Reborn After Betrayal: The Frail True Princess Decides to Give Up

Chapter 274 : Success or Failure

Since receiving the gaze of the "Goddess of Night," being marked, and forming a contract with the mysterious dark matter energy, Celitia had been trying to actively control it.Gradually, she had become able to autonomously mobilize part of that power.

However, each mobilization brought enormous burden to her body, so unless absolutely necessary, Celitia generally wouldn't use it.

Her right wrist's inner side burned scorching hot, the deep purple mysterious mark reappeared, slowly opening those inverted eyes, revealing the flickering six-pointed star.

Extremely cold power surged from her chest, crushing everything in its path, destructively impacting her body's circuits, leaving behind knife-like intense pain.

Her arm burned alarmingly while her chest was strangely cold - truly a combination of ice and fire.

Enduring that pain, Celitia felt abundant power returning to herself.

"Let go of her!"

Just before Dorothy could place the baby girl into the circle, Celitia suddenly exploded into action, reaching Dorothy's side in an instant and reaching out to snatch the baby from Dorothy's arms.

Not expecting her movement to suddenly become so fast, Dorothy hurriedly retreated, narrowly dodging.

"Wow! I almost twisted my waist—"

Dorothy gasped while holding the baby girl, complaining: "Be gentler, slower! It's one thing if I get hurt, but what if you injure this child?"

Celitia had no patience to argue with her: "Shut up!"

There were too many people in the delivery room, and Celitia worried about hurting them, so she didn't dare make large movements and could only pursue Dorothy by weaving around them.

Dorothy held the baby girl while dodging left and right behind them, even having the leisure to chat with Celitia:

"Little girl, I see the aura on your body is very abnormal, even more strange than ours. Would you consider joining us? I could research you!"

Celitia completely ignored her. Dorothy found it boring and had to close her mouth.

Despite dodging for a long time, Dorothy was still cornered by Celitia with nowhere to escape.

"Sigh, fine, since you want her so much, I'll give her back."

Dorothy threw the baby girl forward, tossing her far away.

Celitia immediately turned to catch her, successfully catching the baby before she could fall.

As soon as she held her, Celitia felt something wrong—too light!

"Yes yes, it's fake, just an illusion." Dorothy smiled sweetly. "This is the real one!"

Dorothy picked up a pillow from the bedside, and like magic, the pillow became a baby girl while the baby girl in Celitia's arms became a pillow.

She nimbly placed the baby girl into the blue circle beside her.

Oh no!

Celitia's pupils contracted slightly.

Wait, the spatial jump formation still needed a certain startup process to fully activate.

But if Dorothy interfered, she definitely wouldn't have time to stop it.

"Ariel!" Celitia called out in frustration. "Sleeping like a pig, you should wake up now, you fool Saintess!!"

Ariel groggily opened her eyes.

"I think I heard someone call me a fool..."

In just an instant, she understood the situation before her, her gaze sharp as a blade as she lunged at Dorothy.

"It's you, isn't it?!"

Dorothy panicked and retreated repeatedly: "Hey hey? You've got it wrong, it was Celitia who called you that!"

However, Dorothy's explanation was useless. An enlarged fist pressed toward her, forcing her to hastily dodge aside.

Celitia seized the opportunity and rushed to the front of the circle.

The baby girl was still inside the circle, not yet transported away by the spatial jump formation.

She had to immediately destroy this formation, hoping there weren't too complex protective runes set up...

Vague black shadows flowed between her palms as Celitia reached out to cut off the flowing magical runes.

But unlike usual, the moment she touched those runes, the many magical runes floating with various colored lights seemed infected, suddenly dyed pitch black.

Those black runes spread like a contagion, one after another outward, dyeing all the runes completely black in just an instant.

The originally exquisitely constructed formation was completely disrupted, transformed into some unknown effect.

Celitia was startled.

Right, this time she wasn't using ordinary methods to cut off magic flow, but wanted to directly destroy the runes with brute force.

But did this count as success?

The jumping blue light instantly extinguished, leaving only a mass of shadow floating in mid-air, its internal structure invisible.

Dorothy obviously noticed the change in situation and looked toward Celitia in shock.

"This is...?"

Ariel wouldn't give her a chance to be surprised. Taking advantage of Dorothy's distraction, she punched her squarely in the chest.

Dorothy flew like a kite with a broken string, hitting the wall and spitting out a large mouthful of blood.

At the same time, Celitia reached out carefully to hold the baby girl in the shadow.

But before she could touch the baby girl, that mass of shadow suddenly expanded.

The entire world immediately plunged into darkness.

Celitia couldn't see anything, her hands groping wildly forward but unable to touch anything.

"Where is she? Where is the child?"

Gradually, she recovered her vision and saw the twinkling stars in the distance.

The illusion had ended, and they were back in that strange space.

"How did it just end like this?" Celitia murmured. "Was that child switched or not? Did we succeed or fail?"

Before the illusion ended, the mass of shadow she had touched seemed to be in some unobservable state.

Neither successful nor failed.

Two states of destiny, overlapping together, but not letting her see the result before forcibly ending.

"That was just an illusion after all, not reality. As long as we cleared it, that counts as our success."

Ariel floated beside her, comfortingly patting her back.

Thinking of the doubts accumulated in this short time and the speculation rising in her chest that she dared not avoid thinking about, Ariel hesitated for a while before speaking softly:

"Lily, tell me, is the truth like this—

—Back then, the child mother gave birth to was switched, and Sophia actually isn't her biological daughter. And you... are mother's real biological daughter?"

Celitia opened her mouth but didn't immediately respond.

Seeing her still hesitating, Ariel sighed and added: "I heard everything–you called mother 'mama.'"

"Well... I knew I couldn't hide it."

Celitia sighed softly and admitted helplessly: "You guessed correctly, the truth is exactly as you said."

"But what exactly happened back then, whether it was as this illusion presented, remains unknown. We'd probably have to ask Queen Marianne to find out. Of course, perhaps even Queen Marianne herself doesn't quite understand what happened at the time."