I’m a Villain, but I Want to Live a Long Life - Chapter 102

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“Don’t talk nonsense, Luke! How did I raise you! Are you really going to defy your mother?!”

Luke stared blankly at his mountain-like mother across from him. He opened his lips with difficulty.

“But Mother… Haven’t I told you countless times! She’s the woman I love. Besides, she’s not the kind of person you think she is…”

“Stop talking about love—!! Are you someone who can decide such important matters based on such trivial emotional games?!”

As the lady staggered from her seat, the head maid quickly stepped forward.

“My lady, please calm down! Didn’t they say your heart could get worse if you keep getting excited like this?”

“Oh, Kalia! I must have raised my son wrong, I’ve lived my life in vain! To hear such words again!”

The lady swayed and slumped into her seat. Then she began to sob, tears streaming down her face.

As Luke watched her with trembling eyes, the weeping duchess suddenly lifted her head without warning.

Meeting her eyes that blazed with fierce light, Luke unconsciously stepped back.

Though his mother had grown old, her tremendous presence was never diminished.

“As long as I’m alive with my eyes wide open, you can never decide your marriage as you please! Go ahead and try to bring that lowly woman into this house! That day will be the day I bite my tongue and die!”

“Mother!!”

“Do you think you could really hold your wedding ceremony in front of your mother’s grave?! Do you think you could be happy with that lowly woman even under my curse?!”

It was a curse too terrible to even speak aloud.

The servants each held their breath as if accustomed to this.

“Luc Hallen. Don’t even think about meeting that woman ever again. This is my final warning!”

“Then what about my child!”

Luke shouted with his face contorted in tears. But the duchess rose from her seat without even batting an eye.

She straightened her back and approached Luke without a hint of wavering.

Then she spoke coldly to her trembling son.

“Who says it’s your child.”

Luke swallowed the rising sigh and barely managed to speak.

“It’s been years since the child was born… I haven’t been able to see her face properly even once! All because of you, Mother!”

“Exactly. So why is that child yours?”

Luke stared blankly at his mother. The duchess frowned and spat out.

“Oh, poor Luke. Do you really think that woman only slept with you?”

Deep wounds carved into Luc Hallen’s eyes. The duchess raised her voice even more in front of her shocked son.

“This is exactly why. I always earnestly begged you to associate with people of your level.”

She gripped her son’s shoulders tightly and spoke through gritted teeth.

“Commoners are vulgar and frivolous people. They don’t match the status of you, who is the head of this house and will lead Rishion in the future.”

Luke, who had been biting his lips until they nearly bled, asked back in a cracked voice.

“So what you’re saying now is… that Riana is carrying another man’s child and lying that it’s mine?”

A sneer burst from the duchess’s lips.

“Yes, that’s possible. Aren’t all commoner women like that from the beginning?”

Her eyes blazed with fury and hatred as she spoke.

Luke flinched and clenched his fists. Old memories flooded into his mind.

“Honey! Please don’t go! If you leave like this, what will happen to Luke and me!!”

“Emma, don’t do this! That woman is pitiful. Unlike you, she can’t live without me! You already have everything!”

“What are you saying, honey…! Don’t go, please! No—!!”

Father left without ever looking back. Leaving behind Mother’s heart-rending screams.

It was a ridiculous and tumultuous incident.

Even Luke, who was just a child, could clearly feel it.

The whispers and pitying looks directed at him and his mother that began from that day.

Despite leaving as if abandoning his family to find some great freedom.

Father returned home within a few months.

As a cold corpse.

It wasn’t that Luke didn’t understand his mother’s pain.

But…

“You’re being deceived, Luke! I don’t know what that woman is after by approaching you, but saying she’s pregnant is what those people always say!”

“It is my child!”

When Luke gasped and cried out in anguish, the lady closed her mouth.

“That child is definitely a child of our family. Because she bears Hallen’s blessing.”

The servants who had been eavesdropping on the conversation covered their mouths.

The duchess, who had been motionless like wearing an iron mask, was the same. She staggered from her seat.

“What… what are you saying? The child that woman bore… has awakened the prophetic eye?”

The prophetic eye.

It was a blessing passed down through generations in House Hallen, meaning one had received the gift of the light of knowledge from the gods.

It was similar to the abilities that manifesters possessed, but unlike abilities that manifested during growth, Hallen’s blessing was a power one was born with.

Luke added with a voice full of resentment.

“Yes! The child received the blessing that I, Father, and even Grandfather never received. Will you still insist that Sharlina isn’t my child!”

The duchess closed her mouth with a dumbfounded expression.

The prophetic eye was a rare, magnificent, and very sacred ability.

Those with the ability could see future events at irregular intervals.

“How could that child…”

The lady’s lips trembled.

“I, I can’t believe your words. I need to verify for myself whether it’s truly the prophetic eye…”

“The verification was completed long ago. From the moment of birth until now. Whenever the child opened those eyes, someone around her would invariably pass away.”

Another ability of those with the prophetic eye was detecting death.

More precisely, it was seeing the future based on death.

“Is that still not enough? Sharlina is my bloodline. She’s definitely my child.”

There was no more certain evidence than that, but the duchess didn’t answer.

She just stared at Luke with a stern expression before sharply turning around.

It was when Luke was looking at her back with a devastated expression.

The duchess turned to look at him and coldly declared.

“…Still, it’s not allowed. Bringing that woman in, absolutely never.”

Having finished speaking, the lady left the drawing room with her usual upright posture, clicking her heels.

Luke, whose legs had given out, collapsed to the floor and trembled for a long time.

“My goodness, that was a bit harsh.”

At Selene’s voice, Estelin nodded.

Rosette frowned and let out a sighing voice.

“Why are there people you can’t communicate with everywhere? Listening to that made me frustrated to death.”

Selene answered calmly.

“The arrow of resentment toward her husband went to the wrong place. To the lady, all commoner women would have overlapped with the woman who was her husband’s mistress.”

Luc Hallen nodded.

“…That’s right. That’s why I couldn’t cut off Mother more coldly. Because I knew better than anyone the pain that blinded Mother’s eyes.”

Selene’s blue eyes quietly turned toward Luc Hallen.

“I understand. Parents are like that originally. No matter how hateful and resentful they are, they say you can’t go against the natural order.”

“…That’s true.”

Rosette agreed bitterly.

Duke Haren looked up blankly at Selene.

He could read various complex emotions on the face of the girl who was only nineteen years old.

‘Her hair that closely resembles Aleon Tigris too.’

Judging by how her friends called her Selene, she was definitely Lady Tigris.

The name Selene wasn’t common.

He recalled the impression of Aleon, who had graduated from the Academy decades ago, and narrowed his eyes.

‘Her face resembles her mother’s side more than her father’s.’

Her sharp and bright personality was also more similar to Hemera than to Aleon, who had been nothing but blunt.

‘When I only heard the rumors, I thought she would have grown up to be just a young and immature child.’

Seeing those two eyes shining with intelligence, I felt a strange emotion.

As the Duke quietly gazed at Selene, Estelin casually asked from beside him.

“So what happened after that? Did you really fail to recover your daughter and first love? Because of your mother…?”

Duke Haren wore a bitter smile on his lips.

“My first love… Riana, she died. I couldn’t find my daughter either.”

“Oh my!”

Rosette covered her mouth and asked.

“Why did things suddenly turn out that way? She passed away!”

The smile gradually disappeared from Duke Haren’s lips. The girls stared at him with anxious expressions.

“My mother killed Riana.”

Selene’s face turned pale and stiff.

“Killed her…?”

“After my mother passed away, it was revealed that she had been threatening Riana.”

“Threatening her?”

“Yes. Using the child as a hostage, no less. My mother forced Riana, who was already suffering from a chronic illness, to give up her own life. She said if she did that, she would at least take in the child.”

“…”

“Riana… ultimately accepted that proposal.”

Tears welled up in Estelin’s eyes. Rosette let out a sigh as if dumbfounded.

“That’s, that’s too much. Are you saying you had no idea such a thing was happening?”

Duke Haren smiled self-deprecatingly.

“Ridiculously, I had no idea at all. I believed my mother’s words that Riana had lost her life to an infectious disease at the village hospital. I believed her words that the body couldn’t be recovered, that she passed away peacefully as if falling asleep… I believed it all. Foolishly.”

The end of his voice cracked with terrible sadness.

But then, Selene’s calm question echoed through the cave.

“Then what about the child? What happened to Sharlina?”

Luc Hallen raised his head and opened his tightly closed mouth.

“…Sharlina disappeared. Without a trace.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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