I Was Just Having Fun With The Time Limit – Chapter 134

Chapter 134

Ordinary soldiers couldn’t see what was happening.

They could only see the Emperor disappearing and reappearing in a flash of light.

“Hey, Lucain, is what I’m seeing normal? Something keeps flashing? I’m seeing afterimages.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘afterimages,’ but I don’t know either.”

“Right? It’s just 퍽퍽 (thwack), 윽윽 (groan), flash, 스윽 (whoosh), 쾅! (bang), isn’t it?”

퍽윽번슥쾅! (Thwack-groan-flash-whoosh-bang!)

The expression was strange.

However, the soldiers couldn’t find any other suitable words to describe the current situation.

Ron spoke to Sermon, who had collapsed.

“Do you admit defeat?”

“No.”

Sermon got up again.

And the same thing happened again.

“Do you admit defeat?”

“N…… no.”

The same situation repeated several times.

“Do you admit defeat?”

“N……”

Thud!

Sermon collapsed.

He could no longer continue the duel.

Armitel, who was mediating the duel, threw herself to protect Sermon.

“The duel is over. The winner is His Majesty the Emperor.”

“No. The winner is Isabel.”

“……That’s correct. Since you entered the duel as the Black Knight, the victory belongs to Princess Isabel-nim.”

It was unclear whether this could be called a duel, but in any case, the duel was over.

Ron spoke to Sermon, who had collapsed and couldn’t get up.

“The loser shall pay respects to the winner.”

Sermon, gasping for breath, barely managed to reply, “I understand.”

Confirming his answer, Ron nodded and turned around.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

Isabel hugged Serna tightly.

“I’m sad that you’re leaving already.”

The Emperor and Empress had to return as soon as the duel was over.

They said they had a mountain of work to do.

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault for complaining and making you come all the way here when you’re busy.”

Serna smiled softly.

“Won’t you complain a little more?”

“……”

“I’m serious.”

“……Really?”

Serna was serious.

In fact, other than Isabel, the other princes had never complained to Serna.

They didn’t need her like Isabel did.

The princes were much more focused on honing their swordsmanship.

‘The other children have never acted like this.’

Serna always felt sorry for her children.

That’s why she felt bad about approaching them first when she had time.

She was afraid that it would seem like she was meeting them because she had time, not because she wanted to spend time with them.

The children didn’t really need their mother, and the mother couldn’t readily approach them, and a lot of time passed by like that.

No matter how she rationalized it, she couldn’t be a good mother.

That’s what she had thought until now.

“Thanks to Isabel, I’m learning a lot too.”

Isabel was a little different.

She always wanted to see her mother and spend time with her.

Through that, Serna was realizing a lot of things.

‘My children need me.’

The other children didn’t need their mother’s love, they just didn’t know how to ask for it.

Thanks to Isabel, Serna was gradually realizing that.

I may be an unqualified mother, I may have been like this until now, I may have been a truly bad mother, but can’t I be a little better, just a little bit, in the future?

She saw a tiny sliver of hope.

“What if I whine every day that I miss you?”

“Then I’ll come see you every day.”

“Tsk, lies.”

A detailed schedule of Serna’s bedtime, work hours, and other activities, as well as the travel time using the TeyIsabel Transfer Gate, flashed through her mind.

Serna’s words were realistically impossible.

“Then I’ll send your father instead.”

“Father?”

“Your father doesn’t really know how to do anything other than swing a sword. And when your father attends meetings, people get so scared that they can’t even express their opinions. So he’s not really helpful in running the country.”

She badmouthed the Emperor in front of the Emperor.

Only Empress Serna could say such a thing.

Feeling awkward, Isabel changed the subject.

“B-but Father is busy practicing swordsmanship.”

Actually, that was the main job of the Emperor of the Bilotian Empire.

Serna smiled softly.

“Your father is the strongest person in the world, even without practicing swordsmanship.”

At those words, Ron’s ears turned slightly red.

Ron suffered from the ‘disease of only reacting to his wife’s compliments, but being flustered by them,’ and as Isabel looked back and forth between Serna and Ron, she realized once again.

‘Mother is the real power.’

Before Ron and Serna left, Isabel said,

“Please tell older brother Sermon too.”

✦✦✦✦✦✦

The next day.

Isabel visited Sermon’s tent.

“Older brother. Are you feeling better?”

“You made sure to avoid hitting my vital points.”

His entire body, including his face, was wrapped in bandages.

He looked like a mummy, with only one eye barely visible.

Even with the priest’s treatment, he would need at least a few days of rest.

Isabel sat down on Sermon’s bed.

“Sadness is like that.”

“What do you mean?”

Sermon was openly discriminated against.

At a single letter from his daughter, he dropped everything and came to discipline his son.

In front of hundreds of soldiers, no less.

Moreover, even after the duel, he visited Isabel’s tent first, not Sermon’s, and only comforted Isabel.

Isabel thought Sermon would naturally be sad.

She didn’t know if it was the right way, but she wanted to teach her older brother, who hadn’t learned sadness, about that emotion.

“I’m feeling very good.”

“……You’re feeling good?”

“Yes.”

Sermon slowly raised himself.

“You can sense other people’s emotions through mana, right?”

Sermon raised his arm and extended his hand to Isabel.

His arm trembled from his severe injuries.

“Hold it.”

“……”

Isabel took Sermon’s fingertips.

Emotions were transmitted through mana.

“Y-you’re right?”

It seemed like the emotion of sadness didn’t exist in this person from the beginning.

Isabel was a little confused.

“Why are you so happy?”

“Because Father disciplined me. Mercilessly.”

“……I saw that too.”

It wasn’t a duel, it was a beating.

That’s why Sermon was in this state now.

“Actually, I’ve never properly crossed swords with Father. Even when I attacked Father with genuine killing intent, he always took it easy on me.”

Isabel silently listened to Sermon’s words.

The emotion she felt from Sermon’s fingertips was still joy.

“Mother always cherished me, no matter what I did.”

It was a story from his childhood.

When Serna visited the Bladock Dukedom and met Sermon.

“Every time, I would torment the servants. I think I did a lot of strange things, especially. It got increasingly cruel.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really know why. I just wanted to do it.”

Isabel thought she understood.

Why Sermon did those bizarre things.

He said he didn’t hesitate to do things that were cruel to the point of being difficult to describe in detail.

‘He must have wanted to get Mother’s attention even just once more.’

He was sent to the Bladock Dukedom and raised there from birth.

Sermon had never been a son, not even once in his life.

From the moment he was born, he was not a son, but the future ‘First Shadow.’

‘The Bilotian Imperial Family, who don’t give love to their princes and just make them compete for succession……’

When she read it in the novel, she just thought it was how it was.

But actually living in it, she thought it was a cruel place for the princes.

“But Mother never scolded me, not even once. I thought that was normal.”

But as time passed, his younger siblings were born.

Michael, in particular, was a troublemaker in many ways.

“Mother saw Michael kick a knight’s shin and scolded him harshly.”

“……”

“I envied that so much.”

Sermon smiled softly and asked Isabel,

“Why do you think Mother only scolded Michael and not me?”

“I don’t think it’s because she doesn’t love older brother Sermon.”

“I don’t really know what love is. But I know that Mother is a very good person. She was the only one who opposed me being sent to the Bladock Dukedom.”

“……”

“Mother did that because she felt sorry for me.”

Serna lives with a great debt to her children.

If she had to choose the children she felt most sorry for, it would be Kaman and Sermon.

It was Serna’s busiest time when Kaman was young, and she couldn’t spend time with Sermon from the beginning.

“She felt so sorry that she just hugged me, no matter how big a mistake I made, no matter how bad a thing I did. Father didn’t seem to care much, though.”

“Older brother, did you hate that?”

“I think I did.”

Sermon wished his mother wouldn’t feel sorry for him.

“Mother seemed very uncomfortable whenever she saw me. Maybe that’s what you call sadness.”

He understood being uncomfortable, but he didn’t deeply understand the feeling of sadness itself.

“But I hated that look. I don’t know why.”

“That’s because you hated seeing Mother suffer because of you.”

Sermon thought for a moment and then nodded.

“Maybe so.”

“That’s sadness.”

“……”

He still couldn’t understand it exactly.

But he suddenly felt that this time, talking with Isabel, was warm.

‘Why am I talking about this with this child?’

He didn’t know himself.

Come to think of it, he didn’t think he had ever opened up and talked to anyone like this before.

Isabel’s voice came.

“So I think older brother wanted to be scolded. Maybe it felt like proof that Mother wasn’t feeling sorry for you.”

And maybe Father understood that feeling and scolded you even more severely.

She didn’t say that last part.

Instead, she said something different.

“I’m upset.”

Isabel understood that deprivation manifests in many forms.

It was true for herself, for Kaman, and for Sermon as well.

Sermon’s strange behavior seemed to be evidence of that deprivation.

“About what?”

“Who gets happy after being scolded like that?”

Just as being healthy and not sick can be a joy to someone.

Just being scolded by one’s parents can be a joy to someone.

Isabel tightened her grip on Sermon’s hand.

“Then leave it to me from now on.”

“What?”

“I’ll scold older brother properly.”

Isabel stood up.

She put her hands on her hips and glared playfully.

“If older brother does something strange again, I’ll scold you really hard. You might even cry later because it’s so scary. I’m seriously warning you.”

“What?”

Sermon chuckled.

“Why are you laughing? I’m serious right now. I’m really going to scold you hard. You might really cry later. I’m seriously warning you.”