The Eldest Daughter Walks Down The Flower Path - Chapter 4

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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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The Eldest Daughter Walks the Path of Flowers Episode 4

As Jade had said, the Tilrod Family was a knight family.

Their ancestor, Alexis Tilrod, was a knight of Cardia’s first emperor, Dantes Arpend, and was called the ‘Sword of Flames.’

It is said that as the first emperor’s knight, he reclaimed territories that had been occupied by monsters and opened a new era.

However, after Alexis, the Tilrod Family had walked the path of decline, failing to produce any decent knights.

But that talent of Alexis Tilrod manifested in a completely unexpected place.

None other than in Radis, the black sheep of the Tilrod Family.

‘This child is a genius.’

Armano realized he had found a pearl in the mud.

However, that mud was no ordinary mud.

A tutor who secretly came to find Armano whispered to him.

“Don’t praise Miss Radis. If you do, you might be kicked out immediately without even a letter of recommendation.”

Armano didn’t want Radis’s talent to be buried.

He pretended to teach David and Radis together while pouring all his passion into Radis.

Lazy David liked this arrangement.

Watching his sister, who was bullied at home, sweating profusely under the blazing sun was an entertaining farce.

David would laugh at Radis to his heart’s content, then happily take naps in the cool shade.

Radis, who learned swordsmanship and received praise from her respected teacher, was also happy.

Armano, who taught a talented student, was also happy.

But it was a deception like bubbles in muddy water.

Something that could never last long.

Everything was exposed in the year David turned fourteen.

“Teacher, we’re thinking of sending David to the Imperial Academy.”

“I heard that place is an elite knight training institute. We’re thinking of applying for admission, what do you think? Is it still too early?”

Looking at Jade and Margaret, who were staring at him with bright eyes, Armano realized what was coming had come.

Armano opened his mouth with difficulty.

“It will probably… be difficult.”

Jade’s face hardened.

Margaret’s did too, but she forced the corners of her mouth up into a smile and asked again.

“I see, it would be difficult at fourteen, wouldn’t it? Would next year or the year after work?”

“No. It won’t work no matter how old he gets. I’m sorry for saying this too late. David has no talent for swordsmanship.”

“…!”

Armano tried to persuade Margaret.

He said that David never had the talent to become a knight, nor the persistence to work hard, nor the motivation.

But Radis did.

However, there was no way Margaret would listen to that.

“Cunning wench…!”

The arrow turned toward the easy target, Radis.

“You seduced the teacher like a fox! You’ve ruined your brother’s future, the family’s future!”

Margaret screamed and frantically struck Radis’s cheek.

Radis kept her head down and didn’t even scream.

She was already far too accustomed to enduring violence and verbal abuse directed at her.

Unable to watch any longer, Armano grabbed Margaret’s arm.

“Stop this!”

Margaret struck his cheek too.

“You’re fired! You worthless bastard ruined my jewel!”

Though she drove Armano away, the situation wasn’t resolved.

Margaret had to somehow get her son admitted to the academy.

She had to give her jewel a bright future.

“You do it.”

Radis, whose face was swollen from being slapped, looked up.

“Since you ruined it, you have to fix it. You go and take the exam in David’s place.”

“What…?”

“Your heights are similar, so if you wear armor and a helmet, no one will know. Your faces are somewhat alike too.”

Margaret brought scissors for cutting fabric.

Margaret struck Radis’s head once more, then when she lowered her head, grabbed her hair that was already a tangled mess from being pulled.

Snip, snip.

Radis could only tremble without saying anything as she watched clumps of tangled hair fall before her eyes.

Through the crack of the open door, she could see her two younger siblings’ faces.

David’s face was bright red from trying to hold back laughter, and Yurhee’s already large eyes were wide as grapes with fear.

After cutting all of Radis’s hair, Margaret said.

“If you get David admitted splendidly, I’ll forgive you. You’re the eldest daughter of the Tilrod Family. It’s natural for you to work hard for your younger brother’s future, who is the pillar of the household, isn’t it?”

Eldest daughter.

To Radis, who had never once been called daughter or child, those words came like some kind of revelation.

“I understand…”

Radis did as Margaret ordered.

She tightly bound her chest that had just begun to develop and took the academy entrance exam wearing her brother’s armor.

And she watched her brother, who had passed, leave home.

“Well done.”

That was the first praise Radis had ever heard from her mother.

Radis smiled.

Her hair was messily cut and her face and body were covered in bruises, but she was happy.

Radis wrote a letter to Armano. She wrote that she was grateful for everything, and that she was sorry he had been fired because of someone like her.

One day, she learned that a reply had come from Armano. Because Margaret came to her with a letter in one hand.

No matter how much she practiced swordsmanship and tried to steel her heart, Radis was afraid of her mother. When she saw her mother’s angry face, her heart would pound and her body would go limp.

Radis habitually raised her arms to cover her head. Because she thought she would be slapped.

But Margaret didn’t do that.

She simply smiled maliciously and threw Armano’s letter into the fireplace right before Radis’s eyes.

That hurt ten times more than being slapped.

Much time passed, and David, who graduated from the academy, became an apprentice knight.

However, an apprentice knight was just an apprentice knight.

To be formally appointed as a knight, he had to accumulate achievements.

In other words, he had to go monster hunting.

“I don’t want to go!”

Eighteen-year-old David wailed.

“Monster hunting? Why should I go to such a place? I’ll get hurt. I might even die!”

“Oh, my child! You’ll only need to go out a few times.”

“Brian doesn’t go monster hunting! His father made him a squire to a knight he knows right away. Father, don’t you have such connections?”

Jade, who had been listening to David’s words, silently limped out of the reception room.

Margaret spoke coldly to the back of his head.

“Expect what you can expect from your father!”

“You say we’re a Founding Noble Family but we have nothing!”

David spoke desperately as if the sky had fallen.

“You’ll only need to go out a few times? Mom, please stop pretending to know when you don’t know anything! Do you even know what monster hunting is like? You have to fight monsters in the Monster Forest. Monsters! I might die! And monsters emit miasma!”

David shuddered.

“Do you even know how terrible miasma is? It’s like poison. If you go hunting for a month, you have to rest for half a year when you return for all that miasma to leave your body. Or you have to go to the Temple and pay expensive money to receive the priests’ blessings. Do we even have that kind of money?”

“Child, you get magic stones when you kill monsters, don’t you?”

“How can I kill monsters! I’ll get hurt. I might even die!”

And so the conversation returned to the beginning.

Radis, who had been silently listening to their conversation, quietly returned to her room.

Radis was now a proper twenty-year-old maiden.

If she had been an ordinary woman, she would have been married long ago.

However, she could not do so.

In this era, for a woman to marry, the family elders or parents had to step forward to find a suitable groom and provide a dowry.

However, neither Margaret nor Jade paid her any attention whatsoever.

Moreover, as David had said, they had no money.

The taxes collected from their palm-sized territory were barely enough to manage the estate.

The Tilrod Family was even in massive debt to cover David’s academy tuition and living expenses in the capital.

Such circumstances aside, Radis, who had no social activities whatsoever, had never even experienced the common thing called romance.

While Yurhee, who was three years younger than her, had boys she was seeing, Radis had never even experienced having a conversation with a man.

Radis thought of herself as a shadow.

There was no place for her anywhere.

Margaret abused her and Jade pretended not to notice.

Her siblings also regarded her as nothing more than a bothersome eyesore.

The only place where she could be at ease was that clearing where Armano had taught her swordsmanship long ago.

She continued to practice swordsmanship there.

She practiced the same things over and over again.

That was all there was.

That day was no different.

She had been swinging a sword carved from wood when she saw Margaret approaching and stopped her movements.

Would she be slapped again, she wondered, but Margaret did not do so.

Instead, she said this.

“The Lord of Wenz wants to take you as his wife. He says he doesn’t care who it is as long as she’s a young, healthy woman who can bear him sons—that’s exactly what you are, isn’t it? That old man doesn’t need a dowry, and he’ll even pay handsomely for it. If you bear him a son, he’ll even grant you territory. For the first time, I feel it was worthwhile giving birth to you. The eldest daughter is supposed to be the family’s foundation, isn’t she? He’s a seventy-year-old man, but he’s still vigorous enough that you might even feel like newlyweds.”

Margaret chuckled as she watched the color drain from Radis’s face.

“You don’t like it? Then go hunt monsters in David’s place. You’ll be able to swing that sword you love so much to your heart’s content. It’s a family shame for an unmarried daughter to continue staying at home, but if you do that, I’ll allow you to remain in this house.”

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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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