I Woke Up from Hibernation and Found a Husband - Chapter 73

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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 73
“I found someone with a scar on their wrist.”
The summer Royal Ball Hall was held over two days. As the first day’s ball concluded, Claire, Theodore, Kenneth, and Ebon—who had shared secrets with them on the Laten Plain—gathered at the Voltier Mansion in the Convent.
“You found someone?”
Kenneth’s eyes widened. He set down his teacup and was about to ask who it was when Theodore spoke first.
“Before that, we need an explanation for why you asked us to find someone with a scar.”
Kenneth nodded in agreement and retrieved something from his pocket, spreading it across the Dining Table.
“What is this?”
“It looks like a medicine bottle?”
Everyone stared at it with confused expressions, waiting for Kenneth’s answer.
“Wait.”
Without hesitation, Claire grabbed the bottle and brought it close to her nose. Dodging Theodore’s outstretched hand as he warned of danger, she inhaled deeply and spoke.
“It smells the same as that paper from back then.”
A heavy, fishy stench—damp and reeking like something from a corpse.
“That paper?”
While Kenneth and Ebon looked puzzled, Theodore’s expression darkened. The cursed red paper that had overflowed from inside the shattered bed frame.
“What kind of medicine bottle is this…?”
In the heavy silence, Kenneth answered.
“A drug that awakens abilities.”
* * *
After the Laten Plain incident, Kenneth parted ways with the three who returned to House Voltier and launched a separate investigation into Umbra.
‘Considering what they did to the Eris Sisters and me, they must be conducting experiments on implanting and fusing abilities.’
Kenneth began by investigating whether there were any missing ability users among those with some degree of notoriety.
‘Those without affiliations would be the first targets.’
When numerous long-term missing persons were discovered—individuals who couldn’t even be traced with tracking artifacts—Kenneth pursued their whereabouts with renewed determination.
Unable to use the Guild’s resources due to Sio’s warning, he didn’t hesitate to visit the hometowns of the missing in person. Then one day, while continuing his investigation.
‘My older brother disappeared.’
He met a young girl whose blood relative had gone missing.
‘Before he disappeared, he said he would soon develop an ability. He said we wouldn’t have to struggle anymore.’
‘…An ability would develop?’
Rumors had circulated quietly—of a ‘drug that grants abilities’.
In an Empire that idolized abilities, scams involving ability manifestation were not uncommon, but this case was different.
‘Yes, my brother’s friend took that drug and developed an ability. I saw it myself. But now that friend has disappeared too.’
There were actual cases of people developing abilities after taking the drug.
Kenneth immediately began searching for the drug’s source, but the dealer’s whereabouts were fragmented like a network organization, making it difficult to find the actual source in a short time.
‘Still, for this kind of dirty work, I have a good idea where it comes from.’
The Market.
Skilled at cutting off trails and unable to identify upper management, they operated in society’s shadows, committing all manner of illegal acts.
Kenneth at least secured the medicine bottle found at the young girl’s brother’s residence.
“If the Market is the center of this potion’s distribution, it must be connected to Umbra somehow.”
At Kenneth’s words, Ebon recalled his twin brother Matthew for a moment, then let out a dry laugh.
“But how would spreading their abilities like this actually help them?”
Theodore, who had been silent in thought, finally spoke.
“The ability manifestation might just be bait. The drug itself could have a different effect entirely.”
He was someone who had suffered from madness merely by coming into contact with a dead man’s ability. If those without latent abilities could manifest them from this drug, he couldn’t even imagine how severe the side effects would be.
“So what about the wound?”
Claire set down the medicine bottle and asked.
Kenneth stared at the now-empty vial, choosing his words carefully.
“Kenneth?”
“…Actually, I had a trustworthy pharmacist analyze the residual components left in the bottle. The amount was so small that I couldn’t determine everything inside it, but I could identify the main ingredients.”
He hesitated, struggling to continue before finally forcing the words out.
“This drug. It’s based on beastkin blood.”
A heavy silence fell over the room.
“Beastkin?”
Everyone instinctively glanced at Claire. She was staring down at the bottle with cold eyes.
“Yes. So I investigated the missing beastkin cases…”
Kenneth first looked into whether there were any missing beastkin in the Convent. What he discovered in that process was shocking.
‘There are far too many.’
Dozens of beastkin had been reported missing to the Guard Corps this year alone, yet investigations into most of them were extremely rare.
They must have run away. They’ll return someday. They probably returned to the wild since they’re beastkin.
Dozens of beastkin had been dismissed with countless excuses. In a world where beastkin were despised, countless others lived hiding their identities, so there could be even more missing persons.
“If the missing persons are connected to the Market, if their blood was exploited to create this drug…”
All four of them thought of Anthony at once. Beastkin were popular commodities in the Market, earning them the nickname “chains.”
“So when I investigated this aspect more persistently, I was able to meet beastkin who had been sold to ‘humans’ and returned alive. And I learned of the existence of a ‘Keeper.'”
“A Keeper?”
“The person most deeply involved in buying and selling beastkin. A human who leads in abusing and exploiting them. They always keep their face and entire body covered, so their identity remains unknown, but one survivor said they once saw a wrist slip out from beneath the robe—it bore scars.”
Claire breathed roughly, her disgust evident. Ever since learning that the metallic scent emanating from the medicine bottle came from beastkin blood, her stomach had been unsettled.
“That person with the wrist scars was treated with extreme nobility by other humans, so it wouldn’t be strange if they were among the nobility.”
It was merely speculation, but if there actually was someone with scars in the same location, it would be worth investigating.
“So who was it? The person with the scars?”
They had returned to the original question.
Theodore’s blue eyes grew heavy.
A hand extended for a handshake. Between the gently swaying sleeves, a wound that appeared torn and barely held together was revealed.
‘If this person truly is the one…’
The scale of the matter would expand in the blink of an eye.
“Marquis Temper.”
The owner of the scar was none other than Marquis Cairo Temper—the father of Empress Bianca and the maternal grandfather of Crown Prince Aaron.
* * *
Could there exist a being composed solely of goodwill?
In Aaron’s world, adults were something that had grown twisted and warped by desire.
“If we kill Elliot, Verus’s ability will….”
“At the Sword Academy, it’s said that Gregory, House Voltier’s adopted son, stands out the most. If we bring him to Crown Prince Aaron’s side, we could even check House Voltier’s influence….”
“I can grant my ability to Crown Prince Aaron. In exchange….”
From where I sat on Bianca’s lap, the people around me shifted constantly. Those who bowed and scraped, those who brought strange substances and injected them into me, those who lowered their heads but whose eyes gleamed with sinister intent, and so on.
But the strangest of them all was undoubtedly Ian Lloyd.
“Do you enjoy sweet things?”
A man resembling sunlight, bending his knees to meet young Aaron’s eye level and smiling warmly.
He would slip me sweets that weren’t good for my body when Bianca wasn’t looking, and when I pretended I couldn’t resist and ate them, he would smile brightly.
“My younger brother Ian will help strengthen Crown Prince Aaron’s abilities. This is a secret, but Ian is actually the Empire’s first ability enhancer!”
Hector boasted about Ian’s ability as if it were his own, but I didn’t mind. Meeting Ian made me feel strange, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
‘How presumptuous, patting my head like that.’
At our last meeting, he had lifted me up and held me in his arms, then gently stroked my head.
It was an outrageously disrespectful gesture toward the Imperial Family, yet the sensation of his soft palm was something I couldn’t stop thinking about—a secret I couldn’t tell.
This day was no different. Following Hector to the Palace, Ian reached out his hand to Aaron to use his enhancement ability.
“Hmph, how presumptuous!”
Despite my words, I quickly shifted my body, and a low chuckle echoed as I looked down at Aaron’s crown. Then came a drowsy stretch of time.
As my eyelids grew heavy with the onset of sleep, I suddenly wondered if Ian was dozing off too and lifted my head.
“Ian?”
But Ian was not asleep. His eyes, shimmering with a golden light, were twisted with sorrow.
“This isn’t your ability, is it?”
His voice, laden with melancholy, struck at the heart of the matter.

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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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