Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 82

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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 82
“It’s an honor to meet you, benefactor. The children told me about all the kindness you’ve shown them, and I wanted to express my gratitude in person.”
Her voice was quiet, as though she were naturally timid, but sincerity rang through every word.
The girl bowed deeply in greeting.
“Thank you so very much.”
The pink hair that the male protagonist had spent the entire novel praising as cotton candy soft swayed gently in the light.
‘……but she wasn’t!’
The children followed their “older sister’s” lead and bowed as well.
“Thank you.”
“Thanks for punishing the bad priests.”
“The blankets smell so nice.”
“Yesterday we had stew.”
The children chattered away about everything that had happened since.
Their proud little boasting struck me as quite endearing.
‘Not that she would be. She can’t be.’
After a long spell of thanks and showing off, the children returned to their guardian.
Though they felt grateful to us and held us in good regard, they were still children—their caretaker took priority over everything else.
The children grabbed at the girl’s apron and babbled away.
Like nestlings clamoring for their mother bird’s attention.
“Sister Ibeta, will you make stew again today?”
“Sister Ibeta, remember how Tom just…….”
“Now, now—we have guests. Let’s mind our manners.”
‘So her name is Ibeta.’
The same name as our female lead.
How extraordinary.
“Um, if I may ask—how old are you?”
Even as I knew my question sounded abrupt and strange, I couldn’t help but ask.
‘Please, please let her have severe baby face and actually be thirty.’
The girl, who had been in conversation with the children, blinked at the sudden personal inquiry before smiling and answering.
“I’ll be eighteen when the Day of the Sun comes.”
Minos, the deity who governed all brilliant things—birth, love, and more—was also the god of the sun.
Perhaps that was why Ibeta had been born on the longest day of the year.
She was the heroine. She had to be.
It was a perfect confirmation.
There couldn’t possibly be another Ibeta with pink hair and blue eyes living in the Temple run by corrupt priests.
And with the same age and birthday, no less.
‘I’m ruined.’
* * *
According to the original narrative, Ibeta’s eighteenth birthday—when she came of age—was a turning point in both her First Cycle and Second Cycle lives.
In the First Cycle, Ibeta had just turned eighteen, exhausted by long years of abuse and poverty.
She was so overwhelmed with chores—cleaning, laundry—that she didn’t even realize it was her birthday until evening.
Yet even for someone whose life had been suffering, coming of age held something special.
It felt like an achievement, a milestone reached by someone who had endured.
For the first time in her life, Ibeta prayed to Minos with genuine devotion.
‘Please, let even the smallest fragment of divine grace touch me, so that I might bear this life.’
Ibeta’s prayer was humble—she had lived feeling hope was impossibly far away. Yet it was desperate, earnest.
And when that simple, heartfelt prayer ended, Ibeta felt it instinctively: she had awakened Divine Power.
It was only faint, barely enough to heal a shallow wound, but it was as though Minos himself had answered her prayer.
Ibeta had hoped that becoming a low-ranking priestess might improve her circumstances even a little.
But her awakening came at precisely the moment when the High Priest was searching for low-ranking priestesses he could use up carelessly without consequence.
The supervising priest, dismissing her rank with disdain, handed Ibeta over to the High Priest.
Once transferred to the Grand Temple, Ibeta was forcibly branded with the Curse of Stolen Will—an ancient hex once used on slaves—and was driven into all manner of filthy work.
Degraded. Cast about.
‘I was treated like a beast of burden—worked hard and discarded.’
Then, when an emperor who implemented policies to weaken the Temple’s power made the High Priest anxious, he shoved Ibeta into an operation with almost no chance of success.
‘It was a search for an ancient Sacred Relic that supposedly granted wishes.’
Several priestesses in circumstances similar to Ibeta’s were deployed, but only Ibeta survived to the end.
She did obtain the Sacred Relic, but her own condition was far from intact.
Gravely wounded and her Divine Power exhausted, she couldn’t heal herself and slowly died.
In her final moments, she was finally freed from the ancient Curse of Stolen Will that had bound her.
While stripped of her will, Ibeta had been the High Priest’s puppet, forced to commit atrocities. The guilt tormented her.
She had desperately prayed that the goddess’s grace would touch all those lives lost to the High Priest’s greed.
It was Ibeta’s second prayer.
‘And then the Sacred Relic she possessed activated, causing a Regression.’
The Sacred Relic of Minos activated, and Ibeta returned to her eighteenth birthday—the moment she awakened Divine Power—beginning her Second Cycle life.
‘And that birthday is the day after tomorrow.’
Right before this crucial moment, I appeared—someone with no connection to the original narrative—showed her unexpected kindness, and spirited the children away from the Poor House.
I also eliminated the priests who had been such a harmful influence on Ibeta’s First Cycle life.
‘No, it should still be fine as long as the Regression happens properly on her eighteenth birthday.’
After Ibeta awakens as a Saint, the Grand Temple will eliminate these priestesses to secure her favor and keep her silent.
‘They were always going to exit the story anyway.’
If I thought of it that way, there was still hope.
“Everett, would it be all right if I stayed a bit longer?”
This trip was half-vacation anyway, and I still needed to meet with Harkan.
I decided to spend the remaining days of my ten-day assignment here.
I needed to be there when Ibeta came of age; my peace of mind depended on it.
* * *
Marquis Orso had requested that I stay at the Lord’s Mansion, but through my insistence, I remained at the Temple instead.
A day felt like a month.
‘Two more days left.’
Time crawled.
I began to lose my appetite.
They say stress is the root of all illness, and sleep wouldn’t come easily. Even on the rare nights I managed to drift off, I’d wake with a worse headache than after a day of exhaustion.
Everett grew anxious watching my deteriorating health.
“You haven’t been cursed with some kind of sickness, have you?”
Everett glared at the statue of Minos with irreverent suspicion.
“If you say things like that here, Minos might be watching.”
I managed a weak smile to placate him.
“Should I fetch a physician from town?”
There was no actual physical illness, so it wouldn’t have helped.
‘If I admitted it was stress causing the headaches and insomnia, they’d just tell me to relax and rest.’
“It’s nothing that serious. I’m simply a bit tired.”
I refused the physician.
“Still……”
After lingering near me for a while, Everett finally said he’d turn in early and shut himself away in his assigned room.
And the next morning.
The moment I opened my eyes, as if he’d been waiting for nothing else, he pressed a mug of water into my hands.
“You looked thirsty.”
“Wait, I just woke up. How could you know that?”
I wondered if I’d been muttering about thirst in my sleep.
“Drink.”
Everett urged the water on me again.
As I took the mug, the water sparkled as though dusted with light.
“Is this just water? Why is it shimmering?”
I turned the cup this way and that to examine it, and Everett casually deflected.
“Sunlight must be reflecting off it.”
‘There aren’t any windows in this hallway.’
Still, Everett wasn’t the type to feed me anything strange.
I set aside my suspicions and drained the entire mug.
My head, which had been aching from lack of sleep, cleared considerably, and my depleted energy improved.
I felt the kind of vitality that came from taking a Fatigue Recovery Potion on those rare days when I hadn’t slept enough.
‘No, that’s not it. Those potions feel like you’re borrowing from your future health, but this feels more like I drank a tonic.’
Perhaps it contained some kind of herbal powder.
But it had tasted like plain water.
‘Maybe it was an herb with no taste.’
Still foggy from sleep deprivation, my mind worked slowly.
“Do you feel a bit better?”
Everett asked carefully, scrutinizing my complexion.
“Yes. Thank you, Ed.”
I managed a smile.
But since my worries hadn’t vanished, my energy remained depleted.
At last, Ibeta’s birthday had drawn near—tomorrow.

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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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