The Baby Sprout Who Bloomed in the Villain Duke’s Family - Chapter 61

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

Chapter 61
A heartbeat that rang steady and quiet, like sap flowing through a tree.
A forest suddenly fallen silent, and sunlight striking the woman with perfect precision.
Yet the gesture was not unfamiliar, and it stirred the thought that perhaps she had been waiting for this day all along…….
A smile.
“Clover.”
Elisia, bathed in golden radiance, reached out with a gentle laugh.
The butterflies of the forest, hidden and holding their breath, suddenly rose into flight as one.
The forest’s master, the mother Spirit’s voice—all the beings of this forest that drew upon Elisia’s power resonated in that single moment.
The child’s small body trembled.
Whether from the Demon Beast pierced and killed before her eyes, or from the woman who had suddenly appeared—
Or perhaps from an instinctive recognition that this person who had appeared was somehow connected to her…….
The child understood nothing. Her mind was in chaos. Clover called out softly to her.
“M-Mom……?”
Clover had imagined the day she would meet her mother.
Since she was very small, for years and years, the thought had persisted.
In her imagination, Mom was a beautiful goddess who looked just like Clover, then a commoner, then a nursemaid caring for Louis, and sometimes even an old woman who came through pulling a cart to deliver food. Every face that had ever passed by Clover became her mother in those dreams, only to vanish like bubbles the next moment.
It was a cycle of appearing and disappearing.
Yet in those moments of imagining, Clover was happy.
Because whatever form she took, she was Clover’s mother.
No matter whose face she wore, the mother in Clover’s imagination held her warmly.
And Elisia embraced the child exactly as in Clover’s imagination.
Her skin was neither warm nor cold. It felt as if they had never touched at all.
Yet.
“Mom!”
They were certainly touching.
Clover’s and Elisia’s bodies, their skin.
Mother and child.
The mother whispered as she pulled her daughter close.
“My daughter…….”
Elisia, who had carelessly cast aside the Golden Longbow, whispered as she held her small daughter tightly.
“Have you been well?”
“……!”
“You’ve grown so much…….”
Elisia spoke in a voice barely above a murmur. Clover, bewildered, blinked in her embrace.
She didn’t understand what was happening.
A monster had appeared out of nowhere, then Mom showed up with a magnificent bow and defeated it, and now held Clover close.
“!”
But in this moment, understanding the situation was not what mattered.
That Mom had appeared.
That she had held Clover.
That was all that mattered.
Because to the child, Mom was her entire world.
“Mom, did you come to see Clover……?”
Clover asked in a bewildered voice.
A lovely fragrance came from Elisia’s body. Sweeter and more precious than the Ancient Flower blooming in the Garden.
“Because Clover wanted to see Mom……?”
At that question, Elisia smiled softly.
“Yes.”
But her voice was slightly strained, as if she were holding back tears.
“Because Clover wanted to see her Mom…… Mom came.”
She pressed a tender kiss to the child’s smooth, round forehead.
Blink, blink.
The child, who had been looking up at Elisia as if still unable to believe this was real, finally broke into a wide smile.
Dewlike tears gathered at the corners of the child’s eyes.
“Wow…….”
Neither the monster’s existence nor her aunt could trouble Clover in this moment.
All that mattered to Clover was that her mother was holding her.
The moment her mother kissed her forehead, all the questions she had wanted to ask and all the feelings she had been holding melted away like snow.
The mother she had longed to see.
Dear Mother.
The fact that she had found her—that was all that mattered.
Clover wished, in that moment, that it could last forever.
And yet.
‘Mother, your body…….’
What did forever even mean?
How long did two people have to be together before they could truly say they had been together forever……?
For four-year-old Clover, all of it was impossibly difficult to grasp.
Especially now, as her mother’s form wavered and faded like morning mist about to vanish.
“Mother, no.”
Elisia held Clover tight, but her body grew steadily more transparent. The golden radiance that had sustained her dimmed, as if her strength had ebbed away entirely.
It was then.
“Elisia!”
Kalid, Sone, Demian, and Arwin, who had been staring in stunned silence, rushed forward and gathered before her.
Now half-transparent, Elisia looked up at the faces of her beloved family.
A soft, tremulous smile crossed her lips.
“How much you’ve all grown, my darlings.”
“Mother, no, no…….”
Arwin’s voice wavered with tears.
Sone and Demian bit their lips, pressing down the sorrow and joy warring within them.
Elisia gazed at them with a gentle smile, then reached out and caressed each of their cheeks in turn.
“Mother needs a little more time.”
As she lingered, measuring the years that had already passed in the faces of Sone, Demian, and Arwin—how much they had grown—her body continued to scatter, little by little, piece by piece.
“So you’ll wait for me, won’t you?”
Sone, Demian, and Arwin nodded.
Clover, still cradled in her arms, grew anxious as she read the atmosphere, and she gripped her mother’s arm tightly.
But her mother’s dissolving form could not be held, no matter how hard the child tried.
The girl spoke urgently.
“Mother, you’re not going, are you? You’re not leaving, are you?”
“Clover.”
“Mother, you’re not going, are you? Don’t leave Clover behind, okay? Mother……!”
Elisia gazed at the frantic child squirming in her arms with warm eyes, then pressed a kiss to her forehead.
A soft golden light bloomed around them.
“Clover, take care of yourself.”
“No, no, no.”
“……Mother will always be here, so come visit me again, little one.”
Elisia’s Golden Longbow transformed into firelight, like dozens of fireflies taking wing, and scattered upward into the sky.
Elisia’s presence had grown faint. Her semi-transparent form slowly dispersed, returning to the wood from which it had come.
She looked at her youngest daughter, tears now streaming freely from her eyes, with a tenderness that ached—then finally turned her gaze toward Kalid.
“……Kalid.”
Their eyes met.
“Please…… watch over the children.”
Elisia, still gazing at Kalid with that profound affection, transformed entirely into light and scattered like the wind.
The moment she vanished, Clover, who had been nestled in her arms, tumbled down.
Clover fell from her mother’s embrace onto the soft grass below, and stared dumbly at her own two hands.
[……Clover.]
Just moments before, she had been held in her mother’s arms,
she had felt her mother’s warmth.
“……Mother?”
Clover lifted her head to look at the towering tree that had been Elisia.
The Golden Longbow was gone. The beautiful woman who bore Clover’s face was gone.
Only an enormous tree stood as it always had, looking down at Clover with silent witness.
“Sob…….”
Then, at last, tears welled up from Clover’s large eyes like a spring.
Clover held back her sobs and stammered through trembling lips.
“Mother, d-don’t go…….”
Again,
meet again.
With her words spoken, the child’s weeping broke free—yet Elisia did not return.
***
Kalid, who had already sent the weeping Clover ahead in the carriage to soothe her, examined the corpse of the Demon Beast that Elisia had crushed beneath her feet.
The Demon Beast, reverted to its seedling form, had left no trace of existence under Elisia’s power—it had simply dissolved away.
Yet something troubled him.
‘Why in the world was it here?’
This was the place where Elisia’s true form—the Spirit Tree—dwelt.
A low-rank Demon Beast like this should never have been able to approach it.
‘I need to learn more about this.’
His carelessness had nearly cost Clover her life.
Had Elisia not appeared in her Spirit Form at precisely that moment, the child would surely have been gravely wounded.
The thought of it made him want to resurrect and tear apart the Demon Beast a hundred times over, though it was already dead—his anger would not subside.
Kalid crushed the seedling once more beneath his heel, then looked up toward Elisia’s Spirit Tree.
It stood with the most beautiful form in all the world.
He brought his hand to the trunk, clenched it, and then slowly opened his palm.
“Elisia, don’t be alarmed when you wake and find that Demper’s house has vanished.”
A clean wind blew through the Garden.
“I’ll come again.”
Kalid spoke slowly, at a pace Elisia could understand even in her slumber.
“Don’t worry about the children.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“And if you ever find yourself in danger, you must tell me—you must.”
The Spirit Tree, with its dormant Spirit, offered no answer.
“Even if only in dreams.”
Yet as though the tree understood his words, its branches suddenly shook in unison, showering leaves down upon his head.
Kalid stood among the falling leaves, gazing at the Spirit Tree for a long time.
As though if he waited long enough, Elisia might come to him once more.
But Elisia did not appear.
Just as she could not respond to the tears of the small Clover.
***
Sniff.
Sniff, sniff.
It was only after leaving the white forest that the small body trembling in Kalid’s arms finally began to settle.
He had explained to her several times that Elisia had returned to her tree form to gather strength, and the child had certainly understood.
But for a four-year-old, the immediate fact of being separated from her mother was far too sorrowful, and Clover could not easily stop her tears.
Pat.
Kalid patted the child’s small back, then dabbed away her tears with a handkerchief as he asked gently.
“All cried out now?”
“Mm…….”
“Mother will come to see you again. If you wish, I’ll bring you to her as often as you like.”
“Sniff, sniff, y-yes…….”
Clover answered earnestly, sniffling all the while.
It was strange.
‘I decided not to cry, so why do tears keep coming?’
Mother was only going to sleep for a while.
So they would meet again.
Yet no matter how many times she tried to comfort herself with these thoughts, the tears kept flowing.
It seemed the heart did not always obey the mind.
Kalid folded the handkerchief in half and held it to Clover’s nose as he spoke.
“Go on.”
“Shnk.”
Clover blew her nose soundly into the handkerchief, then looked out with her puffy eyes at Sone, Demian, and Arwin.
“The youngest’s whole face is swollen.”
Sone leaned forward and reached out, brushing back Clover’s damp bangs from her forehead.
“That was a close one.”
Sone withdrew her hand from Clover’s hair, murmuring as she did.
“If Mother hadn’t appeared just in time, it would have been disastrous.”
She took her hand away from the child’s head, then turned to Kalid with an uneasy expression and asked.
“What happened, Father?”

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