The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 110

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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 110
“No, no, no!”
Edward Dianitas, the boy, shrieked.
Albus glanced at his younger brother once, then slowly approached his own body—whether alive or dead, he couldn’t say.
Looking down at himself this way, he found the sight hideously ugly; he rubbed his rigid, ceramic-like body with the palm of his hand.
This body of porcelain, which could neither smell nor feel to the touch, could perceive only the faintest warmth radiating from another being.
“Does it mean death when the flesh entirely crumbles away?”
Albus muttered softly, staring at his wretched, grotesque form.
“Who knows.”
Rozelin shrugged.
She had no way of knowing what would become of a body blessed—or cursed—with the Immortality Abyss as time wore on.
Only…
“Living like this forever means you’ll lose the body to return to forever.”
Rozelin, having answered, glanced at the two boys and opened her mouth.
“That’s why I’m making you this proposal.”
She rolled the Yellow Stone slowly across the palm of her hand and spoke.
“If you’ll cooperate with me, I can heal this body and save your lives.”
What was the immediate problem was the rotting organs and flesh that had decomposed over time and could no longer hold.
The Immortality Abyss seemed to have no side effects on the one who wielded it, but when used on others, this is what happened—or perhaps this was always what had to happen.
Or perhaps this was what was always meant to occur.
“I only…”
“Didn’t want to be left alone?”
Immortality is only immortal unto oneself.
In the rehabilitation records Rozelin had seen, there remained traces of Edward’s Abyss.
It was an ability that could not be hidden, no matter how hard one tried.
The holder of the Immortality Abyss possessed healing power befitting their name, but those who had received such an ability were not among them.
What was a life that could not die, even in fire?
Albus had become an experimental subject but had not died.
And so he had become the sole specimen to emerge alive from a burning kiln.
Just as the mad scientist who managed this Estate had wished.
That is why Albus now resembled a gnarled, ancient tree with hardened eyes and skin melted away into a rigid shell.
What had been a mercy was the fact that Albus possessed an Abyss.
He had awakened under extreme duress.
To survive, he had forced his soul into a ceramic doll, and thus he had become a living puppet.
Albus raised his head in silence.
It had been agonizing.
He had wanted only to die.
But he could not die.
Even as his entire body burned away, his mind remained vivid.
Desperate to live, he had crammed his soul into ceramic, and upon his emergence, he had slain the monster that reigned like a tyrant over the small Estate.
When he learned that the reason he could not die was his younger brother, rage had surged—yet he could not kill him.
What could he say to a brother who clung to a burning ceramic doll and spoke of being fortunate to have an older sibling who lived?
And so they had lived.
Using their power, they had spawned creatures called Monsters around the forest’s edge, and had personally gathered the souls of dying children to transfer them into ceramic dolls.
What was born could never become a proper living being, so they were called Monsters, and the forest was stained throughout with murk.
In time, as years passed, this Estate seemed to be forgotten—no one came to visit.
Only occasionally, very occasionally, did there come wanderers who had heard of the legend of “Immortality” from somewhere.
“What do you want?”
“Brother! You believe that nonsense? It’s all to use us! They all just want to extract something from us…!”
And they all, without exception, had wanted to become immortal.
So the boy had granted them immortality as they wished, and then had locked them away in iron cages.
Just as countless others had done to them in their childhood.
“I should introduce myself properly. I am Rozelin Bellion, from the Bellion ducal house.”
She turned her body slowly, licking her lips at a leisurely pace.
“This forest is registered as private property of the ducal house, and I want to take the resources that grow here.”
Rozelin spoke honestly.
As the forest had not known the touch of human feet for such a long time, it held quite considerable resources.
Recalling the many resources that had emerged from this place after these two children were executed, she could not afford to overlook them.
“I knew it…!”
Edward’s eyes flashed sharp as a blade, as if he had grasped some crucial piece of evidence.
Rozelin fixed her gaze on Albus as she spoke.
“So I’d like the monsters in this forest to harbor no ill will toward Bellion’s people.”
Rozelin smiled with ease as she said this.
“Of course, anyone else who tries to trespass here can be dealt with however you see fit.”
Rozelin spoke with unhurried confidence.
“Ah, and if you could periodically threaten the surrounding territories with monsters, that would be nice too.”
There were protection fees she hadn’t yet collected, after all.
“……Wait, surely you don’t mean us, do you……? Hold on! You don’t mind?”
The blonde boy, Edward, cried out in confusion, and Rozelin nodded brightly in response.
“Right. You can let this place keep being seen as a monster forest going forward.”
Edward’s lips trembled at Rozelin’s words, which were not what he’d expected.
His eyes widened, and he pointed an accusing finger at her again.
“Then that’s it, isn’t it? You’re trying to chase us out?”
“No.”
Rozelin shook her head.
“You can stay here and live as you wish while working as caretakers. Of course, since it would be actual employment, this kind of loose operation wouldn’t do, but I’ll pay you handsomely.”
If you wanted to leave, you could go.
When Rozelin added this further remark, the group fell silent.
“However, I’d like you to release the people inside the Estate. And ask the children what they want—free those who wish to go as well.”
“Release them? Of course they’d all want to stay here! They died unfairly! And why should those others be released anyway? After all……!”
“Because without your Abyss, they would have already died long ago.”
Rozelin’s brief words wrapped the room in silence.
“……If they were healed, could they return to my body again?”
“I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know.”
Rozelin shrugged.
She knew the Chil-yo Stone was an orb of remarkable power, but she couldn’t be certain whether it could mend wounds and flesh to this degree.
“……If I could live in my own body again…….”
Albus’s blue eyes moved slowly, settling on Edward.
“I want to do that. Live in my own body, live only for my natural lifespan, and die that way.”
“…….”
“Even if that were only a single day.”
“……Brother!”
At Albus’s resolute words, Edward’s eyes widened sharply.
The boy stared at Albus with wavering eyes.
“But we’re illegitimate children! Even if we left, no one would welcome us. An illegitimate child can never be accepted anywhere, after all…….”
“The Imperial family learns quite interesting stories in history lessons.”
Arma interjected into the conversation.
“What are you suddenly…….”
Edward glared at Arma with displeasure. Regardless, Arma readily opened his mouth.
“The fifteenth Emperor of the Empire was, in common parlance, an illegitimate child.”
At the measured tone of his voice, Edward and Albus turned their heads.
Arma, standing beside Rozelin, narrowed his brow slightly before continuing.
“Moreover, he was an illegitimate child of commoner birth. Yet his abilities were so extraordinary that no one dared petition to make anyone else Crown Prince in his stead.”
Arma opened his mouth again, gazing into eyes the same color as his own.
“However, the opposition from the thirteenth Emperor, who came two generations before, was fierce…….”
The moment their father, the thirteenth Emperor, was mentioned, both boys’ eyes darkened in an instant.
“And so the fifteenth Emperor said he was fed up with it all—Crown Prince this, that—and abandoned the throne, fleeing the Imperial Capital…….”
As the two boys swallowed hard, Arma smiled faintly before deliberately opening his mouth once more.

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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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