The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 8

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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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Chapter 8

‘Come to think of it, none of us remembered our parents.’

Among Pascal’s Children, not a single person remembered their parents or the hometown where they were born and raised.

It was strange how none of them knew anything. They all equally avoided recalling their past before becoming ‘Pascals’. Every one of them said they only had terrible memories.

‘There were so many orphans like that in the world, so I didn’t think it was strange.’

The immediate environment was too harsh and they were too busy just surviving to have the luxury of thinking deeply about it.

Did Pascal deliberately gather children who couldn’t remember their parents? Or perhaps…

Rita was surprised by her own suspicions. At the same time, she felt resistance to the idea.

She had lived for over ten years as Rita Pascal with reddish-brown hair and freckles. Without a single doubt about her own identity.

‘If I’m really Lillieta… then that other body belonged to someone else? That’s ridiculous.’

As far as she could remember, she had lived her entire life in that body. There was no sense of alienation.

‘…Alienation?’

She suddenly remembered the nagging of Sera Pascal, who had been the healer of the Beacon Squad, when she examined her.

“All the Pascals have similar paralysis symptoms, but our Maple Candy is particularly severe among them. You know? It creaks strangely like screws don’t fit properly. There’s a limit to what Od can cover, so please take care of your body, little fox.”

The paralysis symptoms in her body that occurred more frequently than her comrades.

What if that was alienation?

Suspicion grew like a snowball. The self-identity she had believed in her entire life was shaking.

Her head throbbed. She was confused and dizzy, but there was nothing she could be certain of. She shook her head vigorously.

‘Damn it, stop thinking about it.’

Rita snapped the matchbox shut and placed it on the desk in the corner of the Guest Room. Then she noticed the letter paper and quill pen set placed there.

‘Let’s set aside problems without answers and start with what I can do right now.’

Thinking about the accident she had caused earlier, the most urgent thing for her right now was Od awakening.

The longer she remained in this powerless state, the more sensitive and sharp she would inevitably become. She might threaten another innocent person at this rate.

‘First, the Od aptitude test.’

Od was the primordial natural force that constituted the world.

According to her knowledge, if it was a world with gravity, air, and lightning, Od must necessarily exist.

And depending on the person, there were constitutions that readily accepted such Od and constitutions that repelled it.

Rita pulled out a quill pen from the letter paper and quill pen set and lightly pricked her fingertip.

She soaked the beaded blood on the quill pen, drew a simple magic circle on the letter paper, then opened the window wide, placed an empty cup on the letter paper by the window, and waited for a moment.

‘Od collection magic circle. Even if a formal test is impossible, a simple test should be sufficient with this much.’

Afternoon sunlight and cool spring breeze entered through the open window.

Soon, something like faint heat haze formed inside the cup. This was a phenomenon that occurred when Od gathered and its concentration increased.

‘It’s gathering well. As expected, even if it’s a different world, the fundamentals are the same. It’s not an absurd place where water flows backwards or fire is cold.’

Rita carefully inserted her finger, still beaded with blood, into the cup where Od was rippling.

‘Good. It didn’t bounce away, and there’s no stinging or uncomfortable feeling in my finger. So I don’t have a constitution with Od side effects. As for aptitude…’

The drop of blood from the wound on her fingertip gently permeated into the heat haze in the cup.

Rather than not mixing like water and oil, it spread out like a drop of ink dropped in water, coloring the heat haze with a subtle red light.

Rita gaped at the cup that had turned red in an instant.

‘What’s with this body? The Od aptitude is insane.’

Rita Pascal’s body had quite poor Od aptitude, though not to the level of having side effects.

When she had done a simple test before, her drop of blood floated around like a red bead without mixing with the heat haze in the cup.

‘This is ridiculous. This is… Gid’s level.’

Gid Pascal, who had the highest Od aptitude in the Beacon Squad, showed this kind of phenomenon with his blood.

Thanks to that tremendous Od aptitude, he could utilize large amounts of Od to establish his own domain on the battlefield, and people who witnessed the domain he controlled gave him the nickname ‘Emperor.’

‘It even seems to mix faster than that Gid? If I use gun magic with this body, I’ll be able to use far more techniques than before.’

When she thought of the techniques she had only dreamed of, her complicated feelings disappeared. She repeatedly marveled while examining the cup full of red heat haze from various angles.

‘Wow, really… With this much, I might even be able to complete that technique I only conceived? It’s fantastic. With my original body, I had to be careful because I’d have seizures or paralysis when trying to use new techniques.’

I wish this was really my body.

She had that thought carelessly, then hesitated.

‘…Don’t be greedy, Rita Pascal. What will you do if it turns out not to be true? What if I’m mistaken and the real Lillieta comes back…’

She thought of the four-leaf clover in the matchbox.

Leonhardt probably hoped she would remember something when she saw it, but she couldn’t recall anything.

Perhaps Pascal had somehow tampered with her memories and she had forgotten, but all of this could just be coincidence.

Disappointment after expectation hurts more.

Rita had seen what kind of ending Pascal’s Children, starved for affection, met. She also knew what happened to a certain Pascal who had mistakenly thought they had found their family again.

Pascal’s Children were living weapons and existed only to fight magical beasts.

The Pascals had no such thing as family. Even if it existed, they wouldn’t be able to accept the alien Pascal as one of their own. Only fellow Pascals could understand and live together with Pascals.

That was the principle she had learned from living as a child of Pascal for over ten years.

‘Don’t expect anything. Don’t mistake anything either. Anyway, I’m a Pascal, and I’m going back to the Beacon Squad. So just think of it as borrowing someone else’s body. That’s better.’

Rita, having steeled her resolve, set aside the letter paper with the magic circle and the cup, and stood by the window.

Now that she didn’t have to worry about side effects, it was time for awakening.

She looked up at the bright blue sky and took in a deep breath of fresh air.

‘It’s really a beautiful world. There would be no magical beasts appearing in a place like this, but…’

She made the wound on her fingertip a bit larger with the quill pen. With the beaded blood, she drew the pattern of oath on her palm and placed that hand on her neck.

“〈Od, I make an oath.〉”

A voice with a strange resonance flowed out. At the same time, the wind that entered through the window, no, the Od began to swirl around her entire body.

“〈I will eliminate all magical beasts that come into my sight.〉”

Od permeated her body and something like heat haze rippled. Her blonde hair whipped around wildly and light dwelt in her purple eyes.

Rita grasped her neck and finished the ‘oath’ with an eerie voice.

“〈I swear in the name of Rita Pascal.〉”

Whoosh, there was a sound like air escaping from somewhere. It was the sound made as the Od that had been rushing in rapidly disappeared.

“Huh?”

Rita unconsciously let out a confused voice. The oath had not been established.

She should have sworn to Od, Od should have accepted it, the oath should have been completed, and her abilities should have awakened, but Od just disappeared after listening to the oath partway through.

“Why isn’t this working?”

Until just moments ago, it had been the perfect precursor to awakening. Od had rushed in upon sensing the oath, and even wind had blown.

“Why was I suddenly rejected?”

Rita looked around bewilderedly and felt around her neck, then suddenly remembered seeing a similar situation before.

‘I once saw someone who volunteered for the last line of defense get rejected like this when they tried to make an oath using a false name.’

Even if conducted with proper procedures and proper content, Od would not accept oaths made with false names.

There had been no problem with the oath procedure just now. The oath content was also something she had been keeping for a long time.

‘It couldn’t be that the oath was canceled because there are no magical beasts in this world… Od was rushing in properly until I recited the oath content.’

It was canceled right after the last phrase. Then perhaps.

Rita placed her hand on her neck again with half-belief and half-doubt. She made the same oath as before, only changing the last words.

“〈I swear in the name of Lillieta del Nisa Raskail.〉”

The Od that had gathered around was instantly absorbed into her body. Her hair whipped in the rushing wind and her eyes shone like stars.

Od poured in like a waterfall. Endlessly, up to the limit that her current physical body could accept.

After a storm-like period of time passed, Rita slowly closed and opened her eyes in the quieted surroundings.

“…Ha.”

She was shocked by the amount of Od contained in her body, which was much more than during her ‘Rita Pascal’ days after countless training sessions, and was also shocked by the oath that had been readily established.

‘Why was the oath established in Lillieta’s name? Because the body making the oath belongs to Lillieta?’

Wasn’t the body just a vessel and the soul the subject of the oath? Was the body that directly contained Od actually more important than the soul? Or perhaps…

“Someone else inside? Rita, I don’t think I wouldn’t recognize my one and only little sister. If your essence had changed, I definitely would have noticed.”

“Just think about it once. The possibility that you’re real.”

“That can’t be.”

Leonhardt’s words came to mind.

Her barely composed heart began to waver. Rita muttered again in a confused state.

“There’s no way that could be….”

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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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