Living As the Villainess Queen

She needed to do something about it, she knew that even if she didn’t want it to be true. There was a big chance that her world and Sang-je’s would collide, and she couldn’t be caught unawares.

He was trying to gain control over the Anikas. He was making it particularly so that the Anikas and the king wouldn’t become close. And any Anikas that weren’t under this control simply wouldn’t do. Just like that queen who had died.

Sang-je was also obsessed with Ramita. There was no guarantee that she would be able to keep lying about her level of Ramita and, if her true Ramita was revealed, he would definitely try to keep her in the Holy City. Even if she returned to the kingdom, he would do everything he could to bring her back.

At least with the Muens not on his side, she wouldn’t have to fight her mother’s family.

Alber watched her suspiciously as she took in the news. “You believe me?” she asked. “You aren’t even surprised?”

“Oh, I’m definitely surprised,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought that Sang-je was a lark.”

She stared back at the older woman and realized that this wasn’t the only thing she was supposed to be surprised about. She had come back to this world not too long ago so her grasp of what was normal and what wasn’t was very different from a regular person’s.

Since she didn’t subscribe to religion, the concept of God having an agent was more of a fascination to her than a solid belief. She was just surprised that he was a monster, not much else. If anything, she was relieved.

She didn’t have to fight her family anymore or even another person. He was just a lark. If she had fought another person, there would be no clear line between good and evil. But with a lark, it was pretty obvious who the true enemy was.

She had grown to not believe everything she saw. If anything, she might have believed Sang-je was a sexual predator more than she would have believed he was an agent of God.

“Well, I do want to believe you,” Eugene finally said. “But there are a few things I don’t understand.”

“What things?”

“Well, Aldrit said that a legendary creature can never take the form of a human,” she said. “Was he wrong?”

Alber flinched at that. “No, he’s right.” She sighed. “Larks can’t turn into humans.”

“Then how does Sang-je do it?”

Alber looked away. It was her fault that the creature could do what he did. “Ancient magic was advanced,” she said. “It was also precise. It wasn’t something that could be created in a lab. In fact, there is a way of contacting others without meeting them in person in magic.”

Like a phone?

Eugene wondered.

“You could materialize a person’s likeness and have it remember what you were going to say as a message,” she explained. “Like a letter.”

Like a video call?

“When it first came to be, you could only leave brief messages,” Alber explained. “When it improved, people could start to talk through their likenesses in real time.”

That’s amazing. Eugene thought. When she had first learned about magic, she had believed it to be some kind of urban legend. Or a strange mystical thing like dark magic that only few could participate in. But the more she learned about it, the more it started to seem like a different kind of science that had developed.

“If you could take over someone’s form, then it would be a problem,” she said. “You could commit any crime in a fake form. There would have to be a limit. Perhaps it shouldn’t be completely human.”

Alber nodded. “You learn quickly.” She smiled. She was always so proud when she met a bright Muen child. It was just like when she met Lesa a few decades ago.

Eugene smiled awkwardly, shy from the compliments she was getting.

“But that wasn’t a problem,” Alber told her. “People could see through the forms that the magic created so they couldn’t confuse them with real people.”

So, what about Sang-je? Eugene wondered. Why does he seem completely normal?