Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 110

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 110.
Blood That Won’t Fade (23)
Isolet slept for a long, long time.
It had already been ten days. Without waking even once in Despoina’s House, without eating anything, she simply slept on and on. During that time, the stain on her shoulder slowly faded away.
Visitors were forbidden. Despoina had decided it so. Daphnen could not come either. But as twilight fell on the tenth bright day, a single visitor arrived.
Nauplion gazed at Despoina with a faint smile. The two remained silent for some time, but ultimately it was Despoina who spoke first.
“There would be no need to meet.”
Nauplion offered a bitter smile this time.
“There are things I cannot say once she awakens, so I must speak of them now.”
Shortly after, Despoina gestured toward the inner room.
The bedroom was quiet. Only an iron pot hanging above the fireplace, deliberately lit for the patient’s sake, occasionally made a clanking sound.
Nauplion sat down at the head of the bed and gazed at Isolet’s face for a moment.
I saw strands of hair scattered across her pale forehead but did not brush them aside. As I looked down at the girl, my eyes were weary.
“You’ve suffered greatly.”
It was something no one could hear. Yet I spoke it softly nonetheless.
“You will recover soon. How fortunate that is, you cannot imagine. Had it been any later, it might have been irreversible.”
“I have thought about many things.”
After a moment, Nauplion shifted my posture slightly. Speaking seemed difficult.
“I often think of Ilios Priest. Why was he so cold-hearted? I genuinely admired him, yet I could never bring myself to love him. That is why you fascinated me so. How could you treat such a person as your most beloved father?”
“Perhaps it is merely my own thinking. He must have been kind and good to you as well. But I have resented him for a long time. I… I felt I had no choice but to do so.”
“You were not like that. There was no such bitterness in you. You did not accept that matter as I did. Is it because you are father and daughter that things are different? But my thoughts… they were not shaped that way.”
Nauplion drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. As though my chest were suffocating.
“It seems you did not attach any particular significance to that matter. You simply forgot it quickly, did you not?”
“Yes, yes, you were only ten years old then. You were too young to understand the betrayal I felt.”
Whether from the warmth of the room or something else, Nauplion’s face was flushed.
“But from that moment on, I have never looked upon Ilios Priest with ease. Not even in my final moments, not even in dreams. I always turned my head away. To hide my expression. That day, when he said ‘I wish to regard you as my son,’ I truly wanted to believe those words, but they were nothing more than a lie that would be revealed in a single day. Some lies consume a person like poison.”
Nauplion blinked several times and looked up at the ceiling.
“Though my love-hate toward you and your daughter has destroyed my life so… I could not end anything. Sometimes I wished to be a man of only pleasant disposition. Or to live as a free eccentric bound by nothing. But nothing—I could not untie that first wrongly-knotted cord, and each time I return like this, I realize…”
The sleeping girl’s soft breathing seemed to continue endlessly. Within it, short, rough breaths repeated sporadically at intervals.
“The moment I returned to the Island and saw you again, I realized that the knot I thought I had loosened was still there, unchanged. It was tangled even more severely. But this time… this time it feels as though I can untie it. I believe I have found the way.”
“Forgive me, but I must use ‘Communion’ with you.”
Nauplion brought my two hands together in a triangle and wove hand seals while reciting several runes. It was the same method I had used long ago in Lanzumi’s bedroom when conversing with Lanzumi’s heart, which had lost its voice.
This was one of the magical gifts some of the Island’s people possessed from birth. Just as Enios could perform the ‘Origin’ that calms rough waves, for instance.
In sleep returning to the source,
It shall come as though a dream.
As Mother Moonlight knocks upon that heart,
It shall be inscribed deep within the mind.
Nauplion’s hands glowed with a bluish light. I placed my hand upon Isolet’s forehead. Time passed, and the light faded. I smiled.
“The boy I cherish has ultimately given me the answer. I love that child with all sincerity. There are times I feel as though he were my own son. But he is a child from whom I learn more when he is my friend.”
“Awaken soon and go. And remember that I do not regret this. How fortunate it was that I could exchange your life for mine in this way. It must have been the final debt I owed to you and Ilios Priest.”
“Well, it’s over now. Between me and you two, there’s nothing left. I wish you good fortune, as if we were meeting for the first time. Perhaps I need it too, but still, I hope fortune favors you more.”
“So praise me.”
There was a sadness in those words. It was utterly different from the playful jabs he used to give Boris back when he was called Walnut Teacher, after finishing his conversation with Lanzumi.

The incident that occurred that summer never reached the ears of the Island’s people.
The ruined Old Village was a place everyone avoided, haunted by memories of plague and monsters. Thus, no one discovered the enormous traces of winter that had manifested there.
Yet even afterward, snow and ice lingered for a long time without fading.
Priestess Despoina brought the Winterer and placed a rather dangerous spell upon it—a spell designed to suppress whatever power lay within, preventing it from manifesting.
If the problematic power proved stronger than the spell, there was a risk it might actually rampage in its attempt to break through. Nevertheless, Despoina judged the spell necessary.
Daphnen needed protection from the Sword. And whether because of that spell or for other reasons, the Sword’s power seemed to have fallen dormant once more.
Professor Jilebo’s cause of death was inevitably concealed. The three priests gleaned a rough understanding of Jilebo’s conspiracy through Hector’s account, and through Ekion, they heard an almost certain version of the full truth.
Had this fact become known on the Island, neither boy could have escaped unscathed. Not Daphnen, who possessed the Sword with its terrible power, nor the two noble youths who had orchestrated a murder plot.
Given how matters had unfolded, there was no choice but to minimize the incident by sacrificing the truth of the dead. Besides, it was ultimately better for the honor of the deceased.
And so Professor Jilebo was recorded as having climbed the Mountain alone and fallen from the Cliff to his death. Morpheus Priest crudely manipulated the mangled corpse to make it appear plausible.
He had no family, and his solitary nature meant he had cultivated no close relationships, so no one harbored suspicions.
The fact that Hector and Daphnen had dueled could not be hidden, but the location was changed, and they were said to have reconciled.
Yet since Daphnen emerged relatively unscathed while Hector was gravely wounded, the Island’s people became convinced from that point onward that Daphnen’s skill definitively surpassed Hector’s.
Hector recovered later than Isolet. The sword fragment embedded in his chest was actually his own. When the monster’s claws struck, his blade shattered, piercing himself in the process.
In a way, it was fortunate. Had the wound been inflicted directly by the monster, as with Isolet, there would have been nothing but death.
And Isolet awoke on the fifteenth day and returned home.
Among those who knew the secret, the priests issued a special order of silence to Ekion and Oizis.
Truth be told, Ekion had nothing to gain from this matter being revealed. Oizis, when told it was for Daphnen’s sake, readily agreed.
Negotiations of sorts were conducted with Hector and Ekion’s parents as well. Since their sons had confessed to orchestrating the plot, they could hardly lodge complaints.
After experiencing that incident, Hector became oddly taciturn, and his demeanor seemed to have changed. He no longer led the other boys about as before. It became rare to see him in Ekion’s company.
He attended Scoli’s lessons regularly, but the moment they ended, he would head straight home.
Only once did he encounter Daphnen. It was at the entrance to Scoli’s Dining Hall. Daphnen stopped in his tracks, but Hector passed by as if he hadn’t even felt their shoulders brush.
A few of the Island’s people sensed there was something hidden. But with the three priests controlling the truth and the Regent’s brother’s household involved, no one stepped forward to uncover what had truly happened.
Summer ended. Autumn arrived from late August onward.
Uneventful days passed. One night, as I lay in bed with the lamp extinguished, thinking I had fallen asleep, Nauplion suddenly spoke.
“Boris, let’s resume sword training starting tomorrow.”
“Pardon?”
It wasn’t a question that warranted a response, but I was somewhat taken aback. During the two seasons I’d spent on the Island, I had taken up the sword before Nauplion only a handful of times.
Part of it was because Nauplion had been so busy, but I had also refrained from drawing further resentment, given the jealous glances I already received from the Island’s children.
It was obvious that receiving separate instruction from the Priest of the Sword would kindle their ill will.
Thus, though Nauplion had declared Daphnen his first disciple, the training during this period had been virtually nonexistent, a far cry from the wandering days in Lemme.
“You’ll be fifteen next year, won’t you?”
Nauplion spoke while buried deep in his blankets, but his voice carried no drowsiness.
“We’re not guaranteed to have time that continues forever.”
Daphnen understood those words to mean he needed to gain as much learning as possible in his remaining childhood—in other words, the time left to him.
But those words referred to the time remaining for Nauplion.
“Next!”
I sprinted from ten paces away and slashed at the wooden block suspended from the tree. It merely spun with a dull thud. No matter how many times I repeated the motion, it was futile. Because what I held was not even a practice sword but a wooden one, the cord wouldn’t even fray.
“Again!”
I ran back to my starting position and charged at the wooden block once more. I struck again. The block, struck with full force, swung in a wide arc and nearly caught Daphnen in the face. But he deftly knocked it away.
“Next!”
The same cycle repeated endlessly. The wooden sword in my hand was light, certainly, but to a boy who had wielded a real blade for so long, it felt nothing like a true weapon.
Yet Nauplion deliberately had me grip the wooden sword. He told me to train with the same resolve as if I held a real blade.
Infusing a wooden sword with fighting spirit was difficult. I tried to concentrate, but no matter how tense I became, it felt nothing like holding a real weapon. After a month of this, my mind had grown utterly exhausted.
Nauplion was not one to miss such signs. He told me that my wooden sword had lost its sharpness, and I retorted that a wooden sword was never sharp to begin with.
“True, your wooden sword is duller than a real blade. But compared to a round stone? What if you were to duel against fluttering cloth?”
“But no one fights against stones or cloth, do they?”
“In terms of relative sharpness, there is no difference whatsoever.”
Nauplion drew the wooden sword from his belt and swiftly thrust it at a nearby rock.
The instant I cried out in surprise, the wooden sword pierced partway into the rock’s surface and stopped. Fragments of stone fell to the ground.
“Magic is origin. What sharpens the blade is the power of your mind.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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