Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 83

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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 83

The Magic Beasts had broken through from below the stage itself, making escape through the Underground impossible. The passage we’d been guided down was already clogged with panicking people, a scene of absolute chaos. There was no way out that direction.
So Devy’s suggestion wasn’t entirely wrong, but… I spoke carefully, thinking it through.
“This is underground. You’re saying we should blow up the ceiling entirely?”
Lisianthus gritted his teeth as he answered.
“…I can do it. You know what I’m capable of, don’t you? If I burn everything down, we’ll find a way through.”
“No. It’s too dangerous.”
“In a situation like this, you’re saying that?”
Lisianthus flared up in anger.
“Just because you managed to deal with the Magic Beasts at the Imperial Palace relatively easily, you think this is simple? And if your suspicions are right, someone deliberately sent these beasts to this place—!”
“Yeah. I thought the odds could go either way.”
I forced myself to think as calmly as I could.
A mousetrap.
Or bait.
I hadn’t pinpointed the true identity of the “enemy,” but every item I’d consigned to the Auction House was designed to catch their interest.
As for the Holy Relic, even if Cronen ends up bidding on it, I wondered how they’d get their hands on the sword.
They could have a plausible nobleman bid in their stead, snatch it from whoever wins, or else…
‘…raid the Auction House itself, just like when they attacked Flux.’
On the gentler end of things… since you can bid on anything at an Auction House if you have the money, I’d thought there was a decent chance they’d play it more carefully. They certainly didn’t look like they were short on funds.
Or possibly they’d slip it away during the handover to the winning bidder…
In any case, if they wanted the items completely in hand, I figured they’d know to be cautious.
But the fact that they’ve come at us like this…
‘Either they don’t mind if the items get destroyed in this chaos, or they think these things won’t break so easily, or they’d rather see them gone than fall into someone else’s hands…’
Any of those options was the worst possible scenario.
I’d wondered if they might suspect the Princess’s missing sword appearing at a black-market Auction House as some kind of trap of our own making.
But I’d thought they’d be cautious enough, knowing the Imperial Family was involved!
I’d wanted to investigate the nobility who’d bid today, and more than that, to learn which nobles the “enemy” had made contact with, how much control they wielded in this city. That sort of intelligence.
Instead, they attacked without care for whether we lived or died, without hesitation.
Screech! Lisianthus slashed at a charging Magic Beast as he spoke urgently.
“Damn it, the beasts keep pouring out! If there are more, we’re in real danger!”
“This way!”
—Contractor!!!—
The Emoticon Sword’s voice suddenly rang out in my mind in urgent tones.
—Right now, right now, there, that’s—!
“Your Highness!”
“Titania!”
Lisianthus’s shout sounded oddly distant. So did Devy’s panicked voice. Flux’s frozen one too.
Time seemed to slow. My body flew through the air. My blade instinctively tumbled away into emptiness.
I coughed, fell to the ground, and barely opened my eyes. As my vision cleared in fragments, I saw the figure standing over me.
It was a girl in a maid’s uniform.
Skin as pale and waxy as a wax figure, an expressionless face. Hair cut neatly down to the nape of her neck, and eyes that gleamed the same vivid violet as Primrose’s.
She had delicate, pretty features like a doll a noble girl might play with, a frame so small she could barely be my age, and yet in those slender hands she gripped a long, blood-stained spear.
Ah, so that girl had just attacked me.
The world spun in my head.
I saw Lisianthus charge at her. Even as his hands struck with all his rage laid bare, the girl deflected the attack with ease. Rather than a person, she was like a weapon.
Devy tried to run toward me but stumbled as a tide of Magic Beasts swept toward her. Flux was in the same bind.
“Damn it! These things suddenly—!”
“Flee, Your Highness!”
“No.”
The girl’s lips trembled. The movement of her mouth alone in that doll-like face looked grotesque.
“I’ll take you. Master’s orders. Primrose must obey.”
“Don’t talk insane!”
Lisianthus summoned flame without regard for concealment. The Magic Beasts burned in the inferno. But their numbers were endless. And the girl was far too strong. Lisianthus could barely hold his own against her, his face strained with disbelief.
The pack of Magic Beasts, which moments ago had been chasing fleeing people, now had a clear target: us. Specifically, me. Devy and Flux couldn’t break through the beast tide to reach me.
I reached out toward the Emoticon Sword, staggering.
Surely, last time… even without holding it directly, there was that instance when the sword appeared. Was that only possible because I was wearing Gloriana’s Banner?
I’d been careless. With Lisianthus and Devy at my side, and myself able to incinerate ordinary Magic Beasts with the Emoticon Sword, I’d thought there was little danger. Beast Energy isn’t a serious problem for me, and even if someone gets infected with it, I can heal them.
I was so foolish…
When I hit the ground earlier, I’d struck my head too—maybe that was why my thoughts wouldn’t come clearly.
If I’m captured like this?
Do I become a hostage? An experiment subject? What could they possibly want?
As I forced my body to move toward the sword, a spider-like Magic Beast approached and aimed its hooked leg at me.
Crack.
My body convulsed from the beast’s strike.
“…!”
It hurts.
Pain woke my fogged mind.
No.
I can’t become a burden like this…
Flux can barely use a sword properly. I dragged him here by force. What if he dies?
And Devy?
Ah, right, Devy was part of our deal, so… she should be fine.
Lisianthus… if he goes berserk and burns this whole area to the ground, that would be terrible.
Bibi would be sad.
My mind was foggy.
Am I dying?
Like this?
In the end, this way?
“Titania!”
For a moment, I thought it was a lie. Those golden eyes, appearing so startled they might burst with fear. Even that faint tremor at the edge of his jaw.
In other words, it was too strange. Whenever I think ‘This is it, I’m dying,’ without fail, I see you reaching for me.
As though you were a savior come to pull me from death itself…
My eyes closed again.

* * *

[The Contractor “Titania” has been deleted from the state of death.]
[The Contractor “Titania” has been deleted from the state of death.]
[The Contractor “Titania” has been deleted from the state of death.]

[The Contractor “Titania” cannot die.]
[The Contractor “Titania” must not die.]

* * *

A sword manifested in an instant, slicing through the air.
There was fury in every motion.
Raymond’s eyes weren’t a person’s gaze but rather like lightning itself. Those golden eyes rimmed as if with metal gleamed so savagely that they looked ready to devour and shred everything before them.
The sinews of his sword-holding hand stood sharp and clear. As the man who’d burst through a collapsing wall approached step by step, his black blade carved a storm through empty space. The Magic Beasts caught in that storm perished.
The girl whom Lisianthus had struggled against so painfully, Raymond engaged without difficulty. The sword and spear clashed with a piercing ring.
Ring, clang, bang! The spear blade gave way under his strength, and the girl was forced back. The blade looked ready to strike at her throat in the next instant, but instead Raymond stopped short and simply rushed forward—toward where Titania lay crumpled.
“Titania!”
Sorrow poured through his voice. Without hesitation, Raymond ran and cradled the collapsed figure in his arms. Golden hair spilled from beneath the wig he’d taken care to secure, and the carefully applied makeup had smeared into something almost ridiculous. She’d been thoroughly disguised as someone else. However damaged and pitiful she looked, her true identity wouldn’t be easily recognized. Yet Raymond had pursued her almost by instinct.
Reason whispered to him: this opponent was too much even for Lisianthus. He hadn’t decisively subdued them. The right choice was to entrust Titania to someone else and return to face the enemy himself.
Instinct asked him: so you’d hand over the person in your arms to someone else?
Could you do that?
No. He couldn’t.
Raymond gritted his teeth. Titania’s body was light in his arms. A strange familiarity gripped him. He remembered that time at the Imperial Palace, when he’d desperately protected Bibi and lost consciousness, and when Titania had collapsed.
Why?
Why was it
that only this girl had to keep getting hurt?
It was illogical.
An urgency he couldn’t name filled his mind.

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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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