Roxana
Chapter 75
Chapter 75
The Way to Protect the
Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 75
- A New Encounter
Dazzling sunlight settled over the frozen lake.
The transparent, glittering sheet of round ice looked like an angel’s basin dusted with finely ground stardust.
Orca had been watching that scenery for half a month already.
Upon his long, loosely braided light-blue hair rested a shapka crafted from silver fox fur.
The fur coat wrapped around his frame looked as though it were fashioned directly from the lustrous golden pelt of the monster Silope.
With jeweled ornaments draped in abundance all over him, his appearance was exceedingly opulent.
Such an ensemble might easily have looked bizarre on anyone else, yet on him, it looked utterly natural, without the slightest hint of discordance.
It was entirely because Orca’s features were so exquisitely fair.
Chime…
Swayed by the breeze, his ornaments brushed against one another, chiming like clear bells.
Through silver-gray eyes like moonlight reflected on a winter lake, Orca quietly watched a certain spot.
A snowflake settled upon his long eyelashes, which cast a shadow like an awning. Even so, he did not blink once.
Orca of the Hyperion family, known as the White Beast Tamer, was currently at the monster habitat bordering the Frederica Highlands and Emerald Lake.
After a grueling wait, the beast Gyrote finally revealed itself before his eyes.
Clumps of black fur contrasted starkly against the white snowscape.
Red eyes gleaming with a ghastly, blood-tinged luminescence.
A jagged, bumpy horn jutting high above its forehead.
Sharp fangs protruding past its jaws, and burly, muscled limbs to match.
“Beautiful…”
Orca murmured in admiration, nearly lost in ecstasy.
He was currently concealing himself using a stealth spell that masked his presence from monsters.
That was why he could admire their appearance without alerting the Gyrotes.
True to their pack-hunting instincts, nearly a hundred Gyrotes had gathered in a horde before the lake.
They moved only through the deep snow, making them exceptionally hard to find under normal circumstances—and yet here he was, gazing not at a single one, but at a pack of roughly a hundred.
Orca intended to capture and tame the king of the Gyrotes, the strongest among them.
Yet having waited patiently for half a month to earn this precious moment, he could afford to indulge in a little leisure.
Right now, he simply wanted to admire the splendid scene unfolding before him a while longer.
Whoosh!
“Huh?”
His peaceful moment did not last.
All at once, his field of vision turned entirely crimson.
As if a solar eclipse had occurred, a massive shadow cast itself over the brilliantly white, shimmering landscape of the lake.
Orca watched in a daze as a swarm of butterflies, appearing out of nowhere, swept across the horde of Gyrotes.
Crunch, crack!
The gruesome sound of crushing bones instantly overwhelmed the quiet scenery.
“What in the…”
Orca’s jaw dropped dumbly. He could not comprehend what was taking place right before his eyes.
Flutter.
A moment later, the swarm of red butterflies took flight, casting a vast shadow across his vision just as they had when they first appeared.
Where they vanished without a trace, only the pristine, white snowfield remained.
Not even a single droplet of blood was left behind, leaving Orca to wonder for a second whether he had just dreamed the entire thing.
“Wait… are you kidding me?”
As he snapped back to his senses, an empty laugh escaped his lips.
He had staked out in this bitter winter without lighting a single fire for half a month…
And yet, the horde of Gyrotes he had finally managed to track down was devoured whole by an unidentified swarm of butterflies that dropped in out of thin air.
Orca was deeply disheartened.
’No, wait. It’s winter right now. Why would there be butterflies in this freezing weather? Besides, what kind of butterfly devours monsters?’
At that moment, a sudden realization struck his mind, and Orca sprang to his feet.
The snow that had piled atop his body cascaded to the ground in heaps.
“Poison Butterflies?!”
His wide eyes locked onto the crimson trail receding beyond the blue sky.
‘Could there be a habitat of Poison Butterflies nearby? I came up empty-handed just a while ago!’
If that was the case, a creature like a Gyrote no longer mattered in the slightest.
The swarm of red butterflies was flying in the direction of the Pedelian lands.
The moment he saw that, Orca’s next destination was set.
“What happened last evening… that was definitely a proposal, right?”
Ollin stopped in her tracks just as she was about to step into the tent where her comrades were resting.
“Well, given the circumstances and everything, it felt subtly different from something like that…”
“Different how? That was an outright confession.”
“Right. Asking for the rest of her life—isn’t that practically asking her to marry him?”
“Put that way, I guess it does sound like it…”
Normally, they would never have failed to notice a presence outside, but they were half-dazed, still chewing over what had happened the previous evening.
“I knew the atmosphere was strange right from the start.”
“I had a feeling. A captive? That’s hardly in our young lord’s nature.”
“He said she was his savior. Though I was taken aback at first since the person the Young Clan Head brought back was such an unbelievable beauty that I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
“That’s true. We’d only seen her unconscious, so when she woke up yesterday and moved around, for a moment I wondered if I was dreaming or awake… Mm, I don’t even know how to describe the feeling.”
“You don’t need to explain. We’re all thinking the same thing.”
Then, someone murmured in passing.
“By the way… didn’t she say yesterday that she didn’t have much time left to live?”
A heavy silence settled over the tent, pressing down on their shoulders.
Every one of them was clearly imagining the tragic romance of their young master.
Ollin decided to turn around and leave.
If she went inside, they would undoubtedly barrage her with questions about the woman Cassis had brought back, just like yesterday.
Just then, she felt someone approaching from behind.
Startled by the thought that it might be Cassis, she flinched, but fortunately, it was Isidore.
He walked straight past Ollin and stepped into the tent.
“Do you lot fancy yourselves thrushes? Your noisy prattle can be heard all the way outside.”
“Sir Winston!”
“Conduct yourselves with dignity. This rest period was not granted for you to idle away in gossip.”
“Yes, sir! Our apologies!”
Listening to the crisp, sharp shouts of discipline, Ollin quietly slipped away.
Not stepping inside had indeed been the wiser choice.
Her chest heaved with relief at the thought that she had narrowly avoided being caught by the tiger-like Isidore and scolded alongside them.
Even so, she could understand why her comrades had huddled together to whisper like that.
Ollin looked back on what had happened a few days ago.
At first, she had thought Cassis was carrying a corpse.
Even without that, they had been agonizing over whether to head back inside the Agriche manor since Cassis, who had sent Isidore out ahead, hadn’t emerged for the longest time.
Yet when Cassis finally appeared through the blizzard, he was not alone.
The person cradled in his arms was wrapped so thoroughly in a cloak that their face could not be seen.
However, the sight of long, golden hair fluttering over Cassis’s shoulder was vivid enough to brand itself into her memory.
Leaving the bewildered crowd behind, Cassis took the lead.
“We depart.”
And so they left the Agriche territory. Then, while they paused briefly on the road to regroup—
Clatter!
The tightly shut carriage door opened, and the person Cassis had brought with him emerged.
She seemed to have regained consciousness while Cassis was away for a brief moment.
Judging by the contours of her body and the face glimpsed between her fluttering strands of hair, she was a young woman.
Yet the moment she opened the carriage door and took her very first step, she collapsed powerlessly downward.
With a soft thud, her delicate figure crumbled onto the snowfield.
Witnessing this, her comrades rushed over in alarm.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere—?”
The comrade who was the first to touch Roxana’s body staggered back the very next second.