I Possessed The Immoral Empress

“Everyone move aside! I’m going again! Hoo-hoo!”

Despite being just in her late teens, the girl’s excited voice rang out as Ermedeline turned her gaze back to the battlefield.

At that moment, she noticed the old mage and the teenage boy she had seen at the camp the previous day.

The elderly woman with a hunched back and the boy, who seemed barely mid-teens, were recklessly casting spells towards the battlefield.

Despite her efforts to concentrate, Ermedeline couldn’t calm her mind.

She had felt detached when hearing news of young suicide bombers on TV, but seeing the reality in person was an entirely different experience.

Every time the young girl cheered with her clear voice, it felt like a lament from the depths of hell to Ermedeline.

‘Yes, I need to end this quickly. I need to turn the tide so I can send these minors home.’

Determined, Ermedeline resumed her efforts to break the curses, focusing on the thought of returning the children to their parents.

The balance shifted as the most intense battlefront began to favor her side, boosting the morale of the allied soldiers.

‘I can do this! Just keep focusing! I will end this!’

As she regained her confidence seeing the tide turn, she found breaking the curses easier, thanks to the vast magic power left in her body.

‘Yes! This is it! Keep going with this momentum!’

But her resolve was short-lived.

As she exhausted her magic breaking the curses, a woman approached her. Neither a soldier nor a mage, this middle-aged woman in tattered clothes walked towards her with an odd gait.

“Your Majesty!”

Arvian’s call made Ermedeline look in the direction of the approaching woman. The woman’s disheveled appearance made her unrecognizable, but Ermedeline thought her faded blonde hair and green eyes seemed familiar.

‘Who is she?’

As Ermedeline squinted to get a better look, Arvian stepped in front of her.

“It’s a curse!”

“Yes, she’s cursed, but…”

Ermedeline couldn’t understand why they would bother cursing and sending such a broken woman to her.

She was about to find out the bitter truth.

“Mommy!”

“!”

Ermedeline turned her head towards the familiar voice.

“Gasp!”

Heather, whom she thought she had left safely in the camp with Rooney, was now running towards the woman at full speed.

“No!”

With a great effort, Ermedeline pushed Arvian aside and blocked Heather’s path.

“Calm down! We need to break the curse first…”

Ermedeline tried to hold Heather back, but the young girl, who had already lost her sister and worried about her mother for weeks, saw nothing but her.

This time, Heather used all her strength to push Ermedeline aside and leapt into her mother’s arms.

“Mommy!”

Heather hugged her mother and cried, but the woman didn’t seem to recognize her daughter.

“Get back!”

Ermedeline desperately turned towards the woman to pull Heather away, but at that moment, the curse, filled with intense hatred and anger, activated.

“Ugh.”

However, Ermedeline couldn’t be killed instantly by a curse of this scale. Both Ermond and Ermedeline knew this. Arvian quickly ran over and tried to purify the curse, but the woman and Heather, clutched in her arms, began to decompose rapidly due to the curse’s backlash.

“Purify…”

“You?”

“I can… hold on… quickly!”

It seemed that Ermond had sent the curse, using the woman’s life as a sacrifice.

“Damn it! Damn it!”

Arvian desperately poured his holy power into the woman and Heather, but it was too late; they both died.

Confirming their deaths, Arvian rushed to Ermedeline and started purifying her. Though she had sustained internal injuries from the powerful curse, it was treatable with emergency measures.

“Let’s get back to the tent. You need to rest.”

Arvian tried to help Ermedeline up, but she remained glued to the spot, unable to move. No, she couldn’t move.

Helen had been her greatest failure since possessing this body. And Heather, whom she had saved in the forest at the risk of her life, was now dead. She had hoped to at least protect Heather, whose mother was still in Ermond’s grasp.

‘It’s my fault. It’s my fault. I should have never allowed her to come with us…’

Already burdened with immense guilt over Helen’s death, Ermedeline struggled to breathe as she stared at the decaying bodies of the mother and daughter.

“Hah, haah… It’s… because of me… It’s my fault… haah…”

***

Ermond never expected Helen and Heather’s mother to kill Ermedeline. If he had, he wouldn’t have sent them so recklessly.

The woman, believing both her daughters had died because of Ermedeline, had willingly sacrificed her life for the curse. Ermond had presented it to her as an opportunity for revenge, but his true intention was this.

Ermond hadn’t anticipated Ermedeline risking her life to save a girl she didn’t know in the forest. Although he had set a trap, he was genuinely surprised by her actions that night.

He realized that his curses couldn’t destroy her body. But he found a perfect way to shatter her soul completely.

‘Guilt? A human like you feels guilt?’

Ermond deliberately sent the woman in such a wretched state to show her dying miserably. The unexpected death of Heather was an added bonus he hadn’t foreseen.

***

“Hah, haah, cough…”

Arvian attempted to flow holy power into the hyperventilating Ermedeline, but her condition didn’t improve. As Ermond had intended, the curse couldn’t damage her body but utterly shattered her soul. Holy power, despite being a divine blessing, couldn’t heal the wounds of the heart.

“Your Majesty!”

Felio, who had been keeping an eye on Ermedeline amidst the battle, abandoned his post and ran to her side.

“She’s sustained internal injuries but should recover soon.”

“Then why… what happened?”

At Felio’s question, Arvian pointed with his chin towards the bodies of the mother and daughter.

“Heather? That girl and her mother?”

“What?”

Felio immediately grasped the situation from Arvian’s explanation.

“Let’s get her to the tent. I’ll purify the bodies and the area and follow shortly.”

Felio hoisted Ermedeline onto a horse. She continued to stare blankly into space, her tears flowing incessantly, seemingly indifferent to where she was taken. She clung weakly to Felio’s arms as she was jostled about.

A young wizard girl quickly mounted another horse and headed towards the tent, still suspicious of Ermedeline’s condition despite her apparent helplessness.

When they reached the tent, Ermedeline was laid on the bed, where she lay motionless, only her tears indicating she was still conscious.

Upon hearing the news, Rooney screamed and wailed but soon focused on tending to Ermedeline.

“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault! I should have known she would sneak out…”

Rooney and Ermedeline were left alone in the tent, crying for over an hour as they mourned for Helen and Heather’s family.

“No, it’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

It took a long time, but finally, Ermedeline’s cracked and dry voice broke the silence.

“What are you saying? It’s my fault for not watching Heather closely enough…”

“No. No.”

Despite her weakened state, Ermedeline raised a hand to grasp Rooney’s.

“It’s my fault. This all happened because of me.”

Helen was originally a minor character, barely mentioned in the story, and Heather and her mother didn’t exist at all. Because of Ermedeline’s presence, the entire family was now wiped out.

Being stabbed or burned was a pain she could have accepted. She had expected assassination attempts in the body of the villainess. But causing the death of an entire family because of her actions was unbearable.

The deaths of characters who were never meant to be part of the story felt meaningless now.

“Bring Lord Felio.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Rooney wiped her tears with her sleeve and went to fetch Felio.

“You called for me?”

“Yes. She seems to want to speak with you.”

“I see.”

‘Why him? I’m the one who saved her,’ thought Arvian, pursing his lips in irritation.

“Jealous?” asked the wizard girl with a smirk as she noticed Arvian’s reaction.

“No, I’m not,” he replied, exhaling sharply.

“Oh, but it looks like you are.”

“I said I’m not! I’m not that petty!”

The girl’s suspicion grew deeper, but she decided not to push further, not wanting to provoke the future High Priest.

“He is jealous. You have no idea how petty he can be over the smallest things.”

However, Rooney had no interest in Arvian’s future as the High Priest. To her, he was simply a rival vying for Ermedeline’s attention.

“What? You’re the one who’s jealous, not me!” Arvian retorted.

While Arvian and Rooney bickered, with the young wizard girl looking at them disdainfully, Felio approached Ermedeline’s bedside and knelt.

“You called for me?”

Without a word, Ermedeline pulled out a piece of paper from her bosom. It was one of two letters she had written—one sent to Leopold and the other kept with her, awaiting the right moment.

“?”

Felio’s face hardened as he read the letter. It was Ermedeline’s will.

“As written, yes. Your mother did die from a curse I created.”

The letter contained Ermedeline’s confession of her sins and instructions on handling her estate. Before heading to the battlefield, Ermedeline had read through her predecessor’s diary. She had always suspected that the original Ermedeline was responsible for Felio’s mother’s death, but she wanted to know why.

At that time, the original Ermedeline was filled with rage towards her father, who killed Leopold, and the gods who orchestrated their fate. She sympathized with the story of a duchess who lost her lover to her husband.

Ermedeline had crafted a curse to kill Duke Batistian, pouring all her anger and hatred towards her father into it. However, the duchess couldn’t bring herself to use it on her husband and instead took her own life.

Though Ermedeline had experimented on countless people in her quest for revenge, this curse had been made sincerely. Back then, she understood better than anyone the pain of losing a beloved to family.