The Obsessive Male Leads Want to Eat Me Alive - Chapter 105

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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 105
‘They said four days, but you brought it the very next day.’
A pace befitting the impatient temperament of a certain nation.
I rubbed my nose with satisfaction and laughed. Then I quickly asked.
“What sort of locket is it?”
“This is….”
A wooden locket gleamed in Kyle’s large palm. With an even more radiant light than yesterday.
“This is an ancient relic that the Southern Pirate King retrieved from Ghost Island.”
“An ancient relic…?”
“Yes, the pair of lockets are ‘matched,’ and when the two lockets meet, the appearance of each owner manifests in the empty locket like a photograph.”
“…!”
“When the Pirate King was executed by the Admiral, the pair of lockets he had shared with his beloved went to auction. The winning bidder was kept secret, but it was said to be a noblewoman of mysterious age.”
The winning bidder was a noblewoman?
―Could it be my mother?
Kyle smiled warmly, his deep green eyes full of tenderness.
“It seems your mother placed it in the cradle, desperate to find you again.”
“….”
“After all, it is a locket given to one’s beloved for life.”
One’s beloved for life.
I once read in a book that mothers regard their children as their beloved for life.
A daughter carefully carried in her womb for ten months and born.
What must my mother have been thinking as she placed a lover’s locket around that tiny bundle of life?
‘I didn’t abandon you because you were worthless.’
Mother….
You wanted to find me again, no matter what.
In truth, whether in my past life or this one, I never believed I was a useful family member.
―Not every child
is born from love.
“Most children are born with love. But sometimes, a child is merely the ‘excrement’ of lust.”
“…!”
“Just like you.”
The crude words of a slave trader had actually been rooted in unconscious cruelty.
Though I lived forgetting them most days, they would resurface unexpectedly, piercing my heart like a large needle, deeply and painfully.
“…So my mother, who gave birth to me, wanted to find me.”
“She must have longed for it desperately.”
Kyle wrapped his warm hand around my shoulder in comfort.
I could feel it—that large needle that had suddenly pierced my heart vanished without a trace.
The words of such a wicked person were truly nothing but foolish nonsense.
“Master, the winning bidder in such auctions is normally kept secret, but I managed to identify the bidder by recruiting the auctioneer who conducted the sale at that time.”
“…!”
For a moment, I nearly fell in love with Kyle. This swift and brilliant master of the world’s most capable Dark Guild.
“The successful bidder is the Duke of House Valienne.”
“…!!!”
My mouth fell open in shock. My mother could be a Duke?
‘She was no ordinary person, after all.’
Kyle revealed the Duke’s full name.
「 Derchis Valienne 」
The eldest daughter of House Valienne. She had fallen into a fated love with a soldier of no rank, married him, and conceived a child.
However, her husband had died on the Battlefield during her pregnancy.
“The child of Duke Valienne is said to have been stillborn.”
“Stillborn…?”
Yet here I am, alive and well. Could it be that I’m not her child?
What on earth could it have been?
‘What circumstances would be grave enough to declare a healthy child dead and secretly spirit them away?’
I had learned about House Valienne during lessons in the Forest.
It was one of the most prestigious noble families with a long history.
From their fertile and vast territories, they had accumulated immense wealth through crops and mana stone mines inherited from their ancestors.
Moreover, the family was renowned for bearing honey-blonde hair across generations. I glanced at my own hair.
They abandoned a daughter of such a house in an orphanage?
“…Will the Duke be alright?”
If she had faced circumstances dire enough to abandon her daughter, she herself must be suffering greatly.
Kyle spoke with a somewhat sorrowful gaze.
“Duke Valienne has been lying unconscious since giving birth, it is said.”
“…!”
Ah, so that was it.
“Master, this locket only shines under specific conditions.”
“Could it be…”
As I broached the subject with a certain premonition, Kyle immediately continued.
“When one of the locket’s owners is on the brink of death.”
“…!”
The locket’s light was a signal—one lover calling to the other before death claimed them.
“There isn’t much time.”
At my words, Kyle immediately rose and spoke.
“Yes, you must depart at once.”
* * *
Jannen Street in Eldorado.
Among the lowest-born of people, a street where the desperately poor, the diseased, and the abandoned gathered.
In other words, a human garbage heap.
―Or rather, a ‘living hell’.
On this street where even common commoners dared not tread, a person of high station made an appearance today.
He was the First Prince of Eldorado—a man with long silver hair and crimson eyes, bearing both dignity and compassion.
Gerard observed the woman kneeling before him and spoke.
“The condition has worsened.”
More than twenty years had passed since Gerard von Axilpherion first visited Jannen Street to care for the filthiest, most wretched, and lowest of people.
The woman kneeling at Gerard’s feet was wrapped entirely in soiled bandages.
She suffered from a virulent skin disease—flesh rotting, decaying, eventually sloughing away.
“Your Highness, Your Highness… this is an incurable plague that summons death, and it is contagious. Please do not draw near with that noble body of yours, nor touch my skin.”
Gerard’s eyes remained serene.
“It is fine.”
His large hand lifted the afflicted woman to her feet, and he gently caressed her putrid, foul-smelling shoulder.
—For her, it was the first touch of another’s hand since her illness began.
That it should be the Prince’s hand made her body tremble with awe and emotion.
A voice laden with authority flowed softly.
“You too are a citizen of Eldorado, and thus you are mine.”
“…Ugh, sob… Your Highness!”
“I shall send physicians to provide you regular treatment. Recover quickly and care for your child.”
Gerard’s crimson eyes shifted toward the small boy kneeling beside his mother.
The child trembled uncontrollably.
“A mother must not abandon her child through death.”
“…Your Highness, how can I ever repay such grace? I am truly grateful…”
The afflicted woman shed tears of warmth.
The poor and the sick surrounding them wiped their own eyes.
Loyalty to Gerard deepened once more.
This was the reason the First Prince was most lauded throughout the Empire.
He personally sought out the lowest and filthiest places in Eldorado to care for its citizens—
embracing all the people as a father would.
His perfect and benevolent character was called the undisputed “future Emperor” until Sisrain became Prince.
So when the cruel and savage Sisrain became Crown Prince, the people’s hearts trembled with despair.
“The monster of Crevasse has pushed aside Prince Gerard and seized the Crown Prince position by force!”
“We must rise up!”
The will of the people is a formidable thing.
At times it topples dynasties, replaces leaders, and destroys empires.
This was why Sisrain had spared Gerard’s life.
—Sisrain was shrewd.
By remaining the sole prince who did not clash with Gerard, he maintained his precarious hold on the people’s favor.
If Sisrain were to assassinate Gerard now in secret, all the people would surely suspect him.
An Emperor without the people’s hearts was only half an Emperor. Thus, Sisrain had allowed Gerard to live.
But,
should public opinion shift, Gerard would be executed.
That was why.
After Sisrain became Prince Gerard, he tripled the time he spent caring for the Empire’s people.
Every action was politically calculated.
When Gerard finished tending to all the patients, his guards stepped forward.
“Your Highness, it is time to depart.”
“W-wait, Your Highness. I have something to ask!”
At that moment, the child of a skin disease patient pressed their forehead to the ground and spoke.
“Even though I was born lowly, could I become a great person someday…? Like you, Your Highness?”
Those around them stirred, trying to silence the child. How dare they speak of becoming like the Prince!
“….”
Yet Gerard gazed down at the child quietly. There was no displeasure in his expression whatsoever. He was simply like still, flowing water.
His lips, pressed firmly together, began to move slowly.
“Though you were born lowly.”
Even if a human was born from a humble body.
“Die with nobility.”
If one dies in a noble position when the time comes.
“―Then that life becomes magnificent and flawless.”
“….”
The child stared blankly at Gerard, as if awakening to something profound.
Gerard left that place slowly, leaving the child behind.
Long ago.
There was someone who had spoken those same words to Gerard.
It was when he was still a boy.
Gerard’s mother, the Empress, adored young Gerard, but occasionally spoke madness as if her mind had fled.
“That child is not mine! A slave switched my child with theirs! My child could never be like that!”
“…Mother….”
It was a wound to young Gerard’s heart.
Everyone believed the Empress had gone mad. They said she suffered from nervous exhaustion from childbirth and was not in her right mind.
Since she experienced severe pain during her monthly cycles and her mood fluctuated constantly, everyone thought so all the more.
―Moreover, the Emperor and Gerard were unmistakably father and son to anyone’s eye.
Whenever wounded by the Empress’s words, Gerard would repeat to himself alone.
“I am of bloodline more noble than anyone—of the Imperial House.”
Born between the Emperor and Empress,
the firstborn son of perfect lineage.
He would become Crown Prince in time, and as he grew, he would become the true Emperor of Eldorado.
Possessing arrogance and dignity befitting his station, Gerard found it difficult to endure his mother’s mad ravings. Yet he persevered.
―Because he loved his own mother.
Then one day.
A Slave Woman dressed in rags somehow infiltrated the Imperial Palace and approached Gerard.
Before he could even wonder how she had hidden herself here, Gerard was seized by an uncanny sensation.
The moment he saw that Slave Woman’s face, his heart pounded with ominous foreboding.
The woman’s hands were rough and withered like thorny brambles as she cradled Gerard’s cheeks.
“My boy, my son….”
“…What nonsense are you spouting!”
Gerard trembled and pushed the woman away. She staggered back, her lips curling into a sneer—unmistakably mocking.
“Don’t you recognize your own mother? You have a crescent-shaped mark around your waist. Hehehehe! You’ve had it since birth!”
The woman explained that it was a characteristic of the Morserk Tribe, and that she bore the identical mark.
Gerard had always believed it was his own affliction.
Every full moon, the mark would appear, only to vanish in an instant the following day.
So he had kept it secret, never revealing it to anyone.
Today happened to be a full moon.
“Look, my son!”
The woman displayed her own mark, explaining that parent and child of the Morserk Tribe bore identical crescent marks as their defining trait.
“…!!!”
Upon seeing the mark, the boy felt the world spin beneath him.
He asked, trembling violently.
“…T-that you’re my mother… it’s impossible. Then how did you ever share a bed with His Imperial Majesty?”
“What are you saying, my son?”
The ragged woman laughed, baring her yellowed teeth.
“Your father was never the Emperor.”
“…!!!”
“He was a silver-haired drunkard from the streets with crimson eyes.”
Gerard’s breath caught in his throat.
“He bought one night with me for fifty thousand gold.”

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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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