This Emperor Is Running a Marriage Scam - Chapter 218

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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 218

“Y-Your… Your Majesty?”
Robinson and the knights, recognizing the Emperor, quickly dropped to one knee before Bloden.
“We are honored to receive the great savior of the Ilpein Empire, Your Majesty!”
Robinson then thrust his broken right arm toward Bloden and cried out.
“Your Majesty! What fortuitous timing! That wretch, the lord of this territory, shattered my arm!”
The moment Robinson denounced Kimarise to Bloden, I felt bewildered, yet something struck me as profoundly wrong.
‘How did Bloden arrive just now? Is it mere coincidence?’
The timing seemed far too precise to be mere chance.
‘Why did a blade materialize in Kimarise’s hand from nowhere?’
Kimarise had been unarmed moments before. And no ordinary human could conjure a weapon from thin air.
People who could draw blades from empty hands.
As far as I knew, the number who could do such a thing in this world could be counted on one hand.
Bloden and Raven Aner, or perhaps Commander Spirits who wielded strange forces as weapons.
‘Something is definitely… no, something is very wrong here.’
Then Bloden, descending to the ground, tapped the wolf’s back twice. At that, the beast leaped away to stand beside me, its teeth bared and killing intent radiating toward the surrounding knights.
“Gg-growwwwl!”
The knights, seized by fear, hurriedly clustered beside Robinson. Once the wolf had cleared the immediate area, it turned to me with a wagging tail, pressing its head forward.
Back when I’d fled the Utra Territory with Lora, I’d petted the wolf whenever the chance arose, so I stroked its head with ease while assessing the situation.
Shortly after, Kimarise—his blade vanished somewhere—approached Bloden and bowed with formal respect.
“Welcome back, my lord.”
…My lord? Not Your Majesty?
“You’ve done well.”
Bloden’s quiet voice carried a deep, simmering rage. Yet there was no confusion about the circumstances.
As if he already understood everything that had transpired.
‘What in the world is happening?’
Then it came.
“Your Majestyyyyyyy! Please, you mustn’t kill anyone!”
Raven came sprinting at a speed that seemed inhuman, his voice cracking with urgency.
Bloden frowned as Raven skidded to a halt beside him.
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
At that, Raven glanced around, then let out a relieved sigh and pressed a hand to his chest.
“Ah, thank goodness. No one’s been hurt.”
“I haven’t lost my reason over something this trivial.”
“Yes, I’m truly grateful for that.”
“Duke Dillen, what do you mean no one’s been hurt?”
Robinson, hearing their exchange, spoke indignantly to Raven, gesturing to his arm.
“Can’t you see what’s become of my arm?”
Raven glanced at Robinson’s injury, then let out a snort of laughter.
“Making a fuss over something so minor? A bit of saliva and it’ll be good as new.”
Robinson’s expression darkened considerably. Yet he caught himself, gauging Bloden’s mood, and managed to suppress his pain with visible effort before appealing again.
“Your Majesty, but what brings you to this place…?”
“You attempted marriage fraud and were forcibly abducting my sister, so I came.”
Robinson did commit marriage fraud—that much is true—but sister? Why would Bloden call me his sister?
“Pardon?”
Robinson and his knights exchanged bewildered glances, their gaze shifting toward me in unison.
“Sister… do you mean his wife, then?”
“The way you address my sister is most disagreeable.”
Robinson flinched at the sharpened intensity in Bloden’s eyes and held out the Marriage Registration Receipt he’d been carrying.
“D-disagreeable, you say? No, it’s the truth. Hailey and I have completed our marriage registration.”
Bloden snatched the document from his hand and scanned it, then let out a cold laugh.
“This is merely a receipt of submission, not a certificate of marriage establishment.”
“B-but the Regent himself approved it. Surely you, of all people, know that such approval constitutes the establishment of marriage.”
“Salamander.”
The moment Bloden spoke, Heart stepped forward eagerly, caught the Marriage Registration Receipt that Bloden tossed his way, and reduced it to ash in a single blazing instant.
“Y-Your Majesty?”
Robinson’s bewildered cry drew a bitter laugh from Bloden, who then extended his hand toward Raven. Raven promptly withdrew two small pouches from within his clothes.
“This one belongs to Hailey, so we return it to her.”
Raven handed one of them to me and pulled out a document case from another pouch, opening it to show a paper with something written on it to Robinson.
‘Wait? That was also a Pocket Dimension Pouch? Bloden’s Pocket Dimension Pouch?’
Robinson’s expression after reading the contents was truly bizarre. His eyes bulged so wide they looked ready to pop from their sockets, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish’s as he gaped in bewilderment and began to protest.
“Your Majesty, this… there is no such law! Using your position to take another man’s wife is something Your Majesty cannot do and must not do.”
Then a similarly shaped small pouch emerged from Bloden’s possession. He withdrew two documents from it.
‘I was told there were only three Pocket Dimension Pouches in existence. Why are all three showing up in one place?’
While I stood there bewildered, Bloden showed what he held to Robinson and spoke.
“I have broken no law. Even with the Regent’s approval, only the first marriage registration filed is recognized. The Baron merely arrived a moment too late.”
Robinson froze as if time itself had stopped.
But only for a moment.
“You know well how grave a crime Forgery of Official Documents is. Soon His Majesty will personally inquire into your guilt, so steel yourself and withdraw at once.”
Raven delivered the stern warning. At that, Robinson startled and quickly bowed his head to Bloden.
“F-forgery? I am innocent, I assure you! Your Majesty! For now, by your leave, I shall take my departure.”
Robinson led the Knights away in haste.
While Bloden, Raven, and Kimarise glared at them as they retreated, I approached Bloden and Raven, curious about what those documents contained, rubbed my eyes, and looked at them again.
‘Wait, what is this?’
What Raven held was a marriage registration certificate. But in the bride’s signature line was my name and my signature. The handwriting was unmistakably familiar.
‘…That’s my writing.’
In this world, there was only one marriage registration I had filled out myself—one I’d signed against Baron’s tantrum.
This seemed to be that very document, but the groom’s name was strange.
The groom’s name read ‘Bloden Ilpein.’
Moreover, Witness 1 bore the signature of ‘Raven Aner,’ and Witness 2 bore the signature of ‘Dantarion Denezian.’
I had no idea who Dantarion was, but Witness 1 was Raven Aner himself?
Utterly dumbfounded, I checked the document Bloden was holding as well.
It was the Marriage Registration Receipt and the Certification of Establishment for that marriage registration.
The Marriage Registration Receipt bore the same date as Robinson’s filing, but had been registered one hour earlier.
“This, how can this be? Why is there a marriage registration between Your Majesty and me?”
At that moment, Bloden’s face fell dejected, he avoided my eyes, and his lips moved several times in silence before he finally clasped both hands respectfully and apologized to me.
“I’m sorry, Nuna. You told me that if my feelings hadn’t changed by the time I came of age, I should file the registration…”
‘Why is Bloden apologizing to me and calling me Nuna?’
“So when I came of age, I intended to confess the truth to you and, after being forgiven, propose to you formally… but circumstances unfolded so rapidly that…”
‘How does Bloden know what I said to Baron?’
By this point, a conclusion had crystallized in my mind: Baron and Bloden were one and the same person.
I recalled how Bloden had once called me Nuna and then deflected awkwardly. I also remembered thinking that if Baron grew up well, he would probably resemble Bloden.
For a seven-year-old child, his strength and Sword Technique were utterly absurd.
Every time I was in danger, Bloden appeared along with his Commander Spirits.
“Could it be… Your Majesty is Baron?”
Even as I spoke the conclusion I’d drawn, I couldn’t believe it.
I had never seen Bloden and Baron in the same place at the same time, but there were several instances when His Majesty arrived while Baron was away.
Even with heavy makeup, a child couldn’t transform into a young man in such a short span.
Even if he’d bribed the Academy to skip classes in secret, the children in his Domain would certainly have said something about it.
Yet Bloden’s face and neck and ears flushed a deep crimson as he nodded once.
At Bloden’s reaction, Raven beside him wiped away the sweat streaming down his face with a handkerchief.
“Well… I did try to stop him at the time, saying it was a crime.”
You told me he was a different person who simply shared the same name as Raven Aner. Yet Witness 1 on the marriage registration bears Raven Aner’s signature?
“I had no intention of defending His Majesty, but to prevent the Baron of Snoril’s scheming, there was no other way.”
In the end, Raven also couldn’t meet my gaze and hung his head low.
“Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Raven Aner.”
At that moment, Kimarise stepped forward hesitantly beside Raven and bowed his head in unison.
“I am Kimarise, Commander Spirit of my lord.”
That explained why a sword emerged from his hand in such a strange manner.
Dumbstruck, I gaped and turned my head.
The wolf, who had been watching my reaction, tucked his tail between his legs the moment our eyes met, and his ears folded back sharply. Then he transformed into a small pup.
“C-Crockel?”
“…Yelp.”
Beside him, Heart flattened himself on the ground and lowered his gaze.
‘Wait, I already knew Heart was His Majesty’s Commander Spirit, so why… what?’
A comment Baron had casually thrown out before I named Heart came back to me.
‘Since it’s a Salamander, shouldn’t it be called Salamander?’
‘Didn’t Bloden just call Heart “Salamander” a moment ago?’
Camen, standing beside Heart and catching my gaze, began frantically drawing sweat streaks across his own body with chalk.
‘Wait—didn’t Kimarise introduce Camen to me at first as a Rock Mole? I thought he was known as one, but he’s actually a Commander Spirit?’
Serch came to mind unbidden.
“Don’t tell me… Serch too?”
In that instant, Serch burst from nowhere and flew to Camen’s side, pressing flat against the ground.
I had no choice but to look back at Bloden.
‘Your Majesty, what on earth is happening?’
Bloden swallowed hard, understanding the question in my eyes, and spoke with deliberate care.
“Camen and Salamander, Serch—they’re actually Elemental Spirits. Serch’s true name is Ignis Fatuus.”
“Good heavens.”
I clutched my head, realizing there was yet another mystery left unsolved, and pressed forward urgently.
“When Your Majesty was with me, Baron was either with Kyle or at the Academy, wasn’t he? How did that work?”
Was Kyle in on it too?
“Kyle has nothing to do with this.”
Bloden’s explanation was terse, his voice hollow as he extended his hand.
“Dantarion.”
In that moment, a strange energy swirled up from the ground, and Baron appeared, chalk still in hand.
“My Lord, have you lost your mind? I was in the middle of solving problems at the blackboard—what am I supposed to do if you just summon me out of nowhere……”
Baron protested in bewilderment, his mouth snapping shut the instant our eyes met.
His rolling violet eyes fixed on Raven, who released a weary sigh.
“It’s over. She knows everything.”
In that moment, I doubted my own eyes. Baron’s hair was literally standing on end as he dropped to his knees before me.
“N-Nuna. Th-That is… I didn’t want to, but m-my Lord ordered me to……”
Kimarise reproached the floundering Baron in a low voice.
“Hey, you fool. You abandon your Lord just because you’re in front of her?”
“But my Lord is human, and she’s a goddess.”
Baron replied, mumbling the words and bowing his head as he revealed his true nature.
“Allow me to make a proper introduction. I am Dantarion Doesneyang, my Lord’s Commander Spirit.”
He was the one whose name had been signed on the second witness line.
“……In other words.”
I turned slowly to observe my surroundings and, even amid the chaos, spoke my conclusion softly.
“Everyone here conspired to deceive me, and when that wasn’t enough, Your Majesty committed marriage fraud on top of it all?”

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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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