The Baby Raising A Devil - Chapter 185
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 185
I hid beneath the orphanage wall and watched as the young me was discovered by the Caregiver.
The Orphanage Workers who lifted the blanket hurriedly picked up the young me and shouted.
“Director, it’s a newborn!”
“Good heavens, why is the baby in this condition. Ashital, go quickly and bring some hot water.”
“Yes, yes…!”
Two middle-aged women holding the young me and a young Man hurriedly ran into the Building.
I watched their retreating figures endlessly until they disappeared, then turned my head.
Adrian was looking at me with sunken eyes.
“…”
He said nothing. It was a silence that felt more bitter than any words of comfort.
I couldn’t bring myself to say I was okay, so I forced a smile and shouted.
“Let’s go back now. Ah, but how do we get back?”
Since coming here wasn’t by our own will, we couldn’t return as we pleased.
I groaned and pondered while holding my chin.
“The gem the Cardinal had was the medium that brought us back to the Past, so we need to find it. Ah, but right now I’m just a child with no connections, so where could I find it…”
“I know.”
“Huh?”
“I know the way to get back.”
Adrian who said that took something out from his chest.
It was a small Jade-colored Gem and a Letter.
“How did you…”
“Your Mother gave it to me.”
“What?”
“That Person knew everything.”
I froze as if rooted to the ground and stared at Adrian.
Suddenly I remembered when Mother was sending me away, she had whispered something to Adrian.
He handed me the gem and Letter. When I opened the Letter with trembling hands, it was densely written. It was the handwriting from the Note I had once seen in my aunt’s Room.
[By the time you read this, we will have parted.
Little One. My beloved Baby. Even if we have parted, don’t be too sad. I have no regrets in life, so I am a very lucky person.
What should I tell you first. I suppose I should start with how the Temple determined my life’s purpose from childhood.
When I was young, I was quite an unhappy Child. I was sold by my Parents for 40 Franc and lived in the Prison called the Temple. The only joy I had then was the cheerful, lovable Child I saw in my dreams.
The Child with sweet curly hair was always energetic, kind, and mischievous. Anyone who shared their heart couldn’t help but love that Child. A certain Old Man I knew well called that Child Young Lady.]
It was me. This was my story.
‘The old man is the chairman.’
[I have loved that child who never stops in the face of any hardship since she was very young. So you can imagine how happy I was when I realized that child was my daughter.]
I had decided not to cry anymore, but my eyes kept welling up with tears that dripped onto the precious letter.
[Thanks to the child in my dreams, I was able to find courage, leave the temple, and finally find my own life.
And when I left the temple, I was holding a six-pointed star pendant just like the one around the child’s neck.]
What?
If it’s the six-pointed star pendant kept at the temple…
‘Etoile.’
[It had six friends. The kind one who sent you to this place, and the lovely deer who will be with you someday.]
Pur…
[The friends helped me so much. Thanks to them, I gained a family, found a lover I wanted to spend my life with, and was able to give birth to precious you and your brothers.
But I knew. The reason the friends helped me was because their true master was helping me for some reason.
And only today did I learn who their true master was.
Little one, you saved my life from beginning to end.]
The letter continued to the next page. However, the writing ended after the ‘most important words.’
[…So please. Protect them in my place.
Little one, when will you come to my side? I want to know your name─]
The handwriting in the letter was messier and smudged compared to the note I had seen before, so it seemed Mother had written this while avoiding the temple’s attacks.
What must Mother have felt while writing this letter, knowing she was running toward the end of her anxious life?
‘Mother was wrong.’
I didn’t save Mother; Mother saved me.
I hugged the letter and cried quietly for a while.
“Leblaine…”
“I, I couldn’t do anything in the end.”
Adrian gently embraced me as I twisted my face in anguish.
“That’s not true. Something definitely changed.”
“But…”
“Trust my words, Leblaine.”
Adrian looked at me intently.
I stared blankly at his eyes that shone with strength, then bit my lips hard and rubbed my eyes with my palms.
“This, this is the last time… the last time I’ll cry… When, when we go back, I won’t cry anymore, so…”
“Yes.”
I sniffled and gripped the gem tightly.
“Let’s go back.”
“That gem was a mineral that used to be a demon passage. I think it might be the demon that sent us to this time.”
Quick-witted Adrian seemed to have finished piecing together the situation from what he witnessed and what he heard from Mother.
“If we have the demon passage that created the error in time, we should be able to return. To our original time.”
“Yeah.”
“My guess is we’ll go back to that time when we first came to this place. We might encounter the Cardinal, so we need to be careful.”
Just as I was nodding, Adrian pressed his forehead against mine like he had done when I was young.
My body grew warm, and I could feel the Divine Power that had been crawling along the ground rising up.
“…Adrian?”
I suddenly felt anxious.
Why was he warning me to be careful of the Cardinal and transferring his Divine Power to me?
As if he was going to send me alone.
That’s when it happened.
CRASH─!!
The ground shook violently, and small black spheres rushed toward me from all around.
The surroundings became chaotic.
“An earthquake? Is it an earthquake?!”
“Kyaah─!”
I quickly reached out toward Adrian.
“Hurry and grab on!”
But Adrian stepped back several paces from me.
“I still have something I need to do.”
The sphere wrapped around me like a blanket and light began to spread from within it. My body was gradually floating.
Adrian smiled gently.
“Be careful going back.”
“Adrian─!!”
Everything went black before my eyes.
And when I opened my eyes…
* * *
I frantically looked around.
Inside the Cardinal’s room.
The gift box that had contained the gems was open, and in my hands were the gem Adrian had given me and the gem I had taken from the box before departing to the past.
Adrian wasn’t there.
‘This fool…!’
What business did he have to take care of there!
I quickly infused Divine Power into the gem.
‘Send me back to the past again, please!’
I need to bring Adrian back. Both the Devil’s Passages from the past and the future are in my hands. If this continues, Adrian might not be able to return.
But then.
“The Emperor should… make her an Imperial Consort… Is there still no news from the Empress Dowager?”
I heard people’s voices from afar.
‘The Cardinal has returned.’
Once they discover the Cardinal’s gems are missing, the shrine will try to search for the culprit. If they find out I wasn’t at my lodging during that time, we might have to wage an all-out war against the shrine.
‘Not yet. War should come after we’ve finished our preparations.’
Most importantly, both gems had become cloudy. Like the passages after sending the demons back.
‘That means they’re no longer Devil’s Passages.’
Since such gems were useless to me, I hastily put the gems back in the gift box and escaped through the secret passage.
Having hurriedly returned to my lodging, I gasped for breath, panting heavily.
“Young Lady?”
“…Cecilia.”
“My goodness, Young Lady. Why are you sweating so much…!”
I quickly grabbed her hand.
“Adrian. Have you heard any news about Adrian?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Did Adrian perhaps become an adult?!”
If he couldn’t return from the past, he would have to live through that time as it was, so he should be an adult by now.
“What are you talking about…? That’s not it. His Majesty issued an order this morning for him to go to the border.”
“The border?”
“Yes. He probably departed by now, right? From what I heard, it seems like they’re trying to attach the border forces to the Second Prince in order to gradually pit him against the First Prince…”
Adrian must have come to see me today to tell me about this.
‘Then I’ve bought time until he reaches the border. Before then, I need to find a way to bring Adrian back…’
While I was thinking that, something caught my eye.
There was a book on the table that hadn’t been there when I left my lodging.
“…What’s that?”
“It was there when I came back from stepping out briefly. Isn’t it yours, Young Lady?”
I hastily opened the book.
‘It’s not mine.’
Because this book was a journal.
My journal that was in the Empress Dowager’s Library, to be precise.
Adrian.
Adrian is the only one who knows I entered the Empress Dowager’s Library.
His Amande can detect residual mana, so since the journal was covered with my mana, he must have known I was reading it.
What was strange was that the journal’s contents were different from what I had seen in the Empress Dowager’s Library.
[Even after a month has passed, the child neither cries nor laughs. It was decided in the meeting to give up on the child. It’s a regrettable matter.]
There was no content about kidnapping at all.
‘What on earth is happening….’
But that’s when it happened.
The writing in the journal began to fade away as new text started to appear.
[The child disappeared and then returned. The child who came back cries and laughs normally.]
[Violets were placed by the child’s bedside.]
[I heard stories that around two in the afternoon, someone’s shadow would linger outside the window. I secretly hid and waited to catch the culprit, but what appeared was an incredibly beautiful blonde boy. Far from causing any harm, the boy gently stroked the child’s head, smiled very tenderly, and then left.]
The one who had kidnapped me and then returned me was Adrian.
Did he stay away to protect me?
As I absentmindedly put down the book, I discovered there was an erased mark on the birthday written on the back cover.
Very, very faintly I could see ‘January 7th’ written there, with ‘February 29th’ written over it.
In that moment, I realized what Adrian’s ‘remaining task’ was.
“This idiot, fool. That sea anemone-like…!”
“Young Lady?”
The day I left my younger self behind was January 7th. Since he wouldn’t believe February 29th was my birthday, he secretly changed it when the documents were delivered.
‘An orphaned child’s birthday is usually set as the day they were registered in the orphanage documents.’
He didn’t need to stay behind and protect me on purpose.
I bit my lips tightly and said to Cecilia.
“I need to go home.”
“Pardon?”
“I have something to say to my family.”
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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