The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living - Chapter 115

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 115

“Y-Young Lady? What do you mean… That’s quite a leap.”

“It’s fine. The Empress Dowager will take care of filling in any loose gaps anyway. I just need to do my best to testify.”

Brisa spoke leisurely.

“We don’t have much greed for factional fighting. After offering up His Highness, living quietly in Sears Territory could also be one of our options.”

Maximus hurriedly shook his head.

“That would be impossible. Didn’t you say they’re targeting Sears? They would never let you siblings live quietly.”

Then Brisa quickly said.

“Then you’ll have to tell us the reason.”

Only then did Maximus realize he had fallen into Brisa’s trap.

“Then I suppose I could give the Young Lady all the ‘information’ you want.”

Until that moment, he thought giving information was his own choice.

But now he had reached a dead end where he had no choice but to give information.

Maximus laughed helplessly.

‘The Empress story was a threat, and this was the goal from the beginning.’

Brisa must have already noticed there was something about their bloodline and wanted to ask for the ‘reason.’

Using the ‘plan to simultaneously kill the Crown Prince and Alpheus’ as bait, no less.

‘So she stayed silent to buy time, then waited until now to involve a third party here?’

Maximus ran his hands through his hair, then finally chuckled and muttered.

“I never expected the ‘engagement’ card I ambitiously put forward as a safety measure would strangle me like this. I must have underestimated the Young Lady’s intelligence.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Brisa answered immediately.

“This happened because you underestimated Alpheus’s reckless spirit of sacrifice, his simplicity of not thinking even one step ahead, and his recklessness of blabbing about it to just anyone.”

Confident of victory, she made her blue eyes shine with self-assurance.

“Now then, shall we hear exactly why the Imperial Family is targeting Sears?”

* * *

At the very beginning, when I received the marriage proposal from Maximus.

‘I thought it wasn’t such a bad hand.’

After calming down Delmia.

I had definitely become certain that I possessed some kind of ability. And that it was related to my previous life.

In the midst of all that, it was obvious that Maximus knew something.

Since he was similar to me in not trusting others easily, binding mutual trust through ‘engagement’ was a reasonably decent move. Because what I needed most right now was information.

But…

“I’ll stake my honor on sharing everything.”

There was a boy who said he would share all information with me first without asking for anything in return.

Even though at that time I hadn’t done anything for the Western Region.

“I promise on Nogen’s glory and my honor. Please trust me.”

My former fiancé, who despite the information being difficult for him to obtain, actually asked me to wait for him instead.

I put strength into the hand I had placed on Wolf-dog.

‘And he sent Wolf-dog to deliver the information as quickly as possible.’

Thanks to that information, I was able to calm down Delmia.

Of course, I could have calculated appropriately and compromised to get engaged to Maximus, but…

“Your marriage is for you to decide! The person you love, you choose!”

Alpheus had said that to me.

“Even if you make the wrong choice, I’ll always be a place for you to return to.”

So even if it was the wrong choice, I wanted to decide my own marriage.

‘I’d rather wait for the 101st turn. I’m still young anyway.’

But I coveted the information Maximus possessed.

That’s why I dug a trap.

Of course, since some fabrication was necessary, Maximus couldn’t be present at that moment.

Indeed, Alpheus became righteously indignant exactly as I expected.

“I think we’ve had all the conversations I wanted.”

That’s how I was able to threaten Maximus in return.

‘They were the ones who started the power struggle first.’

I stared at him intently while keeping my hand on Wolf-dog.

‘I just hit back in the same way.’

Maximus muttered in a troubled voice.

“It’s true that I approached Alpheus knowing something about him… Yes… But that’s not everything. The Young Lady has spent time with Alpheus, so you must know?”

His eyes trembled as if wandering.

“That righteousness and… warmth… Yes, spending time together, one inevitably becomes influenced by Alpheus. Especially for people like us… who don’t trust others easily and fear the world…”

“Then trust in that righteousness and warmth, and tell us.”

I found it extremely difficult to say the words ‘righteousness’ and ‘warmth.’

But somehow I managed to finish the sentence without squeezing my eyes shut in the middle.

“Even without binding me with an engagement, I too will always take Alpheus’s side with the same heart as Your Highness.”

I spoke with sincerity.

“Your Highness said so yourself. That we are ‘kindred spirits.'”

Whether that was the decisive blow, Maximus finally let out a deep sigh.

“Hah… This is ‘information’ I originally planned to share only after getting engaged.”

After hesitating for a moment, he began his story.

“Twenty years ago, the Imperial Court burned all books about Sears. They were the last records of Sears remaining on this continent.”

At this unexpected beginning, I frowned.

The fact that Sears had no history books was something I constantly talked about too.

But the Imperial Palace deliberately destroyed them twenty years ago?

“The person in charge at that time was… our mother, who was pregnant. So our mother knows.”

The Second Empress, Anais, became an empress after giving birth to Maximus.

So at that time, she was a commoner-born knight captain, in a position where she could be mobilized for unimportant tasks like burning books.

“Mother was an Imperial Knight, so she kept the secret and only told me, who is royalty.”

Thus the son revealed the secret his mother had kept.

“To summarize, this is it. This land was originally ruled by four families from the four cardinal directions who possessed special abilities. But they were cursed by someone from another world and ‘Dark Mage Hexan’ and became half-human, half-monster.”

When the word ‘another world’ came up, I automatically swallowed dry saliva.

It seemed I wasn’t crazy after all.

‘Dark Mage Hexan’ was considered one of the most vicious dark mages, but since he was from so long ago, there wasn’t much information about him.

“But the special ability called 【Taming】 that could calm them manifested in a family called Sears… It seems the Sears family members at that time weren’t particularly clever.”

Maximus insulted my ancestors.

“Daxion Bebiano, the Empire’s first emperor, was the first to notice this fact. And he took the Sears family members with him to pacify the four chaotic regions.”

“Ah…”

“Daxion granted Sears a marquis title, combined the four families from the cardinal directions to name them the Original Five Families, then established the Empire with their support. The ‘Oath of the Original Five Families’ containing their pledge of loyalty to Daxion Bebiano was the beginning.”

All citizens of the Empire knew about the ‘Oath of the Original Five Families.’

It was so important that everyone claimed it happened in their own territory.

The Seldoche Plains, where I first started hydroponic cultivation, was also one of those candidate sites. That’s why we went through all that trouble in the Western Region.

“But here’s the thing. The important part is that the first emperor Daxion Bebiano was… actually Hexan’s younger brother.”

“What?”

“That’s an Imperial secret. Although he didn’t get along with Hexan, Daxion was also born into a dark mage family. So he passed down to his descendants the power to curse the Original Four Families again. The reason… I trust you can guess.”

I nodded.

It seemed the Bebiano Imperial Family didn’t particularly have special abilities.

Having subjugated five families with special abilities from a ‘mediator’s’ position, they had reason to fear what might come later.

Indeed, because of the ‘Oath of the Original Five Families,’ the four families obeyed the Imperial Court, but they were granted sufficient autonomy.

Especially the prosperous Western Region didn’t even bother reading the Imperial Family’s mood.

“So the Imperial Family was bound to have ambivalent feelings toward Sears. The fact that Sears continued to decline, related history books disappeared, and their special abilities became unknown… was probably due to the Imperial Family’s intervention that continued over a long time.”

I swallowed dry saliva.

Wolf-dog also watched the prince who was spilling the Imperial Family’s secrets without even making a sound of breathing.

“Of course, the Beviano Imperial House also lost the method of casting curses as time passed. But I suspect that the current Empress Dowager and Crown Prince have found that method again. Because the country established by Hexan’s disciples is Sebon.”

That aligned with our hypothesis that the Dark Mage and Crown Prince were on the same side.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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