BXBX NOVEL Chapter 53 53 - To Betray, To Lie, To Confess
Crying out in agony, Asuka fell headlong against the ground. Cutting open a side of her skull, she bled not only from the pierced heart but also from her head as well.
"Asuka!" Yelling her name, Haruki turned to Riley with his eyes filled with rage. Having called off all his spies to unleash on Margarette he never saw Riley sneaking up behind them.
"Demonic spies get him!" Ordering the eyes to appear and attack Riley, Haruki rushed over to Asuka\'s bleeding body.
Pooling under her, the floor was soaked in her crimson-red blood. Ignoring the threat right behind him, Haruki began to cast healing touch on her, and while it did slow down the bleeding, Asuka\'s condition didn\'t seem to be getting better at all.
"M-master?" She mumbled, squinting her eyes and looking up at Haruki\'s face.
"Margarette, heal her!" Taking her hand in his own, he glared at Margarette and gave her the order.
Shell-shocked by the attack committed by her own stepson, Margarete was frozen in place, uncertain whether to heed Haruki\'s order or help Riley as an act of defiance. Glancing up at the throne, however, she couldn\'t find where Riley had gone.
"I\'m not letting you off either," whispering that into Margarette\'s ears, Riley sprang up behind her before kicking her towards Asuka and Haruki.
"I\'ve had enough!" He growled with hate-fueled scorn riding on his face. "I don\'t need Laria, I don\'t need you, and especially I don\'t need those two there either!"
Having fallen right by Asuka, as Margarette tried to get up her eye met with Haruki\'s. With a raging expression on his face, he too didn\'t seem too fond of keeping her alive either.
"Rejuvenation!" Scared for her life, she did as Haruki had commanded.
The very next instant, the bleeding stopped completely, and even the wound to her heart closed up as if nothing had pierced through it.
"Ughhh, why do you always have to do some dumb shi-" before Riley could finish his sentence, a protruding piece of vine coming out of Asuka\'s hands tied his hands together. "What the fuck?! First those eyeball monsters and now this?!"
"I should\'ve just killed you!" Attempting to get up, Asuka growled at Riley.
Having never seen them in their demonic form, Riley\'s confusion about their abilities continued to pile up. Keeping his head straight, however, he quickly came up with a plan to escape the binds.
"Blinding light!" Using one of the very few magic spells he knew, Riley sprang forth a dazzling light bright enough for Asuka to draw the creature back and cover her eyes.
Not wasting a second, Riley charged forward with his blade aiming straight for Haruki and the other.
"Stop!" Putting up a mana barrier, Margarette locked his sword with binding chains. "Don\'t do this, Riley, you don\'t want this…I know."
"You don\'t know shit!" Letting go of the sword he shot back. "This whole fucking mess is your doing, anyway, I never wanted that stupid duchy, or to kill this bastard, but!"
Forever in her mind, Margarette tried to convince herself that she was doing everything for the sake of her stepson, but now as he screamed to her face, it made her realize something that had somehow completely slipped through her mind.
"What do you mean?! I never did anything for me, it was all for you!" While Margarette yelled back at him, Riley took yet another sword out of his cape to defend himself from an icicle Haruki had just shot at him.
"You\'d have to do bett-" his attempt at mocking Haruki was cut short as the blade fell right out of his hands. Still managing to dodge it with a swift movement, he stood his ground. But that didn\'t last long either.
Being turned into a woman, his sexual organs weren\'t the things that had changed, along with them he had lost his muscles as well as the strength to carry the sword for long periods of time.
"Aghh! Why did you do this to me?" Fallen to the ground from exhaustion, he sat there on the floor grinding his teeth and glaring at the three.
"Riley, please you need to understand why I did all this for you!" Margarette murmured slowly walking towards him.
"Did he ever say he wanted those things?" Coming from behind her, Haruki\'s question gave her a halt.
Moments before, she realized that Riley never asked for the land of Laria nor did he want to lay a finger on Haruki, but forcing him towards a future he never wanted was none other than his own stepmother.
\'It can\'t be…I thought he would be happy to do it, that he\'d want more land to rule to show off his competence.\' Mentally broken and exhausted to the bone, Margarette too fell down to her knees.
"Even he gets it, I don\'t know how you didn\'t realize that you were just using me as an excuse to achieve your selfish desires," letting off a sarcastic chuckle, Riley breathed heavily while looking at his broken stepmother. "If it was truly the right thing for me then you\'d guided me instead of pointing my blade in whatever direction you deemed fit."
"Is it the throne?! Do you want it?! I\'ll hand it over to you!" In a desperate attempt to save their relationship, Margarette offered him everything.
"That is no longer yours to pass on," butting into the conversation, Haruki cut the deal short before Riley could even answer.
Glancing up, Riley looked at Haruki before turning to Asuka. The weird dynamic that was going on inside the room had left him confused before comprehension. Why were they asking so high and mighty? What was happening here before he arrived? And why was his stepmother acting subservient to the young duke? Those questions and many more like them popped into Riley\'s head.
"I don\'t care about being a ruler, I just wanna find who I am, and perhaps accept this decrepit body," looking down at himself, he once again realized that he had turned into a woman. Turning to look at Asuka, the alleged culprit for his strange condition, he asked for her help. "Can you reverse this? I never realized how hard it is to wear breastplates as a woman."
Her answer, wasn\'t an outright yes, after all being stabbed through the heart with a fencer wasn\'t something easy to forget, instead, she hummed a nod hoping to torture him some more before reversing his sex.
"To think I was fooling myself for so long…" Her hand rested on the floor, Margarette\'s eyes teared up.
"Don\'t repeat it, that\'s all I ask," having spent all his energy fighting the three, Riley was much more willing to accept a peaceful resolution.
"You still have to pay the price for almost killing Asuka," Haruki on the other hand had some other ideas. "So choose wisely, should I cut your head off right now since you can\'t move an inch or would you rather become my servant just like your stepmother?"
The question realistically had only one answer.