My Body Has Been Possessed By Someone - Chapter 271
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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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Side Story 2
“I cannot simply overlook this matter. The Princess may have instructed us to bury everything, but I cannot forgive you! Go to the Divine Temple and reflect upon yourself. Do not show your face in the Capital for some time!”
Alexandro Adis’s expression darkened.
He had gravely insulted the Princess. In his own way, he had acted with the resolve to be cast out from his family. Better to be struck from the family register than to marry an unpleasant woman.
Yet they were merely exiling him from the Capital?
“His Majesty has sent word to the Divine Temple to interrogate the Black Apostles. You shall undertake that responsibility.”
“….”
“At the Divine Temple, reflect upon your conduct and repent. Do you understand?”
Duke Adis understood as well. To entangle him in the power struggle between the Imperial Court and the Divine Temple—this was a trivial punishment.
And such lenient treatment only emboldened his son’s reckless nature.
Yet there was no choice. Alexandro Adis was the finest jewel his family had produced. He could neither be discarded nor treated carelessly.
“I intend to retire soon, Alexandro.”
Duke Adis muttered with a weary expression.
“I have entrusted all authority to Largos. I shall descend to my Fiefdom and spend my remaining years there.”
“Very well, Father.”
“See that your misdeeds do not reach my Fiefdom. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Swear it to me.”
“That would be difficult.”
“You damnable wretch! You said you’d be careful! You said you’d be cautious! So why can’t you swear an oath!”
“I cannot.”
“Do it! Even if it’s a lie, swear the oath!”
“I apologize.”
The Duke held back his curses.
This reckless son of his possessed an unexpectedly rigid sense of honor. He rarely made promises lightly.
‘If he’s going to be a scoundrel, at least be a scoundrel and make empty promises like everyone else!’
The Duke’s heart burned with frustration.
‘He should father a child just like himself and suffer the same torment!’
* * *
“You’re being exiled?”
That evening, Largos came to find him upon hearing the news.
“Go and enjoy yourself. When else would you have the chance to amuse yourself with the female Priests?”
Alexandro Adis suppressed a sigh. Lately, everyone everywhere spoke of nothing but women.
“Or are you trying to hide from my sight to do something else?”
Largos’s face bore the playful expression of a youth. Yet his eyes carried only warning.
“No, sir.”
“Then that’s fortunate.”
Largos continued with a slight smile.
“One of Father’s retainers has been spreading rumors that you would be more suited to lead the family than I.”
“He must have lost his mind.”
“Well, you have been quite active lately, haven’t you?”
The eyes of my brother asking this were not jealousy, but wariness. Alexandro found that wariness both irritating and tiresome.
“I have already told you several times—I have no interest in the position of family head.”
“Hmm….”
Soon Largos set aside his suspicion and nodded.
“It’s fortunate that our interests differ. Isn’t it?”
Alexandro had tried to ignore him, but Largos’s teasing was only just beginning.
“In any case, be careful with women at the Divine Temple. A naive man like you could have his entire life ruined the moment he meets the wrong woman.”
At this point, I was genuinely becoming displeased.
“Please spare me the unnecessary concern. Surely you don’t think I’m so ignorant as to not understand women?”
“You’re a virgin.”
“….”
“Wait? You’re not anymore?”
“….”
“When? Where? How? With whom? How was it?”
“….”
I was so exasperated that I tried to refute him, but closed my mouth again instead.
Let it go. If I engaged with him point by point, I would clearly end up entangled in an endless mess.
“Think whatever you wish.”
“You really fear nothing, Alexandro. Sometimes I’m afraid I might fall for a bad woman.”
“Why would that frighten you?”
“You and I are different, like opposites in every way, but we share a few things in common. Being stubborn. And.”
Largos narrowed his eyes with a grin and wagged his finger.
“Absolutely, utterly, completely loving women.”
What nonsense is this…?
I sent him a look of contempt, but Largos continued undeterred.
“It’s just that you’re so terribly picky that you haven’t met a woman to your taste.”
“….”
“If someone like you ever truly fell for a woman, you’d go mad—your eyes would flip right out of your head.”
If he says any more, I’ll have to hit him.
Just before a brotherly fight could break out for the first time, Largos, as always, retreated with keen instinct. Crossing the line without quite crossing it was one of his specialties.
“So be careful not to fall for a bad woman. Understood?”
“Please spare me the unnecessary worry.”
“Why shouldn’t I worry? Falling for a woman is like an accident. It happens in a flash before you know it.”
Just as I was thinking I really should hit him, Largos quickly slipped out the door.
“Then take care on your way, younger brother.”
* * *
The period of restraint at the Divine Temple was tedious.
It was called restraint, but it was merely an extension of my work.
Interrogating the Black Apostles at the Divine Temple, torturing them, beating them, trampling them….
‘How tedious.’
He was merely repeating the same daily routine in a different location.
In the Night Garden, Alexandro Adis sprawled across the grass and yawned.
Truly, he was bored to the point of death.
Yet he felt no particular melancholy. After all, his entire existence had been constructed from ennui.
Nothing difficult. Nothing arduous. Only an endless succession of smooth, uneventful moments.
Alexandro Adis had never known hardship. He had never tasted crisis, danger, or peril.
Not when surrounded by Knight Guards infected with the Black Mist. Not when encircled alone by dozens of demons. Not even when he shattered the nose of the boy who would become Emperor.
Nothing frightened him.
His power rendered fear impossible.
“Is this a blessing…?”
Alexandro Adis gazed at his own hands, muttering vacantly.
The radiant white holy power emanating from his palms. The strength said to surpass all previous generations of House of Adis. This power, comparable to the Holy Knights of antiquity, had stripped him of all capacity for fear.
‘But isn’t this itself a kind of deprivation?’
That was why he indulged so idly in this adolescent tedium.
His fascination with gambling stemmed partly from this very ennui. On the gambling floor, his strength mattered not at all—his power, his holy force, none of it signified.
He remembered that first moment when he entered a gambling den and suffered a humiliating defeat.
The sting of losing to an impossible opponent. The hunger to win. And finally, that electric thrill of victory.
It had been exhilarating.
At first, it was.
‘But even gambling grows tedious now.’
His skill had improved so rapidly that he won every hand. Ennui returned once more.
Alexandro Adis gazed up at the night sky. And he sensed it.
This lukewarm existence would continue endlessly.
This tepid, neither hot nor cold life—he was utterly sick of it.
Would something remarkable ever occur? Would he ever encounter adversity worthy of confrontation?
The thought that only this apathetic landscape would stretch before him forever made everything feel burdensome.
‘I might actually die of boredom.’
Perhaps the only thing capable of killing him was this very tedium.
That was what he believed.
* * *
“Hey, you! I know your secret!”
“I have just injected poison into you.”
“Take me out of here. Then I will provide you with the antidote.”
A woman appeared.
She deceived him, toyed with him, and crushed him. It was the first capitulation Alexandro Adis had ever experienced.
‘I will kill her.’
Such fierce rage ignited within him. It was incomparable to the moment he had poured wine over Ekaterina’s head.
‘Once I receive the antidote, I will kill her.’
He genuinely intended to kill her. That woman.
Had that woman not protected him from the Black Apostle, had she not taken the arrow meant for him, had none of those things occurred, he might truly have killed her.
‘No, he could never have killed her.’
She was a woman who froze an entire forest with a gesture.
He remembered that moment with crystalline clarity.
That overwhelming power, that force which seemed almost omnipotent.
Everything had crystallized under moonlight.
That fantastical spectacle shattered in her hands, fragmented, and from the luminous debris swirling like a blizzard, she turned back with perfect composure, as if… as if she were divine.
Perhaps it was the poison clouding his mind.
For the first time, Alexandro Adis found himself utterly overwhelmed. He marveled in shock.
In that moment, her eyes burned with such intensity they seemed to sear his very soul.
The sensation of her pouring antidote into his mouth throughout the night, her desperate whispered prayers that he not die—
Every moment had burned with unbearable heat. She was a fever that threatened to incinerate him entirely.
Was that why? Since she entered his life, every second had been etched into his skin with meticulous precision, as if branded there.
‘A dangerous woman.’
She had nearly succeeded in poisoning him. Moreover, had she not frozen an entire forest and shattered it to dust in a single stroke?
Alexandro Adis remained vigilant toward her. He made her wear gloves to prevent her from using alchemy. He watched her every moment.
That was why, even after bringing her to the Valentino Estate, he slept in the same chamber. He could not afford to lower his guard even as sleep claimed them both.
And that vigilance carried with it a peculiar sexual stimulation.
At night, it could not be otherwise.
“Alex, are you awake?”
One deep night, she whispered.
“Lately, seeing your back every night…”
Alexandro Adis did not open his eyes. Her whisper continued from behind him.
“Your back…”
But it stopped. As if she had suddenly regained her senses, she abruptly fell silent.
My back, what about it.
What could possibly be the matter with it?
Alexandro Adis could not restrain the impulse that surged through him. He rose. He approached her bed.
“Alex?”
He did not answer. He seized her wrist and tore the glove from her hand with his teeth.
“Keep talking.”
Then he clasped her bare hand, pressing it against the sheet as he moved over her body.
“No, don’t speak.”
But when his eyes opened, he lay in his own bed.
‘…A dream?’
Madness.
He swallowed a curse.
‘What kind of damned dream…’
Self-loathing washed over him briefly, but he forced himself to accept it.
It was fine. These things happened. It was entirely natural for a healthy man’s body.
Alexandro turned around. He gazed at the woman sleeping soundly with a complex expression in his eyes.
She had never existed in his life until now.
Excessively intense. Unpredictable.
Dangerous, beautiful, mysterious, strange, incomprehensible.
Such raw materials had cascaded into the very heart of his twentieth year, his youth—attraction was merely the natural consequence.
“Save me, Alex. Then perhaps I could come to love you.”
When she clung to him so desperately, as though he alone were her path to salvation, perhaps—in truth—he had welcomed it.
If he had refused, she would have gone to Duke Valentino instead, or to Largos. She would have clung, pleaded, begged.
Just as she did now with me.
In that instant, a fierce jealousy clawed at his chest.
‘I’ve lost my mind.’
By consuming the poison Theodore had prepared, she had protected him once more.
The moment he secretly took the unconscious woman’s hand, everything shattered. A desire he hadn’t known existed surged up, leaving him bewildered.
I want to touch her.
More, more, more, more.
With that yearning, he heard something break somewhere within him.
“Falling for a woman is like an accident. You’re struck before you can even say ‘oh.'”
Like a rockslide suddenly plummeting from a cliff one day, she had shattered him. It was an accident.
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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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