The Villainess Lives Twice - Chapter 297

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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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Chapter 297

Blood spurting from his collarbone stained Lawrence’s face. Pain, blood, and tears soaked his once-pale face.

Lawrence’s hands clawed painfully at the dirt ground.

There was no trace left of the fresh and beautiful young man who had retained his boyish charm, whom Lisia had once fallen in love with.

Lisia looked down at him with completely dry eyes.

Now that she no longer had feelings of love or effort, it seemed even the wounds in her heart had scarred over.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cause you pain, but you’re a bit frightening to just talk to normally.”

“Lisia.”

Lawrence’s forehead was instantly drenched in cold sweat.

“I’m regretting it.”

Lisia said.

“I wanted to understand you. I thought I could understand you. You must have had a difficult past too, painful experiences…”

Born as the Emperor’s illegitimate child, he had grown up half his life in the Imperial Palace. His mother was Milaire, and his father was Emperor Gregor.

So she believed that there were irreversible wounds in his heart that had made him so cruel.

She had wanted to embrace and comfort him. She had wanted to show him that it was okay to trust people.

She had wanted to save him.

“I wanted to forgive you. I thought that if I alone could understand you, forgive you, love you, then you could change.”

Lisia now knew that had been arrogance.

There were people in this world who didn’t change. Hideous hearts weren’t created only by scars.

Still, she had thought to try forgiving him one more time.

When they met after his return, Lawrence remembered nothing. Only vague emotions remained for her as well.

So they could start their love anew, from the beginning.

If their old love had returned first and those feelings could continue, if Lawrence had prioritized his love for her differently than before, she would have tried to live that way.

She had been prepared to abandon everything else she held dear, forget her hopes for the future, and give up on the world.

Even if it meant being trapped in a narrow world with just him and herself, Lisia could have willingly done so.

But he hadn’t done that.

“I regret trying to understand, trying to forgive, and believing that you loved me.”

He was just born that way. Even if he had circumstances she still didn’t know about, she could no longer endure using that as an excuse.

Lisia gave up trying to understand. She also stopped making efforts.

“I regret having loved someone like you, even for a moment.”

Lawrence gasped for breath. Each time he did, blood spurted from his wound.

“I know my words mean nothing to you. You never even saw me as human, let alone loved me.”

“Lisia, ugh, cough!”

“But I’m saying this for myself.”

Lisia looked down at him and said.

“Rejoice, Lawrence. You succeeded in destroying me just as you wanted.”

Lisia pressed the gun barrel to Lawrence’s forehead.

There would be many who bore grudges against him. But she had to be the one to claim Lawrence’s fate.

Lisia wasn’t someone who believed private revenge was right. This was an irrational feeling.

Even if revenge was the goal, probably getting up and leaving him there would make him more miserable.

But she felt she couldn’t yield this task to anyone else. It almost felt like she was being greedy.

He had succeeded. In the end, he had managed to bind their fates together as one within Lisia.

Even while groaning in pain, Lawrence let out a laugh.

“Is there, huff, a bullet, in it?”

“It doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t. What kills you won’t be a tool.”

Divine revelation comes to those who can change the world.

Holy power is granted in recognition that your path is righteous, that you may change others’ fates with this power.

This was not God’s will. Her holy power had been permitted due to her faith in humanity, so it wasn’t suited for something like this.

So this was something she would do with her own life.

When Lisia pulled the trigger, what shot out from the barrel was white light.

“Cough!”

The sound that burst from Lawrence’s throat was more of a reflexive death rattle than a scream of pain.

Lisia pressed her hand to his neck. His pulse had already stopped.

His eyes, now devoid of life, became cloudy in an instant.

What lay there was no longer the man she had loved, nor the demon deserving of hatred, but the shell of a human whose soul had departed.

Lisia brushed down his eyelids to close them. They would open again when rigor mortis set in after a few hours anyway, but she felt like doing it now.

It was over.

Lisia felt it. It seemed she had finally let go of the painful thread that had continued from her past life.

“Baron Morten.”

“Lisia.”

The knights approached her. Lisia stood up.

“Please lend me a horse. I need to follow Lord Sedric.”

Blue light was still spinning above the levee.

Artizea lay face down, watching the blue lightning occurring in the magic circle.

It was comfortable. In fact, it seemed like her body was the most comfortable it had been in the past few months.

The tip of her cut index finger ached faintly. But it was pain like being cut by paper at most.

‘Wasn’t there pain before either?’

She had felt comfortable then too. She had thought it was the rest she felt because the painful work had stopped.

But it seemed that originally, the five senses were blocked inside the magic circle.

‘How long does it take?’

Artizea couldn’t feel the passage of time. It might have been an instant.

She thought with her eyes closed.

Should she have left a will?

There was a testament. Since she had become Marquess Rosan, she naturally had to organize the title and the many properties attached to the family.

But she had never left a personal letter as an individual.

She had no particular words worth leaving before death. Whatever she said would only be excuses.

She had decided not to. Those she had wanted to make excuses and explanations to were only Milaire and Lawrence in the past, and only Sedric now.

For everyone else, the minus recorded in the ledger would suffice.

Since she had harmed others for her own desires and treated human lives as numbers, it would be right to treat her own life the same way.

But only now did she think.

It would have been good to write a letter.

Not to make excuses, but for those who remained.

For when Leticia would someday be able to read, that even a mother who had done nothing but give birth had thought of her.

It would have been good to write just one line that even a baby just learning letters could read.

She also should have added to the letter she had left for Sedric.

Not a letter from a sinner to a victim, from an advisor to a lord, but from a wife to her husband.

It would have been good to add that she was sorry for leaving him alone.

Besides that, there were more things to write and say than she had thought.

She should have told Alice, who was crying outside, in advance.

That she hoped the rest of her life would be comfortable and peaceful. So even if something happened to her, not to let her heart be consumed by sadness and hatred.

That it wasn’t that she had failed to protect her. That she had already protected her before.

How good it would have been to say it in advance. She had crossed such dangerous bridges so many times.

It would have been good to leave words to Sophie, Marcus, and Hailey too, not just property and pensions, but a will.

And to Benia too.

It would have been good to say she was sorry instead of being afraid.

Though it would have been pointless. Could she have given Benia confidence that she would definitely stop it this time?

She couldn’t have.

Having said she would use her own body as a resource like any other, she had hesitated about human sacrifice.

Even though it was the optimal resource available at that moment.

‘I did well.’

She had kept Benia by her side to steel her own heart. Yet even then her resolve had been unsteady, so it was natural for Benia to push her forward.

That was karma itself. Not the rules of the chessboard Artizea had manipulated, but the fair net of heaven.

Her index finger, with one joint severed, twitched. The tip felt itchy.

It was the moment Artizea felt it would soon be over.

Two arms suddenly thrust into the blue barrier of the magic circle crackling with lightning.

“Tia!”

Cedric shouted.

Artizea’s eyes widened in shock.

“Stop.”

The words telling him to stop were choked and wouldn’t come out. The sound she barely managed to squeeze from her throat was like a whisper.

It was because she had no strength left at all.

The moment she decided to lift her body, as if sensing it, the letters written in blood crawled up her ankles and legs to restrain her body.

A bright blue storm swirled up like a pillar along the boundary of the magic circle. Blue lightning burst everywhere.

Fire caught on the back of her hand and sleeve cuffs. Artizea saw Cedric’s shadow beyond the boundary of light and flames.

It had been there then too.

Artizea thought of the last sight of him she had seen before turning back time.

“Gah, aaagh!”

From Cedric’s wrist to his forearm, flesh burst and tore apart. Even so, he managed to grab Artizea by the collar.

Blood dripped steadily onto the floor. The letters of the magic circle hesitated for a moment.

Cedric didn’t notice this. He simply threw his entire body into motion with only one purpose from beginning to end.

Thud!

Artizea’s clothes tore as she was dragged by the bloody letters and buried into the floor. Her shoes came off, and her ankles burst into flames.

But he managed to drag Artizea’s body outside the magic circle.

At that moment, the excruciating pain returned. Artizea looked up at Cedric in a daze, her finger severed, ankle broken, and entire body torn and covered in wounds.

Nearly half of his black hair had turned white. His young, robust face had also suddenly aged, just like when he had knelt before her.

But that face was no longer a statue carved by wind and rain. Only his eyes burned within a face soaked with blood and tears.

Cedric shouted while gripping her by the collar.

“I’m, I’m going crazy. I’m going crazy because of you!”

Artizea swayed helplessly in his grip. Tears also streamed down from her eyes.

Cedric pulled her into his arms. And he wailed as he cried.

“I saved you. This time I saved you…!”

And he collapsed right there on the floor.

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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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