Surprised by this behavior that differed from what she had seen until now, Reibella spoke to Jeranov who stood beside her.

“Shouldn’t we stop them?”

But Jeranov merely smiled with a troubled expression. As if he had already tried, but it was useless.

Meanwhile, Duke Vicheravali continued accumulating bad karma.

“Get up.”

Even though his son was panting heavily, the Duke commanded him to get up in a cold voice, as if he had no intention of stopping.

Royan glared fiercely at him while taking labored breaths. That murderous gaze said it all. That he wanted to kill him right now, father or not.

‘So that’s why he gets stabbed to death.’

Each of Duke Vicheravali’s actions toward his son was close to accumulating karma that led to death.

“Huff, haa……”

Breathing painfully, Royan stood up again. Then he staggered forward, holding the wooden sword and charging at the Duke.

There was no way those clumsy movements could reach Duke Vicheravali. The Duke coolly deflected the sword and was about to swing his wooden sword mercilessly.

“Stop it!”

Perhaps, if Reibella hadn’t intervened, his wooden sword would have struck Royan.

Reibella hurriedly blocked Royan and shouted at Duke Vicheravali.

“No matter what kind of training this is, pushing someone this hard is not right.”

“Move aside.”

“The difference between discipline and abuse is paper-thin. When you maintain proper limits, it’s discipline, but beyond that, it’s abuse.”

An ordinary child might have thought this was just a father raising his son to be strong, but Royan was an abused child. Such a child needed warmth rather than merciless teaching.

When Reibella looked up with a determined face, Duke Vicheravali looked down at her with a cold face, as if he didn’t understand what the problem was. Reibella glared back at him, refusing to back down, and continued.

“A good educator matches the child’s pace, not someone who expects them to follow in their footsteps. So……”

“Move.”

Thud.

Simultaneously with the voice from behind, Reibella staggered.

Having been pushed with all his might, Reibella fell forward before she could defend herself. Fortunately, Duke Vicheravali caught her before she hit the ground.

When Reibella turned around to look at Royan with relief, Royan was looking at her with displeasure. The sight of her being held by Duke Vicheravali seemed to provoke him even more.

With an even angrier expression, he said.

“Who are you to interfere? Don’t do unnecessary things.”

The intense anger felt in each word was enough to make her skin tingle. Despite having learned swordsmanship for only a short time, the fact that he could emit such an aura was surely because he was the protagonist.

When Reibella flinched, Duke Vicheravali hid her in his arms as if protecting her from his son. While doing so, he coldly stared at his son.

At this, Royan turned away with a brief expression of irritation. Each step he took away was laden with unresolved emotions.

“Are you alright?”

At Duke Vicheravali’s question, Reibella looked at the retreating Royan and asked back.

“Shouldn’t you go after him? ……He’s your son.”

Now was not the time to protect a child with whom he shared not a drop of blood, but to embrace his wounded son.

But the Duke didn’t seem to feel the need. Rather……

“Vicheravali is not a name that the weak can bear.”

He once again uttered words perfect for getting himself stabbed to death.

‘This is really frustrating.’

She had wondered why the relationship between the Vicheravali father and son was heading toward catastrophe, and now Reibella could clearly see why Royan was going astray. But the Duke himself didn’t seem to sense the problem, and Royan, for his part, didn’t seem willing to be honest.

What was with these frustrating people?

Watching them made her feel as if she had eaten a hundred sweet potatoes without drinking a drop of water.

‘I really tried not to get involved.’

In this atmosphere, she couldn’t ask the Duke for money in exchange for information about the magic stone mine, nor could she ask for sword training to improve her physical strength.

What a damn situation this was.

‘They don’t even seem to hate each other in the first place.’

If they truly hated each other, they wouldn’t want to see each other’s faces, but considering they practiced swordsmanship together, it wasn’t hatred.

Looking at those two reminded her of her past self. It was when she had suspected that her Dad wanted an heir rather than a daughter because he made her study so harshly.

‘Dad, do you hate me?’

When she asked with a childish lisp, feeling dejected one day, her Dad had embraced her with a greatly surprised expression.

‘Rel. Dad loves his dear daughter more than anything else in this world.’

‘Then why are you suddenly being so strict?’

‘Because I’m afraid you’ll struggle later. Being the head of the family is not such an easy position.’

Dad said he had unknowingly been strict because he wanted his child to grow up strong, as much as he loved her.

‘Dad is sorry. From now on, whenever you feel upset, come to Dad anytime. Then Dad will know that his dear daughter is feeling sad.’

Perhaps they too, like her Dad and herself back then, were misunderstanding each other. A relationship that could be easily resolved with just a little conversation. If they just looked at each other a little more, they could understand the emotions inside. But they weren’t even making that small attempt.

If she turned a blind eye to this situation, the relationship between the two would head toward an irreversible catastrophe. Somehow, that felt like standing by and watching someone die.

‘Right, what else do I have to do here? Let’s give it a try.’

She had been trying to mind her own business to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, but given the situation, she couldn’t help but intervene.

For the sake of sleeping comfortably at night, and for a smooth business proposal, it seemed necessary to improve the relationship between this father and son that felt as stifling as eating a hundred sweet potatoes.

For that, first……

Reibella’s gaze turned toward Royan.

The more urgent target was, of course, Royan.

* * *

The story about the male protagonist Royan in the novel, as in many romance fantasy novels, focused on ‘after meeting the female lead.’

Therefore, there wasn’t much information about Royan’s life before meeting the princess in the story.

What was frequently mentioned was that he spent his childhood at his maternal family’s home, and there was a brief scene where he confessed the reason to the princess.

He said that his mother, who had always been warm, suddenly passed away.

And because of that incident, he was abandoned by his father and sent to his maternal family. At first, he said, he received the utmost care from his maternal grandfather. But his grandfather died shortly after, and subsequently, living with his maternal uncle, he suffered terrible abuse.

Until she knew only that much, Reibella had judged that Duke Vicheravali had no problems.

Since Duke Vicheravali had to go to the battlefield frequently, entrusting his young child to a reliable relative wasn’t a bad choice.

Of course, it was his fault for not noticing and rescuing his son who was being abused by his uncle later. But he probably didn’t send his son knowing he would be abused.

The intelligent Royan would have known this.

Reibella believed that Royan would have understood his father’s situation well enough, and knew why he had to grow up at his maternal family’s home.

So until that point, she thought there was no problem between the two, and the reason they became estranged was because of the abuse and neglect Royan suffered.

But what if that wasn’t it?

What if the relationship between the two had soured from ‘the point when Royan was sent to his maternal family’?

If there was a separate reason why the two became estranged, and the abuse and neglect were simply factors that deepened the rift, then they would need to find the cause and untangle the knotted thread from the beginning to resolve the relationship between the two.

So Reibella decided to listen to Royan’s story first.