The Lady Only Deals With the Real Ones - Chapter 213

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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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“…Your Eminence Cardinal?”

It was when Ailren’s shocked voice fell, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing with his own eyes.

Flash―

A white sphere shot out from Crescens’s fingertips. Ailren reflexively raised his sword to deflect the sphere, then was horrified as he watched the trajectory of light extending outward.

“Lady Elisha!”

Crash!

The light grazed right past me and struck the wall of the sanctuary.

Ailren’s face turned pale.

It was a force strong enough to make the ground tremble. Just thinking about what would have happened if a person had been hit was horrifying enough.

Through the snowflakes swirling instead of dust, Crescens’s voice rang out, gentle and therefore all the more eerie.

“I said something like that earlier, didn’t I, Sir Knight. That I was the one bound by hostages.”

A sphere appeared at the tip of his long, pale fingers.

Crescens smiled brightly as he rolled the round light like a ball.

“Do you still think that way?”

Over that image, his past that I had seen when I touched Rougenote at the Imperial Palace just moments ago overlapped.

*

When I placed my hand on Rougenote.

The scene I had seen when I touched Rougenote’s ‘traces’ at the Moro Duchy flashed before my eyes.

The cold, desolate streets and the indifferent passersby remained the same, but there was one difference.

“Are you alright, brother?”

It was shown from Eivor’s perspective.

As if I had become Eivor, I could read all of his feelings and thoughts.

Eivor raised his head and saw a man smiling cheerfully from across the sweet-scented tea.

From his clothing, he was a priestess.

Eivor, who despaired at his situation as a magic-immune mage and cursed not only the gods but even priestesses, was about to spit out curses and tell him to get lost, but then changed his mind.

“Do you know the feeling of not feeling alive even while living?”

Let’s give this stupid priestess some enlightenment.

“Yes. I know.”

Looking at that fake smile, it was obviously a lie. A shallow trick to draw those who were mentally and physically exhausted into the Church.

So let’s clearly teach him that he shouldn’t carelessly reach out to just anyone with such pathetic superiority complex, and that such hypocritical mercy and love could harm himself.

This was already a life at rock bottom. There was nowhere lower to fall. It wouldn’t hurt to have one more companion for the final journey.

“I hate the world. I hate the gods. If they were going to give me such a life… I want to burn everything down and then burn myself to ashes. Yes, rather than living such a life, that would be better.”

It was when Eivor, gripping a pocket knife, left a confession that no one would remember to someone about to die.

“Yes. Resent to your heart’s content.”

“…What did you say?”

“The World Tree acts without any meaning. It’s us who give meaning.”

The words were right.

But they weren’t the kind of words a priestess would say.

“We weak ones.”

Eivor raised his head and met empty pale green eyes.

“So if you want to hate, then hate. The World Tree won’t be hurt by such things anyway.”

It was as if he really knew what it felt like to not feel alive even while living.

Yet his voice was gentle and kind, which was strange.

The moment Eivor unconsciously recoiled at the sense of unease that only someone looking into his eyes could feel.

He felt an intangible energy seeping into his body like a snake.

“Shall I bless you?”

“That, that kind of thing…”

Eivor couldn’t continue his words.

It wasn’t from being moved. The strange pressure that had been weighing down on his body ever since he properly looked into the priestess’s eyes blocked his speech.

The priestess smiled. Like someone who knew nothing.

“It’s okay. It’s not like it wears out. Even if you’re magic-immune, ‘holy power’ should work, right?”

Ah.

So this was what he meant when he said holy power would work.

As the priestess’s hand touched Eivor’s head, he felt his consciousness gradually becoming hazy.

He couldn’t resist. What was even more terrifying was that he somehow wanted to submit to that power.

The force that was gnawing away at and devouring his very mind, trying to take root in its place… felt justified like some kind of providence.

“So, live as you wish.”

The scene glimpsed through the traces ended there.

But the words of the priestess, Crescens, seen through the real Rougenote didn’t end there.

He slowly added.

“According to ‘my’ will.”

Crescens, who had been staring into space for a moment, suddenly lowered his head.

His expression had changed. If before it had been a smile of boredom and tedium with everything in the world, now it was a face that seemed truly happy.

“What’s wrong. You were planning to kill me anyway, set fire to this street, cause dozens of casualties, then comfortably eat some poison and die.”

“Urgh, ugh…”

“So I’m saying I’ll use it for you. Your body, for better purposes.”

Chills ran down my spine.

Eivor used all his strength to speak.

“I am… Eivor… remember…”

I remember my life as Eivor.

I will not be used by the likes of you.

That’s what he tried to say.

“Ah, yes. The people you were trying to harm had names too.”

“…”

“But I’ll use it well. Your name, just like your body.”

However, Crescens very simply twisted his words.

Giggling, he added.

“But shall I tell you the ending at least? You won’t die comfortably.”

That was the last.

Consciousness closed. When ‘Eivor’ opened his eyes again.

“What, what! Where is this…!”

Knights were pointing swords at his throat.

Eivor recalled the priestess’s words that he wouldn’t die comfortably.

“That bastard, in the end, he made me…”

The thought couldn’t continue.

Slash.

Blood splattered before his eyes. Everything went dark.

Eivor had a small premonition that even his corpse would be ‘put to good use’ by that priestess.

*

Bang! Bang!

Crescens hurled holy power like a child playing ball-throwing games.

It was a very careless movement, but for those on the receiving end of the attacks, it wasn’t so simple.

Ailren, who didn’t dare try to counter and could only dodge, saw the ground where the holy power fell ripple and ice gather to that spot.

The scale-like ice had somehow tangled together to become a giant serpent that looked down at him.

“Your Eminence Cardinal, come to your senses!”

Striking down at the body of the rapidly approaching serpent with his sword, Ailren shouted.

Then Crescens, who had been casually controlling the snake with his fingertips, let out a hearty laugh.

“Oh my. Even after seeing this form, the knight still politely calls me Your Eminence Cardinal. What do you think, Duke?”

Using the wall as a foothold to launch his body and dodge the snake’s maw, Tesagh struck upward with his sword and said coldly.

“Instead of worrying about the Captain’s forms of address, why don’t you reflect on your own aesthetic sense.”

“My aesthetic sense? Why?”

“First it was fish, now it’s a snake? Can’t you make anything more terrifying?”

Crack. Crack.

The ice scales shattered.

Tesagh, who had been inwardly cheering, soon frowned.

“Haha. That’s not something someone who’s seriously pondering how to break mere ice fragments should say.”

Because the snake’s body had regenerated into solid ice crystals again.

Crescens was inducing a war of attrition.

Biting his lip, Tesagh exchanged glances with Ailren before aiming for the head this time.

Both men’s swords struck the snake’s nape in unison. The snake’s neck was severed, but in the blink of an eye, the ice snake was whole again.

“But… that means the Duke didn’t panic upon seeing me and immediately sought a solution instead.”

Glancing back, Crescens gestured toward Elisha, who was holding Katarina protectively in her arms.

“Did our Princess give you a hint?”

His words were correct.

Though Ailren had instinctively realized upon seeing Crescens, he hadn’t ruled out the possibility that he was being controlled like Katarina.

But Tesagh was certain. That Crescens was ‘that thing.’

“It’s Crescens.”

It was during the ball. Elisha had spoken quietly after confirming Rougenote.

Tesagh understood immediately. It wasn’t just because of his previous vague suspicions that Crescens was somehow suspicious.

From the moment Elisha had been unusually sparing with words at the safe house, he had intuited it.

That Eivor’s true form, ‘that thing,’ would be someone close to Elisha.

When she went to the temple saying she wanted to meet Crescens privately, even in such an urgent situation, suspicion became certainty.

“I have a favor to ask.”

As he recalled Elisha’s subsequent words, Crescens tilted his head curiously.

“But you’re strangely passive. Hmm… perhaps our kind Princess asked you not to harm me?”

So this was what Crescens had been testing through attrition rather than all-out war.

It seemed he was testing whether they would attack the snake or target him, the main body, directly.

“Even knowing who I am?”

Crescens’s face was reflected in each transparent scale of the snake gliding toward them.

He clearly looked delighted. His face was full of smiles.

It was hard to believe this was someone trying to tear off Tesagh’s arm with the snake’s fangs.

“Our Princess is too soft, I tell you…”

That’s when it happened.

“Are you talking about me?”

Whoosh—

Something luminous came flying.

Similar to the holy power Crescens had been wielding, but much brighter and softer, that thing was…

“You mustn’t kill him. Don’t let him die.”

“Elisha, but…”

Sacred flame.

It was a divine-grade holy relic, sacred fire.

The ice snake, struck directly by the flame that flew like an arrow, melted away limply.

“No, that’s not it. Don’t let that thing escape to the next life.”

“…What?”

“Let’s prevent ‘that thing’ from repeating such acts again.”

“Am I soft, Alter? Count Ailren?”

Elisha, who had somehow retrieved the flame, shrugged and smiled.

Tesagh and Ailren shook their heads. Smiles had also appeared on their faces.

“…Princess.”

However, Crescens’s expression had turned cold.

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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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