The Way To Protect The Female Lead’S Older Brother [EN]: Chapter 179

Cassis remained silent, even though he had already suspected the truth.

Roxana had summoned the poison butterfly she had placed on Cassis a few hours earlier to confirm what had happened outside. So, she knew what Cassis wanted to say.

As Cassis suspected, the stone with the spell engraved on it that he found in the monster habitat was indeed Roxana’s.

She had received the stone from Griselda when she was in Fedelian. It was something that Agrice had used to capture a large number of monsters to put in the breeding grounds.

Since it was originally an experiment based on the jewel Hyperion used to imprint monsters, it looked similar.

However, the stone with the magic circle engraved on it had no effect on its own. It differed in that the spell was completed and activated only when blood was applied to it.

She scattered it in the monster habitat in the neutral zone while she was moving separately from Cassis to attend this social gathering.

If her only purpose was to meet her mother, there would have been no reason to refuse Cassis’s offer to provide her with a confidant.

And when she came out of Yggdrasil this time, using the poison butterfly as an excuse, she scattered stones in the nearby monster habitat to draw the monsters gathered on the outskirts of the neutral zone closer.

If she had wanted to hide it completely from Cassis, she would have moved secretly without even making such an excuse in the first place.

For the same reason, she also tolerated Deon following her.

She didn’t expect Cassis not to notice the unusual signs outside in the first place.

She heard from Jeremy about the meeting that the leaders and successors had recently held.

Due to the surge in monsters in the neutral zone, they were planning to carry out a subjugation [suppression] before spring. The timing was planned for around the end of the social gathering.

So, if she wanted to put what she had in mind into action, she had to move before that.

Still burying half of her face in Cassis’s hand, Roxana parted her lips.

“And I…”

She met Cassis’s eyes head-on.

“If I say I hope you don’t interfere with me…”

Roxana’s hand, which was holding Cassis’s hand, moved slightly.

Feeling the movement of her fingers that made warmth permeate her skin, Cassis suddenly recalled the words of Deon Agrice.

The bewitching red eyes looked up at him intently.

While facing her, another surge of emotion swept through Cassis.

…What does Roxana truly desire?

Cassis chased after their meeting gaze as if trying to find the answer.

“…Did I not give you faith?”

Soon, after a low whisper, the hand that had been touching Roxana’s face was removed.

“So, are you trying to test me in this way?”

After that, warmth permeated between his fingers. Their intertwined hands were tightly clasped.

Roxana looked into the golden eyes where the cold wind was blowing.

Cassis didn’t ask Roxana why she did this.

But he probably knew that she had never gathered monsters with good intentions.

What would his reaction be if Roxana explained what she was planning?

She was thinking of recreating the monster incident of 500 years ago here.

Since Yggdrasil’s magic circle was meant to block communication with imprinted monsters, it was entirely possible to summon ownerless monsters from the outside.

She wasn’t planning to create a situation as serious as in the past.

But even so, there would inevitably be people who would get hurt.

It wouldn’t be easy to shift the blame to Hyperion afterward, but it wasn’t impossible.

Roxana’s ultimate desire was more than just changing Agrice internally.

In order to gain a voice and exert power to do so, she had to be at least on par with the other families, but it was difficult to do so in the short term.

Then, there was also a way to bring the other families down to where Agrice was.

Vertium’s goal was to narrow its position with this puppetry, and Gastor was now in a state where he had to join hands with Agrice because of the drug.

In addition, recreating Hyperion’s massacre was the most effective way to do it since the current location was Yggdrasil.

There was another reason for thinking this way.

After the incident 500 years ago, it was said that a magic circle was drawn in Yggdrasil to prevent the same thing from happening, but even until now, there were no systematic rules and laws in place between the five families to check each other.

The five families’ sloppy and unilateral system had continued for such a long time, keeping them stagnant in their respective positions.

So, if not now, when the Agrice and Fedelian incidents and this puppetry have raised the alarm, it was impossible to know when another appropriate opportunity would come.

They needed to be more wary and restrain each other.

She wanted them to know the influence that their respective powers could exert when they crossed the line without reins to control themselves, and to fear it.

However, she knew that planning such an extreme thing to create cracks in the current phenomenon was… contradictory.

She was trying to destroy what Lant Agrice had built, yet she was trying to move in the way she had learned from Lant Agrice.

The days she had spent in Yggdrasil were also a time containing that secret hesitation.

But Roxana couldn’t deny that it was the most efficient thing she could choose at this point.

Roxana faced Cassis, feeling the warmth seeping between her fingers.

Perhaps he and she were the most mismatched people in the world.

Even when she was with Cassis in Fedelian, putting aside other things, and when she was spending peaceful time with him like other ordinary lovers in Yggdrasil, that feeling always remained awkwardly in one corner of her heart.

Was she trying to test him, as Cassis said?

Roxana… didn’t even know herself.

Did she want Cassis to join her in the mud for her sake, or did she want him to remain himself forever without being stained black even by her side?

But either way… only one thing was clear.

“Cassis, you know.”

Roxana’s lips finally moved slightly as she looked at Cassis with a face that didn’t know what she was thinking.

“If you ever get completely tired of me or exhausted and try to leave me…”

Cassis’s eyes hardened as he heard the voice that finally flowed out from within.

But the words she whispered to him next were something that no one would have expected.

“I’ll kill you with my own hands.”

The content was terrifying, but for some reason, her words that rushed into Cassis’s ears were so sweet that they felt like a love confession rather than a death threat.

And perhaps it was a love confession.

Roxana pulled the clasped hands of Cassis more strongly and brought her body closer.

As she leaned forward, her golden hair rippled like waves down her back.

Cassis faced the red eyes in front of him with an indescribable feeling.

“I already knew it, but you’re really unlucky.”

A poisonous smile that hid itself with sweetness bloomed on Roxana’s face.

“To think that you caught my eye among so many people in this world.”

Letting go of the other person for their sake was not suitable for her after all.

“After all, I can’t do something like wishing you happiness and sending you off coolly for the rest of my life.”

It was the same as before, but now it was even more so.

Perhaps the path Roxana chooses in the future is only the lesser of two evils instead of the worst.

She wanted to erase all traces of Lant Agrice from the world, but in the end, she couldn’t be completely free from his ways either.

The Agrice that Roxana had hated so much had already become a part of her.

In the end, Roxana couldn’t deny it, and perhaps that was her limit.

Still, she wanted this person to be by her side.

Even if she committed something that he could never tolerate, she wanted him to not reject her and continue to hold her by her side.

Even if Cassis withered day by day by her side like a tree that had taken root in the wrong place, she would not let him go until he died.

And in the end, she would make sure he met his end in her arms.

“Cassis.”

Roxana knew like an instinct how to keep this person by her side forever.

It was arguably cowardly to use this method on Cassis in this situation, but what could she do?

That’s what a woman named Roxana Agrice was like.

And so, she finally moved her lips and whispered the words that would shackle him like a chain forever.

“I love you.”

But the moment she uttered those words out loud for the first time, she felt something burst from deep within her heart.

She had felt this sensation several times before in front of Cassis.

Something that had been sloshing and swelling inside her chest since some time ago, and finally filled to the limit, burst out like fireworks as it could no longer endure.

It was too much to suppress the words that were clamoring wildly at the end of her throat, so Roxana ended up whispering once more.

“…I love you, Cassis.”

Probably….

There would never be such a sincere confession in her life again.

And then, she couldn’t bear it anymore and moved her head.

Cassis kissed Roxana’s lips while frozen.

A sweet whisper like poison flowed between their touching lips.

“Stay by my side until the moment you die.”