What a Terminally Ill Villain Needs Is an Arctic Fox Ch 10

 

Chapter 10

“Gray was mistaken.”

Kyle muttered, forcing himself to fall asleep even though it wasn’t coming.

“All the guardian spirits have disappeared. That’s the world view of this book.”

If the world in which he had found new life had not been the world of the books he had been reading, he might have found hope in Gray’s words.

But Kyle knew everything. The story of the Emperor, the protagonist, would only progress if the world became a place where the Guardians disappeared. And he, the villain, would not be able to avoid death in the end.

This was my third morning since coming to the North.

Kyle wasn’t so shocked to see his own naked body anymore. He didn’t even worry that he was sleepwalking. He was still depressed from his conversation with Gray the night before.

When I opened my eyes, the only thing I saw was the fox’s moon-like face, which made me laugh a little, but that didn’t completely solve the emotions that had been building up in my chest.

“I told you to take it, but you left it here.”

As I was looking for a bottle of water on the nightstand to moisten my dry mouth, I found the note Gray had left behind.

My forehead naturally furrowed, but on the other hand, my throat was choked with frustration. Although I would be finished with my death, the future of those left behind was not bright either.

“Ha, how desperate must one be to rely on someone like me?”

I sighed as if the ground was sinking while washing my face dry.

A cursed life with only the flashy title of Northern Duke. Kyle felt sorry for Gray’s desperation in relying on him, who had no dreams or future.

“Kkiung.”

As he covered his face with his hands, the fox burrowed into his arms. It squeezed its way into Kyle’s cramped arms and licked his face.

“Really, don’t give me time to be serious.”

Because of the fox’s persistent clinging, Kyle finally took his hands off his face and hugged the fox in a gesture of surrender. The fox smiled with narrowed eyes and twitched its tail in satisfaction.

Kyle petted the fox and picked up Gray’s note.

This is the parenting diary of the successor to Grand Duke Batman, who died 20 years ago. Of course, when Gray wrote it, he probably assumed that the person reading it would be the successor who grew up safely in the future.

“No matter what, it’s like that. Gray doesn’t seem to be in his right mind either, fox.”

I wanted to tell him that it was unusual for him to think of showing the new Northern Duke the parenting diary of his previous master’s successor, but the fox was the only one in the room who could hear him.

The fox nodded vigorously as if it understood what Kyle was saying. Kyle stroked the fox’s head once more with a surprised expression on his face before opening his notebook.

It didn’t feel too old for its age, perhaps because it had been well-kept. In particular, compared to the faded cover, the paper inside was clean, and the letters were neatly lined up like a printed book. It wasn’t very thick, but it was a part where Gray’s personality stood out.

―This book was written after the death of Grand Duke Batman, the Knight of Millet and ruler of the North, and I swear that it contains only the truth.

Shadows formed beneath Kyle’s long eyelashes as he took in the sentence written in the beginning.

“Who would write something like that from the beginning of a parenting diary?”

As he was about to close his notebook with a short sigh because the content was already getting boring, the fox placed its forepaw on Kyle’s hand. Kyle laughed at the exquisite timing of the interruption, as if it had read his mind.

“What is this hand?”

Another paw also came up to Kyle’s hand. This made the fox’s intentions clear: he didn’t want Kyle to cover the note.

He was sitting on Kyle’s lap like a child, with only his two front paws raised obediently, but Kyle found even that adorable and smiled.

“Do you want to read a book?”

“Kkiung.”

The answer was quick.

“Okay. Put your hands down so I can read it to you.”

The obedient fox quickly put its front paws back where they were, and Kyle, feeling his heart pounding with cuteness, kissed the fox on the top of its head and read a book to it.

“On April 27th, Imperial Year 350, a week after the end of the war, the baby was born. Watching the first snowfall in the war-torn North, Lady Sophia named the baby…….”

For a moment, Kyle doubted his eyes.

“Fox.”

Kyle muttered, blinking his eyes.

“You deleted this on purpose, right?”

“Kkiung.”

The fox replied, but Kyle had no way of understanding it. Kyle didn’t expect the fox to reply either, so he turned his head back to his parenting diary. Kyle continued reading through the diary

“The baby was named……. After her husband died, Mrs. Sophia, who had been staring out the window with empty eyes, smiled for the first time when she saw the baby.”

From then on, the baby’s appearance was described, and it was mainly about how much he resembled Archduke Batman.

What was a bit unusual was that even the three red dots in a triangular shape between the baby’s shoulder blades were recorded in detail.

In the following story, Madame Sophia gives birth to a baby and regains her will to live, quickly regaining her energy.

“A cloudy, snowless afternoon. The Emperor’s knights visited the mansion.”

The process of the baby growing up was no different from the contents of an ordinary parenting diary. However, the happiness did not last long.

“Fox, if you think about it, isn’t the emperor the mastermind?”

The diary of the child had been anticipating the Emperor’s intervention since the moment the child began to walk. But that time came sooner than expected.

The Emperor easily usurped the position of Lady Sophia, who had been ruling the northern lands in place of her young son. He did not stop there, but took all the powers of the Grand Duke and ordered the only heir to move to the palace.

“The Palace? If you do it right, you might have met me before.”

Kyle scanned the dates at the top of his diary and calculated his age.

“Kyle is five at this time. Emperor Dalan is four.”

In a palace where there were few people of similar age, the probability that Kyle and the successor before he was possessed would have met by chance was very high. Furthermore, although the successor was only one year younger than Kyle, he was the same age as Kyle’s younger brother, the current emperor, Daylan.

It is unlikely that the Emperor would have allowed his son to meet the heir to the Northern Grand Duke, but it would have been more strange if they had not encountered each other, even by chance, in the confined space of the Imperial Palace.

“Lady Sophia carried the child in her arms and went to the palace with the Emperor’s knights, and that was the last time the child was seen.”

The parenting diary suddenly ended with the scene where the child leaves the mansion to move to the palace.

Kyle had a blank expression on his face, as he didn’t expect the remaining notes to end so pointlessly, although they weren’t that many.

“Is this really the end? So what happened? Are you alive or dead?”

Kyle quickly flipped through the last page of the notebook, pressing down on it with his fingertips in one go. The sound of the faded brown paper turning could be heard.

“Kkiung.”

Kyle, who had lost sight of his original intention of reading it to the fox and was more curious himself, looked through his notebook and found a clue on the last page of the notebook.

“In the year 363 of the Imperial Calendar, on April 10th, just before his 13th birthday, the child suddenly disappeared from the palace. The imperial family began to spread groundless rumors that the child had been mentally unstable since his mother, Lady Sophia, was poisoned in front of her son, and that he had either committed suicide or died in an accident somewhere due to mental weakness. No one was able to find his whereabouts or his body after that, and the position of the Northern Grand Duke became vacant.”

It is now the year 370 of the Imperial Calendar, and he possessed Kyle three years ago, in the year 367 of the Imperial Calendar, when Kyle was 18 years old. The reason he and the son of Archduke Batman did not meet was because there was a gap of four years between them. If the son of Archduke Batman were alive, he would be 20 years old now, one year younger than Kyle.

“They still won’t tell me the name.”

Kyle wondered what the name of Archduke Batman’s son was, but his name was never mentioned again.

Kyle felt a bit bitter after reading the notes in a flash. It looked like an ordinary parenting diary, but it was true that it was an indirect indicator of what had happened in the North.

It was thanks to Gray, who not only recorded the details of raising a baby, but also the daily life happening around him.