Since I’m a Time-Limited Princess Who Has No Tomorrow - Chapter 91

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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 91
The boy advanced toward the thrashing monster, his sword hanging limply at his side. The Crown Prince’s face, stripped of all expression, resembled a white mask. Strands of hair, dampened by cold sweat, clung to his skin. The tilted ceremonial hat cast dancing shadows across his transparent eyes.
I stared blankly before suddenly realizing something. That darkness veiling his eyes—it wasn’t the shadow of his hat. The direction of the light and the shadow didn’t match.
‘He injected darkness into himself?’
What kind of insane act was that?
As shock flooded through me, I heard the Crown Prince’s murmur as he reached Geuseon-dae.
“…Until you come to fear me, my darkness will continue to grow.”
‘Ah.’
Hearing the Crown Prince’s murmur, I began to understand why he was doing this.
During the hurried conversation we’d had while coming here to find the Prime Minister’s Children.
“Your Highness, your darkness is the darkness between stars, born from the night sky itself. It can grow as vast as the night sky itself, depending on your will.”
“Depending on my will….”
“Of course, the darkness of the earth, the shadow-born Geuseon-dae poses no threat whatsoever to Your Highness, who is a Twilight Being.”
“…So Twilight Beings naturally don’t fear Geuseon-dae? Yet when I saw it, I felt utterly unable to overcome it.”
“That’s likely because Your Highness simply didn’t understand Geuseon-dae well enough. Twilight Beings are not afraid of Geuseon-dae at all. So please, don’t be afraid either.”
Those words had been meant to encourage the Crown Prince. In truth, Twilight Beings don’t fear Geuseon-dae at all. It’s simply no match for them.
‘But… the Crown Prince said he felt fear toward Geuseon-dae.’
Why? Because his body was still a child’s?
‘No.’
The human Twilight Being, the Crown Prince, possessed reason to govern his emotions—and thus could master his darkness without succumbing to fear and self-destruction. Conversely, because he could control his emotions, he couldn’t generate the kind of boundless darkness that even gods would fear, unlike other Twilight Beings.
‘The Crown Prince became far more stable than an ordinary Twilight Being, but his darkness itself grew weaker.’
Darkness born from fear that consumed one endlessly and grew without limit could never be the same as darkness cultivated by controlling that very fear.
‘The Crown Prince is clever enough to have compared my explanation of Twilight Beings with his own state and realized this truth.’
And to create stronger darkness, he had plunged himself into fear. To become an ‘ordinary’ Twilight Being capable of overwhelming Geuseon-dae. To cultivate his darkness to the point of overwhelming it.
‘This kid really is insane!’
I stared at the Crown Prince with my mouth agape in disbelief. Cold sweat streamed down the pallid boy’s face. I couldn’t even fathom what kind of horrific terror he was enduring as he moved.
‘How is this even possible?’
Had he spent two years from the black wedding ceremony until the actual wedding, continuously alone in darkness, learning to endure fear?
‘This is far too dangerous.’
While I stood paralyzed by worry and confusion, the Crown Prince raised his trembling hand over the darkness binding Geuseon-dae’s body. The darkness stained his white hand pitch black. Then the darkness overflowing from the Crown Prince dyed the entire corridor black.
Darkness deeper than shadow roils and surges. The darkness runs rampant. The beast, fed fear by its master, swells in size and turns to devour its own master.
“You…!”
Just as I cried out in alarm, a brilliant smile bloomed across the boy’s expressionless face. In that instant, the darkness ripped away from the Crown Prince’s hand. It pivoted in a heartbeat, completely engulfing Geuseon-dae from crown to heel.
“Grraaagh! I’m not afraid! I’m not afraid, I’m not, I’m afraid! I’m afraid! I’m afraid!”
“You said you’d devour me, didn’t you?”
The boy whispered to the luminescent Geuseon-dae, consumed by darkness, his face radiant with laughter.
“I’ll devour you instead.”
The darkness opened its maw. What was born of shadow was swallowed by what was born of the night sky.
“Grraaaagh! Grraaaaaagh!”
Geuseon-dae shrieked in terror. Seaweed-like shadows thrashed, trying to pierce through the darkness, but dissolved into it and vanished. The darkness pulled downward, downward, swallowing the struggling Geuseon-dae whole. The colossal monster sank deeper and deeper into the darkness spreading across the floor. Soon, Geuseon-dae’s entire form was sucked into the abyss. All that remained on the floor was a vast, pitch-black darkness—like an enormous bloodstain.
The Crown Prince stood motionless, gazing down at the darkness that consumed the vast corridor. As if to quell the shadows, the boy’s lips curved higher.
Yet the darkness, having gorged itself on Geuseon-dae’s terror, refused to diminish easily. It rippled like a restless water’s surface, and the shadows began to circle the boy like sharks prowling through dark waters.
I could see the Crown Prince’s smiling lips trembling.
‘At this rate, he’ll be consumed by his own darkness!’
Honestly, it was remarkable and admirable that the Crown Prince had expanded his darkness to devour Geuseon-dae. Truly impressive, genuinely astounding—yet this was still madness.
We had painstakingly tamed that darkness together and transformed it into a shadow spell. To release it again? What was this, a suicide attempt?
‘This foolish child—I won’t let him gamble like this ever again!’
First, I had to save him.
I pressed my lips together and stepped into the darkness flooding the corridor. The shadows, fiercer than usual, lunged to engulf me, and I tried to repel them with the divine power flowing through my possession—but the Crown Prince flinched and looked toward me.
“My lady!”
His wide eyes softened instantly. As if he had completely forgotten what situation he’d just been in, the boy simply gazed at me with joy.
“Are you unharmed?”
The Crown Prince, standing in the midst of churning darkness, paid no attention to his own condition—only to mine. And at that moment, the darkness that had been trying to consume me withdrew of its own accord. It wasn’t because of my divine power.
This sight confirmed my conviction once more.
‘His darkness… will never harm me.’
I walked across the blackened corridor without hesitation toward the Crown Prince. With each step, light rippled across the darkness like waves spreading across water. Luminous footprints bloomed in my wake, then faded.
“Your Highness.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Standing before the Crown Prince, I looked down at the obedient boy and asked.
“Were you frightened?”
“…!”
“It’s all right now. It’s all over.”
I opened my arms and embraced the child who was holding back his fear.
“If you tell yourself you’re not scared, close your eyes and open them again, all the fear will disappear.”
“….”
Just as I had done on our wedding night, I patted the boy’s back and whispered.
“Say the fear is gone, it’s gone, close your eyes and open them—and I wonder what you’ll find?”
The Crown Prince trembled. I heard a voice like a frightened child’s—no, exactly like a frightened child’s.
“…Will you… still be here?”
“Yes.”
I answered quickly, then smiled brightly and looked up at him.
“So you can close your eyes now.”
The Crown Prince’s expression crumbled.
“Ah.”
The boy released a short whimper and closed his eyes. His body immediately went limp against me. The bloodstained hem of his robe hung down, and his hands—which had been clenched so tightly his knuckles had turned white—relaxed, the shadow spell falling with a soft thud into the darkness beneath our feet. The widespread darkness began to gradually recede.
I hastily caught the collapsing child and examined him. There seemed to be nothing seriously wrong—he appeared to have simply fallen asleep.
‘The tension released and he lost consciousness.’
It was inevitable. What twelve-year-old could endure such a horrific day? The boy, who had never experienced a real battle, had crossed the threshold between life and death how many times in such a short span?
The Crown Prince, the Prime Minister’s children—all of them.
‘I’m accustomed to this sort of thing because of the malevolent beings in Heaven targeting me… but the children will suffer considerably from the shock.’
I should brew some honeysuckle flower tea with what’s left later.
While I steadied the Crown Prince with my wings spread wide, the darkness that had been spreading shrank to match only his shadow.
Suddenly—crack, crack, crack—the surroundings trembled. Dust cascaded from the rafters as the entire mansion shook as if struck by an earthquake. It seemed the Crown Prince’s darkness had consumed Geuseon-dae entirely.
‘Now everything that was swallowed by Geuseon-dae’s shadow will be regurgitated, won’t it?’
Thanks to Geuseon-dae’s death, it seemed we could escape this dilapidated mansion altogether. As I steadied the Crown Prince and moved toward where the Prime Minister’s Children were, I spotted a yellow lump lying on the corridor floor.
Myotusa. My weary, blurring eyes snapped wide open.
‘The butterfly!’
It had supposedly been devoured by Geuseon-dae, but it seemed to have survived because Geuseon-dae was consumed by the Crown Prince before digestion could complete.
‘Wait, it’s actually alive?’
I gently laid the Crown Prince beside me and hastily reached out. I carefully cradled the small creature, drenched in dark bodily fluids, in both hands and lifted it.
The kitten’s delicate pink nose twitched.
‘Thank goodness, it’s breathing!’
Yi Yeon-ju’s tearful face flashed through my mind. Truly, what a relief. I had to treat it quickly and return it to her.
I drew upon my divine power, imbuing it with the concept of healing, and poured it into Myotusa’s body.
‘I’ve already used nearly all my divine power. Just a little more….’
As I wrung out every last drop, suddenly—spin—my vision whirled. My wings dissipated hazily and my body swayed.
‘Ah, I’ve pushed myself too hard today….’
My cheek touched the trembling floor.
“Your Highness!”
“Crown Princess, Your Highness!”
With the voices of the Prime Minister’s twins and the sound of their rushing footsteps as my last memory, I lost consciousness.
* * *
“Where did all these strong ones gather from? Gave me quite a scare, kee-hee….”
A massive fox demon shook out her feet, drenched in other creatures’ blood, one by one, and let out a deep sigh.
“Lucky I came early to check, keh-heng, almost showed the princess something unsightly.”
White fur bristled like needles, muscles bulged ready to burst, claws sharper than blades jutted from four paws, fangs elongated so far they protruded beyond her jaw, and ghostfire burned a pale blue in her eyes—a battle stance.
Seok-ran had no desire to show the young princess the sight of her tearing into creatures’ flesh and raking out their entrails in this form.
“If that cute princess saw me like this, what if she started avoiding me? Whine.”
She was unaware that Princess Cheonmyeong was accustomed to attacks.
The fox demon shook herself in the rain, shedding blood and flesh, and surveyed her surroundings.
“These creatures didn’t just gather on their own to prepare an attack… Hmm. Is there anything that could be a clue?”
Thousand-Year Fox rummaged through the creature remains and their surroundings for a while before snorting sharply.
“Found it!”
The fox retrieved something from between the creature remains and puffed out her chest proudly.
“Keh-hee-hee! I’m so capable! I need to get back to the princess right away! I’ll get praised!”
Thousand-Year Fox, now in her beautiful white fox form, bounded through the rain with light steps.
Only after arriving near the military camp the humans had set up did Seok-ran realize something had gone wrong.

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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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