The Snow Leopard Baby of the Black Leopard Family - Chapter 229

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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 229
Tiel ran through a succession of phantom images that appeared and vanished, her body regressed to that of a small child.
The Princess’s Subspace was forcing Tiel to witness once more the things she had truly endured, playing them out before her eyes.
Tiel couldn’t bear to watch the memories replaying before her. She wrenched her head away.
‘I don’t want to see this.’
The memories unfolding before her eyes were undeniably her own—fragments she had desperately wanted to forget, buried deep within her heart.
Her grandfather’s angry shouts. Her small, cold room. Bread so hard and stale it couldn’t be eaten. And Rowen, loved in ways that she was not.
She hadn’t looked at these things because she didn’t want to see them. She’d tried to forget them because she didn’t want to remember. And finally, she’d succeeded in forgetting them all—so why was she being shown them again?
Tiel clutched her worn nightgown in her small fists and ran forward without thinking. She fled from the memories replaying in the body of a child.
But the memories pursued her relentlessly.
The more Tiel stared at these memories, the more she dwelt on those moments, the smaller and more diminished she felt herself becoming.
It wasn’t merely a feeling.
Tiel looked down at the nightgown, which hung even more loosely on her now than before. Her body had grown smaller. Younger. More…
How far could she run?
In the midst of her desperate flight, a thought suddenly seized her. This was the Princess’s Subspace. How long could she run here? How far?
If she continued shrinking, wouldn’t she soon become so small she couldn’t move at all? Tiel stopped, her form now that of a very young child, and turned to look behind her.
The memories she had fled from appeared and vanished repeatedly. Shouts and sobs echoed from all around.
Tiel recognized the owners of these voices.
One was Thender. The other was herself.
It was she who was weeping now. As Tiel listened to the crying, a single tear rolled down her cheek.
It traced a path down her face. Tiel now appeared as a four-year-old child. Her hair, grown only as long as her grief, hung matted and tangled, tickling her bare feet.
The shoes she’d been wearing had vanished along with her dress, leaving her barefoot. Her feet were covered entirely in scrapes and wounds.
Tiel knew full well that all of this was a hallucination. And yet she couldn’t stop crying.
This Subspace seemed designed precisely to force Tiel to recall and absorb these sorrowful memories.
Was this space something Orpheo had devised?
To keep her from ever escaping again, to lock her away as a powerless, defenseless child… was this a prison of Orpheo’s design?
Tiel felt herself growing helplessly weak. It seemed she could neither stop Orpheo’s plan nor the Princess. In a body this small and young, there was nothing she could do.
When would these painful memories end? Perhaps, Tiel thought, if she just endured a little longer, they would finally cease.
But she was mistaken. The Subspace mocked her by continuing to show only the memories of the period when she had suffered most.
It didn’t show her memories from after age seven. It refused to show the memories of when she had been loved in Asterian, showing only her memories from the Nestian Mansion, again and again and again.
Both of Tiel’s cheeks were wet with tears. They flowed without ceasing. She couldn’t explain why. She was simply sad. Sadness brought tears, and tears brought sobs, and…
A very small child covered her ears with her tiny hands as tears streamed down her face.
This place was like hell itself. A prison made from everything Tiel feared most.
But then.
A small light bloomed in Tiel’s palm. It happened against her will.
Tiel in her current state—a four-year-old who could barely speak, let alone use her Ability—should have been unable to manifest anything.
And yet light blossomed in her hand. A round sphere rose into being, positioning itself at her chest.
The light trembled for a moment, then gradually began to shift its form.
Long fins slowly sprouted. It took the shape of a fish Tiel knew well. The tears stopped as Tiel gazed at the creature intently.
It became the shape of a fish, then a leopard, then a rabbit, then a lion.
It moved like someone soothing a small child, and the child-form of Tiel focused entirely on the light’s movements.
And as Tiel became completely absorbed, as she finally could no longer hear the noise around her…
Flash!
The light blazed brilliantly. Then a warm hand emerged from within the radiance and gently caressed Tiel’s cheek.
“…Huh?”
Startled by the unexpected touch, Tiel’s eyes widened. The enormous hand carefully wiped her wet cheek, mindful not to frighten her further.
It dried her tears, held her close so she wouldn’t cry anymore, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
[There’s nothing to fear.]
Then a voice—one that was somehow deeply familiar—spoke to her. Tiel couldn’t identify whose voice it was, but she could easily sense how much this person cared for her.
“But I’m scared…,” Tiel whispered in a trembling, childish voice.
Now in the form of a child, Tiel’s thoughts had regressed to those of a young child as well.
As Tiel trembled like a wounded animal, the warmest light in the world wrapped around her small frame.
[There’s nothing to fear—you’ve already overcome all of this once before.]
In that instant, Tiel’s eyes flew open and she lifted her head. She looked up at the silhouette standing before her.
The silhouette seemed neither entirely male nor entirely female, but what was certain was that it belonged to someone she longed for dearly.
The voice drove home its message like a wedge, whispering once more.
[You’ve already overcome it.]
The voice was right.
The memories tormenting her now were things she had already lived through before.
Her past—a past she had already endured and conquered.
She had survived all of it, borne through it all, and arrived here.
As that realization dawned, Thender’s voice and her own sobs no longer seemed frightening or sorrowful.
The moment understanding struck her, the enormous hand that had been gently stroking her cheek vanished. It crumbled into dust and scattered away.
But its warmth lingered on her skin. Tiel wiped away her remaining tears with her forearm and got to her feet.
When she looked up, beyond the endlessly replaying Memory Fragments, she caught a faint green light glimmering.
The Emerald embedded in Tiel’s palm responded, glimmering in return.
As if guiding her toward that place…
Tiel took her first step forward. She began to walk through the fragments of memory.
With each step she took, she grew an inch taller. After just a few strides, Rowen’s nightgown had become small enough to reach only to her knees.
After about ten steps, the scrapes on her feet had vanished and shoes had appeared. After about fifteen steps, the nightgown had disappeared and her dress had returned.
As Tiel crossed through the Memory Fragments, the echoes of those memories thrashed about and began to shriek with sounds even more harrowing and grotesque than before—but she didn’t look back.
She didn’t look back. She didn’t run. There was no reason to be afraid.
‘If something is a memory I’ve already lived through, it means I’ve already overcome it.’
So there was no reason to fear. Her heart pounded wildly, but she absolutely refused to turn around. The young girl’s sobs twisted into agonized screams. But these were not her real memories.
As Tiel rejected her own memories, they were being warped and distorted, made more shocking and terrifying, fed back to her.
Tiel nearly collapsed several times, nearly fled again, but she didn’t sink to the ground and didn’t run. She walked forward steadily, her eyes fixed ahead.
And finally, when she reached the place where the light shone…
Everything fell silent all at once. The echoes of memories that had tormented Tiel vanished simultaneously. The roars and sobs faded to a whisper, then cut off entirely.
Only then did Tiel turn to look behind her.

There sat a very small girl.
A dirty, grimy girl. A pitiful little child with white hair that had been scorned for being vulgar—
It was Tiel herself.
Young Tiel reached out and grasped the hem of Tiel’s dress.
“Don’t go…”
She spoke in a voice so heartrending, so pathetic, that—
Tiel didn’t want to leave her younger self behind. She understood only too well what feelings prompted this plea from her younger self’s phantom.
She understood the loneliness in that voice.
But she had to go.
The past cannot bind the feet of one who chooses to move forward and live.
Tiel knelt and stroked her younger self’s head gently.
“I have to go.”
“…Why?”
“Because I have things I must do. But don’t worry too much.”
Soon people will come to keep you from being lonely.
Like a miracle.
As Tiel finished speaking, the phantom of her younger self crumbled into dust and scattered away.
Tiel gazed for a long time at the place where her childhood self had vanished.
And finally.
Flash!
A passage to another space appeared.

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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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