How to Replace Your Dad - Chapter 262

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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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How to Replace Father
Chapter 262
Idel leaned toward Calypso.
I’d read it somewhere in a psychology textbook.
When someone’s body tilts toward another, it’s a sign of interest or favor.
Not that it mattered—he was already chuckling softly, betraying his intrigue.
Calypso blinked.
“Uh, why…?”
She seemed flustered by the sudden shift in atmosphere.
[Well, do listen.]
Idel’s split mouth curved into a soft arc.
Calypso was just opening her lips to speak when—
“I’d like to trade for a Reverse Scale. If you give it to me, I’ll grant you whatever you desire.”
Ujina was quick.
The moment Idel’s demeanor had softened, she’d seen her opening.
The female priests frowned.
Calypso’s eyes only widened; she said nothing.
Then Idel spoke.
[Doesn’t that young lady find this at all unpleasant?]
The question was aimed at Calypso.
“Pardon?”
As Calypso questioned, Idel gestured with his chin toward Ujina.
[A woman thoughtless and arrogant, who seizes others’ opportunities without hesitation.]
Ujina’s face flushed crimson as she caught his meaning.
“What, what did you say?”
She cried out, indignant, but Idel’s gaze remained fixed on Calypso.
Calypso flinched and glanced at Ujina nervously.
“Well… um, I’m not very good with words… but, having someone else speak on my behalf is actually something I’m grateful for….”
As she murmured, Idel nodded.
[Ah.]
It was just that, but everything was written in his eyes.
Was she simply a fool?
Just as I was about to judge so, Calypso continued hesitantly.
“That… you seem like a very intellectual being, sir Dragon. Your… vocabulary is quite archaic… I’m still not developed enough to converse with an intellectual… so I thought it would be better if someone more refined than me were to speak….”
Idel’s eyes widened.
After staring for a long moment, he let out a hearty laugh.
I looked at Calypso.
‘A real formidable one.’
She had elevated Idel as an intellectual conversation partner she wouldn’t dare engage with directly.
She showed no shame at revealing her own shortcomings, yet she wasn’t servile about it either.
That she was still lacking—that phrasing suggested she could grow.
Moreover, she’d transformed her retreat into a means for a smooth transaction.
No mere fool.
Most of all….
‘Not a lie in a single word of it.’
Her status window read as follows.
.
.
[Current Inner Thoughts]
The Dragon Lord carries himself beautifully. His tone is calm and never easily ruffled. How magnificent.
Even without the ability to see a status window like mine, Idel was a Chimera—his senses far keener than any human’s.
That formidable goodness was truly a weapon.
Idel smiled thinly.
[A Reverse Scale, you say… I see no reason not to provide one.]
It would be a trivial matter for Idel to give up a Reverse Scale.
He was a being who could remold his own body.
Even if he shed one Reverse Scale, he could reconstruct himself and grow a new one.
His partners brightened visibly.
“Then please, let me…!”
“If you’ll allow us to conduct this trade, we shall offer whatever compensation…!”
Ujina and the female priests spoke eagerly over one another.
[A Unicorn Horn. However, one that has not lost its Sanctity.]
“I beg your pardon?”
“A, a Unicorn?”
“A Unicorn Horn, you say…?”
Ujina, the female priest, and Calypso spoke in turn.
Idel nodded.
[I shall grant it to whoever brings it to me.]
He tapped the blue scales beneath his throat deliberately as he continued.
[A Unicorn dwells in the nearby Forest, so it would be wise to hurry. …Though it won’t be easy, I suspect.]
It really wasn’t easy.
A Unicorn.
In other words, a beast of legend.
A creature that only chaste and pure women could approach—a sacred thing.
It clearly favored Calypso.
* * *
The Princes emerged from the Cave.
They seized their partners and assessed the situation.
Gaspard spoke first.
“A Unicorn—?!”
He frowned as though he’d heard an absurd condition.
Capturing a Unicorn wasn’t particularly difficult.
The problem was the condition itself.
“One that hasn’t lost its Sanctity?”
“But once the Unicorn Horn is severed, it loses its Sanctity within ten minutes, doesn’t it?”
“The texts do say that. Though we’ve never witnessed it ourselves, since there’s been no occasion to hunt a Unicorn.”
Unicorns despised humans and wouldn’t even approach them.
Since they caused no harm to settlements, they went untouched.
Few people bothered trying to capture one.
Unicorns flew through the Sky besides, and boasted the swiftest speed of any creature, monster or otherwise.
Capture attempts invariably failed, wasting nothing but coin.
More than that….
“Only women can approach them.”
Ludovico clicked his tongue with displeasure.
“Not merely women, but virtue of character matters as well.”
“So the dragon purposely favored that Calypso, then.”
All eyes turned toward Calypso.
Gaspard let out a bitter laugh.
“I thought that mad beast would be the headache. Turns out it’s something else.”
That mad beast referred to me.
Gaspard looked at Luciano with a mocking expression.
“You brought your betrothed all this way, and she’s useless. She’s a woman, certainly, but… doesn’t seem the type a Unicorn would let near.”
Luciano’s soldiers frowned but held their tongues.
As Imperial Soldiers, they dared not sass a Prince.
And besides….
“The Saint is certainly worthy, but….”
“For the Unicorn, it’s… rather difficult.”
…Gaspard was right. I wasn’t the sort of character a Unicorn would favor.
An incarnation of greed.
A master of cunning tricks.
A craftsperson of vengeance who bites when cornered.
Such was how I was introduced….
‘But I can’t just sit idle.’
This was a race against time.
While we wasted hours searching for some “paragon of innocence and purity,” the other Princes would snatch the Unicorn Horn first—and we’d be finished.
I leaned close to Luciano and whispered.
“What if I just take it from Calypso? The Reverse Scale?”
“…You really are something. At least try first. Unicorns aren’t dangerous creatures, after all.”
“….”
“What.”
“You didn’t even say as much as ‘the Unicorn might take a liking to me, at least in jest?'”
“….”
Luciano glanced away abruptly.
I narrowed my eyes.
But I couldn’t press him further.
The Mirror World transmitter the Imperial Palace had sent had arrived.
The transmission was beginning.
* * *
Imperial Palace Square.
A crowd of people clustered before the Mirror World.
Roji, who had just arrived, took her place beside Guinevere.
“What’s the situation?”
“My partners have entered the Golden Wound Forest.”
“You’re really going to capture the Unicorn?”
“Well….”
Roji clicked her tongue.
“Even if we have to ask for something, a Unicorn Horn… no, wait. You never know. Yustea is a Saint, so maybe the Unicorn will actually like her.”
“….”
Guinevere’s lips curved upward.
But her eyes remained cold.
“Why?”
“….”
When she didn’t answer, Romeban—Roji’s brother, standing behind her—gestured with his chin toward the Mirror World.
Roji’s gaze turned to the Mirror World.
“What? Yustea found the Unicorn first.”
“The southern map you gave her must have helped. But this isn’t the first time….”
“What?”
Roji echoed the question as if she didn’t understand, fixing her attention on the Mirror World.
Yustea in the Mirror World bent slightly at the waist and approached the Unicorn.
[Great Unicorn. I come to you… I’m not such a terrible person, truly….]
That instant—
[Squeeeeee—!]
“…!”
The Unicorn bolted like mad and fled.
In a heartbeat, it vanished from the Mirror World.
[Ugh, honestly.]
“….”
“….”
Guinevere and Romeban’s eyes went dim.
Roji asked with a bewildered expression.
“Why… why is it running like that?”
“Its disposition, it seems….”
“But even so, you set traps so it can’t escape.”
“The traps were useless either. They melted the moment they caught it….”
“What? How do you even know that?”
“Because this is the second time….”
Guinevere shook her head slowly.
Romeban released a sigh.
And he wasn’t the only one sighing.
Empress Regina, who had come to observe the situation, was also holding her forehead as if her head ached.
“Our daughter finds the Unicorn just fine.”
The creature fled in an instant at the merest hint of a man’s presence.
Both Ludovico’s unit and Gaspard’s, which included male knights, had failed to track it repeatedly.
Yet Yustea alone had combed through the forest.
[Truly….]
Yustea in the Mirror World pulled out a flute.
She blew it with a sharp, whistling note, then drew a peculiar magical device from her breast.
“What is that?”
Roji asked, and Romeban replied.
“It appears to use sound waves to pinpoint location.”
“How can something like that even exist?”
“Poachers do things that way, I’ve heard. But I’ve never seen it done quite like that myself.”
“It’s absurd. If she knows how to do something like that, why does she lose the unicorn the moment she gets close?”
His expression was one of pure bewilderment.
Yustea had truly found the unicorn again.
In ten minutes, she’d located it once more—
[Wait, wait! Stay right there, I’m not going anywhere. Here, a treat for you. Rock candy…!]
But then—
[Squeeeeeee—!]
The unicorn bolted in terror.
Even Ain shook his head in dismay.
Empress Regina exhaled a long sigh. “Perhaps we’d be better off using arrows.”
“There are no female archers among us. Even if the male archers shoot from a distance, it won’t work. We need to extract the unicorn’s horn without depleting its sanctity.”
“So we can’t let it get hurt?”
“Yes. We must capture it without wounding it. The moment the unicorn sustains an injury, it will attempt to use the sanctity pooled in its horn. If all that sanctity is consumed in the process—”
“We lose any hope of obtaining the Reverse Scale.”
The horn must be extracted, and the dragon’s cave reached within ten minutes.
Without this forest’s unicorn, the conditions cannot be met.
“Pfft!”
“This is the first time I’ve seen the Saint work so hard.”
“Perhaps it’s her unseemly temperament that’s the real problem.”
Laughter broke out among the nobility.
Guinevere’s eyes narrowed.
“Yustea is the best at finding them.”
“Not anymore, it seems.”
“Why not?”
“She’s using the sonar flute for the third time now. The unicorn is a clever creature. Once it learns that the moment it hears that sound, Yustea comes charging—it won’t fall for it again.”
“This is frustrating…”
Gaspard and Ludovico’s contingent had already excluded the male soldiers.
Instead, they’d brought experienced female hunters from the nearby towns.
Thanks to them, their partners were steadily herding the unicorn.
That was when it happened.
“Oh! Calypso found one!”
Calypso, within the Mirror World, was moving in on the unicorn.
The Tracking Magic that Yohaël’s mages had deployed was proving its worth.
Calypso approached the unicorn slowly and carefully.
[Is it… is it okay if I… come closer…?]
Calypso edged forward, bit by bit.
The unicorn, which had been drinking from the lake, lifted its head.
“It’s not running away!”
“Oh!”
More than that—it wasn’t fleeing at all.
The unicorn seemed curious.
Calypso continued approaching, moving with deliberate slowness so as not to frighten it.
[Hello. My name is Calypso….]
[Purr….]
“Ohhh!”
Those watching the Mirror World let out gasps of wonder.
The unicorn extended its head forward first.
Calypso’s face lit up.
Marquis Esgaroth, who was observing the Mirror World, spoke. “Where is Yustea?”
Aslan answered him. “She disappeared from the Mirror World at some point.”
“Is she devising an alternative tracking method to replace the sonar?”
“I’m not certain. But one thing is clear—it will be that girl who claims the unicorn’s horn.”
“Damn it. This is getting difficult.”
Then it happened.
[There it is!]

[Grab it!]
A grappling hook flew through the air.
It was Ujina’s group.
The female hunters hurled their hooks toward the unicorn.
“That idiot…!”
Ain shouted.
The moment a wound opened, the unicorn would attempt to heal itself using the sanctity pooled in its horn.
If no sanctity remained in the horn, they couldn’t fulfill the condition the black dragon had demanded.
Empress Regina frowned and glanced to her side.
At Empress Lira, Ludovico’s mother.
“Your daughter-in-law truly….”
“I couldn’t say. Surely she understands that much.”
The corners of Empress Lira’s mouth turned upward.
Ujina, from within the Mirror World, hurled a box.
At once the surroundings flashed, and a barrier materialized.
The grappling hook embedded itself in the ground, and the unicorn thrashed within the chain’s grasp.
[Done! Kill it now!]
[Wait, no! Don’t kill it! We only need to cut off the horn!]
Calypso quickly embraced the unicorn.
When it came down to it, one of the two would claim the horn.
Yet something felt wrong.
“…Isn’t Yustea taking too long?”
She was shouting like that.
Even Gaspard’s female priests had heard the commotion and were rushing toward the unicorn.
But why couldn’t Yustea be seen?
It was precisely when Marquis Esgaroth’s brow furrowed.
“That is…!”

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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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