TDYL 15

Chapter 15

Out of nowhere, Narsia let out a deep sigh as he looked at Violette.

“…What am I supposed to do with you?”

“Yeah… what should we do…?”

At his words, Violette lifted the egg high and stared at it with an uncharacteristically serious face. Narsia ran a hand down his face and muttered like he had a headache.

“I’m talking about you. You.”

“Me? Why me?”

“I told you not to interfere with my experiments and to just go into town. In that short time, you managed to cause another mess. Why did you pick that thing up? This is driving me insane.”

“Hey! I didn’t just randomly pick it up— I mean… I picked it up.”

She started to snap back, then trailed off, avoiding his gaze again.

If she admitted that she’d actually gotten the egg as a prize, Narsia would definitely lecture her until her ears fell off.

Normally, he wasn’t very talkative, but when it came to scolding Violette, he was the exception.

Just two days ago, when she’d been caught secretly smoking on the terrace outside their bedroom, he’d nagged her endlessly — saying that area still counted as the bedroom, asking if the contract was a joke, asking if it was really that hard to go down to the first floor, and so on.

To change the subject, Violette raised the egg again and shoved it closer to his face.

“But where do you think this actually came from? Are there magical beasts in the Navian territory?”

“There shouldn’t be. The imperial records officially state that magical beasts were exterminated hundreds of years ago. There weren’t any stories about them in the capital either. When I heard rumors from the servants, I thought they were literally just rumors. The idea of magical beasts appearing again makes no sense. Even three years ago, when a crack appeared in the protective barrier of the Ayer Coast, there were no magical beasts.”

“What’s this barrier, and what does it have to do with magical beasts?”

Even while watching his mood, Violette couldn’t suppress her curiosity and asked.

She expected him to scold her for not knowing, but she could never ignore something she was curious about.

“…You know there was a great war in the Empire 500 years ago, right? The war people call the Magical Beast War.”

“Ah, yeah.”

She knew absolutely nothing about it, but nodded naturally and listened carefully.

“The war was caused by a black magician group called ‘Iodan.’ They summoned magical beasts from the demon realm and used them in battle. An uncountable number of people died because of the beasts that suddenly appeared.”

“Can people really control magical beasts?”

“With mental-type magic, it’s not impossible, but the exact method hasn’t been preserved. Anyway, the one who ended the war was the great mage, Ortier-nim. Ortier sacrificed themselves to cast a massive protective barrier over the Empire. Once they could no longer borrow the power of magical beasts, Iodan quickly collapsed, and the war ended in the Empire’s victory.”

“So the barrier blocks the demon realm from the Empire… something like that?”

“Exactly. It blocks energy from other dimensions. As long as the barrier stands, magical beasts can’t cross over to this world. After the war, all the magical beasts remaining in the Empire were exterminated.”

Feeling the hairs on her body stand on end, Violette shuddered slightly.

So they’d been wiped out centuries ago — no wonder there’d been no mention of them in the original story.

‘But then why is one appearing now?’

She had tried hard to avoid the original story’s flow, and in reality, many things had changed.

But her marriage — a side character’s life — and the reappearance of creatures supposedly wiped out hundreds of years ago were completely different in scale.

The existence of magical beasts, which weren’t in the original story, made her uneasy.

“Then what you’re saying is… the barrier has a problem?”

“In theory, yes. But it doesn’t make sense. The Magic Tower’s main job is managing that barrier. If there really was a problem, they would’ve moved already. So as weird as it looks, there’s still a chance that this isn’t actually a magical beast egg.”

Violette stared at the egg beside her.

But despite his words, an ordinary animal didn’t seem like it would hatch from an egg that looked that ominous, with its black shell and red blotches.

“…What if it hatches here at the mansion and turns out to be a monster that eats people?”

After imagining that scenario, Violette looked at Narsia with a frightened expression.

He just let out a long sigh and slowly shook his head.

“You picked it up without thinking about that possibility? That’s on you. And under imperial law, raising a magical beast carries a minimum sentence of ten years in prison.”

“Then should I just… put it back where it was?”

“It’ll hatch soon. You’re saying you’ll release a magical beast into the territory? Releasing one won’t just end in execution.”

“…Damn it.”

Only then did the reality sink in, and Violette’s face turned pale.

As Narsia said, she couldn’t just dump it somewhere now, and she couldn’t just wait for it to hatch either.

She truly regretted her actions in that moment.

Why had she ever accepted an egg of an unknown creature so easily?

‘Why? Because I was drunk.’

But she stayed silent — if she said that, Narsia would definitely look at her with contempt.

After glaring at the egg for a long time, Violette asked in a serious voice:

“Narsia… what do we do now?”

“We? Why ‘we’? I have nothing to do with this. You deal with the mess you made yourself. You can smash the egg now or pray hard that something normal comes out. Good luck, Violette.”

“What?”

Contrary to what she expected, Narsia turned his back on her without a hint of hesitation and lay back down on the bed.

Strictly speaking, he wasn’t wrong.

Everything — accepting the egg, secretly bringing it into the mansion — was all Violette’s doing.

Still…

The way he acted like this had nothing to do with him at all hurt more than she expected.

Annoyance flared up unexpectedly, and she plopped down on the edge of his bed and started shaking him roughly.

“Hey! How can you be like this?! Are you really going to be this cold? I’m really hurt!”

“Ah, seriously. This is your fault in the first place. I said I didn’t want to get dragged into annoying things like this.”

“You’re too much! We’re a married couple! Married people are supposed to stick together! Right, honey?”

At the word that slipped out of her mouth, he shuddered and shot upright.

His face twisted as he stared at her in shock.

“What kind of crazy nonsense is that now?!”

“Why? We are married. We got married, didn’t we? And we’ve even slept t—”

“Ahhh!”

Panicking, he hurriedly reached out and covered her mouth with his hand.

Truly flustered, his face turned bright red as he gritted his teeth and whispered:

“Be quiet, will you…? What do you mean ‘slept together’? People will misunderstand if they hear that. We’ve never done that.”

Noticing that his intense reaction meant her words were working, Violette pushed his hand away.

Riding that momentum, she lifted her chin and pressed him shamelessly.

“There’s no one in this room except the two of us. If I say we did, then we did. We’ve been sleeping in the same room for days — who’s going to believe nothing happened? Anyway, are you going to help me or not?”

“You think I’m crazy enough to get involved in this?”

As Narsia grumbled again, Violette suddenly raised both hands high and shouted loudly:

“I slept with Narsia Kegreiner—!”

“Damn it!”

Startled by her unexpected outburst, Narsia threw himself onto the bed to cover her mouth.

In an instant, the two of them collapsed together on the bed.

Silence fell between them for a brief moment.

Her warmth seeped through the thin fabric of their clothes, and the faint lavender scent from Violette’s purple hair spread through the air.

Seeing her pale green eyes staring straight at him from that close distance, Narsia’s face suddenly burned red.

“…S-Sorry.”

Only then did he realize the situation and hurriedly get up.

Unlike him, who felt like he was burning with embarrassment, Violette calmly sat up as if nothing had happened.

“So? You’ll help, right?”

“Haah…”

Unable to withstand her unwavering attitude, Narsia let out a deep sigh and rubbed his face.

Seeing the madness glinting in those green eyes, there was no way she’d back down easily.

In the end, he slowly nodded.

“Fine. Let’s look for a solution together. I’ll contact the Magic Tower tomorrow and check if there have been any recent cracks or disturbances.”

“Phew. I knew my husband was the best.”

“So please, do something about the way you talk.”

When Violette gave him a thumbs-up, he covered his mouth again and sighed deeply.

Whether she understood how he felt or not, Violette just kept staring at him with a bright, innocent expression.

It hadn’t even been a week since he married Violette…

But somehow, it felt like seven months had passed.

Overwhelmed by a strange sense of exhaustion, Narsia flopped down face-first on the bed again.