My Duke Won’t Die! - Chapter 2
Another long day without a favorite was passing by.
“I’m dead tired.”
With a deep sigh, Ella Lane lay down on her bed.
It was a particularly tiring day because I had been hunting since dawn.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the ceiling of a small square room. The plaster walls, which had no wallpaper and had not been painted, were stained here and there.
Counting the stains, Ella recalled her room when she was ‘Hee-Yeon’.
The studio she lived in at that time was also small and old, just like this place.
Three years ago, Hee-Yeon who slept on a mattress in a place where there was no bed, was seriously ill. And when she woke up, it was this old room.
According to what I heard from the landlord who came to check if she was dead, “Ella Lane,” who was actually living here, suffered from the same high fever.
―Are you kidding me?
At first, she thought she was dreaming. It was natural. She woke up from being sick for days, with an unfamiliar face in a strange place, so anyone would think so.
But Ella soon realized that this was reality.
On that day when the rain was pouring like crazy, what she found running wild in the forest was neither a clay model nor CG, but a real living monster.
The memory was still vivid.
The urgency of picking up the ax that had been abandoned nearby, and the pain she felt from her shoulder torn by the claws of a monster.
When she found a shiny red marble under the monster’s skin, she felt instinctive disgust and the physical ability that didn’t seem to belong to her exploded when she attacked the marble.
―What the heck! What is this…Nonsense…
After the black blood of the monster, mixed with the rainwater, flowed down between her fingers, she wondered if she had performed a dimension shift that is often seen in Ropan genre novels.
Of course, her worries didn’t last long.
“Even if I had just transmigrated, it’s so unfair that it had to be <The End of the Abyss> that I want to cry…”
Ella did not forget the first time she heard the name of the Crown prince, who was engaged in tyranny, from Moria.
Two months had passed since she came in here.
―Wait, what is the Crown Prince’s name?!
―My God, Ella. You have to say it with respect…
―Whatever it is, tell me the name again, you punk!
―O-Okay. Let go of my collar and I will tell you! Why are you making a fuss over the name of the Crown Prince who you had not an ounce of interest-
―Name!
―COF! Ge-Gerard! It’s Gerard Acelanus! Hey, air, I-I’m out of breath……!
She felt terrifyingly dizzy.
The reason Ella didn’t forget his name was not only because he was a character she liked.
―That human, is a pretty piece of trash…
―E-Ella Lane, His Highness the Crown Prince is not a p-p-p-pretty piece of trash, but a wonderful person…my sincere advice is if you don’t want your head cut off, please be careful with your mouth…
Well, it wasn’t wrong. The hunters in the world of <End of the Abyss> were in a position to be executed without a trial the moment the High One’s heart was upset.
I’m fucked.
This was the first idea that came to the mind of ‘Hee-Yeon’ who lived as Ella Lane.
And the second thought that came to her mind, even though she, herself, thought it was ridiculous to think something like that.
―Ha, damn it. I won’t be able to see my favorite until the day I die.
That thought.
The Monster Hunters could not go to the capital due to their low status, and there was no reason for the Crown Prince to come down here.
Even if you were lucky enough to go to the capital, unless someone helps you, the probability of entering the Imperial Palace was equal, if not less, than zero.
And the worst of them all was ‘There is really nothing worth seeing in this novel other than the prince’s face’.
―How can a person like me be so unlucky?
Moria, who had been agonizing for a while over Ella’s words to herself, carefully brought up his guess.
―Well…Is it because you don’t have a good heart?
―Do you want to end your life?
―Absolutely not.
Moria’s dream was to live a long time, so that marked the end of the conversation related to the subject. However, Ella’s troubles were never over. It was because she had no idea why she came into this book.
If she had transmigrated as someone from the imperial family, the answer would have been clear to her.
“It must have been meant to nurture the pretty trash prince from by his side…Ha, I was confident that I could do well.”
Ella lamented, muttering words that if God had heard it, he would respond at once with a big, “No.”
It was a dream that could never come true.
What she possessed was an extra with no information, and the location was a border far away from the imperial palace. She even had a hard time getting information about the ‘Ella Lane’ past.
This is because <End of the Abyss>, which was conducted from the protagonist’s point of view, did not describe anything other than the events taking place in the capital, and the villagers knew nothing about the sudden appearance of ‘Ella Lane’.
So she couldn’t know why she was in this book.
Thus, Ella Lane was steadily accumulating stress in a very dog-like situation where the question ‘Who am I, where am I?’ perfectly matched with her dilemma.
“……So, God, if you really exist.”
Taking a deep breath, Ella muttered as she closed her eyes to force herself to sleep, which was not coming despite her tiredness.
“I’m really going to kill you.”
It was a voice that contained only sincerity, with 100% of purity.
***
No matter how talented a person is, he cannot hunt monsters alone.
That was the creed among hunters.
It was not possible to fight while waiting for the monsters one by one, and the positions of the magic stones were all different.
They came out in hordes, scattered sporadically, and attacked simultaneously, and above all, each had different abilities.
If a hunter fought alone in this situation, it was clear that their life would end in less than 10 minutes. Moreover, unlike other borders, the western border did not have an estate headed by a nobleman with the level of force to subdue monsters, so monster hunters were practically guarding the border.
Therefore, it was a natural result that a ‘hunting team’ where like-minded hunters came together to protect each other, came to be.
And among those hunters, Ella Lane was a legend.
It was because she was the only person who did not belong to a hunting team and was the only solo hunter in the western border, which is famous for its rugged mountains, that especially hunted in the Antain Forest, where the most dangerous monsters appeared.
Ella Lane went out with only an old single-edged ax and brought claws and horns the size of a human.
She mainly hunted 1st and 2nd class, and she only killed 4th and 5th class monsters, who all other hunters worked hard to find and hunt, if they got in her way. She didn’t even collect their hides or any other loot for that matter.
In the early days of Ella Lane, jealous young hunters would sometimes go out hunting alone.
It was because they wanted to have the same fame as Ella.
And all those attempts were unsuccessful.
The failure was so great that when the third one died, the village chief even made his own rules.
―Only those who fought and won a battle with Ella Lane can go hunting alone in the Antain Forest.
For Ella, who wanted to quietly earn a living by hunting monsters, one more troublesome task was added.
Just like right now.
“Hey, Lane!”
Here we go again.
Ella grabbed her throbbing temple at the voice calling her in a bad way.
I wanted to live quietly.
No, in the first place this wasn’t even included in #102 of <101 Things You Need to Know to Get Through the World in a Book Possessed as Ella Lane>.
Because she already thought she was living quietly by herself.
Living quietly was Hee-Yeon’s main specialty, and it wasn’t difficult. I have always lived alone, and always will be. That’s why, when I started my new life as a monster hunter, I refused the help of other hunters and hunted alone.
Now that I think about it, it was really stupid.
‘I didn’t know that would be a true act of an attention seeker…’
On the day she caught a first-class monster by herself, she became the famous ‘quiet attention seeker’.
Ella still remembers when she entered the center of the town and caught everyone’s attention for the first time.
―Oh my god, she caught that difficult first-class monster alone……
―Is this first-class?
―Y-You didn’t know? Wait, then how did you catch it?!
And she could bet that her subsequent answer, was the stupidest thing Park Hee-Yeon said when she came into this world.
―I don’t know. I just split it with an ax and it died?
If it hadn’t been for that, by now I would have been quietly living by, joining a random hunting team and catching low-level monsters that everyone else is trying to catch.
In fact, she always forgets when she’s hunting for monsters, but she was in a devastating novel called <The End of the Abyss>, so there was nothing good in catching people’s eyes.
‘It’s a relief that my head is still attached.’
At that time, I received so much enthusiastic attention that I was grateful that this was a western border forsaken by all. If this place had been the capital, by now a lowly monsters-hunter would have lost her head while being accused of targeting the throne.
But for that fact alone, Ella was too lazy to bear the current inconvenience.
‘So God, whose name I don’t even know yet. How about pouring a spoonful of something like a regression since I already transmigrated in this novel? If I live again, I am confident that I will live well. No, I’ll make it real.’
“Where are you, bastard! Can’t you hear me?!”
Ella’s earnest prayer, which she doesn’t even know to whom it should be delivered, was mercilessly destroyed by the raging bully’s cry.
At the interruption, she bit her molars hard enough to flex a tendon on her jaw, but nevertheless, she couldn’t reach the axe in her waist.
“Fuuu, let’s hold it in. That’s a person.”
Let’s kill monsters, but don’t kill people.
This was, so to speak, the first principle for Park Hee-Yeon to live in this world as Ella Lane.
No matter how much she killed monsters with an axe and cut them to death. Until she entered this novel, she was a citizen of a country where common-sense laws about murder were in force.
It’s been 3 years now, and the thought of going back to that place had already been abandoned, but even if Park Hee-Yeon became Ella Lane, she didn’t want to give up such basic morality.
‘But it’s always reaching a dangerous level.’
As she sighed deeply, Ella Lane was calming the swell of killing intent in her mind, and a man with a large double-edged axe in one hand giggled at the hunters around him and opened his mouth.
“Is this the great Ella Lane? No matter how I look at it, I don’t think she will be able to take off a single piece of Idyl’s hair.”
“…….”
“…….”
Of course, no one sympathized with him.
The old axe hanging from Ella’s waist was already covered with monster blood, losing its color and glowing black, and it was public knowledge that the horns and claws taken to the Trading Center each time were cut from a higher-ranking monster.
Sometimes there were guys like that. Those who are thugs in the city come down with clumsy preparations when they hear that monster hunting gives money.
They did not enter hunting teams on purpose so they can monopolize the by-products alone, and quarreled with Ella Lane to break the rules of ‘prohibition of solo hunting’.
It was a perfect vicious cycle.
And among them, Ella, who was suffering the most than anyone else, closed her eyes.
She wasn’t angry. To Ella, who has no favorite to stan, and therefore has no sense of purpose in her life, all these quarrels were nothing more or less than the sound of dogs passing by.
(Note: As a noun, “stan” is defined as “an extremely or excessively enthusiastic and devoted fan,” while as a verb it’s defined as “to exhibit fandom to an extreme excessive degree.”)
It was just annoying. It was as much as, having to be careful to not kill them at once with a single strike because she’s too lazy to care.
Thus, Ella, who finally endured the urge to shut his mouth with an axe, calmly responded without missing the opportunity.
“You’re right.”
