The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 105

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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 105
In truth, Rozelin had once stumbled into this forest by accident, back when she was fleeing under a bounty on her head.
“Come play with us! Please play with us!”
“Pretty sister, let’s play a game together!”
She had chanced upon this Estate, glimpsed the children living here, and played games with them.
And on the day she left, she happened to see the King of Marlux arriving at this place.
But Rozelin, unwilling to be drawn into needless complications, had turned a blind eye despite knowing of his visit.
Perhaps it was all a convergence of coincidence upon coincidence upon coincidence.
The King of Marlux should have discovered this place only years later by the natural course of things.
But Rozelin had destroyed everything that ought to have unfolded as it should.
So everything had happened far too quickly, and before anything could properly take root, it all withered away.
That was why Rozelin had come here sooner than before.
Because the King of Marlux would use the children and demon beasts of this place to plunge the Empire into chaos and make them all criminals.
“Mother!”
From the wide-open Estate door, children came running and clung to Rozelin’s legs.
“……This is……”
Arma’s grip tightened around the hand that held his.
The children who emerged from the open Estate were not a mere handful.
His shock at their number—easily a dozen or more—lasted only a moment.
In fact, calling them “children” was itself somewhat problematic.
Their forms were oddly grotesque.
Each of the children lacked some part of their body.
Some had no eyes, others had no skin, or else their skin bore cracks like parched earth, or they were missing fingers.
Yet if one asked whether their appearance was horrifying, the answer was complicated.
The children resembled……
Yes, they looked just like ceramic dolls.
Where eyes were absent, only the ceramic itself was chipped; where ears or fingers were missing, merely the glass in those places had fractured.
No blood flowed. No veins showed.
Their insides were hollow, as any ceramic doll’s would be.
Well-fired ceramic dolls bearing breaks and cracks presented an uncanny sight indeed.
“Mother, thank you for coming all this way. Please, come closer.”
The children gestured from where they stood at the Estate door.
They could not step outside, and she gazed at them for a long moment, her expression unreadable.
Just as Rozelin turned toward the children with an impassive face, Arma pulled her back slightly.
“Rozelin, this is dangerous.”
“……Is a father preventing his wife and children from meeting really a good thing?”
“That’s right, it’s weird. Should we replace our father? That older brother must be a bad one. He won’t let us see you and our mother.”
The eyes of the dolls—no, the children—began to glow a vivid red. The palpable malevolence radiating from them made Arma’s brow furrow.
Arma’s hand moved instinctively to the sword hilt at his waist.
As Black Darkness began to ripple around him, Rozelin seized his wrist and pulled.
“No.”
Rozelin shook her head.
“Rozelin, this place is of unknown nature. I understand you know far more of it than I do, but I cannot allow you to be endangered like——”
“Arma, this is not a place that can be solved by killing something.”
Rozelin said nothing more, only gripped his hand firmly as she spoke.
Arma gazed down at his own hand, held tight in her grasp, then exhaled a short breath.
“……This is not a wise choice.”
“It’s fine. If things go wrong, you’ll protect me.”
“That much is……a given, of course.”
At Arma’s assurance, Rozelin nodded and approached the children.
The moment Arma removed his hand from his sword, the children’s expressions eased slightly.
Yet wariness still lingered in their faces, so Rozelin opened her mouth.
“Your mother and father had a fight, but we made up.”
“Ah, father……?”
At the word that fell from Rozelin’s lips, Arma’s eyes widened.
Watching Arma’s flustered mouth gape and close, the children burst into bright laughter.
Color bloomed in the children’s cheeks.
“Father’s embarrassed!”
“What is it, then?”
“So you and mother had a fight. But still, you can’t keep us from seeing our mother!”
When Arma looked at the children with a reluctant expression, Rozelin jabbed him sharply in the ribs.
“Arma.”
“Ah, yes.”
Reading her cue, he turned his gaze toward the children, who appeared to be made of ceramic, and nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
At Arma’s apology, the children broke into wide smiles.
Their faces, being ceramic, hadn’t changed expression at all—but you could hear the joy in their voices.
“Yes! That’s okay. Please come read us a fairy tale!”
“I want to play with blocks!”
“Oh, I want a lullaby!”
Rozelin and Arma were drawn into the Estate by the children, moving slowly inside.
As Arma entered, he widened his eyes slightly, startled by how much larger the Estate was than he’d expected.
From outside it had looked gloomy, yet vaguely antiquated; stepping in, however, it revealed itself to be something altogether different—less a grand house than some sort of detention facility.
“Mom, Dad! This way!”
Beneath an ornate chandelier, iron cages lined the side of a long central staircase.
The sight of children napping or reading inside those cages was genuinely unsettling.
Strangely, these moving ceramic dolls seemed content to be inside them.
“Rozelin, what is this?”
“The Empire’s history is quite long. It easily exceeds a thousand years.”
At Rozelin’s words, Arma hesitated, then slowly nodded.
“Just under seventeen hundred years, to be precise.”
“There was an emperor in the past. This emperor took immense pride in his legitimate bloodline.”
Following the children, Rozelin spoke quietly.
“He despised and loathed anything that wasn’t of legitimate blood. In other words…”
Climbing to the Second Floor, Rozelin continued as she trailed behind the children.
“He absolutely hated illegitimate children.”
“Save me!!”
“Aaaahhh! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!!”
As they reached the Second Floor, numerous rooms lined both sides of the corridor, and from within them came an endless chorus of screams.
“Oh, it’s loud.”
“You children, you’re not being too loud, are you? Mom and Dad got startled.”
“I’ll make them quiet right now!”
“Me too!”
“Me too, me too!”
The children who had been following scattered one by one, each darting into a different room and vanishing.
Arma’s eyes widened slightly at the sight inside an open doorway.
There were living people within.
Bound like beasts, their limbs twisted in grotesque and broken configurations.
“Mom! This way!”
A gleeful child approached Rozelin, seizing her hand and pulling her along.
Arma jerked his hand back reflexively, but Rozelin caught his wrist and gently placed his hand on the child’s head instead.
“Rozelin?”
The child appeared cold and hard as a ceramic doll, yet his hair was soft and fluffy.
Rozelin kept hold of Arma’s hand and guided it, stroking the child’s head tenderly.
The child’s body had stiffened, but now his cheeks flushed pink.
“Hehe.”
At the sound of quiet laughter—as if delighted—Arma froze.
“This way!”
The child, his cheeks now flushed crimson, scampered down the corridor. When they arrived at their destination, Arma’s eyes went wide.

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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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