Chapter 54

Chapter 54

Something huge stood on top of me. I could feel the harshness of something rubbing my face several times.

‘It stings…….’

My mind suddenly flashed with recognition as soon as I felt the touch. Large golden eyes were staring right at me, with big round irises, and vertically elongated pupils. Its white hair was fluttering on the sides of its face with its pointed ears perked on the top of its head, a long beard, and a moist pink noise.

‘A cat?’

It was not fully changed and turned into a scary monster yet, but it was definitely a large-sized cat. The cat was pressing down on me with its thick paws and licking my face with its coarse tongue. I couldn’t see any hostility in its eyes.

“Shushu! We need to get that cat off her!” I heard Deleign’s anxious voice ring out.

The Grand Duke and Wyndert seized the cat without a word so as to not provoke it.

Instead of pulling out their knives, they used their body strength to remove the cat from on top of me, and it seems that they didn’t have any plans to kill it because it wasn’t a monster yet.

“Meeeeeeeow!”

However, instead of obediently being removed from me, the cat glared at the Grand Duke and Wyndert and recognized them as enemies, at the same time, it was trying to cling to me so obsessively.

“Wait, wait! I don’t think this wants to attack me!”

The cat held out its paws angrily towards its enemies but it didn’t use its claws while holding me down. Rather, its big and fat paws stepping on me were soft.

“It’s going to ruin your face if it keeps licking you with such a rough tongue.” The Grand Duke spoke with a displeased tone of voice, and tore away the cat forcefully away from me with an almost monstrously annoyed facial expression.

“Meooow!”

The cat made a cry out of protest and tried to run toward me again.

‘Is that a monster? Why is it only doing this to me?’

Its size was indeed ambiguous. It didn’t look like a normal cat because of the size, but if you shrunk it down it would be quite normal and not very monster-like.

It seemed that it took a long time for it to grow to the size of a house. After seeing it in person, I understood why he wasn’t able to kill it during the subjugation.

From their perspective, it just looked like the forest cats and from a distance, this long-haired cat looked like it could be a sacred beast guarding the forest.

‘Such a pretty child…….’

The cat wiggled its tail and jumped over through the air, hitting me again.

It’s as if it was dying to cling to me with no qualms – an attitude telling me that it couldn’t stand being away from me.

“No! Save the lady!”

“Shushu!”

“Remove it now!”

Its fur was so long that I was buried under it and couldn’t properly hear the words of the people shouting to save me. Instead, I heard a different sound, something like the heartbeat of the cat.

‘Oh?’

Buried in its thick fur, I heard the cat’s heart pounding and found something unusual.

“What is this?”

I felt some similar energy to some I once felt and feeling something similar to my own spirit power in this situation caused me a great deal of discomfort.

‘It’s like mine but it’s different…….’

I remember feeling this power somewhere but of course, I couldn’t have felt so much familiarity with the spirit power of others.

‘Is this from my original memory? If so…….’

Maybe it was Azuela’s because she used the power they pulled out from me.

It is likely possible that this has to do with the plot of the Empress and Azuela using the cat.

Then I asked the Grand Duke about something I was curious about, while the cat was away for a moment.

“Dad, can a lot of mana and power coexist?”

“No ,and due to their strong spiritual power the imperial family can’t accumulate mana in the first place. If both of them were in a person, once they contain a certain amount, the two forces will collide and the person will die quickly.” The Grand Duke answered bluntly as he removed the cat from me again, while I was listening to his answer.

The cat kept running to me while the Grand Duke was constantly pulling it off of me. And rather than biting me or harming me, it was just rubbing onto me and it seemed like the Grand Duke couldn’t bring himself to kill it in front of me.

‘If you can’t accumulate spirit power and mana at the same time…….’

Spirit power, mana, and qi are all in conflict. One person cannot stack more than a certain amount of different types.

(T/N: qi is the circulating life force of a human/person based on Chinese philosophy and medicine [Source: Oxford Languages])

‘Then what will happen to this kid?’

I stared intently at the heart of the cat and traced it with my fingers. Wrapped around the heart was a thick layer of elemental power and there was also quite a bit of mana stored in there as well.

According to the Archduke’s words, this cat will not live long and will die. This cat, knowing what I was thinking, was clinging onto me.

‘No matter how much you want to be an empress and earn achievements, how could you do something like this?’

In the original story, the Empress struggled to be where she is now because Shuelina’s mother had already become the Empress, a position that should’ve been hers.

And simply because Shuelina was the daughter of the woman who possessed what she wanted, she decided to thoroughly destroy Shuelina’s life.

If all they needed was her spiritual power, they could have hidden Shuelina in a quiet place and let her live a normal life, while taking her spiritual power.

However, the Empress mistreated and abused Shuelina, sending her to various orphanages and imprisoning her in the Marquis’ estate. Something she could stomach doing because she was full of malice.

‘And the fact that she made up rumors that Shuelina was a wicked woman who was bullying her daughter…….’

Conversely, it was for the same reason that Azuela was able to earn achievements that made people enthusiastic about her, labeling her as a Saint.

It was in order to make the daughter of the former empress a wicked woman, while making her own daughter a Saint and be revered by all. Azuela won’t be able to ascend to the throne but she would be praised until her death.

“This is too much…….” I muttered softly as I felt my tears fall on their own.

“Shushu, why are you crying all of a sudden, what’s going on?” I couldn’t even answer Wyndert’s question so I just patted the cat’s fur.

This cat unwillingly became a monster. It killed many people, and with its increased destructive power and aggression, its body was also damaged. It was made into the culprit and waited for its master, who made it that way, to kill him.

‘This kid is like me.’

In the end, the power used to transform this cat was originally from me. The Empress’ job was to use and process my power at their will, and somehow, she wanted for me to take responsibility for creating this kid.

“Ugh…!”

I used the power of creation.

[e/n: this was originally translated as the power of illusion but that isn’t quite right since she actually brings things into reality from her imagination so hopefully the word I used helps prevent some confusion]

I imagined all of the spirit power and mana disappearing from within the cat’s body. However, it didn’t work out well, when I tried to imagine things that were unclear and vague and turn them into reality it had harsh repercussions.

“Ahh!”

My head felt like it was splitting as soon as I tried it, just like the day my power appeared.

“Shushu!”

I tasted blood in my throat.

I heard that the reason why I fainted that day was because I used too much power beyond what my body could handle, and I instinctively realized now that changing something in a living organism right away is difficult.

“You used your powers again! No, don’t do it!”

“Your face is so pale! Your skin is cold!”

I could feel my brothers were in a frenzy beside me. Perhaps feeling that my condition was getting worse, even the cat called out to me softly.

‘What do I do? How can I help this kid?’

It was unreasonable to try and change the source of life. However…… if only I can somehow distort it like the Empress did…….

‘Wouldn’t it be possible to make the situation more controllable even if I can’t change it outright?’

The source of that spirit power is ultimately me so I decided to take a different approach.

This cat won’t be able to survive and it will die if left as it is, and I couldn’t leave such an innocent creature behind.

I imagined hugging the cat first and then putting a blue ribbon around its neck.

‘While wearing this ribbon, you hide your mana.’

When you take off the ribbon, the mana comes back and you grow bigger.

However, as long as it was wearing the ribbon, it would hide its mana and go back to its original size.

Like the hero who sneaks into the Demon King’s castle in a fairy tale the Grand Duke had once read to me.

As I imagined such a slight anomaly, I felt something on my fingertips again and felt like vomiting.

My head suddenly ached. It was clear that this little body of mine can’t handle my strength yet.

‘It still works!’

I was so happy that I even forgot the pain, seeing the blue ribbon clearly displayed on the cat’s neck, while its size changed dramatically.

“Meow?”

The cat had a puzzled face from not knowing that it was the one who became smaller, so we became bigger from its perspective

‘It’s such a young cat……!’

I could not forgive neither the Empress nor Azuela nor the people from the White Magic Tower who obeyed their orders.

The little cat, small enough to fit in my arms, looked up at me and tilted her head.

I could feel the Grand Duke and my brothers shouting at the sudden change.

The little cat who had just shown great aggression earlier and wanted to kill, was now a docile little cat with its much smaller body the moment it wore the ribbon.

“It was suddenly smaller!” Deleign shouted curiously as he reached out to touch the cat.

“Meeeow!”

But the cat wouldn’t let Deleign touch its fur. It acted good when I was the one hugging it, and was even purring and swaying its tail, but it acted unpleasantly to others.

“So this is what you did.”

The Grand Duke looked at the sudden appearance of the blue ribbon on the cat, so I nodded.

Cats usually die before humans, but its life must be fading away every passing minute.

“I could feel the spirit power in this kid. It feels similar to mine, but with a slightly different spirit power mixed in.”

The Grand Duke already knew that the Empress’ messenger had ripped out some of my spirit powers from me. Just saying this would be enough to know who did this to the cat.

“The culprit may still be around here.” The Grand Duke said with an expressionless face.

It wasn’t because he thought of this situation as nothing, but because he was too angry.

“I can never forgive them. How can they make this kid live a life like this?”

I bit my lip and held back my tears.

I thought I got over it all.

I felt miserable and resentful when I met this child living a life like me.

The Grand Duke took something like a flute from his chest and blew it.

‘I can’t hear anything…….’

There was no sound from the flute.

1STKISSNOVEL. DO NOT STEAL MY TRANSLATION!

However, soon after he silently played the flute, knights started appearing one after another. I realized it was an item specially made for his soldiers. Everyone ran toward our direction to obey the Grand Duke’s orders even though they were wearing heavy armor.

“Explore the surroundings. Suspicious persons, especially wizards, must be captured.”

“We will obey your orders!”

As soon as the Grand Duke gave the order, the knights started running off in different directions.

“It’s amazing that they suddenly appeared like that.”

“There’s no way I wouldn’t have taken any safety measures when bringing you in a place like this.” The Grand Duke smiled and stroked my hair. (T/N: Anyone who wants to join me and apply to become the Grand Duke’s adopted daughter?)