Chapter 2

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Translator: Harry Potta

Chapter Title: The Super Shy Kid is Looking for Dad 101

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“What... appeared?”

In response to Adelin’s question, Tiye fidgeted restlessly, staring at the space behind her.

But from just a little while ago, there really had been something there.

Something visible only to Tiye’s eyes in this moment.

‘Before, even Tiye didn’t know what it was.’

But now she did.

Because she had once met Basto’s late wife, Eve, back in Pearl City.

Tiye lowered her voice.

“That thing... it looks just like a ghost. No, like a spirit...”

“Don’t joke around.”

But in that instant, Adelin cut Tiye off.

Her voice had begun trembling faintly before she knew it.

Her eyes bloodshot, her jaw clenched tight, Adelin said,

“It’s... my mother. Even if you’re just a kid, that kind of joke is...”

Tiye’s eyebrows drooped dejectedly.

“It’s not a joke...!”

She turned to the mercenaries for help, and Nordics stepped forward with a serious expression.

“The child is telling the truth.”

Adelin stared at Nordics with a blank face.

“She’s a mage. To be precise, a necromancer who handles dark-attribute magic. She’s seen the departed before, from time to time...”

“Is that it?”

But Adelin’s reply dripped with sharpness.

“I was trying to help you people. Is this the gratitude I get?”

“Listen, Adelin. That’s not...”

“If this isn’t mockery of my mother and me, then what is?”

In the end, tears that Adelin had held back for so long began to fall in big drops from her eyes.

Her fists, clenched tight, trembled finely.

“I...”

She staggered, her shoulders shaking as she sank to the floor.

It was then that Tiye, tears starting to well up in her own eyes, stamped her feet in helpless frustration.

“...”

The woman standing behind Adelin approached Tiye.

She pulled a white handkerchief from her bosom and gently placed it atop Tiye’s hand.

The woman gazed at Adelin with a sorrowful smile.

As if asking her to pass it along.

Tiye hesitated for a moment before carefully inching toward Adelin.

And she held out the handkerchief to the sobbing woman.

“Sis, this...”

Adelin looked up at Tiye with reddened eyes.

Then, in the next moment, she caught her breath sharply.

Countless tiny specks of light were gathering above Tiye’s palm.

The lights clustered together as if enveloping something, forming a single object.

“...Ah.”

A short gasp escaped Adelin’s lips.

The lights that had gathered on Tiye’s palm had become a handkerchief.

The very one she had personally placed in her mother’s hands on the day she left for the capital to serve as the princess’s maid.

“How... how is this possible?”

“She keeps crying whenever she sees you, sis.”

“What...?”

“Because you’re crying, sis. The ghost looks sad too. She’s been crying nonstop while watching you...”

Adelin’s face twisted endlessly in grief.

With trembling hands, she grasped Tiye’s small one.

The warmth of the handkerchief seeped through the child’s fingers.

“Ugh... sob...”

Her breath hitching, she finally bent down and buried her face in the handkerchief.

“Mom... Mommy...”

A familiar scent wafted from the handkerchief.

The unmistakable smell of her mother, just as she remembered it.

Adelin huddled there for a long while.

Clutching Tiye tightly to her chest, sobbing loudly.

At last, when her cries subsided, she asked in a hoarse voice,

“Is Mother... is Mom really here with me?”

Tiye sniffled and nodded.

“I... I had no idea.”

She had assumed it was an assassin or a spy.

She had even found it odd at times.

How could trained killers fail to hide their presence so poorly? Something felt off.

But now she understood.

‘It wasn’t that she couldn’t hide it.’

She had done it on purpose.

To let her know she was there.

Because it was her mother.

Adelin clutched the handkerchief Tiye had given her.

She took a deep breath and asked,

“Can you hear what Mother is saying, by any chance?”

Tiye gazed toward the space behind Adelin.

But soon, her face fell, and she shook her head.

“No... I can see her lips moving like this, but no voice comes through at all.”

“...I see.”

“But she’s been pointing over there with her finger this whole time!”

Tiye gestured diagonally ahead.

Adelin turned her head in that direction, her eyes growing serious.

“It’s toward the lord’s castle.”

The direction Tiye indicated led to the path toward the lord’s castle.

Adelin’s eyes calmed steadily.

She steadied her breathing briefly.

Then, composing her emotions, she rose to her feet.

“Let’s go. If we delay any longer, the interrogation will start.”

Before entering the room.

She had overheard the Agaveert mercenaries’ conversation in the hallway.

If Reginald interrogated Veil, the Agaveert group might truly be exiled from the capital.

“Let’s rescue your comrade before the interrogation begins.”

Enzo rose to follow her.

“Is that even possible?”

“Possible or not, we have to try, don’t we?”

The Agaveert members exchanged glances.

“...Thank you. Truly.”

At Raoul’s words, Adelin shook her head as if it were nothing.

“It’s fine. I planned to help anyway.”

“Pardon?”

“When your comrade punched Reginald? Honestly, it felt good.”

Basto let out a short sigh.

An image flashed in his mind of Reginald’s two front teeth flying out at once.

“First, let’s check the underground dungeon. If he’s not there, we’ll have to climb to the top of the mage tower...”

“No!”

But then Tiye, who had been staring into empty air, hopped up.

The child shook her head vigorously for some reason.

“The pretty auntie says she’s not at the top or underground. She shook her head like this, like this.”

Adelin’s eyes narrowed.

“Not the spire or the underground dungeon?”

But aside from those two places, where else could they hold someone?

Yet soon, she let out a short gasp.

“No way.”

“Do you have an idea where?”

Adelin looked at Nordics.

“Yes. When Reginald first arrived at the lord’s castle, there was a place he took interest in, saying it’d make a good temporary jail.”

It was the stable located in the backyard of the lord’s castle.

The place where her father had personally raised and cared for his beloved horses in life.

“The stable. The one in the lord’s castle backyard.”

In the darkening forest.

Basto walked with his body crouched as low as possible.

Worried that a tree branch might brush Tiye’s face, who was riding on his back.

“This path is rougher than I thought.”

Raoul, leading the way, remarked, and Adelin nodded from beside him.

“This is the only back route to the castle that Reginald doesn’t know about. No choice.”

They were deliberately taking the long way around to avoid the soldiers’ eyes.

The forest path twisted with endless steep ups and downs.

Because of that, Nordics—who had kept up for the first twenty minutes—gave up midway and headed back to the village.

He planned to pack their belongings and prepare the carriage while the others extracted Veil.

So they could flee the village immediately if things went south.

“We’re almost there. See that wooden fence?”

Enzo nodded upon spotting the place Adelin pointed out.

In the distance, amid thick weeds and bushes growing up to a grown man’s waist.

A fence pieced together from planks came into view.

“Follow that fence, and you’ll reach the backyard soon. There might be guards, but...”

“We’ll handle them. Don’t worry.”

Adelin nodded reluctantly.

“Tiye, hold on tight.”

Meanwhile, at Basto’s words, Tiye wrapped her arms even more firmly around his neck.

That was when it happened.

“Gaaah... Aaaargh—!”

A bloodcurdling scream echoed from not far away.

Tiye’s face went pale white at the voice, as if someone were being tortured.