The Baby Isn’t Yours

Kalia silently looked into Simon’s eyes.

There was no hesitation or lies in them, they were pure and clean.

Kalia liked Simon’s clear gaze, which was focused solely on her. This filled her with a deep sense of satisfaction.

“Of course, Simon.”

Simon smiled even more beautifully than ever at her confident answer.

It was the morning of the return to the capital.

* * *

“Hmm, hmhm, hehehe.”

A low humming noise echoed through Lirik’s laboratory.

Buford, who was packing medicine for the journey, stopped when he heard a sound. He found a small box covered in dust inside a dirty table.

Lirik smiled when he saw it.

“Oh, has it been here all this time?”

He opened the lid and found inside a handful of neatly tied hair. The light yellow hair, preserved by magic, shone glossy.

Even after 25 years.

“Thanks to this, I was able to get my job.”

Lirik smiled thoughtfully as he stroked ther hair.

He couldn’t help but be grateful to the fairy who saved his life when he was on the verge of death, and also helped him gain his wealth and fame, which seemed impossible to revive.

Thanks to her, he went from exile to a court physician with a completely new status.

Lirik immediately remembered the day that came to mind as vividly as if it were yesterday.

The day he removed the heart of a weeping fairy whose heart was beating strongly with life energy, and fed her magic stone that shone brightly inside, to a dying prince, and transplanted the heart into him.

The fairy heart was so full of vitality that it even suppressed the magic enveloping the prince’s body.

It was ironic.

What can be transplanted into a body saturated with demonic poison that cleanses his heart of a fairy.

The two forces collided, and as a result, they reached a delicate balance. Ironically, the power of the heart was enough to purify the magic that had spread throughout Buford’s body.

In order to suppress the powerful force that seeks to clear the clouded mind and body of the prince, Lirik has developed a medicine that can regularly affect the heart.

It was a powerful medicine made from the blood of the demon that had killed the fairy Gaia.

“Hmm, by the way, that fairy was definitely pregnant at the time.”

There was almost no information available about the fairy’s pregnancy at that time. That’s why he didn’t know that the fairies hadn’t shown their pregnancy for so long.

After he removed her heart and transplanted another, the fairy began to bleed.

There must have been a fetus in her flat stomach.

“No matter how much I think, but what a loss it is,” he shook his head with a serious face.

A child between a powerful fairy and a human.

The more the blood mixed, the stronger the genes became.

Too bad she ran away after he transplanted the gryphon’s wings into that woman.

“It died? Hmm, it must have died, right? It was a fetus after all… Tsk, what a shame. I had to take out the fetus.”

If only it could be allowed to recover through further growth.

“Tsk.”

Behind Lirik, who had stuck out his tongue low, Belgian, who had been looking at him dully before, said, gazing intently:

“Sometimes it seems like you’re not human anymore, Lirik.”

“Haha, really?” Lirik looked back with a smile on his face.

Neatly arranging his hair in a box, he casually pushed it back into place.

“But no matter how you look at it, it’s valuable data, isn’t it?” Lirik said, twirling around like an actor in a play.

“Valuable data. Hm…”

In fact, the demon Belgian seemed uneasy.

“A hybrid of a fairy and a human. A half-breed fairy born of a mother whose heart was stolen and injected with demon blood while still in the womb. Aren’t you curious to know what this child will be like?”

“Looks like you value life even less than me, demon.”

“Hahaha! It is an honor to be compared with demons, a great race.”

Lirik laughed heartily.

“But this is very bad. The child must have died?”

“The mother most likely also died, so can you really be sure there was a child?”

“That’s true. But for some reason, I can’t shake the feeling that perhaps the baby has been born.”

Especially since the mother had run away, he still had a glimmer of hope that the child could be born.

“If it had been born, it would have made an excellent test subject. Or great material.”

As Lirik muttered regretfully, the door opened and Buford entered the lab.

“Is the medicine all prepared?”

“Oh yes. Here. Are you leaving tomorrow?”

Buford received Lirik’s medicine and nodded his head slightly in response.

“Even if we leave now, it will take a month.”

“Our prince is very busy with the country’s affairs. You will become a wise Emperor.”

Buford frowned at his words.

“Emperor?”

“Ah, it’s nothing. You must defeat the haughty and ignorant Roxas and bring the rightful imperial power. I live to witness the day Your Highness takes the throne. Haha!”

Lirik laughed as if he himself wore the Emperor’s crown.

Buford looked irritably at Lirik and left with the medicine.

Everything was boring and at the same time anger seethed in everything.

Rotten country, his even more rotten body and soul.

Yes, maybe it would be better if they all died.

So he won’t be the only one to fall.

* * *

“I’m sorry you’ve been through so much.”

Kalia took off her dress and stood before the lord in the clothes she felt most comfortable in.

The dress was comfortable, but Kalia felt more at ease in pants that allowed her to move freely, and that made her expression lighter.

The lord and his wife gave Kalia gentle smiles as they shook their heads.

“No. Rather, we are honored that you have stayed in our castle. If we knew you are general Kalia, we would treat you even better. Please forgive us for any shortcomings in our hospitality.”

“No. I myself stayed here as Lia Rayman, and I leave here feeling more comfortable than I expected, thanks to your attention.”

“We are happy to hear that.”

Two prepared carriages, each with a small amount of luggage, were waiting for her. Since she arrived modestly, they didn’t have much luggage when they left.

Kalia looked at Loa with a completely different feeling than when she first arrived here.

‘Maybe this place called me…’

The small village she passed by remained in her memory and led her to the idea that she should give birth to her baby here, despite the fact that she was a month away from the capital.

Like a salmon rising up against the current of a river in search of her hometown, perhaps her instincts called her here.

‘Definitely…’

Kalia’s gaze went cold.

‘I will find them.’

The doctor who kidnapped her mother and turned her into an experiment.

The mysterious doctor who repaid her kindness with revenge.

Kalia looked around the village with narrowed eyes and saw a blue forest of fairies. At that moment, a thought flashed through her mind.

“Now, if I think about it, those monsters…”

Monsters with magic stones implanted in their hearts that scratched their chests. The corpse of a chimera that Simon picked up. And even the disappearance of fairies.

It all seemed to be connected.

‘These methods are all so cunningly similar.’

The audacity and cruelty of the methods were so similar to the actions of the doctor in this story.

Kalia’s gaze shifted to the country beyond the fairy forest.

Only two clues were written in the letter.

‘He said he was expelled from the Empire and relied on the nobles of Akan.’

His words could be lies, but even so, he was very likely ‘expelled’ from this country and went to ‘Akan’.

And there…

‘Even Prince of Akan, who practices black magic.’

Although the visible but obscure connecting line was tangled, it didn’t matter. You just had to carefully unravel it, step by step.

‘Come to think of it… the day I met Prince Akan, I asked Brik to explore Akan.’

She hadn’t contacted Brik, so she couldn’t confirm anything.

If she comes back, it looks like she’ll have to check that first.

“Kalia,” Simon called softly to Kalia, whose gaze was fixed on the horizon.

When Kalia turned around in response to the sound of his voice, the necklace Simon had given her swayed and rattled invisibly.

Simon looked at Kalia’s collarbone area and smiled lazily, as if satisfied.

And this person, who was looking at Kalia with a beautiful smile as if painted, was the Archmage of the Empire. He promised her that he would do whatever she wanted. Could there be something more reliable?

“What are you looking at?”

“Some country.”

“Akan?”

Kalia nodded with a smile without saying a word.

Simon’s beautiful white hands slid naturally between her fingers like water and intertwined.

“Yes, this country seems very suspicious.”

Simon kissed the back of her hand he was holding.

“The investigation has already begun.”

Hearing Simon’s words, Kalia raised an eyebrow in surprise.

When her eyebrow twitched slightly, Simon thought it was cute and he kissed her on the forehead.

“If I don’t move first, you will. I can’t see it.”

“…Then, what should I do when we arrive?”

At Kalia’s questioning words, Simon chuckled.

“Just remember to sharpen your sword.”

When Kalia looked at him with a puzzled look, as if asking what he was talking about, Simon kissed her again as if couldn’t stand it.

“Because you have to cut off their heads with one blow.”

It was too sweet a kiss for a mouth that spouted cruel words.