He’s My Real Brother, Duke Chapter 1

❅

 

The smell of blood, lingering on my nose, red paint like the blood that stained the white linen bed.

 

A man with a body that was too large to fit on my small bed.

 

With his lips torn, arms with deep scars with an unknown cause.

 

I swung the knife in my hand towards the man on the bed.

 

“It’s over.”

 

It took a long time to finish.

 

I put my knife down on the bedside table, and I quickly wiped the cold sweat flowing from my forehead.

 

And I carefully observed him. I trembled, feeling the anxiety, and my heart was pounding terribly, and I couldn’t calm myself.

 

If anyone has seen this suspicious figure and the surroundings, it would be mistaken for abduction and murder.

 

It was clear.

 

…Of course, I could never kidnap someone.

 

It’s just that, I’m a good healer who wanted to save the ‘Duke Anais’ who was injured in front of my house.

 

I moved the Duke to bed and even finished his treatment, so I have now become his ‘Lifesaver.’

 

This knife that I was holding was also used for his treatment, to tear the gauze and nothing more!

 

I whispered gently as I wiped the unconscious Duke’s forehead with the back of my hand.

 

“You may not hear this, but… The treatment was finished.”

 

Fortunately, the fever went down, and the wound was treated.

 

Well, the reason why this man, who boasted overwhelming power in the novel, got injured so far was unknown.

 

But the reason why he fainted seemed to be due to the outburst of his mana, so I prescribed a special medicine and fed it to him.

 

Now I am completely relieved that the treatment went well.

 

With a sigh of relief, I looked into his face carefully.

 

Certainly, he was the ‘God of the night,’ and he looked reliable.

 

Like the night sky, his black hair looks the softest of all his features.

 

Long shades of eyelashes, a straight nose, and a slight shade under the cheekbones created a sharper atmosphere.

 

Even if those eyes are closed, I think I could capture everything at once.

 

His eyes, however, were only obscured by his thick eyelashes.

 

“You must get better. Okay?”

 

I need to finish the treatment.

 

As I safely put the sleeping medicine into the man’s lips, I thought to myself ‘Oh my God!!’

 

“Because I’ve been waiting for more than three years to this day just to save you!”

 

Of course, even if I tried to think positively, I couldn’t overcome physical fatigue.

 

Maybe it’s because I worked hard all day, or perhaps it was because of the struggle of dragging this big and heavy man into the house.

 

“…I only have five minutes left to sleep.”

 

I thought so and started to doze off.

 

In front of the bed, while he was recovering.

 

❅

 

I decided to sleep only five minutes, but I couldn’t cope with the fatigue that had accumulated in my body for a short period.

 

I was deeply asleep and dreaming.

 

In my dream, my past unfolded like a panorama.

 

It was no coincidence that I saved the Duke of Anais today.

 

In advance, I knew that he would fall in the grass, about 10m away from the First Treatment Center outside the northern Duke Castle.

 

The Duke, traveling alone to hunt for monsters, was forced to fall in front of a small log house in the forest because of mana instability due to the last war’s aftereffects against monsters.

 

That’s why the manager of a nearby branch office ended up saving him. 

 

The Duke of Anais takes the manager of the treatment center to the castle and gives him what he wants.

 

The reason I knew this was simple and clear.

 

This was a fantasy novel, 『Bloody Revenge』. 

 

I was reincarnated as ‘Astel’, the younger sister of ‘Cassian’, the novel’s male protagonist.

 

Unfortunately, this novel, The Fate of Astel and Cassian had a tragic dark ending.

 

We were born to the Count Vietry family, the most prestigious wizard family in the Empire, but our family was framed and destroyed.

 

Sadly, our parents sacrificed their lives for us, using the forbidden stealth magic that no one could trace.

 

Thanks to that, we barely survived the bloodbath.

 

But what could a little child who knows nothing do?

 

Our childhood was challenging, sad, and helpless.

 

It was customary to be starving, and there were times when I was begging and begging for luck and was beaten.

 

Luckily, since my brother got a job as a stable keeper, we were able to eat even soiled carrots as one meal for a day.

 

Still, we enjoy living here. Initially, there exist adversities in one’s life.

 

However, when I was ten years old, the problem began when I realized that I had reincarnated from this novel.

 

“The genre was revenge, and even the ending was sad?”

 

According to the original content, Cassian, who grew up with his younger sister, tried to take revenge on our parents.

 

As a result, he uncovers the identities of some of the spies who destroyed Count Vietry and was cleared of the accusation.

 

However, after he thought it was a happy ending.

 

Cassian eventually died at the hands of the final Villain, which he didn’t even know existed.

 

‘Astel’ was also in a situation where she was attacked and killed while raising a nephew that her brother left behind.

 

The novel ends in bitterness, though it was not clear who the final Villain was.

 

That kind of fate.

 

When I realized that I had just been reincarnated, I was so scared of the future that I cried while walking and begging.

 

“Astel! We are beggars, so we have to work. You shouldn’t cry all the time.”

 

“Brother, what if we are supposed to die?”

 

Cassian responded calmly to my helpless question.

 

“Cassian, you stupid idiot. You know nothing! Just go away!”

 

He laughed without knowing that he was destined to die or that I’ll be living a miserable life with my nephew alone!

 

While he looked tense, I had an incredible realization from his words.

 

“Still… I like the saying ‘If the ending was bad, you should change it.”

 

If I catch and kill the final Villain that Cassian failed to catch in the end.

 

I would make him eat poisoned carrot soup until he dies. I’d make him eat until his belly burst with carrot soup and dies painfully!

 

After that, I’ll prepare to take revenge. Of course, it was the same with my brother.

 

“I want to take the Knights Templar entrance exam.”

 

“…”

 

‘Just wait ten years. I’ll tear off those accusations against our family and live in a nice house wearing pretty clothes.’

 

My brother didn’t share a lot of information about his revenge.

 

However, he was reborn as a hero of the Empire. 

 

Cassian received the nobility status and connections with High-Level Information. I already knew that he would try to find the truth by meeting people from a dark guild.

 

He left me in a remote village, to walk towards his future path full of thorns.

 

“What’s with that expression!”

 

“It’s just….'”

 

“Cause I’m not good enough?”

 

“Yes. You’re not good enough…”

 

My brother looked shocked, but I couldn’t help it.

 

Anyway, if he fails. Then we all die. 

 

So there was only one way to overcome this tragic ending.

 

 

Without my brother’s knowledge, I would help him uncover who the Final Villain was!

 

Only then could we truly survive.

 

I recalled several hints that appeared in the novel, where the Villain wasn’t revealed until the end.

 

First of all, it wasn’t impossible to know who exactly the spy was that infiltrated our family.

 

Since some of the most important hints were given.

 

One of the three spies who fabricated false evidence that Count Vietry was a traitor was a ‘human’, and two were ‘Shapeshifters’. 

 

It was the fact that after they destroyed our family, they fled to the Duke of Anais.

 

If I caught them right away, find out who the final Villain was, and immediately deal with him…

 

With that, we could reach a happy ending.

 

If a problem arises, it won’t be easy to enter the Duke of Anais Castle.

 

There were complex political reasons for this. In the northern part of the Empire, the entire Duchy of Anais was the land of Shapeshifters.

 

The Shapeshifters hated humans who had enslaved them in the past, so they would threaten them when outsiders entered their land.

 

There were also a few humans who had died. 

 

Of course, there had to be some humans who were able to enter the northern Duke’s castle.

 

First, I should get a job at Duke’s treatment center after a difficult journey.

 

However, the circumstances were different for the Duke, the vassal family, and Duke Castle, where the shapeshifters stay.

 

It was a dangerous castle where unauthorized persons could not enter and leave even if it were a guard.

 

The north Duke Castle was a place where if humans tried to sneak in their throats would be cut off immediately due to magic surrounding the castle.

 

As a human being, how would I be able to enter the castle without dying and spy on them without being suspicious?

 

After working in the treatment center for a long time, I finally found a good way.

 

That’s by being the lifesaver of Duke Anais!

 

It may be another matter of being a lifesaver and getting in without spilling blood in the Duchy.

 

❅

 

For a moment when I realized the contents of my dreams, I opened my eyes like I was playing a game.

 

Immediately I looked around in a hurry, and the Duke, whom I carefully laid on the bed, disappeared.

 

Maybe not everything in my dream was true.

 

Or, unlike in the original, Duke Anais is left without gratification for the benefactor who saved him…!

 

I stretched my shoulders and pressed my eyes, and then I heard a soft voice behind my back.

 

“Are you the one who saved me?”

 

It was a terrifyingly stiff tone to describe the phrase ‘the one who saved me’, but the low tone was so sweet that I was confused.

 

I turned my head and looked behind as if possessed.

 

At last, our gaze met in the center.

 

Black hair, bluish eyes. 

 

He was Duke Anais, whom I saved.

 

The ruler of all the Shapeshifters in the north.

 

However, except for the title of “Duke Anais,” the truth about his race was unknown, so he was a mysterious figure in the north who was known as a dangerous beast.

 

And now, he was my only way to enter Duke Castle!