The Baby Who Regressed Refuses Childcare - Chapter 216

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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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Dark, gloomy sky.

Lightning struck down accompanied by thunder like roaring.

Below it, Karin’s urgent cry echoed.

“Faster! Drive the horses faster!”

“Y-Your Majesty the Empress. The road is bumpy because of the rain right now! If we go any faster here… Gasp!”

The next moment, the coachman’s body fell beneath the horse.

Karin’s hand trembled violently after throwing the dagger.

She staggered and got off the roofless carriage.

And after looking at the blood spreading over the muddy water, she climbed onto the horse herself.

“Lowly thing. You couldn’t follow orders, couldn’t do as told, so that’s what you get.”

With lips blue from the cold, Karin fiercely swung the whip.

As the horse began to run, her body swayed greatly.

The carriage broke apart on the bumpy stone road, but the more it did, the tighter she gripped the reins.

In the distance, Hunt Estate could be seen.

[The ritual altar has responded.]

What Etian sent was just one sentence.

A very brief message.

However, Karin had no choice but to depart immediately.

At dawn, a grand council would be held to discuss Adrian’s qualifications.

Her only son might be deposed because of that insect-like Dowager Empress and her subordinates.

But she still had to come.

Coming here was the only way to overturn this situation.

“Y-Your Majesty the Empress!”

As soon as she got off the horse, her whole body swayed.

A maid with a shocked face approached holding a lantern, but Karin waved her hand away.

“Get lost. Don’t touch my body!”

Karin staggered and walked toward the door.

With the eerie sound of hinges scraping, a familiar smell wafted over.

Sweet floral fragrance.

Walls decorated as lavishly as those in the Imperial Palace, and portraits of the Hunt Lineage hanging on the front wall.

But when she lowered her gaze, something completely opposite caught her eye.

A floor made of rough, crude stone slabs.

The floor of Hunt Estate was as shabby as abandoned roads in the back alleys of the capital.

And it was all stained dark red with bloodstains that hadn’t been erased.

“Ahhh-! Save me!”

“Karin! Karin-! Why are you doing this to us!”

Suddenly, memories from when she was twelve flashed through her mind.

Her parents were also executed here.

Their heads were cut off here, under the gaze of the Hunt Lineage portraits.

Originally, Karin should have been there too.

Among them, she should have been executed together as a traitor’s daughter.

If she hadn’t informed on her own parents to Etian the night before.

“Haa, haa…”

Karin went to her room at the end of the first floor.

The more she walked, the more her body trembled.

It must be because she got too soaked in the cold rain.

But her aching body, her mind that seemed about to collapse.

If only she could reach That Person, if only she could activate the sacred relic, everything could be reversed.

When she opened the door, she could see outside the window where lightning was striking.

Rain was pouring in through the slightly open window gap.

Karin passed by it and went to a small door in the corner of the room.

A door with cracked wooden planks and a completely rusted handle.

“This father will make you the master of Hunt. Your uncle isn’t someone fit to sit in that position. This father is much more suited for the ducal position.”

Her father’s voice circled around Karin’s ears like a hallucination.

When she opened the handle, narrow and dark stairs appeared.

“Karin. People must have ambition. Those without greed, without goals, can never rise up.”

“Really?”

“Yes. A life that can’t rise up is like a maggot. If you’re born into this world with a name, you must fulfill your role. Will you live as a maggot that feeds on corpses in the bottom, in filth? Or will you climb to the top and reign over others?”

Her father was a greedy person.

He always talked about rising up, about reigning over others.

That’s probably why he tried to kill Etian, who was designated as the young duke at the time, and take that position for himself.

Looking back, her mother, who came from a prestigious servant family, wasn’t much different either.

“You’re a special child. You inherited your father’s blood. Your maternal grandfather was as excellent as your father. Unfortunately, you’re not a boy, but this mother is fine with that. As long as you can rise up.”

“Rise up? How high do I need to go?”

“Up, up, and even higher than that. When your father becomes a duke, you’ll become a duke’s daughter. After that, you’ll inherit the family, and later grow into a beautiful young lady and become empress.”

It was puzzling.

Why do I have to become empress? Can’t I just become emperor myself?

If I become a duke’s daughter, if I become a duke.

Having achieved that much, I could surely become emperor.

Then I could live the ‘perfectly elevated life’ I’d heard about since childhood.

“That kind of life is impossible.”

Around that time, she met Jayden.

Jayden was… always a child who made Karin feel bad.

“You’re more stupid than you look. You weren’t born as royalty, or as a prince, or as a crown prince, yet you want to become emperor?”

Beautiful appearance that seemed to take one’s breath away just by looking at it.

However, eyes filled with murderous intent.

Jayden was a child who would casually twist and kill the neck of a cat that approached him purring.

“Your parents are stupid too. What’s wrong with their brains? Rise up, my ass. People live as they’re born. That’s the law of nature.”

At that time, she couldn’t understand.

What’s wrong with dreaming of high places?

Father said that a life of complacency is like a maggot.

Mother certainly said I must rise up.

But Jayden said.

“Jayden was a beast, so he died. I’m human, so I killed him. Jayden was born weak enough that his neck would break if I squeezed hard, and I was born strong enough to snap his neck with one hand.”

He called the dead cat ‘Jayden,’ the same as his own name.

Cat Jayden had lived together with human Jayden for several years, with the human feeding him.

“Nothing in this world is given for free. Humans born weak remain weak until the end, so if you want to change something, you have to pay a price.”

“…A price?”

“Does your uncle really not know? That your parents are planning to kill me?”

At that moment, Karin felt something shift dramatically in her heart.

“What happens if they get caught? Can your father really rise to the position of duke? Can you, his daughter, really inherit the household? No.”

Jayden’s eyes rippled with a deep blue light.

“Their necks will be broken before they can even rise. Just like Jayden.”

From around that time, it became visible.

The atmosphere of the household.

Uncle Etian executing those who defied him right in front of Father, as if to make an example.

The strange glances exchanged at every meal, and the power struggles conveyed through the clatter of dishes.

Yes, those born weak die.

They die before they can even rise, unable to even attempt to leap forward.

“Mom and Dad are trying to kill Uncle and become duke.”

“How can I believe your words?”

“Because I want to live. So I’m just confessing the truth.”

So she informed on them.

Mother and Father had their heads cut off in a single moment, kneeling on the stone floor of the Hunt Estate’s main courtyard.

She had trouble when her suddenly changed uncle tried to kill her too, but Karin overcame it.

On the day she informed on her parents, strangely, the sacred relic and ritual altar passed down through the household responded to her.

“Huff, huff-!”

Karin collapsed to her knees before the altar.

Rainwater that had fallen from her body pooled on the floor, and the faintly glowing image of the altar was reflected on its surface.

“Oh God. Please, please…”

Karin took out the scale she had brought from her bosom.

Indeed, a small pulse could be felt from the scale.

[The first interesting child among that human’s descendants.]

Just like when she first received a response from the scale.

Karin unhesitatingly loosened her hair and stabbed her palm hard with a hairpin.

She placed her bleeding hand on the altar and clenched her fist tightly.

Blood dripped down and seeped into the patterns carved on the altar.

As the pattern was completed, the light emanating from it grew stronger.

“Please, please!”

I want to rise.

I want to climb higher.

Jayden was right.

Those born weak can never rise.

A life lived as a maggot is meaningless, and a life lived in complacency is useless.

“I paid the price…”

I cleverly informed on my parents and survived because of it.

My parents died because they were stupid.

Being stupid is also being weak.

If Father really wanted to become duke that badly, he should have been more meticulous.

He should have been careful so Etian wouldn’t notice.

He shouldn’t have spilled such dangerous plans, even to his child.

“I’ve done everything with certainty, everything with certainty. I’m the one who deserves to rise-!”

The moment she shouted with an anger-filled voice.

A tremendous light engulfed the room.

Karin stared at the whitened vision with trembling eyes.

Something was gradually becoming clear right in front of her.

“So you were indeed performing black magic to summon an evil god.”

…A god should have appeared.

The god should have responded to Karin.

She thought she had paid enough of a price, but then why.

“Arrest Karin Hunt.”

Why was the Dowager Empress standing before her eyes?

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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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