Surviving as the Wife of the Swordsmanship Clan’s Troublemaker - Chapter 135

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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 135

Doubt flickered across Johannes’s face.
“I told you. I’m not the woman you know.”
I spoke with conviction, pouring strength into my voice.
His grip on me tightened, but he quickly dispelled his suspicion as though brushing away dust. “That’s impossible. You’ve merely been infected by that pathetic hypocrisy and morality among those wretched humans.”
He muttered as if convincing himself, then dragged me closer, his fingers pressing against my throat.
“Surely the life of a mere beast isn’t enough to awaken your dulled murderous intent, Lara. Human nature is inherently vile, after all.”
“No.”
I did not avert my gaze from his.
“I would have acted the same way regardless of the circumstances. I would have done so even for someone else.”
“Humans love to kill and tear each other down. Fundamentally, they adore hatred.”
“That may be true.”
“That may be true?”
Johannes’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“But that isn’t all there is. I saw something different in what you showed me.”
“You saw something different in me?”
“My mother.”
I spoke quietly.
“Even as she was dying, she tried to save me. That’s what humanity is.”
“That’s maternal instinct. Beasts do the same.”
“Then beasts are beautiful too, aren’t they?”
Johannes fell silent for a moment.
The silence stretched on.
“…How ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
His gaze wavered. Ever so slightly.
Then he spoke in a low voice.
“We shall see.”
With Johannes’s whisper, the Temple trembled.
No.
It wasn’t an earthquake—my vision was simply shaking.
“Please.”
Once again, he had plunged me into his trial.
In the end, I fell into the abyss.
In the end, I fell into the abyss.

When I opened my eyes, the damp scent of earth pricked my nostrils.
My vantage point had shifted higher than before.
‘How many years have passed?’
In that moment, a panorama of everything Hallara had endured unfolded in my mind.
The days of fleeing and stealing scraps to eat.
Being caught by a restaurant owner and beaten senseless.
Limping from place to place, begging for alms.
Even being sold into slavery.
For years, the young Hallara had known nothing but endless suffering.
It was enough to understand why Hallara had joined hands with Johannes, a man who despised humanity.
“Ugh… how could this…?”
Tears streamed down unbidden.
My mind flooded with rage and resentment.
I felt the impulse to crush every human beneath my heel.
Fufufufu!
Laughter echoed through the darkened Village.
Looking closer, I stood before the dilapidated Chapel of Hallara’s very Hometown Village. The acrid stench of oil permeated the air, thick and suffocating.
“Ugh, the smell.”
I kept my eyes fixed on the half-open window. A torch burned fiercely in my grip, and beneath my feet, oil I had carefully poured for hours pooled abundantly.
Inside the sacred Chapel dedicated to the divine, villagers sat gathered by candlelight, engaged in a drinking bout.
“Remember that witch from back then? The one who slaughtered the sheep?”
“Oh, I remember. She was burned at the stake quite spectacularly.”
“You know what? Before the burning, they usually give a paralytic drug to numb the ears and eyes. That way, the death is less agonizing. But someone apparently switched it out with water.”
“Is that why she screamed so much? My ears nearly burst from the sound.”
“That’s why her daughter escaped. We should have burned her too, but she fled into the Forest and we lost her—such a shame.”
Their mockery of my mother came through the window cracks, unfiltered. These hypocrites had burned an innocent person with their own hands, yet they clinked their cups without a shred of remorse.
[Throw it.]
Johannes whispered from the darkness.
[Hurl the torch through the window. Do to them what they did to your mother. That alone would be your revenge.]
The hatred for those who killed my mother.
That primal, pitch-black fury clawed at my heart, urging me to fling the torch through the window immediately.
“…Don’t be ridiculous.”
I clenched my teeth, my torch-bearing hand trembling violently.
This was merely Hallara’s instinct, not my own.
“No. Even if it were me, I wouldn’t commit such a horrific act.”
I plunged the torch I held into a puddle at my feet. The crimson flames extinguished completely.
[Lara.]
Johannes’s furious voice erupted from the void.
“No matter what scene you show me, it won’t work.”
Even if I were to die, I would never become a murderer who killed others.
Johannes had no answer.
Instead, he revived the extinguished torches.
“What are you doing!”
By Johannes’s will alone, the dilapidated roofs and thatched houses that blanketed the entire Village were instantly engulfed in crimson flames.
[Lara. This is what you already did in the past.]
“Save us! Fire!”
“Aaahhh! My child is inside!”
The villagers screamed and bolted from the inferno. A hellscape of flames consumed everything around us.
Fleeing the fire toward the Well, the villagers discovered me standing there, torch fallen from my trembling hands.
“It’s her doing!”
“Wait. That face… Isn’t she the witch’s daughter?”
“That’s right! We should have hunted her down and killed her back then!”
The villagers glared at me with bloodshot eyes, hurling curses. Rather than showing remorse, they insulted the innocent Hallara’s Mother and turned their arrows of resentment toward me.
My body trembled.
Tears threatened to spill.
I stepped backward.
It seemed better to escape from here.
“Mother, please save me!”
But that lasted only a moment. The cry of a child trapped inside the wooden building that burned and collapsed made me stop in my tracks.
“No. This isn’t real.”
This was an illusion created by Johannes.
Yet for some reason, I couldn’t simply walk past it.
“…Even if this is overstepping, so be it.”
I turned around.
“If it’s just an illusion anyway, it won’t matter.”
But even as a phantom, the pain felt utterly real. The scorching flames seemed to sear my skin.
“Mother!”
Gray smoke billowed before the child.
“I don’t have time for such useless thoughts.”
I gripped my skirt and plunged without hesitation into the crimson inferno.
[…Lara!]
In the suffocating heat, I searched for the child.
But the child was nowhere to be seen.
‘They should have been around here.’
Looking more carefully, I spotted two small feet beneath a wooden chair.
The child was hiding. But the flames had already spread to the wooden chair.
“Come out. Let’s go.”
“No. I’m scared!”
When I reached out my hand, the child retreated deeper.
I had no choice but to push the burning wooden chair aside.
“Ah.”
My palm finally burned. It seemed Johannes was determined to push me to this extreme. For a moment, the pain was so intense I wanted to confess that I was a possessor.
“Ugh.”
Tears welled up and my breath caught, but I clenched my teeth firmly.
At last, cradling the child, I rolled out of the inferno.
“Get away. You witch! Let go of my child!”
A woman who appeared to be the child’s mother rushed over and snatched the child from my arms with a violent wrench. She glared at me as though I were vermin and shoved me roughly to the dirt ground.
“Hypocrite. You set the fire and now you play the hero?”
“A sacrifice. You’re offering us as a sacrifice to the demon!”
Serum oozed from my burned hands. The crowd’s resentful accusations pelted down upon me.
Yet I pressed my palms against the ground and staggered to my feet once more.
There were still elderly people and the wounded trapped within the flames, groaning.
I clenched my bloodied hands and willingly stepped into the inferno.
It felt as though my entire body was ablaze.
My vision grew hazy.
[They are your enemies who sought to kill you. No matter how many humans you save, they will never forgive you.]
Johannes’s voice echoed in my ears.
[Why. Why do you neither seek vengeance nor flee.]
At his question, I halted my steps amid the acrid smoke. For some reason, a faint smile bloomed at the corners of my mouth.
“…I know. How fragile humans are, and how utterly ugly they can be.”
Compared to what Hallara endured, it was nothing.
I too was abandoned by my parents the moment I was born.
I married early, hoping to be loved by someone, yet I received no true affection there either.
And yet I harbored no resentment, no anger.
“But Johannes. No matter how broken and twisted things become… someone must be willing to embrace these pitiful creatures with open arms, mustn’t they?”
I simply spoke my words with quiet composure.
“Even if it is nothing but foolish sacrifice.”
And I smiled at him broadly, as though revealing a truth.
“Because that is how I choose to love this world.”

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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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