Chapter 1. Kill the Empress
***
Tamon was a nobleman, but he didn’t mind sleeping outdoors.
He enjoyed the smell of the earth and wind closest to him, and looking up at the open sky.
It was not a very tiring journey for Tamon, even though he had ridden all day on horseback.
When he brought Asha to Amor, he rode for more than twenty whole days with her in his arms.
He wouldn’t have stopped if the horse hadn’t gotten tired and fallen down.
Except for when he had to take breaks for the knights and the horses, he rode out of Tanatos at full speed.
Not only that, he ran with her in his arms, and he didn’t even know it was hard.
Rather, he felt incredible strength as he felt the tiny warmth of her in his body.
He really wanted to pull her away from that cold and cruel world.
He didn’t know why, but he was definitely dazed at that time.
He didn’t regret letting things happen without knowing what to do next.
Since she was not a woman to die like that, it was natural to save her.
There was an innocent thought in him that maybe his ability was ignited for that moment.
Tamon smiled and looked at Asha, who was lying next to him, asleep.
Even with a sleeping bag underneath her, it must have been very uncomfortable, but she fell asleep without complaining.
He couldn’t understand why she was so cute that she secretly snuggled up to him and slept.
Why was she so cute sleeping in a straight position, like a well-made doll, not moving an inch?
Tamon carefully stroked down her milk-white cheeks with his fingertips.
The silky smooth skin was always so seductive.
The skin that grazed his fingertips was so fragile.
Even a light pinch of the skin left a red mark.
It was a waste to kiss it with his lips, so he bit her sometimes and left teeth marks.
But that man (Gillotti) whipped her back until it was tattered.
All the nails on her hands and feet were pulled out, and her bound wrists and ankles had all the skin peeled off.
‘…… How in the world should I kill that man?’
Gillotti Tanatos.
Just remembering that name made Tamon want to kill him right away.
When it came down to it, being stupid was a sin.
There were dozens and hundreds of people who died because of that man’s stupidity, so he was sinful.
Since that man was born a Crown Prince, he had never been hit once, had he?
Probably he just got slapped by the previous King at best.
‘So why don’t I give him a light tap first?’
Then, the more he struggles, the more poisonous shackles will tighten his limbs.
It would be nice to cut off his tongue and his fingers and toes.
That man broke Asha’s beautiful fingernails, so it would be fair to cut all his limbs off.
Tamon was willing to revive the man over and over again so that he wouldn’t die.
So the man could live in hell until he asked to be killed.
It was a cruel thought indeed, but when it came down to it, Tamon’s expression was calm.
Perhaps Asha would stop him from doing so.
She had a softer side than the stern appearance she gave off.
She would tell him to kill the man at once instead.
Then he (Tamon) would try to persuade her somehow and make her nostalgic.
He couldn’t stain Asha’s eyes, so she wouldn’t see the cruelty of it.
Mutiny.
It was a sweet word.
In all its history, there had never been a rebellion that had not been accompanied by a bloodbath.
Tamon was more than willing to give his blood.
He could have shed as much as he needed to punish Gillotti Tanatos and his abominable mistress.
But he would have to shed many times, if not dozens of times more than the amount of his blood.
Perhaps the bonfire was too hot, Asha turned and lay a little closer to him.
He couldn’t help but love the way her small body curled up his arms.
He could give her anything she wanted.
There weren’t many soldiers who could immediately prepare for the relatively sudden departure.
However, the Amor Imperial knights and his personal soldiers were all elite troops.
Unlike Tanatos, who had been steeped in peace for a long time, Amor had been constantly engaged in frontier wars.
Of course, he had to be wary of Gertium’s soldiers, but there was no reason why Tamon couldn’t win if he were to directly confront Gertium’s soldiers.
‘The key is that the soldiers have to come at exactly the time we expect.’
However, he wasn’t too worried about that either, since he had Ronasso.
His close friend was a more respectable Knight Commander and General than he had expected.
Tamon listened to the sounds of the grass, which sounded like a lullaby.
This unromantic woman was exhausted and fell asleep, but he didn’t want to waste this moment with sleep.
Before he got busy, before the blood storm hit, he didn’t want to waste his time sleeping.
However, the forest didn’t seem to like Tamon’s romance.
A hint of dampness at the bottom woke Tamon up.
‘I seem to be behaving carelessly.’
He looked down at the snake that was tangling around his ankles with its tail, mocking him.
It stared straight at him, its head raised as if to let him know that it was the predator of this forest.
It had already wrapped itself around Tamon’s ankles, its eyes filled with the certainty that victory was its own. The snake was quite thick and long.
If it were stretched out, it would have been well over Asha’s height.
The body was not so much as a real snake.
Hisssssss!
The snake bared its teeth and flapped its cracked tongue.
It swung itself slightly low, as if to compare with her, and stealthily covered Asha’s ankles with its tail.
‘Ha.’
Tamon smiled obliquely, and immediately reached out and snatched the snake by the neck.
Shh, shh, shh!
Startled, the snake quickly untied its tail and wrapped Tamon’s arms.
The force with which it tightened his arms was quite strong.
‘If you’re going to play, you’re going to have to play with me. Sleeping people aren’t meant to be touched. Isn’t that right?’
Tamon grinned and put more pressure on the hand that was gripping the snake’s neck.
It growled frantically, and finally succeeded in driving its teeth between Tamon’s fingers.
The snake’s eyes parted in a straight line and it glared viciously at Tamon.
‘I see you’re poisonous.’
The sting was not unbearable, but it wasn’t pleasant.
His body had neutralized the herpes poison, but this much was like a bug bite.
The snake panicked when the bite didn’t change the appearance of Tamon at all. But It couldn’t fight back and slowly stopped breathing.
With its long, writhing body wrapped around Tamon’s arms and shoulders, it tried with all its might, but to no avail.
Tamon watched the snake die with his silent eyes and threw its slumped body into the fire. It was a big one so the fire couldn’t burn it all and the flame flickered off.
He thought about lighting it more, but decided not to.
against it. If he mischievously lit up the fire and called up other mountain beasts, he could wake up Asya, who was sleeping soundly.
When Asha woke up from her slumber, she shouldn’t have to see that disgusting sight…
But no matter how much he looked around, he could find nothing to cover the snake’s corpse. It seemed that it was better to just take it to the nearest place.
‘It’s annoying.’
Tamon gently kissed the sleeping Asha’s cheek and got up. However, the sensation woke her up.
“…Where are you going?”
In a sleepy voice Roselyn grabbed the hem of his shirt tightly.
It must have been an unconscious act, but Tamon couldn’t move.
She caught him.
Asha caught him.
The body that raised up subsided completely.
Tamon touched her forehead and whispered.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
Her mumbled words hit him in the chest. His legs lost strength and he couldn’t move.
“I’ll never go. Even if you tell me to go, I won’t go.”
‘Because you caught me.’
So be it.
Tamon stroked Roselyn’s cheek and caressed her forehead, unable to move as if he turned to stone.
It was a very romantic evening, though it did smell of roasting meat on the fire.
***
*Let me be clear about the use of Roselyn and Asha. When Asha being mentioned in the sentence meant Tamon was doing the thinking so he called her Asha for intimacy. And the name Roselyn was use by the narrator.
***
It wasn’t until two hours later that Roselyn woke up.
It was so dark that it was not even dawn yet.
The smell of burning flesh aroused her sense of smell, stimulating her nose.
She was thirsty and tried to sit up, when suddenly a water bottle popped up in front of her as if it had been waiting.
“Water.”
“Oh, thank you.”
While drinking the water, she unconsciously looked at the bonfire. Startled, Roselyn coughed.
Cough.
“What the hell is that…?”
The tail of a snake, bigger than a bonfire, was out in the open.
The head and part of the body were already gone as if they had been burned, but the unburned part was still there.
“Snakes, I told you there were a lot of snakes.”
Tamon calmly said as if there were no surprises.
And he didn’t forget to gently thrust out his arm with the snake bite mark in front of her.
“I got bitten.”
The two clearly visible holes made Roselyn panic once more.
It was definitely a bite mark, but honestly, this was not a serious injury. He knew it, and she knew it, but the viciously large figure of the man spoke in an exaggerated manner.
“It hurts.”
‘…What do you want me to do?’
Roselyn stared at him with bewilderment.
“Don’t look at me coldly like that. Aren’t you going to do anything when your engraving partner hurts like this?” (Tamon)
Grasping the arm with the snake’s teeth marks, Tamon pretended to grunt.
‘Oh, what in the world should I do with this guy?’ (Roselyn)