Death Is The Only Ending For The Villain - Chapter 40

I held up the biggest spoon of my miniature tableware. It was the biggest of all the utensils, but still smaller than a teaspoon. I tried to scoop up the soup with it, but barely gathered a thimble full.
The fork couldn’t even lift a leaf of lettuce from the salad. The knife, while a good size, was so blunt that it could barely scratch the surface of the meat that was cooked so tenderly.
‘This is interesting.’
I took turns lifting the utensils and gazing at them then briefly touching the steaming food in front of me. Surely someone would notice that a joke was played on me. Could they not see that I couldn’t eat?.
‘How on earth did Emily manage to feed me as well as she did? Were the kitchen staff really this bad?’
Come to think of it, they were. The employees working in the kitchen had treated me the most poorly, they had even before given me rotten food after all.
Ever since I threatened her, Emily had brought me a whole bunch of healthy food to eat. In addition, sometimes when I talked about food that I wanted to eat, she would try to make them herself.
‘I should give her a present when I get back to my room.’
Suddenly I felt a little sorry for Emily who was fighting for me on her own. I looked at the dishes that had been randomly piled on the plates in front of me.
‘Oh well, there goes that meal.’
After all, I couldn’t eat a single bite properly. And as expected, the Duke and the two brothers had no idea whether I was eating or playing with food.
After all this was Penelope’s position in the household.
“The festival is almost over.”
Sometime halfway through the meal, The Duke suddenly opened his mouth taking a sip of wine. I was his first target.
“You’re not going to go out on your last day?”
‘No.”
In a state of irritation, I answered bluntly.
Penelope must have always gone out on the last day of the festival.
I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t want to say something to the Duke, partially because I couldn’t even touch these delicious things in front of me.
However, my cold attitude instantly turned the eyes of the first and second.
‘Oh right, because of your swordsman.’
I looked back at The Duke with a forced smile.
“I’m on probation.”
The Duke clicked his tongue as if my answer was disapproving.
“I’ve never seen a cripple claiming to be on probation because of a single slave.”
Reynold said sarcastically. Everyone ignored his snide remark. I didn’t expect someone to reprimand him or try to shut his mouth, so I didn’t bother to make any kind of response.
“There’s another reason why I called you to have lunch today…”
The Duke finally came to the real reason why he had called me here.
“Because of the upcoming hunting competition.”
‘…Hunting Competition?’
I had briefly seen a little about it when I played the game. It didn’t immediately occur to me that I would actually have to participate in it.
“It’s going to be held again in the northern forest of the palace.”
In the meantime, The Duke gracefully laid down his tableware and continued to speak.
“As you all know, this hunting competition is quite important. The crown prince decided to release some rare animals representing each country, including royalty and aristocrats from the countries that were subjugated by the war.”
“……”
“In the eyes of those who support the crown prince, those who have not participated in the war are not in a favorable position. At times like this, it would be better to consolidate our status.”
“So, last night, when meeting of the other nobility, I expressed the Eckart house’s intention to attend the hunt.”
As I felt that this announcement had nothing to do with me, I half-heartedly listened to the Duke as he spoke. Then I suddenly remembered the “hunting contest” in the game.
[The Inca Empire holds a hunting competition every quarter in order to impose indirect pressure on the survivors and slaves of each defeated country.]
I remembered having seen a brief background explanation while playing in Normal mode.
However, the FL was not able to attend the hunting competition in the game. That was because Penelope had secretly fed poison to the “real princess” when she had first returned out of jealousy of the attention the FL held of the male leads.
The FL, who couldn’t go to the hunting competition, instead went wandering, and by chance raised Eclisse’s favorability when leaving the mansion. It was the moment when Penelope’s last hope left.
After that event, the hunting competition was no longer held, as the kind FL who failed to see the evil deeds of the cruel empire, persuaded the crown prince to stop it for good.
And at the end of Crown Prince’s storyline, all of the atrocities that Penelope had committed against the FM was revealed and she was tortured.
The torture consisted of freezing the heart alive so that it she not immediately die and feeding the poisons that had been fed to the FL, to Penelope one by one. In which Penelope died, being cruelly melted by the poison.
Ugh!
I shuddered reflexively as a series of vivid illustrations emerged. It was then. The Duke, who had finished talking about the aristocratic meeting, suddenly turned to me.
“Penelope.”
“Yes, yes?”
I didn’t listen at all to what he said, but I was stunned and stuttered like a fool. Fortunately, The Duke didn’t take too much notice.
“A vote was made at the meeting to lift the ban of woman participation.”
“Participation…ban lifted?”
“Yeah… So what do you think?”
I couldn’t answer the Duke’s question right away.
‘Think about what?’
I didn’t know what kind of violence acts Penelope had performed in the previous hunting competition in order to get her banned so I felt uneasy.
As I hesitated, The Duke asked me again whether I would participate.
“If you’re going to participate, I’ll tell them to get your hunting gear ready as well.”
“Father!”
Boom! Suddenly pink hair pounded the table violently and shouted violently.
“That crazy bitch, no, that girl, she did something last year, and she’s going to do it again!”
“Reynold.”
The Duke clicked his tongue finally reprimanding his second son.
“The daughters of the aristocrats came and begged to be allowed to participate saying the banning them was like keeping them in prison at every hunting contest.”
But despite the Duke’s reprimand, Reynold continued to stare at me furiously until gnashing his teeth.
First of all, I needed to figure out what the situation was. I decided to just be as blunt as Penelope would be.
“What did I do?”
“Do you ask because you don’t know?”
‘If I knew, do you think I would ask?’
These were words I wanted to shoot at Reynold, who always had a snarky answer. But I had to put up with it. I needed to know the whole story even if I had to provoke him.
But the answer I wanted came from an unexpected person.
“You asked to have a crossbow made, even though we didn’t really approve.”
This was a much calmer voice compared to Reynold’s and it made me turn my head. The First young master stared at me with blue eyes and whispered softly.
“You must have already blocked that day from your mind. Even though it was dangerous, you took the crossbow with you, overpowered the guards like a beast and ran around trying to shoot and kill Lady Kellin and her flock at the tea party.”
“So for a while there was a rumor that someone was teaching the crossbow to a crazy chimpanzee in Eckart.”
As soon as Derek was finished, Reynold added on that remark coldly and sarcastically.
‘What the hell? No wonder my reputation was ruined…’
I couldn’t answer anything back because how could I possibly explain away such an obvious act of violence. But it also wasn’t quite as bad as I had reason to expect from Penelope past adventures.
‘Yeah, she’s the worst villain in the game, of course she would have done something like that.’
It was not great to learn to truths of Penelope’s past adventures, but I believed I could somehow manage the repercussions of this one.
“Stop it. I’m sure she has regretted her actions enough.”
While silently thinking, the Duke stopped his two sons from arguing and they quietened immediately. It was not a bad timing, even though I had already been reprimanded by them.
As the two sons shut up, the Duke looked at me with a grave look and warned.
“You must remember that being an Eckart is heavy responsibility, Penelope.”
“Yes, I won’t disappoint you this time, Father.”
I answered promptly. I heard the sound of grinding teeth from the other side of the table.
“Okay, that’s all I’m going to say.” latest Chapters at Wuxia World.Site Only
The Duke lightly struck the bell on the table, concluding the meal as if all the words had been finished along with the food. Then the door of the dining room opened and a servant entered wheeling a cart. It was dessert.
‘I couldn’t even eat my meal, I wonder what kind of dessert I could eat with these useless things?’
I looked at the servant with gloomy eyes, as she laid down a different dessert at each seating.
It was the middle-aged woman named Mrs. Donna who had long been in charge of the Duke’s kitchen. Serving each their favorite desserts showed how well she understood each of the Duke’s family’s tastes.
In front of Duke and Derek were tea cups with black tea, and in front of Reynold a plate of handmade cookies.
It was my turn next. I thought that I wouldn’t mind anything that she served me because I liked all desserts.
‘What is this?’
However, I had no choice but to frown at the plate placed in front of me. It was a mellow milk pudding.