I Thought It Was a Common Transmigration - Chapter 148

14. Flashback (7)

As Lizé chewed on her fingertips, Killian left to lead the knights in search of Edith, and Cliff increased the number of knights looking for her.

It was clear that Edith would be captured sooner or later.

‘So the only thing I can count on now is the third exception condition?’

Lizé hadn’t been able to kill Edith in her last scheme.

Now she had to make sure that Edith begged Killian to spare her life.

Lizé grew thinner by the day until the day of the Riegelhoff’s execution.

‘What if…… the third exception condition is met? What then?’

The future Lizé knows will disappear, yet time goes on.

Facing an unknown future and becoming old and ugly would be a disaster for Lizé.

‘I don’t want that! What should I do?’

For the first time in her life as Lizé, she felt helpless. As helpless as a soldier standing on an execution ground.

“Edith Riegelhoff has been captured!”

“She’s being led this way now!”

Fortunately or unfortunately, Edith was caught first by Cliff’s knight, not Killian.

‘Please struggle and ask for mercy when you are brought in…… please……’

Lizé had hoped that Edith would have one last hope to live, but as had been the case since the thirteenth Edith had been possessed, her hope was dashed.

As she trudged along behind the knights, there was not the slightest hint of will to live on her face.

Lizé rushed to her side.

“Edith! Why, why did you do that?”

“What?”

Edith looked genuinely puzzled.

“For God’s sake, Edith, say it was a mistake, say you’re truly sorry! Killian has a big heart, he’s not going to ignore your begging!”

Lizé had never made such a wholehearted appeal before.

She begged, desperately, for Edith to rebel against death even a little.

But Edith shook her head.

Ignoring Lizé’s pleas to clear up the misunderstanding, Edith finally bared her pale, slender neck to Killian, who now was supposed to behead her.

‘Please! Please!’

Lizé’s internal scream was cut short by the system’s voice.

[The third exception condition has been met. An exception has been granted and the author’s control has been reduced. The third exception condition will be removed.]

Lizé froze in place.

“Every single one of those Riegelhoffs deserves to be put to death, not only for their treason, but for their heinous deeds.”

Opening his mouth as if he were about to slit Edith’s throat, Killian added with a faint smile.

“My wife’s name, by the way, has been Edith Ludwig ever since she married me. If Edith is a Riegelhoff, that’s an insult to House Ludwig, isn’t it?”

Lizé was stunned by the ‘exception’ that the fulfillment of the third exception condition had created.

‘Everyone wants to kill Edith, and Killian saves her……’

The last twelve Ediths had died here, in this place, under Killian’s blade.

There was not a single exception.

This was an exception Lizé had never seen before.

‘No, everything about the thirteenth Edith was new to me.’

Lizé stepped outside as the execution of the Riegelhoffs began, pacing back and forth nervously and biting her lip.

‘I can’t believe I lost.’

This would mean the existence of this world would cease to exist. Because this is the world where Lizé Sinclair must be the main character.

At that moment, one of the knights by her side stepped forward.

He said, “Lady Lizé is soft-hearted, so it must be hard for you to listen to these terrifying screams. There is a world order that must be upheld, even with such drastic measures.”

Lizé’s head seemed to light up as she heard these words.

‘Yeah, there is a world order that must be upheld, even with such drastic measures.’

She couldn’t admit that she had lost.

‘It’s just that the condition for the third exception has been met. As long as Edith dies, Lizé’s narrative can remain untouched!’

With Edith’s death, the stories that had become Edith’s narrative would disappear, and there would be nothing to interfere with Lizé.

Even if Lizé doesn’t have control over the characters, it’s a life she’s lived many times before, and she can control the changes within reason.

‘Edith must die. Right here, as a villainess.’

Lizé thanked the knight for his advice and ran back to the mansion to get a hot-water bottle. The sharpened dagger was with her.

“Lizé, there’s nothing to see here.”

Cliff stopped Lizé as she entered the execution ground.

“I’m not here to watch the execution, I’m here to give…… a hot-water bottle for Edith.”

“Lizé……”

“It’s going to be cold, and it was decided not to execute Edith anyway, so you’ll have to allow me this, Cliff.”

The soldiers beside him looked touched by Lizé’s warm words.

Finally, Cliff sighed and nodded.

Lizé clutched the hot-water bottle and the dagger tightly in her arms and made her way down to the dungeon where Edith was being held.

She had to hurry, she didn’t know what Killian would do.

When she got downstairs, Edith was shivering and blue from the cold.

Glad to see that there was no way she would turn down the hot-water bottle.

Lizé called out to her in a cheerful voice, “Edith!”

“Huh? Lizé……!”

“You’re cold, aren’t you? I brought you a hot-water bottle to warm you up.”

However, hearing Edith’s answer, Lizé’s face hardened without her realizing it.

“Thanks, Lizé. I thought I was going to freeze to death.”

Lizé couldn’t believe that the woman who had just bared her neck to make it easier to cut off her head was now happily accepting a hot-water bottle because she was freezing to death.

“If you don’t want to die so badly, why didn’t you say a word to Killian to save you before?”

Edith seemed to find Lizé’s demeanor odd, to say the least. But she found it funny that she was answering Lizé’s questions one after the other.

“And now you want to live again?”

Edith’s final answer was simple: she had given up hope because she didn’t think anyone would believe her, and she was tired of insisting on her innocence and being labeled a liar.

“Because Killian believed in me.”

Lizé finally realized where everything had gone wrong.

“Killian…… yeah, Killian was the problem, always has been……”

She’d been so focused on Edith’s actions that she’d taken Killian’s changes for granted, and that’s what had caused this whole fiasco.

‘I should have kept a firm grip on him from the beginning, then this would never have come to this……’

Feeling enraged at Killian, Lizé drew her dagger and slashed wildly at her own forearm.

The feeling of the sharp blade slicing through her skin was unpleasant, but it was a small price to pay for getting everything back.

“Aaah!”

Lizé screamed as she tossed the dagger into the bars, and Cliff and Killian descended as if they’d been waiting.

‘That’s it. It’s done!’

Lizé cried in fear, but inwardly felt relieved. If she got hurt in a place where there was only her and Edith, it was obvious that Edith was at fault.

Until Killian picked up the dagger and handed it back to Cliff, Lizé had no doubt that Edith would be dragged away.

But it was Lizé, not Edith, who Killian suspected.

“What about that dagger, brother? Isn’t it too warm?”

“What?”

“The dagger you’re holding, isn’t the blade and hilt all warm? More than human body temperature.”

“Come to think of it……”

At that moment, Lizé realized her mistake, but it was so unexpected that she couldn’t think of a good excuse.

All she could do was repeat that Edith was lying and that she had only come to give her a hot-water bottle.

But Killian’s eyes grew colder.

“And there was one more important mistake, Lizé.”

He slipped his hand through the bars and swung the dagger.

The dagger couldn’t make a deep cut with a hand that could barely get through the latticed bars.

“Lizé, why did you try to frame Edith?”

“Why don’t you believe me, when it’s obvious that Edith tried to kill me?”

Lizé, who had never been backed into a corner like this before, screamed in frustration.

But Killian yelled at her even more, and as if that weren’t enough, he blamed Cliff who had his arm around her.

It was Edith who calmed him down.

“Killian…… that’s enough.”

There was no anger, no resentment, no superiority complex, just a calm voice.

‘What the hell? Why is she acting like a female lead!’

With tears of frustration, Lizé could only watch as Edith was carried out of the dungeon by Killian.

***

What happened next was too horrible to recall.

Lizé was unable to retort to Edith’s admonishment, and Duke Ludwig, who had stood by her until now, turned away in great disappointment.

As the Duke and Duchess of Ludwig showered Edith with boxes of gold bullion, furs, and an enormous amount of jewelry for feeling sorry for her, Lizé had to face what it was like to be a normal human being instead of a female lead for the first time in a very long time.

To see Edith in the center of the stage, beaming in the spotlight, and herself standing just outside of it, clapping her hands……

The memories of her previous life were already fading, but she remembered the sensation of dropping the K pen name and falling into oblivion.

‘I’ll never go back to that crappy life.’

The life of being praised by everyone is addictive, and even taking a step away from it was followed by an unbearable feeling of deprivation.

To escape that deprivation, and to turn the tables on Edith, Lizé first decided to have a dazzling, extravagant wedding.

But what had happened without her asking for it in the original story, now, with the power of the author gone, she had to ask for it.