Marriage With A Suspiciously Demure Husband - Chapter 44

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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 44

Even though he had tried to use her, Jinzeo Perian did not grow angry.
Rather, she seized his hand and pulled him forward, delighted that their interests aligned.

‘Let’s leave this place. We’ll go somewhere no one knows and live together, just the two of us.’
‘You know well what treatment a slave receives.’
‘If we leave here, who’ll know? And even if they do, I don’t care. You think I’ll push you away? You wouldn’t do something that stupid, would you?’

Jinzeo Perian was audacious.
Her words often spilled forth with a bluntness that seemed almost delightful, at odds with her mysterious beauty.
She was a woman of many colors.
A woman he had fallen in love with without realizing it.
A woman who had taken a slave’s hand willingly and led him away.
Had she said she could not come for a time so that she could send him to him?
With no knowledge of the outside situation, he had no choice but to depend solely on the news she brought.
All he could do was believe and wait.
He had chosen to trust and follow her, even if she betrayed him.
More than anything, he hoped that Jinzeo would not be exposed to danger.
As his thoughts circled, a question arose again.

‘Oh right, what was the name of that girl with no eyebrow on her right side… Anyway, be careful of the girl with the missing right eyebrow. Unless you want a terrible scar left on your face.’

A person who had vanished leaving only cryptic words at the end.
Who exactly had that person been, coming to find him?
Eggmen lifted the sword that stood against the wall.
Nine matches remained.
He needed to win only four of them.
Night would come again.
Which meant day was approaching in this world.
Eggmen thought briefly of Jinzeo Perian, then rose to stretch his body.

* * *

I sat in a chair and passed the time swinging my legs while waiting for Dylan to arrive.
Glancing at the desk, work had accumulated, but not so much that it seemed overwhelming.
I wondered if after I resigned, the Crown Prince had dumped all his work on Dylan and the others and gone off to enjoy himself.
‘Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.’
Perhaps the words I’d spoken when I threw down my resignation letter had made a considerable impression on Zed.
Never to overwork the knights.
I had fully intended to go directly to Lilly Dayworth and expose everything if he didn’t take it seriously.
When he kept tearing up my resignation letters one after another, I’d genuinely wanted to grab the Crown Prince by the collar and shake him silly.
I sank deeper into my chair, arms crossed.
Though it happened unintentionally, I’d managed to prevent Lilly Dayworth from being kidnapped by Kailus, and…
“No, that’s not all. I’ve essentially severed the relationship between Zed and Lilly, and between them and Kailus entirely.”
Kailus had done more than just kidnapping in the original work.
He had actually held Lilly Dayworth captive for a time.
“But was the reason for that ever clearly explained?”
I didn’t think so.
From what I remembered, Kailus never seemed to truly love Lilly Dayworth throughout the work.
Even if he was acting for my benefit, he was still a person, a human—and if he had genuinely loved her, he would have shown some reaction, however lukewarm, not something completely hollow.
He kept her beside him but never cherished her, never showed any affection whatsoever.
What was it, then?
Why had he insisted on keeping Lilly at his side?
Even at the cost of confrontation with Zed Terry Elkium, the imperial prince.
Hadn’t he seemed rather annoyed by it all?
If he hadn’t kept her with him, there would have been no reason for conflict with Zed in the first place.
Still, I clearly remember the passage where he wanted to keep Lilly at his side no matter what.
Unlike me, a disposable extra character with a short lifespan, Lilly possessed Holy Power and had the ability to purify.
Right now it was only a small force close to Affinity Power, but growing stronger beside Zed over time, she would eventually wield power nearly as formidable as a Saint.
But there was no passage saying that Kailus needed Holy Power.
He was someone with an extraordinary resistance to Dark Magic in the first place—there was no reason he’d need Holy Power.
“Or maybe…….”
What if I’d simply failed to sense it?
What if he was actually interested in Lilly?
Lilly’s distinctive bright smile came to mind, and with it, Noah’s gentle face rose unbidden.
“Ugh… I’m a little annoyed…….”
Aren’t I.
That was when I realized my mood was plummeting at alarming speed.
Crash! Bang!
A thunderous sound like some giant’s roar echoed through the space, and Dylan came bursting inside.
“Hazel!”
Startled by the sudden cacophony and Dylan’s shout, I jolted upright from my seat.
“Ah, you scared me. What? What’s wrong?”
The thoughts consuming my mind vanished in an instant.
Had a wall suddenly collapsed?
Dylan’s face was rigid with tension.
“A Demonic Beast has appeared at the Back Gate Portal.”
“Ah, I thought—what? What did you say?”
I was laughing as I pressed my hand to my racing heart, but my expression mirrored Dylan’s in an instant.
What had I just heard?
“What appeared?”
I asked Dylan again.
The Back Gate was a mere twenty-minute walk from the Knight Order training grounds where we stood.
The Back Gate Portal meant inside the Imperial Palace.
So if Dylan wasn’t out of his mind, a Demonic Beast had just appeared within the Imperial Palace.
“A Demonic Beast appeared at the Back Gate Portal. Can you help out right now? You’re a civilian so I’m not forcing you. But…….”
“What are you saying? Let’s go.”
There was no time to think.
I pushed myself to my feet, ready to follow Dylan immediately.
Leaving this to Fay Martin felt like I’d be shirking my duty terribly.
It was better for me to go help a little than for anyone to get hurt.
Dylan nodded, looking considerably relieved, and at once thrust a sword toward me.
I took it with a reluctant expression.
“Just in case.”
“I’m not responsible if it breaks.”
“Even if you chew it up, it’s fine. Your sword is still in the Crown Prince’s office.”
“Tell him to throw it away.”
With a short laugh, Dylan grabbed his own sword, and we bolted rapidly toward the Back Gate.
“But what about the protective barrier?!”
“You know the Gate Portal only has a single layer of protection. We can’t drop the barrier every time someone uses the portal, so the thing just forced its way through.”
“Is it really a Demonic Beast? I heard at dawn it broke through the West Gate—how could another one appear in the capital in just a few hours? It’s not the same one that attacked at dawn, is it?”
We continued exchanging words without slowing our pace.
“No. The reported Demonic Beast has a different appearance. We’ve sent some of our people to search the Western City Wall, so a report should come in soon.”
“And here?”
“The 2nd Knight Order and whatever personnel are left need to handle it. We’ve been scrambling to send people to both the Emperor’s Palace and the Empress’s Palace as well. Still, with you here, we should be able to manage it ourselves.”
I immediately glared at him.
“Are you joking. What on earth is happening.”
“I was consulting with the Crown Prince about damage recovery when suddenly I heard the barrier being torn.”
“No casualties yet?”
“Right, we’re just holding the line for now.”
As Dylan and I ran like mad, a rumbling sensation pulsed through the ground beneath us.
It was a signal that someone was setting up a magical barrier nearby.
“Hah, seriously. I’m going to… I’m going to die…….”
“Looks like you haven’t been exercising.”
“What am I supposed to do? Hah, seriously. Coming here was… wasn’t…….”
I planted my hand on my knee and steadied my breathing for a moment, sword sheathed at my side.
Dylan seemed perfectly fine, while I was the one gasping for breath, struggling to steady myself.
I sent Dylan ahead first, rested a moment longer, then pushed myself to run after him.
Soon I caught sight of black smoke, and then the shapes of Demonic Beasts came into view.
They really had smashed through that barrier line connecting to the outer city wall and poured inside.
“…This is actually happening.”
Dylan wouldn’t lie, but still—Demonic Beasts actually inside the Imperial Palace.
I felt like I was caught in a nightmare.
Not some routine subjugation drill—Demonic Beasts were truly inside the Imperial Palace.
The gathered knights were already holding positions on all sides, methodically sweeping down the lesser Demonic Beasts that kept crawling inward.
But there were three massive ones.
One was shaped like a horned, maned wolf with tusks on both sides of its head.
Two others, similar to the buffalo-like creatures I’d seen in Ferrarium, were rampaging through the Imperial Palace grounds.
Other knights had been summoned and arrived in force, so there were quite a few of us.
Honestly, there were so many knights gathered that my absence wouldn’t have mattered much.
My quick assessment was that if I just threw up some obstacles and stepped back, they could handle the rest on their own.
The moment I finished calculating, I moved to Dylan’s side and was about to drop my hands to the ground to deploy an Illusion Technique, when—
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
A sharp scream made my head snap around involuntarily.
A knight with lemon-colored hair was staggering backward, crying out in terror.
Right before him, the horned, maned wolf Demonic Beast was closing in, black drool dripping from its jaws toward Fay Martin.
The distance was roughly fifty meters.
If the wolf-beast took a single leap, it could swallow him whole in one bound.
What the hell!
Why is he just standing there like that!

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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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