I Plotted The World Destruction With The Male Lead - Chapter 16

Carlyle, who had returned to the capital, was receiving treatment with medicine brought from the temple. His body was in terrible condition after hastily overexerting his abilities in an attempt to escape.

Ever since he had taken Eleanor into his possession, he had always managed to maintain a relatively stable condition. As a C-rank Guide, it was impossible to completely rid himself of the contamination without significant contact, but he could at least sustain himself at a moderate level.

It had been a long time since his condition had deteriorated this badly, and Carlyle ground his teeth in frustration.

Fortunately, unlike Van, his body was not resistant to the temple’s medicine. In fact, it worked quite well on him, giving him a much greater range of movement than Van.

“Eleanor has fallen into that bastard’s hands again!”

This was something he had been wary of ever since realizing he had regressed. He had assumed the man was heading north, but somewhere along the way, the information had clearly been manipulated.

Since the Eastern faction—Van’s stronghold—had collapsed, Van would certainly remember who had betrayed him. Carlyle should have known better than to trust that information blindly.

But he had been desperate.

Just as he had remembered, Eleanor would surely attempt to escape as well.

The imperial family did not consist of just one person. Even excluding himself and Van, there were eight other royals who required a Guide.

Though their individual factions were corrupt, they still held noble status. If Eleanor allied with one of them and hid herself, even Carlyle would take years to track her down.

“I need Eleanor to carry out my plan!”

Moreover, since Van had also regressed with him, any method Carlyle had previously used to succeed could no longer be employed.

That fact made him furious.

“I fought my way to the imperial throne—how could this happen?”

He had been emperor for barely a month. He had finally held his engagement ceremony with Charlotte, and just as he was about to spend the night with her and receive his first proper Guiding, everything had gone wrong.

The moment he touched her, he sensed something was off. But he had no idea that this “mistake” would trigger such a catastrophic chain of events.

He should have made Eleanor his Guide from the beginning. Even if he had postponed their Bonding, he should have at least slept with her to receive a proper Guiding.

Trying to hide the existence of his Guide while hesitating over high-ranking Guides had been his downfall. If he had just been with her once, he never would have been able to abandon her.

But at the same time, even if he had slept with Eleanor and gotten her pregnant, he likely still would have ended up touching Charlotte.

After all, Charlotte Enrique was an A-rank Guide.

Between an A-rank and a C-rank, the choice was obvious! Even Van—the Mad Dog of the East—had made the same decision.

The only difference was that Van had failed to keep Eleanor firmly in his grasp.

“If only I had properly joined hands with Charlotte!”

He had treated her gently, believing she would be his future empress—that had been his mistake.

Carlyle sat up in bed, unable to sleep.

No true royal could rest peacefully knowing that their Guide was in another royal’s hands.

But he had one source of confidence.

Eleanor must still love him. And Van was a fool.

That man had chased after Charlotte for four years and hadn’t even managed to hold her hand! If it were Carlyle, he would have had her in his bed long ago.

“They won’t do anything. At most… they’ll hold hands for Guiding, like I did.”

Even that thought made his blood boil, but he had no choice.

Van, who regularly received Guiding from Empress Luria, was in a completely different state than Carlyle. The gap between them was vast.

Carlyle recalled his father’s miserable death and swore that he would not meet the same fate.

His father had once kept a Guide imprisoned, but when she died in an escape attempt, he had gone crawling to Luria, the only remaining Guide, begging her to save him.

But his compatibility with Luria was abysmal.

Moreover, she despised him. Before she became empress, he had forced her into unwanted Guiding, and she had never forgiven him.

Desperate to save his life, he had tried to force another Guiding, only to incur the wrath of the emperor.

There was no contest between the emperor—who received daily Guiding from Luria—and Carlyle’s father. Beaten nearly to death, he was sent back to the Javeth Ducal Estate, where he died that very night, his body battered beyond recognition.

It had happened right in front of Carlyle and his mother.

The shock drove his mother to madness, and she eventually died of illness. Carlyle, still a child, had no choice but to become the new duke.

To survive, he had prostrated himself before the emperor.

The emperor, who was naturally softhearted, did not see Carlyle as a threat. In fact, he believed that Carlyle’s father had brought his own downfall upon himself and even offered Carlyle his protection.

The only one who despised him was Empress Luria.

She had always been on the side of the Guides, believing that they should be matched with royals of their own choosing.

Carlyle’s father had imprisoned a Guide while already married with children—of course she had been repulsed.

Since he had refused to divorce his wife, intending only to use the Guide as a tool, disaster had been inevitable.

“A child is not to blame,” Luria had once said.

But that did not stop her from finding Carlyle detestable.

Unlike Van, the emperor’s nephew, who had received Guiding since childhood, Carlyle had never been allowed even a single Guiding session. That was likely due to Empress Luria’s influence.

The emperor might have been lenient, assuming that Carlyle simply desired a Guide due to his royal instincts, but that was a foolish thought.

If their positions had been reversed, Carlyle would have left no loose ends—he would have killed not just his enemy but also their children and seized their wealth.

“You died because you dared to underestimate me and the House of Javeth.”

Ironically, Carlyle himself had lost everything because he had underestimated Eleanor. But who could have known that the imperial palace had such a secret passage, or that a god was sealed beneath it?

Carlyle still couldn’t understand how Eleanor had known about such things. She was a commoner by birth and had never received a proper education, even after becoming a noble.

He was aware that the duke had given her minimal etiquette lessons so she wouldn’t embarrass herself at balls and Vanquets.

“But her family was just ordinary people…”

Carlyle had once ordered an investigation into her family, sensing that Eleanor didn’t seem particularly fond of them.

Her parents had been abusive, though in a subtle way. The abuse had lessened as she grew older, allowing her to continue living with them.

As a child, she had been beaten harshly and forced to work, much like an orphan or a distant relative brought in to do labor. There was even an incident where a neighbor woman had asked to “borrow” Eleanor for a few days, which had made her mother, Margaret, explode in anger, feeling humiliated.

There was no way such parents would have provided her with a proper education. Given that her younger siblings had turned out well and had no bad rumors surrounding them, it seemed likely that Eleanor had played a significant role in their upbringing.

While nobles often married young, it was even more common among commoners with low incomes. Many married at eighteen, and by nineteen, they were considered of prime marrying age.

Twenty-one was still within the expected marriage age, but considering the conditions of her home, Eleanor should have left much earlier.

“…Did she stay because she was worried about her siblings?”

Only then did Carlyle realize just how much Eleanor must have cared for her younger siblings.

He recalled the moment when she had shrunk back behind others upon Van’s arrival, holding a girl a head shorter than herself tightly in her arms.

And yet, Carlyle had manipulated Duke Armor into killing those beloved siblings.

He didn’t know exactly how much Eleanor had discovered, but the fact that she had remained quiet all this time and was only now taking action suggested that she knew the truth.

That was why she had betrayed him.

Because of his scheming, her siblings had been slaughtered.

A sensation like swallowing cold stone weighed down in his chest.

Even if his regression had undone those events, Eleanor would never forget.

She was not the type to resign herself to fate or to forgive. He had ignored that fact when he first made her his Guide, but now he understood.

“This world… it should just burn.”

Recalling the voice that had echoed through the mausoleum like a cold flame, Carlyle let his hand fall limply to his side.

In that moment, Eleanor had been willing to destroy the world with him.