🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 43
“If you recover your magic power, I might be able to use you as a subject of the Empire. But for now, I’ll just observe you. Let’s end the discussion here. And don’t leave those behind—eat everything.”
Kaiserten ended the conversation without giving her a chance to argue or explain herself.
At his words, Roabellin glanced down at the plate she had brought.
“It’s a bit too much to eat all of this…”
“Think of it as your dinner.”
He cut her off neatly and turned his gaze back to the documents. It was clear he had no intention of listening to any complaint about not being able to finish it.
After realizing she hadn’t eaten dinner, hunger suddenly hit her, so Roabellin stopped refusing and ate the tea, cookies, and madeleines.
After a while, when the sound of eating stopped, Kaiserten glanced at her, organized the papers he had been reading, and stood up.
“I’m going to bed now. It seems there’s nothing more for you to attend to here, so you should go back and rest as well.”
He gave her one more look, then turned around and went into the bedroom.
‘Finally, I’m off work!’
She was thrilled to be freed from the study at last, but Roabellin stood up with a deliberately calm expression and bowed slightly toward his back.
After Kaiserten left the study, Roabellin turned off all the lights except for a single night lamp. The room was instantly plunged into darkness.
She gathered up the snack tray—having practically eaten everything herself—and was heading out, relying on the faint glow of the lamp, when suddenly a pain like something long and sharp piercing straight through her head struck her, and her breath caught.
“Ugh, h-huh, haah, huff…!”
A crushing muscle pain spread through her entire body, as if she were being beaten all over. It felt like an invisible hand was choking her and striking her at the same time.
Crash! Clatter! Thud—bang!
As Roabellin collapsed to the floor, she dropped the tray she was holding. Plates, teacups, and forks fell and made a loud noise.
“Hah… ngh….”
She had no idea what was happening. In the chaos of her mind, fear and pain made tears spill out without her meaning to.
‘What is this…? Am I going to die like this? Someone, please help me…!’
The next moment, hearing the loud crash of the tray, Kaiserten rushed back into the study. He immediately spotted Roabellin collapsed on the floor.
“Yuli?! What is this—what happened?!”
“Ugh… ngh….”
Kaiserten instantly realized she was in no condition to explain her situation. To take action, he first had to find the cause.
‘For someone who was fine to suddenly end up like this…’
His gaze immediately went to the tea set scattered on the floor. He picked up a little of the flower tea leaves left in the cup and smelled them. His eyes widened.
‘This is Tlain tea…!’
Having grasped the situation, Kaiserten did not hesitate. He laid Roabellin properly on the floor and quickly unfastened the row of buttons running down the front of her one-piece maid uniform.
‘The archmage said that there must be nothing, like clothing, blocking the space between the caster’s hand and the qi-blood points.’
He rapidly unbuttoned down to around her navel, slipped her arms out of the sleeves, and pulled the top of the dress open. In no time, the skirt part of Roabellin’s maid uniform was resting around her hips, and her upper body was left wearing only a camisole.
Kaiserten did not want to lay her face-down, so he lifted her upper body into his arms and placed one hand on the bare skin at the center of her back—the point that governed breathing.
When he quietly checked the flow of her qi-blood, he felt it wildly tangled and raging.
‘There’s no time to properly untangle all of it right now, so I’ll at least try this.’
Just as Iskal had taught him, he placed his hand on the qi-blood point and focused.
A blue light began to glow from his hand. Soon, faint black smoke was drawn out from the qi-blood point, and the violently raging flow gradually calmed.
Roabellin’s blocked breathing slowly returned to normal as well.
“Haah… ha… hoo….”
Now able to breathe properly, Roabellin went limp in Kaiserten’s arms. Relieved himself, Kaiserten held her tightly as well. He could think of nothing but how fortunate it was.
Holding her in his arms, he happened to lower his gaze and noticed something on her back. Above her right shoulder blade, there was something like a drawing. More than half of it was covered by the camisole, but he could recognize it because he had vaguely seen it before when they had spent a night together.
‘Right, I wondered about this back then too. What is it?’
Without thinking, Kaiserten brushed his finger over the tattoo. At that, Roabellin, who had been slumped in his arms, flinched and quickly pulled away from him.
In an instant, his arms felt empty, but Kaiserten forced himself to ignore the feeling and spoke as calmly as he could.
“It seems you’re fine now. But what is that on your back?”
At the sudden question, Roabellin pressed her lips tightly together.
‘What should I say…?’
If she carelessly said it was a slave mark, she might be treated as a slave from now on. And since she was pretending to be a commoner, she couldn’t explain it as a mark engraved according to the old noble custom to prepare for families being separated in war.
If she said she didn’t remember because it was from childhood, this persistent emperor might investigate the meaning of the pattern and try to find her family. In that process, he would discover that it was an ancient word from the Aventador region meaning “queen (后).” If that were revealed, her identity would inevitably be exposed.
‘Either way is dangerous… The best thing is to keep Kai from taking interest in my tattoo.’
After a brief moment of thought, Roabellin answered hesitantly,
“Ah… I just did it because it looked pretty.”
It was a foolish-sounding answer, but she had no choice. Kaiserten, who had assumed there must be some serious story behind it, found the reply unexpected.
“You got a tattoo in a place that isn’t even visible when you’re dressed?”
“Well, um… I heard that in Visentium, revealing clothes are in fashion… So I thought, in case I ever wear something that shows my back, it might look pretty.”
The more she spoke, the more she felt like an idiot, and Roabellin had to carefully manage her expression.
‘Ugh… will he really believe this?’
The tattoo was not small—it was about the size of a palm excluding the fingers—and it was not a commonly popular pattern either.
Still, although it sounded a bit foolish, there was nothing to directly refute, so Kaiserten had nothing more to say.
Taking advantage of the moment when he hesitated, Roabellin hurriedly adjusted the clothes that had been half stripped off. Her openly exposed chest, arms, and shoulders—her pale, delicate skin—were hidden again inside the black maid uniform.
When Kaiserten stared blankly at the sight, Roabellin quickly buttoned herself up and, averting her eyes, said,
“Um… thank you for treating me. I lived because of you.”
‘Ah.’
Only then did Kaiserten realize he had been openly staring at her and quickly turned his eyes away. No matter how much the two of them had already seen of each other, they had only spent a single night together in a dark bedroom.
In any case, now that they had reunited as emperor and maid, this was not an appropriate place, nor appropriate attire—unless a maid intended to seduce the emperor.
‘This is a secret… but I was going to try to seduce His Majesty the Emperor!’
Suddenly, Kaiserten remembered her blushing face on the day of the festival. Without even knowing who he really was, she had said those words with an innocent expression right in front of him—the very emperor she meant to “seduce.”
How shocked he had been then, how jealous he had felt hearing her speak of another man before him. And at the same time… how happy he had been that the man she was aiming for was actually himself.
Kaiserten shook his head slightly, brushing away the thought.
‘What am I thinking with a sick person in front of me… Even without intending to, you tempt me just by being yourself.’
Having dressed herself again, Roabellin leaned on the desk and unsteadily stood up. Kaiserten supported her and rose together with her. Roabellin gave him a look of thanks and asked,
“I suddenly couldn’t breathe and was really scared. What was that? How did you save me?”
To her question, Kaiserten replied seriously.
“It was probably because of the tea you drank. It’s called Tlain tea, and it helps the circulation of qi-blood. For someone whose magic power functions normally, it causes no problem. But if a person with tangled qi-blood drinks it, the magic trying to circulate goes wild inside the qi-blood and causes pain throughout the body.”
“Ah…”
Hearing his explanation, Roabellin couldn’t hide her flustered expression. Now Kai knew not only that she had almost lost her magic power, but that her qi-blood was tangled—in other words, that her magic was merely latent.
“For now, I absorbed the tea’s medicinal effect and forced your magic back into dormancy. Until your qi-blood is properly untangled, you should be careful about what you consume. You didn’t know, but I was the one who told you to drink it, so I apologize. I’m sorry.”
For the person standing at the very pinnacle of the Empire to apologize…
Shocked, Roabellin stared at him without realizing it. But the words that followed immediately snapped her out of it.
“It ended at this because it was tea. If it had been a concentrated medicine with the same ingredients… you would have died, your whole body writhing in pain, suffocating before anyone could help you.”
‘That’s basically poison to me…?’
Just hearing it made her shudder.
“At least remember the name Tlain and avoid that ingredient. It’s used fairly often in Prahenfeld.”
“Yes, but… if it’s used often… that’s too frightening. If—if you would let me go to meet the master of the magic tower so I can treat my twisted qi-blood…”
With a faint hope that she might be able to escape by going to the magic tower, Roabellin pretended to tremble in fear and cautiously tested the waters.
But the moment he heard that, one end of Kaiserten’s eyebrow shot up.
