Chapter 34

Llewellyn still did not show any signs of agitation.

Even though he was beaten with a cane and stepped on his chest with shoes, he didn’t even flinch and kept on smiling in a nonchalant manner.

Rather than making him look cool and poised, it made him look more like a lunatic. At the moment, Llewellyn parted his lips, as if he was about to answer Adrian’s question.

“Wait, wait a minute!”

Rosenia quickly rushed to the place where the two people were fighting. “What did you do to my sister? “. Rosenia was scared that Llewellyn would blither out some crazy answer to Adrian’s question.

So she quickly got close to the two and then pulled Adrian’s arm away to release Llewellyn.

When he felt the pressure from Adrian’s weight disappear, Llewellyn groaned and lifted himself off the floor.

Actually, Llewellyn could have easily avoided Adrian’s attacks if he wanted to… No matter how she looked at it,  she couldn’t understand why he’d deliberately accepted the blows.

She looked up at Llewellyn worriedly. When her eyes happened to fall on his figure, he had a very pitiful look on his face.

Seeing his miserable appearance, her heart thumped for a moment.

A sudden jolt of enlightenment flashed in her mind.

‘Ah, is this it?’

‘Is he deliberately getting beaten up so that he could pretend to be pitiful in front of me…?‘

“…”

Realising this, Rosenia felt as if she had drunk ten full jars of snake wine. Llewellyn’s cunningness made her speechless.

Adrian gave her a fierce glare as he ordered her whilst tightly wringing her wrist.

“Explain, Rosenia.”

“Br, brother….”

“Why is that jerk here?”

His red eyes gave off an eerie glow. She smiled awkwardly. Seeing his face become gloomy, the corners of her mouth twitched and she broke out in cold sweat.

‘What excuse should I make? But, would an excuse even work?’

Adrian didn’t need to use magical powers to know whether she was lying or not. He could at once grasp what a person was thinking.

So to put it simply, it was impossible to deceive Adrian with ridiculous eloquent words.

‘What should I do? I don’t want to lie. Should I just hide the truth? Yes, then I wouldn’t have to lie.‘

She hesitated for a moment and slowly opened her mouth.

“Brother, don’t get so angry. The Duke of Rasiane was lying unconscious near our house, so I just offered him some help.”

“And how did you help him?”

She almost flinched at the sharp question, her smile faltered for a moment.

Adrian glared at her fiercely as she tried her near best to smile as brightly as possible. Her heart sank seeing the frightening gaze, but she still tried to answer as if there was nothing wrong.

“Maybe he got rained on. He had a high fever, so I took care of him.”

“Oh, really? Did you really just take care of him?”

‘Wha, what! Why does he keep questioning me like this? Has he noticed something? Something between Llewellyn and me…‘

‘No, No. Maybe he’s just trying to sound me out. Let’s not panic and answer clearly…‘

Trying to calm her agitated heart, she slowly opened her mouth.

“Of course, aside from taking care of him, what else could I have done? Ah, I just finished cooking. Come, let’s go eat quickly, we can’t starve our guest.”

“…”

Adrian’s eyes narrowed at her casual answer. From the look on his face, it was clear that he hadn’t bought her words.

‘Damn it, it isn’t working…’

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Even if you don’t want to tell me the truth, I know how to get it out of you.”

With a cold sneer, Adrian fiercely glared at her side. Before she knew it, Llewellyn was standing beside her, embracing her body.

“Don’t you dare torture her.”

“What?”

‘Torture?!’

Torture! She was so shocked that she immediately tried to run away. Meanwhile Llewellyn hugged her waist tightly, not letting her go.

Adrian grasped the nape of his neck and murmured while dragging Lewellin away from her.

“Whatever the truth is, there’s a way to make it come out.”

“Wai, wait, brother!”

With big strides, Adrian walked towards the villa, dragging Llewellyn behind him. Rosenia briskly followed them and noticed Llewellyn looking back at her with a sorrowful look.

Excuse me, could you please stop pretending to be pitiful… 

You can easily break-off from his neck hold!

She didn’t know what Llewellyn was thinking, but one thing was clear.

As expected, I’m the only sane person here…

I have to stop Adrian before things get out of control…!

But how the hell do I stop that crazy tyrant? I’m sure he wouldn’t listen to me! I really am about to go crazy!

While Rosenia was agonizing, Adrian steadily dragged Llewellyn to the living room and sat him on a chair.

Then, he used a restraining spell to tie Llewellyn tightly to the chair. For a moment she really thought Adrian might torture Llewellyn.

‘You! Have you gone crazy? No, don’t!’

Rosenia gave a shout and placed herself in between Llewellyn and Adrian.

“Please calm down brother!”

“And would you be calm if you were in my shoes?”

“This man is the Duke of Rasiane! We’ll get in big trouble if you do anything to him!”

“Then, it would be on me; You don’t have to care about something like that.”

“How can I not care about it!”

Adrain hesitated as Rosenia yelled out. Then he gave her a disappointed look, as if he was looking at an immature child.

Anger welled up in her as she took in the obvious look on his face. He still treated her as a child and refused to acknowledge her as an adult.

Adrian’s eyes brought up the sorrows that she had suppressed deep inside her. Naturally, the words that had accrued over a long period of time, all spewed out of her mouth.

“You’ve always been like this brother.”

“What?”

“I’m going to be 21 soon, but you still treat me like a child. You’re too overprotective and you never listen to my opinions!”

“Huh…?”

Adrian made a face as if he was listening to something absurd, but that didn’t stop Rosenia from pouring out all her complaints and sorrows.

“Do you know how frustrating it is to always be at the Mage Tower? I have to bring along my brother with me wherever I go. I’m not a four year old kid, I’m a grown-up now!”

“…”

“And why do you always act on impulse? So you’ll torture him, then what? Have you even considered the implications of your actions, and what would happen if the Duchy of Rasiane gets wind of this? You’re going to start a family war!”

And….

‘I’m actually older than you, you punk! I have lived two lives!’

She swallowed those words and reeled them back inside. She wanted to tell him everything in her heart, but…

Panting, Rosenia stood in front of Adrian and scowled at him with all her might.

Adrian clicked his tongue as he looked at her dumbfoundedly, his red eyes stared at her coldly.

“Are you really asking me why I am so overprotective over you? You really don’t know?”

“Don’t know! I don’t know!”

‘It’s all because of your obsession and sister complex! Stop obsessing over me!’

She glowered at him without withholding any feeling of displeasure on her face.

Of course, Adrain wasn’t so fragile as to get hurt by this.

As usual, he laughed in a haughty manner and asked in a tone that did not lose his signature ridicule.

“Do you remember how you almost drowned in the river when you were two?”

“… no?”

Why was he bringing that up all of a sudden? She blinked her eyes and looked at him sourly.

‘I don’t remember my life before the age of three…’

When she had turned three, her memories of her past life returned to her. Because of it, she had never been an ordinary child, but until then she was like any other child. Hence, she didn’t have any memories from those infantile years.

Adrian asked another question.

“Then do you remember how you almost fell off a cliff when you were three?”

“Ah yes, I remember that.”

“And when you were four, do you remember how you almost died when your boat overturned while boating in the lake?”

“I remember that too.”

“And the time when you got seriously injured because you fell from the top of a tree that you wanted to climb?”

“Yeah that too…”

And so, Adrian brought out countless other events where she had ‘almost died’ while growing up.

As she listened to him dumbly, she realised, ‘I really have almost died a lot.’

“Recently, because of some stupid bastard’s negligience, some dangerous magical beasts managed to escape the Tower. If you had faced those beasts without anyone’s supervision, there’s no doubt you would have died.”

“Ah… It was like that.”

She had completely forgotten about this because she always felt that it wasn’t a big deal. In fact, accidents like these were a common occurrence. During experiments magical beasts often escaped out of the Mage tower…..

“I’ve put several spells on this villa for your safety. Those magical beasts are so strong that only a few wizards could stand to face them.”

At Adrian’s words, her eyes widened and her gaze drifted towards the familiar. He was also a dangerous magical beast but here he was sitting quietly next to Adrian with his tongue wagging out.

‘No matter how I look at it… it looks just like a dog.’

“You’ve always been in danger, Rosenia. You seem to have forgotten everything because you grew up being so indifferent.”

“Umm…”

“Do you still think I’m overprotective of you?”

“…”

She had nothing to refute; so, she blinked and avoided Adrian’s eyes. People usually had accidents once or twice in their lives, but her case was just too bizarre. It definitely wasn’t normal to have almost died 37 times in her short 20 years of life. She finally understood why Adrian was so overprotective of her.

“Before I left you in the villa this time, I used all kinds of protective charms and spells… but it still turned out to be like this again. No matter how hard I try, there’s always a loophole.”

Adrian’s crimson eyes sharply turned to Llewellyn, but Llewellyn just kept looking at Rosenia blankly as if Adrian was invisible to him.

He looked quite shocked. Is it because he heard that she had almost died 37 times?

‘As the one who had gone through it, I completely forgot about it…‘

But Adrian, who counted them all, was truly scary… How the hell did he remember it all? Was it because he had an excellent memory?

But Adrian was also astoundingly indifferent to the affairs of others. To the point that he couldn’t even remember people’s faces.

The fact that Adrian could remember everything about her…

‘… And to add to that he has a sister complex too!’

The thought itself gave her goosebumps and made her body tremble. Adrian sneered seeing her eyebrows twitch and then turned his gaze towards Llewellyn.

~Zzzapp!

Adrian summoned a swirling bluish ball of current in his palm and whispered dismally,

“Let’s get started.”

“What?”

Adrian ignored a flustered Rosenia and prepared to throw the ball of current at Llewellyn.

~Crash!

Suddenly, the living room window crashed and someone came in.

At the same time, the swirling ball of current scattered in Adrian’s hand.

To crush Adrian’s magic spell with ease… that could be only one person.

‘Golden hair…’

-Shwing

The blond boy withdrew his sword from his waist and slowly approached Adrian, keeping his gaze straight ahead.

‘…Was his name Alex?’

The boy had a peculiar constitution on which magic didn’t work.

‘As expected, you didn’t leave right away, but were fooling around the villa.’