An Ode to Divorce - Chapter 62

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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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#62

 

“Gasp!”

 

The child quickly covered their mouth, afraid that making any sound would cause the deer to attack them.

 

It was fortunate they weren’t hit by the stone, but it wasn’t a situation to feel relieved about.

 

Thankfully, the deer didn’t seem to have noticed the child’s presence yet, but being so close, even if the deer didn’t attack directly, getting caught up in its rampage would surely cause serious injury.

 

They needed to escape quickly, but the child was too terrified to move.

 

I also wanted to calm the deer immediately. But just because I was anxious didn’t mean I could skip verses or play faster.

 

For my song to gain power, I had to play sincerely and properly, to a standard I could accept.

 

I needed a little more time until the next verse. I gritted my teeth and focused on each note, each sound.

 

Ding, diring, ding, ding-

 

Bang! Bang bang!

 

Meanwhile, the deer continued to rampage. Under the hooves striking down indiscriminately, the child seemed about to be trampled to death at any moment.

 

In that critical moment, I plucked the lyre’s strings while desperately hoping.

 

‘Just a little, if someone could just buy a little time…’

 

“Tch…!”

 

Just then, the hero who had warned me about the danger clicked his tongue and ran toward the young child, dodging the rampaging deer’s legs.

 

‘Hadn’t he run away?’

 

I naturally thought he would have fled, but it seemed he was still here.

 

The hero tucked the child under his arm and rolled to avoid the deer’s attack.

 

But luck only lasted once. The deer that had missed its footing tried to bring down its bronze hooves on the hero who hadn’t yet regained his stance.

 

No matter how sturdy a hero might be, if trampled by those hooves, it wouldn’t just be a matter of burst organs—he would be completely pierced through.

 

The bronze hooves fell in a decisive trajectory.

 

Ding——!

 

But at that critical moment.

 

My performance barely reached the second verse. The moment I had been desperately waiting for. I raised my voice toward the deer as if drawing from a deep well.

 

You who cry out

 

Even breaking walls and shouting

 

In that commotion

 

You cannot hear anything

 

The deer’s body froze as if bound by chains. The deer staggered backward, then stood firm on all four legs, trembling. Its flanks heaved violently with rough breathing.

 

Thanks to this, the hero who barely returned from death’s threshold had no time to wipe the cold sweat beading on his chin before immediately hoisting the child onto his shoulders.

 

‘Phew.’

 

Seeing the hero hurriedly escape to safety with the child put me at ease.

 

I continued playing the lyre to draw attention so the deer wouldn’t chase them.

 

Like barely clinging to the back of a rampaging wild horse, just playing was draining my energy rapidly.

 

‘A divine beast is still a divine beast.’

 

In the midst of this, I suddenly felt like the deer’s gaze as it stared at me had changed.

 

‘…Huh?’

 

As soon as I sensed something strange, the deer charged at me. The momentum was incomparable to before.

 

“Watch out!”

 

The heroes watching the situation from a step away shouted.

 

‘…I know I need to watch out too!’

 

I grumbled as I rolled my body. Thanks to the grueling breakfall training I received from the twins during my time with the expedition, my movements flowed as naturally as water.

 

While supporting myself with one hand as I got up, I plucked the lyre strings with the other. I couldn’t miss the beat.

 

When I dodged, the deer changed direction again and lunged at me.

 

The deer I had observed so far seemed more like it was stirring up trouble here and there rather than attacking specific targets.

 

But now it was different.

 

The attacks directed at me were blatantly persistent, and the deer’s flickering eyes held clear hostility and hatred. I clicked my tongue quietly.

 

‘…Did it notice that I’m trying to forcibly calm it down?’

 

But there was no time for deep thought. With my stamina, I couldn’t endure this war of attrition for long.

 

I had to calm the deer first.

 

‘The song isn’t ineffective. There was definitely a reaction.’

 

But to put stronger will into it, the lyre alone wouldn’t suffice—I had to sing. However, singing while moving my body so vigorously wasn’t easy.

 

‘Damn, I need to calm the deer to sing, but I need to sing to calm the deer!’

 

How could I escape this ridiculous cycle?

 

Anything would do. To find something that could help me, my already sensitive hearing sharpened even more.

 

Then.

 

Kiiiiing-

 

Amid the commotion, a very small crying sound pierced my ears.

 

The cry of a baby deer.

 

Whether I was the only one who heard it, the golden-horned doe still had her eyes fixed on me with a crazed look.

 

Kking, kiiiing.

 

The sound was getting closer. I didn’t doubt what I heard. Surely, a baby deer was coming this way.

 

‘In that case…’

 

I decided to gamble on it.

 

With a deep breath, my fingers gradually slowed down. The racing tempo slowly decreased. Like going from running to gradually walking.

 

The fast tempo had been chosen to catch the deer’s attention, so slowing down would make it easier to be drowned out by noise and ignored.

 

But the song I wanted to play didn’t suit urgency.

 

In a tempo so slow it was uncertain whether it would reach the deer’s ears, I exhaled long and sang in a whisper-like voice.

 

***

 

Eurich, who had been watching this entire chaos from afar, chuckled as he saw Orphea tumbling around dodging the deer.

 

“Trying to calm a divine beast with music. Did she think that was possible? Her arrogance reaches the heavens.”

 

Certainly Orphea was an outstanding bard, but her opponent was a golden-horned deer protected by divine power.

 

Being able to calm the golden-horned deer was as absurd as being able to break Gert’s curse.

 

‘My heart sank when the deer stopped for a moment, but…’

 

Fortunately, the deer quickly shook off Orphea’s song. Watching Orphea narrowly dodge the deer’s continued attacks by a hair’s breadth, Eurich clicked his tongue in displeasure.

 

‘She’s still excellent at running away. But… how long can she keep running?’

 

Orphea didn’t have particularly good stamina. Meanwhile, the deer would never give up on Orphea, so it was only a matter of time before Orphea collapsed.

 

Eurich stared at the lyre that Orphea desperately protected even while being chased.

 

‘Foolishly and pitifully…’

 

Orphea was being chased by the deer precisely because of that lyre.

 

To be precise, because of the silk strings Orphea had replaced.

 

It was the bait that lured Orphea to this place, and the trap that made the mother deer attack Orphea due to the baby deer’s tears secretly buried to avoid the instrument merchant’s eyes.

 

‘At first it wouldn’t be easily felt, but as the performance continued, the scent flowing out through the strings’ vibrations would stimulate the mother deer’s sense of smell…’

 

In short, the performance meant to calm the deer was actually strangling Orphea.

 

‘This is all thanks to the princess. If the princess hadn’t provided Aliphas’s net, I couldn’t have hidden the baby’s existence from its mother for so long.’

 

The Aliphas net borrowed from Princess Lairinne was a divine artifact that erased the presence of whatever it wrapped.

 

No matter how keenly a mother deer might sense her child’s presence, it was useless before Aliphas’s net.

 

Since quite some time had passed since Eurich kidnapped the baby, the mother deer would be in an anguished state.

 

Having thoroughly drugged the mother deer, Eurich hid the baby deer near the instrument shop and removed its net so that the mother deer would rampage at the exact time Orphea visited the shop on the day she was scheduled to visit.

 

Everything after that went according to Eurich’s scheme.

 

The mother deer could clearly sense the baby deer’s presence nearby, yet the scent of her baby was coming from Orphea who stood before her.

 

As a mother deer, she had no choice but to mistake Orphea for the culprit who had kidnapped her baby. So she wouldn’t simply let Orphea go.

 

‘Unless the baby suddenly appears before her eyes.’

 

Since he had tied up the baby and hidden it somewhere it couldn’t be easily found, there was absolutely no possibility of the baby revealing itself even by chance.

 

‘In all this chaos, who would pay attention to some tied-up baby deer?’

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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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