The Baby Who Regressed Refuses Childcare - Chapter 173

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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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“No. It’s not Annellia Abner.”

Karin answered immediately.

Annellia Abner had been with the Crown Prince all afternoon.

After the demon beasts appeared, she had only been hiding around.

It was none other than Karin herself who had monitored all of this through the magic mirror.

Of course, at some point all the screens in the magic mirror had become calm.

Watching the occasional brainwashed children and demon beasts wandering through the forest, Karin thought.

The Crown Prince and Annellia Abner are stubbornly hiding.

To survive, they must be crawling into places like treetops or rock crevices.

But it was fine.

As long as they were discovered, her plan would surely succeed.

Above all, tonight was planned to be very long.

But the problem was that such a thing never happened.

Rather, while she briefly dozed off from drowsiness, the situation had irreversibly gone wrong.

Karin chewed her lips until they bled and came to a conclusion.

“If there wasn’t enough magic power in the scale to maintain the concealment spell.”

Though it was unsettling, only that assumption could explain this situation.

The scale.

An object that the distant ancestors of House Hunt had received as a token from a contract with a demon.

She was the current owner of the scale that had been passed down through generations of the Hunt family.

The scale contained corrupted magic power, but before Karin, there was no one who knew how to use that magic power.

More precisely, it would be correct to say there was no one who knew how to handle it.

Karin muttered quietly.

“…I’ll need to refill the scale soon.”

The magic power originally contained in the scale had been sufficient for use.

Karin had continuously used the scale over the past few years.

Therefore, by the time she went through this incident, the magic power was nearly depleted.

“I was complacent. I should have prepared more thoroughly.”

In the end, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say things went wrong because the demon beast summoning circle was exposed.

Those who witnessed the summoning circle would have realized that the demon beasts didn’t occur naturally in the forest.

Then they would have also noticed that someone had deliberately summoned demon beasts using black magic.

After that, everything becomes clear.

Among the crazed children, the common factor of weapons would be easy to find.

Karin began chewing not just her lips but the flesh inside her mouth.

“The plan to pin everything on Sharon Abner also failed.”

Above all, after being imprisoned, she couldn’t monitor the forest situation through the magic mirror.

Having used up all her stored magic power, it was also impossible to initiate new spells.

All she could do was obscure the guards’ vision to make contact with Philomena.

Karin glanced at Philomena.

She saw an unusually pale complexion and hollow eyes.

Black magic uses the caster’s life force as payment when magic power is insufficient.

“I’m fine.”

As if reading Karin’s thoughts, Philomena muttered.

“I’m not afraid of death, Your Majesty.”

Karin stared at Philomena silently for a while.

And only after a long time did she answer.

“Yes. You’ve worked hard all this time, Philomena.”

She gently caressed her belly and stood up from her seat.

“I trust you’ll do well until the end.”

Philomena nodded her head.

Karin patted Philomena’s shoulder lightly as if giving a casual farewell.

The next moment, Philomena vanished completely from thin air.

Philomena reappeared somewhere far from the Imperial Palace prison.

Precisely inside Lambert Longton’s tent at the central outpost of the Abner Domain hunting grounds.

“Sister?”

Lambert Longton, who discovered Philomena’s sudden appearance, rose from his chair.

He habitually looked Philomena up and down from head to toe.

A complexion as pale as a dead person.

A pathetically gaunt body.

A pitch-black dress that seemed to make no attempt to hide its gloomy atmosphere.

“What kind of state is that…”

He opened his mouth with a contemptuous voice.

“Lambert, you should have died by Hiana’s hand.”

But he frowned at the cryptic words that followed.

Philomena was staring directly at him with an expressionless face.

It was a look he had never seen before.

“You always thought of Hiana as nothing more than a well-sharpened sword. Just like Father did to me.”

As Philomena began approaching, Lambert’s frown deepened.

“I always wanted to tell you. That the sword could stab you too. That sometimes even a raised dog might bite its master.”

“What nonsense are you spouting now.”

Lambert Longton asked back with a scoffing voice.

“Have you finally gone mad? I’m sure I told you clearly.”

He stared intently at Philomena’s appearance as if incredulous.

“Don’t disgrace the family. Just stay quietly in the manor as if you were dead…”

However, he couldn’t finish his words.

When he brought one hand to his mouth, a dark liquid gushed out.

“Sir! Something terrible has happened!”

Sharon Abner raised her head at the urgent voice of the knight who burst into the tent.

“O-outside…!”

The knight was breathing heavily with a face gone completely white.

Sharon turned her gaze to the magic mirror she had been watching.

Annellia’s group in the magic mirror was in the process of installing something unidentifiable throughout the forest.

They were small spherical objects that looked like the miniature magic projectiles she had thrown at Billy.

“What’s the matter.”

“Well, Du-Duke Longton, no…”

The knight seemed too frightened to continue speaking.

Spencer Viscount, who was watching from the side, said.

“I’ll keep watch over the magic mirror. Please go and see.”

Sharon looked at him once and nodded.

“Has something happened to Duke Longton?”

“You’ll understand when you see! Actually, I don’t know how the situation…”

As she came out with the restless knight, a sharp wind immediately struck her face.

Heavy snowflakes were falling one by one from the sky.

It was when Sharon Abner narrowed her brow, sensing that the search would become difficult.

Through the snowfall, she could see people gathered in front of Longton’s tent.

The moment she was about to take a step in that direction.

“Aaaahhh!”

Someone’s desperate scream echoed throughout the entire outpost.

It was a voice filled with pain and terror.

Sharon quickened her pace as if entranced.

Instinctively, she could tell that something serious was happening over there.

“What the hell are you doing! What the hell are you doing, sister!”

As she stood before the crowd, the murmuring people all made way for her.

“Guhk-! Stop it! I said stop it!”

The scene that was finally revealed was bewildering.

Lambert Longton was kneeling on the ground, his large body curled up like a shrimp.

“Why are you doing this to me-!”

The liquid that gushed from his mouth splattered across the white snow.

Sharon Abner slowly turned her head.

Across from Lambert Longton stood a woman she knew well.

A slender figure.

Jet-black hair contrasting with pale skin.

Philomena in a black dress that exposed her arms and neck, something one might wear to a funeral.

“Cough-! Guhk!”

At that moment, the crouched Lambert swayed.

Even while kneeling, he couldn’t maintain his balance and face-planted on the ground.

Immediately, one of Longton’s knights stepped forward with a pale face.

“Ahhh-!”

But at that moment, something snatched Lambert Longton into the air beyond human reach.

Sharon Abner stood frozen in place, watching black vines grow from the ground.

The screams of shocked people reached her ears in succession.

But Lambert Longton’s agonizing screams were louder than all of them combined.

“Ahh! Ahhh-!!!”

The vines wrapped around Lambert Longton’s limbs like constricting snakes.

The thin robe draped over his body was pulled in both directions and torn.

Seeing that scene, she could automatically tell how much pressure the vines were applying.

“I’m asking why you’re doing this!”

Then Lambert Longton gasped for breath and rolled his eyes back.

“You suddenly appeared! Why, why are you doing this to me!”

With each word, the black liquid that spewed from his mouth mixed with snow and fell.

But Philomena stared blankly at Lambert Longton without blinking an eye.

Around them, people whispered in frightened voices.

“Wh-what’s happening here?”

“I don’t really know either…”

“Jane, don’t look. Shh.”

Some stepped back in fear, and the noble ladies covered the eyes and ears of the children they had brought.

Even among all this, Sharon Abner silently kept her gaze fixed on Philomena.

‘…I definitely saw it.’

Specifically, on the black, thin dress that Philomena wore.

“I did it.”

At that moment, Philomena spoke.

Standing alone upright in the intensifying snow.

The skin exposed beneath her thin dress was red from the cold.

“I summoned the demon beasts to the forest. And I cast spells on the weapons.”

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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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