The Cowardly Baby Saint Sees Ghosts - Chapter 44

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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# Chapter 44
The smile drained from Chloe’s face entirely.
I watched bewilderment slowly curdle into something darker—something like fear—right there in her features.
‘She feels it too. Something’s wrong.’
Click. Click. Click.
Footsteps echoed through the hall—but they came just a fraction of a second after Chloe’s feet touched the ground.
At first I thought I was imagining it. But after it happened twice, three times, the truth crystallized.
‘That’s not just sound.’
I’d never realized how deeply unsettling it could be—when movement and sound fall out of sync like that.
With each repetition, the fine hairs at the nape of my neck bristled one by one.
“Your Holiness.”
Liam’s voice came low, threaded through with tension.
But I had no idea what to do, no way forward yet.
On impulse, I rose slightly and tried to send Holy Power toward Chloe.
The instant faint light gathered at my fingertips, a familiar window materialized before my eyes.
[System]
[Cannot Interfere]
[Urban Legend Progress Rate 38%]
All my resolve drained away.
I bit my lip and sank back into my chair.
The air in the hall had fundamentally changed.
The people who’d been laughing and talking moments ago were falling silent one by one. Wherever conversation died, silence seeped in like fog.
Their eyes were still open—but they no longer looked human.
Even their blinks had become unnaturally slow. Like a clockwork doll winding down, their eyelids descended with glacial deliberation, then rose again just as gradually.
In between, their pupils remained fixed on a single point: the tips of Chloe’s feet.
“…Your Highness?”
I turned to the figure beside me and called her name. No answer came.
Gaitel remained frozen mid-gesture, her fan still raised. Only her eyes blinked; her lips never moved.
Her gaze didn’t waver—locked onto Chloe’s feet, unwavering.
“Your Highness, snap out of it!”
I grabbed her shoulders and shook.
Her body swayed limply with the motion, but her eyes never shifted. It was as if her gaze had been nailed to that spot.
The moment I let go, she snapped back into her original posture with mechanical precision.
A chill ran down my spine.
“Liam!”
I spun toward him. He stood exactly as before, hand still resting on his sword hilt, his eyes blinking in slow motion as he stared at Chloe. My voice rose, but he gave no sign of hearing.
‘I’m the only one left.’
Demian, sitting nearby, suddenly flickered through my mind. I turned my head.
He hadn’t moved either—arms still folded in that perpetually cynical pose, his pupils locked on Chloe and utterly motionless.
I looked around the hall. Everyone—every single person—was caught in the same state. Hands holding glasses. Hands holding fans. Hands clasped together. All frozen in place, only their eyelids blinking slowly, mechanically.
Hundreds of eyes that couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, only endlessly fixed on the tips of Chloe’s feet.
“So now it’s just me and Cheese.”
I looked across the room toward the window frame.
Cheese’s ears were flat against his head, his eyes narrowed at me. His fur stood on end along his back, his teeth bared in a low, rumbling growl.
“Cheese, we need to get those Shoes off her!”
It was the only answer that came to mind. If the Shoes were the problem, removing them should fix this.
I leaped to my feet and rushed toward Chloe.
I pushed through the frozen crowd, reaching her twisted ankle, and grabbed at the Shoes.
“…Huh?”
They didn’t budge.
Clinging to her feet like they’d grown there, the Shoes wouldn’t come free no matter how hard I pulled.
The more I yanked, the more Chloe’s ankle lifted unnaturally with them.
[Cannot Interfere.]
“Hgh…!”
A whimper escaped Chloe as I pulled. Goosebumps erupted across my skin.
‘If I keep this up, her ankle could tear clean off.’
[Warning]
Forcible removal of the Shoes risks severing a portion of the host’s body.
[Cannot Interfere.]
[Cannot Interfere.]
[Cannot Interfere.]
Cold sweat burst across my skin. I pulled my hand back reflexively.
‘No. Not like this.’
Then what was I supposed to do?
Tap-tap.
Chloe’s steps continued. But now her movements were unmistakably wrong.
Her knee bent in the exact opposite direction it should have.
A soft crack—the sound of bone dislocating.
Even as Chloe’s knee buckled backward, her feet still traced the precise Waltz steps across the floor.
“Nngh… nngh…!”
A strangled sound escaped her throat—not quite a scream. Her face contorted with agony, yet her body continued its elegant rotation, too elegant, unnaturally elegant, without pause.
Crack. Crack.
This time her ankle. It twisted inward completely, the top of her foot wrenching toward the floor at an angle that should not exist.
The skin pulled taut and blanched white, spider-webbing with burst capillaries beneath.
And still the shoes moved.
With a shattered ankle and shattered knee, as if nothing were amiss, the feet kept perfect three-four time.
The sight of those ruined legs pirouetting with such grace—it chilled me far more than any scream could have.
A fragment of bone had pierced through the skin on the inside of her ankle, gleaming white in the candlelight.
‘This… this isn’t a movement a human body should be capable of.’
My stomach threatened to turn. I forced myself not to look away.
“Cheese, what if we cut the shoe laces? Or something—!”
The words tumbled out in desperation, but I had no idea what exactly I was asking for.
I gathered Holy Power to my fingertips and tried again, but the window before my eyes offered only the same response.
[Cannot Interfere.]
[Urban Legend Progress Rate 55%]
“What am I supposed to do? What?”
Frustration and helplessness surged up together. Nothing worked. Even the most logical approach threatened only disaster.
“Aaaahhh!”
Chloe’s scream tore through the hall, and in that same instant every candle flame recoiled as one, swaying sideways though not a breath of air stirred.
Tap-tap.
This time her hip. A dull, sickening crunch accompanied the complete twisting of her right leg from the pelvis—her knee rotating to face backward—and yet her foot still struck the floor in perfect time, still maintained the three-four rhythm.
It was impossible. This was no longer injury. This was something else entirely.
It was like watching a shattered doll forced to keep dancing by sheer will alone, by the command that she must dance, must keep dancing.
Her nerves should have been too destroyed to feel pain, and yet tears poured ceaselessly from her eyes.
Chloe’s legs no longer seemed to possess joints at all.
Her upper body, by contrast, remained untouched. Arms, neck, spine—all intact.
That very intactness was what terrified me most. It meant the curse was targeting only what was necessary, only what lay below where the shoes touched, as if with surgical precision.
[Urban Legend Progress Rate 72%]
My chest sank. The status window offered no further kindness.
‘Even if she’s completely destroyed, she won’t stop. So what—what could possibly stop this dance?’
My mind went blank.
I couldn’t remove the shoes, couldn’t burn them, couldn’t cut them away. What method remained?
“We’re running out of time.”
At my words, Cheese began a low, rumbling growl and crept forward inch by inch, very slowly, toward Chloe.
Body lowered, eyes never leaving that writhing shadow.
I rose and followed, moving with equal deliberation.
As I passed among the frozen guests, the blankness of their stares—the way their eyes offered no reaction, no acknowledgment of my presence—filled me with a deeper dread.
[Urban Legend Progress Rate 91%]
There was almost no time left.
The status window offered no further hints, no final warning.
Just a number. That was all it had to say.
I clenched my teeth. Without method, without answers, all I could do was watch this horror unfold—and the helplessness of it choked me.
‘Anything. Please, anything.’
My heart climbed into my throat.
This hall that had seemed the brightest place in the world mere moments ago had become the darkest—a place where hundreds of eyes held their breath, watching in silence.
Only Cheese and I moved.
No one would help. If I failed, the cost would fall on me alone—or rather, on both of us, Cheese and me.
That weight pressed down on my shoulders.
Then it happened.
Through the blur of despair, a familiar roulette wheel surfaced before my eyes.
‘…Huh.’
Huh, huh?
[Submersion]
Eat plenty and grow big and strong into a proper child.
Progress reached 30%!
You receive a random item as a reward.
Right now, at this moment?

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