born. I never got to enjoy even the slightest bit of comfort, yet because my birth was blamed for bringing misfortune, I lived cowed and silent, without a word of protest.
That doesn’t mean my family is entirely wicked, though.
It’s just that Father had lost his grip on reality, and my eldest sister was far too free-spirited. And my second sister, Melanie, was a selfish creature who only cared about herself, while Rose, the youngest, was still far too young. With things as they were, someone had to shoulder the burden if this family was going to hold together at all. And that someone was me.
So does that mean I have nothing but bad traits?
I wasn’t the one cursed by the Grand Mage, so that can’t be right.
I crawled on all fours toward the stream a few steps away, intending to wash the grime off my face.
“Wow…”
This beauty is really something.
Overcome by a sudden rush of emotion, I covered my mouth with one hand. Sure, I’d rolled down the hill and was caked in clumps of dirt, but the reflection on the clear water was beyond anything a human face should look like.

Eliya, the first wife, and her family were all famous for their extraordinary looks, but that was really all there was to them.

The novel had lumped it all together in that single line, but my beauty was truly beyond words. Voluminous platinum-blond hair that tumbled down to my waist, and eyes that were innocent yet dizzyingly alluring. On top of that, the deep violet of my irises rivaled any jewel.
Even I felt like diving straight into the water at the sight of myself, so there was no need to mention anyone else.
“…”
Still, the narration’s line, ‘and that was really all there was to them,’ was accurate.
The only thing I had going for me was this dazzling, radiant appearance, and I’d be torn apart limb from limb before I got to enjoy any of it. Even my modest dream of being content to simply devour my own face would only be possible if I were still alive, wouldn’t it?
“Haa.”
I swallowed the sigh that escaped me and bit down hard on my lip.
Bella from yesterday might have been a different story, but I, who had just rolled down that hill, needed to be different. I tied my cascading hair up tightly and made a solemn vow to the reflection in the stream.
…I would never let this face go to waste.

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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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