The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 107

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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 107
I have no idea how the King of Marlux managed to use these children.
But if I had to guess, he used either Hypnosis Abyss or some other Abyss technique.
“You said Mother would make me likeable! You said I’d be needed again! You promised I could see Mother again…… How could you lie to me like this?!”
Or perhaps he simply deceived them with some trivial lie.
Rozelin met the boy’s fierce gaze with an unmoved stare.
Sometimes the smallest words wrap around a person like warmth.
“You promised you’d come back for me when the time came……”
Rozelin watched the boy, who seemed caught in panic, muttering incoherently to himself.
“How much time has passed?”
At the boy’s chilling voice—like metal scraping against metal—Rozelin slowly turned her head.
“The last year I remember is Imperial Calendar 704. What year is it now?”
The black-haired boy stepped forward in front of her, shielding the blonde boy behind him, and asked with confidence.
“It is Imperial Calendar 1639.”
Since the Empire’s founding, that much time had passed. For them, nearly a thousand years had elapsed.
Within this sprawling yet claustrophobic Mansion, all that time had gone by.
They may not have noticed time passing at all, waiting endlessly in this place for someone to return.
And they would have forgotten even the flow of time itself.
……
The black-haired boy said nothing for a long moment, then turned his head toward Arma.
“What’s your name?”
Arma narrowed his brows as if displeased, yet opened his mouth readily enough.
“Arma Dianitas.”
The boy hesitated briefly, then nodded.
“For now, try to rest.”
After a long silence, he took the blonde boy’s hand and pulled him gently away.
As the two boys disappeared from the room, Rozelin finally exhaled the breath she had been holding tightly.
“Rozelin, I still don’t understand. That those children are even alive……”
Rozelin gazed at Arma for a moment, then turned to look down at the landscape visible beyond the window as she spoke.
“There are humans in this world who do not die.”
“Humans who don’t die?”
“Yes. That blonde boy has the Abyss of Immortality. It’s an Abyss that can only awaken through death.”
“That doesn’t make any sense……”
“And that black-haired boy has the Abyss of Life…… which means he can create life from his fingertips.”
In the past, when Rozelin had wandered into this Mansion, she had stayed nearly a month.
For Rozelin, it was a rare stretch of peaceful time without being hunted, so she had not been eager to leave quickly.
The children were innocently cruel, yet equally innocent in their hunger for human warmth.
“Then what are those chil……—I mean, what about them?”
“I already told you, they can create life.”
To work with life meant to breathe a soul into it.
“The basement of this Mansion was originally a workshop for making Ceramic Dolls.”
Rozelin added that there were quite a few Ceramic Dolls in the Basement.
“People of old were curious creatures. They imagine all sorts of bizarre things and then try to experiment.”
Rozelin spoke softly.
“An Illegitimate Child, after all, carries half the bloodline of that family.”
They hated Illegitimate Children walking around as proof of their bloodline.
In this detention facility, they had sought to educate and reform such Illegitimate Children, while simultaneously controlling them.
Rozelin came to understand why this Mansion had been built only after she left it.
Also, while she was here, she had seen a journal.
A Reformation Journal.
Beneath the text written as solemnly as if recording something monumental, what unfolded was content that turned one’s stomach inside out.
“The administrator who oversaw this facility at that time appears to have been quite an inhumane scientist……”
He grew angry sometimes.
Whenever he did, the man would stop by an armory or a miscellaneous shop selling blades, then return to this Mansion.
He wanted to create living dolls.
Living Ceramic Dolls.
Humans by nature produce no result when placed in fire except death, yet he believed that people could survive even within flames.
Or did he truly believe such a thing?
That people could survive in a kiln burning fiercely?
At times he thought he could change their eye color or hair color.
To ensure the illegitimate child did not exist as an illegitimate child, they attempted to change everything—the eyes she was born with, her hair color, even her bone structure.
A narrow iron cage in the Mansion served as one illegitimate child’s room, her home, and the only space where she could sit with her body at rest.
As she turned each page, the metallic smell of blood seemed to brush against her nostrils alongside the musty dust—as if the scent of blood not yet dry clung to the paper.
With each sheet she turned, beneath the handwriting brimming with superiority lay screams, layer upon layer.
All manner of experiments had been conducted to make her appear like someone else—changing her bone structure, altering her eye color.
To test the hypothesis that extreme stress turns hair completely white, they had kept her awake and locked her in a cage with starving beasts.
The more she read, the more her disgust mounted, and Rozelin’s expression darkened at the memory of those days.
In that moment, she stilled at the warmth of a hand touching the back of her own.
“Rozelin, you’re all right.”
At the sound of his voice, she slowly lifted her gaze.
“No matter what happens, I’ll be here beside you, so don’t worry.”
……
“If you’ll only allow me to be at your side, I’ll protect you without fail.”
Rozelin studied Arma for a long moment, then, uncharacteristically, let her eyes drift away before continuing her account.
As she recounted what she had seen in the Reformation Journal, Arma’s face grew increasingly taut.
“So… you’re saying all of this happened simply because the child born was an illegitimate child?”
Rozelin glanced at Arma, who had settled beside her by then, and nodded.
Even within hell, some lives continue.
There were certainly those marked from birth as bound for damnation.
Nearly a thousand years had passed, yet illegitimate children remained objects of reproach.
Though such things were rarely done so openly anymore, those who were still abandoned in secret, kept locked away, and subjected to scorn persisted.
“The ones who deserve reproach are the fools who misuse what’s between their legs,” Rozelin said, her brow furrowed.
Rozelin spoke with evident displeasure.
During the years when she was misunderstood to have a poor relationship with her father, the phrase she heard most often was “a child born outside”—born of another woman.
As if she, or anyone else, had chosen to be born outside their rightful place.
Could something spring from nothing?
And the conception of life was hardly a light thing.
“So you want to save these children?” Arma asked.
After a long silence, Rozelin finally spoke.
“The Monster Forest originally belonged to the Duchy anyway. I simply thought it would be good to manage it.”
At her deliberately brusque tone, delivered with a hint of awkwardness, Arma let out a low chuckle.
“You’re quite kind, Rozelin.”
Rozelin stiffened and began to protest, her expression sharpening, but Arma brought his lips to the back of her hand.
“You are kind.”
He spoke with certainty.
As if he had sensed the denial that was about to leave her lips.
“Someone unkind would never go so far out of their way for another’s sake.”
He moved carefully lower, massaging her swollen foot once before pressing his lips to her instep.
“I love you, Rozelin.”
……
At the sight of Arma holding her foot, looking up at her with a whisper on his lips, Rozelin silently raised her hand to cover her eyes.
The tips of her ears had flushed crimson.
“What should I do here?” Rozelin asked, drawing her hand across her face.
She opened her mouth to speak.
“I think it would help if you played the father well. We need them to understand we’re not their enemies.”
“I see……”
Arma rose from his seat and settled onto the bed beside her, draping one knee between her legs before bringing his face close to hers with a smile.
“You mean something like this?”
“Father, some cold water……”
“Gasp……!”
“Kyaaaaa!”
A flood of children came rushing in, covering their eyes with their hands while peering between their fingers at the two of them, shrieking.
……
Arma’s face had turned a deep crimson.

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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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