"Faster! Move faster, you bastard Benjamin!!"
"Y-Young Master! Your esteemed body will be harmed! The wheelchair wheels look like they'll break!"
The grand central staircase of the Rothschild Ducal residence.
I was hanging halfway unconscious from the wheelchair my personal butler Benjamin was driving like a madman, descending to the first floor.
Every time we moved, from the shoulder blade that had been stabbed by the dagger all the way to my solar plexus, a terrible pain akin to being sawed apart by a chainsaw assaulted my entire body.
My breath hitched, and a bitter, bloody fluid pooled in my mouth as if my esophagus were inflamed.
[Warning! The body's fatigue level has reached its limit!]
[Life force: Maintaining at 8%. Absolute rest is required.]
'Rest my ass! If I'm even one minute late right now, this mansion is going to blow up!'
In the original story, Sylvia von Kraus is the only granddaughter of the Northern Archmage and a monster who wields ice-attribute 7th-circle magic.
And Ellara, who just moments ago drew her sword and went downstairs declaring she would kidnap me, is the Empire's youngest Swordmaster.
If those two lunatics—top-tier existences in this world—clash in the first-floor parlor?
The Ducal House's parlor would naturally be reduced to ashes, and under the pretext that his granddaughter had been harmed, Kraus Magic Tower and the Rothschild Ducal House would plunge into all-out war.
Far from my comfortable recuperation plan, it was obvious I'd get caught up in a war and die like a mayfly.
"Over there, the parlor! Open the door!"
Bang-!!
Benjamin roughly stopped the wheelchair and kicked open the great double doors of the parlor.
And the scene that unfolded before my eyes was hell itself.
"……From where does a bug-like knight bitch dare block my path? Your master vomited blood and collapsed, and it seems the servants of this manor have forgotten even their manners."
The parlor's temperature had plummeted to below zero, as if the north wind of deep winter were blowing.
Sharp ice crystals had sprouted over the luxurious Persian carpet and the chandelier, and in the very center, a dazzling blonde beauty in a pitch-black dress—
Sylvia von Kraus—was emitting a bone-chilling coldness.
And on the opposite side.
"Do not speak of my liege, you Magic Tower rat."
Ellara, clad in black leather armor, was slowly approaching Sylvia, diagonally pointing a longsword flickering with a blue aura.
Not an ounce of reason remained in her silver-gray eyes. They held only killing intent that looked ready to sever Sylvia's throat at any moment.
"Ellara!! Put that sword away right now!!"
I screamed out as if shrieking, my voice mixed with bloody fluid.
At that moment, the gazes of the two women, frozen in a hair-trigger standoff, simultaneously snapped toward me at the parlor entrance.
"……Y-Young Master?"
Ellara's eyes shook violently.
"……Cailan del Rothschild."
Sylvia also spotted me and fiercely furrowed her brow.
However, her arrogant expression, after scanning my haggard figure slumped in the wheelchair from top to bottom, soon stiffened rigidly in shock.
And for good reason—I looked no different from a corpse.
Pale, bloodless skin, dark circles carved deeply down to under my eyes, dark red blood seeping over the bandages every time I drew a labored breath,
and thin fingers trembling as if they would snap at any moment.
The 'healthy golden-spoon villain' who used to seek Sylvia out to harass her and smirk in the original story was nowhere to be seen.
"You…… just why do you look like that? Was the rumor about you being stabbed by a poisoned dagger not an exaggeration?"
Sylvia asked in a flustered voice, forgetting her usual sarcastic tone and slowly withdrawing her ice magic.
But before I could answer, Ellara ran over like a madwoman and blocked the front of the wheelchair.
"My liege! Why would you bring that esteemed body all the way down here! I was about to cut down every last bit of racket this vulgar mage was barking!"
Ellara tried to bury her face in my lap with a wretched expression, as if she would burst into tears at any moment.
'Ah, you crazy bitch, get away! Sylvia will misunderstand!'
I startled and forcibly pushed Ellara's shoulder away.
"Step aside. How dare you swing a sword in front of my guest? I believe I told you not to embarrass the Ducal House."
I caught my panting breath and glared at Sylvia, equipping myself with the coldest villainous gaze I could manage.
"So. What wind blows the princess of the Magic Tower, who should be tucked away in a corner of the North, all the way to this shabby South? Surely you didn't come to hold my funeral rites in advance."
At my sneering, Sylvia seemed to finally come to her senses, regaining her characteristic arrogant expression. She straightened her back and crossed her arms.
"Yes. Your voice is dying, but fortunately that ill-fated tongue of yours is intact. I'll get straight to the point, Cailan. I came to break off my engagement with you."
"……What?"
Sylvia pulled out a document stamped with gold leaf from her bosom and flicked it onto the table.
"The news that you nearly got assassinated reached the Magic Tower. My grandfather suggested we take this opportunity to settle this unpleasant engagement with the Rothschilds.
I, too, had absolutely no intention of being tied down for life with irredeemable trash like you."
Nice! Long live grandfather!
Inside, I wanted to breakdance. In this crazy harem ecosystem, there was no reason to refuse when one of the heroines who might kill me was voluntarily dropping out.
'Yes. I'll stamp it right away. Let's break it off!'
The very moment I tried to open my mouth in joy.
[Warning! A sudden quest has occurred!]
[Cailan del Rothschild is a villain with extreme arrogance who would never hand over or have his 'possessions' taken by another's hand.]
[Condition: Refuse Sylvia von Kraus's request to annul the engagement and imprint her position as your fiancée.]
[Failure Penalty: Sharp decrease of life force by 5% and danger of cardiac arrest.]
'You son of a bitch!!'
My soul screamed, shedding tears of blood. If 5% gets cut from 8% life force, I'm really going to the grave. I was now trapped in a terrible dilemma where I had to kick away my own lifeline—the annulment—with my own feet.
"……K-kuk. Hahahahaha!"
I disguised the absurd, bursting laughter as the mad cackling of a villain and threw my head back.
Laughing forcibly caused another coughing fit, and black blood trickled down between my lips.
"Young Master!!"
Ellara screamed and tried to wipe my blood away with her bare hand, but I irritably swatted her hand aside.
I reached out with a hand stained with fresh bloodstains and picked up the annulment document thrown onto the table.
I could see Sylvia's blue eyes trembling minutely as she looked at the blood on my hand.
"Annulment? The Kraus Magic Tower dares to notify me, Cailan del Rothschild, of a separation?"
Riiip-!
On the spot, I tore the annulment document stamped with the noble house's crest in half.
"C-Cailan! Just what do you think you're doing!"
Sylvia shouted in shock.
I flicked the torn pieces of the document toward Sylvia's feet, gripping the wheelchair's armrest tightly as I leaned my upper body toward her diagonally.
"Don't get the wrong idea, Sylvia. I'm the only one who can cut my leash. Whether you call me trash or flee to the North…… until you die, you're my fiancée."
[Status: You have perfectly proven the 'Dignity of a Villain'! Penalty waived.]
I barely survived. I let out a sigh of relief inwardly, but outwardly maintained the eyes of a beast devoid of blood or tears.
"Until I grow tired of you and cut that pretty neck myself, don't you dare think of leaving my side without my permission. Understood?"
Silence.
Sylvia alternated between looking at the torn document pieces and me, spewing mad words while bleeding. Her face should have been pale with anger.
She should have stabbed icicles into my face right then.
But instead.
"You……."
Sylvia's blue eyes were shaking deeply, like a scholar who had discovered an enormous unknown stone she could not comprehend.
(Sylvia's Internal Auto-Translation)
'That man is in so much pain he could drop dead at any moment. And yet, the moment he heard I had come,
he came down by force, spitting blood, to protect me from Ellara's blade. Moreover…… even while dying like this, he says he won't let me go?
Enduring all that infamy and hatred…… for me……?'
Sylvia's lips trembled. On her pale cheeks that were always like frost, a faint blush she had never shown before began to spread.
"Cailan. Just why…… did you go so far……."
All hostility vanished from her voice. Instead, intense confusion and an inexplicable, sticky mixture of love and hate began to ooze out.
'Huh? Hey, what's with your expression? Why are you looking at me with such moist eyes? I told you to curse me! Call me trash and go back!!'
It was when I was plunged into a mental breakdown, screaming internally, that,
Srrrk.
Ellara, who had been kneeling beside my wheelchair, slowly turned her head to look up at Sylvia.
Ellara's empty silver-gray eyes were unleashing the worst 'wariness' and 'killing intent' toward Sylvia imaginable.
"……If my liege desires it so much that he would spit blood, it cannot be helped."
Ellara muttered lowly and gripped the longsword's hilt as if to crush it.
"But, the day you inflict even a speck of a wound upon my liege's heart…… then I will truly tear your limbs apart. Mage."
"Ha, interesting."
Sylvia, not to be outdone by Ellara's killing intent, twisted up the corner of her lips while emitting a cold flurry from her eyes.
"You're wagging your tail like a dog on a leash beside another person's fiancé, so don't bark so impudently. He's not a man someone like you can protect."
Sparks flew.
The Swordmaster's killing intent and the 7th-circle mage's mana collided in the air of the parlor, vibrating as if to tear space apart.
And me, caught in the middle of that killing intent from the two strongest beings in the world setting,
……just wanted to sew my mouth shut and bite my tongue right then and there.
I stopped the annulment, and now my hostile fiancée has fallen for me.
And the yandere knight who tried to imprison me has now become a ticking time bomb waiting only for a chance to kill my fiancée.
A peaceful recuperation life for a terminally-ill villain?
That kind of thing has evaporated forever within this damned novel.