The Snow Leopard Baby of the Black Leopard Family - Chapter 104

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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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Episode 104
[Why…… why!]
The voice, growing fainter with incomprehension, suddenly sharpened again.
Of course darkness cannot overcome light…… but that holds true only when light can illuminate everything around it.
If you are born of light yet cannot even illuminate your own surroundings, you will never overcome darkness. You will be devoured by it.
And ‘that one’ is certainly a fool who has not even properly awakened its own Ability, let alone illuminated its surroundings.
So why……
[Did it interfere? Did it interfere again, in the end?]
The resentful voice echoed desolately through the space. Silence fell. In the darkness, time’s passage was imperceptible—whether only a moment of silence had elapsed or whether the ‘voice’ had remained silent for a very long time, there was no way to know.
[Come here, come closer.]
A space entirely black, dark, and desolate.
Standing alone within it, the girl who had been listening to the resentful voice of darkness lifted her head at the voice’s command.
He reached out and touched the pale girl’s face. The girl, who had been standing as if dead all this while, opened her eyelids and faced the pitch-black darkness.
[Yes, it’s alright…… that is nothing but a candle flame. A candle cannot illuminate anything……]
“…….”
[The wind will extinguish it. Rain will make it flicker away…….]
Had darkness not covered her eyes, her lifeless emerald eyes—which would have resembled a blue sea perfectly—gazed quietly at him.
[But you are different…… you are different because I have nurtured you so carefully.]
In the darkness, a voice utterly dreadful and desolate continued to swell.
***
“You’re going through molting, then.”
Clemens spoke carefully while gazing at Tiel. Tiel nodded and looked back at her.
“Yes, according to what Olivier told me, I’m molting.”
“My goodness, what wonderful news…… I must tell them to prepare a feast for tomorrow.”
Clemens smiled faintly. Molting was truly an important milestone for young Beastkin children, so Clemens celebrated Tiel’s molting with genuine warmth.
“You’ve taken another step closer to adulthood. In Arne, there’s a custom of weaving a beautiful Flower Crown and placing it on young Beastkin who are beginning their first molting…….”
“Really? Then you make one for me!”
“I was planning to do exactly that, Olivier.”
Clemens brought her hand toward Tiel’s head, then paused for a moment, her eyes narrowing as if troubled.
Placing a hand carelessly on the head of the ‘Asterian Princess’ would be a grave breach of etiquette. The hesitant Clemens looked at Tiel and asked.
“Princess, would it be alright if I were to place my hand on your head?”
“Yes, of course! You’re doing this to make me a Flower Crown, after all.”
“That’s right—I’ll make you the most beautiful Flower Crown…….”
Clemens gently placed her hand on Tiel’s head and smiled softly as she used her Ability.
A green Ability, matching the color of Clemens’s eyes, flowed down through her graceful fingertips and spiraled around Tiel’s head.
‘How strange—the feeling of the Ability is just like sunlight.’
Tiel blinked and thought.
Strictly speaking, Tiel’s own Ability was closer to ‘sunlight,’ and Arne’s Ability had a different quality from hers.
While Tiel’s Ability was a light that illuminated and embraced her surroundings, Arne’s Ability was a force that assisted ‘growth.’
So Tiel’s description of it being like sunlight wasn’t entirely inaccurate.
Plant stems wound around Tiel’s round head, and before long, flower buds sprouted thickly across it.
“The flowers haven’t bloomed yet?”
“Can a crown without flowers even be called a crown?”
Olivier and Ludian, observing the sight quietly, turned to each other and spoke.
The two of them lifted their left eyebrows identically, making Ludian and Olivier—not Ferdi—look like twins.
“Ugh, what is this! Awful!”
“Tell me about it!”
Olivier turned away in shock. Ludian did the same. Iandros watched them, clicked his tongue, then turned his gaze toward Tiel.
A girl who seemed tense, her small hands placed on her chest, gazed quietly at Clemens.
“Be quiet, Olivier. The flowers will bloom any moment now…….”
Clemens rebuked Olivier in a gentle voice. As the girl gestured, Arne’s handmaid came and set down a large Mirror.
A Mirror large enough to show Tiel’s entire body. Through the Mirror, Tiel gazed at Clemens Arne. The eyes of the two girls met.
“Look—now they’re going to bloom…….”
Clemens whispered softly, as if reciting an incantation.
Then the flower buds, which had been tightly closed, burst into bloom all at once as if responding to Clemens’s command.
“Wow……!!”
Tiel opened her eyes wide and pressed her palm against the Mirror. The girl leaned close to the Mirror and gazed upon the Flower Crown that had grown upon her head. Pale pink flowers and forsythia-yellow blossoms blended harmoniously—it was a very beautiful crown.
“How is it? Do you like it?”
“Yes! Very much! Arne’s Ability seems really wonderful—an Ability that makes flowers bloom…….”
As Tiel murmured with excitement, Ferdi, who had been listening quietly, raised his fingertip.
“Tiel, your brother can bloom flowers too.”
The moment Ferdi finished speaking, a small flame burst into life at his fingertip with a whoosh. Tiel started in alarm and turned to look at Ferdi.
“Brother! We’re indoors—you can’t use your Ability here……!”
“Are you worried I’ll burn down Arne’s mansion? Don’t worry. I’m not like Ludian.”
“But you burned the side building’s wall to a crisp the other day……. I trust you, brother, but I can’t trust your Ability—please extinguish the fire…….”
Rendered speechless by Tiel’s words, Ferdi suppressed his Ability with a dejected expression. The flame quickly died away.
“Tiel, but my Ability is cool too, right?”
“Brother, you’re something else…….”
When Olivier, Ludian, and Ferdi were all together, Ferdi at least appeared to be the most mature and sensible boy, but seeing him like this, it was clear he was hardly the normal or sensible one either.
“Of course the Flame Ability is very impressive—even if you do occasionally burn walls and furniture…….”
“…….”
“And the other day you said you’d show me fireworks, but instead you incinerated the ornamental garden and made the gardener do his work twice…….”
“You do like it, don’t you?”
Ferdi asked pointedly.
Listening to Tiel’s complaints, Ferdi found himself thinking anew how much she had changed.
‘When I first met her, she could hardly speak at all.’
Now she could even scold her own brother. Ferdi was glad to see how his little sister had grown. He wished for Tiel to become a girl who could freely express her complaints and discomforts.
A child who wouldn’t worry about others’ eyes, who could say no when something displeased her.
‘Come to think of it, the very first thing I taught Tiel was how to say “I don’t like it”…….’
Of course, he had taught her that to drive away Iandros, but Ferdi had taught Tiel the word for dislike before the word for joy.
He understood well that it was far harder to express dislike than to express happiness.
If you do not voice your dislike, it accumulates layer upon layer in one corner of your heart, eventually building an impenetrable wall.
And such a wall is terribly difficult to break down, so Ferdi did not want such a wall to form in Tiel’s heart.
This was counsel and aid born from his own experience of having once built such a wall himself.
“I like it very much. I’d be able to like it even more if my brothers and sister Olivier didn’t use their Abilities indoors.”
Though he hadn’t expected her to articulate it quite this well. Ferdi smiled faintly and stroked Tiel’s head gently.
“Got it—I won’t use it indoors.”
“And you can’t incinerate the ornamental garden either—the fire is pretty, but unlike flowers, it can sear everything around it……!”
Tiel gripped Ferdi’s sleeve tightly, with an expression suggesting she was anxious he might use his Ability again.
Ferdi chuckled and poked the soft cheek of her face.
“I won’t incinerate the garden either. Are you satisfied now, Miss?”
“Yes, I’m satisfied. Now I can boldly say that my brother’s Ability is wonderful.”
Tiel spoke in a measured voice. Through the wide-open window, a breeze blew in and scattered along with the small girl’s laughter. The sunlight that brightly illuminated the room flowed along with the current of wind.
Ferdi, watching this, thought that his little sister was just like a small spring formed from the world’s warmest sunlight gathered together.

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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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