When the Female Lead Went Off-Script, the Main Male Lead Became the Tyrant's Empress - Chapter 11.1
……What is this now?
Arden had no idea how he was supposed to react to his niece, who lay sprawled across the floor among the wrapping paper.
Clary’s room was piled high with gifts for her eighteenth birthday.
She should have been delighted and spent the entire day opening presents without having enough time to finish them, so what was this?
The girl had been perfectly fine when she entered the Great Temple, but now she was pale and limp like a scrap of paper that had been soaked and then dried stiff.
“Did something happen?”
“……Uncle, have you ever thought that your life might be someone’s idea of a joke?”
Unable to keep watching, Arden asked her directly, but all he received in return was a listless answer that had nothing to do with his question.
Until the baptismal ceremony, Clary had believed that the genre might have changed because the male leads were behaving differently from the original story.
But she had been wrong.
All she had done was confirm the truth that hope existed in a dark angst story only so it could inflict even more dramatic despair.
Clary Lurie was an existence created to suffer.
The only reason she had a setting that attracted misfortune was because she was the female lead.
The dark angst keywords were throwing firewood into the blazing flames around the role, while the main male lead and second male lead recklessly charged toward it in fuel tankers without brakes, playing chicken.
She felt even more betrayed than she would have upon seeing her favorite celebrity appear on the news instead of a variety show, wearing silver bracelets around their wrists.
She had nearly relaxed, only to plunge into the abyss without even having the chance to do anything.
“Don’t stab me in the back, Uncle.”
“…What happened to make you act like this?”
“Waaaaaah!”
“…….”
Arden, who knew nothing about her circumstances, could only vaguely think that he would never understand children these days.
He had asked her to answer him, yet she let out something between a bizarre groan and a scream.
Even so, although she wore a foolish—no, vacant—expression, she diligently continued unwrapping her gifts.
In all his life, he had never seen such a strange and materialistic child.
It didn’t seem to be anything particularly serious, because Clary’s expression gradually brightened as the number of opened gift boxes increased.
‘What a simple creature.’
Arden liked people who were simple and honest.
No matter what schemes they devised or what truths they tried to conceal, people like that showed it all on their faces.
That was why he cherished them, and why he didn’t include them in matters requiring confidentiality.
Except when he deliberately needed information to leak.
If they died while faithfully carrying out their duties, he sincerely mourned them.
The Court Preacher Purgat did not belong to that category.
The Court Preacher was the most influential figure in the temple after the High Priest.
Having gained honor and power through the Emperor’s trust, his actions became increasingly brazen as time passed.
He gathered an unholy faction and spread doctrines he had twisted to suit his own tastes.
He must have grown so addicted to it that the brazen bastard even tried his ridiculous schemes on the Grand Duke.
What did he hope to accomplish with words that bordered on curses?
Arden disliked how the man persistently clung to Haster, despite receiving his glares every time and fleeing in a panic as though he were being chased away.
The Court Preacher’s eyes overflowed with greed, as though controlling the Emperor weren’t enough and he wanted to bring the ruler of the North under his thumb and bend him to his will as well.
From what Arden heard, the man had continued pestering Haster quite persistently even after they returned to the imperial palace.
‘It’s about time I cut him down.’
The moment Arden discovered that the man Clary had slapped to the ground was Purgat’s son, he decided to deal with the Court Preacher.
It wasn’t merely for the personal reason that the man’s son had tried to lay his hands on his niece.
The son of an untitled common noble had openly harassed an imperial grandchild in broad daylight within the imperial palace.
It had happened in a garden attached to the Great Palace where the Emperor resided, and the victim was the granddaughter the Emperor cherished.
‘He looks down on the Emperor so much that he’s confident he’ll escape punishment no matter who catches him.’
Beginning with Morris’s death, Arden began to move in earnest.
On the night of the funeral, when not even the moon had risen, Arden’s knights arrested the Court Preacher.
The charges were the propagation of heresy and unlawful religious reform.
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