LGHTNOVELBOOK Chapter 148
Chapter 148 Season 2 – Everything Is Different From What We Learned
Laira and Karune, who had decided to start fresh, following their past father’s advice in the underground village.
The first task the two princesses were forced to do, after being dragged to what seemed like a less-than-livestock-quality human settlement, was none other than…
“You want us to cut up a monster so it’s ready for people to eat?!”
“Yes. You both have monster claws and such, so it should be easier for you to butcher it.”
“I-I mean, it’s just too dirty…”
“Butchering a monster? If that’s the task, I can do it! Past His Majesty.”
“Ka-Karune?!”
It was to slaughter the monster that had been captured to feed the people.
Laira, who had been born in the imperial palace and had never attended the academy, protested that she couldn’t handle such a gruesome task.
But unlike her younger half-sister, Karune, who was born with the instincts of a dragon, had a different attitude.
“I’ve done this with my mom! It was so much fun! Old His Majesty!”
Slash!
Slash!
“I-I can’t believe it…”
“She’s really good at this, isn’t she?”
Even the rebel hunters were amazed as Karune quickly dissected the monster’s intestines, bones, and edible meat with her rapidly growing dragon claws.
“Karune, you’re really talented at butchering.”
“…!! H-His Majesty, did you just compliment me?”
“Huh? Yeah, I guess I did. Why?”
“I-I’ve never been praised by His Majesty before.”
Shin-woo praised Karune, who had completed in minutes what would have taken hunters hours to butcher.
And with her first compliment from her father, Karune’s mint-colored hair barely hid her blushing face.
‘To think she’s so happy over something like this…’
She was his daughter, after all.
And as an indulgent father, he couldn’t help but spoil his daughters.
With his sons, like Jae-won and Leon, he could just hit them a few times, and they’d get over it.
But with daughters like Shin-ah, Yulian, Laira, and now Karune standing before him, his attention was naturally drawn to them.
Now that he knew what made his daughter happy, it was time to start showering her with endless praise!
Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.
“Good job, good job, good job, good job, good job!”
“He-hee?! F-Father, this is a bit too much all of a sudden!”
“So, you don’t like it?”
“N-No! I don’t dislike it, but… it’s a little embarrassing…”
“Shall I stop then?”
“…No, please keep going.”
If his daughter wanted it, he would keep going.
Shin-woo didn’t stop patting her head, trying to make his delighted daughter feel even better.
And throughout it all, Karune, still giggling, continued butchering the monster.
Meanwhile—
‘Ugh… I’m jealous…!’
Watching her half-sister receive endless head pats, Laira swallowed nervously.
But being from the most beloved family in the empire—the Ria family—she couldn’t bring herself to engage in such dirty butchering.
“Ha-cha! Ha-cha! Ha-cha!”
“M-Mother?!”
“I can’t lose to my daughters! Ha-cha!”
Even their mother, who was the head of the family, was now busily butchering a massive monster in hopes of receiving praise from the past His Majesty.
But still, I…
“Why don’t you give it a try?”
“…?! Y-you are…?”
“Hello? If we’re going by birth order, I’m your older sister, right?”
At that moment, Laira, who was struggling with the idea of butchering, was approached by another youngest princess, Shin-ah.
The two had never spoken in the imperial palace.
They were sisters who had only seen each other from afar.
So, naturally, an awkward tension arose between them.
However, Shin-ah, having already experienced humanity firsthand, extended her hand to Laira as the slightly older sister.
She wanted to show this new world to another imperial girl.
“Humans are different from what we read in the textbooks.”
“Different…? Are you saying the knowledge we learned at the Imperial Academy is wrong…?”
“Well… not wrong, but it’s like a lot of things were simplified. Humans… they feel a lot more than we imagined.”
“How dare you speak against the teachings of the Empire?!”
But Laira, being the youngest of her family, had worked hard to be the perfect student, only wanting to be acknowledged by her current father and mother.
“All the knowledge of the Empire was created by His Majesty, the great emperor!”
“What?”
“What’s going on?”
“Shin-ah. And Laira, was it? What’s happening between you two all of a sudden?”
“Even though we’re captives right now, the one we should be loyal to is the current His Majesty! Not the past His Majesty!”
Laira, of course, preferred the warm and kind past father, who treated her more like a person.
But he was still from the past.
In the end, the father she would be with forever was only the current emperor.
To be swayed by a fleeting illusion and deny everything the Empire stood for because of some brief encounter with the past—these princesses were beneath that.
“How pathetic…”
“Huh?! Laira! Where are you going?”
“Don’t follow me! It’s not like we can escape the underground city anyway!”
“Th-that’s…!”
“She’s right…”
Whether they tried to run or not, they were still trapped underground.
At Laira’s words, the family members stiffened, unable to move.
***
“They’re all fools… it’s just a fleeting dream.”
The underground village was much smaller than even one of the Empire’s districts.
Well, of course, a village housing only about 1,000 people wasn’t even large enough to be considered a real city.
It was only natural.
Laira was now walking along one of the quieter, more deserted streets of the underground village.
Kicking stray pebbles whenever she had the chance.
“The person we need to impress is the current emperor. The past His Majesty is going to disappear from us soon anyway…”
Above all, her current mother would never abandon the current His Majesty for the past one.
The two of them had been the closest of all before the First Empress arrived.
It would have been an absurd joke for them to take lessons from a human, something both of them despised.
Thunk!
“Oof?!”
“Huh?”
“I-I’m sorry!”
Just then, while lost in her thoughts, Laira bumped into some kids awkwardly dressed like soldiers, as if they were playing soldier in the Empire.
The three children of the underground village—Park Hyuk, Alfonso, and Aya—were dressed in rags, and their eyes lit up as if they had seen a princess from a fairytale when they saw Laira, whose appearance and attire were worlds apart from their own.
“Wow… Hyuk, doesn’t she look just like the princesses from the torn-up books we’ve read?”
“Yeah, she does…”
“She’s not just like a princess; she’s a real princess. I’m an imperial princess of the Empire.”
“A p-princess?!”
“Does that mean you’re a real princess?!”
“Well… yeah, I suppose you could say that.”
Technically, she was one of the youngest of over 30 children and had no real power, so she was more of a hollow shell of a princess.
‘Still, a princess is a princess…’
So, these were human children?
In the books, humans of this age were described as training to kill monsters, already preparing to become killing machines.
But what Laira saw was…
No matter how she looked at them, these kids seemed like they were just playing soldiers.
‘They look exactly like the commoner children of the Empire… no, given their clothes and environment, they might even be worse off.’
The Empire, created by His Majesty Han Shin-woo, was a perfect utopia without a single beggar.
It was an ideal nation.
At least, that’s how Laira and the people of the Empire were taught.
So, seeing beggars for the first time, Laira nodded to herself in fascination.
At that moment—
“E-excuse me, Princess…”
A human, a being regarded as lower than a bug, dared to grab her robe and speak.
“I-I have something to ask you…”
How dirty…
Her mother’s handmade robe now had dirt on it.
She couldn’t kill them because of the past His Majesty, but she could at least scold them enough to make them suffer.
What could humans possibly want to ask?
It must be something selfish, like killing or conquering.
‘First, I’ll knock out a few of their teeth for daring to speak.’
Even as a prisoner, Laira was still a princess.
She assumed the children were about to ask her for killing tips, so she glared at them with fierce eyes.
But—
“What does the sky look like?”
“…What?”
The question
was completely unexpected.
“T-the thing is, we’ve never seen the sky before.”
“…? What do you mean you’ve never seen the sky?”
“…? It means exactly what I said. Did something sound strange?”
“No, it’s the sky! It’s just there, right above! If you just tilt your head up like this…!”
But when she looked up, all she saw was a dirt ceiling.
“Ah…”
What the human children had risked asking her was something that didn’t harm the Empire in the slightest.
It wasn’t even something of value.
It was so simple, so mundane, it was laughable.
They just wanted to see the sky.
These children had lived their entire lives in this cramped underground space.
“I want to see the sky one day!”
“And me! My dream is to plant a tree!”
“A-and me! I… I want to eat the meat of those monsters outside!”
“…There’s meat much better than monster meat. It’s called ‘animals.’”
“A-animals?”
“What’s that?”
“…Ah! I read about that! You mean monsters weaker than other monsters, right?”
“Animals… aren’t monsters.”
What Laira had been taught about humans was this:
That from a young age, they were trained in the harshest conditions, forged into killing machines designed to slay people like them from the Empire.
But in reality, these humans were no different from the children of the Empire.
No, they were even more pitiful, just a bunch of curious kids.