A Villain's Will to Survive

Chapter 281: Interpretation (2)

The Imperial Palace held a greater contrast between day and night than even the desert of the Scarletborn. Before sunset, it was always bright and clear, filled with life. A warm breeze blew through the air as if to greet its guests, brushing against the skin, while streams and ponds sang with the dignity of royalty.

However, once the sun had set, a foreboding darkness blanketed the palace grounds more completely than anywhere else. The air, once warm and welcoming, turned cold, biting at the skin like polished steel. Even the garden, once serene, grew tense—its silence vigilant, as if guarding against unseen intruders.

Even on such an unforgiving night in the Imperial Palace, Ria remained caught in Deculein’s Telekinesis and his suspicious look, which never left her, and she had no one to blame but herself for blurting out the Holy Language in a panic, without reason or context.

“Let me ask you once more—how could someone like you possibly know the Holy Language?” Deculein inquired.

Deculein’s question dripped with contempt, perhaps because Ria stood out in neither class, rank, status, nor house. But even so, she didn’t shrink back—in fact, in terms of physical power, she was stronger than Deculein.

“… I’ve been to the Sanctuary of the Altar before,” Ria said, as if trying to explain herself.

“And you’re saying you learned the Holy Language there?” Deculein replied, his eyes as piercing as ever.

Ria remained silent.

“Even you must realize how absurd that sounds. The Altar has spent years searching for the Holy Language. They’ve never possessed it,” Deculein continued with a sneer.

Ria’s mouth went completely dry as Deculein’s crushing blue eyes drilled straight through her skull, the weight of his stare too much to bear, and silently she lowered her head.

Thud—!

“Eyes on me,” Deculein added, the tip of his staff cracking against the ground.

“… I know a few words of the Holy Language,” Ria replied, squirming a little under his stare.

“What I asked was this—where, and by what means, did you come to know them?” Deculein said, the question cutting through the air like a drawn blade.

He isn’t even giving me a moment to think, Ria thought.

“I just know them.”

“… You just know them?”

Ria nodded.

The game was always there—within the company, beyond it, and even in my dreams, filling my head. The Holy Language, its setting, its scenarios—I probably know more about them than anyone except the writer.

… The problem is, I can’t tell him why I know it. How am I supposed to say that this world is just a game, that you’re NPCs inside it, and that I was one of the people who helped build it from the outside? Ria thought.

“… Yes. I just know it without a reason. It showed up in my dreams a few times, too.”

Deculein’s brow twitched and his eyes narrowed into slits as he locked them on Ria, wearing an expression that was lethal and undeniably dangerous.

Honestly, I’m nervous that he might use the Wood Steel at any moment or whack me over the head with his staff.

“… Tch.”

However, what came next from Deculein caught her off guard and took her by surprise.

“I see,” Deculein said.

The intellect of the era, the most rational professor on the continent—Deculein—was actually nodding, seemingly accepting, in his own way, Ria’s completely unreasonable explanation that she knew about the Holy Language.

Ria’s eyes widened in surprise, but Deculein, without pressing her any further, stood up without a word, his face so cold and unapproachable that even the thought of speaking to him felt impossible.

“… Professor.”

At that moment, a voice carried in from the far end of the garden, and as soon as Ria saw her, she sat up straight, while Deculein—the one who’d been called—remained completely unbothered.

“Your Majesty, the air is chilly this evening. What brings you outside at this hour?” Deculein said.

Empress Sophien, known across the Empire for changing her attire daily, wore a qipao today that traced every curve of her body and shimmered with elegance—making her seem luminous even in the dark—as she wandered forward with heavy eyes and bare footsteps to take hold of Deculein’s robe.

“… I thought you were gone, Professor,” Sophien replied.

Sophien mumbled complaints like a child while Deculein said nothing, simply watching her in silence, and there was something strange—almost intimate—about the air between them.

“… Your Majesty, fatigue is written on your face.”

“Indeed… Perhaps I’ve been too deep in thought. My body can’t seem to keep up.”

As Ria looked between Deculein and Sophien, a single thought surfaced in her mind.

What’s Yulie doing right now? Ria thought.

“… Hmm,” Sophien murmured as her eyes landed on her. “You’re Ria.”

“Gasp, y-you remembered my name—”

“I do remember. They say you’ve been helping the attendants at the Imperial Palace. I’ve heard you’re a good child. But tell me, Professor—what exactly are you doing with her?”

“This child is a Holy Language specialist, Your Majesty,” Deculein replied to the Empress’s question.

***

The Easter egg left behind by Yoo Ah-Ra so clearly resembled her that it wasn’t hard to believe Ria might know something others couldn’t, and Deculein, watching her in silence, allowed that possibility to take root in his thoughts.

However, Deculein had led them elsewhere—to the Emperor’s vault, where treasures from every corner of the continent glittered in the dark—while Sophien stood beside him, both watching Ria in silence.

“I-I was just… I mean…” Ria muttered.

Ria glanced at them cautiously as she nervously handled the Holy Language scroll, whose parchment was packed with innumerable lines of script—some resembling alphabets, others like hieroglyphs or pictograms—an indecipherable stream of symbols that seemed to stretch on forever.

“I don’t think…”

“You do not know?” Deculein inquired.

“It’s… a lot more than I thought,” Ria replied, tasting her own hesitation on her lip.

As a last resort, Ria pulled her trump card by acting like an innocent kid, pretending she wasn’t even fifteen yet in hopes of buying herself a little mercy.

Of course, Ria knew which part of the Holy Language mattered—but she hadn’t expected to be staring down a comparison pool of several billion possibilities.

“I will remove her, Your Majesty,” Deculein said, raising Ria into the air with Telekinesis.

Sophien nodded in agreement and replied, “Don’t forget to seal her memories with the proper spell—”

“Wait! Please—just wait! I’ll write down the last revelation from my dream in the Holy Language!”

“… The last revelation?” Sophien inquired.

“Yes, Your Majesty. The last revelation of the Holy Era—also known as the Testament,” Deculein replied.

“Please look! I’ll show you—I’ll write it right now!”

The last revelation was too important to forget. I made sure to remember at least this one sentence—the one that felt the most alien, Ria thought.

“… Here,” Ria said, and wrote God’s Testament in the Holy Language.

“Hmm, you saw this sentence in a dream?” Empress Sophien inquired, not taking her eyes off the sentence.

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s a lie,” Sophien said, her face darkening in an instant, her wide, unblinking eyes gleaming with something not of this world.

Sweat gathered along Ria’s spine, soaking through her clothes as the pressure built in silence.

“You dare lie to me?”

“Your Majesty,” Deculein said, placing himself between the Empress and Ria. “The child has not yet undergone her coming of age.”

What Deculein had said must’ve been convincing—Sophien scoffed, but her expression softened all the same—as, after the moment passed, Deculein turned his attention to the Holy Language sentence Ria had handed him.

“You’re telling me this is the last revelation—written in the Holy Language?” Deculein inquired.

“Yes,” Ria replied.

“… Let me see it.”

Your indulgence shall lead to My death.

Deculein stared at the Holy Language sentence Ria had written, then unrolled the Holy Language scroll again, his eyes moving between the two with incredible speed—his pupils scanning so fast it was like watching a supercomputer run calculations in real time.

00100100101010.

Tap—

Then, without a word, the pen fell from Deculein’s hand.

“… Even the same revelation can change entirely, depending on how it’s interpreted,” Deculein muttered.

Ria had a good idea of what Deculein had just realized—and though the temptation to laugh bubbled up, she kept it to herself.

“Your indulgence shall lead to My death… If altering the structure and interpretation of the Holy Language…” Deculein said, then muttered a different reading of the revelation. “… My death shall grant you freedom.”

Freedom and indulgence looked alike on the surface but were not the same, as depending on one’s interpretation, freedom could slip into indulgence, and indulgence could masquerade as freedom.

“… Even in a world where God once lived, His followers achieved nothing,” Deculein said, nodding.

In that moment, a memory stirred in Deculein’s mind—one from long ago, when Quay had shown him a glimpse of the Holy Era.

“They gave themselves wholly to the only truth they knew—God, the absolute reason. They neither pursued progress nor dared to dream. For ages, they did nothing but interpret and record God’s revelation, wasting their lives in circles of meaninglessness. Like earthbound beings, no more than worms in the dust.”

Back then, the world was little more than a patchwork of primitive shelters—hardly more advanced than Stone Age huts—and on such an expansive continent, it was they who lived in the smallest, poorest corners of it all.

“However, that was never what God desired.”

Deculein considered what it might mean—the last and only path God had chosen, and perhaps the only one He ever could take, to push His creation to advance.

“Therefore, God chose death by His own hand…”

There had never been a godslayer—none of the kind Quay condemned—and from the very beginning, God had delivered His revelation with the sole intent of ending Himself.

“It seems this, too, is a valid interpretation,” Deculein concluded.

Tick, tock—

Tick, tock—

Tick, tock—

Within the silence, the ticking of a clock echoed through the vault, its sound coming from an ancient timepiece kept among the relics.

“… Hmm, I suppose this calls for a reward,” Sophien said, breaking the silence as she gestured with her chin toward Ria. “Tell me, child—what would you take from this place?”

Ria blinked, her mind blank for a moment.

“Is there nothing that catches your eye?” Sophien inquired.

“No—I do! But… anything? Do you really mean anything?”

Then Deculein turned to Sophien and shook his head.

“Indeed, anything at all,” Sophien replied with a chuckle, noticing Deculein’s reaction.

Then, I suppose I’ll help myself.

“That one,” Ria said, pointing to the copperplate she had been watching for some time.

“… Well, well. The Copperplate of Luketan the Great, is it? A fine choice,” Sophien said with warm laughter.

Deculein glared at Ria.

The Copperplate of Luketan the Great was a rare skill book—an item that allowed its user to inherit one of the legendary attributes of the imperial family. The requirements were, of course, on another level—at least level two Mana Quality and a mana capacity of over twenty thousand—but Ria had met such standards long before this moment.

“To see such worth—that’s a talent and a fortune of yours. Go on, take it,” Sophien said, handing Ria the copperplate.

“Wh-Whoa… Y-Yes! Thank you so much, Your Majesty!” Ria replied, still unsure if it was real, but clutching the copperplate and bowing nearly in half.

***

Not long after Ria slipped out of the vault, holding the copperplate tightly in her arms like stolen treasure, the first light of dawn began to break over the horizon.

“Was it something you had your eye on as well?” Sophien asked, smiling at me as she caught my sour expression, as if it were the sweetest thing she’d seen all day.

“No, Your Majesty. However, it was a treasure of great significance,” I replied.

The attributes of the imperial family were never meant for someone like me—I couldn’t have claimed them even if I tried, and somewhere in my heart, I never really wanted to, for that power was theirs by blood and never mine to take.

“The child may have kept the source to herself, but she has offered a rare and valuable hint. Really, what good is a treasure if it only gathers dust? Better shared than left to rot,” Sophien said with a smile.

I let out a sigh without saying a word.

Tap—

At that moment, Sophien’s head leaned against my shoulder—this time, without even pretending it was accidental.

“Your Majesty,” I said, turning toward her.

“… What is it?”

“Leaning on me like this does not suit Your Majesty’s dignity.”

“… Haha,” Sophien murmured after letting out a chuckle and shaking her head. “But it can’t be helped. I can’t move a muscle right now.”

“What do you mean by…” I said, finally taking a good look at Sophien’s condition.

There was no strength left in Sophien’s limbs, her face sagged with exhaustion, and her red hair—once shining like lacquer—was brittle and dried.

“How strange, as if something—or someone—is trying to take hold of my body.”

“How long have you felt this way?”

“Once in a while before, but lately it’s grown rather frequently. Half the day, my body refuses to obey me, and I can barely move.”

Sophien’s voice no longer sounded like her own, and her ragged breaths betrayed just how weak she’d become. But it was the red current I could see with Sharp Eyesight—the death variable—that confirmed it, and if Quay took over her body now, the system would declare that it was game over.

“… Your Majesty.”

“But it’s alright,” Sophien continued, moving slightly, resting her arms around my waist and burying her face against my shoulder. “It’s strange, but with you beside me, I almost feel better.”

I remained silent.

“So stay just like this and don’t move.”

At first, I thought Sophien was lying—I knew she wasn’t the type—but at that moment, I just couldn’t believe her, maybe because it was easier that way.

“… It is no lie.”

However, just by leaning against me and staying close like that, Sophien’s ragged breath began to steady as the death variable that shimmered around her faded and the color returned to her face as if nothing had happened.

“It means I needed a moment for a recharge again,” Sophien concluded, smiling to herself as she wrapped her arms around my back and rested her brow against my neck.

Just like that, Sophien fell asleep—right there, leaning against me.

“Snore… Snore…”

Then she began snoring—barely audible—but charming in a way that felt far too tender for someone like Sophien.

“… But tell me, how long has it been?” I inquired, my words barely above a whisper, not wishing to wake Sophien as I addressed the one who had been watching us.

— I do not know the cause with certainty.

Then I heard a voice that belonged to Keiron, echoing from the knight statue displayed in the vault, speaking through the stone itself.

— But it began to worsen after you encountered Quay.

“How do you know I ever encountered Quay?”

— Your medal.

I looked down at the medal pinned to my chest—the Honorary Knight Medal, an emblem that marked me as one of the highest-ranked members of the Empress’s Elite Guard, and, just like its name, it bore the form of a knight.

“Even a medal like this bows to your influence, Keiron.”

— Of course, if you think about it, that medal is, in essence, a statue forged and embedded within.

Keiron had the power to become any statue on this continent—no matter how big or small—and when I faced Quay, he was there, staying with me as the medal over my chest the entire time.

“Anyhow, are you telling me this is all because of Quay?”

— That’s the current assumption, as there’s no other cause. However… I don’t believe it’s anything to be overly concerned about.

“… Why should I not be concerned?”

Keiron smiled and pointed toward me with his finger.

— Since the antidote is right beside Her Majesty.

I remained silent.

— It was merely a joke, of course. If Her Majesty finds happiness in your presence, then that alone is cause enough for my own.

I remained silent.

— This was not a joke, if you ask me.

“Snore… Snore…”

Behind me, I could hear Sophien’s gentle breathing.

— However, you don’t mean to let Her Majesty sleep like this, do you? Shouldn’t Her Majesty be properly returned to her bed?

“Keiron, that will be enough.”

— This isn’t merely a joke, either. Leave her like that in the cold much longer, and it’ll be more than dignity that’s at risk.

I remained silent.

— Hurry.

I let out a sigh—the kind you don’t realize you’re holding—because, although uncomfortable, Keiron had a point and wasn’t wrong, so I pushed myself up.

— Do not worry, as I will make sure no one sees this.

“Yes, I’ll leave it in your hands,” I replied.

In the pale hush of dawn, I walked through the Imperial Palace with Sophien upon my back, Keiron’s attentive escort surrounding us in silence.

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