The Villainess Lives Twice

Chapter 297

Proofreader: somnium

Blood splattered from his collarbone and stained Lawrence’s face. His face was white with pain, blood and tears.

Lawrence’s hand scratched the dirt ground painfully.

There was no trace of the youthful and beautiful young man Lysia once fell in love with.

Lysia looked down at him with dry eyes.

She said that she no longer had a heart to love or the effort to, but she seemed to be stricken with her heart’s wounds.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you, I was a little scared to talk about it.”

“Lysia.”

Lawrence’s forehead was soaked in cold sweat in an instant.

“I regret it.”

said Lysia.

“I wanted to understand you. I thought you would understand. You must have had a difficult past, and you must have had a hard time…….”

He was born the Emperor’s illegitimate son, and half of his life was raised in the Imperial Palace. His mother was Miraila, and his father was Emperor Gregor.

So she believed that he must have been so cruel because he had an irreversible wound on his heart.

She wanted to embrace him. She wanted to let him know that he can trust people.

She wanted to save him.

“I wanted to forgive you. Because I thought that if I was the only one who understood you, forgave you, and loved you, then I would be able to make a difference.”

Lysia now knew it was arrogance.

There are people in the world who do not change. An ugly heart was not just caused by scars.

She thought, though, that she would try to forgive him once more.

Lawrence remembered nothing when he returned and met her. He had only vague feelings left for her.

So anew, he would be able to start loving all over again.

If the old love could come back and continue that heart, if Lawrence had prioritized his love for her unlike before, she would have tried to live like that.

She was thinking of giving up everything she had held dear, forgetting any hope for the future, and giving up on the world.

Even if she was confined in a narrow world where she was alone with him, Lysia would have been willing to do so.

But he didn’t.

“I regret trying to understand, to forgive, to believe that you love me.”

He was just born that way. Even if he had a story that Lysia still didn’t know, she couldn’t stand him any longer.

Lysia gave up on understanding. She stopped trying.

“I regret loving someone like you, even for a moment.”

Lawrence took a deep breath. Each time, blood spattered from his wounds.

“I know that my words will mean nothing to you. You don’t love me, let alone consider me a human.”

“Lysia, ugh, cough!”

“Still, I’m talking for myself.”

Lysia looked down at him and said,

“Be happy, Lawrence. You have succeeded in ruining me as you hoped.”

Lysia put the gun to Lawrence’s forehead.

Many will have a grudge against her. But it should be her who would reap Lawrence’s fate.

Lysia wasn’t really the kind of person who thought personal revenge was right. This was irrational.

Even if revenge was the goal, it would probably make her more miserable than to stand up and leave him like this.

But she felt she could not yield this to anyone else. She looked as if she was being greedy.

It was a success. In the end, Lysia’s and his destiny was bound as one.

She laughs as Lawrence moans painfully.

“Is there, hoo, a bullet?”

“With or without it. It’s not a tool to kill you.”

Oracles are given to those who can change the world.

Divine power was given to ones so they can use this power to change the fate of others because their path was right.

So this is not God’s will. Her divine powers were given because of her belief in her humanity, so she was no longer fit for this job.

So this is what she does with her own life.

When Lysia pulled her trigger, it was a white light that popped out of the muzzle.

“Kugh!”

The sound that came out of Lawrence’s throat was not a scream of pain, but rather a reflex of death.

Lysia put her hand on his neck. His pulse was already gone.

The lifeless eyes instantly became cloudy.

What was there was no longer the man she loved, nor the devil she should have hated, but the shell of a human with a lost soul.

Lysia swept his eyelids and closed them. After a few hours his body would begin to stiffen and open it up again, but she wanted to do it in the current mood.

It was finished.

Lysia felt it. It was as if she had finally released the painful bond that had been handed down from her last life.

“Young Baron Morten.”

“Lysia.”

The knights approached her. Lysia stood up.

“Lend me a horse. I have to follow Lord Cedric.”

A blue light was still spinning on the embankment.

＊＊＊

Artizea looked at the blue lightning that rose in the magic circle as she fell on her face.

She was comfortable. She actually thought she felt most comfortable with her body now than over the past few months.

The tip of her cut index finger was softly painful. But the pain was like a paper cut at best.

‘Has there been no pain before?’

Even then, she felt at ease. She thought it was the relaxation she felt thanks to the painful work being stopped.

But in the original magic circle, it seemed that her five senses were blocked.

‘How long does it take?’

Artizea did not feel the passage of time. She didn’t even know it was a short moment.

She thought with her eyes closed.

Would it have been better if she had left a will?

There was a will. Since she became Marquis Rosan, she ought to have arranged for the title and the great wealth of the family.

But she never left a will as an individual.

She had no words to leave in the face of death. No matter what she says, it was just an excuse.

She decided not to. In the past, she had only Miraila and Lawrence, and now Cedric, the only people she tried to make excuses for and explain to.

For everyone else, the minus on the ledger would suffice.

For the sake of her own desires, she harmed others and treated human lives as numbers, so it would be right to treat her own life in the same way.

But now, she thought.

She wished she had written a letter.

Not for making excuses, but for those left behind.

If Leticia could one day read letters, she would have thought of her, even if she was a mother who did nothing but give birth to her.

She wished she had written just one line so that even a baby who was just starting to learn to read could read it.

She also wished she had written a letter to Cedric.

Not a letter to the victim as a sinner, nor to the master as a strategist, but to her husband as his wife.

She wished she had added that she was sorry for leaving him alone.

Besides that, she had more to write and more to say than she thought.

She should have told Alice, who was crying outside now, in advance.

She hoped that the rest of her life would be peaceful and comfortable. So, no matter what happens to Artizea, her heart should not be filled with sorrow and hate.

It’s not that Alice didn’t protect her. She had already protected Artizea.

It would have been nice if Artizea had told her in advance. She had crossed a dangerous bridge so many times.

It would have been nice if she had left a will to Sophie, to Marcus, and to Hayley, rather than wealth and pensions.

And also for Venia.

She wished she had said she was sorry instead of being afraid.

It was useless. Could that convince Venia that she would stop this time?

She wouldn’t have been able to.

She would use her own body as a resource just like anyone else’s, yet she hesitated about making human sacrifices.

Even though it was the best resource to use at that moment.

‘That’s well done.’

She kept Venia by her side to strengthen her heart. Still, her heart was not firm, so it was only natural for Venia to push her.

That was the payback. It is not the rules of the chessboard that Artizea has been dealing with, but a rule of the heavens.

The index finger that had been cut twitched. The tip was ticklish.

It was the moment when Artizea felt that it was going to end soon.

Two arms protruded into the blue barrier of the magic circle where the lightning was bouncing.

“Tia!”

Cedric shouted.

Artizea widened her eyes in astonishment.

“Stop.”

The word ’stop’ couldn’t come out of her mouth. The sound that barely came out of her throat was like a whisper.

Because there was no energy left.

The moment she wanted to get up, as if noticing it, the letters written in blood climbed up her ankles and legs and bound her.

A deep blue storm swept up the border of the magic circle like a pillar. Blue lightning flashed all over the place.

The backs of her hands and cuffs caught fire. Artizea saw Cedric’s shadow beyond the border between light and flame.

It was there then.

Artizea thought of the last time she had seen him before turning back time.

“Kuuu, aaahhh!”

Flesh bursts from Cedric’s wrist to forearm.

However, he grabbed Artizea by the neck.

Blood dripped down the ground. The magic circle’s letters paused for a moment.

Cedric didn’t notice it. He just threw his whole body and moved with one purpose from start to finish.

Riip!

The hem of Artizea’s robe, which had been dragged to the ground by the letters written in blood, was torn. His shoes came off, and his ankles burned.

However, he dragged Artizea’s body out of the magic circle.

At that moment, the pain returned. Artizea looked up blankly at Cedric, with his fingers cut, his ankle broken, and the skin all over his body torn and scarred.

His black hair had turned almost half white. His youthful and strong face had suddenly aged, just as it had been when he knelt before her.

But his face was no longer a stone statue that had been polished by the wind and rain. Only his eyes lit up in the blood and tears-soaked face.

Cedric grabbed her by the collar and shouted,

“I think I’m going crazy. I think I’m going crazy because of you!”

Artizea shook helplessly in his hand. Tears welled up from her eyes as well.

Cedric hugged her. And he groaned and cried.

“I saved you. I saved you this time…… !”

And he just sat down on the ground.