This Emperor Is Running a Marriage Scam - Chapter 64
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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 64
“No! I can’t go!”
It was a woman’s voice. It must have been Cosette.
“You have to get out of the forest right now! You’ll die if you stay here!”
“Ah, sister-in-law! Please! They say a gate appeared in the forest, that monsters are coming!”
The shouts that followed were definitely Potter and Carter’s voices.
We quickened our pace.
The stream that had been flowing gently downward pooled in one place to form a pond. In the open clearing in front of it, there was a tent that seemed to be set up for temporary stay and tools for securing raw materials.
Several large and small wooden buckets containing soil and water, well-used iron rakes and shovels, pickaxes, baskets, and so on.
Between the tent and the tools lined up in a row, I could see the backs of Potter and Carter and Cosette’s very angry face.
The Potter brothers seemed to be persuading Cosette to leave the forest.
Cosette, who had been listening to them with her arms crossed, pointed to a mass covered with cloth on one side of the tent.
“If we’re going, we have to take that with us!”
Potter lifted the cloth to look, then stood in front of Cosette again and shook his head.
“That’s too much to carry. Come back for it later when the situation is resolved.”
“You said monsters are coming! Then that could all be ruined!”
Perhaps because there was no sign of Cosette’s voice calming down, Potter’s tone also became harsh.
“Shut up! Staying alive comes first, so hurry up and go! What’s so important about that stuff?”
It was the moment Potter strongly pulled Cosette’s wrist.
“That stuff! What do you know!”
Smack!
At the sound of the slap echoing through the forest, we all held our breath without anyone going first. Carter was also surprised and covered his mouth with his hand.
Cosette spoke as if grinding her teeth.
“You don’t know, you don’t know what kind of feelings I have in trying to make this.”
“Ugh! Here we go again!”
Potter tried to take Cosette away by force. Then Cosette screamed and resisted.
“W-we should stop them.”
It was when we were hurriedly about to move. There was a commotion from the direction Kimarise had gone.
“Raven.”
At Baron’s gesture, Raven quickly stood in front of the three people.
“Stop the marital fight, and if you have luggage to pack, pack it quickly.”
The Potter brothers and Cosette looked very surprised. But Raven didn’t care and aimed the poker he had brought toward the forest.
“It seems our employee missed one.”
Sure enough, a monster revealed itself from over there.
But it wasn’t the Mantis Sickle Fox I had seen. It resembled a turtle, but was much larger than the monster I had seen before.
Baron grabbed my hand and pulled me.
“Nuna, let’s go behind Raven too. That’s safer.”
Baron, Kyle, and I approached next to the Potter brothers and Cosette.
“Excuse me in the midst of all this.”
The Potter brothers’ eyes were full of questions about why we had come, and Cosette’s face was completely red, perhaps embarrassed that she had fought without knowing we were there.
“The gate seems to have grown in the meantime. A different monster than what we heard about came out.”
Raven shrugged his shoulders and continued speaking as he moved.
“I’ll lure that guy away and deal with it. In the meantime, you can finish what Miss Hailey was trying to do.”
It sounded like he meant he would handle the fight with the monster, so I should resolve the marital fight.
I wasn’t confident, but there was only one answer I could give.
“Thank you! I’ll do my best!”
Whatever hardship I might face, it would be less than Raven who was taking on a life-threatening battle.
Raven quickly ran out, hit the monster once to get its attention, and started running.
“Grooooar!”
The enraged monster roared and chased after Raven.
The tense atmosphere from the monster’s appearance was brief, and soon all around became quiet.
I observed the atmosphere between the Potter brothers and Cosette. The three people were holding their breath in surprise, just rolling their eyes around.
“Uh, um. Hello. Miss Cosette. I came to make a request and unintentionally heard your story. First, I’d like you two not to fight. Because.”
I told her about the behavior Potter had shown when he heard about the monsters.
“The monster story… was real. I thought you were lying to scare me into going back.”
Cosette looked at Potter and Carter.
“You came even though you could really die? To save me?”
Potter coughed awkwardly.
“What’s the point of talking about it.”
Carter also scratched his head sheepishly.
“Still, I didn’t think monsters would appear so quickly.”
As if she couldn’t find words to say to the two men, Cosette fidgeted with her hands clasped together, then finally let out a small sigh and looked at me.
“But what kind of request did you come all the way here to make?”
The extreme anger she had shown earlier had somehow disappeared.
“I’m Hailey. I live over there by the coastline near the port.”
I introduced myself to Cosette first and handed over the design.
“I came to request this. Carter said you would be able to make it.”
Cosette, who was checking the design she received from me, eventually opened her mouth wide.
“This is a C-Crooke! How do you know about this?”
“Ah, I knew about it originally. I call it a fermentation jar.”
“You knew about it originally? This?”
“Yes, it’s called Crooke here, right? This is the best for storing fermented foods. Could you make this for me?”
“It’s true that Crooke is for storing fermented foods.”
Cosette nodded as if acknowledging, then frowned.
“But how do you know about this?”
‘Because I possessed someone.’
But I couldn’t say that.
“I told you I knew about it originally.”
“That can’t be.”
Cosette firmly denied and asked, staring at me intently.
“Crooke is a secret container that was only used in the royal palace of the Kingdom of Meridon.”
“…What?”
What is she talking about? The fermentation jar I know was a secret container only used in the royal palace?
Then Potter asked.
“Kingdom of Meridon? You said you lost your hometown and property… Now I see it wasn’t just losing your hometown, but losing your country?”
As if she didn’t want it to be known, Cosette wiped her face with her hands and sighed deeply.
“Well, it wasn’t just the Kingdom of Meridon. The people of Tillan Kingdom also lost their country.”
Cosette’s eyes welled up with tears as she looked down at the ground.
“My parents were master potters who made and supplied Crooke to the royal palace.”
Cosette brought up the past in a tearful voice.
“Our family of four – my parents, me, and my younger sister. We lived with a workshop behind the royal palace, and my mother taught me the techniques, saying I was born with talent.”
A sigh crept into Cosette’s voice.
“Mother wanted to make various forms of Crooke with me. She said that someday I would enter the royal palace and greet the Queen.”
But Cosette didn’t want to work. Even if she became skilled enough to supply Crooke to the royal palace, playing was the best thing for now.
So Cosette often didn’t help her mother and would sneak out of the workshop to play.
“Then one day I slept over at a friend’s house in a neighboring city. But…”
The royal palace and house had all burned down. Everything had turned to ashes with nothing left.
And her family members were found as corpses.
Cosette deeply regretted not properly helping her mother with her work throughout the entire process of recovering and burying her parents’ and younger sister’s bodies and mourning them.
“That’s when I made a vow through my tears. That I would restore Crooke with my own hands.”
She had already learned the techniques from her parents, and since the materials could be obtained near the royal palace, it was just a matter of putting in the effort.
But such resolve was short-lived, as news came that Kelite’s army was approaching, and Cosette had no choice but to pack her belongings and flee.
“Afterwards, the Kingdom of Meridon was absorbed by Kelite. I wandered around looking for places with workshops.”
Cosette initially sought out workshops run by potters, but unlike the Kingdom of Meridon, other countries had few potters who handled earthenware vessels, and were mostly populated by ceramicists who made pottery. Because of this, she was able to meet many ceramicists while traveling around looking for a place to settle.
She had exceptional talent in ceramics as well. However, the ceramicists looked down on Cosette, who had lost her country and was wandering around, trying to exploit her labor without paying proper wages.
“There were even people who made sharp criticisms, saying I had fled instead of fighting when my country was falling.”
Under these circumstances, far from making Crooke, even survival was difficult. So Cosette only mentioned that she had lost her homeland when talking to others.
She thought she would establish her own workshop and make Crooke once her life became stable.
That’s when she met Potter.
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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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