The Obsessive Male Leads Want to Eat Me Alive - Chapter 106

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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 106
“My father… a common drunkard on the streets…?”
Gerard felt the ground give way beneath his feet.
It was his first time experiencing it—that ringing sensation in his ears from psychological shock.
The world spun before his eyes, and for a moment he stood paralyzed as if struck hard across the head.
Fragmented thoughts scattered through his mind in chaotic disarray.
So they really had switched the child?
The Empress wasn’t mad after all?
Or had Mother’s madness transferred to me, and I’m seeing illusions now?
I almost wished it were a hallucination, but the shabby woman before me felt cruelly, undeniably real.
Like someone who had waited for this very moment, she continued speaking with vivid, exultant joy.
“But it doesn’t matter who your father is, my son. What matters is that I raised you into a magnificent prince! Hehehehe!”
“…”
Not at all.
You simply dropped your chick into another bird’s nest, like a cuckoo!
Gerard bit his lip.
“…It shouldn’t be possible to switch an Imperial child so easily.”
“You still don’t believe me? Of course it wasn’t easy! We of the Morserk Tribe planned this meticulously for the clan’s revival. To place you as Emperor and usher in our tribe’s golden age! …You have no idea how many of our clan infiltrated the Eldorado Imperial Palace for this plan?”
The nameless woman pressed her hand to her chest and spoke with bold confidence.
“Look at me now! How else would I have gotten inside? …And dressed like this, no less.”
Her eyes gleamed with baseness.
“…You planned for so long, yet you ended up selling your body to some random man and conceived a child?”
Unable to suppress his disgust and revulsion, Gerard asked sharply. The woman laughed as if a screw had come loose.
“My son, that night I needed only a man with silver hair and crimson eyes, and fifty thousand gold. ―It was a perfect night.”
The Empress had silver hair, and the Emperor had crimson eyes.
A base life born from a street drunkard and fifty thousand gold worth of prostitution—a bastard who didn’t even know his father.
That was ‘me’?
From the man with the most noble blood in all of Eldorado to the most wretched creature in the world.
Gerard was still merely a boy.
He was young by any standard to bear such a shock.
“…”
Gerard stood with a pallid face, all will drained from him.
Then suddenly, words the Empress had spoken to the Emperor came to mind.
“That child isn’t truly my son, Your Majesty. As proof, he can’t even use Mephistopheles’ power, can he?”
“When Gerard grows older, he will surely manifest the power, Empress.”
The Emperor had soothed his anxious wife.
“That strength flows through his bloodline.”
I had endured by believing those words…
That I was Mother’s son. That someday I would grow and awaken the power, continuing the Emperor’s proud bloodline.
But it wasn’t true.
From the beginning, I was a lowly creature—a common cockroach crawling through the streets.
A filthy parasite feeding off the Imperial Court.
“My son.”
“….”
The woman wrapped her arms around Gerard’s shoulders, his mind completely vacant.
Then she whispered into his ear.
“I made you a prince, so you must repay me. Many of our kinsmen are waiting for their rewards.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed with avarice.
“You’re not thinking of enjoying your position as prince all by yourself, are you? …If I open my mouth.”
“….”
“You won’t be able to live as a distinguished prince anymore, hehehehe!”
It was an unmistakable threat. The mother who had forced me into the Imperial Palace was now blackmailing her own son, whom she hadn’t seen in over a decade.
Gerard’s face grew even paler.
After a long silence, Gerard looked at the woman with bloodshot eyes.
“―I will. I’ll repay you.”
“…!”
Color flooded back into the woman’s face.
“If you reveal the members of the Morserk Tribe who have infiltrated the Imperial Court, I’ll place you in a position of power.”
“Really?”
“―It’s good to lay the foundation now for the tribe’s revival in the distant future.”
“As expected, you’re clever! My son!”
The woman eagerly confessed every Morserk tribesman in the Imperial Court, and the moment she spoke the final name, Gerard’s blade pierced her mercilessly.
From that day forward, Gerard was utterly transformed.
The only emotion I could feel was rage.
From the day I stained my hands with blood that should never have been shed, the boy methodically killed off his own kinsmen who had parasitically fed on the Imperial Court, one by one.
―Without anyone knowing.
And I obsessively strove to become the “perfect prince.”
It was around that time that I built my position by crafting an image for the empire’s people.
But the more I struggled, the more I thrashed about.
One corner of my heart crumbled day by day, and my spirit rotted from within.
It was at that very moment.
A figure shaped like a thick, pitch-black serpent appeared before Gerard.
His name was Venenum (
venénum
).
The soul of a cursed, malevolent sorcerer.
[ If you make a contract with me, I will lend you power. With that strength, become a noble Emperor! ]
The vile serpent seduced the boy with the most welcoming of faces.
Venenum gave me a guiding principle for life.
[ Even if you are born lowly, you can die nobly. ]
―Dying as a noble.
A boy who had believed himself noble his entire life, yet was born of base blood,
had only this one choice left to make.
In the end, Gerard accepted Venenum.
Venenum spoke to him.
That the human body was frail and could not fully utilize his power, and would slowly crumble.
So he must embed a special ‘vessel’ in his eyes and find a special soul to awaken ‘Exordium’. If he found that child, he would be able to live as a noble with Venenum’s power.
The following year.
Gerard saw the color of that special soul.
In Duchess Valienne.
[ Keke, will Duchess Valienne become your lifeline? ]
“No.”
Gerard spoke, gazing from afar at her pregnant belly.
“The child in that womb is the real one.”
Growing within the pregnant woman’s body was she.
The name of the woman he would spend his entire life yearning for—that name was.
―Anette.
* * *
Clop, clop.
In the moving carriage, I sat quietly, lost in thought.
‘…I could have sworn Kyle and I departed alone.’
―Why?
Why are these lunatics following us?
The perceptive Sisrain and Heinrich volunteered to accompany me, and now three carriages (each carrying one of these maniacs) were trailing behind mine.
―A crown prince, an archduke, and a marquis are following behind me?
And this is supposed to be the procession of a mere bread merchant… Is it really alright to drag such distinguished personages along?
…Even the Emperor doesn’t travel with such a retinue.
‘I feel like a master carrying treats for her dogs.’
Three mutts trotting along behind me.
Still, I was grateful the carriage remained comfortable.
All three insisted on sharing my carriage (the three lanky men nearly broke it trying to fit), but I mercilessly kicked them all out.
So now I had the luxury of one carriage per person.
“Sigh….”
I gazed quietly out the window.
‘So I’m returning to Eldorado after all.’
When I fled and hid on Bayonere Island, it felt like quite a distance.
On the return journey, thanks to teleportation, the actual carriage travel was scarcely any distance at all.
―Thanks to some genius Mage.
‘Could Duchess Valienne really be my mother?’
Is she truly in critical condition?
To be honest, it still didn’t feel real.
While I was lost in thought,
“…!”
The carriage door burst open, and a man as massive as a beast suddenly climbed inside and sat down.
―Thud!
“Move inward.”
“…Your Highness the Crown Prince. Eek!”
His sinewy forearm pressed against my back and hips as he effortlessly lifted my entire body and set me down deeper inside the carriage. As easily as one might handle a child.
―What are you doing?
More importantly, you just climbed into a moving carriage, didn’t you?
“I had something to say.”
“It’s cramped.”
I said it petulantly.
Then Sisrain’s large hand gripped the armrest of my seat. His sinewy forearm confined my space like a prison.
“…!”
His thick chest, threatening to burst through his shirt, and his terrifyingly handsome face drew closer and closer.
―Narrowing the space until I couldn’t move an inch. Cornering me like prey.
His sharp crimson eyes narrowed. He whispered with a half-smile.
“Bear with it.”
“….”
―I can bear the cramped space, Sis. But did you have to say it so suggestively?
‘It’s suddenly gotten warmer.’
The moment Sisrain boarded the carriage, the temperature seemed to rise inexplicably.
With just the two of us in this confined space, his distinctive scent became overwhelmingly apparent, and my head spun.
“…Say what you came to say and leave.”
“It’s been a day since I proposed, and you haven’t given me an answer.”
“….”
Over just one day. This man’s patience was clearly far shorter than Kyle’s or Heinrich’s.
“Now it should be easy for you to answer.”
His crimson eyes gleamed like a predator about to devour its prey.
I met his gaze boldly and asked.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because marrying me is the easiest and most convenient choice available to you right now.”
“Being pressured by circumstances to accept a proposal isn’t romantic at all. Is that what you want from me?”
“Yes.”
His lips, framed by a defined jawline, curved upward attractively. He whispered.
“I wish you’d cry and beg, clinging to me desperately, asking me to please help you.”
…Madman.
Only you could make such a thing sound romantic, Sisrain.
As I narrowed my eyes at him, he let out a low laugh and spoke.
“Startled again, I see. That expression is quite beautiful.”
“….”
Today, Sisrain was more persistent and exuded an even more peculiar atmosphere.
The rough pad of his finger gently scraped the soft, sensitive inside of my palm.
Meeting my gaze, he whispered like a devil.
“Let’s do it.”
With his thick fingers, he pressed between mine without leaving a single gap,
and interlaced them with a firm clasp.
His crimson eyes whispered as though suggesting something wicked.
“Let’s do it, with me.”
The nuance was so suggestive and ticklish.
For a moment, it sounded less like marriage and more like ‘something else’ entirely.
Heat crept across Anette’s face.
“W-what are you saying?”
Embarrassed, I blamed him with my words, and Sisrain’s sharp eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
“We’ll get married, and we’ll also indulge in that ‘something else’ you just thought of.”
“…!”
He had clearly planned to sedize me at the first opportunity. His dissolute lips brushed against my ear and whispered.
His low voice wrapped around me like whipped cream.
“―Until you lose your mind.”

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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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