My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 98

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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 98
This time, it was an unfamiliar village.
Rupert was swinging a sword again in a wide clearing.
This time, it was a proper blade.
Beside him stood a middle-aged man of no particular renown, watching Rupert intently.
“Keep the blade straight—put more force into it!”
He seemed to be training Rupert.
Rupert, his focus fixed on the sword’s point, cut through the empty air with steady, unwavering strokes, again and again.
There was something unfamiliar about him.
The sharp, keen-edged gaze, the grimly set mouth, the solid frame—he bore no resemblance to someone fit for mere butler’s work in their household.
‘And that hasn’t changed, has it.’
Agnes didn’t believe what Rupert had told her.
That he would inherit her father’s duties and remain at her side forever.
‘He’s helping me now, but once word spreads that he’s skilled enough to slay dragons, he’ll be promoted to higher station.’
He might possess talent worthy of a noble title, but once they returned, there would likely be charges of treason waiting for him, making that impossible.
Then he would have to seek refuge in the realm of the Other Races.
Everyone would welcome Rupert.
‘Assuming war doesn’t break out, that is.’
What was she to do when they returned?
She had already fled from the Crown Prince.
The situation with Valdemar remained unknown.
And if the Crown Prince were to wage war with the Other Races…
‘What am I supposed to do?’
The moment the thought surfaced, blood drained from her fingertips, running cold.
She could not believe the thought that had just crossed her mind.
‘Is there no choice but to stand against him?’
When she returned to the surface, the Crown Prince would come for her, seeking to drain her power.
With it, he would suppress Kesenor and steer the war with the Other Races in his favor.
A thousand years they had been confined within their prescribed borders, cursed so that a single misspoken word could mean death itself.
Yet he would wage war against them merely because they displeased him.
Above all, Amy had prophesied it.
‘A bad person will take me, she said.’
Not merely to keep her locked away—perhaps that was why Amy had feared it so terribly.
She would lose everything, and worse than death might await her: a life so wretched it would be preferable to oblivion.
‘That’s why she told me to run.’
But how long could she truly flee, and how far?
Agnes bit her lip.
‘It’s impossible. Because of the Duke, he’ll pursue me by any means necessary.’
To command a Grand Mage as one saw fit meant not merely control over Kesenor’s abilities, but dominion over the Magic Tower’s power as well.
‘To oppose the Crown Prince is to oppose the Empire itself.’
Was such a thing even possible?
Frozen by sudden dread, she watched Rupert laboring through his training before her.
While Agnes had been lost in thought, his arms and legs trembled from countless repetitions of the blade.
Yet he clenched his teeth and did not lower the sword.
“That’s enough. Rest now.”
“Gasp—hah—haah……”
Seeing him collapse to the ground, barely able to draw breath, the middle-aged man offered a wry smile.
“I’ll fetch water. Stay here and recover.”
As the man receded, Rupert steadied his breathing, then wiped his hands clean with a cloth.
He leaned carelessly against a tree, slipped a hand into his breast, and withdrew something.
‘Ah… surely not……’
It was the same orb he had seen before.
The one Rupert called ‘Amy.’
“Miss.”
Rupert managed a weary smile.
“Are you struggling? Haha…… Yes, I am. But you must return home, mustn’t you? You want to see your sister.”
Could he hear Amy’s voice?
His face was damp with sweat and lined with exhaustion, yet his gaze remained gentle as he gazed down at the orb, speaking tenderly.
“I will send you back no matter what it takes. ……You say we must go together? I will try. So please, don’t be angry with me.”
Though there was no sun here and the sky hung dark, light seemed to fall across his face like sunlight itself.
How could this be possible?
That she could endure something like this, drawing strength from nothing more than an orb.
Her cheek stung.
When she wiped it with her fingertips, moisture came away on her skin.
Agnes swallowed the cry rising in her throat and gazed at Rupert without end.
During that year Amy and Rupert vanished into the Rift, she had wondered how they survived.
How they returned from it remained a mystery.
Amy claimed to remember nothing, and Rupert had spoken not a word about it.
Yet thinking back, there would have been nothing to say.
A world filled with horrors.
Amy transformed into something like a small orb.
The goal of returning must have seemed impossible.
And yet Rupert accomplished it.
Because to Rupert, Amy was…….
‘We raised her together, after all.’
The youngest had lost both mother and father the moment she was born.
‘I will put the young lady to sleep, so do try to rest, Miss Agnes.’
‘What of Martha?’
‘She has gone down to the village.’
With all the family elders gone, only Alfred and Martha remained as people she could trust.
The duties their parents had managed naturally fell to those two as Agnes learned to take her place.
And so there was no one to care for Amy.
The servants, sensing the household’s darkened mood and thinking only of flight, could not be entrusted with her.
So Agnes took it upon herself to look after Amy.
Fortunately, perhaps because she resembled their mother, Amy cried less when Agnes held her.
Rupert, worried about the two of them, was always hovering nearby, ready to help whenever needed.
Rupert had been scarcely sixteen at the time.
One day Agnes found herself buried beneath a stack of demand letters from creditors.
Hearing Rupert’s murmur, she looked up to find him tidying the room while carrying Amy on his back, speaking softly to her.
‘Look at this, Miss. This was embroidered by your mother, and it’s called a lilac. Come spring, the fence will be bursting with them.’
As Amy gurgled and babbled, Rupert laughed quietly.
Agnes stared vacantly at the two of them laughing together in the sunlight.
In those overwhelmingly difficult times, their only solace.
An apology toward him. Gratitude.
Those moments accumulated, layer upon layer, until their presence became precious beyond any exchange.
Then what must Rupert have felt as he cared for Amy?
Watching the child who once did nothing but cry grow gradually, learning to smile, taking her clumsy first steps—he must have felt something.
Without even asking, she could tell by watching him gently pat that mere orb and speak to it.
‘So that’s why he was learning the blade.’
Because he had to protect her.
Because he had to find a way to save Amy, to return to the surface.
Because he did not wish for Amy to die in this place, and wanted at least you to survive.
‘And if here he doesn’t die…….’
Watching Agnes feel pain suggested he could hurt.
‘Could it be……, even if his body is torn to pieces, he doesn’t die? Feeling the pain all the while?’
The shock rushed over her like a wave.
Startled by the overwhelming realization, she stepped backward, and her vision shifted once more.
Agnes was back in the Wasteland.
Monsters filled every direction.
But they passed right through Agnes without touching her.
Once she realized she was safe, her initial instinct to cringe gave way to curiosity, and she began surveying her surroundings.
Far off, something bulged upward like a hill.
Dozens of monsters clustered together there.
Even more disturbing was that this vast ‘thing,’ shaped like a mountain of creatures, was gradually moving.
‘Surely…….’
An ill foreboding took hold.
If monsters were swarming like this, there must be ‘prey’ in that direction.
But if the prey does not disappear no matter how many monsters cling to it, that means…….
Agnes rushed toward it urgently.
But she could not penetrate the mass.
I want to know what’s inside, and if someone’s trapped in there, I want to save them.
‘Please, somehow……!’
Frantic, I reached for the creatures, but they slipped through my fingers like smoke.
“Rupert……!”
I cried out his name with desperate conviction, but there was no way to know what was happening inside.
Time slipped away, helpless and hollow.
Gasping under the weight of profound powerlessness, unable even to collapse, I did nothing but clutch at empty air.
Then, finally, one corner of the sky began to darken.
The creatures withdrew into the earth one by one.
“Ugh, ……hnn.”
The despair of being able to do nothing, only watch.
Agnes didn’t even realize she was crying.
Where all the creatures had vanished.
Rupert was there, as I’d feared.
Curled in on himself, black smoke rose from every wound, every piece of flesh torn away.
Agnes finally understood why Rupert hadn’t died even in the Wasteland.
The hollowed spaces that had been gouged moments before were filling at terrifying speed.
Bone and muscle and skin regenerated in sequence.
Once fully restored, he finally rose to his feet.
His face held no expression at all.
As if this had been repeating for a very, very long time.
My heart crumbled.
Unaware that Agnes was weeping right beside him, he began to walk slowly.
And there, at the end of it, was the Village.
Despite reaching a place where salvation was finally possible, Rupert showed neither surprise nor relief.
It seemed he already knew the Village was there.
“Rupert!”
The moment I stepped forward to follow him, my vision wavered again.
“Please stop…….”
Now I couldn’t even bring myself to wipe my tears.
“What do you want from me? What am I supposed to do? Turn back time?”
Is it that I should have prevented this from happening.
Or is it an accusation that I failed, that I put him in this state.
That I shouldn’t have let him fall into the Rift.
When Rupert said he would go rescue Amy, if I had gone instead, none of this would have happened.
Perhaps from that moment on, I was the one who was wrong.
“Is it my fault? Are you telling me that I sacrificed Rupert, that Rupert suffered this because of me?”
When I could no longer bear the sensation of being flayed raw, my sins laid bare for all to see, I finally collapsed.
Agnes was back in that familiar place again.
The Black Sea. The crimson sky.
As I pushed through the viscous water and broke free, the Wasteland appeared far ahead.
The cat stood there. Where we had begun.
Somehow, Agnes felt certain she knew the cat’s name.
“Lui.”

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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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