The Runaway Maid is Loved by the Archmage - Chapter 194

※ This book contains depictions of coercive/dubcon/noncon acts, violence, and immorality. Reader discretion is advised.

Facing him, Roina calmed down a little. Yoseph was usually so flustered in front of Maili, but he was originally such a mature and composed person.

“I examined the ritual spell overlaid on the banquet hall and the ancient characters in the room where the Archmage is being held. I didn’t have time to read everything, but I’ve grasped the general context. After putting the pieces together in my head, there’s only this conclusion.”

He said with a darkened face.

“They plan to overlay the disappearing contract of the empire to make it complete. And they’ll do that by offering all the blood of the Archmage and the nobles gathered here.”

“What?”

Roina momentarily recalled past memories. Everything that happened in the beginning. The first emperor of the empire obtained this empire by offering Lutan, the golden dragon of the past. It was the past Roina who changed that into an incomplete state with a thousand-year limit and territorial restrictions, and then revived Lutan and put him to sleep. Thinking along the same lines, this contract made sense. Just like then, they’re offering Lutan as a sacrifice to make a new contract. It’s not yet possible to guess how great the price will be.

“That’s…”

Roina moved her lips but then closed them tightly. This ritual had to be stopped, but her power was incomplete right now. She needed all the fragments to become complete.

“I can’t guarantee it one hundred percent, but there’s still a chance.”

Yoseph said that with a hardened face.

“We have to stop today’s ritual. Then we’ll get another year.”

After today, it would finally be the 1000th year of the imperial calendar. Originally, the limit was supposed to be until next year. The Crown Prince was trying to bring that limit forward. And Veronica…

‘I don’t know what that child is thinking.’

A fragment of the shadow. What’s inside Veronica is one of the primordial magic fragments that she has to retrieve. The one that was embedded in the underground of the Imperial Palace, guarding it for a thousand years.

Right now, she had to stop this ritual first, but if she succeeded in stopping it, she had to get her back.

The contents of the original story flashed through Roina’s mind. The Crown Prince who became a hero by defeating the evil golden dragon, the empire that became eternally happy and prosperous, and the original female lead, Veronica, who naturally spent her whole life with him.

‘The ending was a bit awkward, I think. The protagonist became too simple at that point… Wait a minute, come to think of it.’

If the shadow fragment was inside the original female lead, then the original story she read was different from that point on. The only one who truly possessed the body was Roina herself. There was no such existence as Roina in the original story. And Fides’s words that it was Roina’s foresight.

‘Could it be that that story was the story of when I possessed Veronica’s body?’

If she thought that, everything fit perfectly. Although the Crown Prince blocked him, Lutan, the sub-male lead of the original story, showed constant obsession towards the original female lead, and so did Ryuhyeon. Roina felt cold sweat flowing down her back.

She shook her head slightly and tried to come to her senses. Anyway, the current problem was stopping the ritual. Think. What was it like in the original story?

“Are you sure you know how to stop the ritual?”

“Well, not exactly.”

In the original story, yes, the golden dragon seemed to have gone berserk after eating a black bead-like thing. Groping through her already faint memories, she thought desperately. The name was… the Black Dragon’s Orb, was it?

“The Archmage is at the center of the ritual. If we stop him from becoming the sacrifice, we can definitely stop the ritual.”

“But how?”

“We have to use every possible method.”

Because they couldn’t let the lives of the hundred or so people gathered here disappear. Yoseph said, pressing his temples as if he had a headache. It was because the things he had originally planned were also in danger of becoming variables.

“Whether it’s physical or magical.”

“Whether it’s physical or magical… Ah.”

Roina let out a small exclamation as if she had realized something. Yoseph turned to her, puzzled.

“There must be a magic circuit in the banquet hall too…”

She had only now realized the obvious fact. That the magic in the banquet hall was also based on ancient magic.