Chapter 117
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Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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Chapter 117
The gentle snowfall transformed into a relentless downpour.
'I should have come up with a better excuse than the aurora.'
The Northern Region had warmer places too—a café near Black Tail, somewhere more civilized, anywhere but deep in the mountains.
I decided to stop wandering aimlessly down this path that felt like descending into an abyss. With darkness enveloping everything, reckless movement would be a death sentence for someone like me.
"...Even tears require the right circumstances to fall."
My chest ached with a dull heaviness, yet my mind blazed with nothing but survival instinct.
"Ha... Did he go to the Emperor's residence?"
He was the type to keep his word, so he probably already left. The Emperor wasn't a man of leisure either—with his packed schedule, he might have returned to the Capital, right?
Wouldn't he?
I thought I could locate the Mountain Lodge. Between the dark forest paths, I spotted a small glow and wisps of smoke rising from a lodge.
I finally understood why the siblings in the fairy tale rushed toward the witch's candy house. My toes were growing numb and rigid with cold.
I bounced alternately on both feet while staring at the lodge.
'Pride? Survival? Pride? Survival? Pride? Survival?'
My resolve wavered more than a dozen times.
"Ughhhh...!"
Tugging at my hair in anguish, I made a complete reversal.
"I have my pride! I absolutely won't... I won't go back!"
Since the blizzard wasn't raging fiercely, when the weather calmed down a bit more, I could try activating the Scroll again—there was a chance it would work.
'I have two pages left.'
I just needed to survive until then without freezing to death.
I wished my bag had a lamp, but it didn't. The key to maintaining body heat was finding a place sheltered from the wind.
I moved toward an area with surrounding vegetation that blocked the wind.
"But the Lake here... I can feel the cold radiating from it."
The Lake was beautiful as rumored, but it wasn't an ideal place to endure. I searched for a new location.
"Woof!"
That's when I heard a dog's bark from somewhere.
"A dog?"
"Hahaha!"
"Goodness! How did you get all the way out here?"
The Puppy I'd met at the Mountain Lodge was scratching at my legs with its bright, cheerful face and tongue hanging out.
I quickly scooped up the Puppy, whose hind legs were sinking into the snow.
"Did you follow me?"
"Pant pant pant!"
"You should be in a warm place. Why did you follow me?"
The Puppy's warm body heat radiated into mine. I huddled my body and tucked the Puppy inside my outer coat, holding it close.
"Ahh... there's nothing quite like the warmth of body heat, is there? So wonderfully warm."
A fluffy white Puppy licked my cheek with its long tongue.
"Woof!"
"Did you lose your owner?"
"Woof woof!"
The voiceless Puppy simply gazed at me with its dark eyes and panted happily.
This really didn't seem like a place where a Puppy should be...
The environment was far too harsh.
"...Could it be?"
I pulled the Puppy from my embrace and held it up high, stretching my arm out as far as it would reach.
"Dangerous monsters often emerge at night."
I narrowed my eyes and stared at the innocent-faced Puppy.
"My (ex-)husband Dale... impossibly naive and pure in this harsh world..."
"Woof! Woof!"
"And this Puppy... so impossibly pure and adorable, so seemingly fragile, yet surviving in this brutal Snowy Field..."
"Woof!"
"Are you perhaps a monster?"
I held the Puppy high and examined it from every angle—front, back, left, right. After all, The Emperor had been disguised before me for months.
Couldn't this creature also be a monster?
Now everything in the world seemed suspicious.
"Woof woof woof!"
"See? It's barking louder and louder, isn't it?"
But I couldn't abandon this small creature in the cold, dark Snowy Field out of fear that it might be a monster...
I gazed into the Puppy's small, bean-like black eyes and pondered.
"Woof woof! Woof woof woof woof! Woof!"
"What is it? Are you finally revealing your true nature?"
"Woof! Howl! Howl howl howl howl!"
The Puppy began barking frantically.
"Why? Are you about to transform? Are you a monster?"
"Howl howl howl! Yelp! Whine! Howl howl!"
"What—what's behind me...?"
Rumble.
Then a deafening sound erupted as if the very earth were twisting.
"An earthquake?"
I turned to look behind me, where the Puppy was barking.
And I saw it.
An avalanche barreling toward me like a stampede of cattle.
* * *
"...."
I had no idea how long I'd been standing there motionless.
Every sensation in my body felt foreign to me. Judging by my current state, considerable time must have passed... Ah, yes.
Two hours had elapsed.
Dale wiped his ashen face with trembling hands.
"...Everything is dark."
Though my vision was obscured by my own hand, it was my chest that burned with a searing ache far more profound than mere darkness.
My heart had transcended mere charring—it had hollowed into a gaping void. The ending was devastatingly hollow.
This was not how it should have concluded.
My golden eyes, once luminous, had dimmed to ashen gray, devoid of all vitality.
The fireplace blazed with fierce flames, yet an unbearable chill pierced through me as if winter itself had invaded my very being, leaving only bitter ash in its wake.
"What do I do now."
My quiet voice escaped like a sigh, dissolving into an unheard whisper.
How am I supposed to continue.
As my head dropped, my back found the wall.
I leaned my large frame against it, my eyes closed, dwelling on the lingering image of Enya.
"How am I supposed to live."
My lifeless eyes blinked. As I rubbed my strained eyelids, color gradually returned.
The moment my eyes reddened, tears began to fall.
"...."
I lacked even the strength to wipe them away.
Clear tears fell steadily, and I wasn't even aware I was weeping.
I watched my blurring vision with vacant indifference, not even blinking.
I became Emperor for Enya, and since Enya exists in this Empire, I must continue living as Emperor.
Yet now that Enya is no longer by my side, this life suddenly feels unbearably long. How am I to endure this endless existence ahead?
With a vacant expression, I lifted my head and gazed toward the doorway where Enya had vanished.
I had been completely abandoned.
Enya had left me behind.
"Even though I knew...."
A hollow laugh escaped me at my own pathetic nature.
The problem was that I had suddenly grasped happiness that had been impossible to obtain from the very beginning.
"Become my husband."
Enya's proposal was tempting.
He had intended to catch only a glimpse of her face before leaving. The mere fortune of facing her directly and conversing with her seemed like nothing more than a dream, so he had harbored no such expectations.
He was delighted that Enya had cared for him.
It was exactly like when they first met.
Knowing that his involvement with her could never have resulted in fond memories, he had hoped she would forget the unpleasant ones entirely—yet speaking with her brought him joy.
Rather than learning through others whether Enya appreciated his gift or felt happiness, he could know directly, and that was what mattered most.
He could not bear to refuse the kindness Enya extended to him.
Though he harbored such ugly and sinister desires, he wished to remain in her presence.
Merely occupying the same space was no longer enough. He found himself yearning to stand beside her, to share in every moment of her life.
The happiness she offered him in this moment was precious.
As he dreamed of the future, he coveted Enya.
Even knowing he would vanish...
Dale had once resolved that if Enya would only permit it, he would go to another land and live his entire life as her Dale alone.
He had never desired the throne.
It was never truly his to begin with, and the only thing he had ever desperately wanted was Enya—so he would abandon everything and live an ordinary life.
He would never become a living threat to the Lockhart Family.
Yet it seemed even that was not to be.
"..."
The realization of abandonment came late. Only now did he manage to breathe and wipe his cheeks.
He should have grieved at being cast aside, yet laughter escaped him. A hollow wind continued to leak from the corners of his mouth.
He squeezed his eyes shut and dragged his hand across his face before gripping his shirt. His breathing grew ragged and his chest felt suffocated.
But he could not die from this.
Enya had said she wished for his overwork, not his death from exhaustion...
Yet now it seemed death would be a mercy. Enya had imposed upon him a punishment that denied even that mercy.
Fortunately, he had already experienced living as though dead.
He could do it again.
He would have to return to the Capital now.
There was no reason to exist in this place where Enya was absent.
He would go and do what Enya loved.
Something worthy of a smile, so she would not hate him...
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
Then his sensitive ears caught a violent tremor. The vibration was coming from not far away, growing steadily shorter and closer.
His mind could not muster the capacity to comprehend what it was.
He mechanically opened the door.
"Aaaaaaaah—!"
An avalanche was bearing down upon him.
If he died from natural causes... no. Enya had not permitted it, so he could not die.
And Enya must not be endangered either.
Yet in the wave of snow rushing toward him, there stood an angel—Enya.
Was he still indulging in empty delusions?
It was a hallucination that had vanished ever since I met the real Enya.
I couldn't help but scoff at my own pathetic self.
"There's no way Enya would come back to me...."
"Ahhhhh! Move-! Get out of the way!"
"...Enya?"
Yet even though I'd seen hallucinations every day, I'd never conjured her voice. I could never hear her voice up close.
"Don't close the door-! It's dangerous, move away from the doorway! Get inside! Hurry-!"
"...So now I'm even imagining her voice. How pathetic I've become. What a fool I am."
"Aren't you listening to me?! Move, I said-!"
In that instant, an angel appeared before me, arms spread wide, and flew forward to embrace me before kicking the door shut with her feet.
"Ahhhhhhh-!"
"...!"
Dale, pinned beneath the angel as he tumbled backward, opened his eyes wide. The sound of a heartbeat filled his ears—likely his own.
Yet this warmth was undeniably real, something no fantasy could create.
It was the real Enya.
"Phew, if we'd been even a moment later, I would've been buried in snow and died screaming...."
"Enya."
Enya's words were muffled against Dale's chest as he held her tight.
"Enya."
Dale called her name once more.
He stretched his arms wide and held her so tightly she could scarcely breathe.
"Enya."
Clutching her close, he buried his face in her small head, nuzzling her desperately as he held her deeply in his embrace.
"Did you come to save me?"
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Brought to you by Valir Scans! To support our team and enjoy the latest releases, please read directly on our official site: valirscans.org
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