Rolling in Bed with the Male Lead

"Bilmar! Why on earth are you doing this? Please... at least tell me why!"

Raios, who had followed him all the way to the edge of the garden, grabbed his arm again.

But—

Snap!

Bilmar roughly slapped his hand away.

He frowned and brushed off his collar.

"I am the one who cannot understand why Your Majesty is behaving this way."

His cold violet eyes met Raios's gaze.

There was no intense emotion in them. Only mockery.

"Do I look as though I am seeking revenge merely because my fiancée was taken from me?"

"...!"

Raios's mouth twitched.

His lips trembled, and at last, anger swept over him.

"Isn't that exactly what this is?!"

He seized Bilmar by the collar and pulled him close.

Close enough to feel his breath, his stance suggesting that fists might fly at any moment.

"Poison in her teacup every day since the wedding, assassins breaking in at night! All of it—every last bit of it—must have been your doing!"

"..."

"I have overlooked it until now because I considered you a friend, but there is a limit. Please, Bilmar..."

Raios lowered his head with a pained expression. The hand clutching Bilmar's collar trembled.

"..."

Bilmar quietly looked down at him.

His expression had not changed in the slightest.

"Do you have any proof that it was me?"

The words that followed were absurdly calm.

"If not you, then who else could it be?! Aren't you doing all this because you're obsessed with Elica?!"

Raios shouted through gritted teeth.

His breathing grew increasingly ragged, his emotions on the verge of collapse.

"..."

Bilmar remained silent for a moment.

Then a laugh escaped him.

"Pfft."

"...?"

Raios paused and stared at him.

Then Bilmar spoke.

"Yes. You are right."

At those words, the air froze.

Yes, that was right.

This was purely an act born of jealousy.

If he could not have the one he loved...

Would he not have to destroy her instead?

"I put poison in her tea and sent the assassins."

Raios's pupils shook violently.

His lips trembled, and his grip loosened.

"It was jealousy. If I could not have her, then destroying her was my only choice."

Bilmar stepped forward.

Raios instinctively stepped back.

The distance between them widened once more, yet the oppressive pressure only grew heavier.

"Now... what will you do?"

Bilmar smiled bitterly.

Love resembles hatred.

Rather than warm and affectionate, it is cold and destructive. Obsessive and cruel.

Bilmar's love was not romantic in the least.

Bilmar slowly opened his eyes.

"Love and hatred are alike."

"..."

"If you love someone too much..."

He trailed off. A strange light passed through his cold, sunken gaze.

"You eventually come to hate them."

Love and hatred are separated by only a single sheet of paper.

The divide is so thin that one can easily become the other.

"..."

Richard's brow furrowed slightly.

I already knew, but...

It was far more...

He's a madman.

He also had a vague understanding of the tangled relationship between the Duke, the Empress, and the Emperor.

No, more precisely, he had heard it directly from the Emperor in a previous regression.

Elica.

She had originally been the Duke's fiancée.

But in the end, she married the Emperor—

And from that moment on, the Duke...

...had tried endlessly to kill the Empress.

There were people like that in the world.

People who, if they could not possess something, would rather destroy it.

People who craved not love but possession and wished to reduce everything to ashes.

"I see."

Richard answered calmly while clicking his tongue inwardly.

He could not understand it.

He did not know that kind of love.

His love was more devoted. More sacrificial.

If he could not hold it, he would not touch it. If he could not have it, he would simply let it go.

For now.

Richard immediately shook off the thought.

What mattered now was not sentiment.

What mattered was—

Locating the corpse.

Reminding himself of his objective, he spoke quietly.

"So you came to both love and hate Her Majesty the Empress?"

"That is right."

The Duke slowly nodded.

"I could never—"

His violet eyes gradually darkened.

A gaze containing nothing but a deep abyss, devoid of light or warmth.

"Possess her."

"..."

"Will you follow me, Young Master?"

Bilmar turned on his heel and slowly walked down the carpeted corridor.

"..."

Richard followed him in silence.

Bilmar stopped before the entrance to the basement of the Chesika Dukedom.

Click.

Clatter—

After unlocking the tightly secured lock, he entered the basement.

A dark staircase with not a single point of light.

Richard slowly followed him down.

The moment he stepped onto the final stair—

"...!"

His ocean-blue eyes widened sharply.

A corpse.

A corpse hung suspended in midair, perfectly preserved.

The face, its eyes closed, was serene. It possessed the tranquility of someone in a deep sleep.

Yet that only made the sight more grotesque.

A stillness as though she were alive, a beauty as though she were dead—

A sinister tranquility.

The Empress.

It was the Empress's corpse.

Richard struggled to conceal the wavering in his gaze.

"You seem to have recognized her immediately as well."

"..."

"Yes. It is the Empress's corpse."

His violet eyes glinted crimson as he tilted his head and looked up at the body.

"As you well know."

He spat out the words as though chewing on them.

The surrounding air froze.

"..."

He continued glaring at the corpse for a long time.

After watching him for a moment, Richard slowly reached toward it.

But—

Vrrrm—

A strange vibration spread around the corpse, like ripples across water.

A resistance like a solid wall pushed his fingertips away.

It was clearly right before him, yet he could not touch it.

"Hmm..."

The Duke glanced at Richard.

"Shall we head back now?"

He spoke with a faint smile.

With that as their final exchange, Richard left the Chesika Dukedom. The moment he stepped outside, the cold winter wind struck him like a blizzard.

There is a barrier.

The eerie sensation he had felt in the basement suddenly returned to him.

The powerful magic protecting the Empress's corpse was undoubtedly "Binding Magic."

A fixed spell that "bound" its target so that it could not leave a designated location.

A form of spatial confinement.

The barrier is not so strong that it cannot be broken.

However.

The moment someone forcibly broke it and took the target beyond the barrier—

The target would burn away and disappear.

So that is why.

Richard let out a hollow laugh.

That is why the Emperor has been unable to recover the corpse until now.

He stopped walking.

Without dispelling the Binding Magic... the Empress's corpse could not be removed.

Once Binding Magic was cast, it could not be undone.

Bound in the truest sense. An eternal shackle.

Unless the magic itself was rendered "null"...

"Of course."

A moment later, a smile formed at the corner of Richard's mouth.

There was one way.

He had learned all manner of things over the course of dozens of regressions. Potions that made people fall in love. Forbidden spells acquired by selling one's soul.

Among them...

[The Book of Nullification]

A forbidden tome that could revert any contract or magic to a state in which it had "never existed," just once.

I only need to obtain that.

Originally, the Book of Nullification was used in the latter half of the "story" to save Daphne, who had fallen under a curse.

And at present, that Book of Nullification...

No one yet knew its value.

At this point in time, it would simply be mixed in among other old books and sold on the black market.

He murmured his next destination under his breath.

"The black market."

A place where all manner of goods were secretly bought and sold.

Richard had to go there.

The snowstorm grew fiercer. The swirling snowflakes seemed ready to bury the entire world, but Richard raised his head and walked into the blizzard.

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