This Emperor Is Running a Marriage Scam - Chapter 253

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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 253

Nelloa staggered backward, shrieking as my slaps rained down on her cheeks one after another, but I followed her, hand raised again and again.
“Hey! You’re abusing an elderly woman right now! Don’t you see I’m old?”
“Old? You’re in an Ability-twisted state with side effects running through you!”
Crack!
“Ow! That hurts!”
“Good—that’s the whole point.”
Crack!
Nelloa raised her arm to block, but I was faster. She staggered under the force of my swing, glancing over her shoulder at what lay behind her.
At the end of her gaze lay the passage—the one that led to the Abyss Realm, where the monsters had poured out moments before.
“I’m, I’m sorry! I was wrong!”
“Don’t lie.”
Crack!
With the next blow, Nelloa’s backward stumbling shifted direction—now toward the Abyss Realm Passage.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
“You said I didn’t need a trial, just execution, but even so!”
After taking several more blows, Nelloa began protesting to me in an aggrieved tone.
“You’re a modern person! How can you act so barbarously? Is it really okay to beat someone like this?”
“How many people did you kill? And you’re complaining about this?”
“This is inside a novel! A few deaths here don’t matter!”
Deaths don’t matter because it’s fiction—she’d truly become a monster.
I slapped her cheek again, driving the point home.
“Then you don’t mind taking a beating either, right? Since it’s all just a story anyway.”
As we drew closer to the hole near Iturn’s body, with only a few paces left between Nelloa and the abyss, she suddenly spun around, eyes wild, and lunged at me.
“Execution? I’m not dying! If anyone dies, it’ll be you!”
Heart, teeth bared to sharp points, was about to pounce on her.
“Wait, Heart.”
I held Heart back and grabbed Nelloa by the hair as she charged toward me.
“Ow!”
Nelloa shrieked and reached her arms toward me.
Though she’d aged considerably, she still had enough strength to thrash about. But her shrunken frame meant her arms and legs couldn’t even reach me.
“Let go! I said let go!”
“It’s ridiculous. Did you really think your withered self could overpower me—someone who ate and thrived inside the Gate?”
I held her hair firm with one hand while batting away her flailing arms with the other, speaking coldly.
“If you were from this world, I would have handed your punishment over to His Majesty. But you’re a Possessor, just like me—from the same place.”
I recalled what I’d seen of Bloden’s past inside Iturn’s body.

‘It seems like I’m not experiencing this life for the first time, sister. My memories came back. For now, let me wait.’

‘He must have regressed.’
The original work I’d read seemed to have been written entirely from Nelloa’s perspective—before Bloden’s regression.
And when I pieced together the information from the hallucination, it became clear that Nelloa was the one who betrayed Bloden and played the decisive role in isolating him.
Thinking it through, letting Nelloa simply face execution seemed like far too light a punishment.
‘He said I didn’t need a trial, just execution, and that I could do whatever I wanted, right?’
And Nelloa kept moving toward the Abyss Realm Passage even as she struggled, her eyes repeatedly glancing that way. What she was thinking was obvious enough to skip reading minds.
I released her hair.
“Nelloa, I think you deserve a heavier punishment than execution.”
“Tch. What’s heavier than execution? And besides, I’m going to be the only one punished anyway?”
“If not just you, then who else? Iturn?”
“Of course you! Why don’t you go jump into the Abyss Realm!”
Just as Nelloa lunged forward with both hands outstretched, Camen created a rock at her feet.
Yelp!
“Your thoughts are too transparent to even be surprising.”
I kicked her in the chest as she stumbled forward over the stone.
“Ugh, gahhh! Ahhhhhhh!”
Her center of gravity shifted backward in an instant, and after staggering a few steps, Nelloa plummeted into the Abyss Realm Passage.
“Kyaaahhh! No!”
But with both hands, Nelloa grabbed the passage’s edge and thrashed about, screaming.
“Here, grab me! Hailey! Please, grab my hand!”
I folded my arms pointedly across my chest.
“His Majesty told me the Abyss Realm is a place where you can’t do anything—just stay conscious forever. Then if the Emperor of the time selects you, you become a Commander, and if you escape through this Gate, you turn into a Monster.”
“What?”
“But all the Monsters that come out of there are strong, so I don’t think you’d even make it out. Since you’d be completely useless, nobody’s going to select you anyway.”
“What are you saying? If I go in there, won’t the Monsters kill me?”
Nelloa’s eyes were desperate as she asked, clinging to the floor to keep from slipping.
“You didn’t know that part, it seems. Nobody will touch you. Even if they knew you were there, they can’t communicate. Of course you can’t touch each other either.”
“What?”
“You’ll just think forever down there. Reflect on your sins—eternally.”
Nelloa’s expression twisted grotesquely, and then a loud wail erupted from her throat.
“Noooo! I don’t want that! Save me! Hailey! Grab me! I was wrong!”
Only now was she truly grasping what her punishment meant.
“Hailey! Please, let me stand trial! I’ll accept it quietly! I’ll apologize sincerely to everyone and accept execution! Please?”
“It’s far too late for that.”
I waved my hand.
“Go well. It’s not far now.”
Nelloa’s eyes filled with blood as she began to scream.
“Iturn! Iturn! Help me! Iturn!”
Her screams didn’t last long. As her strength gave out, she couldn’t support her own weight and tumbled into the Abyss Realm.
“Phew.”
After a long breath, I brushed off my hands and quickly moved away.
“We shouldn’t get in the way of the battle. Let’s head over there.”
Dantarion, who had been standing with his mouth open watching, quickly answered and approached me.
“Right, sis.”
“Squeak.”
Serch and Camen, Heart and Dantarion formed an escort around me as I moved.
Once I settled into a corner, Camen erected defensive barriers on all sides. Serch positioned himself outside the barrier to maintain a clear view of the battlefield, while Heart expanded his body and flames to warm the frigid air around us.
Dantarion stood beside me, vigilant against any sudden attack.
Through the window Camen had created for me, I watched the battle unfold.
I quickly understood why Iturn hadn’t responded to Nelloa’s calls. At this point, Iturn had only two heads left.
He was probably three times as horrified as I was.
“Graaaaahhhh! Grrroooooowwwwl!”
It seemed he’d managed speech earlier, but now only screams and roars came from him.
‘So the head that could speak must have been a different one.’
Thud!
At that moment, one of Iturn’s heads flew clean off under Bloden’s assault, and the tide of battle shifted further in our favor.
With only one head remaining, I thought this fight would end soon.
But then I noticed something strange. The severed heads that had fallen earlier began to writhe.
‘Surely… they’re not all reattaching themselves?’
The moment I saw that, a chill ran through me.
“Dantarion.”
“Yes, sis?”
“I need a favor. It might be difficult, though.”
“A favor? You’re asking me for a favor?”
Dantarion’s eyes sparkled as he turned his full attention to me.
“Say anything, sis. Even if you asked me to tear out my heart, I’d do it.”
“Ah, well, not my heart, no. It’s just that those heads moving around make me uneasy.”
“Ah, snakes sometimes writhe even after you cut off their heads.”
“Still, I think it would be better to finish them completely.”
“Hmm, that’s really difficult. I’d like to help, but only my master can slay that creature. What can I do?”
“What if you just pick them up and throw them into the Abyss Realm Passage?”
“Oh, I can do that!”
Dantarion flexed his arms, his muscles bulging prominently, then moved with sudden speed.
Just as he placed one of Iturn’s heads into the hole,
the more fiercely Bloden fought with the remaining head, the more violently the other severed heads moved.
“Heart, could you call Kimarise over?”
“Squeak!”
Kimarise, who had been assisting Bloden and the Demon Lord’s Army in cutting off Iturn’s heads, came running immediately.
“Miss Hailey. What do you need?”
When Kimarise heard my words, he wasted no time rushing to help Dantarion.
It was the moment they shoved eleven of Iturn’s heads into the Abyss Realm Passage.
One of Iturn’s heads still lying on the ground began to writhe violently, then snapped back into place in an instant, reattaching itself to the severed neck.
‘No! I was afraid of this…!’
Dantarion’s mouth fell open in shock at the sight.
“Damn! It was the right call to listen to you!”
-Bloden Ilpein! You’ve done this to me! I swear I’ll drag you down to hell alongside me.
The head began speaking again and lunged at Bloden, trying to sink its teeth into him—but this was a head that had already been severed once. There was no reason the outcome would be any different the second time.
Thud!
The talking head crashed to the ground again. As it began to convulse once more, Dantarion and Kimarise rushed forward in unison and snatched it up.
“Be gone!”
With Dantarion’s shout, the talking head vanished into the Abyss Realm Passage. Simultaneously, an even more intense aura erupted from Bloden’s blade.
“Aaaaaahhhhh!”
A sound that seemed to tear the very air split the silence as a deep gash opened across Iturn’s last remaining neck. The scream cut off as Bloden severed it once more.
Boom!
The moment the final neck fell away, countless cracks spider-webbed across the body still clinging to the ground. Then, brilliant shafts of light began pouring through the fissures in countless, blinding streams.

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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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