VL 10

Chapter 10

If the request she had to fulfill in exchange for receiving this body was a task to be carried out, it might turn out to be quite a troublesome ordeal.

Rowan Oult was, at her core, a person entirely different from Mokyeong. She couldn’t even begin to guess what kind of favor she might ask.

‘What is it?’

‘Please stay by my mother’s side until her final moments.’

‘Your mother?’

It was yet another response outside her expectations.

To ask for nothing more than keeping watch over her mother’s deathbed. Could she really have no other lingering attachments?

As for Rowan’s mother, she had been a living corpse bedridden for well over seven years.

Fulfilling a request to keep vigil over a dying woman whose final hours could come today or tomorrow was easier than drinking cold water. Provided she actually returned to the Oult estate, that was.

Mokyeong tilted her head, wondering if this meant she was essentially being handed a body for free, when Rowan hesitated for a moment before opening her mouth again.

‘And please be careful of what lies beneath the castle basement.’

This time, even her expression had shifted.

Across the face that had looked relieved just moments before, a hint of tension settled for the very first time. She almost looked unnerved, or perhaps genuinely frightened.

‘The castle basement? What’s down there? How am I supposed to be careful………….’

Before Mokyeong could ask back at the cryptic words,

Rowan’s form began to grow faint.

‘Hey—’

Some instinct told her this would be the last. There still seemed to be so much more she needed to hear.

As Mokyeong urgently reached out, Rowan’s translucent hand stretched out to meet her.

Fingers slipping between hers, a slender hand grasped Mokyeong’s in a laced grip.

‘With you………… you can do it.’

‘What? Hey! Rowan! Speak clearly!’

The voice was far too faint. Picking out the words as they scattered into empty air became progressively more difficult.

‘What is that supposed to mean? If you’re going to tell me something, you should give me the full story before leaving!’

Rowan could no longer answer. Her soul had begun to vanish, starting from the head down.

Why now of all times!

Desperate to catch any lingering echo, Mokyeong hastily tried to grab hold of Rowan, but it was already too late.

‘Rowan!’

“…………Rowan!”

Mokyeong snapped awake, shouting into empty air.

After staring blankly at the ceiling for a long moment, she realized it had all been a dream and let out a hollow laugh.

Closing her eyes again wasn’t likely to summon Rowan back.

Yet one thing was certain.

‘This body is truly mine now.’

The ownership Rowan had handed over to her as she vanished without a trace of regret.

‘As much as you like. Please live to be a hundred. Please.’

Since Rowan had put it that way, she had effectively become the rightful owner of this flesh until at least the age of one hundred.

“Anyway, what was that about the castle basement………….”

Rowan couldn’t possibly be referring to the imperial palace, a place she hadn’t even been free to roam around. She must have been talking about the basement of Oult Castle.

Though she never found out precisely what she needed to be wary of, Mokyeong brushed the unsettling feeling aside in an instant. It was something she couldn’t figure out right now anyway; she would naturally find out once she arrived.

Besides, once she reached the Oult estate, she had already intended to tear that castle apart from top to bottom.

If there was something genuinely interesting hidden in the basement, so much the better.

First, however, there was still one thing left to do.

Mokyeong got out of bed and pushed the window open.

The chilly night air rushed into the room.

Night had fallen completely without her noticing.

It was the hour when the watch and patrols guarding the Prince’s palace would loosen up just a bit compared to the daytime.

Extinguishing the lamp, Mokyeong quietly invoked her Venom-Reversing Art.

Channeling the internal energy she had scraped together down to the very dregs into both legs, a modest, barely passable reserve of strength pooled within her.

‘This should be enough to manage a five-minute sprint without a problem.’

After quietly checking the state of her physical condition, she rested her foot on the windowsill.

Before leaving, there was someone she needed to go and see.

“Come on! Drink up, everyone! What is the chief steward doing? Bring out the food without holding back! I must share this joyous heart of mine with all!”

“At once, Your Majesty!”

At the Emperor’s booming command, the attendants scurried into motion.

Inside the lavish dining hall, the Emperor’s close confidants, the commander of the elite guards, and the Prince, Carden, were seated together.

“They’re calling Carden the living incarnation of the First Emperor out there, aren’t they? What a glorious title! Am I wrong? Hahaha!”

The Emperor laughed with genuine delight, tilting his cup back.

Pouring the prized wine down his throat without restraint and tearing into his favorite roasted whole pig, he cut a figure far more like a hearty, boisterous warrior than a solemn monarch.

The First Emperor, Eluxider.

The First Dragon Slayer and the original Inversio, said to have returned from the dead.

Known as the most powerful swordsman in history, he remained a beloved figure among the empire’s people even three hundred years into the nation’s founding.

Thus, the praise of being the ‘incarnation of the First Emperor’ carried no small weight.

Entwined within it was the public’s fervent yearning that Prince Carden was far more suited to the throne than the Crown Prince.

The Emperor knew it, and the Empress certainly couldn’t have been unaware of it.

Carden, the person at the center of it all, understood it better than anyone.

Holding the wine poured by the Emperor in his mouth, Carden glanced sideways at his father.

He was laughing and making merry as if truly overjoyed, but…………

Well.

Was that smiling facade really the whole truth?

He recalled his private audience with the Emperor prior to entering the dining hall.

‘Poor boy! The seat of the Crown Prince was rightfully yours to begin with…………’

The Emperor had clicked his tongue, gazing in the direction of the Crown Prince’s palace.

That gloomy gaze was brimming with blatant dissatisfaction directed at Crown Prince Giltheon.

An elder brother who collapses in illness right when his younger brother has revived from the jaws of death, as if to express his displeasure.

The Emperor had always looked upon the Crown Prince’s sickly constitution with deep disfavor.

He disliked him so much that even now, when Giltheon was hovering between life and death gripped by a high fever, the Emperor hadn’t bothered to visit him even once.

Sometimes he would go off hunting as if he couldn’t bear the sight of him, and at other times he would make a show of riding out to the borders to personally beat back the enemies.

The imperial family of Levre had to be strong.

Only then could they protect this land blessed by the gods.

Blessed with fertile soil, abundant resources, and breathtaking nature, Levre was a land any neighboring nation would naturally covet.

Even though it sandwiched Oult—dubbed the land of demons—right in the middle, that single flaw could not diminish the immense wealth the empire possessed.

To guard something, one must first be strong.

The current Emperor, Brumeulus, had once been one of the strongest knights in the empire.

Despite being an imperial prince, he had personally led a dragon-slaying party to hunt down the twenty-seventh dragon, Marchalios, and ultimately severed its head.

The price had been his shoulder.

The shoulder crushed and mangled by the dragon’s venomous fangs never fully recovered, no matter how many exceptional priests were brought to bear.

He could still wield a sword, but not with the fluidity of the past, and without achieving total victory, one could not earn the title of Inversio even after slaying a dragon.

That was precisely the case for the reigning Emperor.

A man who slew a dragon yet failed to become its guardian.

Even so, he still commanded the most powerful knighthood in the empire, and a ruined shoulder did not strip away everything that made him a warrior.

Blessed with striking looks and dazzling eloquence, he had been the darling of the imperial populace since his youth. Surpassing his other brothers to become Emperor had been an entirely natural course of events.

Yet his firstborn son was a weakling who crawled to bed every few days.

To the Emperor, Giltheon was an irritating speck of sand lodged in his eye.

‘That seat was originally yours…………’

It had been such a mournful, regretful tone.

There had been a time when Carden believed those words were sincere.

When he was very young.

Now, however, he knew better.

If he had foolishly swallowed the Emperor’s words back then and demanded the Crown Prince’s position, his head would have been struck from his shoulders by the Emperor’s own hand before he could even become an Inversio.

Being proud of a strong son and remaining wary of a son who grew strong enough to threaten his own seat were emotions that could coexist indefinitely.

Though the Emperor smiled proudly as he looked at him, inside, he was undoubtedly keeping a relentless, suspicious watch.

A man better suited to being an emperor than a father, he excelled above all others in that particular arena.

A faint smirk crossed Carden’s lips as he set his cup down.

This was enough for now.

Just as he was rising from his seat to leave the banquet hall, Count Exid, the Emperor’s closest confidant and chief steward, approached and whispered something into the Emperor’s ear.

Nodding as he listened to the report, the Emperor soon turned his gaze back to Carden.

“Carden.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Your Consort will be leaving for confinement in the Oult estate tomorrow morning. I’ve ordered her to have everything ready by today. Make sure you’re aware of it.”

Carden’s hand paused for a fraction of a second.

Tomorrow?

That soon?

Yet the flash of doubt vanished in an instant.

Bowing his head with the smile of an obedient prince, as he always did, he replied.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”