I’m The Male Lead’s Biological Daughter, But I Want To Live With The Second Male Lead! - Chapter 7

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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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Episode 7
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The Grand Duke’s Castle seemed impossibly vast, yet Mabel had seen only a single room.
— Take this “Sleeping Angel” before us, for instance. The great sculptor Michelangelo discovered our humble narrator when she was still unknown and graciously became her patron…….
— And right beside it! This shield wrought of gold was commissioned a hundred years ago to commemorate the victory at the Battle of Yorkend…….
This was why Dain took one step forward and delivered ten minutes of explanation, then took another step and delivered ten more minutes of explanation.
Of course, Mabel heard every word of it seated in a chair.
A cold glass of Lemonade in her hand.
— You’d better abandon any idea of wandering around aimlessly and breaking precious treasures, he’d said.
The chair Dain had brought was remarkably plush.
Yet even so, two hours of watching him talk to himself alone was genuinely exhausting.
‘What an earnest museum docent he makes…….’
When Dain noticed boredom settling across Mabel’s face, he pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose.
“Well then, shall we take a brief rest here and move to the next room? The next treasure chamber is rather more impressive, I assure you.”
“Pardon? There’s more?”
Mabel’s eyes widened in alarm, but Dain let out a soft laugh.
“Of course. The Grand Duke’s House is hardly so modest as to possess only one treasury.”
It seemed she had walked directly into a trap of her own making.
Still, when he mentioned resting, he appeared to mean it — Dain led Mabel toward the gazebo in the Central Court.
And before she had even sat down, he began speaking in that same rapid, staccato manner, as though reading from a primer.
“Um? Here. What is. This?”
“……?”
Mabel froze mid-motion, her posture awkward, and stared at the table.
Lying on the table were a few sheets of paper and a Fountain Pen filled with ink.
“Who. On earth. Would leave. Such important. Documents. And a Fountain Pen. Lying about. Like this?”
He had spotted them from a distance as he approached, yet Dain was performing as though he had only just discovered them in this very moment.
“Whoever. Did this. Shall receive. My most. Stern. Reprimand.”
Perhaps embarrassed by his own theatrics, Dain’s face had turned quite red.
Though she couldn’t say precisely what was happening, Mabel recognized that this man was making a genuine effort — it would be wrong to ignore him!
She decided to play along with his performance.
“Is it truly so important? Then I shan’t look! I haven’t actually seen anything yet, in any case!”
“No! That won’t do!”
Dain practically leaped to his feet.
Mabel’s eyes widened in astonishment as she raised her hands before her face.
“Ahem, what I mean to say is, well…… ah, I shall find the person responsible for this carelessness and give them a proper scolding.”
After clearing his throat, Dain pointed alternately at Mabel and the table.
“First, sit down. Finding the culprit will take at least fifteen minutes. Until then, you are to remain here completely alone. Understood? Completely alone, yes?”
“Ah, yes…….”
Mabel seated herself in the chair he indicated.
Dain’s expression grew satisfied.
“Don’t go anywhere — stay right here. If anyone comes, cry out. Don’t accept anything from strangers, and don’t follow anyone anywhere. I shall return in precisely fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, yes.”
Having delivered his instructions with brisk efficiency, Dain departed at once.
Whoooosh—
A breeze swept down from the distance.
Perhaps because of the altitude, despite summer’s approach, the wind was cool and strong.
Fluttering, fluttering…….
The papers Dain had left — those “important documents” — rippled in the gust.
Mabel glanced about, taking in her surroundings in the Central Court.
Distant fountains splashed, and birds sang in the trees.
Yet in this Central Court, with its carefully groomed rosebushes, only Mabel remained.
Not a single ant had ventured near, as though forewarned by some prior arrangement.
‘This must all be according to that man’s plan.’
The image of Dain dashing away like someone who had hastily installed a hidden camera and fled made Mabel stifle a quiet laugh.
How on earth had someone so clumsy become the Grand Duke’s aide?
‘Then again, if this were a character interview, he would have been hired on the spot.’
The Grand Duke’s House clearly valued character above all else when selecting their staff.
This place truly housed only the kindest of people.
They all treated Mabel with genuine warmth, knowing full well that she was from Achelonia.
Even Dain, despite finding her presence disagreeable, showed her consideration precisely because she was still a child.
‘They really are good people.’
Mabel’s gaze darkened as she stared quietly at the Central Court.
‘That’s exactly why it hurts more.’
Knowing the future as she did, Mabel was aware of what would become of the Grand Duke’s House.
A Secondary Male Lead exists as an obstacle to the Male and Female Leads.
An obstacle who blocks the protagonists’ happy ending has no happy ending of his own.
‘But there’s nothing I can do about it.’
A child who was meant to die and be buried soon enough.
Even if she somehow survived the orphanage, how could she possibly intervene in a conflict between the Grand Duke’s House and the Duke’s House?
And even if she could intervene, how on earth could she outmaneuver the Male Lead and help the Secondary Male Lead?
– You’re still just a child, Mabel. Children can’t wander about alone—it’s dangerous.
Even knowing this world was a novel, as Siegmund said, she was ultimately nothing but a child.
“…No, no.”
Mabel shook her head, trying to shake off the creeping melancholy.
The twin braids Ella had carefully tied swayed gently as she moved.
“I won’t think about things so far away.”
Mabel consoled herself that she would tackle the problems right in front of her, one by one.
To do that, she needed to solve Dain’s test first.
Those papers fluttering in the breeze, held down by a small paperweight.
‘But isn’t a test like this usually given to someone trying to prove their usefulness?’
Mabel tilted her head in bewilderment.
She didn’t have any particular need to prove her usefulness.
The child had been abducted and brought to the Grand Duke’s Castle, after all.
‘But I suppose I should at least look at it.’
With that casual thought, she picked up one of the papers.
It was right then that she noticed it resembled the documents Siegmund had been examining in the dining hall that morning.
“Hmm…?”
Among the hard-to-read, cramped handwriting, letters that seemed oddly familiar were laid out.
Though there were gaps missing in places, Mabel understood what those letters meant.
“Is this incorrect, or is it different because the world is different…?”
With just iron added, it would certainly be the Haber-Bosch Process.
“But how do I know this…?”
Mabel, still puzzled, quickly filled in the blank spaces with the letters that came to mind.
“That’s it, that’s right.”
As she completed the equation that had looked awkward before, Mabel smiled with satisfaction.
And then…
Hidden behind a large tree at the far end of the Central Court, Dain’s jaw went slack.
‘This can’t be real…’
Through the telescope, Mabel’s writing was somewhat difficult to make out, but it wasn’t scribbling—it was legible.
The child was truly solving the problem!
Dain’s knees trembled so badly that he couldn’t stand, and he sank down right where he was.
‘She’s actually solving the Grand Duke’s House’s great unsolved problem…?’
He couldn’t believe it.
Roughly a hundred years ago.
Magic began to fade from the Greenhurst Empire.
The Greenhurst Empire, which had been such a dominant magical power that it relied on magic for nearly everything, faced a grave crisis.
But then someone came forward with an alternative.
The Grand Duke Eschlid, a hundred years past.
The alternative he proposed was none other than Alchemy.
When magic pervaded the world, everyone had dismissed it as a field that threatened the status of mages.
But as times changed and years passed, it was now Alchemy that sustained the Greenhurst Empire.
Not magic, which had hoarded wealth and vanished without a trace.
And the current Grand Duke, Siegmund, carried great expectations on his shoulders.
In just three years, he had achieved results far more spectacular than what had been produced over the preceding hundred years—a genius without peer.
Perhaps, if it were him, he might yet solve the Horned Spirit Summoning Formula, which no one had unraveled in a hundred years.
If he could, then the Greenhurst Empire might finally surpass the Hermetic Kingdom, which had long enjoyed prosperity through Alchemy, and stand triumphant.
But even Siegmund had not readily solved the Horned Spirit Summoning Formula.
‘And yet that child is solving it…?’
No—he needed to verify this.
Perhaps she had simply scribbled random nonsense.
‘Yes, that must be it.’
Dain’s suspicion of Mabel stemmed from more than just the business with Sophia.
One of the spies he’d recently caught belonged to Achelonia.
The tail had been caught far too easily, which made him suspect there was more to it—and then, conveniently, Mabel had appeared.
Siegmund had offered no detailed explanation, only that he’d brought the child, but Dain was certain it was all part of Achelonia’s design.
The spy was bait, and Mabel was the real threat.
A demon like Sophia, wearing the innocent face of a small child.

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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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