The Baby Sprout Who Bloomed in the Villain Duke’s Family - Chapter 121

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

Chapter 121
Kalid wiped his hands with a handkerchief and returned to the carriage.
The noise had been louder than expected, and he found himself scratching his brow, worried the children might have woken.
‘I’ll have to remember to bring ear plugs next time.’
It was a trivial matter hardly worth dwelling on, yet the thought that he’d disturbed the children’s sleep left him uneasy.
“Clover, I’m ba—”
Kalid’s face turned to stone as he opened the carriage door, calling out her name.
……
The children were gone.
The children who should have been sleeping under the wool blanket had vanished, and in their place, the maids who had entered to watch over them lay unconscious on the carriage floor.
What in the world was happening?
He searched carefully in case they’d hidden somewhere, but he felt no trace of the children’s power.
The meaning was unmistakable. Clover and Pluto had been taken.
At that moment, the knight commander, who had been collecting the Beast’s corpse, rushed toward Kalid.
“Your Excellency, these creatures—they all have Madness Herb clenched in their mouths!”
Madness Herb was a poisonous plant that drove anyone and everyone mad, regardless of age or sex, human or beast. The Beasts were no exception.
In Rosipheron, there was not a soul who didn’t know what it was. The knight commander waved a scrap of the herb excitedly as he spoke.
“In my judgment, someone deliberately provoked these creatures…… eh?”
The knight commander’s words died in his throat as he realized the children weren’t in the carriage.
A whirlwind erupted around Kalid’s fury once more. The knights braced themselves against the power, digging in their heels to keep from being swept away.
“Someone has kidnapped the children.”
Kalid’s voice was steady as he picked up the wool blanket and held it, his fingers working against its fabric. The blanket still radiated warmth.
Besides, it had taken him only about ten minutes to defeat the Beast.
The kidnapping had occurred after he left and the maids entered—meaning Clover and Pluto had been taken within roughly seven minutes.
“They couldn’t have gone far.”
Kalid’s eyes blazed with blue light—the color of the North Wind’s lion.
“Find them immediately.”
His voice cut through the air like a sharpened blade. The knights snapped to attention at once.
“Yes, understood!”
“Find the young lady and the prince!”
“Someone has taken them! They couldn’t have gone far! Search the surrounding area!”
The Claudian knights scattered in all directions, beginning their search for the intruders.
Kalid’s Whirlwind swept outward as well, seeking the children—a gust that raced across the ground in an instant. A single strand of wind touching them would reveal where they were hiding.
Truth be told, had Kalid not been engaged in combat, no one would have dared entertain the thought of kidnapping the children.
But Kalid had expended his power to defeat thirty Beasts.
In doing so, the whirlwind had drawn all the surrounding winds toward him, leaving what happened inside the carriage beyond his perception.
Ironically, the moment when all Authority Bearers are most vulnerable is precisely when they engage in battle using their power.
Someone had exploited that moment.
He searched for the children using his power while observing the maids’ condition.
Their eyes were glazed over—neither asleep nor awake. In that instant, Clover’s words from the night before surfaced in Kalid’s mind.
“We were playing a hiding game, and one of the maids said she’d show me a place where I could hide.”
“It seems someone took only that one memory from Clover.”
Kalid was certain.
It was Brainwashing, or a Memory Manipulation Ability.
A power that the Ancient Emperor had eradicated completely from this land.
Someone possessed it. And without doubt, they had used it to kidnap the children.
“Tenilron.”
At Kalid’s call, Tenilron, who had been standing outside the carriage, poked his head in.
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“There was a harbor nearby, wasn’t there.”
They were located close to Aibe, a duchy situated along the coastline.
So naturally, there was sea nearby. And harbors where ships could be launched.
And ordinarily, kidnappers head for the harbor once they’ve taken a child—for a simple reason: they must flee the country before the parents can find them.
“There are two close by.”
Kalid spoke without hesitation.
“Seal them both.”
“What should we tell the local lord?”
“There’s no need to explain.”
Kalid set the wool blanket down on the carriage seat where the children had been sitting just moments before.
“I take full responsibility. Seal them.”
“Go, Tenilron.”
Tenilron bolted from the room, while Kalid remained rooted in place, slowly moving his Authority through the air.
He could feel the entire atmosphere of the region shifting gradually according to his will. Kalid subtly traced his Authority along the children’s path.
This was another nobleman’s territory. That nobleman, too, was an Authority Bearer.
To sweep through an entire region with Authority without permission on another Bearer’s land was a grave offense. Yet Kalid did not hesitate.
If anyone was at fault, it was the lord’s failure to manage the Beasts in time. He was prepared to answer for any complications that arose from it.
But all of that could wait. First, he had to find the rat who had taken the children, and ensure their safety.
It was only afterward that Kalid discovered the truth: the village they could not cross because of the “funeral” had suffered no deaths at all.
Everyone simply believed the village elder was dead and had conducted his burial accordingly.
The entire village had been brainwashed.
By an unknown stranger.
***
“We have only thirty minutes before that creature’s eyes can be deceived.”
“We must set sail within thirty minutes.”
A woman with her coarse hair bound high galloped onward, cradling the vacant-eyed children in her arms.
Around her neck hung a gleaming bead—a sacred object of the Trina Church, an artifact designed to cloud the vision of Authority Bearers.
It mimicked the effect of the necklace hanging at Clover’s throat, yet was forged for the opposite purpose entirely.
This sacred object, created to deceive Authority Bearers, granted the wearer temporary freedom from the force of Authority while worn.
This was also why Kalid could not locate the woman at once. She drove her horse harder, racing against the fading power of the sacred object. The beast’s hooves struck the earth with renewed fury.
A small harbor appeared in the distance. Smoke, kindled by another believer for her arrival, rose acrid and heavy into the sky.
Denoraon’s command to her had been elegantly simple: use her Authority to kidnap Clover, and refrain from unnecessary actions in the process.
Pluto had not been mentioned in that order. Yet the woman had defied Denoraon and taken him as well.
Her reason was clear.
‘I cannot forgive him.’
Merely for possessing an Authority that commanded hearts—because her bloodline, all her ancestors, had been slaughtered by the hands of the Ancient Emperor.
When the Current Emperor’s Grandfather seized power, he had systematized the death of any child who manifested Authority related to mind and memory, viewing their gifts as a threat to national strength. Of course, the official rationale had been polished and righteous.
But whispered rumors suggested a different truth: the emperor, fearing exposure of his adultery with her younger sister—committed without the empress’s knowledge—had ordered the execution of every Authority Bearer wielding powers tied to memory or the heart.
Whatever the reason, no justification could absolve the slaughter of the innocent.
That she had survived at all was an act of providence. The Trina Church had sheltered her parents and hidden her Authority, preserving her life by the narrowest margin.
And so her body and spirit rightfully belonged to the Church. Or so it should have been.
Yet she owed a debt to vengeance as well.
And so she had brainwashed the village according to plan, sealing off the road, and provoked the Beasts to create an opening.
She had successfully kidnapped the children.
Pluto Rosipheron was blood of the current emperor—the First Prince, doted upon and cherished beyond measure, whom she had sadly been unable to bring. But to have seized the blood of the massacrer in her hands was no small victory.
The massacrer.
And his blood.
Every time she looked upon Pluto, her blood burned with rage. But the time was not yet. Whatever she meant to do, it had to wait until after she had escaped completely.
She drove the horse at maximum speed, reached the harbor, and tore the children from the saddle.
***
[……Clover, Clover!]
Lucky called out to Clover in a withered voice, over and over. The golden four-leaf clover clung to Clover’s cheek.
[Clover, wake up!]
Lucky’s cry was desperate.
And then.
A glimmer.
Life returned to Clover’s eyes.

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