I Held the Leash of a Blind Beast (1 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 14
“No! Lord Illeon! You mustn’t drink it!”
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
Rona found herself opening her mouth without realizing it. Illeon, who had downed the last drop in one go, took the cup from her hand and set it on the floor.
Illeon’s hand traveled up Rona’s hand, arm, and shoulder until it reached her face. With his own hand, he gently wiped away her tear-streaked cheeks.
“Don’t cry.”
“But—but what if you drink that?”
“Didn’t you bring it for me?”
Rona burst into tears.
“Well… I think I made it wrong. I knew someone who could make it properly, but they said they couldn’t help me. Sob… I tried doing it alone…”
Overwhelmed by sorrow, Rona choked up. Illeon kept using his fingers to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks, again and again.
“It’s fine. Didn’t I say I’d drink anything you brought me with all my heart?”
“But still…”
“Your thoughtfulness alone is enough for me.”
When Illeon smiled happily, Rona felt her heart ache even more.
“I’ll find something better.”
Wiping her tears, Rona declared stubbornly.
“There must be something out there.”
Understanding the omitted subject, Illeon nodded.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
She thought the matter of the herbal tea had been settled.
[This is the timeline separator]Back in the Crystal Palace, Sabiel tilted his wine glass.
“What did that Illeon bastard say?”
As he slammed the glass down roughly in irritation, high-proof liquor splashed in all directions around it.
Crown Prince Sabiel Oder Constance—he was a man unworthy of his name.
The Constance Empire boasted a long history. Among its founding legends, the most important tale was that Emperor Oder, its first ruler, ascended to godhood upon his death.
After Emperor Oder passed away, a grand funeral was held in his honor, befitting the empire’s founder.
Yet a year later, when the court emerged from mourning, an oracle descended upon the temple: Emperor Oder had become a god after death, just as he had foretold in life.
When they returned to the tomb where the emperor had been laid to rest, his body had vanished. Strangely enough, it rained every year on the day the emperor became a god—a message, people believed, sent by the emperor who loved his people.
After becoming a god, Emperor Oder left several messages through the temple. He declared that in future generations, a child resembling him would be born into the imperial family.
Indeed, from then on, among each emperor’s children, one boy with black hair and red eyes was born. That child would invariably awaken the talents of a Swordmaster.
The Constance Empire was a nation ruled by divine descendants. Though two millennia had passed since its founding and the world had changed beyond recognition, not once had rebellion or succession disputes occurred—thanks to the unwavering message of its founding myth.
Being a descendant of the gods meant that the child chosen by the deity would become emperor. Since only one boy with black hair and red eyes was born each generation, birth order—whether firstborn or second—mattered not; that child inherited the throne. But Sabiel was not the one chosen by the gods.
Rev Oder Constance was an imperial princess, yet she was born with the very traits of black hair and red eyes. When she gave birth to a cousin three years her junior, young Sabiel felt as if his entire world had crumbled.
“How could this happen?”
“This is the first time ‘that Oder’ has been born in a cadet branch.”
“Then what becomes of His Highness the Crown Prince?”
He had been too young to fully grasp what was happening, but he clearly sensed it boded ill for him.
His father the emperor’s cold gaze.
His mother the empress’s unceasing tears.
Every time he looked in the mirror, he liked his eyes—blue like the lofty sky. After all, the sky was the highest place in this world. Wasn’t blue the perfect color for someone as noble as himself?
Yet for an ‘Oder,’ it was a forbidden hue.
It wasn’t Sabiel’s fault—he’d simply been born that way. Treated as defective, he grew bitter. The first Emperor Oder becoming a god? What a ridiculous tale.
Sabiel began to believe the tomb had been robbed, even of the body. He befriended a group of upstart nobles who revered science like a faith and shut their ears to theology. Wealthy and at odds with the old aristocracy, these nobles constantly petitioned the emperor to adopt Illeon Clevent—the undefeated former Knight-Captain—as his heir and bestow upon him the name ‘Oder.’
Sabiel despised them for refusing to acknowledge his nobility. He was the sole legitimate heir of the current emperor, the rightful crown prince. It was those outdated nobles, clinging to the obsolete relic ‘Oder,’ who had crossed the line and broken the rules first.
Thus, he devised a plan to ruin Illeon—the very man they clung to like a lifeline. The curse that stole Illeon’s sight wasn’t poison, but something akin to dark sorcery. There was only one way to restore his vision—and even that antidote lay firmly in Sabiel’s hands. Illeon would remain buried in eternal darkness.
Sabiel was satisfied with this outcome. When reports came that the blind duke had fallen into despair and lived like a beast, he spent a fortune spreading rumors across the empire of the “Blind Beast.” Day by day, tales of the fallen hero grew stronger. Sabiel took perverse pleasure in transforming Illeon from a figure to be revered into a pitiful wretch.
No more petitions regarding Illeon reached the emperor. Even the disapproving glances questioning whether Sabiel should inherit the name ‘Oder’ had vanished.
Lately, Sabiel felt truly alive.
“But it’s oddly irritating.”
He hadn’t intended to provoke Illeon so blatantly in public.
Yet seeing Illeon gently caressing fabrics meant for dresses under the bright sunlight, his expression soft, left a foul taste in Sabiel’s mouth.
He’d shoved him deep into the mud—how dare he already crawl back up and poke his head out?
Illeon looked calm and happy. Indeed, astonishingly, his face was filled with contentment and joy.
I’ve never once known happiness or satisfaction—how dare someone like you?
“I should’ve seen that woman’s face.”
If the once-proud Illeon Clevent, now blind, had attached himself to some insignificant woman, it would have made perfect gossip.
Sabiel summoned his aide.
“You called for me?”
“So Illeon Clevent has a woman.”
Even his aide’s eyes widened in shock. Illeon was famously distant from women—so much so that among the capital’s noble ladies, he’d once been called an impregnable fortress. No one had ever succeeded in dating him.
“Look into it. Find out who she is. Which noble family’s daughter? Or perhaps she’s even a commoner.”
“I shall carry out your orders.”
Sabiel picked up his wine glass.
Every time he recalled Illeon’s smiling face, his stomach twisted in disgust.
That night, no matter how much he drank, Sabiel couldn’t get drunk.
[This is the timeline separator]The incident happened in the dead of night.
“Aaargh!”
Illeon’s agonized scream jolted everyone in the ducal mansion awake. The first to rush into his room, Rona saw Illeon writhing in pain, blood smeared near his eyes.
Vivid streaks of fresh blood stained the pristine white sheets and pillow.
“Aaah! My eyes!”
Unable to endure even a moment longer, Illeon clawed violently at the area around his eyes.
Rona couldn’t collect herself. She’d never seen anyone suffer so terribly.
“Step aside, Miss Rona.”
The butler and several servants stepped forward past her, trembling in shock.
“There should still be some plain cloth left. Go fetch it.”
Bernar calmly tried to give Illeon a sedative.
“Grrraaahh…”
But the strength difference was too great—Illeon bit down hard on the arm Bernar had wrapped around his neck to hold his head still.
Drip.
Blood seeped through the butler’s white shirt sleeve and quickly dripped onto the floor. When those sent to fetch long strips of cloth returned as Bernar instructed, they swiftly bound Illeon’s limbs to the bed, rendering him immobile.
It was a pitiful sight. Shocked by the brutal violence, Rona covered her mouth and could only weep. The butler and men moved with such practiced coordination—it couldn’t have been their first or second time handling this.
“Aaagh! Ugh! Uuugh!”
The butler skillfully rolled a towel into a ball and shoved it into Illeon’s mouth.
“Mmmph! Grrrgh!”
Each time Illeon thrashed convulsively, the bed frame groaned as if about to break.
After tearing a long strip from the remaining white cloth to staunch the bleeding on his bitten arm, the butler called to Rona.
“Let’s talk for a moment, Miss Rona.”
[This is the timeline separator]There was an enormous amount of work to manage in the ducal mansion.
Despite his youth and short experience, Bernar had become the duke’s butler early on solely through his exceptional competence. With no lady of the house yet to oversee affairs, his responsibilities seemed endless.
Aside from the bedroom, he maintained a separate office to handle various duties. In that very office—where she’d only been during her interview—Rona now sat dazed, staring blankly at the teacup before her.
“You must be quite shaken.”
“…Yes.”
Rona clasped her cold, tingling hands together and rubbed them.
“Aren’t you surprised, Butler?”
Even he looked unusually pale. Moreover, the arm he’d treated after cutting away his sleeve with scissors—bitten so fiercely—had only just stopped bleeding after a long struggle to staunch the flow.
“It’s happened fairly often.”
Though speaking calmly, worry clouded the butler’s eyes.
“This kind of thing… happened often? I’ve never seen it before.”
If Illeon experienced this frequently, it couldn’t possibly be Rona’s first time witnessing it.
“That is… before you began working at the mansion. Long before.”
Bernar’s eyes reddened as old memories resurfaced.
“His Grace always suffered terrible agony whenever he attempted to treat his eyes.”
Rona’s eyes widened. Bernar seemed pained merely recalling the event. Unlike his calm demeanor while restraining the duke to the bed, the butler now looked deeply distressed.
Illeon had returned to the mansion wounded in his eyes from his final battle. He hadn’t immediately turned beastly. On the contrary, Illeon—steeped to the bone in knightly virtue—had been tormented by the thought that as Knight-Captain, he’d dimmed the victorious light offered to the empire.
Thus, he tried every possible remedy—medicines, foods, everything—to heal his eyes.
That was when these symptoms began.
“He described it as a pain like his eyeballs were being gnawed from the inside out. Sometimes he said it felt as if his eyes were being seared with fire.”
Terrible agony had engulfed Illeon. For months, nearly every day, he endured this torment yet never gave up hope of regaining his sight.
Eventually, after exhausting every last possible method, he finally escaped the endless pain—but it wasn’t peace he found. Unable to discover a way back to how things once were, the man fell into despair.
“It was harder to watch His Grace suffer such pain—so intense he wanted to tear his own eyes out—than to accept that he could no longer see.”
Moreover, each day was torture of hope. Would that medicine work? Might this treatment finally succeed? Just endure once more—just once—and perhaps he’d never have to suffer this long, tunnel-like agony again.
A thin tear slipped from the corner of the butler’s eye, a man who revered his master as the heavens themselves.
Rona felt as if her heart would break.
‘Ask the butler. There should be records organizing all the medicinal ingredients used in treatments. If there’s something we haven’t tried yet, I’ll drink it.’
Now she understood why Illeon had emphasized “something we haven’t tried.” Knowing it would bring horrific pain, no one would dare drink a remedy they’d already tested. That must be why everything had been so meticulously documented.
‘Don’t set your hopes too high. But if it’s something you bring me, Rona, I’ll drink it wholeheartedly.’
He’d suffered so terribly—and yet he’d said he’d drink whatever she gave him? How could he trust her so blindly, without even knowing what she’d offer?
“Just what medicine did I give His Grace?”
Male lead is a Love-Obsessed Merman
When he discovers she has gone, he risks everything to pursue her on land, enduring agonizing pain to transform his tail into human legs…
One-line summary: Male lead chases female lead. The male lead’s love is a bit sick, an invincible love brain.
Synopsis
During a voyage at sea, Jiang Yang accidentally captures a merman.
Servant: I heard that mermen are fierce and brutal.
Jiang Yang looks at the merman obediently rubbing her palm like a puppy: “You call this fierce and brutal?”
Servant: I heard that mermen have no human nature.
Jiang Yang looks at the merman with wet puppy eyes, obsessively calling her ‘A Yang’ like a childish infant: “You call this having no human nature?”
With great difficulty, she releases the merman back into the sea and returns to shore.
Who would have thought that in less than half a month, the merman, who should have been freely wandering in the South China Sea, would shed his scales, endure the pain of losing his tail, transform into human legs, and come ashore to find her?
He kneels at her feet, rubbing her palm, with merman tears rolling down: “A Yang, don’t abandon me.”
_____
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Haha, just picturing this is so hilarious. Imagine Duke Illeon fan girling.
The real blind guy is here; calling someone else’s woman his 😂