Surviving as a Terminally Ill Heiress - Chapter 73

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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 73

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When I returned to the Mansion after a long absence, Grandfather stood at the top of the stairs with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at me with his usual indifference.
He spoke again without moving.
“Did you enjoy your little criminal game?”
Infuriating old man.
He was the type to let me play out every role—criminal, detective, whatever suited my fancy—all while knowing exactly what I was doing.
Very annoying, yes, but I didn’t entirely dislike how he let me handle my own affairs without meddling.
It certainly felt more satisfying to solve my own problems with my own hands.
Like now.
I walked down the darkening staircase with heavy steps.
In the Basement Dungeon below, it was not I but her who remained locked away.
“Olivia.”
She looked up at me from where she crouched on the cold floor.
I had asked the new captain of the guards to let me come this far for a reason.
There was only one thing I needed to ask—nothing else mattered.
“Why did you appear at Ambrose?”
Then Olivia opened her mouth.
“I couldn’t bear to live in hiding anymore…….”
“Right. But you don’t have to hide anymore.”
I took another step toward Olivia.
“So why do you keep trying to dispose of me in such a hurry?”
As if you had some other purpose.
Olivia bit her lip before flinging her words at me like an accusation.
“If you hadn’t spent all your time seeing us as thorns in your side, trying to drive us out, we might have gotten along. I’ve never met a child as vicious as you.”
“Is that so? This is a first for me too.”
Olivia raised her eyebrows.
I stared directly at her still-composed face and spoke slowly.
“Tasis.”
A stimulant so potent it keeps soldiers with broken legs charging through the night.
Its users give off a distinctive artificial lavender scent.
“I’ve never met a mother who forces her child to take that cheap, vicious drug.”
Olivia’s face drained of color.
The moment suspicion hardened into certainty, I felt anything but pleased.
At first, I thought I was mistaken. It seemed impossible.
And I desperately wanted it to be untrue.
Terion was devoted to heavy lavender cologne.
He’s a young noble—of course he uses perfume. So my nose must have been confused. That had to be it.
But here’s the thing.
‘Who sprays perfume all day long even inside the house like that?’
It was nearly enough to numb the senses.
And lavender at that—the kind young noble ladies favored.
Well, taste is taste. There’s nothing wrong with it.
But once I started noticing, the lavender scent permeated the entire west wing.
Not just Terion’s person, but every space he inhabited.
That’s when my suspicions deepened.
Was he trying to mask another smell?
And then…….
While I was thinking, Olivia’s usual smile returned.
“I don’t know what you’re imagining, but our Terion just loves lavender cologne so much…….”
“Yes, lavender is good for headaches, after all.”
…….
“Terion must be suffering quite a bit.”
In every way.
I exhaled a deep sigh.
Tasis’s side effects are severe headaches.
To forget that agony, people take more Tasis. A vicious cycle of addiction.
Olivia murmured softly.
“……How did you know?”
How indeed. That’s what I wanted to ask.
In recent times, Tasis was most widely used in Ritz, just before its collapse.
It was distributed to soldiers to make them keep fighting and dying rather than flee.
How could you possibly…….
“It’s good to break the prejudice that parents would never do that to their own children, and to do it quickly.”
I learned that from a close friend.
I was Mother’s eternal child and didn’t know the world well, but there are parents who see their children as tools.
Like you.
I shrugged, reflected in Olivia’s green eyes.
“Actually, the more confusing part was that Terion, that boy… he really didn’t look like someone taking Tasis.”
Tasis users display exaggerated behavior.
After all, it was born to erase all pain and fear, to push human labor to its absolute limit.
I first saw that drug—which I’d only heard about from Mother—at the Back Alley Fighting Pit.
I’d stumbled in there unknowingly, before I understood how the illicit world worked.
I was assigned to care for the fighters there.
‘No wonder they hired me so readily when I mentioned I’d once cared for my late mother.’
But that place was full of men with shattered ribs that pierced their lungs, with death written all over them.
Yet even they would spring back to life with a single dose of Tasis, thrashing about like crazed moths.
Bright red eyes blazing, they’d fight like madmen for three days and nights without stopping.
Then they’d stiffen, collapse, and never get up again.
How grotesque and chilling it all was…….
I couldn’t bear it and quit within days.
Even now, those scenes and smells return with vivid clarity.
But Terion—a boy already bursting with youthful energy—using massive amounts of Tasis and yet remaining unusually composed?
There were only two possible answers.
Either I was gravely mistaken, or…….
“Is Terion only able to move as much as he does now because of Tasis?”
At my question, Olivia simply turned her head away.
As if avoiding a horrible truth.
“What on earth are you trying to accomplish by going that far…….”
“So we don’t have to live in hiding.”
That again.
It was then, as I furrowed my brow, that Olivia suddenly lifted her head.
Her green eyes, staring straight up at me, twisted with an uncanny light.
As if there was nothing left to hide.
Or rather, as if she no longer wanted to hide anything.
“So that our noble comrades, those who hold great ambitions, no longer have to live in shadow……!”
What—
I stumbled backward without thinking.
As if I had become invisible, Olivia cried out toward the dark ceiling of the Basement Dungeon.
“Fear not death! It is not the end of us! We shall cycle! And thus become eternal!”
Then it happened.
Blood began to drip from Olivia’s face.
From eyes and nose, mouth and ears, dark red blood flowed…….
Soon it was streaming down her skin.
Like melting candle wax.
What…… what in the world is this……?
I forgot even how to breathe.
The horrific appearance and smell, the voice—but most horrific of all was the fervent conviction seeping through every word.
Olivia’s final cry, as her body melted away bit by bit.
“Helmut, your grace……!”
The Demon King’s name.

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The Demon King, Helmut.
He was once a lesser being.
One of the creatures created by the god Nibelis.
……The smallest and most insignificant of existences.
Yet even the lesser being was happy.
For the newly created world was such a world.
There was no hatred, no strife, no competition.
Not until the sun came to be, light poured forth, and mankind became the god’s most beloved.
They could do anything.
In the day the god blessed them with his own hand—this power was called Holy Power.
In the night the god slept and they stole his strength—this power was called Demonic Power.
And so mankind drew near to the god’s omniscience, yet the smallest and most insignificant lesser being could only be crushed beneath their shadow.
One day the lesser being shed tears for the first time and spoke.
‘Great Father, you hold dominion over all things in this world. Yet you gave that omnipotent power to the humans of the day.’
‘Yes.’
‘Great Father, even as you sleep you see all things. So too you must have seen when the humans of the night stole your power.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, my Father. How might this lesser being receive your power?’
The god shook his head.
‘You cannot.’
The moment a shadow entered the lesser being’s heart.
In that very instant, the lesser being awakened.
To a most peculiar power—one that could deceive even humans of day and night, and even the god himself.

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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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