A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad (Novel) - Chapter 107
Chapter 107
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Inside the second-floor bedchamber of the lord’s castle, where the fire in the fireplace blazed.
Drawing the curtains tightly shut, Veil opened his mouth anxiously.
“What exactly is mana depletion? Exactly how dangerous is it?”
Lucarion, who had been examining Tie, lifted her head.
Back in the form of a boy, his red eyes were deeply sunken.
“I don’t know much about human mana depletion either.”
“Kkyu….”
At once, Ppuppu leaned her head against Astie’s cheek and wiped away tears.
Lucarion let out a sigh.
“All magic runs on mana. When mana is exhausted, the caster naturally enters a state like severe thirst.”
Basto came closer to the bed.
“I know that too. But this has never happened until now.”
There had been countless times before when Tie had activated enormous magic.
But he had never suffered to this extent.
“…Originally, manifesting the dead requires tremendous mana.”
At that moment Lucarion muttered.
He looked back at the other members.
“Do you remember the dead spirits Tie brought forth in Pearl City?”
Raul and Enzo nodded.
How could they forget?
The wrecked ship cleaving fearlessly through the stormy sea.
And the blue souls densely filling the area around it.
“The wrecked ship, the dead spirits, and the skeletons summoned today were all the result of Tie reviving only a ‘part’ by using the remnants of something.”
“A part?”
“Yes. You can tell just by looking at the principle behind summoning skeletons.”
Basto’s brows narrowed.
That was because she remembered the things Tie had often said about her bone friends.
“…Yes. He said they could only be summoned if there was a grave nearby.”
“There is no other way. It’s magic that is only possible if there are material remnants nearby, like bone fragments or a corpse.”
“Then….”
“The wrecked ship he brought forth in Pearl City was the same. He called in a ship that had sunk into the abyss and controlled it temporarily. In the case of the dead spirits, the result is the same too.”
“The same in the end?”
Lucarion pointed out the window through the gap in the curtains.
“Dead spirits are originally everywhere. They just aren’t visible to our eyes.”
Veil swallowed hard.
“The problem is that they have no consciousness. No basic memories such as who they were, what they did while alive, or anything like that.”
“So then… you’re saying they’re souls wandering around not even knowing who they are?”
“Yes. What Tie does is breathe mana into them and temporarily gain control over them. Literally creating subordinates he can command for a short time.”
Raul and Enzo’s gazes met.
For some time now, Lucarion had been speaking as if all of this were nothing.
But Tie was the only magician who could communicate with the dead and pour mana into them.
He was also the first.
In the meantime, Lucarion continued talking.
“But linking the underworld and the world of the living is something completely different.”
“….”
“Because it isn’t adding mana to remnants and completing something. From beginning to end, the caster has to do it directly himself.”
Manifestation of spirits.
That was a nearly impossible attempt to perfectly recreate the former life of something already dead.
And yet Tie not only manifested a dead person in front of the living, but even made it possible for them to converse.
“He restored the dead person’s memories, emotions, personality, and even physical traces, so of course his body would be overstrained.”
“B, but didn’t something similar happen in Pearl City too?”
Basto asked with a bewildered expression.
“In Pearl City. Karl Warben saw my dead wife. It even looked as though they spoke. Of course, I couldn’t see her myself….”
“That wasn’t manifestation. It was resentment.”
“What?”
“The reason your wife revealed herself to Karl Warben wasn’t because of Tie’s will. That woman Eve did it directly of her own will.”
Left speechless, Basto shut his mouth.
Lucarion sighed.
“Also, at the time Karl Warben had been on the verge of death. The connection between body and soul was about to snap, so naturally he could vividly see your wife.”
Before Basto’s eyes, the memory of that day revived.
The soaring waves.
Death Hound’s ship rocking precariously.
Even Karl Warben, trembling like an aspen while surrounded by dead spirits.
“Then….”
Basto dropped heavily into a chair.
Silence settled over the room, and quiet continued for some time.
“It’s because of me, damn it.”
Veil muttered.
He was looking down at his own knees with a pained face.
On his knees lay a hand wrapped thickly in bandages and a silver necklace clenched within it.
“There must’ve been another way. Listening to the things that bastard Reginald was saying, I just couldn’t hold it in….”
Instead of answering, Basto only stared blankly at Veil.
By now he had no desire to blame Veil.
But even for him, it was strange.
Why the man who had shown no interest in other people’s affairs all this time had been unable to endure it only this once.
“…I worked in a coal mine too. When I was little.”
But at that moment Veil muttered softly.
With his head lowered, he was gripping the necklace in his hand so tightly that the knuckles showed white.
“My parents sold me when I was two. To something like human traffickers.”
A bitter laugh leaked from Veil’s mouth.
“But the things that bastard Reginald was saying… they were exactly the same as the things the overseer at the first coal mine I worked in used to say, damn it.”
‘In a narrow shaft like this, it’s brats like your younger siblings who have to go in, kid.’
‘The narrower and lower the shafts are, the easier they are for children to work in.’
The moment he heard those words, Veil had felt all the blood in his body turn cold.
Was it because he remembered the past, when he had worked until he coughed up blood in order to keep his younger siblings from being sent into the mine?
Or because he remembered how, after finally leaving the mine, he had begun dirtying his own hands?
When he came to himself after briefly losing his senses like that.
The unconscious Reginald was lying beneath him.
Veil’s gaze, full of guilt, turned toward Tie.
“…I should’ve endured it.”
That was what he had thought while being dragged away by the soldiers.
I should’ve endured it. I should’ve endured it and instead infiltrated the castle secretly late at night.
Then he could have killed the bastard quietly, without anyone knowing.
Just as he had cut off the breath of the mine overseer before leaving his hometown.
“Because of me, the squirt….”
It was while his gaze was sinking ever darker.
“Uuuum….”
A small groan came from the bed.
Veil immediately lifted his head.
Tie was faintly opening her eyes before anyone knew it.
“Squirt?”
“…Tie!”
Everyone sprang to their feet.
But the Tie who had opened her eyes looked first at Veil.
“…Oppa.”
Veil froze, then answered in a trembling voice.
“Uh… uh, squirt. A, are you okay?”
However, instead of answering, the child slowly looked Veil over.
Then, staring at his bandaged hand, asked,
“Is oppa’s hand okay?”
Veil’s eyes abruptly reddened.
Looking worried, Tie stretched out her arm and firmly grasped Veil’s hand.
“I’m sorry, Tie is the little commander, but Tie came too late to save you….”
Veil drew in a short breath.
‘Oppa, did it hurt a lot?’
‘I’m sorry for making you do dangerous things every day, hyung.’
Over Astie’s face, the faces of the younger siblings she had left behind in her hometown were overlapping.
Before he knew it, something dropped onto his knee with a plop.
“O, oppa. Are you crying?”
Startled, Tie strained and sat up.
But instead of answering, Veil roughly wiped his eyes and then suddenly pulled Tie into his arms.
“You fool. No matter what, how could you push yourself that far?!”
Unlike his rough voice, hot tears kept pouring down his cheeks.
“You weren’t even over your cold yet, so what do you mean by manifesting a spirit and doing something like that!”
At once Tie too began sticking out her lips.
Soon the child answered tearfully.
“Uuuhng, Tie just wanted to let big sister Adeling meet her mommyyy….”