Page 82 of The Villainess Whom I Had Served for 13 Years Has Fallen

-We’ve arrived.

The past Yuria began stepping into the dark space with a bright smile.

Watching her, Yuria began to be enveloped by anxiety, remembering what Hans had said.

-How could someone who doesn’t even learn offensive magic survive in the dungeon?

‘Exactly, how did I survive...?’

As her past self walked deeper into the darkness, Yuria’s head grew heavier.

She had no idea what was going to happen next. She couldn’t imagine that she would have walked into a place called the Altar of Greed, filled with the stench of blood.

All she could hope for was the redhead butler.

Just when she felt so guilty that she couldn’t lift her head, a man’s voice began to sound from behind her.

-What are you doing!

Ricardo emerged through the darkness.

Seeing him, Yuria’s eyes began to well up with tears.

Only now did Yuria realize how she could have gotten out. If it hadn’t been for Ricardo, she would have died.

Ricardo had roughly grabbed her wrist in the past.

Gasping for breath and sweating, Ricardo looked at his past self with empty eyes and let out a sigh of relief.

-Oh? It’s Ricardo.

Her past self spoke emotionlessly.

-The Ricardo I hate the most in the whole world.

Her past self seemed unaffected as she hurtfully spoke to Ricardo without any emotion.

No anger. No hatred. No sorrow. Just spewing insults at Ricardo without any of those feelings.

Upon hearing the verbal abuse, Ricardo responded with a nonchalant laugh.

-The person you hate the most in the world, is that right? Anyway, let’s go back. This place is too dangerous.

-Here?

She looked around with a puzzled tilt of her head and replied with a cold laugh.

-This is my home.

-You’ve done well for yourself with such a spacious house.

-...I’m tired, so I’m going to rest.

Her past self tried to break free from Ricardo’s grip and enter the deep darkness, but Ricardo’s tight hold wouldn’t allow her to leave.

Ricardo spoke to her with a kind voice.

-How about staying out tonight? I’ll buy you something delicious.

-I don’t want to. I need to go back.

-Chocolate...! How about some chocolate?

-It’s too sweet. I don’t like it.

-But you used to enjoy it... Anyway, let’s go back. It’s dangerous here.

-I don’t want to...! I don’t!

Her past self continued to struggle and resist.

She tried to break free from Ricardo’s hand, screaming that she would go, looking like a petulant child.

Yuria felt a chill.

Mind control.

She had thought it had nothing to do with her, but seeing the unfocused eyes and the dark expression of her past self, she had to acknowledge it.

That she had caused a great nuisance.

Hans had been right.

His sarcastic remarks about her not remembering her significant wrongdoing were not wrong at all.

Yuria felt grateful that Ricardo had caught her before it was too late. If she had been even a little later, she might have entered the Altar of Greed of her own accord.

With a sigh of relief, Yuria wiped the cold sweat that had drenched her uniform.

Then she looked at the past Ricardo.

The strange student who insisted on wearing butler clothes, saying that demerits couldn’t break a butler’s will, and at the same time, the handsome Ricardo with his tall appearance.

Yuria looked at Ricardo with complicated feelings.

‘Thank goodness.’

She was confident that the end of this nightmare-like memory was approaching.

-We must go quickly.

-I don’t want to!

-Yuria... Sigh...

Ricardo was determined to drag her away by force. Ignoring her past self’s struggling words and looking anxiously toward the exit.

Suddenly, her past self shouted at Ricardo.

-Let go of me! You repulsive hypocrite!

-A garbage pretending to be good, who do you think you’re holding onto!

-Why? Will you say this is also for my sake?

It was the past Yuria, expressing the words she had kept inside her heart to Ricardo.

Yuria swallowed her breath at the sight.

‘What are you doing by saying such things...!’

She couldn’t imagine what kind of reaction Ricardo would have after hearing such cold words. She thought that even Ricardo would feel bad after hearing such things.

He had come all this way to save her.

Nobody would be happy to be called trash. Yuria, with her head bowed, cautiously lifted her head to look at Ricardo.

-Puhaha! So that’s what you’ve been thinking? I thought you were going to die from laughing each time.

Ricardo, as always, was smiling and said to his past self.

-You should have said that earlier. Why suffer in silence? According to Miss Yuria, I am a bad guy indeed, so there’s no damage done.

With his hand holding hers firmly, Ricardo spoke in a kind voice, with a familiar expression as he had once shown in Hamel.

-Well, as Miss Yuria says, I am a bad person. You can curse me all you want.

-So... let’s go.

Facing herself, who had vented her resentment, Ricardo was making a familiar excuse.

Yuria’s eyes widened.

-‘Uh...?’

Despite hearing the cold words, Yuria’s heart raced at Ricardo’s kind reaction.

She had expected him to say something bad, but his easy acknowledgment and kindness were evident.

Overwhelmed by emotions, Yuria exclaimed.

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Why...’

Feeling a tingling sensation in her heart, Yuria focused on the scene before her as she rubbed her sniffly nose.

It was almost over. She just had to hold on a little longer and then she could go back and apologize to Ricardo for this incident.

-Ah... That’s not right. We have a guest who hasn’t visited in a while...

An old man’s voice came from behind.

It was the voice of a feeble old man.

Clearly the voice of a feeble old man, but she couldn’t dare to turn her head.

Turning would feel like death.

Overwhelmed by an inexplicable pressure, Yuria’s body was trembling like a leaf in the wind.

‘Who’s there?’

She saw a back figure of an old man, who had passed by the terrified Yuria, exuding an abyssal darkness.

She was breathless with his overwhelming presence. Realizing the terror despite it not being real, Yuria shook as she lifted her head, and when she saw the old man’s figure, her eyes began to tremble intensely.

-Isn’t that so, young ones?

With ? NоvеIight ? (Original source) white hair.

An old man with a black cane.

The old man with cat-like slitted eyes and golden irises was someone she had only read about in history books.

The old man, smiling like a crescent moon, said.

-My name is Calypso. The old man once called ‘the calamity of the Empire.’ Do you remember?

As the old man’s words finished, a ‘pop’ sound followed, and the surroundings brightened dramatically.

The ceiling and walls were covered in complicated inscriptions. The original appearance of the Altar of Greed, where they had just stood, began to come into Yuria’s view.

The ceiling, once full of sword marks, now had none. Calypso, standing in the center, began to reach out with a malicious smile.

Golden eyes.

An emaciated face.

And the old man wearing a black robe was the very image of the dark wizard who had once plunged the Empire into fear.

‘No way.’

Calypso was smirking with a vile smile, savoring the moment of finally being able to leave.

Yuria was shivering with dread.

It was despair.

Even in the illusion, when she felt the sheer malice tingling through her body, incapable of imagining what Ricardo must be feeling, Yuria said with a trembling voice.

‘We have to run...’

Against a dark wizard of unimaginably high caliber, Yuria instinctively yelled to run, but the past Ricardo was sighing and muttering to himself.

-Sigh... Originally, this would be something the heretics should handle...

Saying something incomprehensible and speaking to his past self as if to soothe her.

-Yuria, please come to your senses. When I count to three, we’ll run that way, okay?

-Don’t be afraid, okay?

-I will solve everything. Just look ahead and run.

The past Yuria nodded with unfocused eyes.

And then.

Calypso, with a bitter smile, said to Ricardo.

-Hmm... Such noble sacrifice. But I dislike such things, you see.

With those words.

Thwack. A sound echoed as red blood began to flow from Ricardo’s mouth.

-Oh...?

A dagger was stuck in Ricardo’s abdomen. A familiar dagger with a pink handle.

The dagger given to him by his father, which he still wore at his waist for self-defense, was now embedded in Ricardo’s abdomen.

‘Ah... no...!’

‘Noooo... It can’t be, right?’

‘It’s a lie... It must be...! Why would I...!?’

Yuria covered her mouth with her hands.

-Yuria, why...

-...

Because the person who had stabbed Ricardo was none other than herself.

Her past self, who had plunged the sword in, was crying with an awkward smile. ‘Drip, drip,’ Yuria couldn’t contain her emotions as tears flowed.

‘Ah... it can’t be... This is...’

At the sound of a clap and Calypso’s laughter.

Life began to return to her past self’s eyes.

Her past self, looking at the blood on her hands, asked.

-Ri... Ricardo?

Ricardo, bleeding, gave the same smile he had in Hamel.

-It’s nothing.

[The reading has ended.]