The Abandoned Prince’s Ghost Bride - Chapter 37

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

The Forsaken Crown Prince’s Ghost Bride – Episode 37

“All right, I’ll be back soon!”
[Be careful on your way. You have to be back before sunset, understand?]
“Got it! I’ll definitely convince Dio! Thanks for the snacks!”
Lucian wrapped up the snacks Lia had given him and quickly slipped out of the Mansion.
Lia waved after him as he went, thrilled with his mission. The moment he vanished, Caesar drifted over to her side.
“You really think Lucian can convince Dio? What’ll you do if he actually succeeds?”
[That won’t happen. It’s far too absurd to believe.]
“Poor Lucian. Does he realize you’re already convinced he’ll fail?”
[What? I told Lucian to go convince Dio. Whether he brings Dio back or not depends entirely on his ability.]
Caesar stared at her with an expression of utter disbelief.
“You’ve got a worse personality than I do.”
[Thank you for the compliment.]
Caesar huffed indignantly at her refusal to even soften her words.
Lia headed into the Mansion, leaving him to his huffing.
[While Lucian’s in the Village, let’s prepare for what’s coming.]
“So you didn’t just make up some random excuse to send him away.”
[Of course not. If he’d stayed in the Mansion, he would’ve noticed something strange right away. Up until now, I’ve been lucky.]
“Why not just tell him? You’re not disappearing forever anyway—just for half a day or so.”
[Even if nothing happens, I don’t want to make Lucian anxious. Once he knows I might vanish, he’ll live in worry every single day. You wouldn’t want that either.]
“……Hmph. If you put it that way, I suppose.”
[Thank you for understanding. So, shall we begin?]
What they had to do was identify anomalies based on the contents of Lia’s Diary.
Lia thought it might be better to have someone else look at it rather than checking it herself repeatedly, so she’d handed it over to Caesar.
“Tch. Why do you curse about me so much? So this is how you’ve been talking about me all this time?”
Caesar was deeply offended by the uncensored words written in the Diary.
[Stop complaining and do your job properly.]
“Fine, fine. I’ll get to work, you little reptile gnat.”
Despite his grumbling, he soon focused intently. Time passed like that.
They found nothing particularly new—only confirmation of what they’d already discovered.
“It’s certain that the residents of this place disappeared while you were unconscious.”
[As I thought……]
The Diary recorded how Lia had witnessed someone vanish in a single day, decided they had died a few days later, and tidied away their belongings.
Thinking back on it now, it seemed deeply suspicious, yet at the time Lia had accepted their disappearance as death without question. What could the reason possibly be?
“Let’s see. Your Diary mentions five people in total. Do you remember who they were?”
[Of course I do. They were all oddballs.]
They had all been masters in their respective fields. Yet for some reason, they’d entered the Mansion to live here, then vanished overnight.
“I checked the dates when these people first arrived at the Mansion, and none of them stayed longer than ten years.”
[What? Really?]
“Yeah. Between a minimum of three years and a maximum of nine. Every single one of them vanished in a year ending in ‘7’.”
[……]
“And look here. This passage bothers me in particular. What do you think?”
Lia examined the passage Caesar had indicated—the very next day after the fourth resident disappeared.
Lia had cleaned out his room, believing he was dead.

……The bedding was in disarray, things scattered haphazardly as though swept away by an arm.
Like someone thrashing about before death.
Just like someone making their final desperate struggle.
……The one thing was that Lia, being meticulous about cleanliness, had found it odd.

“This wasn’t just a disappearance. He was abducted.”
[……Good heavens.]
“I don’t think there was a violent struggle where he fell. At minimum, he was either abducted or murdered. What do you think?”
[L-let’s check the others too.]
They verified the remaining four residents as well, but found nothing as distinctive as the first case.
“The others probably didn’t know they were being targeted for abduction or death, but this person—he knew someone was after him. Does anything about this person stand out in your memory?”
[……He was the only one with any combat ability. The Weapon Master. All the Weapons in the Training Ground Storage belonged to him.]
“Oh, is that so?”
[He never carried Weapons inside the Mansion. Though during his first year here, he at least carried a short blade.]
Once he realized there were no threats within the Mansion, he began leaving his Weapons one by one in the Training Ground and Storage.
Though he harbored a yearning for martial pursuit, as the years went by, he seemed to give up, and gradually he stopped drawing Weapons at all.
[He wasn’t the sort to go down easily.]
It had been more than a hundred years since then, so her memories were hazy.
“……You said you’d kept the belongings of these people?”
[Huh? Oh yes, that’s right.]
“Did any of them have a Diary?”
It was an idea that had never occurred to her. Lia racked her mind quickly.
[Not everyone kept one, but……two—no, three of them did!]
“Perfect. Let’s go look those over.”
Lia went to the Storage and retrieved their Diaries.
As they leafed through them, they discovered something astonishing.
“They were essentially sent into Exile.”
[They’d fallen out of the Emperor’s favor. From what I can see, they were falsely accused and then punished……]
“Why send them into Exile here instead of to a prison?”
No matter how she thought about it, something felt wrong. If they’d been falsely accused to this degree, someone would have wanted them eliminated immediately—yet the punishment seemed far too lenient.
Supplies were delivered to them regularly, according to the records. They were merely severed from society; there was no harsher penalty written anywhere.
“This Weapon Master or whoever—he says his Aura was sealed.”
[The others didn’t have combat abilities, so it doesn’t seem like they were placed under restrictions to the same degree……]
Perhaps he gave up because his Aura was sealed.
She suddenly recalled the Weapon Master, gazing sadly at his Weapons.
“Lia, look at this.”
Caesar called her over as he reviewed the Weapon Master’s Diary.
“He was writing in his Diary when he was attacked.”
The final entry cut off mid-sentence. It simply stopped, and there was this passage written:

It can’t be some great thief trying to rob a property owned by the Emperor—clearly, someone sent them here on purpose.
Dammit, there’s strange smoke coming i
……The entry ended there. Seeing smoke mentioned, it was certain that someone had released smoke to incapacitate or kill him.

“This is problematic.”

Lia and Caesar’s eyes met.
“The timing is all different, but they all vanished in a Year Ending in 7. This means it was planned.”
[Moreover, it seems like they had considerable combat ability. Otherwise, they couldn’t have abducted the Weapon Master.]
“When was the last resident before Lucian?”
[……Around fifty years ago.]
“That person vanished overnight too.”
Even if it had been just one or two people, it might have been coincidence. But all the residents experienced the same thing and disappeared.
Between each incident, there were gaps of at least twenty to fifty years or more.
That span of time was enough for generations of humans to turn over many times, yet they’d all experienced the same event. It gave her chills.
“Over two hundred years. This isn’t the work of an individual—it’s an organization passing down a legacy.”
Caesar came to the same conclusion as Lia, having felt the same wrongness.
“The common thread among these people is that they were falsely accused and sent here into Exile. From that, we can infer two possibilities.”
One: the Imperial Family is behind it. Two: Lucian might be able to escape this chain of abductions.
[Since the Imperial Family sent all these residents here, they’re the ones who abducted and killed them?]
“That’s the most logical conclusion, isn’t it?”
[Then why would Lucian escape this? He wasn’t falsely accused and exiled, so……?]
“Exactly. Besides, no matter how abandoned Lucian is, he’s still the Crown Prince. You can’t just abduct or kill someone like that, even if few people know of his existence.”
[The way they sent all these residents here—the Exile orders came from the Imperial Family, and the way Lucian was sent here on the pretext of a Ghost Wedding—there’s something subtly similar about it……]
“Given that Lucian has survived this long, I’d say the Imperial Family never intended to kill him in the first place.”
[Huh? How can you be so certain?]
“Because Lucian is the Crown Prince’s twin brother.”
When she asked what that had to do with anything, Caesar explained what he’d learned about the Twin Legend.
“There’s a deeply negative perception of twins in the Empire. When twins are born, a household is destroyed, calamity befalls the family, and the vital essence that should go to one is divided into two—so one twin must absolutely be killed.”
[What? That can’t be! There’s no way!]
“It’s become almost common knowledge. And usually, it’s the younger twin who’s killed. But look at Lucian now. He’s alive and well.”
It was odd from the start that the Crown Prince had been raised in isolation, practically abandoned. But she never imagined such a reason lay beneath it.
[……So the Imperial Family never intended to kill Lucian from the beginning?]
“Exactly. No matter how the Imperial Family rules, if the Crown Prince’s twin status became known, there’d be plenty of people who’d view it as ill-omened. Yet they deliberately hid his existence while raising him, and in the end, didn’t kill him—they sent him here instead.”
[Perhaps sending him to this place was meant to keep him alive.]
“Though they certainly treated him as if they couldn’t care less whether he lived or died.”
[……Still, whether Lucian is truly safe is uncertain. If he gets abducted the same way these residents were, what then?]
“So what do you want to do? Send him away from here?”
[That’s……]
“Don’t worry. Trust me. I’ll uncover your secrets and keep Lucian safe.”
If Caesar said it so firmly, Lia had no choice but to trust him.
She hardened her expression and mentally organized everything they’d learned so far.
[……Caesar, this might be connected to the Basement.]
After careful thought, Lia finally spoke the words she’d been holding back.
[In the three hundred years I’ve lived here, I thought I knew everything about the Mansion. But there’s one thing I’ve never understood—just like these incidents. And that’s the Basement.]
“……Now that you mention it, that is strange. Maybe the ones who abducted these residents came through the underground. There was a large tunnel in the Basement.”
[Do you know where it leads?]
“No. I never checked. But it looked like a tunnel connected to somewhere, like an old mine. And……”
Caesar grabbed his temples, which throbbed with dull pain. What happened in the Basement two years ago had left him traumatized.
But Caesar deliberately suppressed it, barely recalling what he’d seen just before he collapsed.
“A Magic Circle drawn on the floor and the door. They were definitely synchronized Magic Circles. Most likely……the kind that absorbs a Sacrifice offered on one side and transfers it to the other.”
[Are you certain?]
“99% certain.”
No matter how much he hated remembering that day, he hadn’t forgotten the Magic Circle.
To be more certain, he’d have to go down into the Basement and verify it himself……
“But there’s no guarantee the same thing won’t happen again.”
[I won’t ask you to do that. I don’t want to see you hurt.]
Caesar smiled bitterly and thanked her for understanding.
Thanks to him, Lia could learn about the parts she hadn’t previously understood, and the new truths she’d discovered.
[The disappeared residents might have been offered as Sacrifices to that Magic Circle.]
“Isn’t that a bit of a leap?”
[No, think about it. Last time you recovered blood particles from the Magic Circle—you said they came from multiple people. And they were all from different time periods.]
Perhaps there were far more victims than just the residents of this place.
If Caesar was right about the Magic Circle being created to offer Sacrifices, then the toll could be staggering.
[Disgusting bastards. What in the world are they doing in my Mansion?]
“A door with a matching Magic Circle. There’s something on the other side that they’re maintaining. Maybe I should go down there……”
[Caesar.]
Caesar looked at her.
[Don’t do anything dangerous. What I want is everyone’s safety. I’m not after uncovering secrets at the cost of risking ourselves.]
“……All right. I won’t then.”
[I’ve learned far more thinking this through with you than I would have alone. The things we need to be most careful about now are……]
“Any potential threat to Lucian and the Basement.”
[Yes. And while I’m gone, could you observe if anything changes? You’re a great dragon, after all—you’re more than capable.]
Caesar grinned with satisfaction, crossing his arms proudly.
“Of course! After all, I am the genius of the century! The magnificent Red Dragon Caesar!”
Lia and Caesar exchanged knowing glances and broke into grins.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————