The Tyrant’s Guardian is an Evil Witch - Chapter 3

『Oh usurper, fate will place you in the noblest of seats and it will take away the most glorious person in your life. You shall lose your love and companion and are to wander in endless solitude for the rest of eternity…』

Clette clicked her tongue in distaste. What kind of curse was that? If it had been her, she would’ve cursed him with a life long disease or three generations of baldness.

Perhaps it was because of the novel’s genre that even the villain’s curse was sappy and cliche. Arpen must’ve also thought it was a ridiculous curse because he laughed in the face of Clette.

“Love? Do you really think I’d put stock in such a thing? I am, in fact, very grateful to you for your good wishes. A companion is but a nuisance who would cripple me to my enemies. Thank you for praying that my reign is one of stability, Grand Duchess.”

Arpen once again mutilated Clette’s body just to make sure she was dead and sat atop the throne of his father. His father whom he usurped. His father whom he killed.

After a few years, whilst he was on a hunting trip, Arpen was met by an ambush set up by those who opposed his reign. He had grown too confident in his own skills and was struck when he lowered his guard. It was the saintess heroine, Ophelia, who helped him in his predicament.

The two instantly fell for each other and continued to meet in secret afterward. But the moment Arpen whispered of his love to her… Clette’s curse was invoked.

Ophelia’s eyes were now opened to the cruel and merciless nature of Arpen. The heroine was naturally kind and was horrified to learn of her beloved’s ruthlessness. She ran away upon coming to her senses and Arpen was left longing, desperately searching for his vanished lover. Ophelia stayed firmly away and did not love Arpen to the bitter end of the novel. It was a bittersweet ending and Clette remembered focusing on this scene in particular.

‘Ah,’ thought Clette.

‘I really loved trashy romance novels.’

However, this was not the time to be fondly reminiscing about her love of trashy romance novels.

The little boy that heralded the coming of the disaster had finally appeared before her.

‘What should I do?’, she wondered.

She had transmigrated into this world far before any of the leading characters’ parents or grand-grand-parents had been born. Clette was naturally astounded by the fact that she transmigrated into a character who eventually dies at the hands of the main lead, but she relaxed when she found out she had 200 years until the birth of the leading characters. She then started living a life of leisure in her ice castle under the pretext of ‘waiting’ for the rest of the cast to be conceived.

In those years she spent ‘waiting’, Clette completely forgot what she had to do to avoid her death. It was such a long period of time that it wasn’t strange if an empire was formed or destroyed. In addition to that, the concept of time itself was often lost at Velos where there were no seasons, only snow, to indicate that time had passed.

It was a situation where her knowledge of the plot was lost to time as she lived a carefree life.

Up until the little boy’s arrival on her doorstep, she had no idea what was happening, but after a while, some of her oldest memories flared up and enlightened her. Clette’s abrupt realization completely blindsided her, as for the past couple of centuries, all she had been doing was playing around in her castle and eating. She had absolutely zero countermeasures.

Clette herself might, after all, be laid to rest in some years.

She felt a lot of sympathy seeing the frozen child so she brought him inside. She was definitely going to regret this a lot. Clette flung away a half-read letter and sank into a chair.

The letter was basically asking Clette to take guardianship of the little boy and listed the compensation she would be receiving. She glared at the red and black imperial crest in anger.