A Villain's Will to Survive novel Chapter 293

Chapter 293: Emotions of the Desert (2)

Soon after Deculein departed on the command to track the prisoner, Empress Sophien stood on the uppermost floor of the main building he had designed and silently took in her surroundings as a strange sense of nostalgia washed over her, drawn not from memory but from the familiarity of the architecture.

The place had been designed to resemble the Imperial Palace, and aside from the desert stretching beyond the windows, everything inside felt familiar as a gesture from Deculein—his way of offering Sophien a sense of comfort and a feeling of being at home.

Thud, thud—

Sophien walked to the bed with heavy steps, let herself fall onto it, and stared at the ceiling, her mind clouded with scattered thoughts and a simmering anger that refused to fade.

“... It is indeed difficult,” Sophien muttered.

I’ve made sense of cause and effect, governance and politics, scholarship and the martial arts, even magic and swordsmanship—and yet, it’s human emotion that proves the most difficult of all.

Because I didn’t know of the emotions—mine and his—and everything felt unfamiliar, was I fooling myself into thinking he held deep affection for me? Did I presume too much—that he would accept me without hesitation? I thought I had approached him as I would any political matter, guided by reason and past patterns, but was my calculation off from the beginning? Sophien thought.

“Tch.”

When it came to human relationships, Sophien was impatient, often too uncertain—understandably so, since in all her long years, she’d never properly had a chance to learn.

“... Damned fool.”

Therefore, Sophien couldn’t begin to understand the depth of the feeling Deculein held for Yulie and couldn’t tell if such an overwhelming emotion could ever exist, one strong enough to stake not only his life but the honor of his entire house.

"One way or another, Yulie will die," Sophien muttered, shaking her head with a thin smile—as if that thought brought her some strange kind of peace.

I already know Yulie’s state is irreparable. If I wait long enough, will he come to me on his own? Was I the fool for moving too soon when time itself might have done the work for me? Sophien thought.

“... Keiron—does it make any sense for an Empress to be distressed over something like this?” Sophien asked.

Lost in a question with no answer, Sophien felt a sudden rush of anger because as Empress there had never been anything she lacked and nothing she couldn’t take, for the most dominant Empire on the continent was hers, and every noble and house beneath it was, in the end, little more than an extension of the Imperial Palace and its might.

“That an Empress cannot outmatch a woman fated to die—”

However, the fact that she couldn’t have even one man left her uneasy and speaking to herself like an idiot, as Sophien began to wonder if she was worthy of the name Empress anymore.

— No, Your Majesty.

From somewhere within the room came Keiron’s voice, and as always, he stood with the Empress as a statue carved in a knight’s form.

“What, exactly, is it you’re denying?”

— Knight Yulie is not a woman fated to die, Your Majesty.

At that moment, Sophien narrowed her eyes, but before she could ask what he meant, Keiron answered.

— It seems they’ve discovered a means to save Knight Yulie.

***

At that same moment, in another oasis far from where Sophien was located. freeweɓnøvel~com

“I found it!” Epherene shouted.

Got it—the lantern flower! Epherene thought.

“See? I told you I’d find it,” Epherene continued, her smile as bright as spring sunlight as she held the lantern flower out to Yulie.

“Yes, you really did,” Yulie replied.

Epherene and Yulie were caked in sand and mud after searching every corner of the oasis, their bodies covered in wounds from fighting the scorpion beast, yet their hearts were full and smiles lit their faces as they looked at each other—all because of a single lantern flower.

“Look—we found it in just a day, even though it’s one of the rarest out there. That has to mean Knight Yulie will survive,” Epherene said, gently placing the lantern flower into her pouch of medicinal herbs. “Now all that’s left is a large mana stone. Though I wouldn’t say no to more lantern flowers.”

“... Is that so?”

“Of course. Oh—and how are you feeling? You did use mana earlier.”

“I’m fine."

“Because of that crazy scorpion beast,” Epherene said, frowning at the giant scorpion frozen nearby.

“Then let us head back, Miss Epherene. You’ve walked long enough through the desert, and I fear you’re close to exhaustion,” Yulie said, her armor an unspoken mark of her discipline as a knight.

“Okay, I’ll contact Assistant Professor Allen. By the way—did you write in your diary today?”

“Yes, I have.”

Freyden’s armor, known as the Armor of Snow, was a treasure granted only to those bloodlines, with the emblem of the knight embossed on its chestplate.

“Make sure to keep it up every single day. I’ll be checking, you know.”

“... Yes, I’ll make sure not to miss a day.”

The decoration of a knight embossed from mana stone was a common ornament found on most armor, but in a broader sense, it was also a statue.

Therefore...

“I really mean it. After throwing myself into all this, if something happens to you, Knight Yulie, I wouldn’t be able to see the Professor again—not that I really can now...”

Keiron was watching them in silence.

***

Back in the main building of the desert, Sophien’s expression turned to ice the moment she heard the news, like glass on the verge of shattering, but behind that brittle mask, fire raged through her heart.

“Scurrying through her death like a cockroach she is,” Sophien said.

The anger burning in Sophien was honest and consuming, so raw she couldn’t begin to understand it nor did she try as it licked at her like a flame with a mind of its own, and Keiron—the cause of it all—said nothing.

“Keiron, keep tracking them and report the location of their hideout—every stone of it.”

— Yes, Your Majesty. But if I may, what will you do with them once they’re found?

“Hmph,” Sophien murmured, the sound closer to contempt with a sneer. “To rewind time for a single soul is to go against the natural order. How arrogant and presumptuous.”

Keiron watched Sophien in silence—watched her burning with a fury she tried to justify, building reasons from thin air just to hold onto the fire.

“It’s nothing more than running from one’s own life—and that too is death by another name.”

— However, if the present self is written into a diary—might that not be enough to preserve the memory?

“A diary? Memories preserved in such a thing are fractured—nothing but fakes. Do you truly believe that with a single diary, the Yulie of the past could ever assimilate into the one standing here now?” Sophien replied, shaking her head with each word crushed out like a blade between her teeth. “Therefore, I will see to her end myself.”

— ... Just a moment, Your Majesty—I ask you to hold your words.

Keiron’s words felt oddly out of place, as if it didn’t belong in the moment.

“What reason do you have to stay my words?” Sophien asked, her eyes narrowing.

— There’s someone listening who should not be.

Clang—!

At that moment, the sudden clang of steel echoed from outside the main building, and Sophien turned to look out the window.

“... That must be.”

Outside, a child was facing another Keiron statue that Deculein had sculpted separately, and the child had a face Sophien recognized.

“Ria,” Sophien muttered.

“Let me explain... Oh?”

By using Elementalization to counter Keiron’s overwhelming strikes of his sword and mana, Ria somehow managed to hold her own.

“Oh, this is more doable than I thought,” Ria concluded.

I was tracking the prisoners using nothing but my Sharp Eyesight, seeing every trace left behind and every sign of passage clearly, and with the weight of prisoners slowing them down, there was no escaping me.

“You can't take to the skies or melt away into the earth—not with that bundle in your hands weighing you down,” I replied, pointing to the bundle in Idnik’s hand, which looked ordinary enough, but inside was a prisoner, and within that space, hundreds of tribe members trembled under the effect of Minimization.

“Hmm, that’s unexpected,” I said, a smile slipping as I looked toward Idnik, the corner of my mouth curling. “In that, we’re of one mind.”

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