Chapter 65
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? How could my dead brother have a daughter? It’s been ages since he went missing. What, did he roll around in bed with a corpse or something?”
“Pegasus found her. Her Yudia bloodline is definitely confirmed for now.”
“…Ha?”
Klein Yudia let out a hollow laugh.
He crossed his arms, frowning deeply as he roughly raked his hair back. The story was so unbelievable that disbelief welled up inside him, but since the divine beast had specified her, he had nothing left to say.
Divine beasts were fundamentally sacred beings of the gods.
They did not lie.
There was no way their search based on the conditions could be wrong.
Rudbride also seemed to sense Klein Yudia’s disbelief and frustration, silently raking his own hair back roughly.
“I hear she’s around six years old now. That lines up with about when that boy went missing.”
“So you’re saying there was some woman he was seeing right before he disappeared? With his personality?”
“That’s exactly why. After he pulled the holy sword ‘Orhator’ that the founding family head used, he kept getting pushed away endlessly. He might have craved human company.”
Klein Yudia’s face crumpled at Rudbride’s words.
“How the hell did you even find out about this? And why is she showing up now, of all times?”
“No idea. She might have been too far away. Pegasus sensed her recently and let me know. Her face is definitely… she looks just like him.”
Rudbride murmured softly, his expression tinged with a wistful longing.
Kiriel Yudia, who had been listening silently, slowly opened his mouth.
“…You’re saying my eldest brother’s child is alive?”
“That’s right.”
“Then why haven’t you brought her here? What are you waiting for?”
Kiriel Yudia asked with a hardened expression.
Rudbride hesitated at his words. He could feel how deeply Dios Yudia still loomed large inside Kiriel Yudia, from the quiet undercurrent of anger.
“I do plan to bring her, but it seems the people there are refusing since we suddenly claimed she’s a member of the ducal family.”
“Is it just the child?”
“No, the mother’s there too. Seems like she’s the woman he was seeing briefly before he disappeared, just as I thought. We even found a letter he left behind.”
Kiriel Yudia’s eyes widened again at Rudbride’s words.
Not even a body had been left behind. Not a single fragment of a corpse could be found.
Since Kiriel Yudia had been the last to infiltrate the Demon King’s castle, the fact that he’d found nothing made him feel the most hollow and wretched.
All he’d been able to recover was a pendant that had fallen after the Demon King died and turned to ash.
A silver pendant engraved with the Yudia ducal family’s crest. It was a pendant Kiriel had gifted his brother long ago.
And inside it was a tiny photo of a newborn baby, so small its eyes weren’t even open yet.
Back then, he hadn’t had a moment to think about what it was, and later he’d quietly looked into it without telling anyone, just in case… but he’d found nothing.
“No matter how you look at it, do you have proof that child is really my brother’s daughter and not some collateral branch? Pegasus can’t distinguish between collateral and direct lineage, can it?”
“She looks just too much like him when he was little. You’ll see when you meet her. You’ll understand why I think that.”
He sighed as he spoke.
“The mother described the man she was with, and it matched him too. Of course, until we do a proper examination, it’s all just my guess. So come and see for yourself to confirm the details.”
“…It’s true there was a child belonging to my brother.”
Kiriel, who had been silent, suddenly spoke up.
All three pairs of eyes turned to him at the abrupt statement.
“Wait, you’re saying our eldest brother had a kid? For real? How would you even know that?”
“Yeah. Back when I defeated the Demon King and picked up my brother’s pendant, there was a photo of a newborn inside. The baby’s eyes weren’t even open yet, but it had the same water-colored hair as our eldest brother.”
Rudbride’s mouth fell open at Kiriel’s words.
He’d never even heard that Kiriel had found the pendant, and now to hear there was a baby photo inside—it was absurd.
“There was? Then why didn’t you say anything?!”
“I didn’t think of it at the time… Later, I looked into it using ‘White Shadow,’ but I didn’t find anything worthwhile back then.”
“White Shadow couldn’t find it?”
When Klein Yudia, who had been listening quietly, frowned and asked back, Kiriel nodded.
“Yeah.”
“It’s surprising that something even White Shadow couldn’t find has turned up now.”
White Shadow(白影).
True to its name meaning “white shadow,” it was a secretive special force that had served the Yudia Ducal Family for a long time.
An organization for meaningful killing in the Yudia Ducal Family, where meaningless killing was forbidden.
They operated in the deep shadows beneath pure white light, mostly specialized in quietly gathering intelligence.
An independent entity that didn’t include a single member of the Yudia Ducal Family’s direct lineage.
Rather than serving the family head, it was a special organization that chose one direct descendant per generation as its master.
And the current White Shadow had chosen Kiriel as its master.
They could find anything, and they would unhesitatingly sacrifice their lives for their missions.
White Shadow handled the selection of its own members solely through the hands of its leader. The Yudia Ducal Family was their employer, but they couldn’t interfere with personnel decisions.
Because no one’s hands reached them, they were the ones who could be trusted even if internal strife arose or traitors appeared within the Yudia Ducal Family.
All the more so since they never betrayed their chosen master until death.
“So you’re saying that child is really our brother’s kid?”
“I’m saying there’s a good possibility.”
White Shadow had chosen the youngest son—not the eldest who drew the holy sword, nor the second son who won victory after victory in battle.
The young boy everyone had shunned and whispered about as cursed by the demons.
“So you’re going to bring her here?”
“She carries Yudia blood either way. Whether she’s Dios’s child or not needs more verification, but…”
“If she’s direct lineage and not even collateral, we can’t just leave her be. Someone has to take her in.”
At Salame’s words, Rudbride narrowed his eyes and slowly turned his head.
Only one person came to mind who could be entrusted with his eldest son’s child.
“If she agrees to come, will you take her in, Kiriel?”
He thought Kiriel, who had followed Dios so devotedly, would raise her more than well enough.
Especially since… he seemed a bit different lately, after adopting those two children recently.
Kiriel hesitated at Rudbride’s words but fell silent.
“…….”
Normally, he would have agreed lightly. No, he might have even volunteered to adopt her himself.
But…
‘…Four kids?’
Kiriel furrowed his brow. No matter how he thought about it, it seemed too much to handle.
Taking care of just one Bunny was as exhausting as handling three kids.
“Daddy… a man who couldn’t be chosen.”
Kiriel paused at the sudden memory.
He was already seen as a man who hadn’t been chosen, so having four kids on top of that felt off somehow.
Plus, taking on one more would feel like dealing with six kids in terms of fatigue, and he wasn’t confident he could manage that far.
“I’ve already got three kids, so let me think it over.”
After a long silence, Kiriel gave that answer, and Rudbride’s expression turned strange.
“Three? I get Bunny and Allen, but who else did you adopt?!”
“Who knows.”
Kiriel drawled lazily, sweeping his relaxed gaze over Klein.
“One of my nephews disowned his dad because he hates him and moved into the annex.”
“Making up nonsense?”
“Even as an adult, you act like a damn kid, so no one sticks around you, hyung.”
At Kiriel’s words, Klein Yudia’s cheek twitched as if he were pissed off, and he opened his mouth with a fierce expression.
“I could take being trashed by everyone in the world, but not from you! Where’s another guy who plays as lone wolf as you?!”
“In the end, your son came to me, didn’t he…? I didn’t know I was so popular with kids.”
“Ha?”
“You must’ve tormented the poor thing so much—his face turned beet red at one compliment, didn’t know what to do with himself.”
Seeing Klein Yudia’s flustered expression, Kiriel smirked, then rose leisurely from his seat.
“He complained nonstop that his dad was too strict… and now he’s doing the exact same thing? Anyway, time’s up, so I’ll be going.”
Thud.
Kiriel left with an expressionless face after dropping that bombshell, and the door closed. A heavy silence descended soon after.
