Ch.148Season 2 – Everything Is Different From What I Learned

“After hearing her father’s words in the underground village, Laila and Karune began a fresh start.

The two imperial princesses were forcibly brought to human dwellings that were worse than livestock barns, and the first thing they were asked to do was…

“Y-you want us to cut up monsters to make them edible for humans?!”

“Yes. You two have monster claws and talons, so dismembering them should be easier for you.”

“B-but no matter how you look at it, that’s too disgust—”

“Monster butchering? I can do that anytime! Former Majesty.”

“K-Karune, sister?!”

It was butchering monsters that had been caught to feed the people.

Naturally, Laila, who was born in the imperial palace and had never been to the academy, protested against this horrific task.

In contrast, unlike her half-sister, Karune retained the instincts of her dragon heritage.

“I’ve done this with Mother before! It was really fun! Former Majesty.”

Slash! Slash!

Slash!

“I-I can’t believe this…”

“She’s actually really good…”

The rebel hunting party was astonished as Karune skillfully used her grown dragon claws to separate the internal organs, bones, and edible meat.

“Karune, you really have a talent for butchering?”

“…!! Yes, Former Majesty. Are you praising me right now?”

“Hm? Well, yes. Why?”

“N-no, it’s just… this is the first time I’ve ever received praise from Your Majesty.”

Shinwoo praised Karune after she completed in just a few minutes what would have taken hunters several hours.

Karune’s face flushed beneath her meat-colored hair at receiving her first compliment from her father.

‘To be this happy over something so trivial…’

His daughter was happy.

And as a father, he had the natural tendency to dote on his daughters.

Jaewon and Leon were boys, so giving them a few smacks was something they could brush off.

But he couldn’t help but be drawn to girls like Shina, Yurian, Laila, and Karune who stood before him now.

Once he realized his daughter was happy, it was time for unlimited praise!

Pat pat pat pat pat.

“Good job good job good job good job good job!”

“H-huh?! F-Father, you’re being too excessive all of a sudden?!”

“Do you dislike it?”

“N-no! I don’t particularly dislike it… it’s just a bit embarrassing…”

“Should I stop then?”

“…No. Please continue.”

If that’s what his daughter wanted.

He should keep patting her head.

Shinwoo continued to stroke her head without stopping, making his already pleased daughter even happier.

Meanwhile, Karune continued butchering the monster with a happy smile on her face.

On the other hand.

‘Ugh… I’m so jealous…!’

Laila swallowed hard as she watched her half-sister getting head pats.

But even though she was from the Lia clan, the most beloved by His Majesty among the imperial family, she couldn’t possibly do this kind of butchering…

“Heave-ho! Heave-ho! Heave-ho!!”

“M-Mother?!”

“I can’t lose to my daughters! Heave-ho!”

Even her mother, the head of their family, was busy butchering a house-sized monster to earn praise from the former emperor.

However, no matter what, she herself…!

“Why don’t you try it once?”

“…?! Oh, you’re…”

“Hello? If we go by order, I was born right before you, so I’m your older sister, right?”

It was at that moment.

Laila couldn’t bring herself to join the group monster butchering.

Shina, another princess who was also the youngest, approached her younger sister.

For reference, the two princesses had never exchanged words within the imperial palace.

They had only seen each other from afar, that kind of relationship.

So an awkward atmosphere was inevitable between them.

Nevertheless, Shina, who had experienced humans first, reached out to Laila as the slightly older sister.

She wanted to see this new world together with another girl of her age.

“Humans are different from what we read in textbooks.”

“Different…? Are you saying the knowledge taught at the Imperial Academy is wrong…?”

“Hmm… not wrong, but more like heavily abbreviated. Humans are… creatures that feel much more than we think.”

“How dare you! You’re rebelling against the Empire’s teachings?!”

However.

As the youngest in her family, Laila had become a model student, wanting recognition only from her current father and mother.

Therefore.

“All imperial knowledge was created by His Majesty the Emperor!”

“What’s going on?”

“Is something wrong?”

“Shina, and Laila was it? Why are you two suddenly like this?”

“We may be captives now, but our loyalty should be to the current Emperor! Not to some former Emperor!”

Of course, Laila preferred the warmth of her past father as a person.

But that was just the past.

In the end, the only father she would be with forever was the current Emperor.

Yet these princesses were denying everything about the Empire because of a temporary person from the past who would return once everything was resolved.

“How beneath me…”

“Huh?! Laila! Where are you going?”

“Don’t follow me! We can’t escape outside anyway since this is an underground city!”

“W-well…!”

“She’s right about that…”

Even if she ran away, she was still in the palm of their hand.

So her family members, who had started to move after their daughter or sister told them not to follow, froze in place.

***

“Everyone’s so stupid… it’s just a momentary dream anyway.”

The underground village was much smaller than even one autonomous district of the Empire.

Well, it was more like a large village than a city, with only about 1,000 residents.

In a way, it was to be expected.

Laila, who had run outside, was walking through a quiet, deserted street in the underground village.

She kicked at the pebbles that kept getting in her way.

“The person we need to impress is the current Emperor. The former Emperor will disappear from our lives soon enough…”

Above all, her current mother would never betray the current Emperor for someone like the former Emperor.

The two of them had been the closest in the imperial palace until the First Empress arrived.

Learning about humans, whom both of them despised most, was like a cruel joke that she couldn’t even begin to understand.

Bonk!

“Ugh?!”

“Huh?”

“I-I’m sorry!”

As Laila was walking alone with her thoughts, she bumped into children awkwardly dressed as soldiers, like kids playing war games in the Empire, as she turned a corner.

A young lady whose clothes and atmosphere were completely different from their ragged appearance.

The three children from the underground village who saw Laila.

Park Hyeok, Alfonso, and Aya began to sparkle their eyes as if they had seen a princess from a fairy tale.

“Wow… Hyeok, doesn’t she look just like the princess from that torn book we saw?”

“Y-yeah…”

“She’s not just princess-like, she is a princess. She’s an imperial princess, you know.”

“A-an imperial princess?!”

“S-so she’s a real princess?”

“Well… you could say that.”

To be precise, she was a powerless, empty shell of a princess, among the youngest of over 30 imperial children.

‘But a princess is still a princess…’

So these were the children of the human world.

In books, humans of this age were described as killing machines who were already training because they wanted to kill monsters.

But to Laila’s eyes, well…

No matter how she looked at them, they just seemed like children playing soldier.

‘They look exactly like the commoner children in the Empire… no, judging by their clothes and environment, they’re much worse off?’

The Empire created by Emperor Han Shinwoo was an ideal nation where not a single beggar could exist.

It was a perfect utopia.

At least, that’s how Laila and the people of the Empire had been educated and raised.

Perhaps that’s why Laila, seeing “beggar-like” people for the first time, was nodding her head in curiosity.

Just then.

“E-excuse me, Princess…”

How dare a mere human.

A species described as lower than insects was grabbing her clothes and speaking to her.

“I have something I want to ask…”

Oh, how disgusting…

Dirty soil was getting on the clothes her mother had made for her.

But she couldn’t kill them because of the former Emperor.

So perhaps she should just punish them enough without killing them?

The questions humans would ask were obvious.

They would surely be full of greedy desires to kill, harm, or conquer.

‘I’ll start by pulling out one tooth from that questioning mouth.’

Even as a prisoner, she was still an imperial princess.

Laila’s eyes widened as she prepared to ruin the mouths of these children who were about to ask her for murder tips.

But.

“What does the sky look like?”

“…What?”

The question was completely unexpected.

“W-well… actually, we’ve never seen the sky even once.”

“…? What are you talking about? Never seen the sky?”

“…? I mean exactly what I said. Was there something strange about that?”

“No, it’s the sky! Something you see just by opening your eyes! If you just look up like this…!”

Look up…

What she saw was not a blue sky, but a ceiling made of dirt.

“Ah……”

What these human children had risked their lives to ask her.

It was a question that was neither harmful to the Empire nor particularly valuable—it was so ordinary that it was almost ridiculous.

Just seeing the sky.

These children had lived only in this narrow underground all their lives.

“I want to see the sky someday!”

“I-I! My dream is to plant a tree!”

“I-I-I! Um… I want to eat delicious meat from the monsters outside!”

“…If it’s meat you want, you could eat animals that taste much better than monsters.”

“A-animals?”

“What’s that…?”

“…Oh! I saw it in a book! You mean those monsters that are weaker than regular monsters, right?”

“Animals… aren’t monsters…”

The humans as described by the Empire.

Killing machines who undergo all sorts of harsh training from childhood to kill people like those in the Empire.

…In reality, they weren’t much different from the children of the Empire.

No, perhaps they were just curious children who were much more pitiful.