Male Lead Is Obsessed With My Health - Chapter 136

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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 136

The dark scenery made everything even more oppressive and sinister, terrifying beyond measure.
‘If you’re going to kill me, please make it painless.’
I was muttering a pointless prayer when the Regent’s exhausted face suddenly caught my eye.
‘What?’
I’d expected him to emanate that bone-chilling pressure of imminent violence, but there was no anger in his bearing at all. Without thinking, I relaxed. And yet…….
‘Something’s different.’
Unlike his usual sharp presence, he looked worn and tormented.
What on earth was this?
“So.”
His quiet green eyes fixed on me.
“What do you think of my depths?”
I sighed without meaning to. I’d suspected as much from the state of the room.
“Why do you live like this?”
Ludwig laughed.
“Good question. I’d like to know that myself.”
That wasn’t an answer at all.
At my sullen stare, the Regent released the hand he’d been holding and gently stroked my head.
“Don’t ever come here again.”
“Why?”
“It’s not a sight for children to see.”
An actually reasonable statement? When was the last time that happened?
My eyes widened in surprise, and the Regent, who’d been studying my expression carefully, suddenly asked a question.
“Are you afraid of me?”
I blinked slowly.
I was scared at first, but…….
‘Not anymore.’
Instead of answering, I looked around the room and asked back.
“Where did mother go?”
“She’s not here.”
“Why?”
“She ran away because she despised me.”
Ran away……?
Then that means she’s still alive?
“A dreadfully stubborn woman. She fled to a place I could never chase or reach her, determined to leave me not even a scrap of her heart, not a fragment of herself.”
The murmur—mingling laughter and tears, mockery and self-mockery—tangled up my thoughts.
“Will you run away too? Because you hate me?”
“I do hate you.”
I’d been planning to turn cold and flee, but now that he was asking, I found myself without words.
An expression I’d never seen before.
Looking at those eyes—ravaged and wounded, staring at me—I couldn’t bring myself to say plainly, ‘Yes, I’m leaving.’
As if he’d already read the answer in my hesitation, the Regent smiled knowingly and returned to his cold expression. The strangeness I felt only deepened.
For the first time, this man seemed truly alive.
And…….
‘I’m really curious now.’
What on earth had happened between mother and this man?
“Did you really love mother?”
Ludwig’s eyes darkened for a moment of silence.
“I wonder.”
Perhaps because the room was papered with Sione’s presence, his cold voice sounded even deeper and lower today.
“Someone told me that wasn’t love at all.”

* * *

Ludwig could possess anything and desired nothing.
Until he was seventeen and met Sione Sigria Halbern.
Phytale’s strength was rooted in the blessings of forgotten ancient gods, and so the imperial house was peculiarly obsessed with bloodline purity.
Despite the many adverse effects caused by frequent consanguineous marriages and obsession with bloodline, the Imperial Law that “only those who carry the Blessing of the Gods in their blood can be emperor and empress” was upheld.
The perfect heir of such a Phytale.
Ludwig was such a being.
“If only our blessing had been a Supernatural Ability instead, we might have been spared such torment.”
The Madness that had taken root in the imperial house warped into jealousy and resentment toward those with Supernatural Abilities, which erupted as inferiority toward Albrecht.
Though called the same empire, those who could not accept that neither supremacy nor equality was possible kept stirring up desperate turmoil in Phytale day after day.
Ludwig found it all tedious.
‘What does it matter?’
As long as blessing remained on this land, no one could seize it by force.
Even if Albrecht grew stronger, it could never swallow Phytale.
It was around then.
“Brother, I keep seeing strange things…… What do I do?”
His half-brother’s Madness had awakened.
Watching his half-brother grow gaunt day by day as he saw the Other Side World, Ludwig had no choice but to head toward Albrecht.
“Ahhh, a monster is coming to get me. Brother!”
No matter how differently they’d been raised, no matter how sick of the imperial house he was, compassion stirred in him at the sight of his brother descending into madness before his eyes.
And it was the Grand Duke of Halbern who reached out a hand.
And in that Halbern Manor.
“It’s nice to meet you. Who might you be?”
Ludwig met her.
That exquisitely, devastatingly beautiful woman.

* * *

Sione Sigria Halbern.
Eldest daughter of Grand Duke Morden of Halbern, a woman who received much attention for her outstanding beauty and abilities.
Some said that had she been born male, she would have already surpassed her father and become the Grand Duke of Halbern; many praised her for having transformed much of Halbern despite being born female.
Though none called her the heir to Halbern due to long-standing principles of succession through the eldest son, she was the Halbern heir in substance.
He could not help but fall.
Most of all, what stole Ludwig’s heart was.
“That’s an odd thing to ask.”
Sione’s answer to his anguish.
“If your brother’s going mad and begs you to kill him, could you do it?”
His younger brother, spiraling into madness day by day.
With Halbern’s relics, his state seemed to stabilize somehow, but there was no sign his brother’s mind would truly recover from the hallucinations.
Ludwig had to decide.
Whether he should kill his brother before the Madness worsened and he truly became a monster, or leave him be.
“I would gladly do it. I cannot entrust the final moments of my beloved brother to another’s hands.”
Her unwavering voice.
Her clear and righteous gaze.
Her tender touch and.
Her firmly set lips.
When Sione looked at him and smiled, Ludwig realized that his dull life had just reached its end.
He could sense the certainty that if he did not possess that woman, he would go mad.
Sione became the only woman Ludwig ever wanted to have.
Perhaps that was where the catastrophe began.
At that time, Sione was locked in sharp conflict with her own father, the Grand Duke Morden of Halbern.
Morden sought to kill his own daughter, and he had even carried out several plans toward that end.
The moment Ludwig learned that Sione was approaching death, he could no longer bear it.
He had to get her out.
Phytale was chaotic too, but nothing like Halbern.
“A political marriage would be nice. I was just thinking of disposing of my daughter anyway, so someone of your caliber would do.”
To take Sione as his wife, he could not become emperor. The empress of Phytale had to carry Phytale’s blood.
This was how Ludwig, once a leading candidate for the throne, came to receive the Grand Duke Position and become Regent, and why he and Morden struck their bargain.
Sione resisted fiercely.
Ludwig didn’t care. He could not allow Sione to die.
Compared to the cunning and skilled Grand Duke Morden, Sione seemed powerless, like a puppy hurling itself at a tiger.
“Tell her right now you won’t marry her. Tell her to give up on me.”
He could not grant her request.
He understood what she wanted, but he thought he could ignore it.
He believed it was possible to have her without honoring her wishes.
It was arrogance.
‘I should have realized the woman I fell for was not ordinary.’
“You’ve ruined everything about me. Do you understand? All of it, because of you.”
“But I saved you.”
“Why do you get to decide that? Listen carefully. You’re the one who ruined it.”
At the wedding, Sione wept and wept.
“Oh, Valere…….”
Reaching for what she’d left behind.
“My poor brother.”
“…….”
“He won’t understand any of this.”
Sione made her plea.
“It’s not too late even now. I’ll give you the chance to undo everything. Annul this marriage right now. Send me back.”
How could he let go when he had barely pulled her into his arms? And send her back to such a fate?
It was unthinkable.
“I’ll do anything, just please grant me this one thing. Sione. You must stay here.”
Ludwig begged, abandoning pride itself, falling to his knees, but.
“Are you just afraid of dying?”
“I’m afraid of you dying.”
“I can die anytime.”
It didn’t reach Sione.
“I’ve lived my whole life ready to die that way.”
There were moments he’d held hope.
That Sione, like everyone else, would break, give up, resign herself, and become numb to it all.
“I will not give you even a scrap of my heart.”
Until Sione made her declaration.
“Take it if you can.”

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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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