Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing - Chapter 256

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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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The Successor Doesn’t Know, So Let’s Just Heal — Episode 256

Lion gazed out the carriage window while eating the sandwich Elvia had given him.
Dense forest whipped past them continuously, even though they’d been traveling for quite some time already.

“But when did you start traveling by carriage like this?”

Usually he relied on Teleportation, didn’t he?
As the Marquis of House Asteri and a Grand Mage, travel time was a luxury he could scarcely afford.
Even if it meant burning some Mana, it was far more efficient to cast Magic directly and arrive at his destination in one bound.

‘And his retinue, too…….’

Weren’t they supplied with unlimited Warp Scrolls from the Magic Tower for work purposes?

“Heh heh.”

Elvia smiled enigmatically at Lion’s question and glanced toward Patrick.
Her expression suggested she had much to say but would hold her tongue this once.

“Ahem.”

Patrick too seemed to find himself in awkward waters, clearing his throat before finally offering an answer.

“One suffers from Warp Sickness. The effects persist even while sleeping, so it’s wiser to minimize its use. And…….”

His voice trailed off, and Elvia seamlessly continued the explanation.

“I once told you about my journey to Bydentis Territory, and it seems to have made quite an impression on you.”
“Ah? I see!”

Only then did Lion grasp his grandfather’s true feelings.
Ah, so Grandfather had been envious after all!
Of savoring leisurely rest days free from work.

‘That’s right. Who wouldn’t want to rest?’

Lion nodded to himself.
As he’d noted before, Grandfather could travel anywhere instantaneously.
It was truly a convenient and efficient ability.
But no matter how much of a workaholic one was, no matter how much one despised wasted time, there came moments when one craved rest.
Grandfather was no exception.

‘For an ordinary person, taking this much time off would hardly be unusual.’

After all, Grandfather had devoted himself to the Empire for decades.
And the Imperial family, worse still, only created more work without lending any real support.
In other words, Grandfather couldn’t rest even when he wished to — there was no one to replace him.
Besides, given his temperament, he’d never take a leave without proper justification.

‘But then I appeared at just the right moment!’

To be precise, the Warp Sickness.
It provided the perfect, unavoidable reason to travel slowly.
Which meant he could ease up on work while at it.

‘And I didn’t even realize……!’

He should have tagged along much sooner.
I was so caught up in running from it all that I never stopped to feel the weight of it.

“Grandfather…!”
“Ahem, yes. Elvia’s right. Now that it’s come to this, this old fool and….”
“I should have figured it out sooner! Ugh!”
……

Patrick watched his grandson’s passionate outburst and felt his brow knit in an odd way.
The boy had always been strange, but today he seemed stranger still.

‘He’s misunderstood something again, it seems.’

Lion’s devotion to family was a mirror of Patrick’s own—unusual and deeply rooted.
But when it came to matters like this, he could be remarkably obtuse.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s gotten wrong this time.’

In any case, he’d best set the record straight before things spiraled further.
He was opening his mouth to speak when—

Tap.

Elvia tapped his arm quickly and shook her head.

‘Why correct him?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The pup seems to be thinking something rather admirable. Why not let him?’
‘But if he goes off and does something foolish because of it—’
‘Would you truly abandon the warmth of this journey?’

An entire conversation passed between them in silence.
Patrick…

“Ugh.”

Unable to bear the thought of sacrificing this intimate journey with his grandson, he could only groan.

“Elvia. How much farther to the Great Barrier?”
“Not far at all. There’s a direct path open to it.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. It’s a special route only the head of the house may use, though…”

Elvia trailed off with a curious smile.
She meant to say it had never been used until now.

“Two full days of riding should see us there. And in the meantime, I shall attend to the young master.”
“Only two days?”
“Yes. Officially, I’m on leave.”
“The Great Barrier is home to many priests.
“I could blend in among them if I suppressed my strength, though I imagine you’d rather I didn’t.”

Elvia wiped the bread crumbs from his hands with a warm cloth and offered him a cool drink.

“Thank you.”

Lion sipped the drink and turned to look out the window again, then paused and glanced back at Elvia.

“But…”
“Yes, Young Master?”
“How did you know I’d gotten younger?”

Elvia simply smiled softly in response.

“How adorable you are, truly. Unable to move about as a child, yet now you scamper here and there with such vigor—as though making up for lost time.”

She’d seen it all.
I don’t know what method she’d used to find out, but somehow she knew everything—even Lion’s survival instinct to play cute.
The saving grace was that she respected privacy scrupulously.

“Ha, ha, ha……”
“Heh, heh, heh……”

Lion and Elvia laughed together.
It seemed best to simply laugh it off.

“Then, I shall remain outside. Please call upon me whenever you need anything.”

Elvia offered a respectful bow, then vanished smoothly from within the carriage—vast as a room itself.
And then……

“Ahem.”

-Wow. She really wanted to talk to you, huh?
-Strange. My body feels all twisted up—completely different from usual. It’s hilarious.

But I could see Tiamatrak sitting just as composed as always. Where was the humor in that?

-By the way, you mentioned the Great Barrier earlier, didn’t you? Is that the strange aura that appeared recently?
-That’s the one—the aura that sealed off the entire land where the Demons dwell.

It happened about fifty years ago, yet Tiamatrak was calling that “recently.” Dragons truly did have a different sense of time than humans.
Their perception of duration simply didn’t align with ours.
Tiamatrak had pressed himself against the carriage window and started gazing out at the scenery.
It made sense—having been an Earth-Bound Dragon for so long, the outside world probably felt fresh and fascinating.

“Right. Anyway, I received a gift from that priest.”
“Yes. He gave me an enormous amount of Holy Water. Thanks to that, I have more materials for Alchemy now.”
“……Was there nothing else?”

Patrick’s question was unusually cautious for his temperament, and Lion paused before answering honestly.

“Right after Licht woke up, he asked me whether my becoming small was truly due to the potion.”
“……”
“I suspect the dream Licht had might have been connected to me somehow.”

Patrick felt a small shock of surprise.
He’d never imagined his grandson would volunteer information so readily.
It wasn’t merely this one piece of intelligence that startled him.
Rather, it was all these strange occurrences unfolding around Lion.
Matters directly and indirectly connected to the Hero, that is.
Before now, the only time Lion had spoken so openly about such things was during a drunken truth.
A slip of the tongue fueled by drink.
A conversation they could both choose to ignore, within reason.
Nothing more than that.

‘If asked whether I felt regret, the answer would naturally be yes.’

Part of him wished to be of greater help, yet another part wanted to shield him from such worries entirely, to bury them away.
But the reason he hadn’t……

‘I just wanted to be of help, even if I couldn’t do much.’

Lion’s nature ran far deeper than most realized, and he made it a practice not to rely on others unless absolutely necessary.

‘On the surface, he seems to depend on everyone. But that’s not it.’

He hid behind the House Asteri, a dynasty of mages.
He pushed forward his successor, Ricshel, the prodigy.
He appeared to lean on himself, the Arch-Mage.
But beneath that appearance lay something else entirely.
Lion’s true nature was to protect his family, to shield those he cared for.
Conversely, he harbored a fierce tendency to bear everything alone.
So when he had mentioned the Northern Region before, it was natural that he would seize the pretense of a business trip to make his way toward the Great Barrier.
Lion had certainly tried not to let that show during their conversation through the Crystal Orb.
Which was why Patrick had held his tongue as well, choosing instead to focus on talk of business and travel.
To turn a blind eye to whatever his grandson might do.

“Would it be all right if I told you?”
“Come now. You already know everything—that’s why you brought me here in the first place.”

Of course, Lion was fully aware of all this.

‘I did wrestle with whether to speak of it.’

The fact that the Hero’s true identity was someone else.
The existence of some scheme between the Hero and the Holy Maiden.
And only fragmented information—that something about the Hero was unstable.
He did not know precisely what they had orchestrated.
From Lion’s perspective, this was ‘uncertain,’ and properly speaking, he should not have reported it.
But.

“Because we’re family.”
“……!”

The moment their eyes met—this grandfather who had rushed back the instant he heard that his grandson was in danger days ago—Lion realized he had been thinking of something all wrong.
Was it truly fitting to establish a course for himself, chart his own path, and then merely notify his family afterward?
It was not entirely wrong, perhaps, but……

‘Something’s off.’

That was all Lion could manage to articulate. Still learning what it meant to be a family, his words fell short.

“But you’ll have to pretend not to see, no matter what I do?”
…….

Patrick felt a bittersweet smile bloom inside him as he gazed at his grandson’s playful expression.

‘He’s grown.’

Once a sapling that seemed to wither without flourishing, he had suddenly surged upward until even Patrick could scarcely lay a hand on him.

‘And again, he’s grown.’

A child so fragile he might be swept away by the gentlest rain had become a seedling reaching to the knee, then a young sapling tall enough to meet the eye—all in what felt like an instant.
By the time this journey ended, Patrick suspected he might no longer be able to treat him like a child.

And yet.
Not now.

“You’re misunderstanding something.”

Patrick brushed away the bitter ache coiled beneath his surface and let a cold, cutting smile emerge instead.
The expression was glacial, threatening even—but to Lion’s eye,

‘Hmm….’

it bore an odd resemblance to himself.
For that fleeting instant, Patrick seemed brimming with mischief.
Yet was it just his imagination?

“Lion.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“I am a man bound by duty to recognize the Empire’s dangers before anyone else and to prevent them. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I cannot interfere with what you do. Not when you might accomplish something.”

By “something,” he surely meant matters tied to the Hero or the Chaos ahead.

“I… suppose so……?”

But something about that phrasing felt off, didn’t it?

‘…… No. Surely not.’

The mood had been good until now.
And his Grandfather, a man more rational than Lion himself, surely understood as well.
That it was better to uncover and resolve this matter first, before the Archbishop or others could—better than burying one’s head in denial.

‘That way, it doesn’t escalate to the Hero.’

Blocking the snowball before it rolled out of control. Prevention before disaster.
His Grandfather surely grasped that fully.
But.
Lion’s sharp premonitions had a way of proving correct,
and this one had not failed him now.

“Yet something about this… feels wrong to me.”
“Sir?”
“Even the most rational mind grows clouded sometimes. So I shall do my utmost to keep watch over you this time.”
“What?”
“In turn, you do your best to escape my vigilance. I’ll grant you that much.”

While Lion sat stunned at Patrick’s declaration of intent,
Patrick let out a low chuckle and drove home his point.

“We’re family, after all. Aren’t we?”
“Waaaaah——!!”

—So this is what a family squabble looks like?
—You’re caught now! This’ll be fun!
—If you need my help, just say the word. All right, Lion?

Faced with Patrick’s perfect gambit, Lion clutched his head in both hands.
It seemed he still had far too much to learn about family.

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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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