The Snow Leopard Baby of the Black Leopard Family - Chapter 251

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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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Special Episode 1
When the owner of a Subspace vanishes, what becomes of all that dwells within it?
Countless scholars in the Crasion Empire had wondered, yet none had uncovered the answer.
There were scarcely any who could even study the Subspace to begin with.
The Spatial Ability is an extraordinarily rare Ability. Moreover, it manifests only occasionally, and only through Imperial bloodline.
So who could possibly have researched the Subspace?
Yet one thing remained certain.
‘Lose your way within a Subspace, and you cannot return.’
Should someone become caught in a Subspace by misfortune, even its owner would never return.
How many knew this truth?
Likely fewer than could be counted on one hand—perhaps even including the vanished princess Adelaide. Fewer than ten, certainly.
A Subspace is vast, and within it, a person’s disappearance is devastatingly simple.
Iandros knew this far too well.
Because.
“Iandros!”
“Iandros, my son.”
His own parents belonged to that very category of the vanished.
They must have lost their way within Iandros’s Subspace.
And their Life Force must have faded along with his Rampage.
There was a time when he wondered—perhaps his parents might yet live somewhere within that Subspace.
If one day his power grew stronger, if he could master the Subspace entirely, perhaps he might see them again.
Perhaps somewhere within the Subspace, the two of them waited for such an Iandros.
Yet that was nothing but a hollow dream.
As he matured and came to command his Subspace masterfully, Iandros searched again and again within it, sensing for any trace of Life Force.
But he felt nothing.
No living soul dwelt there.
His parents had simply vanished long ago, swept into his Rampage.
Which meant only one thing: no one could survive when a Subspace underwent Rampage.
In that sense, when they first searched for Je, there was nowhere he could be found.
The princess who owned that Subspace had ceased to exist, and her Subspace had shattered completely.
Nothing could be recovered from there. That Tiel survived at all was a miracle.
If one placed a single ant inside a gift box and burned it in a furnace, what were the odds that ant would live?
What were the odds of finding the ant’s corpse among the ashes?
The probability approached nearly zero. Thus Iandros could not bring himself even to search for Je.
The space he had entered had vanished entirely; Iandros had no sense of where even to begin looking.
He considered whether Je might have used that ‘Passage’ to cross over, as Tiel had when entering Iandros’s Subspace.
‘Yet I sense no Life Force—none at all.’
Iandros’s power had grown nearly complete; within his Subspace, nothing lay beyond his control.
That he sensed nothing meant, as said before, that Je had not crossed through his Passage.
Which suggested that he had likely…
‘Vanished entirely alongside the princess.’
Had he ever imagined the Subspace he trusted so deeply would shatter so completely?
He must have believed that by fleeing there, he could escape entirely.
But when the princess’s mind became whole and her Subspace fractured, Je left no trace behind.
Yes, he had surely believed that.
Yet.
“…You found him?”
When reports came that a man resembling Je had been spotted in a remote village on the border of Arne, Iandros found himself nurturing an unwanted hope.
How had Je escaped that Subspace?
How had he gotten out?
If he had survived that place, might his parents also be alive somewhere?
Somewhere within Iandros’s Subspace?
But soon after, when Je was discovered in that remote border village of Arne as a blackened corpse,
Iandros abandoned those hopes and thoughts.
According to reports, Je’s face had been twisted in agony, and his fingertips had crumbled away like dust, leaving nothing.
Likely he had suffered terrible harm forcing his way out of the Subspace.
Neither alive nor dead, he had wandered the lands of the Crasion Empire before meeting a wretched end.
Further investigation revealed that screams of agony had echoed from the inn room where Je lodged throughout the night.
He had clearly hidden in that remote corner of Arne, hunted and desperate, hoping to recover.
But was it the use of the Evil God Orpheo’s power? Or the strain of forcing himself from a collapsing Subspace?
Je died. Just like that.
It was said that as he perished, beasts swarmed to his corpse, their eyes gleaming with hunger to feast upon it.
Upon receiving this report, Iandros commanded that the beasts be left to devour the body.
He had no desire to recover Je’s remains. The man deserved no such courtesy.
Considering the grief Je had caused, the wasted time, and the squandered resources, it was a just decision.
Yet for beast-kin, “allowing beasts to consume a corpse” was an act of extraordinary cruelty—an order beyond all proportion—so Iandros took care that word of this did not spread.
Instead, he released the Imperial House’s provisions and coin to aid the hungry in that region. The beast-kin soon forgot about Je’s corpse.
Only after hearing the report that every last trace had vanished completely did Iandros feel at ease, and he set aside thoughts of both the Subspace and Je.
For a moment, learning that Je had escaped the princess’s shattered Subspace, he had foolishly dared to hope that his parents might still live. He felt like a fool for that hope.
When Iandros drew upon his Ability, the entrance to Iandros’s Subspace appeared before him.
Beyond that threshold, Iandros’s Mansion shimmered.
‘I had thought I’d already sent them off in my heart.’
Yet I have not.
The faces of his parents flickered briefly before Iandros’s eyes, then faded.
Had they lived, they would have aged as much as Cassius of Asterian,
but the faces of his parents that appeared and vanished before Iandros’s eyes were like Iandros’s own at this very moment.
And so they would remain forever. Only Iandros would age. Only he would grow old.
While Iandros aged, his parents would watch him from beyond his memories, wearing those same unchanging faces.
‘I do not know when I shall be able to truly send you off.’
Ten-year-old Iandros had always wondered: how does one truly let go of departed parents?
Even now, Iandros still wondered that above all else.
And for a long while after, Iandros did not entertain such thoughts again.
However,
when time had passed and he saw a small child who resembled him,
Iandros remembered this day once more.
***
A small child had been born to Iandros and Tiel.
It was a blessing to the Crasion Empire, a joy beyond measure. On the day the child was born, Iandros held a grand celebration and distributed food to his people.
And looking upon the small child sleeping peacefully in the cradle, he thought of himself—the boy who had lost his mother and suffered for it.
Of Tiel, who had similarly lost her mother and endured that same anguish.
And there, as Iandros kissed the sleeping child’s brow, he made a vow.
That he would not abandon this child. He would not leave.
This child would never weep, longing for a mother’s embrace.
This child would never be torn from parents’ arms and raised by the hands of another.
There was a time when he had resented his parents for rushing in to save him, only to sacrifice themselves in his stead.
But Iandros then had been a very young boy. Now he was a father.
Only now could Iandros understand without hesitation those parents who had rushed in to save him.
If danger threatened this child, Iandros knew he would not hesitate to make the same choice.
But.
“I will do everything to see that it does not come to that, my little one.”
Iandros whispered softly, pressing his cheek tenderly against the sleeping child’s.

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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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