The Villainess is on a Quest - Chapter 8

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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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Episode 8
What was certain was this: all five grand ministers were dead. The one she’d called a mere boy had risen to power, and Matthias lay unconscious.
Countless imaginations flickered through her mind.
Though war raged, contact with the Royal Palace hadn’t been entirely severed. Yet she had no way of knowing what had transpired there over the last five years. Was such a thing even possible?
She turned her gaze to the one part of the letter she could actually make out—the final words.
[If this letter reaches Commander Aine Kleine, I beg of you. Protect the Queen and the Prince.]
At least until he’d written this letter, Raysi had been alive.
Aine’s eyes fixed on the word protect.
The person mentioned here, and the one named in the Quest—they summoned the image of one and the same individual.
Protect them from what, exactly? And who was the enemy hovering above the Quest supposed to be?
That person was none other than…….
‘Did you do all of this? Vinet.’
As Aine tucked the letter into her breast, she sank into thought.
If this letter were entirely true, what judgment would she have to render?
If Vinet really was the architect of the current situation…….
“Why would he attempt such a thing now?”
Yet one thing remained incomprehensible to her.
A man who loved Raysi so deeply wouldn’t harm her son.
Aine found it distasteful, but Vinet had loved Raysi until the very moment of his departure.
He had even proposed abandoning everything he possessed to leave with her.
Wilhelm resembled Raysi so closely that Aine couldn’t help but wonder if he was practically her clone.
Yet Wilhelm was poisoned. There was no way Vinet, a man who had lived and died for Raysi, wouldn’t have noticed Wilhelm’s condition.
“For now, saving Raysi’s child is the priority.”
Suddenly, Aine found herself thinking of her past self.
Her past self would never have deliberately brought such hardship upon herself for the sake of one child.
But as she had witnessed in the council chamber, the tide had already turned in Vinet’s favor.
She could tell from the fact that no one had moved to follow her, even as she openly raised her voice in opposition.
She acknowledged that supporting Vinet would be the easiest path, the path of least resistance. But she owed Raysi too great a debt.
Just as Raysi had striven desperately to save her, Aine was resolved to save Wilhelm with every fiber of her being.
‘If we escape right now, the timing would be perfect.’
After one last glance at the window, Aine began to move.
The Royal Capital was no longer safe. She intended to slip away with Wilhelm under cover of night.
Before they could act first.
“Commander! We have a crisis!”
But war never waits for its opponent to be ready.
“Fire has broken out in several sections of the palace!”
* * *
Seeing flames shoot up across multiple points with her own eyes, Aine knew extinguishing them would be impossible.
If they’d tried, enormous manpower would already have been mobilized.
But tragically, the palace was silent as a tomb—only the sound of rain fell on the corridors.
“Commander. The Royal Guard has surrounded the palace.”
“They’ve made their move already.”
At least there was one mercy: the soldiers she’d brought with her hadn’t succumbed to panic.
They were men who had fought alongside Aine through the Empire Wars, veterans of countless trials.
For those who had come near death more times than they could count, the current situation was hardly something to lose their composure over.
Especially not with Aine at their side.
For she was a woman who had made the impossible possible more than once.
“We’re surrounded on all sides, but fortunately Marco has already scouted a route for us to escape.”
“Marco’s family—the Venos house—is based in the capital. Other noble families from the capital may be cooperating with them.”
“Please don’t worry about that, Commander. Not a single one of those who set out with you has betrayed us.”
“I’ve always told you to beware of certainty.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
Her subordinates already had absolute faith in Aine.
At their response, Aine smiled bitterly and spoke.
“If death comes calling, surrender at any time.”
“Commander.”
“You are all precious assets to the kingdom—and nobles, not our enemies in the Empire. There’s no reason for them to kill you.”
Their target was singular.
Wilhelm alone. If they eliminated him, no one could oppose Vinet’s assumption of the throne.
For he would hold the sole Right of Succession.
“What happened to the Prince?”
Aine wondered if Wilhelm was safe.
If she said nothing, those capable officers would surely have placed Wilhelm somewhere secure — she was certain of that.
The man she’d addressed was about to answer when—
“Commander! Disaster! The Prince’s chamber has collapsed in the flames!”
“Commander!”
The moment Aine heard those words, she bolted toward Wilhelm’s quarters without hesitation.
* * *
‘Of course. This is what they were after.’
The corridor leading to Wilhelm’s chamber was already engulfed in raging fire.
“Commander. My sincerest apologies.”
“Mane.”
“I should have protected His Highness at any cost, but in the brief moment I stepped away—”
Mane’s face bore burn marks from desperate attempts to rescue someone within.
Though several officers had cleared away some of the debris, the situation was beyond hope—too deadly even to contemplate entry.
“Commander, you must escape before the Royal Guard breaks through.”
“We don’t know how long Ante and the handful of others can hold the main gate.”
The officers had already concluded Wilhelm was dead.
Even Aine couldn’t imagine the boy surviving in that inferno.
Yet she found herself remembering Raysi’s face—how the woman had reached out to her until the very end.
“I cannot abandon the Prince.”
“Commander!”
She grabbed a potted plant directly in front of her, poured its water over herself, and before her subordinates could stop her, threw herself into the flames.
Searing heat washed across her entire body, but she pressed forward without faltering.
She had to see with her own eyes whether Raysi’s only surviving child was alive or dead.
‘If he truly is dead, I will reduce this kingdom to ashes.’
It had nothing to do with patriotism.
With Raysi gone, any desire to protect this kingdom—any reason to protect it—had vanished completely.
If Wilhelm died here as well, Aine resolved to survive and use her own army to destroy the rebels utterly.
Moving with such desperate speed, she reached Wilhelm’s chamber door.
‘This is as far as I can go.’
She was gasping for breath, and the water she’d drenched herself in had already dried.
At this rate, the flames would consume her too.
“I’m… sorry… ma’am.”
Faint, but unmistakable.
Wilhelm’s voice, from inside the chamber.
“Commander! Come out at once!”
“Damn it, Commander!”
Her subordinates screamed at her to leave, but their voices didn’t reach her ears.
“Hell. I wish I had an axe.”
She reached for the door handle.
She knew that touching a handle heated by fire was dangerous, but Aine was no monster—she couldn’t tear a door apart with her bare hands.
She wrapped her jacket around the handle and yanked it toward her.
“Hngh!”
* * *
Wilhelm’s breath came in ragged gasps.
‘Am I… going to die like this?’
When the heat roused him, the ceiling was already choked with acrid black smoke.
Some primal instinct whispered to him that he might die here, just as his parents had.
‘I… have no strength.’
He’d summoned every ounce of power, even what remained of his infant strength, but his body wouldn’t obey.
Unable to fight any longer, Wilhelm wept.
That day too had been suffocating—filled with the same black smoke.
The world had turned bright red like the sun itself, and his mother had shielded his eyes with her hand, but through the gaps in her fingers he’d glimpsed many bodies sprawled on the floor.
Wilhelm had been paralyzed by terror—the thought that after his father, he and his mother would die too.
But as his mother hid him in the wardrobe, she whispered:
‘Please, just you survive.’
The soldiers who came soon after killed his mother as well. He’d wanted to crawl out of the wardrobe and rush to her, but his body had gone rigid with shock—he could do nothing.
From that moment on, Wilhelm’s only purpose had been to survive.
Every day was unbearable and lonely; he longed to follow his parents into death, but he could not break the last wish his mother had left him.
From that moment on, Wilhelm fought desperately to survive.
‘But even that’s finished now.’
Wilhelm knew it too. His uncle Vinet had no intention of letting him live.
There was no way for a child who had lost everything to defeat an adult.
“I’m sorry… Mother.”
So he decided to accept it.
He had failed to honor his mother’s wishes, but he had done his best, and he thought she would understand.
He heard a sound near the door. Wilhelm closed his eyes, thinking it was the person come to kill him.
He had one desperate hope: since he hated pain, he prayed they would end it quickly.
“Commander! Come out at once!”
“Damn it, Commander!”
But the one who came for Wilhelm was neither an assassin, nor Vinet, nor the parents who had abandoned him and left.
“Fortunately, you’re still breathing.”
The woman before him bore the exact same face he had heard described countless times from his mother.
Silver hair and crimson eyes.
Wilhelm wanted to keep looking at her until the end, but his eyes slowly closed.
Yet his ears heard clearly.
“You cannot die here. So please do your utmost to survive. Your Highness.”
Those were her final words to him.

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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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