The Abandoned Prince’s Ghost Bride - Chapter 142

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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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The Forsaken Prince’s Phantom Bride — Episode 142

Thud!
Leon leaped from his place, and in an instant, his form vanished.
The speed was too swift even for the Dragon’s Eye to follow, startling everyone—but they quickly gathered their wits.
“Protect Lia!”
At Lucian’s shout, the three of them positioned themselves back-to-back around her, leaving no blind spots. But their heightened vigilance lasted only a moment.
“Argh!”
“Kaiser!”
Kaiser suddenly hunched forward with a groan. Lucian soon understood why.
Crack!
A force so powerful it made his brain ring struck his cheek. Lucian staggered.
Leon was attacking from somewhere invisible. Lucian felt impacts on his face, chest, abdomen, and countless other spots.
Each blow came with the force of a swung mace.
Damn it!
Carserin was mere afterimage—physical attacks couldn’t reach him.
Because of this, Lucian and Kaiser bore the brunt of the assault.
Realizing something had to change, Carserin unleashed his power.
A ring of pure white flame materialized around the four of them. Only then did Leon’s attacks cease, unable to breach the barrier.
“Hah… hah……”
“Tch, this hurts like hell……”
“Is everyone alright?”
Lia, trembling with tears, wrapped her hands around Lucian’s and Kaiser’s faces. In that brief span, both men were battered and bruised.
Only after Lia cast Healing Magic did the two begin to breathe easier.
Yet Lia still couldn’t calm herself. She couldn’t bear to watch these people suffer for her sake any longer.
“It’s me you want, isn’t it! Stop tormenting these innocent people and tell me what you want!”
Lia’s rage propelled her toward the edge of the flame ring, but Lucian and Kaiser desperately held her back.
“No, Lia. You can’t go out there—it’s too dangerous!”
“Did you see that creature’s eyes? He doesn’t care about your safety anymore. You could die!”
“Then you’re telling me to just stand here and do nothing?!”
As Lia thrashed, tears streaming down her face, Carserin—who had been standing silent—clenched his fists.
“I won’t hide behind you anymore. I won’t use you as shields.”
The moment Lia tried to brush off their hands and leave, Carserin stepped into her path.
Seeing Carserin up close for the first time, Lia’s eyes wavered.
This is my fight. You stay here and watch.
Three hundred years ago, I should have killed Leon right there.
Back then, I couldn’t accept that Leon had betrayed me—all I managed was to seal Lia. But now it’s different.
It has to be.
As Carserin turned away with renewed resolve, Lia faltered.
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them with an ominous gleam.
His gaze, fixed forward, suddenly shifted left. In the same instant, Carserin’s Magic lashed out at the point he was watching.
Bang! Crash!
A cloud of dust scattered, and Leon—hidden until now—appeared.
“Impressive. But you’re nothing more than a phantom from three hundred years past.”
Cackle-cackle-cackle!
Leon let out a ghastly laugh and swung a massive scythe made of Mana at Carserin.
Since it was a physical attack, Carserin simply pretended to dodge backward.
“Carserin!”
But at Kaiser’s cry from behind, Carserin discovered his own abdomen had been split open.
Crgh!
His form flickered momentarily, but Carserin sensed the scythe descending on his head and rolled away in time.
So attacks did work. It wasn’t his imagination.
“How is it that I’ve come to possess this body?”
Leon’s mockery echoed above the bewildered Carserin.
“For all you claim to be a Dragon, my knowledge of Spirits far exceeds yours.”
Moreover, the powers wielded by black mages are often inhumane in nature, granting them knowledge of Spirits unmatched by any other race—especially one who has lived more than three centuries.
“Perhaps it’s fortunate. I’ll consume every fragment of your Spirit and make it mine!”
Carserin frowned and dodged Leon’s charge.
Early in their clash, Carserin had given his all, yet Leon’s power still surpassed his.
Moreover, the Carserin here was neither a true Spirit nor his living form—only the lingering regret he had left behind.
Its strength and cohesion inevitably fell far short of a true Spirit.
Watching the Dragon Heart flicker with instability and fracture, Kaiser gnashed his teeth.
“Don’t you dare lose! If you’re my past life, show me your strength!”
“……Kaiser!”
This fool……!
Lucian was caught off-guard by Kaiser’s reckless action, and Carserin cursed under his breath.
Leon, who had been seizing Carserin’s throat to drain his power, paused and turned toward Kaiser.
“Hoh? A past life, you say……?”
What are you looking away for——!
Sensing danger, Carserin launched an attack, but Leon’s attention had already fixed on Kaiser.
Damn it! Take him and flee!
“Wait! Let me face him instead——!”
Kaiser couldn’t finish. More precisely, he was unable to.
“Crgh……!”
Kaiser seized his left arm, crying out. A searing heat burned through his draconic skin so intensely it felt as though it were melting.
Tearing away his sleeve to check, he found a strange marking etched on his left arm.
“No, this is……”
To Carserin, that symbol was unmistakably terrible.
“Ah, so that’s it. I couldn’t absorb Carserin’s Spirit, and now I understand why—he’s undergone Reincarnation. Such a thing makes perfect sense.”
The same marking appeared on Leon’s left arm as well.
Seeing it, Lia unconsciously whispered:
“A Soul Contract.”
Before the war, to ensure Leon’s safety, Carserin had forged this bond.
Such a contract meant they could never betray each other, never kill each other, and neither could escape it until one of them died.
This very contract had played a role in Carserin’s inability to kill Leon in the past.
Had Carserin broken the Soul Contract with an attack, the backlash alone would have dealt tremendous harm to his Spirit.
Though Leon would suffer the same consequences, human cunning knows no bounds to other races’ imagination.
When weighing Dragon against human, any observer could tell which was weaker.
A Dragon needs only minimal force to end a human’s life. Thus this contract is infinitely disadvantageous to Dragons.
A Dragon’s slightest action could gravely wound a human, so his movements are severely restricted. A human, conversely, can do almost anything without seriously harming a Dragon, so they are comparatively unconstrained.
Though the contract appears equal, in truth it grants the human power to manipulate the Dragon as he wishes.
The contract ends only when one party dies. Yet that hardly means it dissolves.
Who knows how long Reincarnation might take? And even if it occurs, the chance that both would remember their past life and meet again is nearly impossible. So we say the contract ends when one dies—it’s only a saying.
But now, that near-impossible chance was unfolding before their eyes.
“Damn it! Disappear!”
Kaiser clawed at his arm, but the marking would not fade. Even if he carved away the flesh, the contract etched upon his very Spirit could never be undone.
“That’s not how you use a contract.”
Leon smiled wickedly and snapped his fingers. Kaiser’s body went rigid, moving against his will.
Stripped of control, Kaiser felt alarms screaming in his mind. He released a burst of power, hurling Lucian and Lia away from him.
“Don’t come near me!”
As he pushed them back, his arm transformed, becoming draconic and threatening, and he swung it at where Lucian had been standing.
“Kill Lucian. And bring Lia before me. As long as she lives, I don’t care what happens.”
This was only the beginning. With complete control over Kaiser, Leon puppeteered him like a marionette, launching attacks at Lucian and Lia.
“Ugggh! Don’t make me laugh! Did you think I’d go down this easily?!”
Kaiser fought with all his strength to resist Leon’s commands, but to no avail.
“Lia!”
At Kaiser’s cry, Lia erected a Barrier, blocking his strike. Beyond the barrier, his anguished expression was plainly visible.
But mere defense wouldn’t suffice, so Lia and Lucian worked together to evade him.
“If the contract is supposed to be equal, how is Leon controlling Kaiser like this?”
“It seems Leon found a loophole. Such contracts bind both parties to prioritize each other’s requests above all.”
Direct combat between the parties is acceptable, but neither can attack with lethal intent.
Perhaps that’s why Kaiser’s early attacks never reached Leon, and he alone suffered the onslaught.
“……If Leon can do this, then Kaiser should be able to do the same.”
Watching Kaiser thrash against Leon’s binding, Lucian shouted:
“Kaiser! Don’t resist—try to control Leon instead!”
“Control……?”
Should he demand Leon destroy himself? No, that would constitute self-harm, violating the contract. Tell him to break free from this bondage? That would be refusing Leon’s command, which wouldn’t work either.
Damn, this is complicated.
Yet there had to be a loophole—there had to be, just as Leon had found one.
Even as he pondered, his body dutifully pursued Lucian and Lia. As the attacks intensified, a clever idea struck him.
“Leon! Have a sparring match with me!”
Leon’s tongue clicked. His body naturally appeared before Kaiser, intercepting the attack meant for Lucian and Lia.
“Bingo.”
“A lizard with a little intelligence, it seems.”
Leon casually blocked Kaiser’s arm. But Kaiser then erupted the entire surface of his body in White Flame.
As Leon touched the pale fire, he felt his power draining. Recoiling from the White Flame, he increased his distance.
But Kaiser seized the opening.
“You said to spar—why are you running?”
Smile plastered on his face, Kaiser unleashed White Flame without hesitation. Caught off-guard, Leon took one head-on and twisted his face in pain.
But moments later, confusion crossed his features.
“Hahaha! So even your strength to flee is gone?”
Unaware of what had shifted, Kaiser hurled another White Flame at him. This time Leon didn’t dodge—he caught it with his bare hand.
Hisss.
The flame extinguished with a crackling sound, leaving Leon’s palm slightly charred.
But that was all. Unlike how other black mages fared against White Flame, the effect was disappointingly weak.
“The color was subtly different. So it’s not White Flame but something else. If you think such a trivial attack will work on me, you’re deluded.”
Leon smiled crookedly and summoned Black Flame far larger than Kaiser’s White Flame.
The Black Flame coalesced into a single mass, resembling a miniature sun. The dark star hurtled toward Kaiser with tremendous force.
Sensing imminent danger, Kaiser rolled across the ground, barely evading it. The difference between this Black Flame and the bishop’s thirteen years ago in that cellar was incomparable.
While light normally drives back darkness, overwhelming darkness can consume light instead—such was the principle at work here.
White Flame could never match White Flame, and it stood no chance against Black Flame.
The tide had turned again.
“This way, we’ll never win.”
“We need a trump card.”
Lucian nodded in agreement with Lia’s words, as if they shared the same thought.
“……But I have no idea what weakness such a monster could possibly have.”
How to defeat Leon, who matched Kaiser’s power or exceeded it, remained a puzzle.
While they were still thinking, Carserin approached them.
“……You two.”
I don’t have much time left.
Carserin’s form had grown quite translucent. Having already expended much power and taken damage, he lacked the strength to maintain his presence.
Lia instinctively understood: if he faded now, they would never meet again.
I have a stratagem. Will you hear me out?
In Carserin’s flickering gaze burned resolve and certainty.
This was no desperate last stand.
Lucian and Lia nodded, listening intently to what Carserin would say.

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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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