In This Life, I Will Be The Lord - Chapter 238

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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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This Life, I Will Become the Clan Head Episode 238

A dark and damp underground dungeon.

In the innermost part of it, Empress Lavinia sat.

“You don’t look very peaceful.”

Peres spoke as he cast long, dark shadows created by the flickering torches in the prison corridor into the cell.

The Empress in the darkness was like a withered flower.

Her once dazzling appearance that had captivated everyone’s attention had now lost its light.

Though she still sat with her back straight, pretending to be noble and dignified, to the eyes of the one standing outside the iron bars, she was merely a wretched criminal.

With her disheveled hair, dirty clothes, and the dark circles under her eyes from sleeplessness, there was no room for beauty.

The reason was easy to predict.

“Rats are truly vile creatures, aren’t they.”

At Peres’s quiet words, as if a secret had been discovered, the Empress’s body flinched greatly.

“When you try to close your eyes and fall asleep, they squeeze through even the tiniest gaps and devour everything they can find, crawling around your bedside as if constantly targeting human flesh – that sound is enough to drive a person mad.”

Whether it was an underground dungeon or an abandoned pavilion.

They were perfect nests for beasts that lived hidden from human eyes.

“Open the door.”

Peres said to the guard.

Heavy metallic clanking sounds rang out a few times, and Peres walked into the prison.

“Have you come to kill me?”

Empress Lavinia asked Peres with venomous eyes.

“Not yet. But I don’t see any signs of repentance from the criminal.”

“Ha!”

Empress Lavinia snorted.

“I’ve done nothing wrong. You and I simply waged a life-or-death war. I lost and you’re tearing Angenas apart for all to see. So I’ve already paid for my crimes.”

The Empress spoke with a shameless face, lifting her chin.

“You’ve paid for your crimes.”

Peres looked down at the Empress with cold eyes.

“The victim has no intention of forgiving, yet you say you’ve paid for your crimes. That’s quite strange arithmetic.”

Every night, no matter how much he covered his ears, his mother’s voice was still so vivid.

“To follow the pain my mother had to endure, you still have a long way to go, Empress.”

Peres added briefly.

“You’re not yet begging to be killed instead.”

Seeing the blue eyes shaking with instinctive fear, he felt the fierce rage that had been wildly demanding to send the Empress to the execution block calm down somewhat.

It won’t be that easy.

Of course, he had no intention of leaving the scales tilted so heavily toward the Empress.

“Bring him.”

At Peres’s command, the guard standing by the door moved quickly.

Not long after, with the clanking of doors, the quiet underground dungeon became noisy.

“Let, let go! Let go, I say! Eek, don’t, don’t hit me! I was wrong!”

That voice was familiar to both Peres and Empress Lavinia.

“…Astana?”

“Mo, Mother!”

Astana, who had been roughly dragged by the soldiers’ hands, recognized Empress Lavinia and wailed like a child.

Though he was officially the Crown Prince of the Empire, Astana’s pitiful state was closer to that of a street vagrant.

The innate nobility of a prince was nowhere to be found.

When Peres quietly gestured, the soldiers released their hands that had been restraining Astana.

“Mother!”

Astana’s appearance as he ran to Empress Lavinia and clutched at her dress hem was so immature that his age in his mid-twenties seemed questionable.

If such an Astana had inherited the throne, who would have actually held the Emperor’s power.

It wasn’t hard to figure out without much thought.

The guards watching from the side seemed to sense this too, as they quietly exchanged glances and frowned.

“Why, why is your face like this…?”

The Empress examined Astana’s bruised face with trembling hands.

“Those bastards! Waaah!”

Astana pointed at the soldiers who had brought him while speaking.

“He didn’t want to come… we had no choice.”

A soldier quickly made excuses to Peres.

“If a criminal doesn’t obey orders, it can’t be helped.”

“You bastard!”

The Empress shouted at Peres.

“Astana is the Crown Prince of the Empire! No matter how much power you’ve gained, you cannot treat His Majesty’s bloodline like this!”

Empress Lavinia embraced Astana with one arm.

To the touching scene of mother and son, Peres replied coldly.

“It’s His Majesty’s command to thoroughly investigate all remaining crimes regardless of status.”

“…Yobanes!”

The Empress ground her teeth in fury.

It was quite different from her earlier boasting about “just waging war.”

And then she glared at Peres as if to kill him and shouted.

“You demon!”

“Sob! Sniff!”

Astana, held in the Empress’s arms, continuously shed sorrowful tears.

“Mother! Those bastards treated me like a commoner! They dared treat me like a beast! Sob!”

“It’s alright, Prince. It’s okay.”

The Empress acted like a pitiful mother protecting her son.

And that sight touched something within Peres.

The color of his red eyes watching the mother and son embracing each other with tilted heads sank even darker.

A demon, she said.

Then he should live up to that expectation.

“Astana.”

At Peres’s call, Astana looked up and sniffled.

“Wha, what!”

“His Majesty has entrusted me with all investigations regarding this rebellion and the previous assassination attempt.”

Peres’s words bounced off the cold prison walls and reached Astana.

“That’s why you’ve been confined in prison instead of your palace for the past few days.”

“So it was your doing…!”

“Moreover, the real culprit of what happened in the Forest of the Mad hasn’t been revealed yet.”

Astana stopped speaking.

His dull mind worked furiously to understand the meaning of Peres’s words.

Peres leisurely clenched and unclenched the hand that held Astana’s fate as he spoke.

“I’ll put it simply for you. In short, either you or your mother will become that culprit.”

“Then, then…”

“But as the Empress said, you are of precious blood descended from the Emperor, so I’ll give you a choice.”

Peres spoke with a crooked smile on one corner of his mouth.

“Right here, right now, admit that your mother, Empress Lavinia, gave you a dagger and told you to harm His Majesty the Emperor.”

“Wha, what…?”

“Then, considering your cooperation with the investigation, I’ll get you out of prison immediately.”

And Peres made one more proposal.

During the days he’d been imprisoned, Astana had called the food the guards gave him ‘garbage’ and refused to touch it at all.

“If you write a detailed confession in your own hand describing the situation at that time, I’ll even provide all the food you want to eat.”

The Forest of the Mad incident had all unfolded according to Peres’s plan.

Astana had to fabricate something that never happened in exchange for escaping prison and food.

Peres waited for Astana’s answer with a leisurely attitude.

‘Ridiculous nonsense.’

Lavinia inwardly scoffed at Peres’s proposal.

It wasn’t a proposal to guarantee survival, nor was it a proposal to guarantee the minimum rights as a prince.

In this situation where his life might be lost to treason at any moment, what Peres offered as compensation was utterly meaningless.

‘He would never accept it…’

Slowly.

The Empress’s sneer disappeared as Astana released the hand he was holding and pulled his body away.

“…Prince?”

Surprised Lavinia called out to Astana, but Astana avoided her gaze.

At the same time, mockery flashed in Peres’s eyes.

The Empress was startled and tried to stop Astana.

She was about to advise him not to fall for Peres’s word games that didn’t even guarantee his life.

“Pr-Prince. If you fall for such a proposal…!”

“It wasn’t my fault from the beginning, was it.”

Astana muttered like an excuse while still unable to look at Lavinia.

“It’s all something Mother did on her own, so it’s unfair for me to get dragged into it too.”

Lavinia gave up on trying to help Astana.

Instead, she trembled with a sense of betrayal.

“How, how dare you… How dare you treat me like…”

“Isn’t this all because Mother and Angenas had excessive greed beyond their station!”

Astana shook off Lavinia’s arm that was still holding him and jumped up from his seat, shouting.

“A noble from the western countryside should have been satisfied with becoming the Empress’s family! How dare you not know your place!”

Astana now blamed Lavinia.

And he showed a servile smile toward Peres and said.

“You, aren’t you and I brothers. Brothers who share the same father, the same blood!”

And he approached hesitantly.

“Whatever you say, I’ll write it all as you command. Whatever happens to Mother and Angenas has nothing to do with me, little brother.”

Peres slightly moved to avoid the hand reaching out to him.

And he commanded the guards.

“Take him away.”

“Hey! Let go! I’ll walk out on my own feet!”

Astana glared at the soldiers and hurriedly left the prison, saying.

“I want to eat freshly baked bread and meat! You must prepare it quickly!”

Astana, who was moving away like that, glanced back at Lavinia at the last moment.

But that was all.

Leaving his mother alone on the cold prison floor, Astana fled from the underground dungeon as if escaping.

Foolish bastard.

Astana’s safety is only guaranteed until he submits his confession.

He doesn’t seem to know that yet though.

Peres sneered while watching Astana’s retreating figure.

“Ha, haha…”

The Empress only let out empty laughter while collapsed.

Her eyes, staring blankly down at the prison floor, lacked even focus.

“How, how could you do this to me…”

“I’m glad I could meet your expectations, though it may be insufficient.”

Peres said in a voice filled with laughter.

Then, Lavinia shouted.

“You must feel satisfied getting your revenge! But that’s only momentary! Soon you too will be consumed by vengeance!”

Then she clutched her stomach and laughed as if realizing something.

“Haha! Yes! You’re already consumed! You inherited the throne to get revenge on me! So you can never be united with that woman you’re so desperate for!”

Ahahaha!

The Empress’s mad laughter echoed loudly throughout the cell.

“Very good! Very good! Continue living unhappily like that!”

However, tears were flowing from the Empress’s eyes.

Thump, thump!

Even while laughing in a daze, the Empress was pounding her chest with her fists as if in grief.

The laughter suddenly became animal-like wailing, then at some point became mad laughter again.

At some point, the Empress’s laughter abruptly stopped.

“Kill me. Put me on the execution platform as an Empress who dared to try to kill the Emperor. Don’t you need to complete your revenge.”

It was a cracked, extremely tired voice.

However, Peres shook his head.

“You’re underestimating me again. My revenge cannot be completed by something as trivial as your death.”

With a distinctly changed tone, Peres threw a piece of paper at the Empress’s feet.

“It’s the Empress deposition decree. It means you’re no longer the Empress of the Lambru Empire. It means you can’t even die on the execution platform.”

Lavinia’s withered hand barely picked up the deposition decree.

To such Lavinia, Peres said as if confirming once more.

“You are nothing now.”

As if struck by lightning at those words, Lavinia’s body began to tremble.

“No. That can’t be… That can’t be. No…”

Lavinia shook her head as if denying reality.

Step, step.

Peres approached right next to the collapsed Lavinia and lowered his posture.

And looking straight into the bloodshot, tear-stained blue eyes without an inch of error, he said quietly.

“Let me be clear. You’re going to die here. It could be today, it could be tomorrow.”

Lavinia’s cracked lips trembled.

“You will die.”

However, it stirred no emotion in Peres.

“Someone might come in and beat you to death, or slit your throat while you sleep. Or maybe the food the guard gives you will be poisoned.”

Lavinia’s face was gradually being colored with fear.

“So live each day in hell, fearing whether today might be your last day. Rot away forgotten in this place where no one will save you, Lavinia Angenas.”

Having said that, Peres stood up from his seat and left the cell.

“It can’t be like that! Ahhh! Rather kill me! Kill me! No!”

Lavinia rushed at Peres as if to kill him, but was quickly caught by the soldiers’ hands.

Peres coldly commanded the guards one last time.

“If the criminal tries to commit suicide, gag her and tie up her limbs.”

Step, step.

Peres’s footsteps leaving the underground dungeon were buried in Lavinia’s screams.

But that was only for a moment.

Clang.

As the thick iron gate closed behind Peres who had left the prison, only the sound of quiet wind could be heard.

Everything of Lavinia was thus trapped in the underground dungeon.

Peres walked through the quiet Imperial Palace without looking back.

* * *

“Peres hasn’t been seen for the past few days.”

I said to Cleribane as I left the Angenas Estate.

“He’s probably incredibly busy. He’s handling all of His Majesty the Emperor’s duties.”

“Ah, that must be the case.”

Since the Emperor’s condition still wasn’t improving and remained precarious day by day.

Someone had to handle the accumulating work.

“I need to get used to it.”

Peres was going to become increasingly busy.

The same was true for me.

So from now on, we wouldn’t be able to come and go as frequently as we had before.

Even though I knew this well, my chest kept aching.

I ignored that pain, pretending not to notice it, and said to Cleribane.

“Ride with me. I’ll drop you off on the way.”

“Thank you.”

Inside the carriage returning from the Imperial Capital to Lombardy Territory, it was quiet.

I think it’s about time now.

“Um, Lady Pirenthia.”

As expected, Cleribane cautiously began to speak.

“Go ahead, Cleribane.”

This was the same Cleribane who had said he had something to discuss last time.

Now that the cleanup of Angenas was slowly coming to an end.

My expectation that it was time for Cleribane to bring up what he had mentioned last time was correct.

“Sigh.”

After a short sigh, Cleribane looked at me and pulled something from his chest.

“What is this?”

I asked as I unfolded the paper.

And my heart felt like it dropped with a thud.

“This is…”

“It’s the lifetime contract we used when creating Pellet Trading Company.”

Cleribane cleared his throat once more and said.

“Please terminate this contract.”

What?

“I think I need to step down from my position as head of Pellet Trading Company, Lady Pirenthia.”

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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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