Time Healer Ceres - Chapter 50

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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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“Then this rumor is true?”
“What does this……!”
“This makes no sense……!”
A sharp gesture cut through the air.
“You’re saying the previous Family Head did not properly pass on the position to you?”
Oselt raised his hand to silence the clamoring elders, then posed his question with measured calm—though his expression was colder than anyone else’s in the room.
“No, that’s not it!”
Creel rushed to elaborate.
“My master lost the ring long ago…….”
“The previous Family Head?”
“Yes. As you know, his health was failing in his final years. His mind was not entirely clear. He could not recall where he had placed the ring.”
Creel shifted all responsibility onto the previous Family Head—his departed master, long since dead.
“He apologized to me and instead passed on this Fake Ring. I have tried my best to locate the ring my master lost, but to this day I have found nothing.”
……
Even as Creel offered his explanation, the elders’ expressions remained unmoved.
Though they had long watched over the Elrsia Countess House, they had never encountered such a situation.
A Fake Ring. In all their years, not a single Family Head had failed to properly inherit the Family Head’s Ring.
But was Creel’s account even truthful?
Had the previous Family Head truly lost the ring?
Now, at this moment, the strange circumstances surrounding the old Family Head’s death surfaced in their minds once more.
His sudden illness had shocked them all. Those who remembered the questions that lingered then could not shake their unease at the sight of the current Family Head wearing a counterfeit ring.
‘But…….’
The previous Family Head had been dead for some time, and they themselves had personally verified his handwritten will, transferring the Elrsia Countess title to Creel.
“I too regret deeply that the ring is lost… but I cannot spend my time blaming a master who has already departed this world, can I?”
Creel, acutely aware of this fact, let more force enter his voice.
“Regardless of what anyone says, I am the disciple acknowledged by my master. Please, consider only that fact.”
“Hmm.”
“But without the Family Head’s Ring…….”
“The previous Family Head lost it, did he not?”
“Even so…….”
A Family Head without the Family Head’s Ring.
The elders’ faces grew more troubled by the moment.
Knock, knock.
“Might I impose?”
At that very moment, the meeting room door swung open and a figure stepped in unbidden. It was Chaien, the Tower Master.
“A family council is in session.”
At his entrance, Oselt’s brow twitched slightly.
“This is no place for outsiders to enter at will.”
Despite the cold rebuke, Chaien merely smiled warmly and gave a light nod as if he understood perfectly.
“My secretary insisted there was something she absolutely had to convey.”
“Your secretary?”
Before his words had even finished, others entered the room behind him.
Seres, and following her, another figure who appeared with careful steps.
It was Herion, a member of the Elrsia House council.
“What are you doing here……!”
At her appearance, Creel’s face twisted in fury.
In response to his reaction, Oselt too fixed his gaze upon Herion.
“Everyone out, immediately! This is not a place for just anyone to enter!”
Creel’s voice rose to a pitch higher than ever before.
For some reason he could not name, Herion’s arrival sent an inexplicable dread flooding through him.
“Well, it’s…….”
Herion herself was equally bewildered.
She would never have guessed that Seres, whom she had been seeing frequently of late, would bring her to a family council chamber.
Since she could not understand why Seres had led her to this place, she too felt baffled and caught off guard.
“Once I convey this, I will go, even if restrained.”
Blocking Creel’s murderous stare directed at Herion, Seres stepped forward.
“What is it you mean to convey?”
“There’s no need to listen, Oselt. I can handle this matter myself……!”
“Let’s hear what she has to say.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said I would hear what you have to say.”
“……!”
A warning bell clanged in Creel’s mind—he needed to remove them immediately—but confronted with Oselt’s unwavering tone, he found himself unable to utter another word. The head of the Elder Council was not someone whose temper one dared provoke.
“Very well. What have you brought?”
Since Seres entered, Oselt had been studying her with evident interest.
A young noblewoman who couldn’t have been more than her late teens.
Yet even as she stepped into a chamber filled with countless elders—himself among them—she bore herself with perfect composure, which immediately caught his attention.
She moved as though this scene were utterly familiar to her, so unnaturally at ease.
“This.”
In response to Oselt’s question, Seres drew something from her pocket and extended it toward him.
The object emerged with such casual lightness—as though she were merely tossing aside a stone—that Oselt’s eyes widened in an instant, his gaze having fallen upon it without a second thought.
“That’s……!”
Those who glimpsed the object in Seres’s hand reacted much the same.
“Surely not……!”
“That’s……!”
Snap!
Some rose from their seats with gaping mouths; others half-stood, slack-jawed.
None could conceal their shock.
A crimson ring rested in her palm.
It was unmistakably……!
“The Family Head’s Ring…….”
It was identical to the one Creel now wore.
If one had to find a difference, it would be in the saturation of the red jewel set at its center.
The crimson light of the ring in Seres’s hand burned far deeper and more vivid, and the light rippled endlessly as though the stone itself were alive.
“It’s a forgery! It must be a forgery!”
Creel lurched to his feet, his voice cracking.
It was impossible for that to be genuine.
How could a ring he’d spent so long desperately searching for suddenly turn up in the hands of some woman with no connection to him whatsoever?
It had to be a fake—crafted by a faction bent on his ruin.
‘Could it be her……!’
Creel’s gaze fixed on Herion, who stood with an innocent, unknowing expression, and he glared at her with barely restrained fury. He was certain she had orchestrated this entire affair.
For nearly three years he’d treated her as though she were invisible, yet she’d stubbornly refused to leave—and now she’d engineered this catastrophe!
“A forgery?”
Seres regarded Creel with a look of disdain for a moment, then turned her head away.
She had no interest in entertaining his rambling denials.
Proving the ring genuine would be simplicity itself.
“Jubelios.”
A single name flowed softly from her lips.
Whoooosh!
“……!”
The conference chamber filled instantaneously with searing heat.
A massive crimson bird materialized, radiating tremendous warmth.
[What is this? Why is this place so cramped?]
The red bird, recognizing that the chamber was too confined to spread its wings, rapidly diminished in size.
Yet the heat pouring from its body remained formidable.
Circling the chamber once in a blur, the red bird settled docilely upon Seres’s shoulder.
“That, that, that……!”
“The Fire……!”
Confronted with the sudden phenomenon, the assembled elders could scarcely form words, their eyes wide with shock.
‘This is why there can be no doubt.’
A transcendent being that dwelt only in the true Family Head’s Ring.
The Fire Spirit King itself.
Jubelios, the Fire Spirit King, had been sealed within the Family Head’s Ring since ancient times.
Only the current head of House Elrsia could command him—only they could bear the ring.
“So that is the genuine Family Head’s Ring.”
Oselt, head of the Elder Council, could not tear his gaze from Jubelios, a low murmur of wonder escaping him.
It had been an eternity since he had laid eyes upon the Fire Spirit King directly.
Though bound to the ring, it was nonetheless the Fire Spirit King—and controlling such a being was no simple task, even for a house head.
Fearing that careless words might provoke the fierce and unpredictable spirit’s displeasure, even a house head would rarely summon him without grave cause.
No, he couldn’t summon it.
‘But then…….’
What was that presence?
[Well? Don’t you feel it? The very air transforms at my appearance alone? Behold the awe-struck wonder in their eyes.]
“Of course the air changes. It’s just the heat you’re radiating. It’s absolutely unbearable in summer.”
[That is all testament to this great one’s majesty.]
“Stop talking. You don’t get a turn to speak right now.”
[Am I not permitted to use my own mouth! Though I am bound within this ring, I am still the mighty Fire Spirit King……!]
“Quiet. Before I submerge you again.”
[…….]
The exchange was too quiet for Oselt to make out the words clearly, but watching Jubelios deflate at the woman’s rebuke left his mouth hanging open in disbelief.

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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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