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Chapter: 12
Whether Sieta was still distracted by Vicente’s face or not, Rosciate mercilessly ignored Vicente and disappeared through the warp gate.
And Vicente… just stared blankly at the cold, departing back of Rosciate.
Even after Rosciate had vanished, he kept staring for a long while.
“Abba!”
To grab Vicente’s attention from his gaze following only Rosciate’s retreating figure, Sieta tugged on his clothes and spoke.
“Yes, my daughter.”
Only then did he seem to realize Sieta was there.
With eyes dripping honey, he scanned her face thoroughly.
Feeling that gaze, Sieta felt a twinge of confusion.
‘What’s going on?’
Vicente resembled her overall, and his beauty was already fully formed, so there shouldn’t have been any reason to inspect Sieta’s face so closely.
Yet in Vicente’s eyes, which scanned Sieta from head to toe, a sudden chill appeared.
Though he was still smiling, there was a noticeably cold air in his demeanor.
“Spending time with this father must be boring, yes? Shall I bring you a child your own age?”
Clearly.
Sieta quickly realized that this was the expression of someone who had not the slightest interest in her.
Her jade-colored eyes, so much like his, instantly narrowed.
Then, as if measuring him, she looked at Vicente with puzzled, icy eyes.
‘His attitude is so different when Rosciate is around versus when she isn’t?’
But for the moment, Sieta decided:
“I don’t want that!”
Throwing a childish tantrum,
“I want to stay with Abba!”
She stubbornly clung to Vicente.
As a child, she calculated that she could act however she wanted.
However, in the process, Sieta overlooked one thing:
A child, when faced with a father they barely know…
…is likely to become shy or awkward if the father himself seems uncomfortable or distant.
Yet she, as if wearing a mask of bravado, boldly grabbed Vicente’s clothes again, smiling cheerfully and said:
“I’ll stay with Abba!”
Sieta’s thought was simple.
‘No, I came to see Dad on purpose, and now he’s fussing over it with his subordinates? Seriously?’
Of course, Sieta also considered that, no matter how high-ranking someone was, they probably weren’t above her—Sieta, the Empire’s sole heir.
‘As long as he isn’t the Pope.’
To bear a child with Rosciate, the final boss, the most likely candidate would have to be the head of the temple, the Pope.
So Sieta asked directly:
“So, Abba… are you the Pope?”
“It seems His Majesty the Emperor has spoken of me.”
Sieta nodded vigorously, thinking secretly:
‘Just as I thought.’
The man worthy of standing beside her beloved Rosciate had to be someone at least as high-ranking as the Pope.
And the only thought that followed was:
‘I’m doomed…’
Both her parents being top-tier bad guys—this life was clearly going to be a disaster.
Still, she clung to Vicente’s leg.
Seeing this, one of the clergy stepped forward.
“Your Highness, the Pope is very busy.”
Just as the Emperor had many responsibilities as head of the Imperial Palace, the Pope, as head of the temple, surely had countless duties.
But Sieta protested internally:
‘I came here to see Abba, not anything else!’
Children didn’t care about such things.
With her grand ambition to win her father’s favor and surpass her mother, Sieta’s tantrum wouldn’t be deterred.
While the temple staff fretted helplessly, one man laughed.
“…Haha!”
Vicente, the one Sieta clung to, twisted his face into a smile.
‘Why are you laughing?’
Is he satisfied that his daughter is so clever?
No matter how Sieta glared at him, his laughter continued:
“Phew, ha… ahahaha!”
After a long while, he finally said:
“Enough, come on now.”
At Sieta’s pouty voice, he relented.
Then, unlike before, he looked at Sieta with a kind gaze.
Not only that.
He even patted her!
Vicente’s gaze, which had shown not the slightest interest in her moments ago, had completely changed.
‘What’s going on?’
He had ignored her entirely, and now he suddenly acts tenderly?
“You may resemble me in appearance,”
he said, letting his amethyst-colored eyes gleam a little sinisterly.
“Yet…”
He spoke leisurely, as if toying with her.
“In personality, you seem to resemble His Majesty the Emperor.”
It seemed almost tinged with madness.
‘Are his eyes normal?’
Sieta knew that it was unusually harsh to say such things to her biological father.
But still…
‘No, those eyes are truly deranged.’
A chilling thought arose in her mind.
Perhaps.
Yes, perhaps.
As the husband of Rosciate, the original story’s final boss…
He could very well be dangerously insane… or at least crazily obsessed.
The temple faction had been the protagonist’s adversary in the original story, so she had expected him to be extreme.
‘In a world where the spiritual and imperial powers clash, the Pope acting on the Emperor’s behalf must have shattered his personality even more.’
Sieta didn’t know why Rosciate opposed Vicente, but at least he had her favor.
“How can he resemble His Majesty’s judgment so much…”
She murmured, as Vicente gently stroked her cheek.
Yet his gaze was no longer on Sieta.
He was searching for… Rosciate’s features in her.
Sieta tilted her delicate neck, sensing the oddity.
‘Apparently…’
Something unrecorded in the original story had occurred between the Emperor and the Pope.
Not long after, she got lost inside the temple.
She remembered Vicente had asked her to wait while he finished urgent matters.
But she didn’t.
‘I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to come here, I can’t waste time.’
Rosciate had only allowed her a private meeting with Vicente after she caused a commotion drinking poison to guarantee some benefit for herself. So…
‘I need to memorize where things are in the temple.’
She didn’t know when she would return.
“I’m lost. Where should I go~”
Sieta sang cheerfully, glancing around.
Lost? Was she scared?
Not at all.
She deliberately twisted her path so temple staff or servants wouldn’t catch her. She was technically lost but not afraid.
Too reckless, you say?
‘The temple is protected by wards~’
And this was thanks to… the original story’s male protagonist.
He survived until the end and won.
What does that mean?
‘There’s no safer place in the Empire than this temple.’
The only comparable safe place might be the palace, constantly protected by Rosciate’s dark magic.
‘Anyway, I’m always in the palace or the temple.’
Unless Rosciate randomly drags her out to hunt again, Sieta’s safety was guaranteed.
Unexpectedly, she encountered the male protagonist struggling alone on the outskirts of the temple.
“…W-who are you!”
His frail voice was rough, likely from hardship, but still pleasantly audible.
Sieta looked at the boy with long, unkempt silver hair, seemingly on guard, without much reaction.
