MBSGBC 06

Chapter 06

Mom?

Mo… mom?

I floated in the air, mouth wide open. Like a piece of laundry hanging in midair.

At that moment, a solid arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me in.

I didn’t need to check who the owner of that arm was. An all-too-familiar voice reached my ears.

“That’s enough.”

With one arm around my waist, Lion Voltain snapped his free fingers with a practiced motion—*click*.

As if everything that had just happened was a lie, everything that had been floating slowly sank back to the ground. *Thud*—the sound of my worn-out shoe tip touching the floor rang out loudly, like a judge’s gavel.

The passersby, who had suddenly experienced a disaster, murmured among themselves, searching for the cause of the incident. Lion, as if wanting no part in it, calmly moved away from the spot at a leisurely pace. One arm still held me, half-dragging me along.

Lion Voltain’s complexion, which I hadn’t seen in a few days, was unchanged. The dark circles under his eyes were still there, and his face was still excessively pale.

Whether others had dazed expressions or not, Lion Voltain didn’t care. He simply opened his mouth and said one thing.

“Ru. What did I tell you about using magic?”

The young boy, who had been following Lion with quick, short steps and looking up at me with sparkling eyes, finally gasped in surprise and covered his mouth with both hands. His rosy cheeks turned even redder, as if red paint might drip right off them.

“But Mom…”

“She’s not Mom.”

At Lion’s words, the child’s eyes grew even wider. After looking back and forth between my face and Lion’s, the child clung to my robe with eyes that looked like they were about to burst into tears at any moment.

“She *is* Mom.”

“Not yet. You have to earn her first.”

The man, replying absentmindedly, bent down and lifted the child with his free arm. Being able to lift a child fully with one arm—that was a physique rarely seen among mages. But honestly, it couldn’t be called a stable posture. I quickly pushed him away and said,

“Instead of that, hold the child pro—… Huh?”

Before I could even finish my sentence, my legs gave out and I plopped down onto the ground. Confused, I tried to get up several times while bracing myself on the floor, but my legs wobbled like a newborn fawn.

Lion looked down at me and muttered,

“You really are easy to fool.”

“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

“There was a paralytic agent on the flowers.”

“Excuse me?”

Come to think of it, the child who had been holding out the flower basket, asking me to buy one, had already disappeared without a trace. Realizing the situation had gone wrong, they had fled.

Lion Voltain was as calm as if he dealt with this kind of thing every day.

“It’s not a common trick, but they did use their head a bit. This kind of thing happens because you walk around broadcasting ‘I just made a big score,’ you know.”

He wrapped his arm around my waist again and pulled me closer. My wobbling body was dragged along in the direction he led, and I ended up leaning completely against him.

It wasn’t that I had never experienced light physical contact during my Magic Tower days, but we had rarely been this intimately close, so it felt somewhat uncomfortable.

“Mom.”

Unbelievable reality kept hitting me in waves.

The child in Lion’s arms reached out to me, blinking their eyes. The feeling of their soft little palm touching my hair gave me an indescribable sensation. My chest felt ticklish, but at the same time, I was baffled.

To be honest, the child did resemble me. But suddenly, *Mom*?

There’s a limit to responsibility without pleasure!

Lion Voltain looked down at the red-cheeked child blinking their eyes and said in an indifferent tone,

“If you’re sleepy, sleep.”

“I don’t want to…”

“I won’t run away, so you can sleep.”

“Really?”

The large olive-colored eyes turned toward me.

“You won’t go anywhere?”

Oh, good heavens. I *wanted* to go somewhere. I wanted to bolt right now and escape from the immediate crisis!

But my mouth wasn’t honest.

“I won’t go.”

Hearing my answer, the child beamed brightly. With half-drowsy eyes, forcing themselves to stay awake—they looked so adorable I wanted to bite them.

With a smile still lingering on their face, the child soon fell asleep. *Huff, huff*—breathing that soft, childlike breath.

Lion gave a slight tilt of his chin, and a group of people in plain clothes approached. After receiving the child from Lion’s hands, they pointed at me as if asking what to do. Lion shook his head and gestured again with his chin.

“Just watch the child properly. Prepare one more carriage.”

Lion’s attendants nodded without a word and disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared.

I glanced in the direction the child had gone and muttered,

“They seemed to be in a deep sleep. Isn’t that magical exhaustion?”

Lion glanced over his shoulder at the square, which had become half-chaotic, and replied calmly,

“Of course it is. They used that level of large-scale magic without a proper spell formula.”

“I suspected as much, but you taught a child that young area-of-effect magic? Are you out of your mind?”

“You’re awfully noisy.”

Lion bent down slightly and lifted me in both arms. The so-called bridal carry.

“People are watching!”

“Let them. If you cared about what people think, why did you bother putting a perception-inhibiting spell on your robe?”

Right. I did do that.

Feeling sheepish, I stopped resisting, then realized something.

“…Wait. How did you recognize me?”

“A mere Magic Tower-level perception inhibition? That doesn’t work on me.”

Lion walked confidently, whether people stared or not. I covered my face with both hands and had no choice but to endure the current moment with patience.

Once I felt safe, the events that had just happened finally registered in my mind.

If I had been pickpocketed for the check in my pocket, I truly might have been unable to recover on my own.

*’I should thank him.’*

That’s just basic human decency. The problem was, something was prickling at my conscience.

I peeked one eye out from behind my hands and looked up at him.

“…But. Wasn’t your timing for saving me a little too perfect?”

“Because I was watching from the beginning.”

“Oh, from when?”

“From when you were running around the pawnshop.”

He tilted his head slightly, countering my bewildered gaze. An annoyingly pretty smiling face.

Getting into the duke’s carriage was half forced, but also half voluntary. Partly because I could barely move due to the paralytic agent, but also because I was worried I might get hit from behind again and have all my assets stolen.

Lion Voltain?

He was a man who, without a single proper business bearing his name, raked in enormous annual profits from territorial taxes, port tolls, market fees, mines, and the like. My windfall was pocket change to him. Even thinking about it was a waste.

Lion Voltain half-laid me down on one side of the carriage seat and sat on the opposite side. Then he took out a bottle of water from a basket and handed it to me.

The bottle I received was warm. It seemed he had done some kind of magical treatment inside the box. As I sipped the warm water little by little, the numbness in my toes gradually seemed to improve.

Lion Voltain complained like a child.

“This is all because you didn’t come, you know. I even left you an invitation.”

“You never said *when* to come.”

“The child said they wanted to see their mom quickly, and you weren’t coming—so as a last resort, I used this to find you.”

He tapped his temple with his finger.

He used his head? How?

“Your thoughts are obvious.”

“More conceited talk.”

“You didn’t want to be in debt to me, right? But you needed money. So you wanted to make a huge profit using the big events you remember, didn’t you?”

“Ugh.”

“Can I ask you one question?”

“Go ahead…”

“You’re the one who used the regression magic. Didn’t it ever occur to you that profiting from future knowledge would mean owing me?”

Of course, I…

I *had* thought about it…!

“You thought it’d be fine if you earned it secretly, right?”

*Ugh!*

I was so ashamed of having my dirty little secret exposed that my eyes actually welled up with tears. This was practically a physical blow. Lion Voltain was determined to beat me into incapacity with facts…!

He watched me in my internal torment as if observing a spinning toy. His voice, laced with amusement, coiled around my neck like a snake’s tail, chillingly.

“Without even knowing what kind of game you’ve jumped into.”

“…What game do you mean?”

“That rabbit.”

“…You mean the nameless beast?”

“I caught it and handed it over.”

“Wait, you mean in the past life too…?”

“The house asked for my help.”

If Lion Voltain was talking about *the house*… there was only one—the royal family!

“Whoa, so you’re saying the royal family ran a rigged gambling scheme?”

“Not exactly. I just had some power saved up for today.”

Let me recap.

In the past life, no one had bet on that nameless rabbit. A beast that looked weak to anyone. The title *nameless*. No one placed a bet, and all the money on the table went straight to the national treasury.

In other words, this was a state-sponsored gambling scam!

And I—by winning the money the state was trying to swallow—had become a walking bomb.