Surviving as the Wife of the Swordsmanship Clan’s Troublemaker - Chapter 124
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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 124
Warm morning sunlight filtered softly through the Drawing Room.
Only two teacups sat on the table, isolated and waiting.
I had expected that a distinguished guest from the Imperial Palace would be sitting demurely at the Drawing Room table, awaiting the host—but my prediction had been spectacularly wrong.
The largest couch in the center, backlit by the sun. There lay Crown Prince Aurel, sprawled across it with the arrogant ease of someone in their own private chambers.
I approached him with heavy steps.
Platinum hair cascaded across his closed eyes. His skin was pale and elegant, drained of all color.
His appearance was just as disturbingly unreal as Docheop’s.
Yet what filled my mind was not admiration for his beauty, but questions.
‘How is someone who was supposed to be dead alive and standing before me?’
And what was I supposed to say to him?
As I hesitated, he slowly opened his eyes. Brown irises that gleamed blood-red in the sunlight rolled toward me.
The moment our eyes met, a short gasp escaped me.
‘…What is this?’
My heart ached with a sharp, piercing pain.
My stomach churned and tears welled up. I couldn’t explain what I was feeling—it was like meeting someone I had waited for across a vast expanse of time.
“Do you know me?”
Perhaps that’s why those words tumbled out instead of a greeting.
I would have welcomed any response, but the Crown Prince merely reclined against the couch, studying me.
“I heard that when you met me, you would tell me why you came here.”
I spoke with deliberate composure. But the man offered no reply. He simply remained deeply settled into the couch, his gaze never leaving my face.
What is this? Why won’t he answer and just stare at me like that?
“Um… I heard that last year you had an accident and… well, that you were in an accident. Are you alright?”
Even as I asked, my mind felt ready to burst with curiosity.
How had the original story diverged so completely? Was this a butterfly effect caused by my possession, or was there some hidden setting I had never known about?
At last, his red lips—curved like a serpent’s sinuous line—parted slowly.
“Are you Lara?”
His voice was hauntingly beautiful.
But Lara? That name…
No one called me by that name. Which meant this man knew me from before I possessed this body.
Unease washed over me.
‘Before I possessed Hallara, she was supposedly an executive of the Holy Church… Could this man also be connected to the Holy Church?’
Or perhaps he was someone I had encountered while acting as a member of the Holy Church.
After all, Johannes was using the Northern Emperor’s weakness.
‘Which one is it?’
The problem was that I didn’t know how the connections ran.
“Why did you come here?”
I tried to probe him.
“To see Lara.”
He responded slowly, his words offering no help whatsoever.
If anything, it seemed he was the one testing me.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know you.”
“Since when?”
This time he asked immediately.
“Since when I didn’t know you… that’s difficult to answer. I have no memory of it.”
At my words, cracks appeared on Auriel’s face.
“And forgive me, but if you won’t explain why you’ve come here in that condition, I’ll be taking my leave.”
It seemed our conversation wouldn’t progress.
And cold sweat had been trickling down my body the entire time.
At this rate, I felt I might collapse.
“I think it’s better we talk about this later.”
Just as I stepped backward, it happened.
[Ugh! Hallara!]
Junel?
A flutter of wings—
[Dodge!]
Junel flew toward me, crying out urgently. His eyes were filled with terror.
But before Junel could even reach me, Auriel’s gaze turned toward him, and Junel was sent flying backward in an instant.
“Junel!!”
How could Junel be sent flying like that?
What on earth was this man?
I turned to face Auriel, my face drained of all color.
“Just now—you did that?”
“It seems we even knew each other’s names.”
Yet he remained far too composed.
“…You can see Junel?”
“You ignored my contact and spent time having fun with a spirit, it seems.”
Auriel’s mood appeared deeply wounded.
“Just who exactly are you…?”
“That’s not what matters.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have two choices.”
He continued in a cold voice.
“First, reveal yourself as a survivor of the Brinihanta Clan and watch Bloodmere fall.”
This was catastrophic.
The very scenario I had dreaded was becoming reality. Bloodmere crumbling because of my existence.
“Second, die here.”
With that, the conclusion was clear.
This man was a member of the Holy Church.
Either return to Johannes’s embrace and fulfill my duties as an executive, or die here—that was the choice being presented.
“I cannot wait long. I’ve exhausted my patience coming all this way.”
He lifted the teacup resting on the table—a black tea the Maid had served at Francesca’s instruction before I entered.
He extended the cup, its dark crimson liquid swirling within.
“It’s been laced with Black Death poison. To explain further——”
“No need for explanations.”
I already knew that without his words, I would experience excruciating agony coursing through my entire body before dying an agonizingly slow death.
“Do you remember everything else, yet somehow erased me from your memory?”
He tilted his head with a bitter expression.
“How am I supposed to remember a dead person?”
“That’s all you see me as, then.”
His voice turned glacial.
He seemed ready to kill me without the poison at all.
‘He wasn’t lying about the Black Death poison.’
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of finding me.
“If I die—the Family won’t suffer any consequences because of me, will it?”
“Are you trying to die?”
“Whether I die or not, what does it matter?”
“If that is your choice.”
He extended the teacup toward me.
I glared at him resentfully before slowly reaching out with both hands to accept the cup—a draught of death itself.
His expression remained unchanged on the surface, yet he seemed absolutely certain I would never actually drink from this poisoned chalice.
The true “Hallara” who had served as an executive of the Holy Church would have betrayed others to survive, or crawled on her belly begging for her life.
Hallara was apparently the kind of woman who could cause endless trouble for others yet stretch out her legs and live without consequence.
‘But that’s not who’s inside this body now.’
Even with that thought, my hands holding the cup trembled pathetically.
I was terrified.
If I drank this, there would be no turning back. The moment the virulent Black Death poison slid down my throat, no antidote in the world could save me.
Yet… in another way, I felt relief.
This terrible Black Death poison burns through a person’s veins and hardens all their blood completely black.
Once I died here, even if they performed an autopsy, all traces of the Brinihanta Clan’s mana flowing through my blood and any evidence of the Holy Church would dissolve away, leaving nothing to be discovered.
‘Yes. That’s all I need.’
The people of Bloodmere.
And Docheop.
They were the first people to feel like family to me, struggling alone after being dropped into this strange world.
The thought of never seeing them again was unbearably sad, but I had no luxury to indulge in that sorrow now.
If I disappeared, Bloodmere could be cleared of the false accusation of harboring a fugitive from the Extinct Family.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Without hesitation, I brought the shimmering cup of poison to my lips.
“Cough!”
It was the very moment I held my breath, about to swallow the poison.
Clang!
He seized my hand roughly.
“Ah…!”
My eyes flew open to find Prince Aurel, who had been leisurely mocking me moments before, snatching the teacup from my grasp, his face contorted with anguish.
“You truly wish to die?”
The man who seemed so untouchable that even a needle’s prick would draw no blood now gasped harshly, his composure shattered into pieces.
“You would cast away your life for mere insects?”
His voice was a turbulent mixture of rage, betrayal, and an unspeakable, suffocating despair.
“Have they become so precious to you that you would willingly embrace such devastating torment?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he poured the entire contents of the cup I had been about to drink into his own mouth.
“You… are you insane?!”
Crash!
The empty teacup shattered against the floor into countless fragments.
He seized me with twisted lips stained with blood, but in that instant, a blue vein bulged grotesquely across his pallid face.
“Cough!”
Dark blood gushed from his mouth in a sickening torrent.
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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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Lyncdtxo
What the actual fuck is going on 😭 (istg if smth happens to her ill be crashing out)