I’m Hunting My Enemy - Chapter 69

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

69. Saintess (3)

Glem listened silently with his now-restored body.

“Even the Imperial Palace probably didn’t know they were keeping it. The reason they disguised ancient sorcery that forcibly grants divine power to humans in the form of marriage, going back to ancient times, is….”

“Because that’s the oath the First Emperor made.”

Glem couldn’t hold back and blurted out.

He seemed like someone who had despised, spat upon, and cursed that oath long before Agasa ever had.

“Isn’t it a binding he created to trick the patron deity into pretending to be his companion so it would protect This Land in his stead?”

“So you think of it as a binding.”

“Isn’t it?”

Agasa’s eyes were so calm that her thoughts were hard to read.

“They say it’s virtuous for a wife to obey her husband’s words after marriage. Breaking those bastards’ jaws was my daily routine. Because they’re the ones who never truly know the fear of having to obey every single word.”

“You would never agree to it?”

“Even doubting it is unpleasant.”

“Even if Ryuie would look only at you, listen only to your words, and become your eternal lover?”

“Could a Ryuie who can’t think for herself, can’t move, and has lost all passion and dreams truly be called a ‘lover’?”

The oath the early Emperor created to trap the patron deity was cunning.

He turned words about permitting anything in the name of love into a slave’s declaration.

If the two married, Ryuie would have to obey Yosua until death. In a state worse than slavery. An oath of absolute obedience to unconditionally follow whatever Yosua said.

In exchange, the other person would enjoy infinite glory.

“The fact that Rkultu’s blood mixed into the Imperial bloodline must also be because of that oath.”

Glem lifted his chin at the surging nausea.

To think the Imperial family were descendants of such a person.

It was horrifying.

‘I couldn’t tell Ryuie.’

Of course it was a shameful secret of the Imperial family that was hard to reveal, but it was also because both people would gain immortality regardless of the form.

What if Ryuie were to be tempted by the lure of immortality?

He didn’t even want to imagine the moment when someone with Ryuie’s quick decisiveness would even ‘consider’ such a thing.

What Glem loved wasn’t a doll. It was Ryuie herself. Not a doll that would only obey him.

To avoid the worst outcome, Yosua left without telling her anything.

“The First Emperor’s death was two thousand years ago.”

“Yes. In the end, eternal immortality wasn’t achieved.”

“Then why can’t the oath be broken? If that damned bastard could die, then naturally the oath should be breakable too, shouldn’t it?”

Agasa wished she could give a definitive answer to that desperate question.

How many times had she herself offered prayers to the god with hope?

An unfitting shadow fell across Agasa’s usually bright and clear eyes.

Agasa felt Rkultu’s power bestowed upon her spreading faintly.

Writhing, crawling.

Some force that eternally ruled the universe.

“Crown Prince. To stop something, it must first be realized.”

Glem’s face turned pale as he understood before Agasa even finished speaking.

“An oath that hasn’t even begun cannot be broken. The oath could only be broken after the wedding ceremony takes place, and by then Ryuie would already be in an irreversible state.”

Finally, bitter resentment seeped into Agasa’s voice.

“Even if the oath ends, the curse cannot be reversed.”

He never expected to receive such a definitive answer from the Saintess’s own mouth.

Glem understood with his body, not his mind, the sensation of the ground collapsing beneath his feet.

“…No.”

“Your Highness.”

“There must be some way. I’ve done everything possible to somehow find a method.”

“Your Highness.”

“For over ten years, not saying a single word to Ryuie for fear of fulfilling the oath’s conditions. Rolling in mud and eating garbage, barely making it this far!”

“….”

Agasa silently watched Glem as he rambled incoherently, his voice growing louder.

Intense emotion burst his blood vessels and crushed his breathing.

“How can you know without even trying!”

It was completely Glem’s voice that burst out, not Yosua’s.

Agasa, who had been trying to intimidate him with divine power, unconsciously stepped back several paces.

Glem’s appearance with hope completely stripped away

was terrifying.

Like how to rescue a beast from a trap, you first need to cut off its breathing.

“You should know the method. You claim to be chosen by god!”

“I am his tool, his hands and feet, his eyes and ears. I am the appropriate use in the right place. I cannot be more than that.”

Agasa quietly recited.

“Ryuie has already come to me for the same reason as you.”

“What did you answer then?”

“I gave the same answer.”

“Yet you say Ryuie showed interest in you.”

Agasa’s cheeks reddened slightly.

It was a secret and turmoil she wanted to hide. But she also shouldn’t hide it from the person in front of her right now.

Because Yosua was Ryuie’s fiancé.

From his perspective, she was the immoral one.

‘How shameful.’

Agasa hid the feelings that kept rising from within.

Rather than let her mindset as a Saintess crumble, it was easier to turn it into resentment.

If she blamed the other person, it seemed like all the fever that had hurt her would become lies.

“Why did you return?”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you just run away from Ryuie forever? Are you reassured because your body changed? Yet you still blame why the oath can’t be broken?”

Glem didn’t mention that Ryuie had found him.

Because it would be a useless excuse.

“If you truly love Ryuie, you should never have returned! You should have stayed away!”

“You want me to neglect her again after finding out? If I hadn’t met her again, I wouldn’t have known the oath had grown so strong!”

“So what did Ryuie gain? A brief fantasy of being lovers? Your self-satisfaction?”

“Now that I don’t have a body, I can stay by her side and find a way to break the oath!”

“I just told you there isn’t one!”

“Then what do you want.”

Glem roughly cut off her words.

“To give up everything and have Ryuie make the oath with me? Because that’s the Saintess-like position? Did you even love Ryuie?”

“!”

“Are you fine with Ryuie dying, with her suffering something worse than death?”

Agasa squeezed her eyes shut.

Glem also seemed to think his words were too harsh and caught his breath for a moment.

“…I went too far with those words.”

“No. No, you’re right, Your Highness.”

Agasa muttered while covering her eyes with the back of her hand.

“That’s why I rejected Ryuie.”

Between duty and love, Agasa chose duty. Back then, it was too short a time to realize her feelings for Ryuie were love.

“The truth is, Ryuie came to see me because you left. I know that.”

It’s a forbidden feeling.

Having rejected Ryuie, Agasa now truly had to rely on god for everything.

Otherwise, it would mean her past choice was wrong. It would mean she couldn’t stop regretting.

‘There’s no turning back.’

Agasa wanted to cry.

“…Ryuie always gives me only the choice to defy God.”

Once again, Agasa had no choice but to turn away from that terrible and arbitrary cry that told her to reject God if she loved her.

“I could not abandon God then, and I cannot now, so I beseech Your Highness the Crown Prince. Please return to Yosua’s body.”

Glem wore an expression of deep betrayal.

After all, it was no different from telling him to kill Ryuie with his own hands.

Pain flowed from Agasa’s lips as she bit them hard.

“If you knew what feelings I speak these words with, please don’t make me say them again.”

“I cannot do that.”

“Then what will you do! Will you continue to bear the curse together beside Ryuie? Burning together like this? Eventually someone will die!”

“That cannot happen.”

Glem slowly repeated his words. Agasa, who had been about to scream, hesitated.

Glem was not calm.

His eyes had gone mad.

“What if there’s another way for marriage vows to be fulfilled?”

“…What?”

Until death do us part, the two shall love each other forever.

Glem muttered under his breath.

It was a phrase he thought he could only say at a wedding ceremony. But now it could be interpreted with a different meaning.

“I will kill Yosua’s body.”

Agasa’s eyes widened in shock.

“I will never return to being the Crown Prince again.”

Glem’s eyes, with all their blood vessels burst, looked like someone shedding tears of blood.

‘I was dreaming for a moment.’

He had dreamed too long of the fantasy that everything would return to normal.

Even though it had already become irreversible.

Glem severed all his remaining attachments.

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