My Body Has Been Possessed By Someone - Chapter 283
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Side Story Episode 14
* * *
I brought the Adis Knights into the Valentino Estate to transport Raphael.
“Marquis Alsbayne? What’s the sudden matter?”
“Your Grace, I have something urgent to discuss with you. It’s a matter of great importance.”
“I’m busy at the moment. We can schedule a meeting later….”
“It’s truly urgent, Your Grace.”
What could possibly be so pressing? That’s when Largos spoke.
“Go handle it, Duke. I’ll wait here.”
Silvien trusted Largos Adis. No—he trusted Adis itself. That honor of being Descendants of Holy Knights, that brilliant history spanning the ages.
“Very well. I’ll be back shortly.”
So I stepped away for a moment.
Just a moment.
Truly, truly, truly.
Truly just a moment.
It was only a moment….
* * *
“Kanna?”
When I returned, the Valentino Mansion had been reduced to ruins.
It was a sea of blood, a field of corpses.
Adis, Valentino, every knight and every servant, every living soul had been slaughtered.
And Kanna….
“Open your eyes, Kanna.”
She was cradled in Raphael’s arms.
Only her head remained, isolated and bare.
Silvien stood frozen in thought.
‘Kanna’s body is gone.’
Where could it be?
I rolled my eyes around, surveying the surroundings.
And I found it. Before that door, Largos’s corpse.
The frail body of a woman that corpse was clutching….
‘Wait, what?’
Kanna was dead?
How could such a thing be possible?
Dizziness overwhelmed me. My thoughts scattered in all directions, fragmenting and reconnecting and breaking apart. Laughter rose in my throat only to turn ice-cold, my mind reeling in chaos.
Silvien could not accept any of this.
“I was wrong.”
Then a woman approached.
“As expected, Valentino and Raphael alone couldn’t protect Kanna.”
The woman gazed upon Kanna’s head and spoke with sorrow in her voice.
“Unless Adis joins us, it won’t work. But this cursed Adis has already become a Black Apostle….”
“And you are?”
Silvien Valentino’s lips trembled.
Everything happening now felt like a dream. It lacked all sense of reality. Perhaps that was why he remained so composed.
“Me?”
The Unknown Woman laughed bitterly.
“Kanna’s Mother.”
“….”
“Kanna died again. Well, it was inevitable.”
“….”
“Don’t worry. I can turn back time.”
“….”
“Then this incident will never have happened.”
Distantly, the Unknown Woman bit her own hand.
“It becomes something that never occurred, something that never existed at all.”
Then she lifted her bleeding fingers. She murmured softly.
“I need to find another way. A way to save Kanna….”
As she traced something in the empty air, droplets of blood began to gather along the trajectory.
Silvien Valentino watched the sight with perfect composure.
And he reached a conclusion.
‘This is a dream.’
Yes.
Of course it is.
How could this be real? How could this possibly be true?
It was strange, after all.
This has to be a dream.
Kanna couldn’t possibly have been killed by Largos Adis, could she?
Kanna, my sister, my Kanna.
‘This is just a dream….’
Silvien Valentino let out a laugh.
This cursed dream. This cursed nightmare—when I wake, it will be as if none of it ever happened.
Wake up soon. Please, soon.
Soon….
Soon!
* * *
“Gasp!”
Silvien Valentino’s eyes snapped open. He jolted upright like a spring.
“Gasp, gasp….”
He quickly surveyed his surroundings.
‘Where am I….’
The Study. Whiskey spread across the table. An unbuttoned shirt.
Yes, I had fallen asleep while drinking. So that was it.
“As expected.”
Silvien Valentino let out a hollow laugh, cradling his face in both hands. His fingertips trembled with a convulsive shudder.
Yes, it had been a dream.
It couldn’t have been real. Kanna Adis. Kanna Adis….
“….”
After a moment, Silvien slowly lowered his hands.
‘What was I thinking just now?’
The face that had been twisted as though battered by a tempest had become serene, like a sea without a single ripple.
He gazed at his own palms and pondered.
‘What dream had I been having?’
Nothing remained.
Like grains of sand scattered by the wind, not even the smallest fragment of memory persisted.
Silvien Valentino wiped the cold sweat beading on his forehead.
He was certain he had experienced a truly horrific, genuinely dreadful nightmare….
Yet nothing came to mind. Nothing at all.
“Haha.”
Laughter escaped him unexpectedly. Before falling asleep, Silvien Valentino had drunk for the first time in a very long while.
Kanna Adis, his ex-wife whom he had divorced not long ago, had taken her own life.
That was why he had turned to drink.
Had Kanna Adis’s suicide truly shaken him so profoundly? Yes, it seemed it must have.
That would explain why he had suffered a nightmare so agonizing his heart still ached.
‘How pathetic.’
Silvien Valentino seized his disheveled cravat. As he retied it with precision, he reflected.
‘This self-pity ends now.’
Kanna Adis was dead. And Raphael had vanished.
He had disappeared without a word the moment of Kanna Adis’s death.
The woman who had captivated his interest was gone, and the man to whom he had opened his heart had vanished.
Yet he remained here.
His own life, which he cherished above all else, remained utterly intact. That was sufficient.
“Duke Valentino, may I enter?”
The Aide’s voice reached him. There were likely reports piling up. Silvien Valentino straightened his hair and rose to his feet.
“Come in.”
Now it was time to work.
He was Silvien Valentino—the head of the Valentino Family.
* * *
Not long after, Raphael appeared before him, having become a Divine Spirit who had purged the Grand Temple in blood.
“It has been some time, Raphael. Have you been well?”
Silvien Valentino greeted him warmly.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For disappearing without a word.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m just glad you’re safe.”
“Is that so.”
“Yes. I’m as happy as I was when you returned safely from exploring the Eastern Continent.”
There was some truth to that sentiment.
From that point forward, the Divine Spirit Raphael consulted and communicated exclusively with Silvien Valentino.
Everyone said that only Duke Valentino could control the mad Divine Spirit who had torn all the priests to shreds.
‘Just as I suspected—a golden goose.’
And so Raphael became a living instrument of Valentino’s power.
The Valentino Family shone with a brilliance unlike any before, luminous as a full moon. It was the radiance Silvien had cast upon them.
Occasionally, his deceased former wife crossed his mind, and occasionally his chest felt heavy—but that was all.
Time flowed on and on.
One day, Silvien discovered that his dead former wife had been serving as Prince Yalden’s mistress.
‘How absurd.’
Thus he reunited with Kanna Adis, killed the Emperor, and began a long journey searching for fragments of Kanna’s soul scattered through the cracks of the world.
A long,
an extraordinarily long journey it was.
* * *
“What are you thinking about?”
Silvien gazed quietly at Kanna Adis seated across from him.
“Silvien?”
Unable to bear his gaze, Kanna Adis furrowed her brow.
“Why have you been looking at me like that since earlier?”
“Ah. My apologies.”
Silvien smiled and lifted his teacup, dropping sugar into it with a soft plink-plink as he asked.
“How is your body feeling, Kanna Adis?”
“Quite well. Thanks to you… but is it really all right to consume that much sugar?”
“There’s no reason it shouldn’t be.”
“It’s remarkable every time I see it. You’re like a sugar addict.”
“That’s correct—an addict.”
Through the long journey, my palate had changed.
It had to change. I had traversed countless worlds, encountering fragments of Kanna living different lives under different names each time.
They shared only one commonality.
‘They all died young.’
Was it because they were torn fragments of a soul?
The lifespan of each fragment was devastatingly short.
Each time, I witnessed the fragment’s death and then recovered that soul.
Therefore, I remembered all of her countless deaths.
But why….
Why does it feel as though I’ve forgotten some death?
“Silvien, you seem strange today. Why are you staring off into space like that?”
“I’m not sure.”
Silvien murmured, unable to comprehend the feeling that had taken hold of him.
“I distinctly saw something long ago, but it feels as though I’ve forgotten it….”
“If you can’t remember it, it must not have been important.”
At Kanna’s words, Silvien laughed.
“I suppose you’re right.”
“It becomes something that never happened, something that never existed at all.”
And so it came to pass.
The moment it became something that never was, that dream never surfaced again.
Silvien never recalled that time. It never rose to consciousness again, drifting instead beneath the dark depths of the abyss.
Forever,
for all eternity.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————