1.1 Not Every Summon is Met With Cooperation
“Forgive me, Lord Isaac, but based on your symptoms, the only possible diagnosis is pregnancy.”
Isaac doubted his own ears at the sentence that struck him like a bolt from the blue. It couldn’t be. Something had to be wrong. Isaac replied with a laugh, treating the doctor sitting before him like a blowhard.
“I have lived my entire life as an Alpha, and you tell me I am pregnant? No matter how far the honor of the Transis family has fallen—to a level where even a dog wouldn’t scavenge it—this joke has gone too far.”
He struggled to maintain his composure, but Isaac’s hands trembled strangely as he uttered each word. It was inevitable. Had something happened about two months ago, on a night when the moon waned early? Everything that had recently pushed Isaac into confusion had begun from that day.
Misha. A strange guest who visited this exiled land, where no one else came, at least once a month to show his face. Dressed in simple and modest clothes, he was a child Isaac had never once suspected of being anything other than a monitor sent by someone in the Imperial Family. Why had he never once asked clearly about his identity? Isaac clutched his forehead in belated regret.
“Do you know who the father of the child is?”
The benevolent old doctor, completely unfazed by Isaac’s insulting response, asked with a face that seemed genuinely concerned for the patient before him.
‘Fuck….’
Isaac silently swallowed a curse. He knew. Aside from that guy, he hadn’t so much as brushed fingertips with a woman, let alone a man, for nearly three years. However, from this moment on, he had to pretend he didn’t know, even though he did. With a deep sigh, Isaac found himself stuck in a mire where he could neither move forward nor retreat.
If he answered that he didn’t know, it would mean that although he had fallen as a traitor, the head of the Transis family—once a scion of a prestigious house that held power second only to the Imperial Family—had rolled around so promiscuously that he didn’t even know the father of his child. On the other hand, if he said he did, this old man, who remained loyal enough to the Transis family to travel to such a wasteland to provide medical care, would never stand by and watch Isaac raise a child alone. Not that it was even certain whether he could give birth in the first place.
“You do know, then.”
The old man quickly read the distress on Isaac’s face and asked.
“Just who is it that makes it so difficult for you to speak his name?”
At the old man’s lament, Isaac avoided his gaze and let out a deep sigh.
“I will take care of this child myself, so I ask for your silence.”
Isaac lowered his voice, trying his best to block the old man’s persistent barrage of visit our sitequestions. However, the old doctor seemed to believe that not abandoning Isaac—the young master he had watched for a very long time, who had been the head of the house and had now fallen into a pitiful state, like a thorn embedded in his palm—was more important than his own well-being.
“How do you mean you will take care of it! Your mind and body are not in a state to endure a pregnancy entirely without help. If you persist in this stubbornness, you could lose your life!”
That damn life. Wasn’t it a life that would end soon enough even if left alone? To a traitor sentenced to a punishment where one had to suffer and die despite the existence of a cure, such words didn’t even register.
“Then all the better. The Imperial Family won’t have to send a monitor every month to check if the traitor is dead or alive.”
“Young Master!”
Only after the very old title finally escaped the old man’s lips did Isaac fall silent. The old man, seemingly giving up on getting an answer from Isaac, began to search his memory diligently. Within the last three months, there were a total of five people who had entered the Transis estate, which was so shabby it was hard to believe it was the residence of a noble, including the resident caretaker.
One was the old man himself, and another was the old man’s daughter. The old man was an Omega, but his heats had stopped long ago, and his daughter was also an Omega. In any case, the two were naturally excluded from suspicion. The other two were the caretaker working here and his wife, both Betas placed here because they were unaffected by pheromones.
Then who on earth could it be? Was there an outsider he had been secretly communicating with without his own realization? The old man groaned and clutched his head, without even putting the remaining one person on the list of suspects.
After thinking deeply for a long while, the old man reached a conclusion. Judging by the child’s pulse, the conception must have been a [unauthorized copy]bit less than two months ago. Had something happened about two months ago? Had someone other than the five he knew entered the estate, or had Lord Transis gone out…?
‘There was.’
The timing didn’t match perfectly, but since it is not easy to gauge the exact week in the early stages, such a discrepancy could be overlooked. It was the birthday celebration of the Crown Prince. The pride of Osbrant and the most beautiful prince in the empire, Mikhail Ivan Osbrandt. The young prince, who would have lost his life at his hands had Lord Isaac’s treason not ended in failure, had narrowly survived to become the Crown Prince of the empire.
Perhaps because he felt satisfied only by watching the man who had once nearly killed him in a weakened state, the Crown Prince, who had visited here every month in secret from his vassals, had recently come of age. Although the Crown Prince had visited in modest attire, accompanied only by a single investigator rather than guards or servants, hiding the fact of his visits and claiming there was no need for such things, perhaps this time, for some reason, he had brought an outsider along. Now he understood. The physician asked, a realization flashing through his mind.
“Could it be among the party the Crown Prince brought with him? Did they dare to violate you…?”
As the old doctor pressed him with a voice that was intentionally indignant, Isaac muttered with trembling eyes and a face so frail he looked as if he might faint.
“No, it’s not… it’s not like that….”
“Then what on earth happened!”
Seeing Isaac’s pale face, the doctor momentarily made an irreverent assumption that he dared [unauthorized copy]not even think of. Surely, no… such a thing was impossible. The moment the old man spoke the words that should not have been uttered, Isaac’s head dropped helplessly.
“Could it be… that brat, the Crown Prince….”
And at that moment, deep anger flared in the faded eyes of the old man.
“I, Federt Erion, have lived nearly eighty years, so I have nothing left to fear! How dare he! Not content with shattering the Transis family, he even dared to degrade the young master, its head! I shall make that insolent Crown Prince pay for his crimes and then perish!”
At this, Isaac, horrified, opened his tightly shut eyes and stopped the old man. Pay for his crimes, my foot. The old man, who was at an age where it wouldn’t be strange if he collapsed after causing a scene while being blocked by guards on his way, was saying things he couldn’t possibly do.
“It’s not what you think, so please! Please! Keep silent about this, for both your sake and mine!”
It would have been better if it were like that. Then he could resent, insult, and despise the opponent to his heart’s content. But unfortunately, there had been no irreverent or insolent act between Isaac and the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince had courted Isaac very politely, and Isaac had replied indirectly that a traitor destined to suffer and die as punishment did not have the luxury for such things. And instead, he had permitted the other to take his body.
‘Because back then, I didn’t know he was the Crown Prince.’
Lovely and sweet Misha. A strange guest who brought things to kill time for a traitor whom everyone insulted as trash. It was obvious that he had [Read on Read BL Novels]been dispatched to monitor whether Isaac was sharpening his sword toward the Imperial Family again, but he was the only one who became Isaac’s companion. After interacting for three years, Isaac began to live waiting only for the day Misha visited once a month.
‘Um, I’ve come of age now. May I dare ask for a gift from Lord Isaac?’
Misha had asked Isaac if he could go to his hometown with him. Isaac knew full well that such a request from an Alpha who had just come of age was a metaphorical expression of a marriage proposal. No matter if he was a lower noble sent as a monitor to a place like this, how could he block the bright future of an Alpha? Isaac rejected Misha’s request. Instead, he gave him his body, which could be ransacked and left with marks by an Alpha without causing any problem.
Isaac’s body, which had not felt the gentle touch of another for a long time, was extremely sensitive, and dealing with an Alpha in rut was so agonizing that his toes were curled tight every moment, but it wasn’t only pain. Misha’s tongue was so sweet it was hard to believe he was a fellow Alpha, and wherever his hand touched, heat rose as if a fire had been lit.
‘I love you, Isaac. I want nothing but you.’
The day Misha confessed the affection he had been suppressing. The day he looked at him with the eyes of a strange Alpha, unlike the young Misha he had watched until then. Isaac instinctively felt that he had lost his only friend. He hoped this young Alpha would forget him as a moment of pleasure. That in the distant future, he would think of it as a childish mistake of his youth, saying, “I once committed such a deviation.” It was with that heart that he had allowed it.
A week later. It was highly unusual for the deposed Duke Transis to be invited to the Crown Prince’s birthday celebration, where all nobles of the rank of Count or higher in the empire gathered to prove their loyalty. On that day, everyone whispered in unison that the Crown Prince seemed intent on firmly showing that traitor who the victor of the empire was.
The moment he confirmed who was sitting in the Crown Prince’s seat, Isaac wanted to run away from that spot immediately. Because a very familiar face was looking down at him. While Isaac remained speechless with a face stained with shock, the other wore a calm, slightly relaxed smile, as if he had expected such a reaction. That expression was so unfamiliar that Isaac felt as if he were seeing his true face for the first time.
Being betrayed by people is a fairly familiar thing. The Master of the Bitter Cold, who once wielded power enough to threaten the Imperial Family. Isaac Tion Transis Read on Read BL Novelswas a man who had survived by pulling countless knives out of his back unauthorized copyand cutting the throats of those who aimed for his life. Lee Hyeon, who became ‘Duke Transis’ following him, was the same.
Immediately after an unavoidable accident, Hyeon, who woke up suddenly in a library he had never seen before, looked around and thought. This must be a conspiracy plotted by someone who intended to harm him. However, as his consciousness grew clearer, the scenes remaining chaotically in his head explained why Hyeon had woken up in a strange room.
‘How dare… how dare a mere brat…! Did you think this body would end like this…!’
A man covered in a black robe whispered like a madman in a strange laboratory, dropping blood onto a magic circle. In the hands of the man chanting an unknown spell were materials used when performing a summoning ritual.
‘If only this succeeds… I can take it all back. The things those bastards have shamelessly taken, and the things that were originally mine.’
What the man sought to summon was a being that would grant his wish. It was a formula that all his colleagues, who had researched with him at the Magic Tower long ago, had viewed negatively, saying such an absurd summoning could never succeed.
Could such a thing succeed? For those of you with no ability and no guts, perhaps. With the thought that he could rebuild the glory of the past if only this succeeded, the man chanted the spell with eyes half-turned.
‘Is it a success…!’
The moment the magic circle he had drawn with his own blood finally began to glow from the edges. [stolen content]Only then unauthorized copycould the man confirm what the formula he had completed required as a sacrifice.
‘What…!?’
It was the soul of the caster himself. As the letters of the magic circle floated up and began to wrap around the man’s body to make him pay the price of the formula, he thought while writhing in pain.
A human whose soul is taken as the price of a formula becomes an empty vessel, unable to move a single finger, like a doll. In that state, how on earth could he make those bastards pay the appropriate price?
This cannot be. He must retract the formula. As he struggled to erase the magic circle, his breath tightening in his throat, a scale appeared in his blurred vision. It was a legendary object said to be used by Eredite, the Moon Goddess who governs knowledge, civilization, magic, and alchemy, when weighing sins and souls.
‘Keuh… cough, hack….’
What caught his nearly closed gaze was a black crystal placed on one side of the scale. The man instinctively realized that it was his own soul, which the formula had demanded as a price. And on the other side….
‘Khek, keuh, ugh….’
The soul of someone else seemed to be placed there. The formula had Read on Read BL Novelssucceeded. If so, [Read on Read BL Novels]even if he perished as the price of the summoning, the wish he so desperately desired would surely be granted. That was enough.
An Imperial Family of traitors who had nothing to boast of except for their golden bloodline. They would surely pay the price for coveting things beyond their station by the being he had summoned. The man sneered in pain and closed his eyes.
That was the extent of the memories that surfaced chaotically in Hyeon’s head.
“…….”
The memories in his head felt like someone else’s story, and if so, who am I? Barely pushing himself up while enduring the dizziness, Hyeon slowly reviewed what had happened to him.
A dark night. Hyeon had been heading somewhere after receiving a call from someone. It was an urgent call saying that someone seemed to have intentionally set fire to the factory. It was a request saying that although they had hurriedly reported it to the fire station and were working on extinguishing the fire, it would be good for him to come out to assess the situation.
Hyeon had taken the wheel without hesitation. Perhaps because of an encroaching sense of anxiety, his mind seemed to be elsewhere, but there was nothing wrong with Hyeon’s driving.
If there was just one problem, it was perhaps that although he had made the company his own in an instant with his thorough abilities, he was just an ordinary human who lacked the skill to avoid a van veering out of its lane and rushing toward him. The driver in the driver’s seat of the van was dozing off with his head slumped on the steering wheel. The last scene that covered Hyeon’s vision was the shattered car window and vivid blood. It was an unmistakable instant-death accident.
‘…A being that would grant his wish.’
Hyeon, who confirmed the formula of the summoning ritual the man had desperately tried to succeed through fragmented memories, let out a hollow laugh at the absurd situation. Me? First, Hyeon slowly raised his trembling body and stood before a mirror covered in white dust in one corner of the laboratory.
The face was quite similar to his own, but it was clearly different. The stubborn yet strong eyebrows, the high and straight nose, the deep eye sockets, and the clear yet sharp eyes made him look like Hyeon’s twin, but a characteristic cynical impression stood out. The atmosphere itself was different from Hyeon, who had grown up being beaten to hide his emotions since childhood.
A warmonger who threw the whole country into crisis for his own greed and revenge, a trash noble with no blood, tears, or mercy, Duke Transis. Hyeon knew who he was—the successor to a great estate that occupied most of the northern part of the empire.
‘What an absurd thing….’
Isaac Tion Transis, also known as Duke Transis, was a villain from a famous fantasy novel that had once held an exhibition event at the event hall of the complex mall Hyeon managed. He was a character who challenged and pointed his sword at the legitimate successor of the empire, Crown Prince Mikhail, countless times, but failed every time and met a miserable end.
Since it was a project that had to produce maximum promotional effect in a short period, Hyeon, who was usually uninterested in far-fetched stories, remembered that he had forced himself to read until the end for the sake of research. Hyeon quickly looked around. If this was the time when the wealthy Duke Transis was staying in this worn-out wooden house…. It was the period when the Duke had been exiled to a frozen lake after being caught attempting to assassinate the young Prince Mikhail.
‘Why suddenly me….’
He didn’t know why he, who was supposed to escape the place of exile with the [stolen content]help of vassals who had not yet turned their backs on the Transis family and reappear after building strength, had summoned [visit our site]him. However, Hyeon could guess why he had been dragged here as the most suitable being to grant his wish.
Because Hyeon was a person who had succeeded in the revenge that Duke Transis had failed to achieve until the end.
An ungrateful, immoral child and a tenacious person who even beat out the biological children of the Chairman couple, CEO Lee Hyeon. That was the most accurate sentence to summarize Hyeon.
As the successor to a top-tier group, Lee Hyeon was a globally renowned young executive who had achieved such immense growth that he managed to place the company among the top ten groups at a young age. However, he was not the chairman’s biological child. Hyeon had known since his teens that he was not his parents’ own.
‘If only Ye-jun… if only Ye-jun hadn’t been lost back then…’
Hyeon was a substitute for the biological son the chairman and his wife had lost long ago. Because he was brought in as a child born on the same day to be raised in place of the lost son, he had never once forgotten the fact that he was not their biological child.
If I offend the chairman and his wife, I could be discarded at any moment. Every single day, under constant pressure, Hyeon strove to become the perfect successor. Fortunately, Hyeon was brilliant and a quick learner.
To achieve this, he put in blood-sweating effort in secret; he pretended not to be sick when he was, and acted as if he had no emotions even when he was sad or distressed. Whenever his adoptive parents expressed pride in him, he could laugh it off, treating such things as trivial, natural sacrifices.
Whenever Hyeon made a mistake that was unbecoming of a successor but typical of a child, he brainwashed himself into believing that the resulting slaps and reprimands were [stolen content]merely his adoptive parents’ love, intended to mold him into a better talent.
Finally, around the time Hyeon graduated at the top of a prestigious university and was proving his practical abilities as a successor, the culprit who would wreck his life appeared.
It was the chairman’s biological son, born on the same day as him.
No matter how much the chairman and his wife desired it, they could not immediately place a carefree fellow—who had dropped out of college and possessed not a single proper career qualification—into the position of successor simply because he was their biological child. The problem, however, was that not only the chairman and his wife, but even the honorary chairman—who had retired from management but still held firm power—closed their eyes to the company’s actual interests because of bloodline.
‘Blood is the only thing we can trust, so Ye-jun shall be the successor. Isn’t it enough for Hyeon to support Ye-jun by his side? Without you, that child wouldn’t have been able to grasp anything of what he enjoys now.’
Hyeon had spent over thirty years proving his skills as the corporate successor. He had given up his entire life to live solely for the purpose of becoming the successor, told that he must possess the dignity and skill befitting an executive. He could not accept the fact that he had to yield his position to a fellow who possessed not a single quality that surpassed his own.
Despite this, Hyeon loved the couple who had taken him in, much like a baby bird following the parents it had imprinted upon. Had he known that this love was merely an unrequited one, destined to be cast aside for a single bloodline, he would not have struggled so desperately to meet their expectations.
Hyeon tried his best to accept Ye-jun, but no matter how he looked at him, Ye-jun lacked the aptitude of a good manager. As soon as he was put in a management position, he turned off the temperature sensors in the storage warehouse before leaving for the day, causing losses of tens of millions of won. He ignored hiring procedures and hired his acquaintances as parachutes, earning the resentment of existing employees, and every project he led ended in failure. There were also several repeated instances where he was caught laying hands on employees.
Despite all this, the honorary chairman packaged these incidents as part of the process of stolen contentbecoming a successor. To Hyeon, he merely visit our sitelectured him, saying that if Ye-jun made a mistake, it was Hyeon’s fault for not giving a direct warning, and that he needed to keep his wits about him.
Finally, on the day Hyeon’s fiancée broke up with him, saying, ‘Your grandfather is so obsessed with bloodlines that I don’t think he even considers someone like you a grandson anymore,’ Hyeon was ousted from his position as vice president and decided to take revenge on the chairman’s family who had mocked him.
And that revenge was a success. Ye-jun, while trying to cover up his own mistakes, committed an even larger blunder and ended up imprisoned for attempted murder and embezzlement, while the chairman and his wife were kicked out of their mansion, left with only a business barely enough to keep them fed. The chairman eventually went mad while denying his biological grandson’s misconduct.
Therefore, if one were looking for someone more suitable than Hyeon to carry out a perfect revenge on someone else’s behalf, there was no one. If Hyeon stepped in, the end for Duke Transis would not be self-destruction, but rather a conclusion where he reclaimed the Empire.
However, there was a prerequisite that necessarily followed that assumption…
‘Too bad. If I had been summoned three years ago, I would have gladly rejected a pushed-upon fate.’
That was Hyeon’s active cooperation.
Unfortunately, the current Hyeon was in a precarious state, looking as if he might break at any moment even without an accident. Lee Hyeon, a cold-blooded man with no blood, no tears, and no emotions, who looked only toward the growth of the company. A cruel Alpha who could cast out the very parents and grandfather who raised him for the sake of the company.
People who coveted his status always clung to Hyeon. Alphas saw him as [Read on Read BL Novels]a mark to be coaxed with words to squeeze out some wealth since he wasn’t the ‘real’ [unauthorized copy]successor, and Omegas tried to seduce him with pheromones, claiming only they could soothe Hyeon’s wounds. Both were meaningless, futile efforts.
Hyeon had lost interest in everything. He held the position of CEO responsibly out of a sense of duty, but he no longer had a reason to struggle. Why on earth had he tried to become a good, outstanding manager? Hyeon was precarious, like a doll whose spring was about to completely unwind.
Hyeon died instantly in an accident. Since he had finished his revenge, he had no regrets about his life, so the sudden extension of it did not make him enthusiastic. Duke Transis—or rather, since he had lost the status of Grand Duke, he was now a Duke—Hyeon, now more certain of where he was in the story based on the memories remaining in the body, slumped heavily into the laboratory chair and thought.
If he did nothing as Duke Transis, this body would die within five years due to the curse, which was the punishment for treason. Until then, it wouldn’t be so bad to leisurely look for things he would have wanted to do if he hadn’t been a successor, enjoy some freedom, and peacefully end his life.
As long as the Duke himself didn’t struggle to take revenge on the Imperial Family, there would be no one diligent or bored enough to come and harass a Duke who was essentially a puppet with its strings cut.
The real Duke Transis might wonder what kind of bolt from the blue this was, but Hyeon quickly accepted his situation and decided to use it to his advantage.
Until a short while later, when he encountered the manager of the exile site who had rushed in, startled by a loud noise from the laboratory, Hyeon’s plan seemed quite plausible.
One day, in the third year since Duke Transis had become a fallen noble in name only. On the day a bolt of lightning struck the spire atop the old castle.
The manager of the frozen lake exile site thought that the Duke had finally gone mad.
Otherwise, how could a person change like that? The manager, who had opened the door to deliver meals to the Duke as usual, hid behind the door in preparation for something irritable to fly at him.
“I have brought your dinner, Your Highness.”
Since the status of Grand Duke had long been stripped away, the titles ‘Duke’ or ‘Lord Transis’ were sufficient, but…
‘If I call him that, he’ll fly into a rage, asking if I think he’s a joke.’
As long as he was working at the exile site by imperial decree, there was nothing to be gained by offending Duke Transis. Calling him ‘Your Highness’ wasn’t difficult, and since the man couldn’t actually do anything anyway, he figured he might as well just play along.
Three years had already passed since Duke Transis’s attempt to assassinate the prince had come to naught. As the manager thought, Duke Transis’s honor had long since rolled into the gutter, to the point where even a dog wouldn’t pick it up.
The warmonger Transis, who dared to threaten the Imperial Family without knowing his place. Not only did he drive young men to the battlefield and extort taxes for his own greed, but he also tried to threaten the virtuous Prince. It was a name used as the most frequent punching bag in the Empire.
If a person is cursed at that much, it would be better for them to refine their nature and reflect. Unfortunately, Duke Read on Read BL NovelsTransis was a man who had lived his entire life looking down on others, steeped in a sense [visit our site]of superiority, and even in his position as a fallen noble who had lost everything, there was no improvement in his attitude.
‘Yesterday he made a fuss about doing some ritual…’
As if that would work. He was told he was expected to be a promising magic scholar at the magic tower when he was young, but wherever that prodigy’s history had gone, it was the manager’s job to clean up the mess every time he did something useless each year. The manager hoped it would be easy to clean up this time. The elderly manager sneered inwardly and waited for the Duke’s reaction.
“Your Highness…”
When the usual response to just leave the food didn’t come, the manager peeked through the door, anxious that the man might have collapsed while doing something strange again. At that moment, a familiar voice shouted urgently.
“Stop! Just leaving it in front is enough!”
Immediately after, startled by the awkward tone that was different from usual, the manager accidentally dropped the tableware in his hand.
Clang, clatter…
Instead of ‘Leave it and get lost,’ it was ‘Just leaving it in front is enough’? Did I hear that wrong? While doubting his ears, the manager clutched his head, expecting a thunderous roar for failing to do such a simple thing. It was a precaution against the Duke’s habit of losing his temper and visit our sitethrowing things. However, the reaction that followed the dropping of the tableware was unimaginable.
“I—I’ll clean it up, so you may go!”
What on earth was this? Had the Duke gone mad? He’s going to clean something up with his own hands? Was he a human being capable of such an act? The manager now sensed that something strange had happened to the Duke and flung the door open to check the inside of the laboratory.
“What on earth have you been saying since a moment ago…”
What unfolded before the eyes of the terrified manager who had thrown open the door was a dark red magic circle soaking the floor, and…
“……????”
The Duke himself, lying prone and trying his best to hide the chaotic marks on the floor.
The Duke has finally gone mad. The manager’s mind flashed with the thought that he now had something to report to the Imperial Family.
After suddenly becoming the traitor Duke Transis, Hyeon adapted to the situation quickly. Since he had been raised to have no [stolen content]strong opinions and to be easily compliant in fields other than work, he didn’t feel much discomfort in the changed environment.
Nevertheless, if there was one specific part he found awkward, it was none other than the attitude of the managers.
“Are you truly alright? You do know how to adjust the cuffs of a dress shirt, correct?”
Considering the commotion that ensued just because he said he would change his clothes himself, Hyeon was utterly bewildered. It was the same from the manager’s perspective.
The real Duke Transis was in a state where the only remaining territory was a rural village with no value to seize, where people barely survived by digging up grass roots. However, unable to shake the habit of being treated as the lord of a great estate, he often tried to treat the managers like slaves.
He was a young master who not only demanded assistance with minor clothing but also with tea and snacks, and even hated the effort of turning a page when reading a book, trying to make the manager do it. For such a man to suddenly say he would bathe himself as long as warm water was provided—it was impossible not to be shocked.
“I… no, I can handle it myself.”
Having lived as a modern person, for whom using polite language even with subordinates was natural, Hyeon also found it awkward to deal with the manager.
Do you really intend to do this yourself? Surely not this [unauthorized copy]too? Not only did he have to sweat to dismiss [Read on Read BL Novels]all sorts of assistance, but it stolen contentwas even more awkward because the manager frequently suspected that the Duke had finally snapped from despairing over his situation.
‘Maybe I should just pretend I lost my memory due to some aftereffect of an accident.’
Since Duke Transis’s memories remained intact in the body he had suddenly occupied, he didn’t have to worry about saying something nonsensical. However, it was natural for Hyeon—who was accustomed to doing his own work to set an example as a manager—to struggle while adapting to the life of a noble in a fantasy world.
“No! I must do it!”
Hyeon, who had already been deprived of the chance to do things himself for the twenty-fifth time, sensed that his plan—to spend his days in peaceful recuperation, taking the rest he couldn’t have while fulfilling his duties as a successor, until the Imperial curse claimed his life—was going wrong.
“No matter how I think about it, the Duke is strange… That man is not someone who would suddenly change like this…”
“Could it be that he has finally regained the reason to judge his situation objectively…?”
The managers dispatched to the frozen lake, Duke Transis’s exile site, were a single elderly couple whose children had all become independent. The manager couple, who submitted a short report on Duke Transis’s current status every week, held daily discussions on the topic of why the rogue-like Duke was suddenly trying to act like a decent human being.
“If that were the case, there would have been some unauthorized copytrigger, right? We need to know why he’s suddenly acting this way.”
“How should I know that? If I knew, I would have been promoted and gotten out of here long ago.”
“Anyway, I don’t know why he’s suddenly doing things he never did, scaring the life out of people.”
“Is it time for him to die…? There should still be quite a bit of time left.”
As expected, perhaps something happened to his head due to the shock of the failed ritual that day? The manager tried to test the Duke with a subtle probe, but there was nothing wrong with the Duke’s memory.
“Your Highness, I have prepared the trout stew you liked.”
When the food was served with a slight lie mixed in, a ghost-like answer returned.
“I like trout stew? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Then, as if appalled, he immediately sent the dish back. It was a reaction that would make any manager’s heart [unauthorized copy]drop, but it was the same for Hyeon. Even the usually indifferent Hyeon felt his heart rate quicken for a moment at the obvious attempt to test him.
‘As expected, they suspect that something definitely happened.’
Fortunately, the memory of the manager serving trout stew last year, only for the Duke to flip the entire table in a rage, screaming that it tasted fishy and asking how he was expected to eat such a thing, remained very vivid in his mind, so he managed to pass through safely.
They’re suspecting me so much, as if I’m plotting something suspicious. What should I do? If he could, Hyeon wanted to just come clean and say, ‘It’s nothing like that, I’m just going to live like a lazy bon vivant within the budget, so please don’t pay me any mind.’
‘I have a feeling that if I just leave it, the misunderstanding will only grow…’
And just as Hyeon intuited, the manager’s misunderstanding reached the Imperial Family, causing an unexpected ripple effect.
“…Thus, it is reported that there are concerns that Duke Transis may be plotting some suspicious conspiracy.”
The capital, located a distance that takes three full days of riding without using a gate from Frigid—where blizzards rage year-round except for a short summer—was experiencing a pleasant and comfortable era of peace, unlike Frigid where the frozen lake exile site was located. According to the flow of the original story, this was the time when Duke Transis would be grinding his teeth in the darkness, preparing to escape the exile site to end that peace, but there was no one who could predict that.
Contrary to the usual expectation of luxury, an elderly man sitting in an office with quite simple and modest decorations listened to [Read on Read BL Novels]the report, swallowed a short Read on Read BL Novelssigh, and asked the secretary before him.
“Have you not found any evidence of this suspicious conspiracy?”
No matter how much he stood at the pinnacle of the country’s power, the Emperor could not sentence the head of a family that had once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the current Osbrant Imperial Family to death without clear evidence. Especially if the target was Duke Transis, who had held the power and support to threaten the Imperial Family until his rebellion failed.
“Yes… I regret to inform you that, unfortunately, no physical evidence sufficient to request a trial has been found.”
Hmm. The Emperor swallowed another groan and rubbed his eyelids with his hand. Three years had already passed since the prince, who had not yet reached adulthood, had almost lost his life at that man’s hands. Considering that man’s temperament, which seemed to know no surrender, it was a time when it wouldn’t be strange for him to cause trouble.
‘He’s not the type to stay quietly tucked away there…’
If he committed a crime that could be clearly punished, the Emperor would try to have him executed even if he had to strongly persuade the Council of Elders. But instead, he just kept pestering the managers in small ways, and it was already the fifth time they had to replace the personnel because the dispatched manager had quit.
“Then, report in detail exactly why this is being regarded as suspicious.”
At the Emperor’s command, the man who had been bowing his head at the [stolen content]very [Read on Read BL Novels]front of the desk spoke.
“His attitude has changed drastically lately. Until then, he tormented the caretakers by complaining about everything—the water temperature, the patterns on the water glass, the length of his trouser hems—but suddenly, he has dismissed all attendants.”
“Dismissed the attendants?”
The Emperor tilted his head, prompting for more detail, and the man spoke in a calm voice.
“Yes. He said he would bathe alone once it was prepared, that dressing assistance was cumbersome and unnecessary, and even…”
The man paused as if delivering shocking news, and the Emperor, growing impatient, nodded quickly and asked.
“Yes, go on.”
“They say his severe pickiness with food has stopped abruptly.”
This was news that caught the attention of everyone in the office. Before Duke Transis fell from grace, what was he famous for? While he was known as the conqueror of the North, backed by the Quillan Great Estate, he was a great tycoon stolen contentwho enjoyed different delicacies 365 days a year thanks to tributes brought from all over [unauthorized copy]the [Read on Read BL Novels]country, as his estate stretched not only across the North but also through the granaries of the Central region.
Consequently, even after becoming a fallen noble, his palate remained filthily picky, and he had harassed and driven away five different caretakers. When a caretaker squeezed a tight budget to barely provide a variety of dishes, he would flip the table, claiming the quality was too low; he was a man whose notoriety never ceased.
And that Duke Transis was no longer complaining about food? Without the caretaker even being changed? It was only natural to suspect that the caretaker was plotting something strange without a single piece of proper evidence.
“My goodness… that is surprising.”
To this, the man spoke in an exaggerated tone, as if there were even more shocking news.
“Not only that, but lately, he has developed a hobby he never had any interest in before…”
As the man paused, every ear in the office waited for him to continue.
“He even harvested pumpkins from the garden himself. Duke Transis, with his own hands.”
“What?”
The Emperor doubted his own ears. That Duke Transis had harvested crops with his own hands—even after hearing it clearly, he couldn’t believe it.
“If I heard correctly, it sounds like the Duke walked into the fields on his own two feet…”
Because at the frozen lake exile site, there was no one capable of carrying an Alpha of a sturdy build like the Duke and placing him in a field. As the Emperor trailed off with a look of doubt, the man replied in a voice meant to instill certainty.
“You understood correctly, Your Majesty. He even asked about the sowing method for Osbrand pumpkins. Can you believe it?”
Everyone who heard it doubted their ears. The young master of a sterile room, who would throw a fit and demand something to wipe his hands the moment a speck of dust touched them as if they were the filthiest thing in the world, had harvested crops directly from a field? The sun would have to rise in the west tomorrow.
It would be more believable if he were researching a magical component in Osbrand pumpkins to create a magic bomb to send to the Imperial Palace.
“Unbelievable. Send an investigator to look into this in detail.”
“I shall follow your orders.”
At the Emperor’s command, the secretary who had delivered the caretaker’s report bowed deeply and turned to leave the office.
The fact that the inner truth was simply that Hyeon—who had nothing better to do—was merely looking for a pastime instead of tormenting the caretakers like the real Duke, was known to no one except Hyeon, now Duke Transis.
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