Please Leave The Sickly Villainess Alone

Her eyes shook uncontrollably.

I dropped Layola’s shirt and took a step back, bending at the waist to be at her eye level.

Then I wiped my tears and spoke with a smile.

“Jake, sister Serine, and all the others. A total of sixteen, where are they?”

At my words, Layola opened her tightly shut mouth.

“You won’t be able to find them anyway.”

I gently pressed the sword wound on Layola’s shoulder.

“Aaagh!”

“Whether I can find them or not is not for you to worry about. It’s best if you speak accurately. If you do well, I may even spare your life. Right?”

“Ugh… In, in my desk drawer, there’s a notebook with the adoption records.”

At Miller’s signal, one of the knights entered Layola’s room and retrieved the notebook, bringing it to me.

Inside the notebook I received were indeed the whereabouts of the children – how much they were sold for, when they were converted to slave status, and where they were taken, all recorded.

The locations the children were taken could be categorized into three places, including an illegal mine in the eastern region.

[Serine / 120 Silver / XX Year X Month X Day / Diara Magic Ore Refinery]

Even though she acted mature, she was just a young girl in her teens, yet they sent her to the magic ore refinery, forcing those frail arms that used to hug me to strike rocks day after day.

I handed the notebook to Dad, which then went to Miller.

“The Jerom Mine, Diara Magic Ore Refinery, and Tepin Contracting Company. A total of three locations.”

Miller ordered the knight squad to split into three teams to retrieve the children.

The knights wore masks concealing their faces, unlike the regular knights seen at Rayes. True to Dad’s words, they were the Shadow Knights, wearing black armor without any family crest insignia visible anywhere.

Miller joined the team heading to the Diara refinery.

“I’ll be back, Father.”

Miller and the knights exited the forest.

Layola watched their retreating figures with a despondent look and muttered:

“The ones you’re dealing with is Kablos… That Kablos. What foolishness is this…”

Scoffing at her ramblings, Dad personally enlightened Layola, who still couldn’t tell right from wrong.

“This is Rayes.”

“Ra… Rayes? Rayes?! Impossible! Why would a noble from the capital be in a place like this!”

Layola must have thought Dad was merely a local lord at best. Even just his unique silver hair should have given it away, but she was too ignorant of the world.

“And this child is Rayes’s precious youngest daughter. The one you abused with your own hands.”

I glanced at him. By kindly explaining our identities, it seemed he had no intention of letting Layola off lightly.

Since we had already located the whereabouts of all the trafficked children, I saw no need to stop him either.

“That can’t be! He never said such a thing!”

‘He,’ huh. I interrogated Layola further.

“Tell me who brought me here.”

As I raised my hand to press the sword wound again, Layola immediately cowered and opened her mouth.

“I don’t know who brought you, but I kidnapped the other children as orphans. However, a prestigious person brought you. But they only showed blue eyes, wearing a mask, so… cough!”

Unable to continue, Layola coughed up a thick spatter of blood and breathed her last, having lost too much blood.

“She’s dead.”

Dad stated, a hint of regret in that single line.

It seemed he felt a tinge of disappointment at ending her too easily.

But I chose to focus solely on the fact that it was over.

The notorious tyranny of Layola was truly over, just like that.

‘By the way, blue eyes…?’

I got up from where I was seated. At the very least, I had succeeded in locating the children’s whereabouts. The blue-eyed, masked one…

That was something to investigate later. Now that I had returned to Rayes, they were destined to come find me on their own eventually.

Garnett and the remaining knights helped the children one by one onto the carriages.

As Dad and I were about to head for the carriages as well-

[You listed the talents of the other children earlier.]

“…?!”

I flinched, startled by the voice coming from behind, and turned to look back.

Yet in my view was only Layola’s lifeless body.

Those lips had moved, addressing those words to me.

Layola was speaking, but it wasn’t her voice.

Someone else was borrowing her already deceased lips to speak.

As I stood frozen in place, Dad approached me.

“That voice just now, didn’t you hear it, Dad?”

He shook his head, perplexed.

It was a voice only I could hear.

[Then what about you? What do you want to do, what do you wish to become?]

Only incomprehensible words echoed in my ears.

[…Try to do better this time.]

With those final words, Layola’s body slumped sideways.

That androgynous voice lingered in my memory until I boarded the carriage.

‘Who was that…?’

Beyond that unforgettable voice, I sensed a fleeting affection.

‘Nothing but mysteries.’

I soon brushed aside my curiosities and thought about whether Miller had successfully rescued the children.

The sunset sky was already visible through the carriage window.

I hoped they would all reunite unharmed.

* * *

Four days had passed since that day.

On a particularly sunny morning that filled my chest with inexplicable anticipation, I raced down the stairs in a frenzy after receiving news from Garnett.

“Sister Serine!!”

I dashed towards the glimpse of golden hair in the distance.

“R-Ria! Is that you, Ria?!”

We embraced each other tightly. It had been nearly 7 years. Sister Serine had grown taller since the last time I saw her and become more beautiful, more mature.

The hand I clasped in mine was battered.

“Sister, your hand!”

“It’s alright. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

I couldn’t hold back the tears flowing uncontrollably. She was the first person to smile at me in this world, the first to show me affection when I arrived here.

According to Miller, all sixteen had been successfully rescued, and since they were of the age legally considered youth, they were given a choice before being brought to the Duchy.

Having already been conscripted into the criminal operations of the Kablos Duchy, there was a risk they could be recognized by vassals if brought to the capital where their faces were known.

Having barely escaped that hellish place, most of the children declined coming to the capital, Miller said. Instead, they were sent to outlying regions where their status and safety would be guaranteed to start new lives.

Sister Serine, however…

“She came to the capital alone to see you.”

Following Miller’s words, I looked at Serine.

“Ria is still just a child. I thought I should be by her side.”

Despite her own safety not being assured, Serine stated it firmly.

We had indeed formed an exceptionally close sibling-like bond over the others.

“Is it alright for sister Serine to stay at the Ducal estate with me?”

Miller gave a light nod.

I beamed and hugged Serine again tightly. Knowing the children from the Troy Orphanage were now safe lifted a weight like a drenched cotton ball off my heart.

* * *

“Explain this to me precisely so I can understand. If you don’t, I won’t hesitate to cut off your windpipe, even if it’s you.”

Though it was a bright morning outside, Duke Kablos’s study blocked out all light by heavy curtains, darker than any darkness.

The Duke sat slumped indecorously in his chair, boots propped up on the desk. He swirled the wine in a glass held in one hand, his usual nonchalant demeanor.

However, the icy blue eyes glaring down at his vassal were filled with intense wrath even in the shadows.

Kneeling before him, Menders sensed those eyes had lost their usual casual composure.

“The Troy Orphanage under Viscount Louiscone was raided. By the time we arrived, the young slaves were already gone, and the director was dead, killed by the attackers. Simultaneously, slaves originating from the Troy Orphanage escaped.”

Under that chilling gaze bearing down on him, Menders continued in a fear-stricken voice.

“It seems they received outside help. According to eyewitnesses, the assailants wore no identifying insignia on their attire, leaving no evidence or information to trace.”

Duke Kablos lowered his feet from the desk and pressed down lightly on Menders’ head.

“I don’t care if one slave goes missing or a hundred, they’re easily replaceable. What I want to know is…”

The Duke’s icy eyes flashed as he continued speaking.

“Explain the Crown Prince’s and Princess Rayes’s return. After all, the ones who raided the Troy Orphanage were likely one of those two who originated from there.”

“The, the Crown Prince and Princess appear to have escaped from the Troy Orphanage a few days ago together. They were found and placed under the protection of Rayes Duchy’s knights, staying a night at their estate before the Duke presumably escorted the Crown Prince back to the Imperial Palace the next day. Princess Rayes’s adoption seems to have occurred during that process.”

The Duke tapped Menders’s head under his foot as he spoke.

“So Rayes found the Crown Prince, huh? Well, that’s something we can verify later. The important thing is…”

The Duke’s voice turned chillingly sinister as his blue eyes gleamed.

“Why Princess Rayes’s throat is still intact. That must be it. For Kaine to immediately adopt a child he had only met the day before is highly unusual. Unless she truly is his daughter.”

Only an exceptionally beastly intuition would allow it. Even he himself likely couldn’t be certain, but that child was highly probable to be the Princess Rayes.

“Twelve years ago when you kidnapped the Princess, she should already have been killed by now. Why was she kept alive and handed over to the orphanage? I accept placing the Crown Prince there was following my orders, but whose intention was it to send there the Princess?”

Menders had nowhere left to retreat. Having served Duke Kablos as his closest vassal his entire life, he knew the Duke’s true nature all too well because of it.

There was no way he could leave this room alive.

He had anticipated this day would eventually come.

Menders tightly shut his eyes.

After a brief prayer for his true master, he bit down hard on the poison pill he had prepared in his mouth, ingesting a lethal dose.

The toxin rapidly spread through Menders’ body, and he collapsed sideways without revealing anything the Duke wanted to know.

“Your loyalty is commendable. I truly underestimated you, thinking you were just my dog all this time.”

The Duke coldly sneered down at Menders’ lifeless corpse.

And then.

Knock-knock-

“Father, may I come in?”

It was his beloved daughter Senia.

Ordinarily he would welcome her with open arms, but now was not the time. His gentle-natured, young daughter who took after her non-Kablos roots might faint at the sight of Menders’s corpse, practically family since her childhood.

“I’m still working, so return to your room. I’ll be done shortly.”

“Oh…okay…”

Her dejected voice faded along with her footsteps into the distance.

The Duke had his hidden subordinates dispose of the body from the shadows. Then, showing rare concern for his other children besides his daughter, he asked about one of their whereabouts.

“Come to think of it, when is Enoch returning?”

[The young master will be completing his studies and returning sometime next week.]

“Hmm…”

The Duke rolled his pen, observing the sack Menders’s body was carried away in.

Then, in a flowing, elegant script, he began composing a leisurely reply to a letter that had recently arrived for him – one that any reader could tell was written in an urgent, incensed state by the First Imperial Consort who had conspired with him to kidnap the Crown Prince.

Repeatedly mentioned in the letter alongside the Crown Prince’s mysterious survival was the name of the now deceased Menders, who the Duke inscribed as being the one responsible for sparing the Crown Prince’s life and placing him in the orphanage.