I Tamed the Slave Male Lead Chapter 16

Sota looked down at Regita with a bored expression and sneered.

“I called you here because I knew you’d act like this again. I was worried you’d shamelessly make a spectacle of yourself in front of everyone again, without even knowing how disgraceful you were being.”

“Brother… sob. Please, just this once.”

“What about the Oculous Festival? What of it? You pathetic woman.”

At Sota’s cold words, goosebumps rose along my arms.

“Let me make this perfectly clear. If you want the elixir, go get that slave back. Otherwise, you’ll have to spend the rest of your life with that hideous face, never even getting a glimpse of the elixir, looking no different from a leper. I’m quite curious what the princes visiting the Oculous Festival will think when they see you like this.”

“Brother! Ahh, please!”

The miraculous potion known as the elixir, said to be capable of curing all diseases. It seemed Arabella wasn’t the only one who needed this panacea, which could supposedly only be produced by a single saint or saintess recognized by the Temple.

Come to think of it, I remembered something. In the latter half of Blue Roses at the End of the World, when Dorothea, who had been recognized as a saint, began producing elixirs, Regita had suddenly changed her attitude and acted as though she would give Dorothea everything she had, body and soul.

It seemed Regita had been born with some serious skin disease or immune disorder. Perhaps that was why she needed regular doses of the elixir to maintain her current beauty.

In a way, it made me even more resentful.

Despite suffering from an illness she had been born with herself, she had tormented and mocked Arabella so cruelly all this time.

‘You deserve everything that’s coming to you, Regita.’

The moment I thought that, Regita glared fiercely and suddenly clung to Sota’s trouser leg.

“Why are you being so cruel, Brother? The elixir originally belongs to all direct members of the Imperial Family. If you keep doing this, I’ll tell His Majesty that you’re trying to hoard the elixir all for yourself! Then you’ll be in trouble too!”

At last, Regita, cornered into a desperate situation, showed her claws, but Sota didn’t even twitch an eyebrow.

“Go ahead and try. Do you really think His Majesty will take your side? Instead of me, the Empire’s only Swordmaster, who will protect Father’s safety from the front lines if a war breaks out, will he take the side of someone as pathetic as you, who does nothing but disgrace herself at every turn?”

“But… but!”

“Prove your worth as a member of the Imperial Family, Regita. Once I become Emperor and lead the Imperial Family, I intend to burn away and sweep aside every useless husk without a shred of patience.”

After saying that, Sota kicked Regita hard with a hardened expression.

Thud!

“Aah!”

“This is your punishment for daring to defy me. Stay here alone and reflect on what you’ve done for another hour before you come out.”

With that, Sota turned his back on her and began walking away.

“The… the staff.”

At Regita’s frightened voice, Sota’s steps came to a halt.

At the same time, my heart began pounding strangely hard.

I didn’t know why the word ‘staff’ sounded so significant.

“I’ll find the saint’s staff and b-break it. If you d-don’t give me the elixir.”

“What?”

Sota slowly turned around.

An eerie chill seeped into his voice.

“I know that staff is hidden here too.”

“Ha. Who told you such nonsense?”

“I-I’m a member of the Imperial Family too! I know enough to understand how important that thing is. Count Maiona’s death was actually because he was trying to retrieve it, wasn’t it!”

An astonishing truth I had stumbled upon at the most unexpected moment.

The shock was so great that a tiny gasp escaped my lips before I could stop it.

Yusiliph belatedly clamped a hand over my mouth and pulled us back behind the bookshelf that served as our cover, but it was already too late.

Sota’s chilling voice echoed through the archives.

“Didn’t I just hear something?”

“Huh? I… I didn’t hear anything.”

“I’m certain I heard something.”

As expected, a Swordmaster’s five senses were extraordinary.

The next moment, Sota swiftly drew the sword from the sheath at his waist and, without hesitation, sent a sword aura flying toward us.

Whoosh!

As a shockwave that felt as though space itself were being sliced apart came crashing toward us, I felt Yusiliph’s weight envelop my entire body and press me down against the floor.

Crash, crash! Rumble!

In an instant, three or four bookshelves near where I had been standing were sliced horizontally as cleanly as if they had been cut with a blade before collapsing.

The section at exactly the height where my neck would have been was sliced away, and the books that had been resting there came tumbling down.

The fallen books piled up on top of Yusiliph and me as we crouched beneath them.

“Brother, what is this—”

“Shh. Be quiet.”

“……”

Tap.

Tap.

I heard footsteps slowly approaching us.

Flattened against the cold floor, I held my breath.

I could feel Yusiliph, who was shielding my body, bracing himself against the floor with as much strength as possible through his arm muscles, trying not to put his full weight on me.

The sound of his heartbeat rang clearly in my ears, like the hammering of a blacksmith in a forge.

Tap.

Trapped beneath the pile of fallen books, I hypnotized myself.

I’m a stone right now. I can’t feel anything. I’m not even breathing.

So, please, you fragile excuse for a body, don’t move. Because if you do, I’ll be dead before the end of the world—or anything else—can even arrive.

Just as I was anxiously feeling as though my lifespan were being shaved away in real time, I sensed a faint, unfamiliar movement of air near my ear.

How should I put it?

It wasn’t something my hearing could precisely pick up, yet instinctively, I knew that something was happening, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who sensed it.

Sota also stopped walking and remained silent for a moment.

And then—

Flapflapflapflapflap!

“Eek!”

As the loud, violent beating of wings suddenly filled the space, Regita screamed in terror.

“A-a bat! Eek!”

A swarm of bats that had apparently made their nest somewhere in the old archives suddenly took flight from all directions, creating a horrible cacophony.

I had no idea why, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

“…So it was just bats.”

Sota stood there for a moment, muttering to himself.

But as the bats continued making a racket, he eventually lost interest and turned around.

Only when his footsteps began fading into the distance did I finally let out a sigh of relief.

I heard Regita, terrified, stumbling after Sota with a clatter.

However, the moment Sota left the archives, he immediately locked the door behind him, and Regita began pounding on it while wailing.

“Brother! Brotheeer! Don’t leave me here alone! I’m sorry!”

Listening to her frightened, tearful voice like a little child, I almost felt sorry for her.

If only she hadn’t been so cruel to Arabella all this time, I might even have pitied her a little.

“Get up now.”

Yusiliph whispered into my ear.

With Regita’s crying combined with the bats’ noise, he seemed to have judged that moving around now wouldn’t attract any attention.

By then, Yusiliph had already roughly cleared away the pile of books that had fallen over our bodies.

I got up while rubbing my limbs, which had grown stiff from tension, and let out a long sigh of relief.

Then Yusiliph whispered softly into my ear.

“Let’s move quickly while it’s noisy. Do you have any idea where the swordsmanship manual might be hidden?”

I knew he was only whispering so Regita wouldn’t hear us, but the pleasant low tone of his voice tickled my ear, making my heart flutter.

Steeling myself, I calmly replied,

“I think I might.”

“…Really? Where?”

As I listened to his openly doubtful voice, I looked around the archives for a moment.

My eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness by now, allowing me to see the overall scale of the fairly large archives.

If we tried to search this entire place blindly without any clues, it would probably take at least two days.

After thinking for a moment, I raised a finger and pointed toward one spot.

It was an old bookshelf directly in front of the shelf Sota had just sliced apart with his sword aura, covered thickly in dust and tangled with cobwebs.

“Let’s search over there.”

“Why that one?”

Yusiliph asked casually, but I noticed that his tone had changed ever so slightly.

‘You sensed it too, didn’t you?’

I cleared my throat before whispering into his ear.

“Isn’t it strange? Considering where the Crown Prince was standing and where we were, it would have been far more efficient and logical for him to cut through that bookshelf first, then the one behind it. But the Crown Prince bent the trajectory of his attack unnaturally just to avoid that bookshelf. Doesn’t that mean there must be some precious books there that shouldn’t be damaged?”

Perhaps because I had gotten carried away and talked for so long, I could see his earlobe twitching every time my breath brushed against his ear.

Feeling rather pleased with myself, I deliberately moved my lips even closer and whispered,

“Don’t you think so too?”

Feeling playful, I even lightly blew against his ear as I spoke.

He flinched, covered his ear, and glared at me.

“I get it, so stop. Let’s just hurry up and find it.”

I shrugged and turned toward the bookshelf in question.

All the while, I desperately tried to hide the grin curling up at the corners of my lips.