A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad (Novel) - Chapter 126

Chapter 126

* * *

Alexander carefully laid Tie on the bed.

When he covered him with a blanket, the child immediately curled up.

Beneath the tightly closed eyelids.

He could see the child’s dark eyelashes trembling faintly.

‘……It is only natural that he would be tired.’

In truth, he remembered the previous night, when Valentis had revealed the Necromancer King’s true identity to the three young masters.

At that time, the first emotion he had felt was concern.

‘You say you will keep the religious order from knowing. Put another way, does that not mean that the moment it is found out, disaster will break out?’

‘That is right, Father. What is the reason you are planning such a thing? Unnecessary friendship with mercenaries, is that not far too dangerous a burden?’

The imperial family was troublesome and strict.

Because it was centered on the Emperor, who always caused incidents in a fit of temper, and the Empress Consort, who whispered only sweet words into the ears of that Emperor.

Of course, even such an imperial family did have opponents they found difficult.

The religious order whose home base was the central continent.

However, helping the Necromancer King was something that could turn even this religious order into an enemy.

Because just before the subspace incident broke out in the weapons district, the religious order had already approached Luminen using the Necromancer King as a pretext.

[On this occasion, I would like you to look into that Necromancer King fellow a bit. Whether there is anything else strange, whether the aura of his power is peculiar, and also……]

‘……’

[Whether there is any pretext by which we might tie him to something and call him to the central continent.]

The religious order.

Among them, the cardinals were people who originally never stepped forward directly in any matter.

But for some reason, recently they had ordered Valentis to keep watch on the Necromancer King.

As though they wanted to see the Necromancer King up close by manufacturing any pretext at all.

At first, Valentis seemed to obediently follow the orders of the religious order.

But after going to the weapons district, he suddenly showed strange behavior.

‘He possesses an unauthorized relic. It seemed he did not know the activation condition of the relic, judging by the fact that he attempted memory manipulation on me.’

‘Does it matter. In the end, my memory is intact.’

The relic the Necromancer King possessed without permission.

He said he would pretend not to have seen Sanctum of Oblivion, the very thing that would become the good ‘pretext’ the religious order was talking about.

And that was not even all.

‘Is the religious order aware of this fact?’

‘No. They do not know. And I intend to keep them from knowing in the future as well.’

Now he was searching for a way to help the Necromancer King even to the point of violating holy law.

Not alone, either, but by mobilizing the entire family.

‘I will say it again. This is madness.’

Given the situation, it was a natural result that Leonardo opposed it fiercely.

Edmund and Alexander were the same.

‘Please think of the duty of the family! Luminen is a family that serves the imperial house and the religious order, is it not, rather than one in a position to involve itself in such private matters!’

‘Private matters? What of the family are you, that you presume to judge the weight of a matter?’

‘……Father.’

‘I am the master of Luminen. And I have already made the decision to help the Necromancer King. Is there anything more needed now?’

But Valentis was obstinate until the very end.

At a glance, he looked like a father blindly forcing his own thoughts on his sons.

But the deeper the conversation went, the three young masters could sense it.

Whom Valentis was seeing in the Necromancer King, no, in the Astie left all alone.

‘……He is thinking of Theseos.’

‘Yes.’

Inside the banquet hall after Valentis had left that day.

The young masters only let out sighs in the silence.

Theseos Luminen.

The young younger brother who had been dragged off to the religious order at the age of four and had his mana sealed.

For some reason, Astie had many points in common with the Theseos of those days.

That he had manifested mana and was under the watch of the religious order.

That he had been separated from his parents and left all alone.

And lastly,

‘That child does not know how to show his own pain. He only knows how to endure and bear it. He keeps enduring and enduring until the insides of the one watching rot away.’

Before leaving the banquet hall, Valentis’s eyes had been bloodshot.

‘Do you think it is normal for a young child to press down his own pain?’

‘……’

‘He is a pitiable child, and one who stirs compassion. If Luminen truly is a family that protects the Empire, then we must help him. It is not right to worsen the situation and drive a young child into a corner.’

Throughout his words, Valentis’s eyes had been sunk in deep regret.

The three young masters knew what he was recalling.

Valentis was remembering a not-so-distant and yet remote past, four years earlier.

The day when Theseos had become a perfectly fitting sixteen years old.

The day when several large magic stones rose in the wasteland on the outskirts of the imperial capital, and the imperial family was thrown into turmoil.

And so, on that day, even young Holy Knights who had only just finished their basic training were mobilized in large numbers to the battlefield.

In the wasteland, which was like a living hell, the mana of Theseos, repressed for twelve years, went out of control.

Even now the young masters remembered the scene of that day.

The flames of mana that looked as though they would devour the whole land.

The people screaming, and even the terrible scars carved wherever the shockwaves touched.

It was a disaster.

A great catastrophe that devastated the entire radius and nearly blew away even the imperial capital’s First Gate nearby.

But when everything ended, there were no dead.

Because Eleonora, in the midst of the explosion, embraced the rampaging Theseos without the slightest hesitation.

He offset Theseos’s mana with her whole body.

And in the end she crumbled away into powder.

It was a vain death where they could not even recover a corpse.

Under the Emperor’s lead, the handling of the situation soon began.

Theseos’s rampage was made confidential.

His name was erased from the Holy Knights, and the explosion was falsified as having been caused by the large magic stone.

Because the fact that a ‘defect’ like Theseos had come from Luminen could not be revealed outside.

Time passed cruelly.

The reports were forged so that Theseos had never participated in that siege in the first place.

Instead, rumors began to spread that his whereabouts had become unknown.

All of the remaining members of House Luminen could know.

That following the imperial family, even the religious order had decided to erase Theseos from House Luminen.

At some point, Theseos silently left the family.

Valentis went searching, but in the end he could not find his son.

Then a few more years passed like that, and when the three young masters and Valentis finally found Theseos again.

Theseos was no longer Theseos.

Taking as his new name the pet name Eleonora had used to call him when she was alive, ‘Tesetan,’ he had become a mercenary.

The words Theseos left behind before his brothers and father, whom he was meeting again after a long time, were only a few.

‘Please announce that I am dead.’

‘……Theseos!’

‘Please say that the fourth young master of Luminen is dead. It is the last favor I ask of you.’

After that, the three young masters could never see Theseos again.

Because Theseos deliberately kept avoiding House Luminen.

In the end, they met Theseos only through rumors, and saw him through rumors.

Of course, down to the changed clothes, the frivolous way of speaking, the skin tanned black, and even the atmosphere of a savage butcher that was said to come off him even when he stood still.

The Theseos of rumor, as his words had said, was no longer the fourth young master of Luminen.

Meanwhile, Valentis collapsed.

‘I regret it.’

‘Father……’

‘At that time. When Tesetan was being seized by their hands and taken away from the mansion’s central courtyard. If I had stopped them then, would anything have changed?’

‘……’

‘If then I had thrown everything away and embraced that child, if I had properly fulfilled my role……. if as a father I had stood proudly and become a shield for my young son……’

But no longer at his side was even Eleonora, who would have taken his hand.

Valentis tried to forget Theseos in order to go on living.

Because otherwise regret and remorse tormented him day after day.

And around that time.

The ‘Awakening of Sacred Sight’ possessed by Valentis advanced by one stage.

It evolved from simply reading holy power and mana into something that could also feel and gauge the emotions and pain of others.

Thus Valentis thought on the day he met Astie.

That perhaps his power had grown for the sake of that very moment.

The Valentis of the past had always blamed himself.

For not knowing Theseos’s instability.

For not recognizing his pain.

But this time was different.

Because the moment Astie wiped away tears with a handkerchief, she saw the sorrow and longing brimming over in the young heart.

‘I do not want to turn away any longer. I do not want to repeat painful regret twice.’

In the end, the three young masters had no choice but to follow Valentis’s will.

Because in the end, they too were the same as Valentis.

In that they had all kept aged emotions in the depths of their hearts like folded fans.

* * *

The next day.

Tie opened her eyes in a half-asleep daze.

Morning sunlight poured in through the opened curtains.

“You are awake.”

A gentle voice was heard from the front.

Before long he saw someone sitting in the easy chair.

Alexander, setting the book he had been holding down on the bedside table, smiled broadly.

As if she had kept watch by Tie’s side all through the night while she slept.