The Baby Bear of the Black Fox Mansion - Chapter 12

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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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Episode 12
[Ah, in any case, it’ll be robust. I raised it well on good medicinal herbs alone. It won’t just keel over anywhere. This body’s! Descendant, after all.]
[True enough, a thousand-year-old tree with a spirit dwelling in it—I did feed the child all sorts of things whenever it complained of hunger after reaching Attainment of Enlightenment, including the Immortal Herb….]
[I did struggle to chase away the spirit when it tried to uproot me.]
[Will it come back?]
[It will. It said it would return. Bears keep their promises.]
The Garden Caretaker spoke with gravity.
[They don’t, though. Our young miss falls for the cousin’s honey cake trick every time. Haven’t you seen that?]
[…….]
[It feels like only yesterday she was mocked by her cousin and wailing on a dust-covered bed, crying that she had no maid or steward.]
That was why.
He had shown himself to the child in this shabby form deliberately.
Even in a wretched state, far more pitiful than any servant he’d ever known, the child had burst into radiant smiles.
[The name of a hero who saved the world—it’s all dead now. Unable to chase after a single child. Isn’t that so, founder of the first generation?]
[Quiet, you brat. The Bear Clan may be simple, dull-witted, and foolishly strong, but our vitality and persistence are unmatched in all the world. It’ll all work out fine.]
[Oh…. Your self-awareness is better developed than I’d have expected.]
The Maid, crouching with both hands cupping her chin, spoke.
[……Would you like to die?]
[Already dead, so what.]
At the Maid’s indifferent tone, the Garden Caretaker exhaled a long breath.
[It really would have been nice if you’d mentioned beforehand that the young miss is actually a rather special child.]
[What good would it do? I’d either be written off as mad for saying strange things, or if by some miracle I was believed, I’d just get used. One or the other.]
The Garden Caretaker answered bluntly, removing his straw hat and tilting his head back.
The sky was blue, transparent, and very clear, though it rippled with the faintest hint of a crack running through it.
Seeing this, the Garden Caretaker narrowed his brow.
[Not many years left.]
[Indeed.]
As the Garden Caretaker lowered the tilted head, his bangs parted slightly to reveal his forehead. There, embedded in his brow, was a rough stone identical to Miel’s.
* * *
“Little bear, what are you planning to do with that?”
After finishing his meal, the child patted his belly contentedly while trotting down the corridor, clutching a flower and a Bear Core in each hand.
Jerpeon followed slowly behind, asking his question.
Work was piling up, there was much to be done, and he still needed to find out what had happened to his wife and son….
‘Why am I here doing this?’
Yet there was something undeniably entertaining about watching the child dart about with such spirited determination.
A flower and a Bear Core he’d never seen before.
It was puzzling how the child had extracted the Core in the first place.
‘Does removing it cause no harm to its life?’
Jerpeon furrowed his brow.
“Story!”
“Story?”
“Bad person’s story! Wanna go see!”
He couldn’t make sense of it at all.
Even when he’d raised Lisaar, he’d never felt so utterly lost in conversation.
Before long, the two of them passed through a corridor frozen solid with piercing cold and arrived at a door.
The chill was so severe that Jerpeon gasped sharply, his entire body seized by numbing frost.
“Miel, can we go in here too?”
“…You mean here?”
“Yep.”
He fell silent for a moment.
The door was locked and visitors refused entirely, which was why Jerpeon had never laid eyes on the two of them until now.
Yet for some reason, looking into the child’s eyes, he found himself unable to refuse.
“But let’s make a promise—if either of them seems unwell, we leave right away.”
“Okay!”
Miel nodded eagerly.
Jerpeon raised his hand to knock on the door, then hesitated.
“It’s actually my father who’s cursed, not me.”
At the chilling voice that suddenly surfaced in his mind, he drew a sharp breath.
He knew it. There must have been something wrong.
‘But if that’s what was truly on her mind all along…….’
Squeeze.
His finger was caught.
Roused from his pointless musings by the small but firm warmth, he slowly lowered his gaze.
The child was gazing up at him intently.
When their eyes met, Miel broke into a bright smile.
“It’s okay.”
“……Yeah.”
A five-year-old offering reassurance—words spoken carelessly, surely—yet he found himself inexplicably comforted by them, and that bewildered him.
Even as he thought this, Jerpeon knocked without hesitation this time, unlike before.
“Serniel, may I come in for a moment?”
“…….”
“Serniel?”
“……What did you bring here? Jerpeon.”
A voice came from inside the room.
“A young Bear Clan child I happened to rescue from mud the other day. I’ve brought her along.”
Jerpeon turned the handle.
As he stepped inside, he found the room frozen solid—everything utterly encased in ice. It was worse than yesterday.
He knew his wife’s specialty magic, as an Arctic fox, was ice—but this exceeded his expectations.
Jerpeon’s gaze swept urgently to the bed.
Lisaar, pale as death, lay motionless on the frozen bed as if asleep, his shallow breaths visible as his body trembled.
“Lisaar!”
Jerpeon lunged toward him in alarm.
Or rather, he tried to.
Crash-crash-crash!
“Wicked spirit—take this!”
Attack!
Or he would have, if Miel hadn’t scurried ahead of him and hurled herself at Serniel instead.
Thud.
Clinging to Serniel’s leg, Miel screwed her eyes shut tight.
“What is this awful smell?”
“Oof!”
Serniel’s delicate brow furrowed in disgust, and with a sharp kick of her leg, Miel tumbled backward, rolling across the floor.
Serniel gazed down at the small bear child sprawled across the ground, her brow creasing in confusion.
‘Beyond that door, I sensed something strange…….’
A presence vast and untouchable, something one must not even brush against.
‘Was it a mistake?’
She tilted her head, looking down at the insignificant baby bear.
Jerpeon’s eyes widened in alarm, and he quickly crouched beside the child.
“Are you all right?”
“Mmgh……”
Miel’s gaze flicked between the Silver Spirit Herb and the Bear Core she held in her hands.
“Why won’t it work……?”
It had worked before, surely.
[Look, I’m telling you, you can’t do this! Get out of here now! Abandon this hopeless place and come with me to the mountains…….]
The Dragonian’s voice rang out.
Serniel’s eyes snapped toward the boy.
[What are you staring at?]
The boy’s brow knitted in anger as he glowered savagely at Serniel.
Regardless, Miel, still sprawled on the floor, crossed her short arms and pressed her lips together with all her might.
Her lips formed a tiny triangle.
“Little one. That’s a cat possessed by an Evil Spirit.”
“Huh……?”
Now that she mentioned it, the Garden Caretaker had said something like that once, long ago.
“Berness can deploy the mightiest Barrier because we are those who perceive the source. We see it, interpret it, discern its weakness—and so we can weave a Barrier stronger than anyone else’s.”
“……?”
Of course, most of what the Garden Caretaker said was too difficult; she remembered very little of it.
‘But I have to remember……!’
I have to save Honey Cake and Mama Honey Cake!
‘Remember! O greatest and mighty panda, Miel……!’
Huuuunh!
“Evil Spirits attain enlightenment once they find and resolve the reason they became Evil Spirits, but Curses are different. Those come from That World.”
“That World……?”
“Things that someone summoned to this world for some reason. Living beings, each with their own story—bundles of narrative.”
“……???”
“Well, it might be too much for you yet, little bear. Anyway, that’s how it is. Humans desperate to kill someone, or save someone, or grant a wish—they reach for a Forbidden Text that doesn’t belong to this world, and they summon these things.”
“……*yawn*.”
Miel, come to think of it, had stopped paying attention because the Garden Caretaker’s explanation was boring.
Since she was always distracted like that, she couldn’t actually remember much of it. Miel puffed out her lower lip.
‘But he always uses such difficult words.’
He just sets the mood.
“If it’s hard to remember, at least remember this one thing: burn the Silver Spirit Herb. Feed her the Bear Core. Then go in and find the cause. That’s all there is to it. Eventually you won’t need the Silver Spirit Herb or the Core, but since you’re still a little bear, you do.”
“……okay.”
“You’re not listening again, are you.”
“No, I am… um, the Core that Ennie burned, the little bear…….”
The Garden Caretaker’s eyes, watching Miel ramble on incoherently, somehow looked like the sleepy eyes of a teddy bear.
“You can do it, right? I’ll help, so try it with that cat first.”
“……okay… do I really have to?”
“No. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. But if you do, you can save it.”
“……!”
“The choice is always yours.”
That day, Miel saved the cat.
The cat didn’t live long, but Miel never forgot the memory of ranging through the Back Mountain with the rescued cat.
Miel, who had been lost in thought, suddenly opened her eyes wide.
“Fire!”

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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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