That’s How I Became a Villainess - Chapter 19

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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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Episode 19

Bridget pinched and clawed at her own skin, desperate to stay conscious. Her teeth were grinding.
‘That Isaac would stoop to this!’
To whom had he sold her? Rage consumed her, her body trembling, her blood burning hot.
She’d known he was contemptible and base, but she’d never imagined him depraved enough to sell his own wife to another man.
It was a depravity beyond anything her imagination could conceive or guard against—a ugliness too profound to anticipate.
No matter how hard she clenched her teeth, her memories kept fragmenting, slipping away in patches.
There had been the carriage, then someone moving her, and then she’d found herself freed from her bonds and lying on an unfamiliar bed.
‘Wake up. Please…….’
The Maidservant who entered the room frowned upon seeing her.
“What? You haven’t fallen asleep?”
The Maidservant left and returned moments later, this time carrying a cup of tepid water.
“Drink it.”
“No……stop……!”
“There’s a Sleeping Draught in it. It’s better for you to drink it. The Count doesn’t like women who resist.”
The words sent chills down her spine. There was no trace of sympathy in the Maidservant’s expression.
Despite Bridget’s resistance, the Maidservant forced the draught down her throat.
After wiping up the spilled liquid, the Maidservant bound Bridget’s wrists and left.
Moments later, an Old Man entered the room.
“Mm, excellent. Excellent.”
The Old Man murmured with satisfaction, as though he’d just received a delightful gift.
Even as sleep crashed over her like a wave, Bridget struggled to see his face. But her vision swam.
The Old Man’s hand traced across Bridget’s cheek, back and forth.
Though her body had grown numb, she shuddered at that revolting touch.
The Old Man didn’t care that Bridget hadn’t yet succumbed to sleep.
Bound as she was, with her eyes half-closing, she would be under any moment.
“Heh heh, a fine face. And the body—I thought she was only lean, but it’s quite firm.”
She wanted to tell him to stop, but her throat had locked; she couldn’t produce a sound.
The Old Man stroked her hands and wrists, savoring the moment, moving slowly to run his fingers through her hair.
It was all a nightmare.
‘I’d rather…….’
She wanted to bite through her own tongue and die.
But instead of biting her own tongue—
“Ahhh!”
Bridget bit down with all her remaining strength on the Old Man’s finger as it traced her lips.
The Old Man shrieked and shoved her away.
She’d wanted to sever the finger entirely, but her body was too weak; all she’d managed was a wound, and she resented even that limitation.
“Wretched creature!”
Clutching his injured hand and groaning, the Old Man’s face twisted with rage. He raised his hand against Bridget.
Crack!
“Ugh!”
Her head snapped to the side. Her lip split open—she hoped the impact would shock her awake.
But the drowsiness wouldn’t lift.
The Sleeping Draught the Maidservant had administered was taking hold now, making it harder for Bridget to cling to consciousness with each passing moment.
Her sluggish body wouldn’t obey; it lay limp and unresponsive.
The Old Man steadied his ragged breathing, then glared at Bridget as he spoke, his voice edged with threat.
“I was going to treat you kindly, but since you’ve chosen this path, I’ll be very rough with you instead.”
‘Please…….’
Tears spilled from her eyes as despair crashed over her. She was terrified. Disgusted. Was this really how it would end?
‘Please.’
God, deliver me.
In her helplessness, she prayed desperately. There was nothing else left to do.
“Spirited thing. But what more can you possibly do, hmm? Heh heh, I’ll make sure you never want to open your eyes again.”
Then, in that instant—
Bridget felt the entire room plunge into darkness.
Even though countless candles had been illuminating the space.
‘Is this a dream?’
She’d thought sleep finally claimed her, and with it came visions.
Otherwise, the sight of so much Magical Energy devouring everything around her in an instant would be utterly impossible.
Like the tide surging at its peak, black mist flooded the room at a terrifying pace.
Magical Energy normally moved slowly, taking root in one place and gathering bit by bit—but this sudden convergence of power was an anomaly.
Bridget knew of one person who conjured such strange phenomena.
There was no possibility he could be here; this had to be a dream.
‘Julian…….’
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
She could hold on no longer. Bridget’s consciousness slipped away entirely.
Unaware of the commotion erupting beyond her door.

* * *

“My Lord!”
Someone wrenched the door open.
“What in blazes is happening?”
Kensington, already half-undressing Bridget from her slip, spun around irritably.
“Something urgent—” He gagged. “Ah!”
What met his eyes was a Black Knight wreathed in dark smoke, exhaling black vapor in thick plumes.
“Ahhh!”
The servant’s scream was severed along with his body.
Thud! Splash!
The bisected corpse crashed to the floor, spurting blood.
Kensington trembled violently, collapsing onto himself.
“The… Black Knight…….”
A cursed thing—thoughtless and senseless, neither living nor dead.
It regarded the Count with the gaze of something that was neither human nor anything else.
Where eyes should have been lay only a hollow emptiness, black pits that seemed to swallow light itself.
“Hah…… urgh…….”
The Black Knight approached without a sound.
The Count clawed backward across the bed, trembling, desperate to put distance between them.
But there was not just one.
More Black Knights filed in, encircling the chamber in perfect formation, lined up with geometric precision.
Then footsteps sounded.
From the darkness of the Corridor, moving between the Black Knights, a figure emerged.
“Your… Your Majesty……!”
A man with hair as black as the Knights themselves, and eyes of an unsettling crimson that flickered with blood.
He passed unhurriedly through the ranks of Black Knights and stood before Kensington.
He resembled the demons of legend—beautiful enough to seduce mortals and steal their very souls.
The more he stood amidst the darkness, the more impossibly radiant he became, an otherworldly beauty that inspired only dread.
The reek of blood emanated from him in waves.
The Iron-Blooded King, Julian Blake.
Kensington’s face drained of all color, as if confronted by death itself.
Though the Count, like Bridget, could not see Magical Energy, he felt something suffocating fill the room.
It was no mere sensation. The countless candles scattered about the chamber flickered—their flames shrinking to seed-like points at the wicks—then extinguished all at once.
‘I… can’t… breathe…….’
Dense Magical Energy constricted his throat.
Even in the darkness, those scarlet eyes burned with unmistakable clarity.
“P-please! Please, spare me! Spare me, I beg you!”
He did not even ask why the King had come to his estate—he simply clasped his hands and pleaded.
Julian was not a king who dressed murder in justification.
Few of the many deaths he had ordered were ever explained.
A tyrant who savored slaughter.
Kensington concluded he was simply unlucky—merely another of the King’s hunting trophies.
There were already several nobles who had vanished within a single night after offending Julian’s disposition.
“Please, have mercy! I beg you…….”
Julian regarded the Count with detached indifference, tears and snot streaming down the man’s face as he groveled.
His gaze held a hollowness that surpassed even the empty eye sockets of the lifeless Black Knight.
That chilling stare made Kensington recoil in revulsion.
“Count.”
“Please, I beg you…….”
“Did you touch her?”
Julian asked one last time, his voice parched and hollow.
“I…… Yes, no, I……? What…….”
Count Kensington, terror-stricken and delirious, trembled like an aspen leaf as he stared at Julian.
Julian seized the blade from the knight beside him and brought it close to the Count’s cheek.
The cursed sword exhaled thick black smoke, the same as that which rose from the knights’ bodies.
It was a cold and sickening vapor.
“Aahhh!”
The Count flinched at its touch, his neck recoiling.
Then Julian tapped the Count’s cheek repeatedly with the flat of the blade and asked again.
“Did you touch her?”
“I, I, I don’t…….”
Julian, as though he had no real interest in the Count’s answer, struck his head once with the flat of the sword and swept it aside, then turned his gaze toward Bridget behind him.
His eyes traced each mark upon her—the blood at the corner of her mouth, the raw wounds scattered across her body.
For the first time, emotion flickered across his face.
“You did.”
Rage.

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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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