The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 37

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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 37
* * *
“What do you think, Hatan?”
“Your thoughts are my thoughts, surely.”
“I know that much. I’m asking for the tribal leader’s opinion.”
Late into the night.
A woman seated at the table inside the vast tent turned to the man beside her—her first husband and tribal leader—and posed the question.
“He didn’t seem to be lying, at least.”
“True enough.”
Kan, chin resting on his palm, drew the pipe to his lips and spoke. Hatan naturally lit it for him.
“Bold, for someone from the Empire. And he speaks well.”
“The second one hasn’t stopped talking about her all day. The first seems taken with her too.”
At Hatan’s words, tinged with amusement, Kan let out a soft laugh and ruffled the hair of the man who stood twice his own considerable size.
“Bold, yes. But dangerous.”
Hatan did not contradict him.
Roselin Bellion had indeed been bold today.
He could not say her words were true, yet neither could he call them false.
“And yet she held her head high before me, looking like that.”
He had learned she collapsed not long after leaving the tent, and his shock had been considerable.
It was Altitude Sickness—common enough when outsiders came to Kaluta.
If she had been suffering since last night or this morning, her body should have been deteriorating steadily; yet she hadn’t so much as paled, and the mental fortitude to stand firm and argue point by point commanded respect.
“It’s a wonder she was alive at all, in that condition.”
Kan spoke, recalling the report he’d received from Kaluta’s physician.
Even Kaluta’s children were hardier than that.
“It comes down to whether we open the border or not.”
Kan let out a low chuckle.
“Send the Cheondongsae.”
Hatan’s eyes widened slightly.
The Cheondongsae was a bird said to travel a thousand leagues in a single night, its name earned from that feat, and it lived only in the jungles where Kaluta stood.
And this bird was moved only when there was a true emergency—an urgent summons.
“Tell them all to come here within three days. It’s been a long time since we’ve held a Tribal Council.”
For the first time, Kan was convening the Tribal Council for an envoy from a foreign land.
“Yes, my Kan.”
Hatan suppressed his surprise, brushed his lips lightly against her cheek, then turned to leave the tent.
Kan laughed softly at her husband’s endearing manner.
“Come back once you’ve finished. Tonight, I’ll indulge you as I haven’t in a long while.”
“Yes.”
Obediently, Hatan departed the tent, his mind turning to what had transpired that afternoon.
* * *
“Do you wish to die now? You dare speak of my children and threaten me?”
Kan, easily grasping what Roselin was saying, had blazed with anger and made no effort to conceal her fury.
Roselin seized Arma’s wrist just as he reached for his sword. Arma flinched and lowered his eyes slightly.
“…Roselin.”
“It’s all right, Your Highness.”
At Roselin’s restraint, Arma withdrew his hand from his sword hilt. Only then did Roselin release his wrist.
Arma glanced down at his throbbing wrist, then back to Roselin.
‘A headache, this.’
Though her thoughts ran thus, Roselin met Kan’s gaze unflinchingly, her expression composed.
Kan’s anger was something the Kaluta Tribe itself dreaded.
Her murderous aura was piercing, and the crushing weight and menace she exuded was too much for ordinary people to bear.
“It wasn’t a threat. I stated a fact.”
“What?”
“The Empire and other nations will continue to advance scientifically. They’ll develop weapons without end, and someday they’ll create weapons that far surpass human strength.”
“Such foolishness—!”
“I know the Kaluta are strong. Few can stand against the Kaluta Tribe in single combat.”
Roselin cut off Kan’s words and pressed on with her own.
“Closing your borders is not the answer.”
……
“History itself doesn’t prove otherwise, does it?”
Kan glared at Roselin but said nothing.
“The Ul Empire, which once dominated the vast Ulgrang Steppe, also practiced isolation. But centuries ago, in a great war, the Ul Empire was defeated, and the steppe was carved apart and seized piece by piece.”
“…….”
“And now it has become a small nation clinging to the edge of the steppe, barely hanging on by relying on alliances with foreign powers.”
Roselin smiled slightly as she looked at Khan.
“Many people have pointed fingers at the Ul Empire, calling it arrogant…….”
At the trailing end of Roselin’s words, Khan’s lips twitched.
“History cannot be entirely correct, but I’ve yet to see a people who’ve forgotten their history survive for long.”
Roselin said no more and rose from her seat with easy, measured composure.
“Since the table is broken today and everything is in disarray, perhaps it would be better to set another meeting for another time. What do you think?”
Khan fell silent at her question.
After a long moment, Roselin watched Khan’s head nod heavily, then smiled and bowed slightly.
“At our next meeting, I hope we can reach an amicable agreement with a sturdy table between us, and with mutual respect.”
Roselin flicked the collapsed table with her foot as she spoke.
Her arrogant gaze was sharp enough to easily mask her pallid cheeks.
It was rather discourteous behavior, but strictly speaking, the Kaluta who had smashed the table with his fist before her eyes had even less grounds to protest.
Arma naturally escorted her out of the tent.
“Ha!”
Khan, bested by words for the first time in his life, could do nothing but let out a hollow laugh.
* * *
“Water…….”
After the negotiation, Roselin lay in bed recovering from Altitude Sickness, and at her softly murmured request, Arma sprang to his feet.
“I’ll fetch some right away, Roselin.”
“Ah, thank you.”
She watched Arma dart away with a reluctant expression.
Not long after Arma left, someone knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
The door cracked open, and children poked their heads through the gap one after another.
One of them was a familiar face.
“Goodness, so an adult really can’t move when they’re sick…… Batar was telling the truth!”
“That’s right? I told you I don’t lie.”
It was Batar who answered with evident pride.
Whatever rumor he’d spread, their expressions all resembled ‘There’s actually a person like that in the world?!’
In other words, they looked as though they’d just encountered some rare creature or legendary beast.
Batar stood surrounded by them, nodding his head with a thoroughly pleased expression.
Though what he found so satisfying was anyone’s guess.
“Can we come in?!”
Batar glanced at Roselin and asked.
“We won’t cause any trouble…….”
Roselin did not much enjoy showing weakness to anyone.
But neither could she be so hardened as to turn away even children with a harsh manner.
And so Roselin nodded with a reluctant expression.
“Oh, we got permission!”
“We’re coming in!”
“Hey, what did I tell you? I said greetings are essential, didn’t I? I said there are proper ways to greet people in foreign lands!”
“Oh, that’s right.”
Four of the children, excluding Batar, lined up and bowed their waists in unison.
“We beg your pardon!”
It was a most dubiously executed bow.
“Wow, your skin is so pale. You must be in terrible pain…….”
“Are you all right? Pretty sister?”
“Pretty one! Marry me—I’ll make you healthy again!”
One boy plucked a flower from the Flower Vase and pressed it into Roselin’s hand as he proposed.
“Hey!”
Batar’s fist came down with a thump on the boy’s head.
“Ow, ow, ow!”
The would-be suitor rolled across the floor.
“Wow, your white hair is so beautiful…….”
“Is there anywhere else that hurts? I’ll tell my mother and father to bring you something to make you healthy!”
“No, I’m fine.”
Roselin let out a hollow laugh, watching the children cluster around her.
“Get well soon, sister.”
“Yes, yes! Get all better and marry big brother Batar!”
The children held fast to Roselin’s hands and arms as they spoke.
“Stop! Don’t say such strange things!”
Even as she protested, her grip on their warm, small hands remained firm, and something in Roselin’s eyes softened just slightly.
Roselin let her flickering eyes drift slowly shut.
“Huh…? Sister’s falling asleep.”
“Shhh, shush! Mother said we have to treat weak outsiders more carefully than down feathers.”
“Yeah, but the pretty sister seems like she needs even more care than down feathers.”
In the soft murmur of their whispers, Roselin slipped once more into sleep.
When Arma returned not long after, he sent the children away—still shushing to one another—and settled himself on the edge of the bed where she lay.
“Why do you keep making me want to possess you, Roselin?”
Watching her stand unflinching even before the chieftain of savages, a shiver ran down his spine.
At the same moment, something cheap and jealous twisted through his chest.
Arma, it seemed, did not yet know this about himself.
“If you keep tempting me like this, I won’t want to let you go.”
Arma whispered softly.
He leaned down carefully and brushed his lips against the ends of Roselin’s sleeping hair.
In the darkness, his blue eyes slowly grew dim.

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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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