Choosing the Baby’s Father From the Following – Chapter 89

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟖𝟗

“……What?”

The Empress, swaying as if about to collapse, asked hurriedly.

“Just now, what did you say? You said you can purify my son? Are you saying you’re a Saint?”

A Saint.

The being that could purify magic power with holy power has only existed in documents until now.

Like the magic sword ‘Belich’, which was just a legend before the discovery of the booklet.

The Empress grabbed Helena’s hand.

“Can, can you purify my son? If, if you can do that, I, I will……”

However, Helena avoided the Empress’s hand and silently shook her head.

“I apologize, Your Majesty.”

She said calmly.

“His Highness, the First Prince, has already exhausted all his life force and seems to remain in this world only by the will of the magic sword. Even if the magic power is purified somehow, he will not be able to survive in the end.”

Then Hart’s daughter got up from her seat.

“Sister, what do you mean? Does that mean you can make our father not sick?”

Helena looked at the little lady with her bright, imperial red eyes shining and nodded heavily.

Then she looked around at the Empress, the First Princess Consort, and her children.

“Perhaps I…… can do it. However, there is a high probability that His Highness will pass away as soon as he finds peace.”

Suddenly, the Empress changed her expression and blocked Hart’s front.

“Don’t touch him. What’s the difference between what you’re saying now and killing my son!”

Because she shouted loudly, the startled little child burst into tears.

The First Princess Consort, who had been sitting like a statue with her mouth shut, fell to her knees in front of the Empress.

“Mother, please……”

Hot tears streamed down from her reddish-brown eyes.

“Please, can’t you just let this person…… go? Does he look alive to you now, Mother……”

The Empress couldn’t answer and eventually collapsed in front of the First Princess Consort, sobbing.

After Helena patted the crying children’s backs to soothe them for a while, the Empress finally seemed to have made up her mind and stood up to look at her.

“Can you really…… do it? Is, is there a chance he might survive?”

Helena replied in a gloomy voice.

“I won’t say there’s no such chance, but it seems very low to me.”

Then, instead of the Empress, she looked at Lurik once more.

He had been standing by the door, silently waiting for Helena.

He also had a lot he wanted to say and ask.

But Lurik eventually nodded and replied.

“If that’s what you wish.”

Finally, Helena sat at Hart’s bedside and placed her palm over his face.

A white light spread widely under her small palm.

Even from the hands of the Tower Master, a genius of his generation, he had never seen such a white and even light emitted.

The Empress just stood still, watching Helena with wet eyes.

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

Helena remained motionless, sitting even as her face turned pale and she gasped for breath.

“……Helena.”

Lurik, unable to bear it any longer, approached her, but she didn’t even answer.

A long time passed.

At some point, the First Prince’s face, which had been stained with a blackish and grotesque color, returned to its usual state.

“……Father?”

When one of the daughters called him, Helena finally removed her hand.

Lurik wanted to hug her and check on her right away, but he couldn’t do anything but lightly touch her shoulder, afraid of giving the Empress a reason to find fault.

Then, Hart struggled to open his eyelids.

“Father……?”

A month and a half had already passed since he lost consciousness and fell ill.

His eyes, which had been tightly closed, finally opened and saw his children.

The red eyes, a symbol of Brentania, were clear and bright, unlike when he collapsed.

“Dera. Sissiny.”

Perhaps it was the last time he would call his daughters’ names.

The First Prince’s voice was as weak as the sound of the wind.

“……Father!”

When the children hugged him tightly, Hart smiled faintly.

A tear flowed from the corner of his eye as he finally found peace.

“Hart……!”

The Empress cried out to her son with tears streaming down her face, but Hart instinctively knew that the time he had left was very short.

So, instead of his mother, he looked at Lurik.

“……Ryu.”

It was a syllable he had never heard before, but Lurik instantly realized it referred to him.

The time their eyes met was very short.

But he couldn’t help but understand what Hart was trying to say.

‘Only the two of us have suffered the pain of being the vessel of ‘Belich’, a pain that others don’t know.’

Hart’s regaining consciousness was only for a fleeting moment.

The red eyes that had opened with such effort soon hid under his eyelids, and his arms, which had briefly held his two daughters, fell to the floor with a thud.

“Father! Father!”

“Your Highness!”

The court physician, who had been by his side the entire time, checked his pulse and shook his head.

Then, the Assistant Secretary, who had been waiting in a corner of the room the whole time, stood up and declared.

“……His Highness, the First Prince, Hart Theuderic Brentania, has passed away.”

He was the one who had never left the room, not even for a moment, with the court physician after the Tower Master withdrew his magic and the First Prince’s life was in danger.

The sound of crying spread like waves.

Upon hearing the news, the court ladies all knelt and wailed.

After a long while, Lurik helped Helena up from the sea of tears.

He wanted to carry her in his arms, but unable to do so, he moved his leaden feet towards the detached palace.

As soon as he entered the detached palace, he grabbed Helena’s arm and checked on her.

“Are you alright?”

Helena nodded, albeit with a somewhat weak gesture.

Then she asked Lurik in return.

“How about you, Your Highness? Are you alright?”

Lurik looked down at Helena in disbelief and, regardless of who might see, embraced her tightly.

“……Your Highness?”

“Just for a moment……, let’s just stay like this for a moment.”

He was too insignificant to be a rival, yet too distant to be a friend.

He was his only brother, the one with the high status and the name that had made him live his life as a shadow.

He had never liked him for a single moment, yet they had spent an awfully long time together.

It was an early farewell to a blood relative whom he had hated, yet occasionally pitied.

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

A long, long time ago, when Lurik was twelve and Hart was thirteen.

It was the same year that Lurik, after reducing his sleep and training tirelessly, received his certification as a Sword Master.

“Seeing as even you could become one, being a Sword Master isn’t much, is it?”

On the way to the training ground, Hart sat on the wall and sneered.

“……Yes, I suppose so.”

When Lurik replied without even looking up at him, Hart jumped down from the wall, fuming.

Only then did Lurik stop, slightly nervous.

‘If he misses his footing and falls, the blame will needlessly fall on me as well.’

He was only worried about that, but Hart, furious, blocked his path.

“Is that it? The new sword you received?”

Lurik finally understood why the Crown Prince was picking a fight.

Despite having everything in this empire handed to him simply for being the Empress’s son, he was coveting the one symbol that Lurik had earned with his own ability.

‘Unlike the red hair he envied so much, I suppose he thinks he can easily take this from me.’

In their younger days, when Hart was envious of his hair, it was common for him to throw mud and sprinkle ashes on Lurik.

As Hart reached out as if to snatch the sword’s hilt, Lurik quickly turned half a circle and avoided his touch.

“Hey, that’s cheating! Would it hurt to just let me see it?”

He couldn’t possibly be inferior to the Crown Prince in agility.

“You have never shown me any of the items you have received so far, Brother.”

Lurik replied and quickly ran to the training ground.

Hart ultimately failed to catch Lurik, but a few days later, an incident inevitably occurred.

When he woke up in the morning, his sword was gone.

“Have you seen my sword?”

Lurik frantically searched every corner of the detached palace, grabbing every employee he encountered and asking.

“My sword, the imperial sword that His Majesty newly bestowed upon me!”

Among all the employees who only shook their heads, one of the guards hesitantly opened his mouth.

“Well, actually……”

“What is it?”

“Early this morning, I saw His Highness the Crown Prince passing through the hallway……”

Lurik’s eyebrows furrowed.

“And?”

“Somehow, unlike usual, he seemed to be…… wearing a sword. I couldn’t be sure if it was the imperial sword!”

Furious, Lurik ran straight to the main palace, but the Crown Prince cleverly avoided him all day and didn’t appear in his sight.

‘An audience with His Majesty the Emperor, Imperial studies, observing political meetings……’

Hart had a full schedule of important events that Lurik couldn’t interrupt.

And he couldn’t just run to his father and whine that his brother had taken his sword.

“I said I would give the sword to the more capable son, but I didn’t expect you to take it at the age of twelve. I look forward to more from you in the future.”

It was the first time his father had said he expected something from him.

But he didn’t want to whine that he had already lost the sword to his brother just a few days after receiving it.

Four days passed like that.

On the day he decided he couldn’t bear it any longer and would get the sword back by force, heading towards the Crown Prince’s Palace, Hart’s voice leaked through the gap in the door.

“Mo, Mother. This is just temporary…… I just borrowed it from Lurik for a while.”

It seemed Hart had been caught by the Empress with the sword.

Lurik was secretly amused by Hart’s seemingly flustered voice.

“Put it down this instant, this instant!”

The Empress, unusually surprised, scolded Hart severely.

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