I Tamed the Slave Male Lead Chapter 18

‘It must be my imagination. It’s just a side effect of concentrating too much on swordsmanship training.’

Thinking that, he responded to her words in a slightly sardonic tone.

“So you do have something you want.”

“Don’t worry. It won’t be something that causes you any harm either.”

With that, she hopped down from the tree trunk and stood on the ground.

“Then finish your practice and come back, Yusiliph. I’ll go back first. The Imperial messenger should have returned by now.”

There was actually a reason Arabella followed Yusiliph every morning when he went to train in the forest on the outskirts of the estate.

Ever since the day they had sneaked into the Imperial secret archives, Regita had begun sending people to the estate every single day.

It was obvious they had come to demand that Yusiliph be returned, and Arabella had been having a hard time shaking them off.

“If you keep ignoring the princess like this, you’re going to run into trouble sooner or later.”

At his words, Arabella nodded indifferently.

“That’s true. I suppose I will.”

Yusiliph frowned as he looked at her speaking as though she were talking about someone else.

But he soon lost interest and took his sword in hand.

Whatever that suspicious woman was thinking was none of his concern. He already knew she had some dark ulterior motive, after all.

He had no time to let his mind wander elsewhere.

Now was the time to become stronger.

He had to thoroughly imprint the teachings of the manual that had miraculously fallen into his hands upon his body and make them his own.

His eyes quickly turned cold and composed as he breathed, focusing on calming the heat around his dantian.

Then he began swinging his sword again.

‘There’s definitely a limit to just avoiding Regita like this. I need to settle the situation once and for all soon. But to do that, Yusiliph absolutely has to grow much stronger….’

I gazed silently at Yusiliph’s back as he immersed himself in training again, then turned around and left the forest.

By then, the sun was already sinking beyond the forest.

After spending the early mornings in the forest for several days, I had apparently come down with something. My head ached, and my stomach felt nauseous.

‘This useless excuse for a body… Sigh.’

When I climbed over the low wall between the forest and the estate grounds, my head spun so badly that I nearly collapsed.

I barely managed to get over the wall and walk toward the mansion.

By the time I reached it, the sun had already gone down and the sky had grown dark.

The mansion standing tall against the deep navy sky looked eerie, like a haunted castle.

Whenever I played horror games, there was always some sinister secret hidden in places like this.

‘There’s definitely some kind of secret here. Between the Imperial Family and House Maiona.’

I recalled the conversation I had overheard between Sota and Regita in the Imperial secret archives.

‘I-I’ll find the saint’s staff and b-break it.’

‘I know that staff is hidden here.’

‘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!’

Judging from Sota’s reaction at the time, everything Regita had said had to be true.

‘What exactly is the saint’s staff?’

Even if it had only been during elementary school, I had once been called a prodigy, so if I trusted my memory, I was certain that the ‘saint’s staff’ was information that had never appeared in the original story.

And yet, why did I feel increasingly uneasy every time I thought of the word ‘staff’?

‘Well, anyway, judging by the atmosphere between Sota and Regita back then, it’s a given that some nasty truth is being hidden. The problem is that Count Maiona might not have died in battle at all. He might have been eliminated by the Imperial Family.’

Could it really be a coincidence that the head of a powerful noble family and his daughter had both been targeted for murder one after another?

In the original story, Arabella had been killed meaninglessly.

But now, because I had possessed Arabella’s body, I had survived by sheer coincidence.

Then there was no guarantee they wouldn’t try to kill me again.

‘They said Count Maiona died because he was trying to retrieve the staff. So couldn’t I just pretend I know nothing about the staff and live quietly?’

But could I really survive in this world with such a naive, head-in-the-sand approach?

Rather, if I wanted to protect myself from a threat that could strike at any moment, shouldn’t I uncover exactly what that threat was and figure out the truth?

Besides, Crown Prince Sota’s reaction, as though he particularly disliked Yusiliph and me growing closer, also bothered me immensely.

“Ugh… Why did I have to possess such a pathetic body, only to be saddled with a mountain of quests I have to clear?”

Grumbling, I dragged my heavy feet along and struggled to open the mansion door.

When I climbed the stairs to the second floor, I was so exhausted that I practically crawled up them.

I finally reached my bedroom, but I couldn’t immediately collapse onto the bed as I had hoped.

Becky, who had been waiting for me all this time, greeted me noisily.

“My lady! Where have you been again? I’ve been waiting all day. Where do you disappear every day… Huh?”

There was anxiety in her voice as she asked with a sorrowful expression.

I stared at Becky’s haggard face, which had grown gaunt in just a few days, before lowering my gaze to her swollen palms.

Noticing that I was looking at her hands and sighing, Becky awkwardly hid them behind her back.

“I, um… I fell earlier…”

“Did you fall onto a grill where someone was cooking meat? There are lines all over your palms.”

I forcibly took Becky’s hand and examined her palm, which was covered in more than a dozen bloody welts.

“That’s not it, My lady….”

“Who hit you? Uncle? Or the head maid?”

“It’s not like that….”

But contrary to her denial, tears were already welling up in Becky’s eyes.

“Uncle wouldn’t bother wasting his own effort disciplining a maid, so it must have been the head maid.”

At my confident guess, Becky could no longer deny it and lowered her head.

She soon let go of my hand and timidly followed behind me as I walked into the bedroom.

Instead of going to the dressing room, I stood before the bedside table and opened a drawer.

Then I took out an ointment and held it out to Becky.

“Here. Put this on.”

“You, you don’t have to do this, My lady.”

“Put it on and get better quickly. How am I supposed to have a maid working for me if she can’t even use her hands properly?”

Embarrassed by my words, Becky’s face turned bright red.

“I-I’m fine. Injuries this small healed quickly before too.”

So this wasn’t the first time.

I forcibly pressed the ointment into Becky’s hand, then sat on the bed and fell into thought.

The hellish fatigue from spending the entire day outside was washing over me, but I felt that I should deal with Becky’s situation first.

Becky had probably been constantly subjected to Greham’s threats and persuasion.

The head maid, who clung to him and acted like the tongue in his mouth, had probably played a part in tormenting her as well.

Of course, Becky probably hadn’t been beaten for nothing. She must have received something in return too.

That was likely why she had managed to endure it somehow and remain by Arabella’s side.

But recently, I had kept shaking Becky off and moving around alone, so she probably hadn’t had anything to report about my activities as she normally did.

Those whip marks on her palms were probably the result.

“Becky, you said you have family, right? Who’s in your family?”

I asked in a hoarse voice from exhaustion, and Becky hesitated before answering.

“I have two younger siblings….”

“What about your parents?”

“They passed away more than three years ago.”

“…I see. Then you’re supporting your younger siblings all by yourself.”

“Yes, well….”

Perhaps because it was the first time her master had ever asked her about such things, Becky fidgeted and let her voice trail off.

‘Arabella. You should have paid a little more attention to the people around you.’

I clicked my tongue inwardly.

Arabella had known only that her personal maid was spying on her under her uncle’s orders.

She hadn’t known that Becky was a young head of household who was raising her two younger siblings all by herself.

Understanding that everyone had their own circumstances, I realized just how narrow the world of someone who had lived alone her entire life must have been.

But as a result, her world had never expanded even a single centimeter throughout her entire life.

She had eventually died alone, trapped within that tiny world.

And now, I intend to change that.

I yawned widely and struggled to get to my feet before entering the dressing room.

As I pulled out a silk box hidden in the corner of the dressing room, a sudden wave of dizziness hit me, making it feel as though the ceiling had flipped upside down.

“Oh my, My lady!”

Becky cried out in alarm, but unfortunately, she was too far away to catch me.

Ah… Don’t tell me I’m going to die from a concussion this pathetically? This is way too anticlimactic.

Regretting belatedly that I should never have pushed myself so hard, I helplessly began to collapse.

Then someone firmly caught me from behind.

This situation feels strangely familiar.

“You seem to have a hobby of collapsing.”

The moment a sarcastic voice pierced my ear, I knew whose it was.

“Yusiliph?”

He lifted my limp body into his arms without answering.

“When… Did you get here?”

I had definitely left after watching him absorbed in his training.

But he didn’t even pretend to hear my question and strode toward the bed.

I tightened my arms around his neck and clung to him like a child.

Maybe when the body was hurting, the heart naturally became weak too.

The moment the dizziness washed over me, a deep sense of helplessness, emptiness, and sorrow surged through me.

It was probably a familiar emotion engraved deep within the real Arabella’s unconscious.

For the first time, I fully understood the heart of a girl who must have grown utterly exhausted in the face of a body that broke down whenever she tried to accomplish even the smallest thing, and a reality that never changed no matter how hard she tried.

That desperate feeling of wanting to place even the slightest hope in that rotten Crown Prince Sota.

‘I really can’t do this alone. I think I truly need you, Yusiliph.’