Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 199

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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 199

[[Barrier entry is now possible.]]
The ceremony was complete.
The moment it finished, I heard the voice of whatever oversees the Northern Barrier—an AI left by God, a ceremonial assistant, whatever you wanted to call it—and I disengaged the barrier’s security and ran. Out of caution, I’d left Jemina within the barrier’s protection.
My speed was incomparable to when I’d once ridden a modified snow sleigh by the Wind Power.
Through some sacrifice and creative methods, I’d absorbed every trace of the “Titania” who’d been rolling relentlessly through this world. That alone should explain it, I suppose. I ran without hesitation, following a path that materialized with perfect clarity in my mind.
Silence, black silence.
“Your Highness!”
“How did you get here…!”
Fortunately, the situation hadn’t changed much from the last time I’d confirmed it.
Facing the Castrain Duke convulsing as he coughed up dark blood, with two brothers desperately trying to protect him, I looked toward the Magic Beast. The creature let out an instinctive, horrific shriek.
“Fall back!”
Raymond’s desperate voice.
In the meantime, the Castrain Ducal House must have attempted various countermeasures—I could feel traces of hastily erected barriers scattered around and the lingering taint of magic in the air.
But I exhausted all my power in an instant and shattered the remains of the Mana Stone, now turned to rubble, beneath my feet. Each step produced the sound of something crumbling.
Emotion flickered across Raymond’s golden eyes.
“Your Highness will be in danger! Immediately—!”
“No.”
I examined the Duke’s condition.
-…The fundamental problem is that his heart—the very source of his power—is shattered. Without fixing that, even if we treat his abdominal wounds, he won’t last long.
‘But I can do it.’
-……
‘Though I’ll be short on power.’
First, I drew up my Healing Force to staunch the bleeding. When I bit my fingertip and let blood pool in my mouth, Lisianthus gasped.
“Wh-what are you doing…!”
“Move.”
“What?!”
I shoved the gasping Lisianthus aside and cut the tail of the Magic Beast as it flew toward me.
It severed clean. When the sword had told me I could match Raymond’s power, I’d been stunned. But now that I felt it directly……
It wasn’t exhilarating or refreshing. It just felt familiar—as if I’d swung the blade dozens, hundreds of times before. Raymond and Lisianthus’s eyes wavered.
I gathered my power into the sword and drew it high.
Keeeeeeeee—
The Magic Beast shrieked. Murky energy rippled outward in all directions.
Lisianthus made a choking, gasping sound. I flicked my fingertip and created a Light Orb in the empty air, then detonated it.
Bang!
As the light power exploded in the void, the Magic Beast convulsed like an insect doused in pesticide.
Shrieeeeek!
“Gasp—what, what is this? I can breathe so much easier now……”
“Your Highness?”
Unlike Lisianthus, who stood bewildered, Raymond called out to me as if unable to believe his eyes. I blinked at him.
Yes. Even when “Titania” first awoke, I’d felt that something was strange. Was I perceptive? Or not?
I didn’t know.
I’d worried that absorbing all of “Titania” would erase my own self—the identity I’d built living in modern Korea. But it hadn’t happened that way. I’d always known these things, but it was more like forgotten memories resurfacing one by one.
Regret, perhaps. Bitter love. Or maybe just satiation with everything.
Those emotions surfaced too, like sediment stirred up from muddy water.
“Did you want to kill me here……”
I recalled Titania’s knowledge and experience. Titania and the Castrain brothers had fought and clashed, matching their strength against numerous Magic Beasts.
But this Magic Beast before me now—it didn’t seem to have appeared even at the very end.
Or perhaps it had been a final weapon they’d been preparing, only for “Titania” to swiftly dive into the Underground World and reset it all, never getting a chance to use it.
It wasn’t a finished Magic Beast. But with the current forces at the Castrain Ducal House—and me stumbling as I was until now—we couldn’t have handled it.
It would’ve taken someone detecting anomalies and coming down here with the clear intention to eliminate the Light Contractor who’d sensed something wrong.
But that much didn’t matter now.
“Kill me? What are you talking about? More importantly—what did you just do? That……”
Lisianthus spoke to me hesitantly.
“Get the Duke behind you and fall back.”
“…Huh?”
“Don’t interfere.”
“……Huh?”
Lisianthus only repeated my words as if he hadn’t heard them right. I abandoned Raymond’s stare—his lips moving soundlessly, unable to form words—and simply threw myself into motion.
Wreathed in Light Power from head to toe, each time I swung the sword with concentrated force, the Magic Beast’s limbs flew clean off. Its massive bulk meant I barely needed to aim, which was convenient.

The Magic Beast’s voice echoed in my mind.

Not really the beast’s voice—more like a fragment of the consciousness of the God of Darkness, I supposed. Like seeing a certain dark lord who’d embedded a piece of his soul in a horcrux.
Instead of answering, I cheerfully swung my blade at the carapace the Duke had already half-smashed.
Clang!
Unlike the other parts of the body that sliced through like soft tofu, this was harder.
Clang-clang! Clang-clang-clang!
It made rather a pleasant sound.
“This is fun. Sounds like playing castanets.”
-…You seem to be in better spirits than expected, Contractor.
“If it won’t shatter, keep smashing until it does!”
Ting, tang, crack! Clang!
I pounded the carapace in a brisk rhythm, breaking it from the outside in. Lisianthus, who’d rubbed his eyes in disbelief several times at first, eventually gave up interfering and withdrew, protecting the Duke. He seemed to be communicating with his homeland through something like a Crystal Orb.
It looked as though they were using it to commune with his home.
“…It’s over here.”
And Raymond, watching me brutally smash away, pointed to what appeared to be a weak point.
His eyes trembled helplessly as he watched me batter the carapace with the flat of the blade, yet I liked his unwavering focus on the objective of actually defeating the beast.
“If you strike here, perhaps……”
“Thank you for telling me.”
I’d never fought this one before, so finding its weak point was difficult. I plunged my blade into the spot Raymond had deduced, driving it deep until only the hilt remained. With a sound like shattering ice, the carapace shattered into fragments.
The glowing Magic Beast swung one of its still-intact front limbs, trying to seize me whole. Raymond gritted his teeth and flicked his own blade through the air, severing the beast’s claws.
I exploited that opening and burrowed deeper inside the creature. Because of its massive bulk, it thrashed helplessly, unable to catch me as I drove deeper. Drenched in blood and gore, I tore through its insides.
And extracted the Mana Stone.
The shrieks I heard were so sharp they eclipsed anything before. I practically excavated the Mana Stone—black as ink—from within, barely wrenching it free.
The Magic Beast fell slowly, crumbling as it descended. Like a small mountain collapsing.
As the beast’s fluids spread, the earth and stone began to dissolve with a sizzling sound. Lisianthus now held the Duke’s body aloft, trembling almost uncontrollably.
I let out a short breath and detonated another Light Orb to temporarily purify the contaminated ground beneath us.
“Put the Duke down.”
“…Is there a way?”
“Yes.”
Lisianthus set the Duke down without hesitation, his face eager with curiosity yet ready to burst. I pressed my blade against the Mana Stone, still filthy with the beast’s fluid, now dark and corrupted.
-Purifying a Mana Stone of this size immediately would be too much for……
‘Too much? Really? Should I just pour some blood instead, I guess?’
-…I will help.
Normally, once you kill a Magic Beast and extract its Mana Stone, you can use the stone as-is. But this one was made by the God of Darkness accumulating power over eons, so using it without precautions on a dying man would be disastrous.
As I concentrated my Light Power and drove out the Demon Energy, dizziness spun through my head. Oh, now that I think of it, I felt some muscle soreness too.
I’d grown stronger, but my body still lacked conditioning.
Once the purification of the Mana Stone—larger than a child’s head—was complete, it glowed with a pure white light. I pointed to it and spoke.
“The Duke’s heart is shattered, and it’s difficult to just heal that directly. The torn abdomen is actually a secondary concern.”
“Then…?”
“So I’m going to replace his heart. With this.”
“…Can you do that?! On a living person?!”
Lisianthus was horrified. Normally it would be impossible, yes.
“In any case, I’m not trying to kill him, so just wait and see.”
I had to cut the explanation short. The Duke’s breathing had already grown visibly shallow.
Without further delay, I drove my sword into the Duke’s chest. Both Raymond and Lisianthus flinched simultaneously.
I placed the large Mana Stone within his rib cage and pricked my own fingertip, letting blood flow freely into him. Dark blood streamed from the Duke’s mouth, eyes, ears, and nostrils. The same came from his chest.
My head spun. No matter that I was a Light Contractor—an experienced one, a Returner—boosting someone else’s Healing Force, sharing my own power to compensate, and simultaneously purging the debris of a shattered heart along with accumulated toxins and curses while making a Mana Stone into a new heart and source of power was pushing it.
But it did work.
Twitch.
The Duke’s corpse-like body convulsed. His trembling eyelids slowly opened. One eternal second.

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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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