The Villainess is on a Quest - Chapter 15

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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 15
If one were to sum up the conversation Cled had with Aine in a single word, it would be this:
‘Preposterous.’
How could a woman who had just become a prisoner claim she would make him Emperor?
Cled had heard such words countless times throughout his life.
Promises to help him ascend to the throne, appeals to make them his right hand, desperate pleas to hear some secret strategy they claimed to possess.
Whenever such proposals came, Cled had always responded in the same manner.
He would sever their heads and present them before the Emperor.
All of them had died that way, yet Cled had not killed Aine.
‘If she’s proposing a deal, there must be something she wants in return.’
Part of it was because she held the rank of enemy commander, but more than that, it was Cled himself who felt intrigued.
By the woman who had come close to ending his life, not once but several times over.
“Besides, there’s a reason I can’t kill her.”
Cled shifted his gaze toward the desk.
There lay a letter that had arrived just as his conversation with Aine concluded.
A letter from Mary Stewart, second commander of the 1st Army of Orion Kingdom.
The brief handwriting was elegant, but its content was anything but.
-Should you so much as lay a finger on her, I will leave nothing alive, not a single blade of grass.-
The letter’s tone was as brutal as it was clear about one thing.
“At least, peace has come—for as long as we hold her.”
The long war that had stretched on for five years had finally reached its end.
* * *
From the moment Aine decided to surrender to the Empire, she had expected a hellish existence to await her.
The way the Empire treated prisoners was brutal.
They were cast into spaces fit only for livestock, and meals consisted of a single hard piece of bread once a day.
Aine had anticipated much the same, but her expectations proved wrong.
“This will be your quarters going forward, Commander.”
She gave the guide a sidelong glance.
Her look carried the clear message: stop joking and show her the real accommodations.
But the guide’s face bore no trace of humor.
“I understand the Empire is known for harsh treatment of prisoners.”
“That only applies to common soldiers. I’m Captain Aten, by the way.”
“Still, isn’t this too much?”
It wasn’t merely noble-class quarters. At a glance, everything in the room—furniture, curtains, carpets—had been prepared to a standard fit for royalty.
No matter how one accounted for the rank of officer, or the possibility of many missing details, by Aine’s standards it was far too generous.
Yet Aten seemed to think differently, answering with firm conviction.
“Are you aware how much Brantfort Fortress has been turned upside down because of you, Commander?”
“Well, that makes sense. The front-line commander of an enemy nation doesn’t surrender every day.”
“That’s one reason, but there’s another.”
Another reason. Aine waited for him to continue.
“Please rest comfortably.”
Instead, Aten bowed respectfully and withdrew from the room.
“What in the world…”
Aine hesitated, standing in thought for a moment, but her exhausted body seemed incapable of enduring any longer.
‘I’ll think about it tomorrow.’
She was too tired to do anything but defer every question to the next day.
After carelessly tossing off her outer garments and collapsing onto the bed, her gaze fell upon her treated hands.
As soon as Cled left, military physicians had appeared and tended to her wounds.
‘I wonder how Mane and Wilhelm are doing.’
She felt concern for where and how the two of them were faring now, but before long, complete darkness claimed her.

[ALERT] Wilhelm Status Change
Wilhelm’s condition is critical. Provide treatment immediately.
Wilhelm : Critical Condition
Health Gauge : 2%
* * *
“Did you confirm that Commander Aine fell asleep?”
“Yes. I even entered the room, but she did not wake.”
Like one who always guards against small sparks that become great fires, Cled was a man who handled matters with absolute certainty.
At Cled’s signal, his aide Richard began his report.
“Mane. She holds the rank of Major and serves as a military physician. Her family appears to have a long tradition of medical practice.”
Cled was being briefed on the backgrounds of those who had surrendered to them, following Aine’s lead.
“Any suspicious details? Anything unusual?”
“Nothing particularly suspicious. But what’s unusual is that she participated in every major battle and yet survived to the end.”
After hearing the report, Cled looked at Mane, who still lay unconscious from the surgery.
All the military physicians who had overseen her operation said it was a matter of luck.
A difference of mere millimeters had spared her from a fatal wound—perhaps, they’d said, God himself had guided her survival.
“Still, investigate her more thoroughly. We can’t afford to miss anything.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Where is the child?”
Cled’s interest having waned, he moved on to his next subject.
“The boy is being held in isolation in another room.”
“Isolation?”
“Yes. We discovered he’s addicted to Eternal Nightmare.”
A low exhale escaped Cled’s lips.
His brow furrowed at the mention of Eternal Nightmare.
“The Kingdom’s people are just as mad as the Empire. Giving Eternal Nightmare to a child—that’s insanity.”
War drives everyone to madness. There is no sanity left in it.
So people say, but Cled’s thoughts differed.
He believed that people engaged in war precisely because they were already mad.
A memory he’d rather have forgotten flickered across his mind, but he cast it aside.
“Take me to the child’s room.”
His work wasn’t finished yet—not completely.
He could not afford a single exception.
Richard was reluctant to let Cled see the child, but orders were absolute, so he led the way reluctantly.
When they arrived at the ward, Cled saw the child writhing in agony.
Cled fixed his gaze on the boy and asked.
“What is the child’s name?”
“We haven’t been able to determine it.”
“His origin?”
“The same.”
“His parents?”
“Unknown.”
“Then what exactly have you found out?”
Every question demanded an answer. Those who failed to provide one were deemed useless and discarded.
Until now, Richard had always answered whatever Cled asked, but for the first time, he found himself with nothing to say.
“Completely unknown identity, then.”
“My apologies, Your Highness.”
Yet Cled did not blame Richard. If the royal family had deliberately classified the child’s information, there was nothing they could do about it.
“Still, there are details worth inferring.”
Not certainty, perhaps, but the Kingdom’s treatment of the child’s very existence as classified, the poison they fed to a child in order to eliminate him—
“And the fact that she kept him with her even while fleeing. That too suggests something.”
Cled nodded in agreement.
‘She wouldn’t carry him along without reason.’
It was easy enough to understand why she’d brought a non-combatant like Mane along—before being a military physician, she was his subordinate.
But the child before him was just a boy. Barely six years old at most.
“She mentioned it herself. A rebellion had broken out in the Kingdom.”
“A rebellion, you say?”
“Yes.”
The sense that this child might be connected to it hung thick in the air.
“Still, I feel I’ve seen him somewhere before. I just can’t remember.”
The longer Cled looked at the boy, the more familiar his features seemed.
‘He resembles someone.’
It was no mistake. His face was clearly one he’d encountered somewhere before.
But the frustration of not remembering exactly gnawed at him.
Eventually, he abandoned the effort and returned his thoughts to the present.
‘An unknown child.’
Without jumping to conclusions, Cled nonetheless sensed something dangerous about the boy.
He couldn’t say why, but his instinct seemed to demand the child’s death.
He need only reach out his hand to snuff out that fragile life with ease.
But the moment he realized his opponent had fallen prey to addiction to the Eternal Nightmare, his resolve crumbled.
“Has His Majesty been informed?”
“Yes, we dispatched a messenger to the Imperial Palace at once. Beginning with Aine’s surrender and including the contents of Deputy Commander Mary Stewart’s dispatch.”
“Then we shall have to wait.”
Watching the child struggle for breath, Cled reached out his hand.
It was a hand cold as ice, devoid of warmth, yet to a child whose entire body burned with fever, it seemed to become a lifeline itself—she clung to it desperately.
Seeing the child so perilously close to death’s threshold, Cled opened the pendant hanging from his neck. Within it lay an Elixir.
“Your Highness. That is what His Majesty bestowed upon you….”
“Hush. Not another word.”
It was medicine that the Emperor himself had given.
Even in a state where the shadow of death hung heavy, this Elixir could extend one’s lifespan—a treasure of incomparable rarity.
He had been told to keep it always with him and use it only in the direst of circumstances, yet Cled did not hesitate. He drew out the Elixir and poured it into the child’s mouth.

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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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