Isn’t Being A Wicked Woman Much Better? - Chapter 168

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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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Chapter 168
* * *
After the Harvest Festival celebration, Isidore had ventured south to survey the conditions of his territory and returned to the Capital after nearly a week away.
‘…I miss seeing her face.’
“Cookie, you miss seeing the Lady too, don’t you?”
Meow—
While absently stroking Cookie as she eagerly rolled a ball of yarn, a bird arrived with a small letter, as if responding to telepathy.
He unfolded the paper and smiled faintly.
Isidore quickly wrote a response with his quill pen.
A reply arrived shortly after.
‘She’s coming here?’
Isidore, who had been planning a theater date in the Yones District, was startled by the Lady’s sudden declaration of a visit. Now that he thought about it, this was her first time coming to his Town House.
‘Last time she came to the entrance and turned back.’
Isidore jumped to his feet and rang the bell cord urgently.
“Miguel.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Miguel tensed at Isidore’s serious expression.
“Prepare to receive a guest. She is the most noble person in the Empire, so be far more meticulous than when the Crown Prince visited last time. Prepare a welcoming bouquet as well. Understood?”
“Surely… not His Majesty the Emperor or His Holiness the Pope?”
“Stop that insolence. Deborah Simour is coming.”
Strictly speaking, she was the incarnation of a saint bearing the memories of the most beloved being in the Empire, so it was hardly mere infatuation.
“…Ah, yes. I understand.”
However, Miguel, unaware of the deeper context, left the office while trying to hide his bewilderment. Isidore hurriedly brushed cat hair from his arms and entered the dressing room.
Shortly after, dressed in a vest, he put on gold-rimmed glasses and unfastened one button of his shirt.
“How is it?”
Miguel opened his mouth with a deadpan expression.
“If you intended to express the image of an intellectual head of household who had been absorbed in work all day before receiving a guest, it’s a success. The sleeve cuffs and vest color are a perfect combination.”
“Have you made a contract with a demon? Your words lately lack any semblance of soul….”
While Miguel seriously pondered the difference between a ruthless employer and a demon, they received word that the Simour Family carriage had arrived at the Visconti Town House. The Visconti household servants, aware that this was a visit from a young lady who might become the future Duchess, greeted her with heightened alertness.
As tension hung thick in the air, Deborah Simour emerged slowly from the carriage in a black long coat, and the servants could only grow more tense at her impression, which was colder than the rumors suggested.
“Welcome.”
Isidore smiled gently and handed her a large bouquet, and she, suddenly cradling fresh flowers in her arms, curved her long eyes and smiled very softly.
A few servants who happened to witness this moment revised their impression of her. She was certainly an attractive beauty who captivated the eye.
“The welcome is too grand. You didn’t need to do all this.”
At Deborah Simour’s murmur, Isidore shrugged.
“If you had told me yesterday that you were visiting, I would have laid out a red carpet from the carriage to the annex.”
“You’re teasing me?”
“Your embarrassment is endearing.”
Isidore, taking her coat from behind, kissed her long, slender white neck several times. They had shared far more intimate contact than this, yet the Lady still flushed at the tips of her ears, absently toying with the flower petals.
“Sit here. I’ll prepare tea.”
The two of them passed through an ornately decorated corridor and entered an antique reception room. The moment Deborah Simour took her seat, Miguel wheeled in a tray laden with various desserts. She lifted a teacup with a golden handle slowly to her lips and took a delicate sip.
“Does the tea suit your taste?”
“Yes. It’s delicious.”
Isidore speared a honey-preserved cherry with his fork and brought it to her crimson lips, then spoke.
“We could have gone on a date outside, but why come here instead? Of course, I’m pleased. You can visit whenever you wish without needing to send word. I’ll have a space prepared that you’ll enjoy.”
I’d heard that Duke Simour had even employed a plant hunter to create an expansive rose garden for Deborah Simour. With the weather growing colder, I thought I should construct a greenhouse within the Visconti gardens where she could find respite.
“Actually, there’s another reason I came here.”
Deborah Simour suddenly reached out and slowly removed the glasses perched on Isidore’s sharp nose, and his emerald eyes trembled with tension.
“….”
“If you have time today, spar with me, Isidore.”
“…What?”
I could have sworn I just heard the word “spar”—a term utterly incongruous with this romantic moment. Had my ears deceived me?
“Since you’re a knight, your town house must have a large training ground suitable for a duel. Simour doesn’t have such a space, so the knights have to go all the way to the barracks.”
She murmured while touching the glasses he’d worn.
“Wearing glasses while fighting is dangerous, after all….”
‘A genuine duel challenge?’
Isidore blinked slowly, his expression bewildered, and the teapot lid rattled discordantly—a sound at odds with his suddenly serious mood.
‘She visits out of nowhere to fight her lord. This is absolutely mad.’
Miguel, who found Deborah Simour increasingly charming with each passing moment, trembled as he held the teapot, barely suppressing his laughter under his lord’s piercing gaze. Isidore grasped her hand with a faint smile.
“Have I perhaps made some grave mistake without realizing it? If there’s anything displeasing you, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”
“It’s nothing like that at all…. I’ll show you with my eyes first.”
* * *
A brilliant flash of white light shot forth like an arrow, and as the training ground rang out loudly, Isidore cried out his surrender.
“I’ve lost. This is the first time I’ve had to concede during a sparring match.”
Isidore gazed at the shattered wooden sword and murmured with an intrigued expression.
“See? I told you not to let your guard down.”
My duel (?) with Isidore ended in my victory, having shattered his weapon.
Of course, since he hadn’t mounted a proper attack against me, it was difficult to call it a fair match, but the fact that he—who even employed teleportation magic—couldn’t evade my strike and had to block it with his wooden sword held great significance.
“What exactly was the power you used just now, my lady? At first glance it appeared to be holy power, yet it possessed tremendous destructive force.”
I removed my sweat-soaked protective gear and set it on the ground as I spoke.
“It’s holy magic.”
“Holy magic?”
As if hearing an unfamiliar term, he wiped the perspiration from my brow with a handkerchief, his brows furrowing slightly.
That made sense. Holy magic had been founded by a Priest named Danae during the era of Gode Tegea to prepare for holy war, but due to its demanding application methods and limited usage conditions, it had never spread widely and the lineage of knowledge had been severed.
One week prior.
Through a conversation between Naila and a man resembling Isidore in my memories, I had learned who “Danae” was and what kind of person she had been—the name that appeared in the preface of the formula introduction.
“Danae. She was known as an eccentric Priest. That woman was a peculiar individual who wielded holy power like offensive magic.”
The reason Archmagus Simeon and Dragon Ricurgos had entrusted the formula to Danae after developing it was because she had long claimed she could fuse the mana distributed throughout nature with holy power and use it as offensive magic.
“Mana and holy power. Aren’t these two forces fundamentally different?”
Mana was a force corrupted in the intermediate realm, while holy power was the primordial pure force bestowed by the divine. Because these two forces possessed different natures, priests were unable to create mana circles within their bodies.
“True. But combining the mana in the air with holy power is an entirely different matter.”
“Then does that mean I could also gain the strength to protect myself now?”
“I can’t say. Holy magic lineages have died out for a reason—it’s extraordinarily finicky. You need mana sensitivity as well.”
To fuse holy power with mana, one had to sense the mana drifting through the air, and compounding the difficulty, the formulas developed in ancient times required an extremely complex casting process, which made Naila find holy magic tremendously challenging.
‘Hmm. I mastered it after just a week of practice, though.’
Perhaps it was because of my Simour bloodline.
That was certainly part of it, but the mana density in the air now was lower than it had been in Naila’s time, making fusion with holy power easier, and more importantly, my improved formula was far simpler than the ancient one.
‘Still, it’s not something anyone can just do.’
One needed powerful, highly pure holy power to reshape the mana in the air and convert it so that holy power gained offensive capability—a field where even Cardinals could barely manage it, if at all.
‘…Well, I have no intention of training disciples anyway.’
Since it was clearly beneficial, I planned to use it freely myself and then take it to the grave.

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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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