The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 109

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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 109
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“……What the hell, get out!”
Bang-crash-clatter!
The moment the door swung open, a cascade of clutter flew straight at them, and Arma’s eyes narrowed sharply as he drew his blade.
In the same breath, Rozelin ducked nimbly beneath the flying debris and slipped into the room with casual grace, retreating to safe ground.
Over Arma’s head, as he swung his sword with flourish, the shattered remains of the objects rained down in a cascade.
Rozelin watched him with a look of mild disappointment.
“If you break things above your head, gravity pulls them straight down, you know.”
“……Yes. My thinking was careless.”
Arma sheathed his blade with visible embarrassment, responding to her observation.
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“I’ve got nothing to say, so get lost.”
“You’ve got a harsh mouth for someone with parents.”
“Take your pretend games outside and play with the other kids.”
Facing the growling boy, Rozelin shrugged and settled into a chair at the tea table.
“I’d prefer a floral tea.”
The golden-haired boy’s eyes hardened as he watched Rozelin sit down brazenly at the table set amid the wreckage of the room.
“Do you have a death wish?”
“Well, I’m scheduled to die soon anyway.”
When Rozelin nodded and acquiesced so readily, the blonde boy’s expression crumpled in confusion.
“I’ve told you a thousand times — you’re not leaving this Mansion!”
“How long are you planning to keep me here?”
The blonde boy faltered at Rozelin’s question.
Clutching his head in both hands, the boy stared at her with an ominous gaze.
“The dead should be let go.”
People act, and because they act, they regret. Because they regret, attachment lingers.
Yes, attachment always finds a way to take root.
Rozelin, too, was an ordinary human who couldn’t escape that regret and attachment.
Rozelin closed her eyes slowly, then opened them.
“I thought it would be enough if you were happy.”
Once, Rozelin had read that reform record and deemed the boy’s anger justified.
She had believed that if the boy could remain happy in ignorance, that would suffice.
So instead of dissuading him that day, she had turned away and left the Mansion — and the consequence was the boy’s neck beneath the guillotine’s blade.
Even with the Immortal Abyss, if one is bound by an Abyss restraint collar, one is nothing but an ordinary human.
“But I don’t think that’s true anymore.”
“What kind of nonsense have you been spouting this whole time! Brother, throw this bastard out!”
Rozelin blinked.
“Ah, so he’s the older one?”
Her finger pointed toward the dark-haired boy whose head came just slightly lower, then withdrew uncertainly and settled back on the blonde.
“You got a problem with that?!”
“No. Just thinking how terrifying prejudice can be.”
“That IS having a problem with it!”
At the sharp outburst, Rozelin merely shrugged.
“Ed.”
At Rozelin’s call, the boy’s eyes widened.
“The dead don’t come back.”
“…….”
“No matter how much you two use your abilities to trap children’s souls and seek revenge in this cramped Mansion…….”
Rozelin rose slowly from her seat.
A vast and magnificent room.
Deep within that room, now a complete disaster, stood another door.
It looked like any other doorway. Rozelin walked toward the entrance beside the bed.
“……What are you doing?”
Sometimes one wonders.
If only those whose threads are wound with one’s own could find happiness by life’s midpoint.
Even if birth was misfortune, if only some happiness had graced their years.
But the world is not a story in a book, and life is not fair.
Some sorrows, in the end, simply end in sorrow.
“Don’t.”
At the voice from behind, Rozelin withdrew a yellow stone from the Bracelet on her wrist.
Arma would be guarding her back anyway, and those boys wouldn’t stand a chance against him.
“Don’t do it!”
Crackle!
As Rozelin stepped forward, something dark and murky began to move as if to threaten her.
The black-haired boy merely stared at Rozelin, neither stopping her nor moving himself.
The moment the murk threatened to engulf her, light seeped from the yellow stone, wrapped around her body, and purified the darkness.
‘The yellow stone from the Chilyo Stone carries the power of purification and healing, or so I’ve heard…….’
The ability to drive out wickedness and heal others.
The moment Rozelin’s hand touched the door, its blackened color returned to normal in an instant.
It was a very old wooden door, weathered and decrepit, looking as though it might collapse at any moment.
An incongruous door that clashed with the ornate room.
In truth, it wasn’t the door that was out of place.
Rather, if anything was normal, it was this.
‘For a Mansion that’s been standing for hundreds of years, it’s stranger that this part remains so intact.’
Rozelin turned the doorknob with a soft click and opened the door.
“Rozelin, this place…….”
The dark room, lit only by a flickering candle, admitted not a single ray of sunlight, and reeked of rotting decay.
“In legend, Immortality is regarded as something quite…… extraordinarily grand, isn’t it.”
She spoke in a low, whispered voice.
“Get out! Don’t go in there without permission! I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!!”
The panicked voice lurched forward with bared teeth in an instant, but Rozelin didn’t look back.
Arma subdued the charging boy with one arm and shoved him backward.
Rozelin strode into the room and yanked open the curtains that hung shut.
Sunlight poured into the room.
“……This is.”
As light filled the room, a ghastly scene lay bare.
Emaciated and withered, something lay there—barely more than bone wrapped in skin.
Had the chest not risen and fallen in the faintest motion, it would have been no stretch to call it a mummy.
The skin was as dark and mottled as deadwood, shriveled and dried into countless wrinkles.
Or was it simply dried?
No—it was more accurate to say it had once melted, then solidified again.
The sight was that grotesque.
There was no boundary between eyelid and eye; the mouth had partially dissolved; the nostrils were barely visible.
With each breath, a stench like rotted animal entrails wafted forth.
“Leave.”
The golden-haired boy’s voice trembled.
“Get out…….”
Though the room appeared ornate, the air around Rozelin emitted a dangerous, creaking sound as though it might shatter at any moment.
“There is no eternal Agelessness, is there.”
Rozelin looked down at the man who resembled a dried branch, then slowly turned her head.
“Isn’t that right, Albus.”
The black-haired boy blinked once, then slowly met Rozelin’s gaze.
His smile, lingering at the corners of his mouth, was somehow subtle.
“……Is that boy…… this old man?”
An elder who lived as though dead.
‘Or is he even an elder?’
His body was the size of a small child.
Only the skin—whether of stone or flesh or hide, she couldn’t tell—hung shriveled like cooled lava that had run liquid, lending him an aged appearance.
Rozelin nodded slowly.
He had become a being that could neither die nor live, trapped by the Immortal Abyss.
However, he was fortunate enough to possess the Soul-Manipulating Abyss.
That was how Albus could abandon his body and act through a Pottery Doll.
But his actual body was like this.
“……Can a person even live in such a state?”
Arma looked down at the nearly-dead figure and asked.
“Immortality is not Agelessness, just as omniscience is not omnipotence…….”
“……So he only aged while unable to die.”
Arma understood Rozelin’s meaning at once.
“No, that’s wrong! I’m alive and well, see.”
“Can you truly call that living?”
The boy wanted to be with his brother, who shared his fate.
His brother was the only one who understood his bleak existence, his companion in all things, family more precious than anyone else—and so the boy yearned to remain at his side.
“He should have died long ago.”
Even if that meant stepping into a roaring furnace and perishing in the flames.
“…He’s alive. He is alive.”
“Only because your Abyss keeps him that way.”
At Rozelin’s flat words, the boy’s eyes snapped open.
“Inside the Toy House you made.”
Rozelin added quietly.

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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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