I’m the Strong Youngest Daughter Here to Save My Family from Darkness - Chapter 14

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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 14
* * *
The next day, in the early dawn.
Arienna’s eyes snapped open inside her stiff sleeping bag.
‘I think I heard some clicking sounds last night…’
Like someone was going back and forth around here!
‘Or was that just Tuntuni being silly?’
But the thought soon slipped away.
It was because she remembered the fluffy, cozy dream she’d had during the night.
In it, Daddy appeared, pinched her cheek, and said, ‘Daddy’s coming to see our Tuntuni!’
“Hehe.”
I dreamed about Daddy, you know.
I couldn’t see his face at all, though.
And so, in a cheerful mood, Arienna stretched and gave Kyle’s morning exercises her very best effort.
‘Even if my Spirit’s gone and he said I can’t ride my Oath, it’ll all work out somehow!
Except that I couldn’t wash properly and I’m pretty grimy, I felt wonderful!
* * *
Led by Kyle, the group hurried back and stood in front of the Wish Altar again.
“Look, I thought about it all night, and this is different from the Wish Altar I read about in the book.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Right here!”
Kyle spotted a strangely smooth stone lying beside the Wish Tree.
Its neat square shape and the complete absence of even the smallest scratch made it look like someone had carved it deliberately.
Arienna followed his gaze.
“What’s that?”
Kyle turned his head and muttered.
“That thing’s been bugging me. The book I read never mentioned anything like it beside the Wish Tree. I don’t know what it is for sure, but could it be a Magic Tool? There are a lot of monsters around here, so sometimes they disguise Magic Tools as stones…
Arienna’s eyes went wide.
‘A Magic Tool!’
The Magic Tool Kyle showed me earlier was cool too.
‘This stone is super cool! And there’s writing on it!’
Click.
With a small noise, Arienna pressed down hard on the stone.
Kyle flinched and stared at her.
“What did you just do?”
“Huh? This goes clickety-click!”
“That could be dangerous, so don’t just touch it at random…”
But Arienna was lost in the sound coming from the stone, completely entranced.
Click, click.
Kyle, who had been about to stop Arienna in alarm, suddenly narrowed his eyes.
“Hey. Didn’t you just hear a really loud sound?”
Arienna tilted her head to one side.
“What sound?”
She was about to say she could only hear the clicking.
Bang!
Arienna and Kyle snapped their heads toward where the sound had come from.
“That came from empty air. Right?”
They said this was a ghost town, but are there really ghosts here!
Frightened, Arienna and Kyle pressed close to each other.
Kwaang!
Once again, the sound of a thunderclap rang out from empty air.
Kyle covered Arienna’s ears and shouted into the air.
“Who are you!”
But no answer came back.
Instead.
With a jjeog, jjeojeok sound, cracks began to spread through the air.
‘Is it a monster?’
‘Please let it be a monster!’
The two of them glared at the empty air, thinking the very same thing.
Arienna clenched both her fists tight.
‘Oh no, maybe that wicked, vile Rheinfeld has followed us again!’
Kyle, ready to burn everything in sight if need be, conjured flames across his palm.
And then—
From a crack that split open in the empty air emerged a person.
An old man, his hair gone streaked with white.
* * *
The old man dropped straight down out of the air, seemingly unhurt.
He wore the bewildered look of someone who had just woken from a nap.
Glancing around, the old man finally spoke.
“W-what on earth? Why did I wake up in the middle of broad daylight? And why only me?”
“…Huh?”
Arienna went stiff.
“A-a monster shaped like a person?”
Thoroughly on edge, Arienna ducked behind Kyle’s back.
Kyle’s wariness spiked in turn, and just as ice began to form at the tips of his fingers—
“Aigo, aigo. This shouldn’t have happened… Aigo.”
What? The old man suddenly burst into wailing.
Kyle, looking utterly dumbfounded, muttered under his breath.
“…Judging by that, he doesn’t seem to be a monster. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
At Kyle’s words, Arienna nodded.
A person came out of thin air! And now he’s bawling his eyes out!
‘What on earth is going on?’
Arienna’s eyes went round and round.
They didn’t even have a moment to ask where he had dropped from.
The old man kept sobbing loudly for more than ten minutes.
Once he had finally calmed down after a long cry, Kyle, who had been getting impatient on his end, told him to stop crying at once and handed him a handkerchief.
“So how exactly did you end up appearing out of thin air, and what happened to this village?”
The old man wiped his tears with the handkerchief and looked up at Kyle.
The boy was barely ten years old by appearance, but judging by his clothes and manner of speech, the old man guessed he was a noble.
A noble’s child wouldn’t be wandering around alone, so if he explained the situation, perhaps the child’s guardian would lend a hand.
The old man let out a sigh and laid out the whole sequence of events.
“You’ve seen the Wish Altar, yes? So, you see…”
* * *
Exactly one week ago.
“Aigo. Our Jon is so adorable. Now, let’s see you smile nicely!”
“Yesss, Grandpa!”
Jeremy, the village chief of Wish Village, let out a hearty laugh as he happily sketched his grandson’s portrait.
Jon, the grandson he would have spoiled rotten, was ten years old, yet every aspect of his development had stalled at the level of a five-year-old.
Jeremy had once lived in the Capital, and to raise a child with a disability, he had held on by selling off the household goods he had saved up, one piece at a time. He had endured the prying fingers and prejudiced stares of others too. Even so, it had not been enough.
He came to realize that what was truly terrifying was not monsters, but people. So he left the Capital.
Even if Jon’s intellectual abilities lagged behind others, it was fine here. Everyone in Wish Village carried a story much like his own.
“If only we could keep living in peace like this forever!”
Originally, Wish Village was protected by the blessing of the tree spirit, so monsters never invaded it. That was why a village could exist at all within Monster Island, which was crawling with monsters.
‘May this peace last.’
And then one day.
With a puzzled expression, Jon pointed a chubby finger at the tree.
“Grandpa, look! Look over there!”
“Hmm? What is it?”
“Something’s wiggling!”
At that, Jeremy’s eyes went wide. Following where Jon was pointing, he saw something lying crumpled on the ground.
When he drew closer, he found a girl no bigger than his thumbnail, curled up and trembling. The tiny sprout on her head had withered yellow and drooped limply.
“What in the world is this?! Why would the Wish Tree’s spirit be here…?”
The spirit, which should have been dwelling within the Wish Tree, had been torn away from it and was withering away.
Swoooosh—
At that very moment, an ominous black mist began to coil around the Wish Tree.
* * *
“That mist was the problem.”
Jeremy went on to explain the many things that had happened since the spirit collapsed.
How many monsters had appeared, and how many people had died.
Thankfully, the Wish Tree’s spirit, who had barely regained her wits for a short while, showed them mercy before falling back into sleep.
The Magic Tool was placed on the Wish Altar, which helped the villagers slip away into the Pocket Dimension during the daytime, when the monsters roamed.
And so the villagers had willingly settled into a routine: by day they slept inside the Pocket Dimension the Spirit had made, and by night they returned to the village to eat and go about their lives, then slipped back into sleep again.
But because Arienna had tampered with the device, something had gone wrong, and Jeremy had found himself jolted awake in the middle of the day.
“Monsters will be here any minute. What am I supposed to do?”
He rolled his eyes around, his face full of unease.
At that, Arienna shot her hand straight up.
“I’ll scold the monsters!”
Of course, it was Kyle who would do the scolding.
“Huh?”
“I can scold ’em!”
So it was Kyle who would do it.
Arienna clenched her fists tight after hearing the old man’s sorrowful story. Kyle would be able to take care of the monsters.
Of course, Kyle figured Arienna was just saying it with all the confidence in the world, but still.
The old man, having dismissed it as a child’s nonsense, pressed a hand to his forehead in disbelief and muttered.
“Right, fine, I hear you. Little ones, where are your parents? Hm? You don’t have a guardian?”
“Our parents…”
Tuntuni was at home, though she wasn’t quite sure where that was.
Kyle glanced sideways at Arienna’s crestfallen face and spoke.
“Does that even matter right now? Anyway, we’ll handle the monsters ourselves, so don’t worry about it.”
“Sigh. Monsters are dangerous, but living like this has its limits too. I can’t even remember the last time I saw proper sunlight… If only the tree hadn’t withered in the first place… Perhaps you could ask your guardians for help?”
Just then, Kyle and Arienna’s eyes met.
A wish can only be granted once a Hero’s Oath has been made.
And to make a Hero’s Oath, the Spirit of the Wish Tree was required.
So if they revived the Wish Tree…
“Gramps, about that black mist. Can you tell us more about it?”

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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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