A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad (Novel) - Chapter 88
Chapter 88
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Translated by Sylph
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Enzo urgently stopped the carriage on the mountain path.
It was at the eastern entrance of the ‘Gravis Mountains’ that they had to cross to go to the imperial capital.
“Squirt, hey, squirt! Come to your senses, okay?”
Veil, having laid Astie down on the seat, carefully shook the child.
“Squirt. Can’t you hear me? Huh?”
But no matter how much she called, Astie did not move at all.
Enzo, who had touched Tie’s forehead, muttered,
“…He is too hot.”
Astie was, quite literally, suffering from a raging high fever.
Restlessly, he looked around at the other members.
“A high fever in kids… is that not dangerous?”
Silence settled.
It was when everyone was exchanging flustered looks.
“…Ice.”
Raul, suddenly coming to his senses, muttered.
He hurried to the luggage compartment, then opened the food box.
Inside was about half of the ice the blacksmiths had packed for them together with fresh food.
“How about lowering his temperature a little with this?!”
“Yes. That is a good idea.”
Basto, who had answered, took off his coat.
And she moved into the carriage as if to cover Tie with it.
“Wait a moment! Just in case, I have a little fever medicine I brought from the gate. This too….”
Then Nordix too took out a pill from inside his small bag, but
“Are you all insane?”
At Lucarion’s next words, everyone stopped short.
Lucarion, who had been examining Tie’s face, was already shining her eyes ominously.
He looked at Raul first.
“An ice compress? Do you not know that if you try to bring a fever down too quickly, it can cause hypothermia? Astie is still a young child. On top of that, his ability to regulate body temperature must be immature, so what are you….”
Raul hurriedly set down the ice pack.
Lucarion then looked at Basto.
“You too. Do not think about covering Astie with something, and start a fire over there first.”
“…A fire?”
“Yes. Make lukewarm water and bring that container full of it. And a clean cloth.”
Basto stood frozen blankly for a moment, but soon hurried off toward the place Lucarion pointed.
Lucarion looked at Nordix.
“Where did you buy that fever medicine?”
Nordix looked flustered, but hesitated and answered,
“Outside the imperial capital, that is, at the herbalist’s by the gate….”
“Then it is not for children.”
“It is for adults.”
“Then cut it into a quarter.”
“What?”
“Unless you want to overdose a child with adult fever medicine, cut it into a quarter.”
Nordix’s eyes flinched toward the pill in his hand.
Soon he hurriedly took a small hand knife from his waist.
As he began to cut the medicine, Lucarion added,
“Just in case, use the medicine last. If the fever still does not drop by other methods, then use it.”
“Understood.”
Finally, Lucarion shifted his gaze to Enzo and Veil, who were standing frozen.
“You check where the nearest village is. You go and heat up drinking water. As I said earlier, lukewarm. If this keeps up, Astie is going to get dehydrated.”
Veil swallowed hard.
But he soon grabbed the water bottle and ran toward Basto.
Enzo had already disappeared toward the driver’s seat to get the map.
* * *
Inside the carriage, as the sun dimmed.
“Uuuung….”
Astie’s sick groan echoed softly.
Lucarion, who was sitting by the child’s pillow, gently brushed Tie’s damp forehead.
“There now, it is okay. It is okay. Astie.”
At those words, the child’s furrowed brow slowly relaxed.
Turning over, Tie curled to one side from the sprawled position she had been lying in.
Veil muttered,
“…It is a thousand blessings that the fever went down.”
When he recalled the situation from a few hours ago, his vision grew distant again.
Following Lucarion’s instructions, the members had moved busily.
Basto had brought lukewarm wet cloths to wipe Tie’s body.
Nordix had ground up the fever medicine, then divided it into tiny portions just small enough for the child to take.
Raul and Veil had kept letting lukewarm water trickle into Tie’s mouth so that he would not get dehydrated.
Meanwhile, Enzo, after checking the map, returned with an uneasy expression.
“If we go just a little farther into the Gravis Mountains, there is a village. Since it has an inn, it seems like we might be able to spend one night there without trouble, but….”
“But?”
“I think I heard one of the blacksmiths say that most of the residents evacuated recently because of a magic stone that arose near there. If we go and find the village empty, would that not be a disaster.”
“…Yes. And it would be even more of a disaster if there were any magic stones there that still had not been conquered.”
Agabert went into an emergency meeting.
Since they did not know what would happen to Tie, they even considered simply turning back toward the weapons district, but
“It is impossible to return to the weapons district. Looking at the sky, it seems it may rain before long.”
The problem was that the road they had traveled so far was a dirt road with a shallow slope.
In truth, Agabert’s carriage was on the heavy side.
Even so, until now they had been able to get this far because the mountain path had been fairly dry.
However.
“If it starts raining on the downhill stretch, that changes things. The whole area will turn to mud, and if the horses slip, everyone will be in danger.”
Considering the weight of the carriage carrying the mercenary company’s luggage and all the monster cores they had processed thus far.
If they traveled on steep slopes or wet roads, there was a high probability of an accident in which the carriage overturned.
“I thought we were completely stranded.”
Recalling the dizzying situation, Veil wiped his face and looked at Astie.
Fortunately, when they wiped the child’s body with lukewarm wet cloths, her fever gradually went down.
The dehydration symptoms Lucarion had worried about the most also seemed to have passed without incident.
“It’s okay, Tie. Everything will be okay.”
Veil looked with subtle eyes at the familiar nursing Tie.
‘Because the squirt is a monster, is that familiar also a monster.’
Up until now, all the familiars Veil had seen had been lump-like things that made strange noises while following their summoner around.
It was the first time in his life he had seen one with a human appearance, and on top of that it was smart.
It was just as he shook his head and turned his gaze away.
“….”
His eyes met Basto’s, who was sighing with an expression similar to his own.
At first they had snarled at each other, but now that they had grown somewhat closer, Veil could naturally read Basto’s eyes.
Apparently, Basto seemed to be thinking something similar to him.
Meanwhile, Nordix, who had been looking at the campfire they had lit at a distance, muttered,
“When we stop by the next herbalist’s, I should stock up on children’s emergency medicine first….”
Nordix too had been greatly flustered by this incident.
‘You would have to have raised a child in your life to know such things….’
Her gaze suddenly turned toward Astie’s familiar.
Was his name Lucarion?
If it had not been for that familiar, there was a high probability that Astie’s condition would have worsened.
And since they were stranded in the forest, if he assumed the worst….
Nordix’s face turned pale, and he asked Lucarion,
“Where did you learn all those things?”
At those words, the familiar turned his head.
Though he was a familiar, his appearance as a human was so natural that at a glance he looked like an ordinary boy.
“From a certain man.”
“A man?”
“I learned it from the man who was Astie’s father.”
At those words, Nordix’s eyes widened.
The other members were just as surprised.
Meanwhile, Lucarion, glancing at them indifferently as if they were bothersome, added,
“It has been quite a while since Astie summoned me. Since I’ve been with him from when he was a baby, has it already been more than four years, I wonder.”
“….”
“Whenever Tie was sick, that man always did this. I knew all of it from hearing it.”