The Baby Bear of the Black Fox Mansion - Chapter 36

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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 36
He laughed and straightened his spine.
“No, you look just like Father… you’ll drive your own child to ruin with your own hands.”
“…Brother!”
“Valen. Valen. My brother.”
He cupped Valen’s cheeks in both hands.
Their faces were so close their breath mingled.
“I hate you all. Father, you, everything surrounding Noctis. I’m a symbol of ill fortune, am I? I made a pact with demons?”
The man’s laugh came soft and sharp.
“Tell me—if I’m truly such a magnificent creature, will these words become a curse when I die?”
He swept his palm across Valen’s cheek.
Sharp nails extended, raking slowly down Valen Noctis’s cheek.
Black ears pricked sharply upright, and a thick black tail swayed and thrashed.
“…!”
“Valen. Your child will be born a black fox, and you will kill that child with your own hands.”
With those words, he turned away.
Watching the man’s retreating figure, Miel thrashed her paws uselessly through the air.
“…I only—”
Left alone, Valen pressed his palm hard against his cheek.
As blood trickled down, he narrowed his brow.
‘It’s going to hurt…’
Miel scurried toward Valen with rapid, frantic movements of her stubby limbs.
The moment Miel’s small, soft paw touched Valen’s blood-stained cheek—
“…!”
Valen’s head snapped up.
Their eyes met again.
“You… you were that baby bear before…”
“Mew…?”
Miel tilted her head.
She reached out and gently patted Valen’s cheek.
“What is this—a dream? Or have I lost my mind?”
“…”
“No, it doesn’t matter. Baby bear, even you have to think I’m ridiculous.”
She tilted her head again.
“I was afraid.”
Valen raised both hands to his head, gripping it. He staggered, then collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud.
Miel’s eyes rolled as she flailed, then found her footing on the earth.
With a quick bound, Miel flopped down in front of Valen.
“That’s what’s coming. A Monster Wave.”
She tilted her head.
‘Monster Wave…?’
What was that? She had no idea.
Miel blinked her eyes.
“Monsters will keep charging at you endlessly. No one knows when it will end. You could die. I’m not that strong with Magical Power. Not like my brother…”
“…”
“I know, I do. That I’m being cowardly…”
Miel nodded repeatedly.
‘Passing your burden to someone else out of fear isn’t exactly noble.’
As the baby bear kept nodding, Valen let out a hollow laugh.
“So you’re saying yes? Doesn’t someone usually say no in a situation like this?”
When the baby bear tilted her head in confusion, he smiled faintly, then buried his face in his palms and groaned low.
His trembling frame seemed twisted with anguish.
“The truth is, I was afraid, so I pushed it onto him. And hurt him in the process.”
“Mew…”
“I’m a wretched creature.”
“Mew!”
Miel nodded firmly with conviction.
“…Yeah, I know.”
‘If he’d asked me for help, I would have given it.’
Watching Valen with his face buried between his knees, Miel gently patted his legs.
“…I should apologize.”
He nodded.
Valen smiled faintly as he watched Miel.
“But where did you come from, little cub? Are you some kind of Spirit…?”
It was the moment he tilted his head in bewilderment.
“…!”
Miel’s body floated upward, then—Pop!—the world went dark and silent once more.
“Kyuu-uuuh.”
And in the next instant.
Miel’s eyes squeezed shut as he spun through empty air, and when they opened again, the child found himself in a completely new place.
“…Brother.”
A place filled with dark stone monuments standing stiff and upright, and mounds of earth rising gently….
It was a place deeply familiar to Miel, who had lived in the Cottage.
‘…Yokin. The place of long sleep.’
People whose hearts no longer beat—people who could no longer move—went there for their final long rest, he had been told.
They said that once you went inside, you departed for a far and distant place, and could never be seen again.
When Miel turned his head slightly, Valen was weeping.
He stood blank and vacant before one grave among countless others, his shoulders shaking with silent tears.
Creep, creep.
Something dark crawled up Valen’s body and clung to it.
It was like jelly, or like smoke.
“….”
Miel carefully grasped the hem of Valen’s trousers.
The world spun in a slow circle.
This time, Miel’s body did not get sucked away like before.
Miel remained where he was, still clutching Valen’s trouser leg.
Valen stood before a bed.
“Darling… are you back…?”
“Waaah, waaah!”
Miel’s eyes widened in astonishment.
On the bed lay a beautiful woman, and someone beside her was crying.
Releasing Valen’s trouser leg, Miel rose onto tiptoe and stretched his head just above the mattress toward the source of the sound.
‘A baby!’
Miel opened his mouth in wonder.
Something far smaller than himself, something squirming, lay crying on the bed.
‘So cute….’
The little writhing thing was incredibly adorable.
“…can’t be.”
He stumbled backward, then stumbled again.
“…Darling?”
“This is a dream. It’s a dream….”
Valen’s face had gone ashen as he backed away, unsteady on his feet.
“How is this….”
“Valen! The child is born. Is it a boy or a girl?”
The door swung open.
An elderly man with a stern, angular face entered with gleaming, sharp eyes alight with anticipation.
“Oh!”
Miel was shoved aside by the old man who had rushed in.
The elder’s face went hard as stone when he saw the newborn.
“Again…! Again, a black fox…!”
“…!”
Miel’s eyes grew wide.
“Blast it all! I thought this generation would finally break this curse…! And yet again, from my own blood…!”
“…Ah, Father.”
“To give birth to such a thing! This woman must have been tainted by something unholy.”
A sharp gasp.
Such cruel words.
Terribly, terribly cruel words.
“Waaaah!”
The small, squirming infant cried out in anguish.
Watching the child weep pitifully, Miel rose onto his toes and stretched out his hand.
Soft.
The moment he grasped the small, trembling hand, the sobbing child fell silent.
“Take another woman. Find someone more presentable, more suitable. I will acknowledge your choice.”
“……You.”
Valen’s body shook in fine tremors as he opened his mouth.
“Before you died, you laid a curse upon me. You said my child would be born as a black fox…….”
“That damned fool, returning with just one arm, and even then……!”
The sharp-eyed elder’s gaze grew even more pointed as his voice rose.
Then he spun around and thundered out of the room.
“……And.”
Valen’s lips quivered before he lowered his head.
“You said I would kill my own child with these hands…….”
Speaking in the softest of voices, he swallowed hard.
Ooze.
It was the same dark substance as before.
When it coalesced with what had risen moments ago, it took the shape of a very dark lump.
‘……! Just like what was clinging to Grandfather!’
No!
Miel stretched out his hand and struck at the dark thing with his small palm, slapping repeatedly.
But unlike the black smoke that had clung to Zerpeon before, this did not dissipate.
“……Darling, are you all right?”
“…….”
Valen stared blankly at his wife, then slowly turned away.
He said nothing, and did not once hold the child in his arms.
“……!”
Miel tugged insistently at the hem of Valen’s garment as he departed.
But unlike last time, Valen did not see him. He seemed not even to notice that Miel was pulling at his sleeve.
Creak—
Thud.
The door closed.
Leaving Miel behind.
As the door shut, the world darkened again, and Miel blinked slowly.
“Waaaah!”
The child began to cry again, and Miel turned toward him.
“Don’t cry.”
Miel rushed forward and reached toward the child, grasping his hand once more.
Snap.
The child’s weeping ceased.
A silence deeper than silence itself settled over the room.
Flicker, flicker, flicker.
The light in the darkened room suddenly began to pulse.
The white glow flickered.
The light shifted to orange and flickered again.
This time it turned a bright red before flickering once more.
“…….”
Miel, rigid with tension, scrambled up onto the bed.
Carefully, he crawled over to the child’s side, the one whose hand he was still holding tightly.
‘Be brave, brave panda……. Miel.’
The light, now blazing scarlet, flickered one last time.
Poof!
The light extinguished completely.
Whoosh—!
The curtains were torn open and light poured in.
Miel stood in the corridor.
And beside him was a small boy, about his own height, still clutching his hand tightly.

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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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