Episode 125
Ren reached the nursery in the blink of an eye.
Something had happened; the defensive shield was active.
It was undoubtedly magic installed by Grand Duke Babenberg after he purchased the hotel.
Ominously, someone was collapsed near the baby’s crib.
Then, suddenly, the steep, choking sound of a baby’s cry reached his ears.
“Waaah! Waaaah!”
Ren reflexively turned his head and froze in shock.
Where his gaze landed was a wide-open window, and a tiny baby was perilously dangling from a slender woman’s fingertips.
The woman shrieked in a sharp voice.
“Come any closer and I’ll drop her! Wouldn’t Louise be so disappointed if you couldn’t save the baby, even after getting this far into the room?”
Finally, the clouds that had obscured the moon receded, clearly revealing the owner of the voice.
It was the Second Princess, Cyril.
Ren hastily estimated the distance between himself and Frilis.
He wasn’t one to bother with calculations usually, but having recently used magic to the point of draining his life force, his body wasn’t in good condition.
‘Get a grip, Len Daphte.’
Just the mere assumption of the baby being dropped felt like his insides were melting.
Ren calmly caught his breath.
His opponent was just a single minor noblewoman.
If he could just pull both her and the baby to his side in one go, that would be the end of it. Provoking her with a rush would only be counterproductive.
So, he layered another defensive shield over the one already surrounding the room.
Now, no one could interfere with him. All he had to do was pull the baby over as he intended.
‘It’s unsettling that Frilis is so young, though…’
Just then, the Second Princess asked in a voice tinged with madness.
“Ren Daphte, the genius of the Magic Tower. Don’t you actually want revenge too?”
But her question, mixed with the pitiful, incessant crying of Frilis, didn’t reach Ren’s ears at all.
In truth, he couldn’t care less about what she was saying.
He was only thinking of the baby.
So, instead of recklessly using magic, he began to deploy another defensive shield outside the window.
The Second Princess continued to babble.
“You liked Louise too, didn’t you? Didn’t you spend the last year following her around, attending to her every need?”
Outside the window, in a place invisible to the Second Princess, a dense defensive shield was being woven.
Only when he was confident it was sufficiently complete to save Frills even if the Princess dropped her, did Ren finally have the composure to process her words.
“Aren’t you sick of this child too? The one who deceived us all, abandoning noble honor, dignity, and face! A secretly kept illegitimate child!”
It was only then that Ren’s brow finally furrowed.
Belatedly, he properly understood the reason for the Second Princess’s presence here.
‘She’s not here for her parents’ revenge?’
From the moment he discovered the Second Princess until now, he had assumed she was here for revenge for her family and house.
But it seemed she was here merely because of her twisted love for the Grand Duke and her jealousy towards Louise.
While Ren was flabbergasted, he also thought this might make things easier to resolve.
If he could divert the Second Princess’s attention elsewhere, the baby might not even have to endure the terrifying experience of falling onto the shield outside the window.
“What kind of insane nonsense are you spouting, Second Princess?”
So, Ren deliberately spoke with annoyance.
“That child is my daughter. If she weren’t, would I have been madly following and protecting Louise all this time? Does the Master of the Imperial Magic Tower look that idle to you?”
He calmly stated what, until a month ago, he had believed without a single doubt.
Since it wasn’t a lie, Ren’s tone was utterly natural.
“Spending the night first wasn’t enough to claim the esteemed Princess, and while that’s bitterly frustrating, this child is still my daughter.”
But then, the Second Princess suddenly burst into laughter.
“Your daughter?”
Her laughter was shrill and had a strangely precarious edge to it.
As it mixed with the intensifying baby’s cries, it created a dreadful cacophony.
Ren regretted needlessly provoking her and prepared to pull both her and the baby towards him immediately.
At that moment, the Second Princess cut her laughter short and asked,
“Don’t tell me you’re still suffering from the side effects of ‘Illusia’?”
The Second Princess instantly recognized the flicker of unease and anger that passed through Ren’s purple eyes.
A woman’s tearing laughter echoed like hell.
“Len Daphte, you sentimental fool… So you were just a know-nothing know-it-all after all?”
Her high-pitched voice was laced with laughter, as if she couldn’t contain her glee.
“That one and only night you fell asleep in Louise’s room—don’t tell me you still don’t remember it? Or did you see a hallucination that night? One that made you think you were the father?”
The eyes of the continent’s strongest mage turned cold.
But the Second Princess, heedless of her life, continued to chatter on.
“Oh, Ren. I really wanted to help you…!”
She spoke exaggeratedly and clicked her tongue.
“Well, honestly, it didn’t matter if it was you or the Crown Prince. What on earth did you men see in a wretch like Louise that was so precious that you couldn’t even manage to bed her once? You pathetic men…”
The mage’s aura was gradually becoming unsettling.
Chirilla was a commoner who couldn’t sense magic, but she could feel with her entire body just how angry the Tower Master was.
And that made it all the more hilarious.
If she provoked him, if he helped, a much more plausible revenge would be possible.
The black flames were almost synonymous with Tower Master Ren.
They were a vicious fire that devoured everything, leaving only ashes behind.
Louise wouldn’t even have the baby’s body to keep.
“You were all so indecisive and incompetent that I helped you! Why couldn’t you even accept the feast I laid out for you?”
Each time she spoke indignantly, the baby in her grip swayed perilously.
“Waaah!”
Cyril’s found the crying sound truly dreadful.
She scowled and said,
“Doesn’t it annoy you too? This tiny, loud, hot, wretched lump of flesh!”
Then, tears suddenly streamed from Cyril’s golden eyes.
“And despite being like this, she has red eyes? See? Don’t you?”
She shook the baby in her hand arbitrarily.
The baby’s cries grew louder, but Chirilla muttered to herself as if she couldn’t hear them.
“If she had resembled Kal, I wouldn’t have hated her as much… It wouldn’t have been this dreadful!”
Then, she looked at Ren with her crazed, gleaming golden eyes.
“So let’s kill this child for revenge. Then, those two will blame each other and be miserable for eternity. Right?”
“Waaaaaaaaaah!”
The Tower Master’s eyes, watching the tirelessly crying baby, had already grown cold.
“You say she’s not my child? Are you sure?”
A sharp laugh echoed once more.
“Oh, poor Ren… The hope of House Daphne, the Empire’s Flame… Pfft, you clueless man…”
Cyril pulled the baby she had been holding outside the window back in and showed her to Ren.
“Do you see any part of her that resembles you even a little?”
Then, without giving him a moment’s pause, she answered herself.
“Of course not! As if Louise would ever sleep with you, with the likes of you…! She’s still a Princess!”
Ren stared intently at the baby without making a sound.
In the two months he had been at the Tower, the baby had grown unrecognizably, yet she still looked exactly like Louise.
He still couldn’t even entertain the thought that the baby might resemble another man.
The Second Princess pushed the baby closer to Ren and whispered.
“Let’s get rid of the baby. Make it as if she never came into this world, turn her to ashes. Ren, that’s what you do best, isn’t it?”
Ren stared holes into the baby for a long time, and finally, he reached out both hands.
Cyril, her lips parted in excitement, handed the baby over.
“Let’s tear their hearts to shreds. Let them suffer so much just from seeing each other that they can never be together forever. How about it? It’s what you want too, isn’t it?”
“Waaaaaaaaaah!”
Frilis continued to cry even in Ren’s arms.
Now that he thought about it, this was the first time he had held the baby.
‘So this is how light she was.’
The baby was warm even while swaddled.
Crying with all her might, she was sweaty and kicked her tiny, undoubtedly slender legs incessantly.
That woman who had tried to throw this baby out the window like a useless rag, that woman who had dared to feed the Magic Tower’s drug to the Master of the Imperial Magic Tower.
Ren would absolutely, absolutely never forgive her.
