Limited Extra Time - Chapter 61

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

—— Page 1 ——

“I’m glad to see you looking so happy.”

“I am happy. So very happy that lately I’ve been doing things the old me would never have dared attempt.”

“What sort of things?”

Winston tilted his head, his expression puzzled.

“I’m going to repay my family for raising me and become completely independent. I won’t be known as Carina Leopold anymore—I’ll make sure the name ‘Carina’ is what endures in this world.”

“You’re repaying the cost of your upbringing?”

“Well, I plan to. I’m thinking of becoming famous through my paintings. The paintings my entire family dismissed.”

I’ll show them how the world judges the art that never once earned their praise.

I’ll become so renowned they won’t be able to avoid hearing about it, no matter how much they’d rather not know.

“So I’d like to live a little longer, if I can.”

I cannot stop the death that awaits me, but if I could live even a moment longer, that would be enough. Though I don’t know how far this name will spread.

“They always asked me what I lacked, what they hadn’t given me. So afterward, until recently, I kept thinking about it.”

Carina Leopold spoke slowly, her voice measured.

Perhaps it was because Winston made me feel at ease—I always found myself sharing family matters with him. He always listened with such earnest eyes.

He tried to share in worries no one else had ever acknowledged.

That’s when I understood. This was what it meant to rely on someone. This was what a true confidant was.

Real conversation was when someone didn’t dismiss my thoughts, didn’t interrupt midway, and looked me in the eye while speaking. It wasn’t avoiding dialogue because of busyness, nor was it sighing in exasperation.

“But no matter how much I think about it, the only thing I seem to have received is transplanted roots.”

Carina Leopold laughed softly.

“Unless you’re saying you’ve been doing free labor under the guise of being a brother instead of a caregiver.”

A bitter laugh escaped through her teeth.

Her voice had grown colder, unexpectedly frigid. Winston’s assumption that she would continue to be soft-hearted proved entirely wrong.

“Perhaps the two of them had their own thoughts as well. Without knowing it,

—— Page 2 ——

they may have loved me.”

Though I never felt it.

Carina Leopold shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes held not a trace of warmth. Not even a hint of the lingering attachment that had once been visible.

“But after talking with Millaiyen and having conversations with Periel and Winston,

I suddenly had this thought.”

Carina Leopold spoke softly.

“I understand well that the three of them worry about me. Even without words,

I can feel their consideration in every action.”

Carina Leopold was that perceptive.

She knew well how sensitive she was. Yet there was one thing she had never felt.

The kindness or consideration that I felt from Winston and Millaiyen after just one day of meeting them—

“When I think about how I felt that from Winston and Millaiyen, people I’d met just a day ago, something I’d never felt in my entire life, it all becomes meaningless.”

Carina Leopold’s gaze had already grown resolute, like a plant with roots driven deep into the earth, unmoved by the wind.

“Even if I were to receive an apology now, the time I lost will never return.”

The branch that had swayed in the wind had finally taken root in the earth. Someday it would bud again and bloom. Winston simply listened to her words in silence.

“So I’m just trying to forget. Trying to let it go and move past it. Even if it seems

selfish, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Her gaze had already turned away from the past, calm and resolute.

“If you want to hold it against me that I was born, then I have nothing to say. But giving birth isn’t everything, is it?”

Carina Leopold curved a faint smile at the corner of her lips. This story that had hurt so deeply no longer ached quite as much now that I had acknowledged it and faced reality head-on. But I resented the wasted time. I didn’t know how perfectly I could complete the bucket list I had written, or whether I could accomplish all those regrets within the time remaining, yet I refused to let the past shackle my ankles.

I wouldn’t deny what I had carried for so long and given birth to through that pain, but that doesn’t give it the right to mortgage my life.

“I won’t deny that I carried it for a long time and gave birth to it with great pain, but that doesn’t give it the right to mortgage my life.”

Winston nodded. Only then did Carina Leopold, her expression visibly relieved, turn her head toward the

window outside.

“Parents aren’t the owners of their children, are they?”

“No, you’re right, Miss. Parents can never be the owners of their children.”

At his words, Carina Leopold’s eyes crinkled as she smiled softly.

Her tense face relaxed in an instant. Winston, watching her place a hand over her heart, patted his own waist a couple of times.

“Parents are guides. They can hold their children’s hands and lead them, but eventually the child must let go and walk away.”

Children depart.

The parents who once matched their pace to the toddling child will eventually fall behind.

The parents grow old while the child becomes a strong young adult.

Unable to keep up with the child’s pace, the parents inevitably fall behind, watching their child’s retreating figure and witnessing their growth from afar. This is true for all parents.

“A child who has begun to walk alone no longer needs to return. Their own

—— Page 3 ——

built a nest and began finding their own path.”

A child left alone ventures out to find a new family.

In that time, the parents grow old, and the child becomes strong enough to stand entirely on their own.

“But if that child returns one day and takes the hand of their aging parents again, it means they were good parents to that child.”

“…”

“If the child never felt that way, then those parents

ought to look back and reflect on themselves.”

At Winston’s words, Carina Leopold laughed silently.

Yet she had no confidence she could be such a good parent. So perhaps this situation—where she could avoid having children—was something of a blessing after all.

“It is not easy for a child standing tall and walking forward with pride to turn back and retrace the path they came from.”

A gentle resonance became a wave.

Carina Leopold simply clenched her fists, holding words in her ears that she had never heard from anyone before.

“It is only sorrowful that such parents are so few and far between.”

Carina Leopold nodded.

She had never met such a parent—at least not one for herself. Carina Leopold kept her mouth closed and slowly leaned her body against the headboard of the bed.

“I miss Millaiyen Pestellio.”

“Early spring has arrived.”

Winston gently patted her shoulder. The sun was only now beginning to set gradually, as if night were still far away.

“Spread out the distance and secure the rear!”

“Aaagh! There was no mention of this!”

Blades clashed, and the surroundings erupted in brilliant light.

Due to Herta’s relentless assault, a tree thick enough to require three grown men to encircle it stood precariously, half-crushed.

“Commander! They keep coming without pause!”

It was while I ventured deeper, tracking Herta’s traces, that the moment I spotted one, it let out a piercing shriek, and soon after—

In less than five minutes, I found myself surrounded by Hertas.

It was a result no one had anticipated. The charging Hertas had encircled the Scout Expedition and cut off our retreat. Such coordinated tactics were unimaginable for beasts devoid of intelligence.

Above all, they could summon reinforcements like this.

…

Without a word, Millaiyen Pestellio drove his foot into the ground, lunging toward the Herta snorting heavily before him.

In an instant, he closed the distance and thrust his blade, aiming for the gap between the creature’s raised claw and limb.

The Herta, belatedly aware, tried to retreat, but Millaiyen Pestellio was far faster.

His eyes flashed brilliantly as he left afterimages in his wake, plunging his blade beneath the creature’s claws in a heartbeat.

A shriek—a threatening cry—

—— Page 4 ——

Yet Millaiyen Pestellio never averted his gaze from those sallow yellow eyes.

Millaiyen Pestellio bared his teeth like a beast. The Herta, losing its balance, stood on three legs without setting down its wounded limb, glaring at him with fierce, burning eyes.

“Well, that actually works.”

“If you’ve all seen it, then fight properly.”

His voice cut through like a blade of frost, sharp and unforgiving.

At Millaiyen Pestellio’s warning—not quite a warning—

The Knights straightened their swords again.

Millaiyen Pestellio drove his blade beneath the claws of the creature’s other foot without hesitation.

Herta let out a scream far more terrible than before, toppling sideways. At that agonized cry, the other Hertas’ sallow yellow eyes snapped toward Millaiyen Pestellio in unison.

Millaiyen Pestellio’s lips curled upward in a twisted smile.

“Now that’s what a demonic beast’s scream should sound like.”

Whether Herta understood the low murmur of his words or not, the creature—whimpering as it licked its own wounded foot—suddenly blazed its sallow eyes at him with renewed malice.

Millaiyen Pestellio let out a hollow, breathless laugh.

“Look at you, a mindless demonic beast forgetting your place.”

Drenched in Herta’s blood spraying forth like a fountain, Millaiyen Pestellio drove his foot into the ground. Crimson afterimages lingered in the air where he had passed.

He stamped the ground hard. Red light lingered like an afterimage where he had passed.

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