I Possessed The Immoral Empress - Chapter 158

As Arvian predicted, no word arrived from the central temple priests the next day. The priests who had left the capital headed straight for the port, planning to monitor the situation from the nearest foreign harbor outside of Trivian.

Arvian felt a heavy burden on his heart, believing all these troubles were caused by his presence. Ermedeline, too, kept glancing at Arvian, noticing his bitter expressions.

‘Because of me, another troublesome situation has arisen. If it weren’t for me, or if Arvian wasn’t by my side, we could have received support from the central temple.’

As Ermedeline took one step after another toward the battlefield, the desperate cry of a young soldier, who had bled out while calling for his mother in the brutal chaos, echoed in her mind.

While Felio seemed resolute, with no visible agitation on his composed face, Ermedeline couldn’t remain indifferent. She was the only one aware that her existence had altered the original narrative, causing this situation to unfold. Even Arvian didn’t know this was a world within a novel.

From the moment she left the tent, Ermedeline’s mind was torn between two conflicting thoughts battling for dominance.

‘What can I do if I stay here? It’ll be a miracle if I don’t faint again.’

‘So what? Are you planning to abandon all these people and run away for the sake of love?’

In her past life, Ermedeline was neither a brave soldier nor a saint willing to sacrifice herself for others. However, she wasn’t so heartless as to turn her back on a boy who resembled her own miserable childhood.

She had only strived to be a good and honest person to escape the label of being an orphan.

Amidst the whirlpool of intense internal conflict, she arrived at the battlefield, where more wild animals had gathered due to the increased number of casualties from the previous day’s battle.

“They didn’t clean up again today. What are they thinking?” 

Ermedeline listened to the commander while trying not to retch from the nauseating smell. She couldn’t even bear to look at the battlefield, where what had once been people now lay scattered.

‘I can’t. I can’t do this! What can I possibly do in a place like this?’

She couldn’t even bring herself to look at the battlefield, let alone fight.

But cruelly, the horn signaling the start of the battle blared once again. Like a ravenous wolf, the reaper of death circled the battlefield, ready to reap lives.

“Ah.”

The clash of swords immediately forced Ermedeline to hold her breath to stifle a scream. It was the third day, and she thought she should be used to it by now, but today’s vivid horror, which she had witnessed firsthand, brought a greater fear than the previous days.

Ermedeline felt as though she would faint from sheer panic, but she forced herself to face the battlefield and began casting the curse-lifting spell. Felio left only a brief nod before plunging into battle, as he usually did.

The signal was set: when Felio drew the red string from his chest and wrapped it around his hand, they would disappear from the battlefield during the fiercest fighting.

For that to happen, Ermedeline had to be close to the battlefield. If she stayed at a distance, only occasionally using curse magic, it would be impossible to evade the watchful eyes.

Step by step, Ermedeline moved closer to the battlefield, where life and death scattered like droplets of blood. The closer she got, the more vividly she could feel the hellish chaos.

‘Am I really going to abandon them?’

“Ahhhh!”

“Save me! Please, ahhhhh!”

“Priest! Priest! I don’t want to die yet!”

As she heard these raw, desperate cries, Ermedeline’s heart grew heavier.

‘Run away? Leave them behind? Survive alone?’

The guilt and sense of responsibility weighed so heavily on Ermedeline that she found it increasingly difficult to imagine leaving the battlefield.

‘I can’t. I can’t go. How could I go? I can’t do it.’

Even as tears streamed down her face, Ermedeline continued to channel her magic. The more curses she lifted, the easier it became for the soldiers to fight. Soon, the soldiers of Frianton began to retreat, forming a circle around Ermedeline.

Arvian, staying close to her and purifying curses as well, boosted the morale of their troops.

“Waahhh! Her Majesty the Empress is fighting with us! Push forward!”

Although she was a witch, the sight of the strongest mage and the nation’s empress fighting alongside them was enough to uplift the soldiers’ spirits.

Hearing their cheers, Ermedeline’s resolve to stay and fight grew stronger.

‘Yes. That’s it! I can do this! Lead this war to victory and leave proudly!’

***

Noctavinus, having received reports that the central temple was empty, found himself deep in thought. He had initially planned to visit the capital to resolve Arvian’s past issues. However, a meaningful vision from his dream last night had unsettled him.

In his dream, he saw the golden-haired Henry outside the palace, burning in the fiery inferno, shedding tears of blood. Upon waking, Noctavinus had immediately decided to head to the capital. But another dream soon followed, holding him back. In this vision, Ermedeline, with her jet-black hair as dark as a moonless night, lay in a pool of her own blood on a desolate red hill.

Noctavinus was torn. The gods had never given him meaningless dreams. A dream featuring both the emperor and empress was likely a crucial prophecy for the empire’s fate.

It was said that a noble named Leopold threatened the throne in the capital. Moreover, the priests from the central temple had all left this morning.

Of course, the border battlefield was also in a dire situation. The Grand Temple had been trying to increase support while dealing with the influx of refugees but could not afford to leave the area entirely, given its proximity to Frianton’s border.

While soldiers were stationed at the battlefield, the refugees here were all civilians.

“Are we still headed to the capital as planned?”

Noctavinus hesitated to answer the priest assisting him. The priest found this hesitation curious. Noctavinus was not a leader who imposed his opinions as absolute, but once he decided on a course of action, he pursued it with conviction. The capital, the emperor, and the empress at the border—all were critical. Any disturbance to their safety would have significant repercussions.

Standing at this crucial crossroads, Noctavinus looked up at the sky once more.

‘Why can’t you just tell me exactly where to go? Why do you always make it so confusing?’

In truth, despite his outward appearance, Noctavinus had never felt complete certainty in his choices. The prophecies were always ambiguous, leaving him to choose between several possibilities. Not being a deity, Noctavinus couldn’t foresee the future, leading to deep contemplation and eventual decisions swayed by his intuition. He constantly questioned his decisions.

The reason he appeared so confident was that, once he made a choice, he left the outcome in the hands of the gods. He did not trust his own judgment, but he had unwavering faith in the best intentions of the gods he had served all his life.

“We will go to the border.”

“What?”

There were already mages and priests from the Grand Temple at the border. However, the capital, contrary to Henry’s belief in its strong defenses, was entirely empty. The capital of the Trivian Empire, without mages or priests, was devoid of even the slightest divine protection.

Logically, it might have made more sense to go to the capital to protect Henry. But Noctavinus decided to trust his intuition. The gods would not have replaced that witch’s soul with one from another world for no reason.

“We’ll check the situation at the front lines and then head to the capital.”

“Ah, yes.”

The priest found Noctavinus’s choice puzzling but complied without question. Although the central temple had turned its back on him, many still followed him at the Grand Temple.

Meanwhile, Ermedeline, having regained her confidence, began to channel her overflowing magic with determination. She wanted to stabilize at least this front line today so that there would be no need for a cowardly retreat. As such, she was the first to sense the shift in the atmosphere on the battlefield.

Her heightened senses quickly identified the feeling.

A curse.

The same feeling she had encountered in the forest near the Grand Temple.

‘Could it be?’

Ermedeline raised her desperate eyes and looked around. The battlefield was still a horrifying scene of blood and flesh, with the deafening clash of metal and piercing screams creating a chaotic symphony. Amidst this chaos, Ermedeline sensed a very familiar, orderly flow of magic.

‘No! It can’t be! That’s impossible!’

She hurriedly tried to step back to survey the entire battlefield. However, escaping from the chaos was no easy task. Ermedeline had to cast the Curse of Decay on the soldiers of Frianton blocking her way to create an escape route. Arvian, noticing something, followed closely behind her.

‘No, no, it can’t be! This can’t be happening!’

A certain fact kept surfacing in Ermedeline’s mind, but she desperately wanted to deny it. Struggling to free herself from the battlefield, Ermedeline hurried up a high hill. Felio, in the midst of battle, instinctively realized something was wrong. She had left the front lines without the promised red string wound around her hand.

Other mages noticed her abrupt departure and assumed that the Empress, who had been fighting unusually well today, had fled once again.

“After her!”

At the command of a middle-aged mage, a young boy next to him started towards the hill where Ermedeline was heading. Since they had been supporting the battle from the rear, the boy did not face the same obstacles Ermedeline had to overcome to escape.

Contrary to what the mages and soldiers thought, Ermedeline wasn’t fleeing. She was heading to the highest point, where several mages were already positioned.

Once she reached the top, she looked out over the vast battlefield with a clear view. What she saw made her heart sink. A faintly glowing magic circle had become visible on the ground, almost obscured by corpses and pools of blood. The circle was absorbing the blood from the fallen soldiers, growing brighter and more ominous.

‘No…’

Ermedeline’s worst fears were coming true. She could sense the dark power emanating from the magic circle, a malevolent energy she recognized all too well.

From the higher vantage point, the full scale of the impending disaster became clear. The blood-fed magic circle was nearing completion, its glow intensifying as it drew more life force from the battlefield.