The Baddest Villainess Is Back
Chapter 63
All the personnel, including the troops, had been concentrated in the backyard where the banquet was being held to prepare for the Kalutans.
Even though it was outdoors, the grounds were so vast that there was more to manage, making the external security noticeably tighter than usual.
The Kalutans were more jovial than expected.
Thanks to their hearty personalities and easy mingling, the banquet ripened in an instant.
Roselyn also relaxed pleasantly, emptying a few glasses of wine.
“Lady Bellion.”
Roselyn’s face was slightly flushed.
She paused at the call of a maid who approached while she was tilting what might have been her umpteenth glass of wine.
“Yes.”
“Marquis Wilbrid is urgently calling for you. He said he has something to say regarding the previous matter, so if you have had enough to drink, please come for a moment….”
“…Gerran?”
“Yes.”
At the maid’s words, Roselyn tilted her head slightly and then nodded obediently.
‘Why would Gerran suddenly call me separately? If it’s about the previous matter….’
She followed the maid into the Imperial Palace, her brow furrowing. If it were about the previous matter, he would have come himself.
“…Did that fellow tell me to come?”
“Yes.”
Roselyn slowly pressed her thumb against her brow. The slight intoxication seemed to clear.
“How strange.”
“…….”
The maid came to a dead stop at Roselyn’s words.
“That fellow Gerran doesn’t trust people, so there’s no way he would have relayed a conversation we had to anyone else. Who are you?”
“…Wow, our Lady is quick on the uptake, aren’t you? I thought you two were in that kind of relationship… but I guess there was something else going on?”
Roselyn’s eyes widened at the eerie voice coming from behind.
At the same time, thwack! Along with a dull sound, a heavy pain surged through her neck.
Her vision blurring was the very next thing that happened.
She had been kidnapped.
Roselyn didn’t know whether to be happy or sad about the current situation, which could be defined by that one single word.
‘I should have been careful when Khan told me to be.’
Despite him sensing something with his beast-like instincts and giving her advice, she clicked her tongue inwardly at the unforeseen situation.
‘To be kidnapped in the middle of the Imperial Palace….’
The laxity of the security was simply lamentable.
It seemed that since Kaluta was visiting, every effort had to be focused on them, inevitably leaving the security within the Imperial Palace porous.
“Hello, Lady. Are you awake?”
“…….”
“I know you’re awake, so open your eyes already.”
At the voice, Roselyn, who had been pretending to be unconscious, frowned.
As she exhaled a sigh and slowly lifted her head, a familiar man burst into laughter.
“It’s been a while.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t act like a friend I just happened to run into on the street. It’s annoying.”
Roselyn spoke, her hands tied behind her back and forcibly fixed to a chair.
She twisted her hands this way and that, but they didn’t seem like they would come loose easily.
Roselyn clicked her tongue inwardly.
“Where is this?”
“Well, where do you think it is?”
The man, who had pulled up a chair opposite her and sat cross-legged at a distance, was dressed like a nobleman but did not look like one.
Indeed, he looked more like a back-alley thug than a noble.
“You know, Lady. How on earth do you know so much that you’re interfering in our business at every turn?”
“…….”
“I’m sorry to say this, but I took a look at your body while you were sleeping, and you didn’t seem to have any particularly great power.”
“You say quite confidently that you touched a woman’s body without permission.”
“That’s because I didn’t examine you with that kind of intention.”
The man, Aximus Baldur, scanned Roselyn up and down.
Her expression was indifferent, and her gaze was steady.
However, he knew how powerfully Roselyn’s heart was beating.
Just because one’s expression is calm doesn’t mean there is no fear.
“I was curious if you had some reliable corner to lean on that allowed you to wag your tongue so lightly. But it didn’t seem like there was any reason for you to be so confident.”
The voice adding that he was a bit disappointed lacked dignity, his speech lacked grace, and his actions were crude.
Roselyn remained silent as she looked at the man who was completely unbefitting of the title of Count.
It was because she didn’t particularly want to mix words with such a foolish human.
‘……Count Baldur.’
As she recalled, because everyone in the Baldur family had died in an unfortunate accident, he, an illegitimate child, had become the next Count.
‘As if it were an unfortunate accident.’
Only the culprit hadn’t been found; everyone surely knew that the incident was suspicious.
“Hm? Are you going to keep your mouth shut? What if I kill you?”
“If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already.”
“Oh?”
“The fact that you tied me up like this without killing me means you have some business with me other than murder. Am I wrong?”
Roselyn spoke coldly, suppressing her emotions as much as possible.
Count Baldur let out a snicker at Roselyn’s behavior and shrugged his shoulders.
“Ah~ Sorry, sorry. I did inherit the title of Count due to an unfortunate accident, but I haven’t really been taught anything, you see.”
“That much is obvious.”
The man flinched at Roselyn’s firm, mocking words.
“I know you’re of vulgar commoner origin, but as long as you’re wearing those clothes, can’t you do something about that vulgar way of speaking? My ears feel like they’re rotting. It’s troublesome since my hands are tied and I can’t even block them.”
At Roselyn’s jeering, the corner of Count Baldur’s mouth twitched once.
The man was laughing boisterously and acting as if everything were a nuisance.
Furthermore, he used speech and attire that seemed to rebel against the world, and his clothes and grooming were a mess.
That was the way this man rebelled against the world.
A way of openly rebelling against the stifling aristocratic society.
Roselyn knew it well because she had once had similar thoughts.
To think that the only rebellion a man nearing forty could come up with was this—it was so pitiful it was almost laughable.
Roselyn moved her hands tied behind her back roughly, as if trying to undo the ropes.
The Seven Luminaries Stone Bracelet was still on her wrist.
Gerran Wilbrid had even picked up the red stone and returned it to her previously.
She tilted her head back, distinguishing the colors of the beads by tracing her memory.
“……Our Lady is starting to cross the line a bit.”
“Ah, my apologies. I thought it would be better than calling you an immature child, but I guess it wasn’t.”
“A child……?”
The corner of the man’s mouth hooked up savagely.
Grip!
His hand clamped around Roselyn’s throat.
“Why is our Lady being like this? I thought I requested a polite conversation.”
“This…… is polite? You need to relearn your vocabulary from the beginning.”
Roselyn spoke in intervals through her constricted airway.
She did not stop her tongue even while her breath was being cut off.
“Ah, fuck……. You’re acting like a real bitch. Huh? Don’t make me angry. I don’t want to cause a bloodshed or anything.”
Roselyn paused.
“You don’t want your eyes gouged out and one of your ears cut off, do you, Lady?”
At the added words, her face grew even more fierce.
“Do you think I would yield to such things?”
Count Baldur flinched at Roselyn’s ominous gaze.
‘……No, what kind of sickly Lady is this?’
Isn’t that the face of a seasoned beast that has been through all sorts of hardships?
The man stroked the sparse beard on his chin and loosened the strength in his hand.
He looked down at Roselyn with narrowed eyes before plopping back down into the opposite chair.
“What a truly interesting Lady. I’m almost tempted to kill you with my own hands once everything is over.”
“Those are the kind of words a loser would say—one who couldn’t win through fair means and despicably took the title of Count.”
“……Stop provoking me, Lady. You’ll really get a scar on that precious face.”
Reaching out, the man pressed his blunt fingernail hard against Roselyn’s eyelid.
At the sensation of the eyeball being pressed through the lid, physiological tears ran down Roselyn’s cheek.
“Oops, I made you cry.”
The man roughly wiped her cheek with a coarse finger and sat down heavily in the chair he had pulled in front of Roselyn.
“Why?”
“……Why?”
The man’s words, just as he was about to open his mouth, were cut off by Roselyn.
“I suppose the King of Makruksa ordered you to make me the Queen?”
The man flinched at Roselyn’s words.
The emotions like annoyance or frustration instantly vanished from Count Baldur’s face.
Visible in his chillingly sunken eyes were only anger and wariness.
“……Who are you?”
The expression of Count Baldur, who had been acting sly or treating Roselyn with a light tone throughout, hardened.
“I asked, who the hell are you?”
“What does it matter to you who I am? You’re going to die anyway.”
“……No, just how much do you know?”
“Well, I wonder how much I know?”
Roselyn asked cryptically, her head held loftily high.
“Lady, do I look like I’m joking right now?”
“No, not at all?”
Roselyn smiled seductively.
“I just know that no matter how much you fly and crawl, you won’t be able to beat me.”
Aximus Baldur.
At a glance, he seemed like an easygoing hedonist similar to Gerran, but in reality, his inside was filled with twisted anger toward the world.
So, to summarize it in one line, it meant that at forty years old, he still hadn’t escaped puberty.
“……Tsk, anyway. That’s right. The King wants to make you the Queen. Don’t you want to live without being looked down upon by anyone, Lady?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“A life where no one looks down on you. Becoming a noble existence with everyone under your feet. It’s not a common offer; the position of Queen has been vacant all this time.”
Roselyn looked at Count Baldur without a word.
“If you think that trampling others is the way to avoid being looked down upon even at that age…….”
Roselyn let out a short laugh and looked at her opponent with pitying eyes.
“It seems you’ve lived your life so wastefully it’s pathetic.”
“……What?”
“If a life where you can only define your own value by depending on others isn’t pathetic, then what is?”
Count Baldur glared at her at the sound of Roselyn’s laughter-laced voice.
“Well, I understand.”
“What could someone like you possibly understand?!”
“You probably offered me the position of Queen because you thought I was in the same situation as you. Of course, it’s true that I was lonely too.”
Roselyn’s lips parted as she smiled languidly.
Even though her arms were tied and she was bound, she was so dignified and relaxed that for a moment, the man wondered if he was dreaming.
“But I didn’t throw a tantrum for others to set a value on me like you bastards.”
“Hey, Lady……! Jokes should be in moderation…….”
“What do I understand? Well. Is it the reason you’re so twisted?”
Roselyn only said what she wanted to say.
“You were born in a brothel as the illegitimate son of the previous Count Baldur, called a bandit ‘father,’ and grew up being beaten.”
“…….”
“Then one day, after almost being beaten to death by the bandit, you awakened an Abyss, blocked the brothel you lived in with earth, set it on fire, and burned it to the ground.”
At the sight of Roselyn reciting his past as if she had seen it, Count Baldur’s face went beyond hardening to turning pale.
“Is it perhaps an Abyss?”
“The ‘King’ of Makruksa must have found you while you were trembling in fear and told you that you were the illegitimate son of some noble, and you went to the Count’s house only to have your existence denied and be turned away at the door…… am I right?”
The man did not answer even at Roselyn’s arrogant question.
She smiled at the silent man.
“And with the single-minded thought of getting revenge, you must have worked hard with the King to grow Makruksa until now.”
Whoosh.
Roselyn smiled brightly.
“But what to do…….”
“……What was that sound just now?”
Beads of sweat trickled down her pale cheeks.
“That plan is scheduled to go completely awry.”
Snap. The rope, charred by fire and snapped, fell to the floor, burning brightly.