* * *

“Your Holiness the Pope, we cannot do this. The nobles do not want any more conflicts with the Frederic Empire. It is a complete defeat for us at the point when our followers have already been captured.”

Aceras put his head in front of the kneeling messenger.

His head was accepting his words, but his heart was different.

Instead of releasing their followers to the capital of the Frederic Empire, Aceras gave more ‘favor’ to the nobility.

As his lifespan was getting shorter, his mind was being driven to the edge.

Dalia Pesteros.

When he left the capital, he seemed to have wanted to show Dalia Pesteros for some reason. The image of him surrounded by brilliant light and praised by everyone.

But what does he look like now?

Everything he had planned failed.

Cedric Vercelona Michelio, because of that damn second prince!

He grinded his teeth.

The marble handle that he holds breaks and turns to powder in his hand. Now he can’t even control his own power properly .

‘But it’s best to step back for now.’

Aceras held his breath.

He knew that the next might be his last chance. He should never make a mistake in haste.

“Alright.”

“…….”

“I’ll step back for now.”

It was only then that the messenger openly showed signs of relief.

Aceras forced a smile. His position in the Holy Empire was slightly damaged by this failure.

First of all, it is time to reinforce it. At the expense of sacrificing more of his life expectancy.

Now that his most loyal followers have been captured, it is impossible to plan to kidnap her again.

Then.

‘If she doesn’t come, I have no choice but to go.’

He will wait for some time. And after that, he will directly go to the Frederic Empire to find Dalia Pesteros.

Although it’s difficult to go to the enemy territory, there were several seeds that he and the Holy Empire had sown. He decided to put his hopes on it.

10. The Fourth Transcendent

‘It can’t be like this.’

Half a year has passed since the kidnapping incident. Dalia has changed a little. Not only did she think so, but others thought the same as well.

“Somehow you look more mature now?”

“Your way of speaking sounds cooler too.”

She turned 17 after her birthday in June.

She became a little taller, so everyone who sees her now says she looks like an adult. However, Dalia didn’t become like this just because she got older.

She woke up.

Realization. She realized now that since the situation has become like this, she can’t always suck honey just because she’s surrounded by her brother and the people around her. (*t/n: I can’t find the exact meaning but it’s probably an idiom or smth similar. Probably means ‘she can’t always live comfortably by depending on the ppl around her’. )

The Aceras route was already approaching the future, with the target changed from Adrisha to herself.

Since Adrisha did not know the development of the original work, she was dragged around believing that Aceras’s recovery was near.

But Dalia was different. Knowing the ending of the original work, she knows that the Aceras’s recovery was absolutely impossible.

Rather, it was better to fight against him.

Therefore, from now on, she has to actively use the information of the original work to lead the situation in a way that would benefit her somehow.

It’s been half a year since she made that decision. In the meantime, she has made several plans.

First, she started by looking at her situation objectively.

First of all, Dalia overcame the first crisis. Since the plan to kidnap her failed and a fanatic was captured, Aceras will not be able to move properly for the time being.

She heard that his political position in the Holy Empire was not perfect either.

Having experienced such failures, it was time for him to stabilize his internal position.

However, if Aceras really believes in Dalia’s purification ability, the second time will come unconditionally. Then, Dalia could not stay still.

She had to prepare for an attack that might come a few years later.

Of course, Cedric, Adrisha, and Hikan are reliable, but this was between countries. If there’s a war like the original, sacrifices will be unavoidable.

Dalia wanted to prevent war as much as possible. However, no matter how desperate she was, there was a limit to what Dalia could do right now.

At first, she decided to start by developing the strength to protect herself.

‘How about swordsmanship?’

Dalia asked Hikan to teach her swordsmanship.

“It usually takes a year to get the basics right.”

But when she heard that, she gave up right away.

Next was magic.

As for magic, she has at least a minimum of general knowledge from the lessons that she took for basic magic. So she thought that it would be better.

However, after learning for about three months, she gave up completely. Dalia realized.

She has no talent in magic at all!

‘But I should try to ask Sir Cedric if there’s an easy way to learn next time.’

In addition, Dalia has tried several methods.

However, again, in a world where there were transcendents, an ordinary human struggle from now on does not yield any meaningful results.

Finally, Dalia found herself contemplating about learning even the espionage skills from Adrisha.

This really wasn’t it. So she decided that her plan to increase her strength would be just that.

‘This doesn’t work.’

So Dalia completely changed the direction of the plan. It was to interfere with Aceras’ path.

The only way was to use the content from the original. Come to think of it, Dalia was not able to fully utilize the immense power of having read the original work.

If possible, it would be nice if she can establish a relationship in a positive way, that can help her to solve the problems.

‘If I were to be more greedy, it would be better if they were related to the Holy Empire.’

And they were the characters in the original.

This plan was meaningful only because Dalia knew the original work, the characters and their background.

There was only one person like that.

Veord Mershain. (*t/n: the way I struggled trying to decide the spelling for her name)

She was the only female transcendent whose name appears in the original work and was the head of the Mershain Dukedom until five years ago.

She was also the Empress’s older sister, that is, Cedric’s aunt.

In the original Meldon route, Veord greatly contributed in making him the Duke of Artus, and in the Aceras route, she betrays the Empire and joins the Holy Empire side.

She moves thoroughly only for her own gain, so her actions were completely different depending on the route.

Her biggest feature was that she always maintains her early to mid-20s appearance due to the curse of not getting old.

Perhaps her mind did not age as well, she always revealed herself as she was, and was a person who moved regardless of common sense.

The reason why she stepped down from her position as the head was because she was involved in a violence incident.

…… Of course she was the assailant.

As soon as she was stripped of her position as the head, she said that the aristocratic society was frustrating, then cut her hair short and disappeared into the underworld dressed as a man. She still hasn’t returned until now.

However, according to the original, the reason she disappeared was to find a way to lift her curse.

In the Aceras route, Aceras asks her to cooperate in return for using his self-healing power to lift the curse.

Ignorant of conscience and reason, Veord immediately betrays the Empire and sided with him. It was this situation that Dalia was trying to stop.

The ability that Veord Mershain received through mana awakening was ‘nullification’.

It nullifies all magic, divine power, and healing power in the vicinity. Although there were restrictions that it cannot nullify the ability of fellow transcendents, it was still the most troublesome power if she became enemies.

There were conditions to make Veord be on Dalia’s side.

Of course, she has to find a way to lift her curse without Aceras.

The method comes from the original Meldon route.

That was also the reason why Veord made him the Duke of Artus in the Meldon route.

‘Okay, I’m using that method.’

But there was something on her mind. If Dalia uses that method instead, then how about Meldon, he wouldn’t become the Duke of Artus then?

‘……No, there will be another way when the time comes.’

In fact, Meldon had the blood of the Duke of Artus.

After thinking of several ways to prove it, Dalia was relieved. If it doesn’t work, she’ll think of another way again.

Having made up her mind, she began to plan in earnest.

In order to release Veord from the curse, she must first need to know why she was cursed.

Why did she get cursed when she had the ability to nullify everything in the first place?

It started with a very trivial event.

At the age of 14, Empress Siord, Veord’s younger sister and the Emperor’s fiancee at the time, was worried about her future as she would grow old like a normal human being compared to the Emperor, the transcendent who would age slowly .

Then she went to a fortune teller in the back alley that developed a drug that will let her to never age.

She knew that it was a scam, but still, the Empress was willing to be deceived and paid a lot of money to buy the drug.

Then she shows the drug to Veord, who came to visit her.

Veord was annoyed that her sister wanted to be young just because of her fiance.

She blamed the Empress for buying such a drug, and drank it herself. At that time, Veord was 16 years old.

The problem was that the drug was real.

There was no problem at first.

Because it was a drug that let people to not age, Veord who was still growing at that time, grew up very well.

However, no matter how much time has passed, when there was no change in her 20-year-old appearance, it was only then that Veord realized the problem.

The bigger problem was that when Veord realized the fact, her mana awakening had already ended.

The antidote developed by the Imperial Palace Magic Tower had no effect in front of her ability to ‘nullify’.

She tried to inquire from the fortune teller who manufactured the drug, but he had already died.

Veord, who had lost all hope, wielded a personality that was not as good as it was before, then gave up and went to the underworld. And there, she was looking for a way to lift the curse.

However, according to the original work, it will be difficult for her to find a way on her own.

Eventually, she went to Aceras or got help from Meldon.

This time, Dalia will be the one who will help her.

To do that, she had to find someone. The fortune-teller who was thought to be dead, the one who sold the drug to the Empress.

Translator Note: When I first saw Veord name, I was like…’how the heck do I spell her name??’, then I use translator to see how it spelled in english, it gave me ‘Beard’, and I was like ‘huh??’, and it also gave me ‘Beorde’, so in the end I just list down name that sound similar and choose ‘Veord’..Then come my second crisis, her family name..at first I spelled it as ‘Merchane’ but then I changed to ‘Mershain’ since the previous one feels like ‘merchant’ for some reasonhow about you guys? Which one is better? Merchane or Mershain? **oh I change to a darker theme..it doesn’t feel like reading with holy light background anymore