My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 58
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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 58
Amy, hoping to soothe him despite his labored breathing, seized his sleeve and shook it.
“Rapitor, are you all right?”
“Oh, this shouldn’t be happening—don’t you think this place needs better security? How can a sorcerer conceal things with such a flimsy mechanism……!”
Just moments ago, he’d marveled at how a vault could possibly exist in such a location.
“In any case, I’m grateful someone understands its true value. I would never have known.”
“Of course! Only we can handle this sort of thing! The sorcerer can’t, the giants can’t—we’re just relieved it isn’t destroyed!”
He seized Agnes’s two hands and gripped them tight, then clung to her desperately as he spoke.
“Let’s begin at once! Tell me anything you need!”
It was as though she’d stumbled upon a legendary mineral from myth itself, one whose existence she’d never even suspected.
Agnes glanced down at Amy, standing beside her.
Amy was laughing with innocent delight, a soft hehe escaping her lips.
‘Did she know such a thing existed in Dragon Lair?’
Dragons themselves were creatures of legend.
Yet six-year-old Amy had found one, and Rupert and Kesenor had defeated it together.
‘It’s all thanks to Amy.’
Even knowing it was no blessing, Agnes envied the child’s gift.
She found herself wishing genuinely that she too possessed some ability.
‘If only I could read any secret, lay bare any hidden thing.’
Then she might uncover the World Tree’s mysteries, the truths others kept concealed.
At least she wouldn’t feel this anxious, this stifled as she did now.
In any case, if Rapitor was going to help, it seemed her days ahead would grow very busy indeed.
‘First, I should write to Elizabeth.’
Then perhaps she could solve the matter of her siblings that had troubled her all this time—and create a new source of revenue for her fiefdom besides.
Agnes held Amy close once more, without quite knowing why.
“Hm?”
She whispered again to her sister, who looked up at her in bewilderment.
“Thank you, Amy.”
“Aw, don’t be silly.”
Her younger sister wrinkled her nose shyly, and Agnes pressed her lips repeatedly to the child’s flushed cheeks.
* * *
After that, Amy spent more of her days with Rupert.
Agnes, preparing for new ventures, descended to the village almost daily with Ignitan and Rapitor.
But it was fine.
She always returned by evening to dine with them, play until sleep took hold, then lie down beside Amy as they both drifted off.
More than anything, when her sister was away, Amy could enjoy sweets without restraint.
‘She said to eat only one because they’re so sweet.’
But surely one more wouldn’t hurt.
Amy chewed eagerly on the Strawberry Tart in her mouth.
“Big sister was upset?”
“Yes.”
According to Rupert, Agnes had wished that she too might gain abilities like his or Amy’s.
“It’s all right. It’ll happen eventually.”
She popped another piece into her mouth and picked up her pen again.
Amy was working on handwriting practice, homework her sister had set.
Still clumsy, her fingertips kept getting smudged with ink.
She gazed at her own graceless hands in frustration, then wiped her fingertips on the handkerchief lying on the table.
Then, in the softest whisper, Amy spoke.
“I hope she doesn’t get one.”
“Wouldn’t it let the eldest young lady defend herself better?”
“Only if it means she has to enter a Rift like we do?”
“That’s…….”
Rupert offered a bitter smile.
“Absolutely not.”
“It was hard there, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then it can’t happen. Besides, there are other ways, but those are really out of the question!”
The unique power granted only to a World Tree Companion.
There was the ability to fall from a great height without injury—as she’d dreamed of once before.
‘But the condition for its awakening is meeting that creature.’
At the memory, gooseflesh prickled across her arms again.
She was grateful it was only this intense now; if she remembered it on a dark night, she’d weep from the sheer terror of it.
But it was always fine once she burrowed into her sister’s embrace and held on tight.
‘It’s all right. That meeting happened anyway—not here, but in some nameless village far away.’
As she fumbled through her memories, the pen nib in her grip began leaking ink in a steady stream.
“Miss Amy?”
“Oh no!”
She’d been trying so hard to write neatly for once, but the ink spread in a dark stain, ruining the page completely.
“Sigh.”
“I’m sure you won’t scold me too harshly for this.”
“Well… I suppose not.”
While Rupert wiped the ink that had spread across the table, Amy picked up the thread of thought that had broken off.
‘Wait—now that I think about it, why was Sister in a village instead of here?’
The novel had clearly begun that way.
Agnes, wandering from place to place before settling in a village.
There was no mention of her father or mother, no talk of Elizabeth or Edmund.
Only the explanation that Agnes was the daughter of a viscount.
‘Good heavens, how did I not think of something so important!’
She rummaged desperately through her fragmented memories, but no plausible clues surfaced.
‘Was there already a problem with our household before I was even born…?’
Otherwise, there was no way her sister would have been dressed in shabby clothes in a village like that.
The lack of context between scenes was only natural for adult-rated pulp fiction, she supposed.
Amy groaned silently to herself.
‘Is it because I’m not even nineteen yet that they won’t show me?’
And she couldn’t remember why it had been rated that way in the first place.
Perhaps there had been something frightening and cruel happening.
‘I have a feeling my sister and the male leads were doing something… Ah, this is so frustrating! Won’t the System or the World Tree give me a proper explanation?’
Her mind could think as maturely as an adult’s, but her mouth would only produce words fitting a six-year-old—it was infuriating.
“I’m so frustrated.”
Hearing her inner thoughts spill out unguarded, Rupert’s brow furrowed with concern.
“Well then, would you care to take a walk with me?”
“Yes, I’d like that!”
“Where would you most enjoy going? What do you say to visiting the eldest young lady in the village?”
“So we’re going to the village? I want to go!”
Amy’s eyes lit up, and she scurried off to change clothes before hurrying out of the mansion.
“It’s so hot…”
But once they were actually walking, the sun was unbearably fierce.
A week had passed since Amy’s return, and they were sliding into June.
Even with the wide-brimmed hat her sister had bought her perched stylishly on her head, it barely helped.
With a six-year-old’s small body, she could hardly bear even the heat rising from the dirt path beneath them.
Rupert simply picked Amy up without question.
Carried on his cool, broad back, Amy found herself thinking of the days she’d traveled with him.
Though not long ago, they already felt distant and dreamlike.
“Wasn’t I heavy?”
“Pardon?”
“You carried me around all the time.”
“Not at all. I could lift you with one hand.”
“That’s not true.”
“I could demonstrate whenever you wish, but I fear it would be too dangerous for the youngest young lady, so I’ll refrain.”
Besides, she had no confidence she could balance on Rupert’s palm without falling—it wasn’t as if she were a stick.
“Have you been to the village before, Rupert?”
“Oh yes. Ah, this will be your first time, miss.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Amy’s world had always been confined to the Laberose Mansion and its surroundings.
So everything she’d seen while traveling across the world was novel and wondrous.
The Magic Tower buried in snow.
The Naopha Forest, densely packed with impossibly tall trees that seemed to pierce the sky.
The Flame Mountain Range rising impossibly high in the middle of a barren desert, without a single ordinary tree in sight.
And finally, the Dark Elf Cavern filling an island where the sun beat down relentlessly.
Each time she encountered these wondrous realms, Amy could not help but gasp in amazement.
“When I was younger, I used to visit the mansion quite often with the eldest Miss. Up until I turned fifteen, I’d go down regularly to look after Village affairs.”
“Really? What did you do there?”
“You remember that Pebble the Miss gave me last time? I’d pick things like that up, and play with the Village children too.”
“No kidding?”
Rupert laughed softly, his voice carrying the weight of memory.
“We’d climb trees together, and sometimes we’d splash about in the Stream.”
“Sister did that?”
“Yes. She did.”
The Agnes of now was the very picture of refined nobility — utterly unbelievable.
“Come on, there’s no way Sister would do that. It was you, wasn’t it, Rupert?”
“Quite the opposite, actually.”
Over his shoulder, she caught Rupert’s smile.
“Miss Amy, by contrast, was quite well-behaved.”
“Oh! I’m telling Sister on you!”
“You shouldn’t. I’ll just have to take my punishment.”
Along with Rupert’s laughter, the two of them soon arrived at the Village.
A modest fountain in the Village Square was spurting water freely into the air.
In the wide clearing beside it, children were playing.
Among the adults there were only the elderly, and when several of those sitting in the shade recognized Rupert, a commotion broke out in their surprise.
“What? Rupert?! What on earth happened?”
“Look how you’ve grown! You fell into that Rift, didn’t you — are you all right now?”
As she listened quietly to the exchange between the elders and Rupert, she heard fragments of that story about visiting with her sister when she was small.
‘So it was true.’
Though that bit about dashing around like a tomboy was surely exaggerated. At most, she’d probably just trailed behind the Village children.
When she asked about Agnes’s whereabouts, they said she was now at the Blacksmith with Ignitan and Rapitor.
“The Blacksmith is dangerous, so it would be better to wait here.”
“Why? I’m curious.”
“It’s a place where fire is handled. Besides, Miss Agnes never went to the Blacksmith when she was young.”
A soft whine escaped her.
Though she appeared disappointed on the surface, Amy found herself more distracted by the children who kept stealing glances at her than by whatever troublesome work her sister must be doing at the Blacksmith.
‘What is it? They’re curious about me, aren’t they?’
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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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