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Join the Server“So you’re saying there’s no way! Roquel must become the Duke. He must be my son! Do you think I’m attending to this old man just to end up as a forgotten second wife, relegated to the back rooms?”
“Forget about the Defensio blood. We can’t risk anything more. Any future plans depend on Roquel being safe. Why not target the Duke’s son instead? Let’s get rid of him, just like the Duke.”
“That brat leaves no openings. Neither do the people around him, and those in the kitchen are especially difficult to win over. It’s been ten years. Ten years as the Duchess, and I haven’t been able to plant a single person in the kitchen. The old man might have eaten whatever I gave him without suspicion, but do you really think that monstrous brat would eat anything I send?”
It seemed those two were also involved in why the Duke was on his deathbed, clinging to life. Heinzel could feel the death flags piling up, one after another.
“If he were interested in women, I could at least send one in. But that monstrous brat only thinks about killing. It’s nothing but demon beasts, demon beasts, demon beasts. A disgusting wretch. Disgusting Defensio.”
Even as she carefully stripped Roquel’s blood-soaked clothes and wiped his bare skin with a towel, the Duchess spat curses as if uttering a hex.
“Let’s think of a method. If that brute absorbs even a single drop of demon beast blood, the rest will be easy. That much was confirmed with the Duke, wasn’t it? The Defensios are strong against evil things, but also weak to them. If even that one falls, dealing with the child will be simple. It would also be easy to keep the child in our grasp and manipulate them, rather than disposing of them entirely.”
“No! Roquel will be the Duke.”
“Yes, of course, Roquel must become the Duke. My point is, if all the Defensios suddenly die, it might arouse suspicion. We can just leave the young one and slowly get rid of them later. Naturally, the next Duke must be Roquel.”
‘But he’s already dead.’
Swallowing the truth he dared not voice, Heinzel shook his head slowly.
The Duchess and Vant, having quickly cleaned the child’s body and wrapped him in clean sheets, vanished from the room, intent on returning the child to his bedroom. It seemed this particular room was not Roquel’s actual chamber.
“Hey, puppy.”
Fearing that the light from his side would be visible from theirs, just as their light had been visible from his, Heinzel didn’t dare turn on the main lamp. Instead, he moved far away from the wall connected to the room and illuminated the weakest possible light source.
As Heinzel, kneeling weakly, called out to the dog, the creature, which had thankfully remained quietly by his side, trotted over. It rested its chin on the toe of his slipper and gazed up at him.
“You just crapped on me.”
The puppy, spinning in a circle as if to deny having relieved itself, let out a small, indignant ‘woof.’ Fearing the sound might carry, Heinzel quickly apologized and covered the dog’s mouth.
“Shhh, shhh. Quiet down. If I’m caught here in this situation, I’ll truly be dead.”
In this brief span, Heinzel had uncovered far too many secrets—secrets so monumental they were almost unbearable. He let his shoulders slump in despair.
“Listen carefully, puppy. We really need to go back to my room now. We have to get back before dawn, too.”
He considered simply exiting anywhere if he couldn’t find his way back to the bedroom. However, with Roquel now dead, if it were discovered that Heinzel had been wandering the secret passages all night, the Duchess might grow suspicious.
Now, truly needing to risk his life to return to his bedroom, he carefully grasped the dog’s paw and pleaded.
“Puppy, please. Save your big brother. If you lead me straight to my bedroom and don’t take any detours, I’ll generously overlook the fact that you crapped yourself. Huh? Your big brother is a kind-hearted person, you know that, right? I even treated your injuries. You little rascal, is this how you treat the one who saved your life, by pushing him into a death trap?”
Hainzel begged the dog to hurry and take him back to his bedroom. As he clutched its paws, tearfully imploring it to lead him to his room, the puppy finally lifted its heavy rear and began to waddle forward, taking the lead.
‘Would this puppy become his savior, or remain a grim reaper until the very end?’
Now, even its waddling rear seemed suspicious to Heinzel. Unable to relax, he cautiously followed the dog, step by careful step.
****
Having safely returned to his room, Heinzel collapsed to his knees, his arms braced against the floor, and wept tears of profound relief. All the way back to his bedroom, he had been consumed by the fear that he might never escape the secret passage, or worse, be captured by the Duchess and meet his demise.
As if to mock his overthinking, the puppy next to him began to playfully chew on Heinzel’s hair, which had fallen forward.
“You… you…”
Though indignation churned within him, Heinzel couldn’t bring himself to unleash his fury on the dog. He simply clenched his fists. Only after he had calmed down somewhat did he embrace the puppy and climb onto the bed.
He needed to process the shocking revelations he had heard today. Roquel, now dead, inevitably came to mind, but Heinzel struggled to erase the horrifying image of the corpse, forcing himself to focus on other thoughts.
The blood of Defensio.
Recalling the Defensio blood, which had been mentioned multiple times in the conversation between the Duchess and Vant, Heinzel rubbed his brow.
‘Only a few close confidantes and those of the Defensio bloodline knew that secret. How could the Duchess have possibly found out?’
Hainzel, who had been wracking his brain, inwardly chided himself for agonizing over such a surprisingly simple answer.
The Duchess. The Duke’s wife. Of course, the Duke must have told her. They had been married for ten years, had a child together, and if he truly believed they would live happily ever after, he would naturally have shared it. Since he firmly believed Roquel was his son, he would have assumed Defensio blood flowed through Roquel’s veins, and thus, considered it a fact the Duchess ought to know.
“Foolish man. No, perhaps I should say the Duchess was quite adept at deception.”
He marveled at the Duchess’s audacity, having so flawlessly raised another man’s child as the Duke’s own. Yet, he also scoffed at her misfortune for choosing to claim the child was of the Defensio bloodline, of all families.
While he wasn’t sure if paternity tests existed in this era, the Defensio family possessed a unique trait passed down through their bloodline. This characteristic appeared without exception in all Defensio descendants, making it the only family where one couldn’t successfully pass off another’s child as their own.
The blood of a Divine Beast flows through the Defensio family.
This was a line from the novel.
A long, long time ago, in an era of chaos where demon beasts and humans intertwined, a man voluntarily took on the destiny of fighting demon beasts to save suffering humanity. So heavy was the fate he bore that the gods, detaching a piece of their own power, sent a Divine Beast to aid him.
The man, enduring immense hardship alongside the Divine Beast, drove the demon beasts to the northernmost reaches of the continent. There, he discovered a rift in the void from which the demon beasts poured forth, naming it the ‘Wound of Arno’ after the continent itself.
To care for the ravaged continent and its people, the man founded the Empire of ‘Dayloa’ and became its first Emperor. He then bestowed the title of Duke upon the Divine Beast, ‘Defensio,’ who had fought by his side, tasking it with guarding the border between the demonic realm and the Empire.
“Wow, thinking about it now, the first Emperor was total trash.”
The Divine Beast had helped a complete stranger, undertaking demon beast hunts that were never part of its destiny, only for the man to betray it. After enduring hardships together, the man founded an empire, became Emperor, and decided to live well alone. He granted the Divine Beast a mere hollow ducal title, banishing it to the north and forcing it to hunt demon beasts until its death. Even the Divine Beast’s descendants were trapped there, generation after generation, unable to escape.
“That Emperor is a son of a b*tch.”
What sin had the Divine Beast’s descendants committed to be confined to this frigid north, forced to hunt demon beasts until they died? Furthermore, through the union of Divine Beast and human, their offspring bore a curse—dubbed a blessing—that condemned them to a lifetime of suffering. No wonder the Northern Duke’s personality was so twisted.
Lyden Defensio, the Duke of the North, was known to be cold, ruthless, and indifferent to others.
When the female protagonist first met him, rumors were circulating that Lyden had personally beheaded his stepmother, the Duchess, and his half-brother, Roquel. Unlike the people whispering behind his back, the overly meddlesome female protagonist brazenly asked Lyden to his face if the rumors were true. Lyden, without hesitation, confirmed them. A ridiculous progression of events followed, with the female protagonist, completely unaware of the full context, immediately declaring that she understood Lyden’s pain—but he would set that aside for now.
Hainzel scratched his chin, recalling a single sentence that had been very briefly mentioned in the novel.
Lyden personally beheaded his stepmother, the Duchess, and his half-brother, ‘Roquel.’
Hainzel finally understood why his name hadn’t appeared in the novel. He had died before the story even began, experimented upon by the Duchess and Vant, never even getting entangled with Lyden.
In the original novel, Heinzel simply died. Consequently, the Duchess and Vant likely ceased their experiments.
However, with Haeseung transmigrating into the deceased Heinzel’s body, Heinzel was resurrected, diverging from the original story. The Duchess and Vant, believing the experiment to be partially successful, then attempted something on Roquel that they should never have done, leading to Roquel’s death.
‘So what happens to the storyline where the Duchess and Roquel are beheaded by Lyden? Will such a small deviation have no impact on the novel’s progression, or will Heinzel’s name take Roquel’s place?’
‘Lyden personally beheaded his stepmother, the Duchess, and ‘her son, Heinzel.”
The mere thought was horrifying. Heinzel shook his head vigorously, trying to dislodge the dreadful image from his mind.
The adventure continues! If you loved this chapter, I Just Wanted An Ordinary Life This Time is a must-read. Click here to start!
Read : I Just Wanted An Ordinary Life This Time
