Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 40

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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 40

Perhaps it was the thought that as long as she didn’t touch it directly and merely held it for a time before handing it over to the temple as evidence, there would be no blame to her.
That ‘evidence’ was demonic energy concentrated and hardened from the cores of hundreds of Magic Beasts, and by itself served as a catalyst to lure many beasts into the area.
And if a Magic Beast swallowed it, the Great Calamity would unfold. Though there were no truly dangerous Magic Beasts prowling the Capital normally, there remained the possibility that far more vicious ones might be drawn from a distance.
All the Magic Beasts in this vicinity would inevitably swarm toward the Imperial Palace.
The Castrain Ducal House had prepared for this by secretly scattering Magic Beast traps throughout the Imperial Palace. It was to divert the beasts’ attention from the Empress’s evidence. A necessary precaution.
Screams began to echo from afar.
“A Magic Beast! How did a Magic Beast reach the Imperial Palace!”
“Send reinforcements! Send them now!”
“Aaaah, what in the world is happening!”
Those who had entered through bribes alone, without any real skill or even a basic examination, and who habitually slipped away from their posts, were swiftly overcome and attacked by the beasts.
Those who possessed at least a modicum of ability befitting the Imperial Palace name managed to hold their ground against the beasts somehow.
There had been no intention to escalate things dramatically.
Except for the Magic Beast that had fallen upon Brian, none of them were truly that threatening.
Besides, the beasts had been deliberately herded toward areas where soldiers were always stationed. As long as they weren’t mere layabouts swindling their positions, they could manage the creatures even if they couldn’t kill them. And there were far more than a handful of soldiers and knights stationed in the Imperial Palace.
Yet despite all this, hearing the screams erupting from all directions, I let out a hollow laugh.
Of course.
The current Imperial Family was rotten to the core.
The Royal Guard, who followed only the Emperor? In a situation where the Emperor himself had lent them to the Empress for personal use?
With only the Emperor able to command them, and concerned solely for the Emperor’s welfare, that elite guard in name had degenerated into nothing more than ‘the Emperor’s most stylish problem-solvers.’
The Imperial Knight Order? They had chosen Imperial Palace duties precisely because they despised facing Magic Beasts. Out in the world, all manner of promising young and old were dying in combat with beasts, yet these people pretended not to see that reality and simply wanted to stand proud within the safe confines of the Palace, calling themselves knights. How could their actual skill be anything to speak of?
So it made sense that the Empress had taken special pains and expense to hire mercenary-types and place them as her personal guard around her son.
I had been astounded to hear that she’d even brought someone with the reputation of a serial killer, confirmed to have genuine skill, masked his face, and assigned him to protect Brian.
Even those sorts were knocked out cold in a single blow against the Magic Beast earlier.
I surveyed the situation and rose to my feet. It was nearly time for what I’d been planning. Just then, the Empress spoke to me.
“Come to think of it, I never did hear what your actual role was supposed to be in this little play of yours.”
“A play? Well, I thought of it more as simply returning the provocation in kind.”
“You wouldn’t have lost much even if you’d let the Empress deceive you this way.”
……
“The Empress’s true target this time was me.”
I regarded the Empress—her expression unyielding, yet her eyes bearing the unmistakable weight of fatigue. Her hair beginning to fade and gray at the roots. The elegant, swan-like line of her neck. Eyes shadowed by burdens.
The person who had listened without protest this morning when I came with strange talk, and had answered that she would do it.
Among all the people in this Imperial Palace, she was the one to whom the word ‘noble’ most truly applied.
She had endured and persevered for so many years. Gray hair had begun to appear, and she reportedly covered her head with dye each time.
The Emperor, who consumed every tonics and supplements to maintain his vigor and flaunt his beauty, contrasted sharply with Cleo, the Empress, who paraded her own loveliness—and yet she had brushed off his ridicule of her appearance with calm downcast eyes, time and again.
“When His Majesty took the Castrain Ducal House’s side and hid you, the Empress was displeased and so His Majesty favored her instead.”
“If Her Majesty faces hardship, then it will be my turn next anyway.”
“You once refused to work alongside my son, did you not?”
“When you accepted me into the Empress’s Palace while I was unconscious, I already owed a debt. I intended to repay it.”
“So you merely wished to avoid leaving a debt to the Castrain Ducal House.”
“Had I truly died, no amount of imperial rank would have kept you safe.”
That was why, when I regained consciousness and heard I had been treated in the Empress’s Palace, I was tremendously shocked.
The Empress, already despised by the Emperor, held no real power. True, fortune had smiled on me and I had recovered completely, but if I had died without revival, the Empress would have borne all the blame.
“You’re more tender-hearted toward those around you than I thought.”
“…What? Tender-hearted? Me? I simply can’t stand leaving debts unpaid.”
I instinctively furrowed my brow. Here was someone who had already astonished me merely by taking me into the Empress’s Palace.
Plotting revenge against Cleo alongside the Empress, and I’m tender-hearted? What nonsense is this?
The Empress gazed at me like that and smiled faintly.
“You’re also rather shy.”
“…Your Majesty, honestly, I’d feel more at ease if you cursed me as a shameless schemer who starts trouble without fear.”
I found Adrian easier to deal with—he carried himself with slick charm. Facing the Empress was always uncomfortable.
“I believed I myself needed to endure further.”
As I moved to leave, the Empress spoke to me in a quiet voice.
“It’s still far from over. Until the princes come of age, merely speaking the throne’s name is treason. His Majesty won’t designate a Crown Prince while he still believes himself vigorous, so I thought the key to victory lay in persevering to the very end, preserving one’s strength for that final moment.”
It was sound logic. The Empress and Adrian had persevered tenaciously and seized victory.
She did not live long after suffering wounds in the civil war, and Adrian endured constant gastric spasms from stress while clearing the ashes of the destroyed Palace. Yet they lived to trample the corpses of their enemies and mock them.
“And yet, I wonder now… when will a battlefield favorable to us ever arrive?”
I found myself at a loss for words.
Even after Adrian and Brian came of age, the situation would not improve or worsen significantly from what it is now. It was because of the Emperor’s stance.
After Brian marries the daughter of the Habilios Marquis House, he will begin in earnest to contend for the throne.
The Habilios Marquis House joined hands with Cleo and threw everything into raising Brian to Emperor.
My memory of this part grows oddly hazy—it seems that house wielded some sort of power related to Magic Beasts, but….
In any case, they were the house that threw timber into the fire of the civil war that reduced the Imperial Palace to ash.
In truth, it is the Castrain Ducal House that commands the nation’s greatest military force.
Yet even possessing such vast forces, they could not move freely. The front lines had to be held. If the front once collapsed, it would cascade—entire villages and cities would be lost like dominoes.
So even as the civil war grew increasingly brutal, the Castrain family could not send all their forces into the Capital.
Meanwhile, their enemies didn’t care whether the continent itself or the people were torn to pieces by Magic Beasts.
In the end, they won the civil war, but the cost in blood was enormous.
Perhaps if it had begun earlier than the original timeline—around now, in fact—the situation might have unfolded quite differently.
“I apologize for turning my back on you because of my own difficulties.”
I froze at the Empress’s words.
“Seeing the spectacle you’ve created today, I realized that all my reasoning until now was nothing but a coward’s excuse.”
……
“As Empress of a nation, I have a duty to care for all the children of the Imperial Family, yet I pretended not to see you so that I could protect Adrian. It was irresponsible of me.”
The Empress, in a certain sense, resembled Raymond.
A sense of duty.
Pride of self.
It was as if those words had been woven together to paint her portrait. And after those things crumbled, she lived for Adrian alone.
She was a perfect Empress in every way, and incomparably more mature than a negligent Emperor. And yet she spoke of herself as ‘irresponsible.’
“…Why are you apologizing to me?”
“Whether today succeeds or fails, I won’t blame you for it.”
The Empress smiled with a face that seemed somehow relieved. The feeling was strange.
“How could an adult who dumped this task on a child have anything to say about the outcome?”
It was because of a mother like this that Adrian had to become cunning as a serpent.
Perhaps he genuinely wouldn’t have cared what became of the throne itself. His nature was naturally pliable, and he lacked for nothing.
Yet because of such a mother—one who understood shame and chose to forget it, grinding her teeth for her son’s victory—he had to become ever more cunning, ever more flawless in his moves.

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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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