I Will Protect My Brother - 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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Chapter 9
My body froze rigid, as though I had witnessed something I should never have seen.
Yet the discomfort lasted only a moment.
“It’s been a while, Whezel.”
Kalian Wynack’s lips curved with fluid grace, sketching a gentle smile across his face.
I watched the transformation with a peculiar sense of bewilderment. The angel had returned.
‘Was I mistaken?’
While I composed myself, Kalian Wynack extended his hand toward Luize.
“We met once in Abuye a few years back, didn’t we? How have you been?”
Luize Whezel swatted Kalian Wynack’s hand away with an expression of utter disdain.
Kalian Wynack’s face fell with hurt, and even as my heart raced, I felt indignation flare within me.
Why wouldn’t you accept a handshake from my brother!
“Enough. Little Wynack—who is this child?”
Luize Whezel’s golden eyes turned toward me. He lifted my chin with the tip of his finger.
Looking up at him, his pupils narrowed with suspicion, their light turning sharp and calculating.
“You seem quite close to the Wynack Heir.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Who exactly are you, to show no deference before the Family Head of a Transcendent Family, and moreover, to know the form of a transformation not yet formally announced to the public…?”
Mother of mercy. They haven’t announced the jaguar form to the Continent yet?
Ah, now that I think about it, this conference was the first official appearance of Whezel’s new master in a public setting.
But regardless, I had excuses aplenty. I pouted irritably at Luize Whezel, who was now pinching one of my cheeks.
“I heard about it from our Family Head. Is that strange?”
“Your Family Head?”
“Owen Wynack, sir.”
Rumors circulate freely among the Transcendent Families anyway. Luize Whezel shrugged.
“Well, I suppose that much checks out.”
“Ah, ah?”
Before I could react, my other cheek was caught as well. Luize Whezel stretched both my cheeks outward.
“Daring to ride upon the Family Head’s back, no less.”
The barbed edge in his voice made it clear that was precisely what had offended him.
‘But you were the one who carried me. If it bothered you, you could have shaken me off.’
As my expression soured, Luize Whezel’s brow furrowed in tandem.
“And with such boldness and wit, why on earth would you resort to such an obvious lie…?”
“Ah—”
Luize Whezel’s words were severed mid-sentence by a voice that slipped in with perfect timing.
Kalian Wynack released a sound—whether a gasp or a sigh, I couldn’t discern—and draped his arm across my shoulders, resting his chin atop my head.
His expression lay beyond my field of vision. His ensuing voice brimmed with ennui.
“You talk too much, Whezel.”
“You’re remarkably taciturn, Wynack.”
“That wasn’t directed at you.”
Kalian chuckled softly near my ear, lowering his head. Then he whispered playfully.
“Rosy. That guy’s pretty loud, don’t you think?”
“….”
I couldn’t answer immediately, troubled by a growing sense of dissonance.
The faint sword energy that had lingered around us until moments ago had vanished completely.
So cleanly that it seemed suspicious.
With his chin resting on my head, I felt the subtle movement of Kalian’s lips parting.
I needed to know what he was saying. If only to dispel this strange unease.
The faintest tremor transmitted through my head was enough.
I focused on the shape his lips and jaw formed as they moved.
You’re my precious treasure.
Don’t pay attention to him.
It wasn’t particularly suspicious words.
Kalian called me by all sorts of endearments every day—my treasure, my princess, my rose, my darling—and whenever I showed affection to someone other than him, he grew openly jealous.
So was I overreacting? Was I simply bothered that Luize Whezel had pinched my cheek?
‘Or could it be… that today is ‘that day’?’
I tilted my head back as far as I could.
“Kali. It’s fine….”
I tried to look up at him, but since he was leaning completely against me, I couldn’t.
Kalian touched the tip of my braided red hair with his fingertips and murmured languidly.
“I’m tired, Rosien. Your brother’s exhausted.”
“Tired? Ah, I suppose. You didn’t sleep, did you?”
“Yeah. I’m hungry too, and sleepy. I want to go back to the Mansion now. Okay?”
Let’s go already. Kalian’s words trailed off with a note of childish whining. His tone and demeanor showed no significant deviation from usual.
‘Maybe I was just being oversensitive….’
After all, this frail boy had endured a terrible threat while staying up all night. It was natural he’d be exhausted.
Moreover, he hadn’t eaten all day. With that, my mental image of Delpiam plummeted further into the negatives.
These bastards—if you’re going to kidnap someone, at least feed them properly!
* * *
After Kalian Wynack and the unfamiliar girl ascended, an absurd laugh echoed through the drainage system, which had fallen briefly silent.
“Ahahaha, I’m speechless. Truly at a loss for words….”
Luize stared into the darkness of the sewers and spoke bluntly.
“Come out now. Kirges. We need to talk for a moment.”
After a brief silence, something rustled. The figure that emerged from beneath the low passage was Regina.
Luize’s golden eyes flickered toward the space behind her. Even with a beast’s eyes superior to humans by several times, he caught one more shadow rolling across the drainage floor.
Though he was acquainted with the Guard Captain’s pathetic appearance, Luize showed not the slightest sign of agitation.
“I clearly opposed it. It seems the Wynack Heir is indeed somewhat… lacking.”
“How was I to know that’s what you meant, Whezel?”
That he was critically deficient in character.
Luize and Regina simultaneously recalled Kalian Wynack’s final appearance.
As he emerged from the drainage system with the spirited girl, he turned his head toward them.
With sunlight pouring from the entrance crowning him like a halo, the boy smiled with an enchanting grace and waved gently.
Even after witnessing his true form with her own eyes, Regina found herself momentarily entranced—his presence was overwhelmingly sensual.
A sinister Satan draped in an angel’s skin.
Having formed this judgment, Regina resolved that once they left this place, she would interrogate Owen Wynack as thoroughly as one might wring out a rat.
The madman. He should learn to speak properly.
‘What on earth is he raising that boy to be?!’
Luize’s gruff voice pulled her back to awareness.
“What did you agree upon with the younger Wynack?”
“…An alibi. He will erase the memories of the Emperor and the Guard Captain, and keep absolute silence about everything that transpired here today.”
“Nothing particularly remarkable, then. Very well. We shall bury this matter. In any case, we need the younger Wynack to suppress ‘that thing,’ so there will be other opportunities.”
Regina nodded in agreement.
However much they needed a way to pacify the raging sacred relic, she could not place an invincible weapon into the hands of a madman with her own hands.
“Let us observe a while longer. But first…Whezel. That red-haired girl from before.”
Luize, who had begun to walk away now that their business was concluded, came to a halt. Regina paused briefly before asking carefully.
“Did the younger Wynack call her Rosy?”
“Rosien, he said. She is a disciple of Wynack and has received the family name.”
“Wynack bestowed the blessing of Guardian Star upon such a young child?”
The selection examination for Wynack disciples was notorious for its extreme difficulty. Moreover, the Wynack Family adhered strictly to the principle of bloodline succession, and it was rare for them to grant the family name to anyone not of their blood.
Then this small girl named Rosien must possess exceptional skill worthy of catching the Family Head’s eye?
‘Her mana was certainly difficult to gauge.’
The girl’s mana, as she had observed it, seemed similar to Wynack’s mana, yet rather than linear, it possessed a woven, net-like structure. A net-like pattern was the characteristic hallmark of Kirges mana.
Moreover, the sorcery this girl had inscribed upon the Guard Captain of Delpiam—Regina’s gaze shifted to the unconscious man at her feet.
‘This is high-level brainwashing sorcery that touches the mind itself.’
Regina carefully separated the command from the Guard Captain’s forehead.
Kalian Wynack is a weakling hiding his power.
Touch him and you die.
“….”
She couldn’t fathom why such an obvious command had been implanted….
The sorcery inscribed by the girl in less than a second was excessively perfect.
Even Regina, the Family Head of Kirges and regarded as the greatest sorcerer of the present age, would not have detected it without careful scrutiny.
Regina’s black eyes grew clouded.
A girl possessing such insane skill from twelve years ago suddenly came to mind.
‘Rosien Wynyak?’
In truth, from the moment she heard that innocent voice calling out to her older brother, Regina had remembered.
The legendary prodigy with flowing red hair who wielded the power of stars freely—a girl with a lovely face and proud green eyes.
Once the most promising candidate for the next Family Head of Kirges, a sorcerer who was both a mutation of Kirges and the blessing of the entire cosmos—Rosien Wynyak.
She was nearly the only child in Kirges, that gathering place of couch potatoes who did nothing but peer through telescopes and research stellar coordinates, who actually knew how to move her body.
Was her sorcery skill merely average then? No—at the young age of seventeen, she could operate more than fifty different sorceries.
Twelve years had already passed since they lost that child, whom everyone in Kirges admired and yearned for.
‘I had thought I would never see them again.’
Yet the possibility that I might be mistaken flickered through my 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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