Translator: Nox

1 - Marquis Maron

Episode 1

0. Hayley died.

When was it? I remember seeing pigs being carried in a small truck to the slaughterhouse on a sunset-lit road.

Each time the truck turned a corner, the pigs swayed, squealing. Their white rumps were stamped with purple and red marks.

I was suffering from depression back then.

I stopped the car and cried my eyes out. Maybe it was because I felt sorry for the pigs, or maybe it was because I felt too sorry for the villain in the novel I was reading.

The villain, Hayley.

I was sad because she resembled me. She was so similar to me, pretending not to be needy for affection, pretending to be strong.

"...Huh?"

But this time, I was trapped in a pigpen made of iron bars.

A wheeled cart rattled as it moved. Before I could even figure out what was going on, stones and filth were thrown at me.

"You evil woman! Die, just die!"

"Someone like you should disappear from this world forever! You heartless, soulless monster!"

They were all angry. They condemned me, scorned me, and hated me, citing faults I hadn't even committed.

What is this?

"Hayley, suffer in hell forever!"

Why am I Hayley?

"Die in Maron Keep! You trash!"

Hayley? Hayley Maron?

No way. It's been ages since I stopped reading that novel. I cried while reading the villain's point-of-view side story, and I deleted all the downloaded files because I hated the protagonists in the main story.

I became that villain.

---

The sky is blue. The clouds are white.

"Excuse me. When do we arrive? My butt is going to get bruised."

"Shut up."

"This is the Kasnatura border, right? My name is Hayley Maron, right?"

"Stop pretending to be crazy! Do you think that will change anything?"

I was just asking a question, but a whip came flying. Fortunately, I was trapped inside a sturdy iron cage, so I wasn't whipped directly.

"Hey, can't I even ask anything?"

"Just shut up..."

"Don't talk to her. You'll be cursed."

The man wielding the whip flinched at the advice of another man beside him.

Honestly, it was funny.

"Funny. If you're going to be cursed for talking, isn't it already too late? How many times have I spoken since a while ago? I begged for food, I begged to go to the bathroom in the middle, and..."

"This crazy bitch, really."

The men looked genuinely angry, but that didn't mean they could hit me. It was all thanks to this iron cage. I don't know what it's made of, but it's sturdy and spacious, which is nice.

"Hayley Maron, stop talking."

A man who seemed like the leader spoke from the back.

"You guys stop too. Just focus on the mission.He had the tone of an old fogey among old fogeys. He must be a very high-ranking person, because when he spoke, all the men around the cage shut their mouths.

Of course, I had no intention of doing so.

"Mister, please just tell me when we're arriving. If you're not going to let me go to the bathroom, you don't have to give me food, but if it's going to take a long time, I want to get some sleep."

Fortunately, it was late spring, so the weather was warm. If it were a cold winter, it would have been difficult to endure in just this thin dress.

There wasn't even a blanket or leather spread out in the cage. My butt hurt so much. It would hurt even on asphalt, but driving on an unpaved road without a cushion was just awful.

"Hey."

"......"

Now they had decided to ignore me completely, and the men didn't even make eye contact with me. The old person must be scary.

Then there's no helping it.

I reached out of the cage and grabbed the cloak of the man closest to me.

"Eek! Let go, let go!"

"Give it to me to sleep on."

The man whose cloak was grabbed lost his balance on the horse. The man next to him screamed and drew his sword.

I heard threats that they would cut off my wrist if I didn't let go, but I didn't give up.

"If you don't give it to me, I'll curse you."

I spoke ominously in a voice that sounded like it came from a Korean ghost story, and the man screamed and threw away his cloak.

"Nice."

It was a useful cloak. The dress I was wearing was just fancy and had no practicality at all, which was disappointing, but this was different. I could cover myself with it like a blanket, spread it out, or wear it over my head.

I pulled the cloak through the bars of the cage, hugged it tightly, and grinned.

Ah, now I can live a little.

As I curled up like a bagworm with the cloak wrapped around my body, I couldn't help but laugh at my miserable situation.

It's good that I possessed a novel.

It's also something I can handle that I possessed a villain.

But a terminally ill villain is a bit much, isn't it?

"Crazy."

The sky was blue. The clouds were white. The season was late spring, and I was Hayley Maron.

A murderer who plunged many people into misfortune with forbidden magic. A ghoul who wouldn't hesitate to do any bad deed for money. A public enemy of the three kingdoms.

Eventually, she harmed a noble person and was sentenced to death by hanging.

"Send her to Maron Keep to die alone."

The place I was being taken to was a barren land not affiliated with any country. It had been over 100 years since it became contaminated with Magical Energy and uninhabitable.

The three kingdoms tried to behead Hayley, but the sect strongly opposed it. They said that since Hayley used forbidden magic, they couldn't be sure just by cutting off her head.

So they were sending her to the remote Maron Keep. Once they sent her there, she would die on her own.

Humans cannot live in Magical Energy-contaminated land. They cannot come out. The moment they breathe the contaminated air in the contaminated land, they forget who they are and become corpses that only wander there.

So the denomination mainly used the land to dispose of people.

They attach the title "Maron" to prisoners who are too troublesome to kill outright, like me, and throw them away.

"Hey, mister."

When I poked my head out of the cloak, the man who made eye contact with me spat at the cage.

Wow.

I really hate that.

It's always those who are nothing who spit on the road or at people. May you live your whole life under someone else like a commoner.

I glared at him and cursed him, and the man's face turned pale in an instant. He was so scared, I don't know why he keeps trying to mess with people.

"Ask me if you have any questions.The old man sighed and approached the cage. On closer inspection, he was a handsome middle-aged man with a stylish white beard and white hair.

"What was it, the two-letter kingdom. Is the king there dead? Is he still alive? Hey, can you tell them that the uncle's death wasn't my fault, but because his wife secretly poisoned him? I feel like it's unfair."

"It's no use trying to seduce us like that. We are under the protection of the denomination."

"Then give me some money before you abandon me. Give me plenty of food too. Who knows? Maybe I won't die there and survive."

I need money to go to a nearby village someday and buy bread and clothes.

The old man looked at me with an inscrutable face.

"I heard you made enough money to build a kingdom with bad deeds, what happened to all that?"

"That's just a rumor."

The real Hayley may have had a lot of money, but I don't. The book didn't say where she kept that money.

Besides, she's going to die anyway.

In a year.

"Aish."

I rolled back up in the cloak and lay down again. These uncles didn't seem like they were going to give me money, and they didn't seem like they were going to buy me anything delicious either.

The hand that peeked out from the dress was beautiful. The wrist was so thin it looked like it would break, and even in this moment of being dragged away, a subtle fragrance emanated from the rose-like hair.

Hayley, why did you live like that?

Didn't you really know that if you do such bad things, even for the sake of others, you'll end up like this?

While you were killing people to help someone, cursing people to make someone a king, and taking the blame for someone else.

Those 'someones' became the protagonists of this world.

Abandoning you.

Ignoring you.

Killing you.

They became the protagonists.

"Ha! Life..."

Sweat was beading inside the cloak. The midday sun was heating up the cage.

I hugged Hayley with both arms and crouched down inside, as hard as I could.

I had a strange dream. Hayley appeared and shouted at me to give her my legs, but when I yelled back, 'You should ask for my body, not my legs!' she sat down and cried.

"We've arrived!"

As soon as I heard that we had arrived, I jumped up and sat down. It was real. There was a canyon below the cliff. It was the road to Maron Keep.

I could hear the sound of ghosts crying through the narrow canyon. Knowing it was because of the wind, it was still a creepy sound that even a modern person like me found spine-chilling.

"Prepare.The old man glanced at me once and ordered his subordinates. I was sitting there wiggling my butt, thinking that I was finally going to leave this familiar cage.

But these guys weren't taking me out of the cage, they were dismantling the part where the carriage and the horse were connected.

"Aren't you taking me out now?"

The novel starts much later. So I know why Hayley was abandoned, but I didn't know 'how' she was abandoned.

This is ominous.

"Take me out! I'll walk in on my own two feet!"

It's true. Because a magician who has been deprived of Mana is as weak as a paper doll, I had no choice but to do what these men told me to do.

"Hayley Maron."The old man looked down at me and said."

"Reflect in the cursed land until the moment your life ends. God will be watching you."

Clang.

The cage dropped. I clung to the bars inside, clutching the cloak tightly, and shouted.

"No! You heartless bastards! You're not throwing me like this, are you? Huh? Even if you're abandoning me, this isn't right! Take me out of here! At least let me walk and die!"

"Throw it."

The men moved with a heave-ho. There was a path between the canyons, but they were going to push the cage off the cliff.

"One, two, three!"

"You son of a bitch!"

I screamed at the top of my lungs inside the cage that was floating in the air. I cursed them using all the swear words I knew.

Of course, it was useless.

All that was poured out on Hayley until the very end was terrible contempt and hatred. They were intoxicated with a sense of justice, invoking the will of God, and believed that the more horribly Hayley Maron died, the more peaceful this world would become.

"Die!"

"Don't ever come back, you dirty murderer!"

"Atone forever down there!"

Wow, no way.

She was abandoned like this?

How did she survive for a year?

Even as I fell, I was admiring Hayley. She really was an amazing woman. She was thrown into the canyon in a cage, but she survived.

Whoosh. The wind blew.

I was flying in the sky. The faces of the men who pushed me away quickly disappeared. I could see the damn blue sky and white clouds.

---

Hayley died.

Some who heard the news were relieved, some writhed in guilt, and some forgot her existence.

Those who rose to the throne with her power, those who succeeded in revenge with her power, and those who were forgiven for their sins with her sacrifice, all believed that this death meant the end of her.

Just one magician who loved them too much and wanted to be loved.

Hayley died.