The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 198

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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 68
“Doesn’t seem like you want to talk.”
……
Arma remained silent as well.
Opening his mouth would only let ugliness pour out.
And he had no desire to lay bare his true nature like that. He had lowered his mask for one reason alone—Rozelin—and no other.
“You seemed quite close with the Wilbred lady…….”
……
“Why do you wear the form of a Beastfolk that’s been extinct for so long?”
Sevirous, chin propped on his hand, began to drawl out what he wished to say, one point after another, as if indifferent to whether his target would respond.
At that, the boy’s face twisted sharply.
“Won’t you say even a single word to your father? How heartless you are, youngest.”
……
Still, Arma did not speak.
He had plenty to say. His throat was full of it. But the moment he opened his mouth, it would all come pouring out like a broken dam.
That would be genuinely infuriating. Even worse—letting this man see into his heart.
“You must resent me for what happened with your mother.”
……
But when the other man touched that tender nerve, heat flared through his skull.
The sight of him—confined, yet unguarded—made no sense. And then, to lose a nation for the sake of one person.
“Of course.”
So Arma answered coldly.
“Looking at your failure, resentment becomes revulsion. I wish you’d shut your mouth.”
“Your words are rather short.”
“Someone told me once—there’s no point in being courteous to someone without courtesy.”
The boy spoke with an icy edge, his gaze meeting Sevirous’s directly. It was unmistakably different from the boy who always averted his eyes, held his tongue, and hid himself away.
“So you’re done with the act.”
“I quit.”
“Why?”
“Thought she’d hate it.”
Sevirous let out a low laugh.
“So you’ve learned what love is.”
“You do it. Why couldn’t I?”
“I didn’t think you would.”
“Neither did I.”
Arma—no, Arma Dianitas—met Sevirous’s gaze directly as he spoke.
“I didn’t think I could. Because what you’ve done is so terrible.”
……
“And look at you now. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? If you couldn’t trust yourself to protect her, if you chose to separate her from your child and lock her away, then at least let her be happy.”
Arma’s teeth ground together, his voice savage, his contempt unconcealed.
“Will you just give up because it’s impossible? Because it won’t work? Is that what you’re going to say? If it seems impossible, then sell your soul to make it possible. Bow that proud head of yours to those who would help you!”
Arma surged to his feet, seizing Sevirous by the collar as he sat in his chair.
Sevirous, smaller than the boy by a considerable measure, looked down at him in silence, his collar gripped tight.
“If you were going to be Emperor, you should have given up your mother. If you were going to be a man for one person, you should have given up the throne. If you were neither, then you should have been the one to make the sacrifice—not demand it from your mother……!”
Sevirous watched the anguish pour out of him without a word.
Sevirous remembered Arma Dianitas.
He had always been lonely, always alone, always isolated.
An Illegitimate Child with no parents, no shield to protect him—the Third Imperial Prince.
The sacrifices he had demanded of that one person were considerable.
The Emperor, being his father, understood well the capabilities of his children.
Of all his offspring, Arma was the most exceptional. Cruelly, impossibly so.
And Arma knew it too.
At some point, the boy had begun to hide himself.
He no longer let his talents show.
He ceased to strive toward anything.
He seemed to have grown timid, his words became sparse, and his face bore only a faltering, hollow smile.
One could tell it wasn’t fear that had changed him.
People don’t transform overnight like that. Brilliance doesn’t vanish in a day.
His youngest son had chosen vengeance—by robbing him of his heir.
So he had hidden himself, made himself unremarkable, and swallowed even his own rage.
‘I knew, and I stayed silent.’
If that was what he wanted, then I would give it to him. There was still so much life ahead of us; I could afford to wait and see. I had sacrificed enough, and I told myself I deserved to keep something in return.
That’s what I believed then.
But now the boy was furious.
He could no longer hold back, and his rage came pouring out, aimed squarely at me.
Sevirous found this oddly fascinating.
“I needed a mother too.”
Arma Dianitas spoke, his grip tight on Sevirous’s collar.
“I had so much I wanted to say.”
How much had he envied his siblings?
He had envied them even knowing he didn’t have what they had, and he had raged at the fact that it had been taken from him when he might have claimed it.
And he had despaired at the realization that it was his own father who had taken it away.
“I see.”
“If you were going to take me with you, you should have made me happy. But now…”
Arma Dianitas ground his teeth, throwing his head back.
In that instant, Sevirous glimpsed something glistening faintly in those bright blue eyes and froze.
“You were planning to die, weren’t you?”

“With her. You were planning to die with her, weren’t you?”
Sometimes, certain relationships breed such mutual hatred that they end up knowing each other more completely than anything else ever could.
Arma had spent long years observing Sevirous, striving desperately not to become him, despising and hating him with all his might.
“If you couldn’t solve the problem, you were going to kill her and then kill yourself. That’s what you were planning.”

And so certain truths are perceived even when one wishes desperately not to perceive them.
“If you hadn’t been mad, how could—”
Sevirous regarded his son in silence.
The boy was small and young, with an innocent face, and yet something within him seemed far older than his years should allow.
The deep resentment didn’t seem to have accumulated in Sevirous so much as layer upon layer through the long years the boy would continue to live, as though it were being forged into something in some future time.
“I hated you—”
“I know.”
“I wanted to kill you. Again and again and again.”
Thud!
The boy, still gripping his collar, shoved him down from the chair with overwhelming force, and Sevirous crashed to the floor.
‘So it’s true—beastfolk are said to be roughly ten times as strong as humans,’ Sevirous thought absently, yet his eyes never left the child.
The boy straddled him, fist still clenched in his collar, staring down at him with those piercing blue eyes wide and blazing.

“But… if you weren’t here too, Mother would suffer. You might be the worst parent to me, but you’re not to my siblings or to this kingdom…”
In that moment.
Pitter-patter.

Something wet fell like rain onto Sevirous’s cheeks.
He didn’t immediately understand what was falling on his face, and it was only moments later that his eyes slowly widened in recognition.
“I endured it. I held it in, held it in and held it in…”
All of that suffering had accumulated and become the present Arma Dianitas.
But Arma had come to a realization.
Watching Rozelin gradually transform the Bellion Family Estate.
Watching her become someone different from the person he had known.
Ah, so this kind of existence might have been possible too.
Some world, some story might have worn this face.
There was a time when Rozelin had spoken to him in a melancholy voice as she rode upon his back when he wore the form of a wolf.
If he remembered correctly, it was the day they had shared lunch together in the warm and cheerful Garden of the Bellion Family Estate.
“Wolf, I think about it sometimes. If I’d been brave back then, would things have been different? If I hadn’t held back and had acted like a child, would I have no regrets?”
“Whine?”
“Children throw tantrums, don’t they? What if I’d stopped holding everything in, thrown myself down and cried about my loneliness instead? Wouldn’t that have changed things?”
“Yelp.”
“I should have said I was upset back then. It wasn’t shameful, but I let my pride get in the way.”

“None of it stays with you in the end anyway.”
“I want to go back soon and tell Father about how I ended up calling Garren Wilbred my adoptive father. I want to see Arma.”
Beneath those words lay a sorrow so desolate it could scarcely be spoken aloud.
That was why Arma often found himself wondering if he’d sometimes been able to see his mother—if only he’d been honest about his feelings to this man, even once.
The thought returned now, pointless as it was: perhaps his father would have shown him her face.
“……I couldn’t kill you.”
“Youngest……?”
He’d wanted to. But there were too many threads holding him back.
And the greatest reason of all……
“If you die too, what becomes of me……”
“…….”
“Even if I’m a beggar, filthy, pathetic, selfish—you’re still my father.”
Sevirous opened his mouth, then closed it. Opened it again, then closed it.
There was too much to say.
Or perhaps nothing to say at all……?
He couldn’t find a single word, so he remained silent.
“……But maybe, in this world, I don’t have to hate you.”
“…….”
“I can’t come to like you now. But there’s still a chance, isn’t there?”
Tears traced down Arma’s cheek and fell upon Sevirous’s, where they slid down in kind.

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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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