I’m Hunting My Enemy - Chapter 56
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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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56. Identity (2)
Now that Glem had been caught stealing the Crown Prince’s ring.
Everyone’s reasoning had shifted toward the possibility that Glem had either blackmailed the Crown Prince or might have actually harmed him.
The knights’ rough handling was also based on the same speculation.
Perhaps even Ryuie thought Glem might have harmed the Crown Prince.
While no one thought Glem was the rightful owner of the ring, Benito asked nonchalantly.
“You’re the Crown Prince, aren’t you?”
“…!”
Glem’s breathing stopped.
Benito’s face was serene without the slightest hint of doubt.
Faced with such unshakeable certainty, Glem felt as if the ground beneath his feet had suddenly disappeared.
“On what grounds….”
“The Ohen Priest told me that my memory is as good as nonexistent. But that doesn’t mean I know nothing.”
Benito pulled his lips into a smile, but it felt empty rather than joyful.
“You were careless, Yosua.”
Glem’s hands gripping the prison bars began to tremble finely.
“You… who are you.”
“Like the humans who tried to avoid their vows by taking different bodies, your heart remains unchanged despite wearing another flesh, which is fortunate at least.”
“Who are you!”
Benito said.
“You love Ryuie, don’t you?”
Glem unconsciously threw himself against the cage with a thud as if trying to burst out. An ominous feeling seemed to take shape and crawl up his back.
Benito opened his mouth in a soundless laugh.
“Yosua’s body would be easier to love than Glem’s body, wouldn’t it?”
“Who are you. What are you scheming? Damn it, answer me!”
“Do you plan to keep leaving it to Rkultu God?”
Benito tapped his fingertips. It was the position where ordinary people would wear a ring.
The vision that appeared whenever Ryuie approached the ring immediately came to mind.
Yosua’s body.
‘No way.’
“How do you know that.”
“Your body isn’t sealed in the ring, Yosua.”
“It’s not?”
“Rkultu is keeping the Crown Prince’s body safe through the ring.”
Though it sounded like the same thing, Benito raised his finger as if it were distinctly different.
Two fingers pointed, one at Glem and one at the sky.
“If you keep your vow and marry Ryuie, I’ll return your original body.”
“Shut up.”
“Why do you refuse?”
“If the vow is fulfilled, Ryuie will die!”
Glem couldn’t hold back and shouted.
The emotions that had been boiling inside him for ten years struck his head like an erupting volcano.
The moment Yosua first learned about the vow, he began searching for a way to break the engagement, staking everything.
That’s right. It was Yosua, not Ryuie, who decided to break the engagement first. Though the reasons were different.
“She won’t die.”
“It’s as good as dying.”
Glem’s eyes, with burst blood vessels, were stained red almost like a beast’s.
Glem suppressed his anger and spat through gritted teeth.
“Besides, once she realizes I deceived her, Ryuie will never marry me anyway.”
Sting.
Even as he spoke, his insides felt like they were being stabbed with a skewer. It was similar to the pain he felt every time Ryuie unhesitatingly said she would break the betrothal vow.
Benito took on a thoughtful expression.
“If she thinks she was betrayed by Yosua rather than Glem, she wouldn’t marry you?”
“She won’t marry me, I tell you.”
“I’ll keep your secret.”
Benito still ignored all of Glem’s words and made his request.
“Glem’s identity shouldn’t be revealed anyway. Oh, and you shouldn’t get close to Ryuie in that fake body either, right? It would be terrible if Ryuie fell in love with Glem.”
“What nonsense….”
Even though he tried to dismiss it, it bothered him.
Because Ryuie’s changed gaze clung to him like evidence.
Glem struck the cage, shaking off any such possibility.
“What’s your purpose?”
“What meaning does that have?”
“Why did you appear here?”
Benito answered gently to Glem, who was almost shouting threateningly.
“Yosua. Your disappearance has gone on too long, so God has come to fetch you. There will be a wedding where two people will be eternally happy.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
No matter how desperately he wished for it, the wedding between Ryuie and Yosua must not take place.
It was an impossible dream.
Even harboring such a wish was shameful.
He rather hoped this love would pass like a brief fever he had suffered in childhood.
“If you wait, you’ll find out.”
Benito smoothly disappeared.
Left alone, Glem had to suffer through all sorts of negative imaginings and disgusting truths.
All through that night.
* * *
“Insolent thing.”
Catsy fumed with indignation.
“I cherished him, doted on him, and tamed him nicely, and he dares to bite the hand that feeds him and betray us? Ungrateful bastard!”
“….”
Ryuie said nothing in particular and removed the clothes she had worn when capturing Glem, one by one.
Watching the lace gloves fly through the air, Catsy rolled her eyes.
Originally, Ryuie would leave uninteresting emotions for others to handle, so she was satisfied the more she got angry.
But now, no matter how much Catsy cursed, tore apart, and ranted about Glem, there was no encouraging response.
‘Is she not that angry?’
Catsy cautiously observed Ryuie.
After all, this wasn’t the first or second person who had approached Ryuie with ulterior motives.
But to say she truly thought nothing of Glem, Ryuie’s reaction was different.
Like someone lost in deep thought, her lips were clear but her gaze was unclear.
“What will you do now, Miss?”
Bendam asked.
“Since he coveted the Imperial ring and insulted the ducal house, shall we promptly sentence him to death?”
Among them, he pretended to be the most normal, but in fact Bendam was the most cold-blooded and quick-handed.
He was good at handling affairs so that disposing of a single mercenary, not even another nobleman, wouldn’t cause major problems.
A slight irritation crossed Ryuie’s previously calm brow.
“Leave him be.”
“But Miss.”
“You know what I’m like, so why are you doing this?”
Bendam awkwardly bowed his head.
Ryuie had never killed anyone. That’s why she also disliked having others executed.
It was because he hadn’t even tried doing it with his own hands yet, so how could he watch someone else do it.
‘If we didn’t know the reason, you could have looked like a moral human who hates murder. But the word “yet” is too scary.’
Bendam was doing his best to keep Ryuie from going astray, but sometimes this mission felt overwhelming.
Moreover, if the target of murder was a handsome ex-lover, it would be a story that would satisfy Ryuie too much, which worried him even more.
‘I thought the young lady’s first murder might be His Highness the Crown Prince, but this atmosphere is completely heading toward Glem, isn’t it? She’s not going to do it, is she? Ah, why when there are so many witnesses too.’
Bendam’s worries continued to grow. Fortunately, Ryuie wasn’t plotting a murder plan for the betrayer.
Ryuie was looking into her own heart. Turning Glem’s shadow reflected in her always glass-smooth heart this way and that.
She tried to confirm what position Glem held in her heart. Because it felt like that would change all her actions.
Perhaps even the ending.
* * *
“Bring Ryuie here and I’ll tell you everything.”
Ever since being locked in the cage, Glem had been repeating the same words.
The knights who came to bring meals had stricter discipline than the priests.
They followed the rule of absolutely not answering Glem much better.
There were no casual remarks, no subtle attempts at persuasion.
Absolute obedience to orders.
‘I can’t use the same methods on the knights as I did with the priests.’
It didn’t mean he would lose if he fought the knights.
Unlike the priests who could be threatened with their individual lives, all the knights belonged to Ryuie. If he harmed one knight, he would have to face them all, and that would ultimately weaken Ryuie’s power.
Glem didn’t want that.
But trying to persuade them only with words, so uncharacteristically moderate, was truly killing him. He even felt like a prisoner who had received his execution date. Because he didn’t know when Benito would tell Ryuie the truth.
‘Damn! What the hell is that bastard anyway?’
With nothing to do, Glem pressed his forehead while the prison bars rattled pointlessly.
All the etiquette and kindness he had learned during his days as Crown Prince had been lost long ago.
Since becoming Glem, his new personality had taken such deep root that no one would suspect the delinquent mercenary.
This was all because of the relic at the bottom of the swamp.
‘…How many years have I been living in this body already?’
Now he couldn’t even distinguish whether he was Yosua or Glem.
He had watched other people’s destruction for as long as the time it took to forget himself.
The Relic of the Swamp wasn’t an object that liberated people as the rumors claimed.
It was a relic that made people lose their human bodies and transform into monsters as the price for escaping their vows.
In other words, it liberated monsters, not humans.
Yosua, who knew nothing, accidentally touched the relic while trying to help them and became Glem as the price.
Yosua was terribly, horribly, shamefully embarrassed about being Glem.
‘I should have quickly returned to being Yosua after all.’
He couldn’t forget the moment when he remained the only intact human among people who were transforming into monsters and wailing.
At that time, Glem completely erased Yosua’s personality.
Because he couldn’t dare present himself as the Crown Prince in front of them.
He was too ashamed that he remained human instead of becoming a monster just because of a single bloodline.
At first, that’s why he didn’t hurry to find the ring.
‘That’s when things started going wrong.’
Glem pressed his brow tightly. In doing so, he lost sight of his peripheral vision for just a moment, and when he lowered his arm again, there was a human presence.
“!”
‘Ryuie!’
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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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