Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 256

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

Chapter 256

“I’m a failure who’s fallen out of my father’s favor, so I’ll do what I can to save as many as possible. So our brave little one absolutely must survive—she needs to be there to see whether I keep my promise or not.”
The child darted away, turning back again and again as Adrian patted him on the back, signaling it was time. From beside me, someone tossed out a question.
“…So what now?”
“What do you mean, what now?”
Adrian let out a soft chuckle.
“Kill all the Magic Beasts, seize the Imperial Palace, and watch our father repent before me saying, ‘I didn’t send you out for this. Those vile creatures seduced me! Forgive me, my son!’—and then I get to gleefully tell him, ‘Your regret means nothing to me!’—and slit the throats of the Imperial Consort and the fake Brian. The thought of it makes me want to die happy. If I become Emperor in the future, will that little one’s mother still curse me then?”
With a face as calm as someone worrying about lunch options, he rattled off these unrealistic assumptions, and a weary voice came back.
“…Be realistic.”
“Let’s do our best. We’re up against monsters who don’t care if their opponent is female, a child, elderly, a parent, or anything—so if we don’t give it everything, where else would we spend our strength?”
“You’re not going to rescue your sister?”
Those gathered here were once mercenary comrades whom Adrian had staked his life alongside. They were a sort of elite unit.
So they understood roughly what situation Adrian was in. After all, they needed to be prepared for any contingency. They worried about Adrian, who had left his biological mother in the dangerous Imperial Palace and his half-sister in enemy territory.
“I never thought I’d make a particularly impressive Emperor anyway.”
“And now?”
“Well, it’s more like—the comparison is just too…. You know? Do you want steak or roast beef? Chicken or duck? Those are choices worth deliberating over. But if someone asks you, ‘Bread or rotten potato?’, if you don’t want to die, the choice is obvious, isn’t it? This isn’t even that. The other side is led by the Master of Magic Beasts.”
“And?”
“There was a time I thought, if emergency came, I could just take my mother and sister and flee. But the two of them—no blood relation—somehow got stuck together like a real mother and daughter, thinking similar thoughts.”
“…….”
“Titania never properly enjoyed her rights as a princess. She shoulders a burden the Emperor himself discarded, pretending it’s nothing while someone has to carry it. Mother uses the excuse that I must become Emperor, so of course she acts that way. …Well, both of their eyes have changed a bit now.”
She would become the eternal foundation sustaining the Northern Barrier with her living body.
Had she said such a thing, Adrian and the Empress would certainly never have let Titania out of the palace.
Titania, who rarely made requests for herself, had dissolved her engagement and suggested she wanted to sneak out and play, to rest—so they’d gone along with it.
They thought it would be safer outside the dangerous palace than anywhere else, but who could have known she’d willingly walk into a grave?
With Rasper, after revealing Raymond’s betrayal and the detailed circumstances from the Castrain Family, Adrian felt like he might collapse.
Thinking back on it now—to say she’d go play? To rest? While burdening the people around her? How could anyone believe that? She wasn’t the kind of girl to stubbornly insist on leaving alone to play selfishly while knowing others were suffering. Adrian himself hadn’t been able to stop the Empress’s resolve to never leave the palace.
Perhaps it was because the Emperor and the Imperial Consort Cleo were so devoted to their own desires. That desperate determination not to become like them was born.
That aside, the last news was truly shocking. That Raymond—of all people—had gone to the enemy’s side. He’d abducted Titania, who was heading for the Barrier.
To dismiss it as mere jealousy……
The scale was far too grand.
And yet, for some reason, Adrian wasn’t that worried about Titania. Even though Raymond—such a powerful piece—going over to the other side was clearly a ominous sign.
“Since I have family who won’t flee even if the world becomes hell, I should conduct myself accordingly. Besides, if I fail to stop those two from turning the world into hell in their attempt to protect each other, I feel like I’ll be threatened even after I die…….”
“Grand words. But in the end, if both of them……pass away?”
“This matter is something that must be done regardless of right or wrong. Whether you abandon your humanity and live miserably, or do everything you can and accept the outcome, saying there was nothing else to be done.”
Someone had accepted despair.
Someone had become despair’s servant.
Someone had scorned others who did not follow despair and willingly became part of it.
It’s easy to despair. It’s easy to blame others. It’s easy to shift your responsibility onto someone else. It’s easy to turn away from reality.
You can make mistakes. You can commit wrongs for a moment.
But when you see people in the same circumstances—or innocent people with no fault at all—plummet to the bottom because of your mistakes or wrongdoings, you know it shouldn’t happen. You know such things must not occur. Surely one can muster at least that much human compassion.
If someone can’t even do that—well. Can we really call that a person? I don’t know.
“And another thing. That girl Titania—she doesn’t care for herself, judges herself harshly in strange ways, is self-sacrificing, yet my foolish sister is clever enough to hide it all behind brightness and cheer. But—”
Adrian grinned wickedly.
“That girl—if she alone falls into a pit, she’ll lie down in it, close her eyes, and wait for the end. But if someone gets tangled up with her and falls into that pit together, she genuinely panics and somehow summons miraculous power, shouting ‘Someone’s fallen here! Over here!’—and by any means necessary, she forges a path upward and rises out by sheer miracle.”
“……What on earth is that assessment?”
“Well. I just have a feeling it’ll work out somehow.”
“Your evidence?”
“Instinct.”
Don’t ignore my instinct—I’ve survived this long because of it. Adrian’s voice was so calm he didn’t sound like he was facing the most dangerous operation briefing of his life.

* * *

“How old are you?”
“…….”
“What’s your favorite food?”
“…….”
“If I may ask, what’s your family relationship?”
Instead of an answer, a look that clearly meant ‘Are you insane?’ came back at me. I didn’t yield and offered a wink instead.
At that, the other’s face contorted as if they’d bitten down on a worm.
Too bad—such a pretty, cute face for once.
-If I may say, I think similarly. ( ˊ࿁ˋ )
‘Then you shouldn’t have asked in the first place.’
-Will you answer whatever I ask?!Σ(O_O)
‘They can’t touch me now thanks to the Contract. My real mother told me to live like a human, but she also said not to cower anywhere. Even if I fell in a desert, I’d survive with the resolve to ferment kimchi with cacti.’
-What does that have to do with you flirting with some man and woman meeting like an arranged match in front of the lackey of an old enemy who once threw away the Contractor’s life and my comrades’ lives?!( ｡_｡)
‘Well, it’s part of gathering information for the future!’
“What’s your relationship with that ‘Master’ you love so dearly?”
“Our Master is absolutely perfect.”
“But in what sense are they perfect?”
“…….”
A wary gaze fixed on me.
I was in that same room where Lilium had kept this opponent as her subordinate. After I’d spent a long time needlessly destroying and stabbing things, and even suffered the threat ‘When our god wakes up, you’re a dead woman,’ here I was.
I had to think.
I thought very hard.
And I arrived at a perfectly sound conclusion: ‘Before our god wakes up, these bastards can’t touch me, so I need to do something now.'”
“Our Master can make any male kneel before them.”
“Oh, right, males.”
“That your pathetic biological mother was once called the most beautiful woman in the Empire—this is only because those ignorant fools don’t remember our Master.”
“Why can’t they remember?”
“…….”
“I can’t figure out where this is, and I can’t leave anyway. And you people treat humans outside like insects, so telling me would hardly hurt, would it?”
“……Hmph. Well.”
The eyes of the opponent who’d been glaring at me narrowed.
“Our Master’s family line has served the Chernobog Family as vassals for generations. Quietly, to build strength for the future while evading the eyes of the Imperial Family and others. By the grace of the god Chernobog, we gained various powers. One of them is Delusion.”
“Delusion?”
“Our Master, more precisely, can blur the information and very perception of our Master and our family line itself. They were ‘made’ so it would be possible.”
“……I see. More precisely, how?”
“Like grafting branches and crossbreeding different species. Passing down genes that have such potential. Continuing that lineage. Using only the superior traits of Magic Beasts.”
So our Master, from the moment they were born, is of a different species than frail humans.
The face of the one speaking held genuine affection and pride. I smiled outwardly.
“The only, single, unique being in this world.”
“…And you consider that something to be proud of?”
“Of course!”
“To look down on everything from above—even a god couldn’t accomplish that. And…….”
Let me search my memory.
I paid the price of ■■■ and recovered an incomplete Master Consciousness, regaining all ‘previous’ memories. But even in that recovery, there remained one fragment that felt incomplete.
And I had a feeling one of them was that girl, Lilium.
“Being complete alone just means you have no equal friends, no lover. Isn’t that lonely?”
The girl’s face, now completely expressionless, glared at me.

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