The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 123

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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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Side Story 3 — Several Years Later
A few years had passed.
Rozelin tilted her head back blankly.
A plume of white breath rose from her lips.
Winter had returned once more, harsh and unforgiving. She had saved enough money that she didn’t suffer from any real scarcity of food, but the channels through which she’d once obtained medicine had dried up.
She could still find a way to get it, but she’d chosen not to. Capture was breathing down her neck anyway, and Rozelin no longer found much meaning in living.
Fleeing constantly—well, even that had its limits. Beyond a certain point, she couldn’t help but wonder what the point was anymore.
If she wanted to, she could slip across the Border. But word had it that Garren Wilbred was on her heels.
“Tch. That old codger has nothing better to do.”
After months of wandering, Rozelin’s speech had grown rougher. She clicked her tongue, clearly displeased.
Garren didn’t seem to age, and she couldn’t fathom what he was thinking.
There had been rumors that after the Plague took his wife, he’d shut himself away from the world.
Yet when he’d helped her that one time, he didn’t look happy about it.
Garren Wilbred wasn’t someone with whom she shared any real connection. If anything, their paths had tangled only after she fled her home.
She’d sold information about the Wilbred Family, and when he tracked her down, he’d asked with a grin whether she’d really done it—his infuriating face still fresh in her memory.
Not that she could do anything about having already sold what she’d sold.
She’d expected some kind of retaliation, but he’d simply asked a few oddly-phrased questions with an amused expression, then left.
After that, he’d appear periodically, asking pointless questions about who else she’d sold information to, then vanish just as suddenly.
Even when she moved without telling a soul, he’d hunt her down as if by magic.
‘…Strange old man.’
She’d thought the Third Imperial Prince was leaking her location. That wasn’t it either.
It was Garren Wilbred who’d informed her that the Third Imperial Prince was dead. And later, when she’d fled in panic, it was Garren Wilbred who’d sheltered her.
She had no idea why.
By the time she’d sorted through her thoughts and left that house, Rozelin had become a Royal Regicide—someone who’d seduced and murdered the Third Imperial Prince. The perpetrator had confessed to killing royalty, or so the story went.
It was a clear trap, but Rozelin had no way out of it.
Her hands and feet had already been bound; there was no one to help her.
On a stage where the ending was already written, endless flight was all Rozelin could do.
And she fled well.
No one would have believed a noblewoman could evade the manhunt so skillfully, yet she’d managed to hide for half a year. Her success was so complete that the Crown Prince himself had ordered Marquis Garren Wilbred to bring her in personally.
But even Rozelin’s luck was running out. She could still flee, but her will to continue had reached its limit. There was no longer any reason or meaning to run.
‘What’s the point of running anymore?’
Having survived this long, Rozelin didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life.
There was no one left to show that she was doing well.
Her father was dead. Her grandfather was gone. Her uncles were gone.
What remained…?
Nothing.
“Even the Third Imperial Prince…”
Nothing.
They were all dead.
No one was left.
“Look at me, Your Highness.”
Rozelin stumbled into the empty Hut, murmuring absently.
By sheer luck, the market had opened early that day, so she’d pulled her robe low and bought stew ingredients. A pot of roughly chopped vegetables and meat sat bubbling over the fire.
“You’re gone, and I’m still alive.”
Rozelin stirred the stew slowly, speaking in a hollow voice.
She’d only half-watched someone else cook once, then copied what she’d seen. The result was something that tasted like neither one thing nor another—just a vaguely meaty broth.
She clicked her tongue softly and sighed.
She wasn’t picky about food, so she had no real complaints. But the shabby nature of all this—it sat wrong with her.
“Eating this won’t bring anything back. What am I even doing?”
Rozelin added more salt at random and turned up the flame. Cooking remained one of her weaknesses.
“Damn that Garren.”
She clicked her tongue again.
After leaving the Duchy and parting from Arma, she’d drifted from place to place and picked up nothing but the harsh dialect of the lower classes.
Just as Devon Bellion, the Family Head of the Duchy, had a gift for learning the speech of commoners, so too did Rozelin.
‘Driving people around like cattle all the way to the Northern Region.’
She cursed under her breath.
He seemed to be herding her deliberately, so she’d let herself be driven, but sometimes she wondered if she should have just let herself be caught halfway.
“Still, I got the Medicine Bottles out of it.”
The Empire she’d seen while being chased this far was a shambles now.
War and the emergence of Demon Beasts had devastated crops and destroyed public morale. On top of that, rumors had begun circulating that a Criminal Organization had been causing trouble, with whispers that its leadership had recently changed hands.
The Emperor was dead, and the Royal Regicide remained at large, still wandering beyond reach. This was why the Crown Prince had not yet ascended to the throne.
He meant to capture and execute Rozelin, the Royal Regicide, consolidate the people’s loyalty in one stroke, and only then claim the crown.
Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if Rozelin herself helped cement that loyalty……but.
‘Why must it be the Third Imperial Prince’s regicide, of all things?’
Rozelin’s brow furrowed.
Had it been the Second Imperial Prince’s regicide, she might have consented willingly. But no matter what, she did not wish to remain branded as the killer of the Third Imperial Prince—a man to whom she had been betrothed for over ten years.
Having barely finished two bowls of the stew from a single pot, Rozelin eventually set down her dish, her expression still twisted in displeasure.
She clicked her tongue in irritation and rubbed her eye sockets.
“…….”
Rozelin drew a small handkerchief from her breast.
It was not truly a handkerchief. She had merely cut a blanket into something the size of one.
The following year, Arma actually bought her a woolen blanket, and the year after that, he did not buy another. There was no reason to.
Rozelin tilted her head slowly.
“If I were to disappear, what do you think it would be like?”
Rozelin lay back on the mat-covered floor and blinked slowly.
What would it be like if I disappeared?
‘How was it, then?’
At first, I simply thought: she is gone. When the time came for her return, I waited as usual. When the appointed hour neared, I grew restless, pacing about…….
Long past the time she should have arrived, and she was not beside me…….
Only then, it seemed, did something feel wrong. My heart began to race.
“Rozelin…… would you not live well enough on your own, even without me?”
Rozelin smiled quietly and retrieved a medicine bottle she had set aside on one shelf—a remedy that stopped wounds from bleeding.
Its effects were meant to take hold some seven to ten days hence.
“I lived well.”
Rozelin answered softly.
I ate properly, and for a time, I took my medicine faithfully. There was nothing particularly different from before.
I stayed within the hut when the Third Imperial Prince would normally arrive, venturing nowhere, but aside from that, nothing had truly changed.
Still two dishes set upon the table. Still meals prepared for two.
Only at some point did I realize that the food left on the other plate was an emotion. It took time—swallowing it, adjusting to portions for one—before that shift was complete.
Yes, Rozelin had lived well. Which is why now, Rozelin wanted to die.
Because she had lived well.
She wanted to die well.
Whether at the hands of Garren Wilbred, or some soldier, or provoking anyone into killing her during transport or in a cell—this was how Rozelin imagined a good death.
At the very least, she did not wish to die on the gallows, condemned for the murder of the Third Imperial Prince. That was the worst death she could conceive.
Rather remain the world’s most notorious villainess than meet such an end.
Thud-thud.
At the sound of footsteps outside, Rozelin drained the medicine in her palm and rose to her feet.
She smiled, as she always did.
Her crimson lips curved into a perfect arc.
“Garren, have you grown old in your dotage……? Is following after me truly taking you this long?”
She spoke as she stepped toward the door and passed through it.
That day, Rozelin Bellion—the murderer of the Third Imperial Prince who had eluded capture for more than half a year and set the Empire ablaze with scandal—was arrested by Marquis Garren Wilbred, an announcement released in an extra edition across the realm.

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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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