I Became the Emergency Food Supply of the Bear Family - Chapter 9

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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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Episode 9

“So.”
The gaze that had been fixed on the rabbit outside the window turned toward Theodore.
“Don’t you have any questions?”
He waited a moment, but Theodore said nothing.
“Taciturn creature. Even for a bear, you’re severe.”
After snorting dismissively, Pallas moved to the main topic.
“You must have seen it too, in that rabbit’s eyes. The Power of Spring it carries.”
Theodore’s brow twitched at last.
Pallas was right.
He truly had ‘seen’ it.
Inside the small rabbit threatened by wolves—a light as warm as sunlight.
“You must understand the reason. I touched your eyes a little. Do you know what’s most necessary for finding something? Desperate longing.”
Desperate longing.
As Pallas spoke the word, the corners of his mouth lifted.
“And you possessed it. Both the you I met ‘that day’ and the you standing before my eyes now.”
……
Theodore’s golden eyes darkened, sinking into shadow.
His wife had returned bleeding, cradling their daughter—now a cold corpse—in her arms.
Whether he had accepted it as reality or could not accept it, Theodore took up his blade. He had never harbored such fierce killing intent toward any other soul.
He knew it was something a family head should not do.
And so in the depths of night, he had gone to that castle alone.
With his sword he had slaughtered the guards, torn the knights asunder with his claws.
What remained at last was a man trembling in terror.
Theodore had severed the baron’s neck.
When he returned, his hollow revenge complete, the first to appear before him was Pallas.
Pallas said nothing.
With a smile no different from usual, he approached and extended his hand, wiping the blood from the corners of his eyes before vanishing suddenly.
That must have been when he placed the enchantment on his eyes.
Pallas’s gaze turned back toward the window. Deep curiosity dwelt within his irises. It was Theodore who spoke first, fixing his eyes on the sage’s yellow pupils.
“I can no longer see the light.”
Some time ago at dinner, he had observed the rabbit on the table carefully, but saw not the slightest shimmer.
“Yet it remains true.”
“The magic I placed would have broken the moment you gazed directly upon that light. It’s a power no ordinary magical force could perceive or detect.”
……
“Even I harbored doubt, but seeing it with my own eyes settles it. Eoestre was real. Such vast power dwelling in such a small frame.”
Without turning his eyes from the rabbit bounding through the snow-covered garden, Pallas spoke.
“You did well to bring her here. Had you left her in Baekrang’s hands, we would never have found her again.”
Theodore’s brow furrowed deeply.
“You knew?”
“Yes. It seems Baekrang has been gathering Eoestre candidates and sending them somewhere.”
The yellow eyes finally left the window. Pallas turned slowly to face Theodore and added,
“To the Central Region.”
……
Theodore’s expression darkened.
Knowing Pallas’s habit of speaking obliquely, Theodore could not help but understand. Where the Central Region pointed to.
“Why such a serious face? Now is not the time to concern yourself with such things, is it? To let an Incarnation roam so freely—how foolish can one be?”
Pallas laughed as if at a loss, looking toward Theodore.
“Shall I help?”
With those cryptic words, Pallas’s mouth curved upward.
“They say one can absorb power by devouring an Incarnation—Baekrang truly are fools of the highest order. The Power of Spring can only be wielded by Eoestre’s true Incarnation.”
……
“But in her current state, she cannot wield that power. We can only wait for her to awaken it herself one day, or for it to run wild. But that will be too late.”
Pallas spoke without a single blink.
“Your wife will die.”
Silence fell. Theodore gave no answer.
“You know better than anyone. Only the Power of Spring can destroy ‘that.'”
……
“Surely you didn’t bring that rabbit here out of mere pity?”
Theodore gazed quietly into Pallas’s eyes.
As if he already knew what the other would say.

***

Cradled in Ferdi’s arms, Na Bom emerged from the front gate of the Inner Castle.
‘First I need to leave my room, then pass through the dining hall……’
Tracing the path with her front paws, retracing the way here, Na Bom suddenly squinted against the brilliant light that pierced her vision.
It was snow.
The snow blanketing the garden gleamed like jewels, reflecting sunlight from the clear sky.
“Hmm. With weather like this, it shouldn’t fall until afternoon.”
“Then we can walk through the garden too.”
After Heinz examined the sky with his yellow eyes and spoke, Ferdi nodded.
“Wow, nobody’s stepped on it yet! Hehe, I’m first!”
Louie ran across the pristine snowfield, leaving footprints. The sound of his feet crunching through the snow seemed to carry all the way here. Na Bom unwittingly stretched her front paws toward the snow.
“Ah, watch out, you’ll—”
Before Ferdi could finish his warning, the small white body launched into the air.
Ferdi and Heinz reached out in alarm, but Na Bom landed smoothly. Her hind legs, wrapped in bandages, planted firmly on the ground right after her front paws.
‘Snow.’
Since becoming an arctic hare, she had seen snow endlessly.
And yet snow remained ever new to Na Bom.
Na Bom knew snow mainly through television, YouTube, and the hospital window.
Children rushing out of the hospital with their parents, stepping on the snow. What would it feel like to step on the snow piled thick upon the ground? Na Bom had pressed the hospital bedsheet with her stiff feet, trying it out.
In winter, she couldn’t leave the hospital.
The dry air of the hospital room. The mist of the humidifier blown down from above. That was all the winter Na Bom knew.
Yet for all that winter caution, it was summer when she caught a cold.
The summer cold had progressed straight to pneumonia, and lacking respiratory muscles, Na Bom had slipped into a coma. And the last face of her mother she had seen……
“Snowflake!”
A loud voice rang out from ahead, and Na Bom’s head jerked up at once.
In the middle of the pristine white garden, Louie was waving his arms vigorously toward Na Bom.
“Over here! I saved some snow for Snowflake to step on!”
Whatever she had been thinking just moments before, Na Bom forgot it in an instant.
Urged on by his eager beckoning, Na Bom stepped into the snow.
Crunch, crunch, crunch-crunch.
Savoring the sensation slowly, Na Bom trampled the snow on all four legs.
Soon she reached the white path marked out in a circle by Louie’s arms. At his eager gaze, Na Bom lifted her small front paw and pressed firmly into the white snow.
Squeak, squeak-squeak.
!
From her paw pads to the crown of her head, goosebumps rippled across her.
Just as she thought—no matter how many times, no matter how she stepped on it, snow was the best!
With her dark eyes opened wide, Na Bom could hold back no longer and threw herself forward.
Dashing into the garden’s shrubs, Na Bom rolled across the snow, rubbing her body against it this way and that. Fresh white snow settled upon her small white form.
“I want to try too!”
Louie cried out excitedly and threw himself down beside Na Bom. At the boy’s delighted laughter, Ferdi hurried over.
“Louie! Snowflake!”
Ferdi looked down sternly at the rabbit and boy rolling in the snow.
“What are you doing, you’re getting covered in snow……”
Just as he was about to scold them, Na Bom suddenly sprang up from the ground.
Whoosh!
Her small body disappeared into the snowdrift piled beneath the trees.
The snow tumbled down with a rumble, and two small ears poked up. Soon Na Bom’s face emerged above the snow, her white fur dusted thickly with fresh powder.
……
Louie and Ferdi’s eyes didn’t waver from the little rabbit.
Louie’s excited gaze and Ferdi’s stern pursed lips both melted away like snow.
“So Snowflake loves snow.”
“That’s our Snowflake.”
Only after seeing the faces of the two who had drawn near did Na Bom snap back to attention.
‘This isn’t the time! I was supposed to be finding an escape route!’
Just as she stood to inspect the garden,
Na Bom caught the scent of another beast and froze, turning toward the castle gate.
Behind Anna, who was walking with her hand raised in greeting, appeared a man.
A bearded middle-aged man whom Na Bom had delightedly watched push away her front paw.
His ice-cold expression had melted strangely the moment he saw her—curious enough that Na Bom had taken to calling him this.
‘The Weird Man.’
He had frightened her when they first met in the dining hall, but his face was amusing and he always brought delicious hay, so her opinion had improved considerably. Though he must surely be a beast himself.
“Lady Snowflake, today Captain Nook will provide your escort.”
The Weird Man—Captain Nook—bowed deeply to Na Bom with his melted expression.
“This is the first time I’ve had the honor of introducing myself properly! I am Nook Greenland, captain of the Sled Dog Knights under the Grizzly Family, entrusted with your protection.”
At his confident tone, the previously silent Heinz shook his head slowly, muttering to himself. He must have volunteered.
Yet there in the rare winter sunlight stretching languidly across them all, only Na Bom stood frozen in place.
‘……That can’t be right.’
How could she have forgotten?
The Grizzly Family’s order of knights, sworn to eternal loyalty to their lord, blessed with tireless stamina……
That very name was
‘the Sled Dog Knights.’
Sled dogs. What animal could be more fitting for the phrase ‘tireless stamina’?
And strong-willed loyalty in dogs, eternal service—there could be no better match!
But leaving that aside,
Sled dogs. Dogs.
She had never heard of dogs entering hibernation.
That meant Na Bom would need to evade the eyes of at least two beasts to escape this manor.
A hibernating bear and a wakeful sled dog’s unrelenting gaze.
‘……I need to change my strategy.’
There was only one trick an animal surrounded by beasts could play.
Banding together with fellow non-beasts.
Na Bom’s frozen features softened into resolve as she turned her head.
“Lady Snowflake?”
She would win over Anna!
Such a pretty and kind woman couldn’t possibly be a beast! She might be a bird spirit or perhaps an arctic fox—surely something that way. No, even an arctic fox would still count as a beast to her, but better than a wolf or dog of the same kind!
With hopeful eyes looking up at Anna, the woman smiled brightly in response to Na Bom’s gaze and opened her mouth.
“Did you realize? I was originally part of the Sled Dog Knights too. After retiring due to injury, the lord took me in, and that’s how I became Lady Snowflake’s personal maid!”
“Mm. The lord would never abandon a knight who has sworn eternal loyalty, would he, Anna Samoyed?”
When the captain called her name, Anna snapped to rigid attention and saluted him.
Na Bom’s face flooded with despair. She collapsed to the ground as if defeated.
“Lady Snowflake?”
“What’s wrong! Are you tired from playing so much?”
“Does your foot hurt?”
Anna and the brothers examined Na Bom with concern, their eyes full of worry.
Then, a small shadow emerged from behind the captain’s back.
…?
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Na Bom lifted her head, and something damp brushed across her face.
‘What is this!’

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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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