The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 149

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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 19
With her long hair spilled across the bed, she lay motionless in sleep.
It had been so long since she’d seen sunlight that her skin was pallid—not merely pale, but translucent enough that the veins showed through beneath the surface.
……
Rozelin stared at her for a moment, then scratched her cheek.
There was something uncannily familiar about her face—something that reminded her of the girl’s father.
“……She’s alive, isn’t she?”
When she reached out carefully to take her hand, a faint warmth met her palm. Not hot, but not cold either.
At the soft tick-tick of falling drops, she turned her head and saw liquid flowing through the IV drip inserted into the back of the girl’s hand.
This meager fluid was clearly all that kept her barely breathing.
And yet her cheeks had sunken so deeply that her cheekbones stood sharp and prominent, and her wrists were so thin that a child could wrap their fingers all the way around them.
Rozelin glanced down at the Seven-Color Stone Bracelet on her own wrist.
It was so depleted now it barely deserved the name bracelet.
Of the Healing Stones that had powered it while saving the child with the Immortal Abyss—the yellow one was half-gone, leaving only purple and blue.
Without Healing Stones, the remaining bracelet was frankly worthless.
Rozelin climbed onto the bed where Lilly Bellion lay sleeping.
Carefully, she stretched out her hand, pried open the girl’s mouth, and pushed the stone slowly down her throat.
As it blocked her esophagus, Lilly Bellion’s body reacted instinctively and swallowed.
‘That’s the yellow stone gone now too.’
The depleted Seven-Color Stone Bracelet now looked almost like a string bracelet—hardly different from thread.
Rozelin waited before Lilly Bellion’s bed.
“Will she wake up……?”
In truth, she didn’t know if it was even possible to treat someone in a vegetative state.
She’d gambled.
Gambled that by melting the stone inside her body, she could somehow heal her.
Swoosh—
At that moment, a beam of light burst forth, flooding the surroundings with radiance.
A gentle yellow glow filled with vitality began to carefully envelop Lilly Bellion’s body.
The light spread slowly across Lilly’s form until it had wrapped around her entirely.
“What’s……?”
It felt similar to the last time she’d used the healing stone, but there was no visible change on the surface.
She was simply asleep—a problem of the mind, nothing more.
Crash—!
While she was still thinking, a loud boom echoed from outside multiple times.
Knock-knock.
Not long after, a polite knocking sound came at the door.
“Who is it.”
Rozelin answered curtly, her brow furrowed against whatever might be coming.
“Miss, it’s Christine.”
“Yeah, come in.”
“Yes.”
As he entered, the light faded away.
Turning slightly, she thought Lilly Bellion’s complexion looked better—or maybe it didn’t.
‘……I need to take her and go.’
Before the captain of the guard, who was holding his breath somewhere, heard the news and arrived. At the sound of the door opening and the knight stepping inside, Rozelin’s body went rigid.
“Hello there, little lady.”
“……Who the hell are you.”
Beside the knight, whose face showed nothing out of the ordinary, someone stood.
Rozelin’s eyes swept quickly over the stranger’s appearance.
The way they blended in so seamlessly—as if they’d always been there—sent a chill down her spine.
Her skin crawled.
“……Christine.”
“Yes, Miss. Is something the matter?”
The matter is in your head, isn’t it.
She swallowed the words she wanted to snap at him. Rozelin rubbed her face several times.
“Who did you bring with you?”
“Who? The High Priest who came to escort us this time.”
“……When exactly did our party get a High Priest?”
As Rozelin asked with a frown, the knight tilted his head with an odd expression.
“Well, from the very beginning…….”
“I don’t know who you are. Kill me or get out of my sight. Now.”
Rozelin’s face twisted into something feral as she delivered the command, her voice sharp as a blade.
The knight, caught off guard, laughed awkwardly and began glancing back and forth between Rozelin and the High Priest.
After hesitating for a long moment, he opened his mouth carefully.
“Miss, are you joking?”
“No.”
“But you’re the High Priest. Which means the Marquis Wilbred hired you to protect Miss in case she got hurt.”
“That’s absurd.”
Rozelin watched the knight’s uncomfortable smile and spoke with absolute certainty.
“My wretched father would track down whoever harmed me and destroy them himself. He wouldn’t hire a priest to protect me.”
Garren Wilbred himself was a demon; that’s just what he was.
There was no reason he’d bring along some unwanted variable, some priest whose intentions were unclear.
Certainly not——
“And even if he did, that wouldn’t make him any less of a charlatan.”
At Rozelin’s words, the neat-faced man in dark priestly robes let out a clear, crystalline laugh.
‘This man doesn’t seem like a child.’
Unlike all the saints and priests she’d encountered before, who were uniformly childlike.
“Charlatan? That’s awfully harsh, Miss.”
“What business does the Bynac Sect have with me?”
“I simply wanted to have a conversation. Hearing that you’ve repeatedly refused so coldly, I had no choice but to come here in person.”
There was not a trace of hostility in those curved eyes.
Only goodwill filled his gaze, as if he were looking at a beloved child.
To Rozelin, that kindness felt utterly grotesque.
“I have nothing to say to you, so I’d appreciate it if you’d vanish. I’m not light-minded enough to waste time conversing with something as trivial as you.”
“My, I heard you were once an orphan.”
“Be that as it may, the distance between you and me now is like heaven and earth. I have no time for charlatan priests like you—the kind who prey on children.”
“Please, don’t say such things.”
With infuriating lightness, he rose and strode across the room, dropping himself into the chair in front of the table.
The man without his robe had snow-white hair and eyes of pale blue.
Rozelin’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Christine.”
“Y-yes, Miss.”
“I’m leaving.”
Rozelin studied the knight for a moment before speaking.
“Don’t you dare follow me.”
Rozelin hoisted Lilly Bellion up into her arms.
Though “hoisted into her arms” wasn’t quite right—she’d simply heaved the woman across her shoulders like a bundle of laundry.
She was incredibly strong.
It was enough to lift an adult woman, but her frame was too small to do it gracefully.
……
Lilly Bellion’s dangling limbs looked rather pitiful, but this was the limit of what Rozelin could manage.
“I’m sorry? Miss, what do you mean, don’t follow——”
“You’re fired.”
Rozelin answered curtly and was already striding toward the door of the cottage when the knight lunged into her path.
He threw himself in front of her.
“W-wait! Miss! What on earth——”
“Christine.”
“……Yes?”
“I despise idiots. I despise dogs that don’t know their master. And I despise those who cause harm most of all.”
Christine froze at Rozelin’s glacial tone, his eyes wide.
It was because genuine contempt and revulsion glinted from those eyes—eyes so much younger than his own.
A contempt he’d never seen before; it was as if everything until now had been a lie.
“Miss……?”
“I gave you an order, and you refused it. Regardless of whether it was true, you disobeyed me. That’s the problem.”
“That’s——!”
Rozelin looked down at her own frame and clicked her tongue in annoyance.
“And now you’re blocking my way. If you don’t want to die, step aside right now.”
Christine’s face drained of all color.
Even when he’d offered praise and she’d worn an unfamiliar expression, or when he’d made jokes and she’d scolded him dryly—he’d never seen her look at him with genuine contempt.
But now his small, young master was truly abandoning him.
“A dog that doesn’t recognize its master has no use.”
Rozelin lifted her foot and kicked Christine’s knee with a sharp crack.
“Ugh……!”

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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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