The Fall of the Arrogant Lady, The Life of a Blind Doll

The heavy door that had sealed off the secret chamber where Karin and I shared our intimacy burst open without warning. The air inside the room, thick with pleasure and sticky heat, froze in an instant as a chill of despair slipped through the gap.

Camilla trembled like a leaf, unable to hide her panic as she stammered out her excuse for interrupting her master’s private moment. But my gaze was already fixed on Carna, who had collapsed in her arms.

In Camilla’s embrace was my mother, Carna, dressed in an elegant old-fashioned gown and sobbing wretchedly like an abandoned dog.

Mother…

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Internally, I was stunned by Emily’s devastating speedrun in driving out the legal wife in just two hours. On the outside, however, my expression had to be that of a loving son, more shocked and grief-stricken than anyone else.

I carefully released the hand that had been gripping Karin’s bare waist, rose quickly from my seat, and approached Carna. Then, feigning surprise, I pulled her frail shoulders into my arms as she sat crumpled on the floor.

The moment my gentle voice reached her ear, an uncontrollable ripple began to spread through Carna’s unfocused blue eyes—eyes that, in her perfect state of idiocy, should have only waited for her master’s commands.

The agonizing sense of loss from being abandoned by her master. The horrific jealousy of having her place stolen by a cheap commoner maid. All those negative emotions tangled together and exploded, forcibly dragging the suppressed fragments of her ego to the surface.

Carna buried her face in my chest and began to wail as if she were a wife who had just witnessed her husband’s infidelity.

As I whispered softly while stroking her back, the words that had been suppressed—no, that should have been forcibly erased—began pouring out of Carna’s lips like a flood, carried on the wave of her awakened ego. It was a blood-boiling lament directed at Karin, who was to become her daughter-in-law, at Camilla, her ill-fated comrade, and at me, her son. It was also a horrifying, nauseating record of how an arrogant and noble genius mage had been reduced to the most miserable of dolls.

“…I was a fool. I didn’t realize… that everything was Master’s, that man’s meticulously laid trap…”

Through her tearful confession, I could vividly reconstruct in my mind the hidden truth that even the original novel’s readers had never known.

The Carna of the past had been arrogant, but she possessed overwhelming talent that more than justified her pride. She was the first mage to appear in a family renowned for its knights. In the western part of the Empire, there was no one who didn’t know her name, and among the haughty noble ladies, she stood out as the unrivaled genius. Above all, she had once utterly crushed Count Blake—the young professor who had been cleverly tormenting his juniors at the academy and in high society, flaunting the petty arrogance of a noble mage—in a magical duel.

That dramatic affair had elevated her fame to immeasurable heights.

“I expected him to tremble with humiliation and rage after being defeated by me in front of the entire academy.”

But after that day, the defeated count began to court her with a passionate, almost insane fervor, as if he had become an entirely different person.

“At first… it was simply amusing. Seeing a man kneel and submit to the young woman who had trampled him gave me a strange sense of superiority and thrill.”

However, Carna’s heart already belonged to another man. He was kind, upright, and a young knight who could gently embrace even her arrogance. So Carna firmly rejected the count’s advances—he was much older than her—as if he were an insect.

Instead of stopping, the count’s obsession only grew more disturbing. He even dueled her beloved to the death over her.

Two men shedding blood and fighting solely to possess her. In that barbaric situation, Carna felt the greatest exaltation a noble lady could ever experience.

In the end, the duel’s outcome was disappointingly one-sided. The count, strong in theory but weak in practice, was miserably defeated by her lover and left rolling on the ground. Looking down at his pathetic figure, Carna delivered a cruel death sentence to him in front of everyone.

It was a dazzlingly arrogant declaration. Carna mercilessly slapped the cheek of the count as he clung to her pathetically even after losing the duel.

But Carna did not know. That it would be the worst possible move, one that would drag her soul down to the bottom of hell.

Not long after, the man she loved was found brutally murdered in a back alley, the victim of an attack by unknown assailants. Driven mad by grief, Carna was certain it was all the count’s vile scheme and reported him to the imperial court.

However, the count proved his innocence so thoroughly that her family instead incurred the Emperor’s wrath for insulting an innocent and virtuous noble house. Her family was driven to the brink of ruin overnight, and Carna was forced to prostrate herself at the feet of the man she so despised, begging for forgiveness with tears.

Even in that desperate and miserable situation, the count continued his act of pure, unwavering love. He gently extended his hand to her as she lay prostrate on the floor.

“Even after suffering such indelible humiliation from me… even after my family’s honor was trampled and I struck his cheek, the way he still whispered that he loved me… I, I was completely deceived by that false devotion.”

Carna, now firmly convinced that he truly loved her with all his soul, accepted his courtship in a wave of deep emotion and guilt. Unaware that it was the entrance to an unbreakable hell from which she could never escape, even in death.

She willingly placed the thorny crown called “engagement” upon her own head.

Time passed, the wedding was held with great splendor, and finally, Carna’s steps toward the deepest bedroom of the Blake estate felt strangely heavy. She had decided to give her body to him, moved by his tearful devotion that had saved her family from crisis and prevented her complete downfall. Yet as the bedroom door drew nearer, a cold and unpleasant doubt began to bloom like a poisonous mushroom in the corner of her heart.

Why did I believe I loved him?

A much older man with inferior magical talent, a vile character, and nothing but arrogance, who had pursued her with an unnaturally persistent courtship. Looking back now, it was less like blind love and more like the meticulously designed trap of a hunter, cutting off every escape route and driving its prey into a corner.

But the union between their families was already irreversible, and the heavy shackle of “Countess Blake” was fastened around her ankle.

Fine… I’ll just bear him an heir and then live my own life. I can devote myself to magical research using my talent, or perhaps secretly take a lover who suits me while wearing a perfect mask.

The moment she lay down on the soft bed, using her last shred of pride as the noble lady and genius mage of the western Empire as a shield, the door finally opened and the count approached.

But the glint in his eyes within the darkness was not the devoted and sorrowful gaze of the lover he had shown her all this time. It was the vile greed of a disgusting predator who had been drooling for a long time, finally having driven his prey into the perfect trap.

Without a trace of tenderness, the count roughly tore off her pure white dress. He blatantly inspected the most secret part of Carna’s trembling body, then split his lips into a bizarre and spine-chilling grin.

The instant Carna’s eyes widened in horror and she reflexively tried to rise while chanting a spell, a man wearing a strange leather mask—the master hypnotist known as the President—silently emerged from the deepest shadows of the bedroom like a ghost.

At the President’s low, spine-chilling voice, the count roughly loosened his necktie and growled like a beast.

With a snap of the President’s fingers, Carna’s limbs, which had been trying to rise from the bed, froze perfectly still as if bound by invisible steel ropes. A horrifying paralysis that prevented even her lips from moving. She rolled her eyes in terror, screaming desperately inside her mind, but the President’s venomous voice began to burrow mercilessly into her eardrums.

Watching Carna, now laid out on the chopping block as perfect material for a doll amid her shattered sincerity and memories of despair, the count savored the most bitter and hideous sense of victory.

He began to mercilessly violate her pure body, which had been rendered immobile by his will, unable to move even a single finger. As he roughly took her, he transformed every deceptive confession and tear he had used to win her favor into the most arrogant and cruel truths, pouring them into her ear.

With every word of the count’s mad revelation, Carna’s soul was torn to shreds. She had to realize the cruel truth in real time while being dominated as a doll. She realized that everything she had loved had been destroyed by the devil before her eyes, yet instead of unleashing magic in rage, she collapsed completely, overwhelmed by her own utter helplessness—unable even to sob in sorrow.

What dug into that gap of despair was the President’s bizarre hypnotic trap.

Throughout the long hours as night deepened and dawn approached, merciless violation and mental training continued without pause. When that hellish night finally ended, every spark of intellect that had once shone in Carna’s clear blue eyes had been completely shattered.

The proud and arrogant lady’s mind had been ground to dust by repeated physical violation and verbal traps, leaving not even a speck behind. In the empty space where her sincerity had been castrated, only a blind and grotesque instinct of obedience toward her master remained.

When day broke, there was no longer a noble genius mage from the western Empire on the bloodstained bed. Only a beautiful, hollow meat doll named “Countess Blake” remained—a shell that mechanically spread her legs at her husband’s call.

Life after that day was a continuous stream of thorough humiliation. The count violated her broken ego like a beast every single day, forcing her to conceive the Blake family’s heir. Her body was reduced to nothing but a breeding vessel. After a long pregnancy and the bone-crushing pain of childbirth, their son Edric was finally born.

Having obtained his heir, the count came to Carna where she lay exhausted on the bed. To make one final confirmation that she had been perfectly remade into a doll, he commanded her to speak her deepest remaining “sincerity,” not the suppressed doll’s performance.

After months of domination and brainwashing, her body and mind had completely fallen. Carna, who could no longer maintain even a second of ego without her master’s presence, looked up at the count’s face with unfocused, empty eyes and asked pathetically.

It was not revenge. It was not a curse. It was the desperate plea of a completely broken toy.

At that pathetically blind question, the count smiled with the most satisfied and bitter grin, gently stroking her sweat-soaked cheek.

That deceptive reassurance. With that single lie, Carna felt a miserable and grotesque sense of relief as if she had gained the whole world, and she completely fell into the role of the perfect doll who obeyed the count with absolute loyalty.

On the surface, she wore the mask of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a graceful and noble countess, obediently following her husband’s every command. But deep in her dark abyss, a grotesque obsession that was no longer human sprouted like poisonous weeds.

In the place where her human sincerity and rage had been brutally carved out, what had taken root was the blind affection and horrifying possessiveness toward her master that manifested once she had been perfectly trained as a doll.

You promised. When you made me your one and only possession… you swore that all your seed would be given ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠only to me.

Having vomited out all her horrific past memories, Carna clutched my chest and screamed as if she were coughing up blood. The fall of the genius mage, which had been summarized in just a few lines in the original novel… its concrete narrative was a horrifying yet bittersweet delicacy.