A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad - Chapter 203
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A Powerful Child Searches for Dad Episode 203
Inside the room where streetlamp light gently filtered in.
Sleeping Tie’s back rose and fell evenly.
Leaning against the wall, Tesetan gazed down at the child’s face intently.
‘Father! Father-!!’
The moment he first saw Astie came to mind.
The deep blue rippling sea.
Astie standing precariously on the pier, calling out to him.
In his head, the words the child had sniffled out just before falling asleep kept echoing.
‘I want to keep living with Grandmother and Aunt…’
‘…It’s only natural, I suppose.’
Astie’s life hadn’t even reached five years yet.
And the child had spent four of those years entirely here, with the people of this place.
‘Though I’m supposedly included, since he has no memory of me, I’m an exception.’
White cheeks.
Eyelashes trembling at the edge of his eyelids, wondering what dreams he was having.
“Why…”
Tesetan muttered.
“…But why do I feel like my insides are turning upside down.”
‘Talochium is nice too, but Tie likes Jongno-gu as well.’
Why did those words make his heart feel like it was sinking.
Tesetan closed both eyes and leaned his head against the wall.
His head ached as if it might split open.
‘I want to eat kimchi…’
He recalled the tantrums the child would throw during meals at the stronghold.
‘Kimchi! Rinsed in water! Cut up! Put on top of rice with fish cake!’
‘Ah, so what is fish cake anyway!’
‘Eomuk!’
‘Uh, what?’
‘Seaweed and kimchi and fish cake! Hiiing…’
At first, he hadn’t paid much attention to it.
It was natural for a four-year-old child to be fussy about food.
But the foods Astie said he wanted to eat were things that couldn’t be found even if you searched the entire continent, let alone the Empire.
‘Tie. Then you should at least tell me how to make it.’
‘How to make it?’
‘Right. If you tell me the exact recipe, I’ll try making it. What ingredients go in?’
‘Ingredients, umm, cabbage…?’
‘White cabbage? That’s a vegetable not cultivated on the continent.’
‘No, just cabbage. Like this long and big one. You give it a bath.’
‘You give white cabbage a bath?’
‘Yes! Then you sprinkle red pepper powder, it’s scary-tasting hot powder! Then you mix it, and sprinkle fishy-smelling soy sauce!’
‘…’
‘You put vegetables in containers and give one to the neighboring house.’
He didn’t know it then.
But looking back now, he could understand.
At Talochium, Astie had been longing for this place.
More precisely, for all the life he had lived here, eating and drinking and spending time.
‘…There are no forsythias?’
‘Forsythias?’
‘There’s not even one yellow flower. No hibiscus either. This garden is stupid!’
‘You little brat! After I spent all day running around making you a flower bed, what kind of attitude is that?!’
‘…Hueeng.’
‘What, what is it. Why are you suddenly crying?’
He would sniffle even while looking at a perfectly fine garden.
‘I’m going to erase all the Tanifang on Tie’s room ceiling.’
‘Danzu! Didn’t you really like those? Why would you erase them? They’re on our uniforms too.’
‘…I’m going to erase the ones on the uniforms too.’
‘But why…’
‘Because they don’t move!’
‘Pardon?’
‘Because they don’t move at all! Tonnapang that don’t move aren’t cute at all. They’re not pretty!’
He would suddenly throw tantrums while looking at his most favorite fairy drawings.
Coming here, he naturally came to understand the reason for that too.
[Sparkle, sparkle! Gathering shining hearts! Sparkle~ beam!]
[I won’t forgive making friends cry! Disappear, shadow of darkness! Bloom attack!]
Inside the television, those things were alive and moving.
They laughed and cried with exaggerated expressions.
Sometimes they would collapse exhausted after battles with evil villains.
‘Tonnapang is the best! Transform please, strike!’
Then Tie would cry and laugh along with them.
Talking and moving.
As if the fairies beyond the screen were welcoming.
‘Having two hometowns is sad.’
The voice of the child chattering with sleep crusted in his eyes echoed in his head.
‘Father forgetting Tie is sad too.’
‘…’
‘Only sad things happen to Tie every day.’
At the feeling of his heart tightening, Tesetan clenched his fist.
That’s when it happened.
“…?”
Something faintly glimmered from the chest of the child lying on his side.
Tesetan quietly approached Astie’s side.
And he slightly lifted the blanket covering the child’s neck.
“What is this?”
He hadn’t seen it wrong.
Beneath the pajamas the child was wearing.
Some yellowish light was shining through.
“Marbas.”
Tesetan immediately called for Marbas.
Marbas, who had been waiting in the corner, bounced over.
“Check it out.”
Marbas tilted his head.
[Check what, you mean? I’m not sure either?]
Tesetan furrowed his brow.
After pondering, he reached out and slightly pulled down the child’s collar.
Below the exposed collarbone.
Something was rippling beneath the child’s skin.
[There’s something under the skin!]
Marbas jumped up.
Tesetan quietly observed the pulsating thing.
After a while, he furrowed his brow as he recalled something.
‘Come to think of it.’
He remembered the moment they were sucked into this world.
The Clock Tower battle.
The plant-type Heart of the Mana Stone that had been hidden in the Underground Passage of the Palace.
When their group and Ardiana’s group met again, Ardiana had already thrust her sword into the Heart of the Mana Stone.
‘Her injuries were severe.’
Ardiana had been completely consumed by mana.
The emotions he felt then were complex.
Worry for Ardiana.
Nevertheless, relief that since the mana stone’s power was exhausted, the battle would soon end, and at least Astie would be safe.
But the next moment, something unexpected happened.
‘Light.’
From the Heart of the Mana Stone that seemed to have exhausted its power, something unidentifiable shot out.
It was light that glowed like the sun.
The light soared high as if to touch the ceiling of the tunnel, then,
“…No way.”
It flew straight into Tie’s chest and pierced it.
Tesetan swallowed dryly.
‘Why had I forgotten?’
As soon as they came to this world, he should have examined that thing that entered Astie’s body first.
But because they happened to fall in a place he’d never been to before.
And because Astie seemed perfectly healthy with no problems, he had forgotten about it.
After the light pierced Tie’s heart, the space they were in became completely distorted.
Suddenly a portal appeared, and it pulled Astie and Tesetan to this place.
“I need to check.”
Tesetan gathered holy power in his right hand.
“I can’t control mana because of the restriction. But with this….”
Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
Ever since the restriction was placed on his heart in childhood, whenever he handled holy power in ways other than through a sword, pain always accompanied it.
But now was not the time to fear such pain.
Tesetan placed his palm on Astie’s chest.
And he carefully pushed his holy power toward the light pulsating beneath the child’s skin.
However.
“…Huh?”
The thing embedded in the child’s chest forcefully pushed him away.
The force was so strong that the heavy pressure made everything from his palm up his arm to his head go numb.
[Do you sense something?! Please don’t tell me it’s some new type of monster! Something that parasitizes a host or…!]
Marbas bounced up and down with his wood grain turned pale.
Tesetan knelt on the floor while enduring the powerful force trying to repel him.
Between Astie’s body and his palm, the two energies clashed fiercely.
What was strange was that even amid all this, the child was still fast asleep.
“…Damn it.”
Tesetan bit the inside of his mouth.
Realizing he could no longer retreat, he gathered his strength and exerted even stronger pressure.
That was the moment.
‘Do not push away.’
The back of his neck stiffened as someone’s voice thundered in his ear.
‘Do not intrude.’
Tesetan froze in place with a start.
And he slowly raised his head.
The dark room became brightly illuminated.
‘From the moment I sprouted, this has been my place.’
The floor was rapidly covered with green moss.
Stems grew up the walls as hundreds of large and small leaves bloomed.
Golden eyes floating in the air gazed at Tesetan.
‘This life is my next root.’
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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