“Dangerous, Bella!”
“Huh…?”
Thud.
When I came to, I was sprawled on the ground, pushed away by Raven.
He had taken Lina’s attack for me.
“Raven!”
Startled, I quickly ran to him. Raven winced and clutched his shoulder.
A purple aura began to seep out from the long slash wound.
He was poisoned.
“Raven! Are you alright?”
“Guhh…”
Lowering my head for a closer look, I saw Raven’s leg was already severely injured.
He had deliberately stepped in to protect me with his battered body.
“That woman is not an easy opponent. She’s using some kind of illusion.”
Only then did I realize that my spell had not fully affected Lina.
I had confirmed that her upper body and part of her face had been frozen, but now I saw that only a small amount of ice had stuck to her clothes; she was unharmed.
‘I was too careless.’
Unlike the previous intruder, who was easy to toy with, she was a highly skilled assassin.
If she had skillfully deceived people’s eyes and infiltrated this far, she was likely a highly trained assassin.
‘But… why did she target Raven and not me?’
Though she muttered to herself, Lina had clearly said, ‘Now that it has come to this, I have no choice but to kill both of you.’
That meant she had initially intended to eliminate only Raven tonight.
The fact that she had gone through the effort to create a fake identity and infiltrate the Rose Palace just to get rid of Raven was difficult to understand.
Lina muttered with a disappointed expression, seemingly finding it hard to accept the situation as well.
“Rescuing the princess, unexpected. Did you pity her as you were being used?”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear that from the likes of you.”
“I thought you were a stray, but it seems you’re more like a hunting dog. Disappointing.”
Frustrated by her incomprehensible words, Raven furrowed his eyebrows.
I gritted my teeth, noticing Raven’s bleeding was getting worse.
There was no more time to waste.
“Attack now. We have to heal Raven.”
“You’re confident, princess.”
“Don’t underestimate me. I won’t be careless now.”
“Will luck favor you this time?!”
As soon as she finished speaking, spells flew out from between Lina’s fingers.
Not just one, but several.
“Raven, duck!”
Tap-tap-tap!
Dozens of spells were frozen solid by the invisible ice shield I summoned.
The next moment, Lina’s figure multiplied, charging towards me.
She had used illusion.
‘Which one is real?’
It wasn’t about magical power or a strange vibe felt during the day.
This was a form of martial arts, discernible only by those with excellent kinesthetic vision.
Therefore, Raven, with his superior physical abilities compared to regular demons, was able to determine her location.
“Right!”
The moment Raven shouted, I instinctively reached to the right.
A life-and-death moment within a few seconds.
I was able to catch the most vivid of the illusions.
‘That’s the one!’
Sharp pieces of ice, summoned from the tips of my small fingers, flew like arrows towards her.
Whoosh. One of Lina’s multiple illusions distorted its face.
As I expected, the attack had hit her true form precisely.
“How… how could…”
Seemingly confident in her illusion skills, Lina couldn’t believe her eyes.
Although shards of ice were stuck in her shoulder and abdomen, her expression was more of disbelief in her own failure rather than of pain.
“Until now, no one ever discovered it. How could a little princess like you…”
“Heh, maybe you should get a taste of your own medicine.”
As I grinned and took a step closer to her, the sound of people rushing from the outside began to fill the air.
People belatedly realized the intruder’s presence as shards of ice brought down part of the building.
“Damn it.”
Rina muttered a soft curse through gritted teeth.
Then, for a moment, she glanced in the direction where Raven and I were, and soon after, billows of smoke began to rise around her.
“What the hell?!”
Where do you think you’re going?!
Just as I was about to cast a spell to capture the increasingly blurry Rina,
Raven grabbed my wrist and hastily covered my nose and mouth with his sleeve.
“Don’t breathe! It’s poisonous gas.”
Gasp, poison?
Unprepared with a detoxification spell, I quickly covered my mouth with both hands.
As the surroundings completely fogged up, Raven hugged me tightly, curling himself up.
It was as if he was willing to inhale the poison himself, just to protect me.
‘My eyes and nose are stinging…’
Just like someone had recklessly sprinkled hot pepper powder, I found myself coughing, but the more I did, the tighter Raven hugged me.
So tightly I could hardly breathe.
“Princess Bella! Princess Bella! Where are you!”
Sione’s voice echoed from nearby.
At that moment, a magic spell I had once learned from her flashed through my mind.
“Bella, this is wind magic. It’s not particularly destructive compared to other magic, but if you become proficient, it can be used for various purposes.”
“Huh… like what?”
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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