The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 148

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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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Part 2, Episode 18
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“Is this the place?”
Rozelin, whose short stature prevented her from wearing a sword at her hip, tilted her head as she adjusted the blade strapped across her back.
She had come today to execute the first part of the plan.
She’d extracted the information from Garren Wilbred through relentless questioning, and stolen the sword from his warehouse.
Well, she’d taken it and then announced it openly, so it probably didn’t count as theft.
“Miss, that direction is dangerous.”
As I approached the mountain’s cliff face, the knights gasped in alarm.
“It’s fine.”
“Miss, that way is also dangerous—”
Everywhere I went, everything was supposedly dangerous!
When Rozelin fixed them with a sharp, cutting glare, the knights fell silent.
It had been two months since Rozelin arrived at the capital.
She had learned swordplay from Garren Wilbred as promised. What was remarkable was that she, who had never so much as held a blade before, wielded the weapon as naturally as if she had been born alongside it—as though the sword were an extension of her own body.
Rozelin had soon come to realize this was due to Sansar’s Blessing.
At the same time, anyone who crossed blades with her could not help but recognize it: the inhuman strength flowing through Rozelin.
“Here it is.”
The child stopped in her tracks, studied the information and map she’d obtained from Garren Wilbred with careful attention, and exhaled sharply.
A ramshackle, dilapidated cabin standing alone on a remote mountain ridge.
‘Aunt is here…’
The girl rubbed her face slowly, stared at the weathered cabin for a long moment, then carefully pushed open the door.
Creeeeak—
The hinges groaned with age at the same instant a voice shouted from behind the cabin: “Who’s there!”
Rozelin paused mid-doorway, turned her head, and saw a band of mercenaries with vicious features, their eyes narrowed sharply.
“What’s this? Little girl, didn’t your mother teach you not to just wander into empty houses?”
“No.”
“…What?”
“I don’t have a mother.”
Rozelin said it flatly.
To be precise, her mother had passed away long ago and was no longer among the living.
The mercenary, caught off guard by how naturally the response had tumbled out, faltered and his lips twitched awkwardly.
“…Ah, I see. I’m sorry about that…”
“You idiot, what are you apologizing for!”
Crack—!
Someone struck the apologizing man hard across the back of the head.
Rozelin drew the sword from her back.
The knights who had accompanied her under Garren Wilbred’s orders to serve as her escort turned deathly pale.
“No, please don’t, Miss.”
“Yes, that’s right. We’ll handle this.”
“If you were hurt, our hearts would break.”
“If even a single mark appeared on that beautiful face, my heart might burst.”
At the barrage of honeyed words pricking her ears, Rozelin’s shoulders trembled slightly.
Rozelin regarded the four knights with obvious displeasure, then narrowed her eyes.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Good. So what’s the real reason?”
Rozelin released her grip on the sword hilt and asked.
“If you were to injure yourself even slightly, we would face brutal training again, and His Grace the Duke would have us laughing as he put us through the thresher, so please, we beg you, spare us…”
The lengthy, sincere plea tumbled out in an almost pleading tone, and Rozelin scratched her cheek sheepishly.
Through Sansar’s Blessing, Rozelin had grown nearly as strong as a Kaluran—and to her already fierce, reckless disposition, she had now added the ability to act on it alone.
As a result, she’d become someone who barely bothered to read the room, wandering about freely and accumulating injuries with equal abandon.
The problem was that Garren Wilbred had become quite the hot topic in society.
He hadn’t even married yet—merely an unconventional aristocrat living together with his fiancée.
Moreover, he’d taken in a street orphan as an adopted daughter, and every business venture he touched turned spectacularly profitable.
To such an extent that other nobles would invest wherever Garren Wilbred invested.
So naturally, many eyes had turned toward him.
And simultaneously, the attention could not help but fall as well on Selena Hyde, the Countess’s daughter and his much-beloved fiancée, and on Rozelin.
The Duke suddenly adopted an orphan?
And every venture he undertakes succeeds?
What emerged were imaginative humans who wove these two facts together freely.
That the adopted orphan clearly possessed some tremendous ability.
Or rumors circulated not infrequently that she possessed the Abyss, which brought good fortune.
And that was not all.
Even whispers that all of Garren Wilbred’s business successes were achieved because of the child — the world never seemed to quiet down.
As such rumors spread and multiplied, Rozelin’s own life found no peace either.
Those who harbored doubts about Rozelin’s true nature, spurred on by gossip that rippled through society, had kidnapped her more than once.
Of course, though Rozelin could have escaped, she chose not to — instead she allowed herself to be kidnapped willingly, then beat every last one of her abductors to pulp and returned home.
Three kidnapping attempts alone.
Altercations that numbered in the dozens.
And as if that weren’t enough, tea invitations to Selena came pouring down like a mountain every single day.
Deeply displeased by such developments, Garren Wilbred assigned Rozelin a guard.
The problem was that Rozelin evaded this protection and went about raising hell on her own.
Rozelin had been so perpetually ill over her twenty-seven years that she had never gone off medication for a single day.
And so gasping for breath until her throat ached, wielding a sword in one hand and crushing beneath brute force those she had never been able to overcome before — she found tremendous satisfaction in such acts.
To the point where she would shake off all her guards and wander about freely.
And seeing this, Garren Wilbred gave up delivering tedious lectures to Rozelin.
Instead, he began to hound the knight he had assigned as her guard.
As if to say: if you don’t want to be cursed at, conduct yourself properly.
‘Such a cunning one, after all.’
He had exploited the fact that Rozelin disliked causing harm to others.
“Fine. I’ll go inside then.”
“Yes! Please go in safely and carefully, rest well — we shall handle everything!”
The knight serving as captain of this guard detail shouted with all his might.
His eyes betrayed a desperate plea for her to leave.
‘Looking at me like I’m some time bomb about to go off…’
Rozelin, slightly irritated, was about to say something, but upon seeing the knights standing before her like a wall, she scratched the back of her neck instead.
The moment she opened the weathered cabin door and stepped inside, cold air greeted her first.
The old cabin showed little sign of habitation.
All that could be found was a bed wedged in the corner, a window, and curtains.
And a makeshift kitchen and a small table.
Even the kitchen bore a fine layer of dust, as though it had gone unused for quite some time.
The table, at least, bore traces of someone having sat there.
Rozelin moved her short legs restlessly, pitter-pattering about here and there, before finally letting out a deep sigh and approaching the side where the bed lay.
A woman lay on the bed, her presence so faint that if not for the slight rise and fall of her chest, one might have mistaken her for dead.
‘I found her at last.’
Her heart raced with a sense of accomplishment.
Lilly Bellion.

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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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