Since I’m a Time-Limited Princess Who Has No Tomorrow - Chapter 145

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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 145
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My entire body ached as though I’d been beaten senseless. The world spun around me, my stomach churned with nausea, and my ribs throbbed with a peculiar, searing pain. My head already pounded, and the cacophony surrounding me only made it worse. My condition was absolutely dire.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
“A m-monster!”
“S-save me… *cough*!”
Screams kept piercing through the haze of my dizziness, though I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Who was shrieking like this? And where was An-si? She wouldn’t normally tolerate such a commotion without saying something.
‘Be quiet, would you. Where did An-si go…?’
Oh, that’s right. I’d sent An-si to the border to bring back Heuk-yeon. Without her here, no one was stopping this racket near my bedroom.
‘Wait. My bedroom?’
This couldn’t possibly be my bedroom. I was in the mountains taking the first trial of Seongsul Academy.
I forced my foggy consciousness to sharpen.
‘So… after our group received praise from Heo Gye-gyo, everyone was exhausted and fell asleep… and then Gwang-chul woke me up… why did he wake me again…? Oh, assassins.’
Assassins? The word hit me like ice water, and my mind snapped into focus. I remembered everything in an instant—the strange light that poured down as I returned with the Crown Prince to our group, how I’d blocked the explosion from the arrow-attached pouch with my own body.
‘I must have lost consciousness from taking the impact directly.’
Even as my mind cleared, opening my eyes proved extraordinarily difficult. The talisman had done its job well—I didn’t seem to be severely injured—but the shock from the explosion itself had left my entire body screaming in pain. My head spun dizzily.
Groaning, I finally forced my eyes open, and at last I could identify the source of the relentless noise that had been ringing in my ears.
“Kyaaahhh!”
“Ugh… *gurgle*….”
Beneath the night sky, figures in black clothes and masks writhed and screamed, either swallowed by darkness or pinned down by it. One masked figure threw down his blade and fled, but a darkness deeper than the night itself yawned open like a beast’s maw and devoured him whole.
‘What… what’s happening?’
I stared around me in a daze.
In every direction, throughout the dark forest, a pitch-black darkness spread like a web woven by some colossal spider, or as though the heavens themselves had poured down an ocean of ink.
‘This is definitely….’
The Crown Prince’s shadow magic.
But something was different. Very different, in fact. The shadow magic he normally wielded felt clear, like a starless night sky, but this was murky… unrefined.
It was different too from the darkness he’d conjured when he consumed Geu-seun-dae, when he’d deliberately amplified his own terror to force it to swell. That darkness had felt like a ravenous beast, gorged on prey and growing arrogant, circling even its master with intent to devour—like a shark-infested midnight sea. But this… this was something else entirely.
‘…the Abyss? The Deep?’
The entrance to the Abyss, the deepest place in the Afterlife, had felt something like this. A hole so profound that nothing inside could be glimpsed, appearing only as an impenetrable black void.
‘Just looking at it made me shudder, and I’d once asked Heuk-yeon how she could possibly live in such a place. That bottomless pit of hell… it felt exactly like this.’
Why was the Crown Prince’s darkness like this? Where was he?
Still dizzy, I scanned the surroundings more carefully.
The Crown Prince stood in the very center of the pitch-black abyss spreading like a spider’s web. His black hair, which had been neatly tied back to match his formal robes, now hung in complete disarray.
Black darkness, black hair, blue-black garments. Only his profile, glimpsed in the shadows, appeared pale. Among the humans scattered across the ground and those crawling and screaming in agony, only he stood perfectly upright.
In that moment, I finally understood completely why he was called the Shadow-dweller.
One who stands in darkness. Neither clearly human nor divine, neither monster nor demon—not a ‘being’ or a ‘god,’ not a ‘ghost’ or a ‘creature,’ but simply designated by the character for ‘one’—a being whose very existence defied categorization.
I stared at the Crown Prince’s profile for a moment, then shifted my gaze to the humans scattered around him.
‘Masked humans… they look like those assassins from before. Are these the ones who fired that strange light and shot those explosive arrows?’
They were unmistakably the assassins I’d seen with Gwang-chul. Damn that Gwang-chul—he said one group went after the instructors, so why were they here?
‘Now that I think about it, they did split into two groups. One went after the instructors and the other was here? Or did that idiot Gwang-chul chase one group and forget about the other?’
And it seems those remaining assassins ambushed us—or more precisely, the Crown Prince.
‘It looks like most of them are already dead….’
The screams that had echoed across the area moments ago had fallen silent. Corpses lay scattered everywhere.
‘…Is this the Crown Prince’s first time killing someone?’
These assassins deserved death, and stopping an assassination attempt posed no moral problem, but that righteous, gentle boy might be shocked by the very fact that he had killed people through darkness.
‘And the Crown Prince’s nightmares from the Black Phoenix incident should still linger.’
I examined the Crown Prince with concern. Only his profile was visible, so I couldn’t discern his current expression.
The Crown Prince stood motionless for a moment, then stepped toward the sole assassin still groaning with life. The darkness around him was drawn along like the hem of a trailing robe. When the Crown Prince pressed one foot down on the crawling assassin’s back, the darkness that followed swept over him like a tide.
“Aaaaah, kraaaah, aaaah!”
The assassin thrashed about in terror. The Crown Prince bent his waist over the man, his long hair cascading down like a curtain.
“Who sent you?”
He asked quietly. But the assassin buried in darkness seemed to have lost all reason to answer. Foam flecked his lips as his eyes rolled back.
“Guh….”
“I asked who sent you.”
His voice remained calm and composed, yet the Crown Prince clearly wasn’t in a normal state either. He was pressing for answers from someone in no condition to give them.
I pushed myself up from the ground with my arms. As I moved my upper body, a sharp, stabbing pain shot through my side.
‘I thought I wasn’t injured, but it seems I am?’
It hurts terribly. Since everywhere else seems fine, the protective talisman must be working, but why didn’t it block this?
My body instinctively tensed, and a whimper escaped my lips.
“Ugh….”
The moment I let out a small sound, the Crown Prince, who had been trampling the assassin, suddenly lifted his head. His eyes, like black glass marbles, fixed directly on me. Starlight filtered across his pale face, and only now could I see the Crown Prince’s features clearly. The boy gazed at me and murmured blankly.
“My Lady.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
At my response, the Crown Prince’s pupils trembled. He shook his head left and right as if trying to regain his senses, then staggered toward me. As he moved with unsteady steps, the darkness spreading around him rippled like water, pressing toward me.
The Crown Prince stopped beside me and looked down at me intently. The darkness that filled the space near me, following the Crown Prince, began to creep over me as well. His darkness, which had always maintained a certain distance from my vicinity and retreated whenever I approached, now threatened to engulf me.
‘It’s been a while since it tried to swallow me whole.’
I subtly drew upon my divine power to push back the encroaching darkness, when the Crown Prince, like a broken wind-up doll, called out to me again.
“My Lady.”
His expressionless face seemed both confused and frightened.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
The boy had lost his senses, and the darkness had lost its restraint. If I weren’t Princess Cheonmyeong and if the one standing before me weren’t my dear young husband but something else entirely, this situation would have been quite terrifying.
But I was Princess Cheonmyeong, who traversed the Afterlife as easily as breathing, and the boy before me was indeed my little husband, so I felt no fear whatsoever.
“My L….”
As I opened my mouth and tried to sit up, my side pulled painfully, and a cry escaped instead.
“Ow!”
“…?”
The Crown Prince looked down at me with a blank expression. With tears welling slightly in my eyes from the pain, I looked up at him and spoke petulantly.
“My Lord, it hurts here. I think I’m injured.”
In that instant, focus returned to the Crown Prince’s eyes. He hurriedly knelt beside me and examined my side where I was holding myself.
“Where does it hurt? Please show me.”
“Ugh…”
The moment I released my grip, the Crown Prince carefully lifted the tattered hem of my garment. As he did, fragmented jeweled beads and crumbled straw tumbled down from between the folds.
‘Ah, Jewong’s ornament… it’s completely shattered.’
The fact that it had broken so thoroughly yet I’d sustained additional injuries suggested that explosion had been far more dangerous than I’d realized. I’d narrowly avoided catastrophe. It was fortunate I’d taken the blow instead.
“…!”
As the wounds became visible between the torn surcoat and inner robe, the Crown Prince’s eyes widened sharply. Looking down alongside him, I could see long lacerations weeping blood where shards had cut and scraped, and the skin surrounding the wounds had turned an angry crimson—unmistakable burn marks.
‘The severe pain was from the burns.’
I’d heard that fire-inflicted pain was the most excruciating of all. That’s why Hell reserved so many punishments involving boiling, frying, and searing. Despite my lengthy experience as a patient, having grown somewhat accustomed to suffering, tears still pricked at my eyes.
The Crown Prince’s complexion drained of color as he examined my wounds.
“We must see the Royal Physician at once.”
I stopped the Crown Prince as he moved urgently to lift me. It was something I’d recalled belatedly while receiving treatment from Kim Cho-ryeong for my ankle, but this time the memory surfaced immediately.
“No, I can treat it myself.”
“You will treat it yourself, my lady? Are you certain you’re well enough?”
The Crown Prince asked, trembling, his face even more pallid than mine.
I felt somewhat dizzy and my entire body ached, but such a condition had been routine in the Heavenly Realm, so it was manageable. I nodded and gathered divine energy at my fingertips. This was as good a time as any to attempt healing my own wounds.
“Please hold the hem of my garment, my lord.”

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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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