The Monster Knight wants Parental Leave

Undoubtedly, Lucia could not be the maternal figure of the holy child.

Even in the past and present, Lucia reasoned that the child’s misconception of seeing her as a mother stemmed from her dark hair.

This was foretold a millennium ago, with the temple amassing information about the black-haired saint for centuries.

But even within that temple, the register of individuals with dark hair in this vast continent was a mere fifty.

Yet, disregarding these facts, anyone who peers into this child’s innocent eyes and listens to her mystical words might momentarily entertain the notion of maternal instincts.

“No. I am not your mother.”

Unsurprisingly, Lucia was not of this ilk.

Her stern declaration appeared to greatly dishearten the child.

As though the light nurturing her had been extinguished, the sparkle in her golden eyes vanished, replaced swiftly by darkness.

“But I came to save you. This place is perilous, so I’ll transport you to somewhere secure.”

She signalled to the stunned child to follow, but she didn’t stir.

Lucia was nonplussed.

Her blueprint was simple.

Save the ill-fated saint, locate a dwelling on the outskirts, employ a trustworthy caregiver, and conceal the child until her saintly awakening.

Considering her regression that morning, she deemed it a decent strategy.

However, what she failed to understand was that trust is fundamental not just in human relationships but also with speechless creatures.

‘…She appears to not comprehend words after all.’

She, naively expecting the child to follow her flawed plan without question, was clutching at straws.

Ultimately, Lucia approached the child and extended a hand, as if to assist her to rise.

But then,

“……Annie must remain here.”

The child, turning her head with a resigned expression in her eyes, murmured something.

Indeed, she did comprehend the words.

This realization brought a moment of relief.

“Annie can’t. Leave. Need to clean here. …Otherwise, it hurts.”

In the midst of the nauseating odor, she hadn’t perceived, but looking around, the child’s words rang true as filth was systematically deposited here and there.

However, whether the child could manage this gargantuan cleaning task in such an expansive warehouse seemed almost negligible.

Something else troubled her more.

‘Hurt?’

She recalled the gruesome demise of the saint prior to her regression.

The saint is a divine emissary in the form of a child.

Fragile in appearance yet endowed with an incredible resilience, able to endure days of starvation.

That’s how she managed to survive, ensnared for years in a sin tree, dressed up in the deceitful terms of the tree of life.

But the child is in pain?

Lucia promptly stripped off the ragged cloth encasing the child to inspect her body.

The child recoiled at the unwanted contact, but her feeble resistance was no match for Lucia.

“It hurts! It hurts! It hurts…!”

It was peculiar.

Despite the child’s vehement protests, Lucia stood her up and scrutinized her, finding no visible injuries.

Then, abruptly, a white radiance converged in the child’s hand.

Shaking her hand as if to demonstrate, the child reached out towards Lucia with a pitiful gesture.

It was the third sign, divine power.

“This. This…! Here. Over there…….!”

When Lucia shone a lamp on the wall that the child desperately pointed to, she saw rows of check marks and a whip laying on the ground.

“……!”

“……I’ll rip them apart.”

Anger surged to Lucia’s delicate forehead.

She couldn’t help but notice.

Regardless of how one saw it, these marks appeared to be a grotesque method of verifying the divine power.

Reality was far more brutal than anticipated.

A whip used on such a small child’s body.

If it was this severe, the saint must have lived her entire previous life in torment, not merely during the moments of sealing.

Lucia’s stoic expression, one that rarely flinched at anything, warped instantly.

“Tell me. How in the world did you end up in this place?”

Given that she had some command of language, it was certain the child was raised among people.

She resolved to find them and inflict the same pain they had caused.

Spurred by Lucia’s intensity, the child couldn’t respond, merely struggling to release her forcibly seized wrist.

However, Lucia didn’t relent with her queries.

“Where were you before? Your parents?”

At her intense probing, the child, who had been attempting to evade, appeared to deflate completely.

She then lowered her head, murmuring as if the words were being extracted from her.

“……Orphanage. No mom, dad……”

The child, head bowed, quivered her tiny chin, and tears flooded her pitiful golden eyes, as if the dam holding back her tears had burst.

“……”

‘……If she had parents, she wouldn’t have mistaken me for her mother.’

She had been foolish.

Such retribution mattered only to her, burdened by guilt for the saint, not to the child who was grappling with the wounds she had already suffered.

Lucia, who only realized her lack of empathy after confronting the child’s hurt.

She berated herself once more for her ignorance, reminiscent of how she had dismissed the child prior to regression, oblivious to her circumstances.

.

.

.

“I’m sorry.”

It was an apology long overdue.

Her harsh grip on the child’s wrist loosened and faltered.

The child then quickly extricated herself and retreated further into the corner than before.

With a heavy heart, Lucia observed the sobbing child, yet she found herself in a dilemma, as if not taking the child today would compound her future plight.

She had erased the child’s records from the temple, but the traffickers involved here wouldn’t remain silent.

‘I have to take her regardless……’

If she was her usual detached self, it would have been straightforward.

Because it wasn’t challenging for an adult to remove this defenseless child, disregarding her personal circumstances.

However, Lucia, staring vacantly as if instinctively knowing this situation was distinct from others.

She stood there for a while, the sound of the child’s sobs echoing in her ears.

It was a foreign noise in her world where children were absent.

She harkened back to her own youth, comparing it to the sound she was hearing.

In her childhood, Lucia was in stark contrast to the young saint now.

She rarely wept, hid, or reacted to anyone.

This was partly due to her nature, but likely also influenced by her circumstances and upbringing.

Her mother died during Lucia’s birth.

Even her surviving father didn’t lay eyes on Lucia until she was grown.

Additionally, the nannies and maids, who served as surrogate parents to young Lucia, were unusually taciturn, and she, raised in such a sterile environment, was as indifferent to everything as a marionette.

The revelation that this was wrong came under the influence of her comrades who shared her knightly life after she matured.

Yet, even after realizing her isolation, she was powerless to change it, as she had already developed as much as she could.

For her, who had already adopted solitude as a habit, wielding a sword was the sole source of excitement in her life.

Hence, she abandoned everything and awaited a solitary death in a place devoid of people, living past ninety.

The child, also parentless, was both similar to and different from her.

Because Lucia surmised that the child still held expectations of parents to the extent of calling her ‘mom’.

Does this mean that, unlike her isolated self, the chance for the child to grow up as a normal child still exists?

‘A normal child……’

Yet, the child is a saint.

It’s virtually impossible for a saint to grow up as a normal child under ordinary parents.

Because the world is rife with temptations to forsake family, even if it is one’s real family.

She furrowed her brow, recalling the many sordid experiences she had witnessed in wars regarding family.

And then, it struck her.

Into Lucia’s eyes, which had been stationary for a while, floated the child’s hair, quivering slightly.

‘…Unique black hair. Training period 5 years. Age 5…’

Upon seeing the hair, the same color as her own, an idea sprouted.

With this one thought, the cacophony rattling in her head vanished, and she began to speak candidly.

“I am, like you.”

At the end of the prolonged silence, when Lucia spoke, the child, her face concealed, started in surprise.

“I grew up without parents. So I don’t understand. What it’s like to have parents.”

At her admission, the child peered at Lucia through the hair veiling her face.

“And I likely won’t know in the future either. But regrettably, there’s only one way to protect you.”

Considering the child’s special nature, her parents also need to be exceptional to safeguard her.

“It’s for you and me to become a family.”

“…Family?”

The young saint looked puzzled.

“What I’m suggesting is that I should become your mother.”

In her mind, the saint, capable of purifying the black corruption threatening to destroy this world, could only be protected by the strongest woman on the continent.

A woman like Lucia.

She stretched out her hand towards the child.

An unrefutable, absurd proposition.

No, it was more akin to an imposition or intimidation.

Yet oddly enough, did her clumsy proposition reach the child?

The child’s face, previously dark, began to glow again upon touching Lucia’s pristine white gloves.

However, that was just a fleeting moment.

For a while, the child stared at Lucia’s outstretched hand with shimmering eyes, glanced at the birds around, and at the litter on the floor, then her expression darkened once more.

“…Here. This is where I belong.”

The child, although unrestrained, bore the pitiful look of a creature unable to escape from its place.

Lucia released a gentle sigh.

Just then.

“Hey! The lock!”

“What? The lock’s broken?”

Gruff male voices echoed from the warehouse entrance.

Immediately, the child’s face twisted into a look of anxiety. They appeared to be men she recognized.

Lucia, remembering the severely vandalized wall, grimaced.

But if she were to retaliate against them now out of petty vengeance, the child might fear her.

She restrained her rising fury as best as she could and made a vow for the next time.

As the men attempted to enter, the birds in their cages fluttered noisily.

The child clung onto the frantic cage protectively, as if to shield it with a puzzled gesture.

Presumably, if the birds weren’t settled, the men appeared to have taken some adverse action.

Observing this, an intriguing idea sparked in Lucia’s mind.

“Child, could you unlock all the doors of the birdcage.”

“…?”

“When they open the door, the birds will scatter in every direction.”

The child blinked at her with a puzzled expression.

Demonstrating to the child, Lucia promptly began unlocking the birdcage doors.

And as she jostled the cage, the birds began to fly out one after another, creating a loud commotion.

Once she had opened the final cage door and the bird had taken flight, the wooden barrier blocking the warehouse almost coincidentally crumbled down.

Amidst the flurry of birds, Lucia once again reached out to the confused child.

This time, it was Lucia’s firm hand, filled with the resolve that she would never let go.

The child gazed intently at the hand proffered to her once more.

Her eyes were filled with hesitancy, as if a tantalizing but forbidden fruit was placed before her.

“Let’s go. Together.”

She voiced these words, gesturing towards the birds readying themselves for flight.

Just then, the warehouse door burst open with a thunderous noise.

Immediately, numerous birds began to take flight through the opened entrance, and the two sturdy men became flustered as their vision was clouded by a shower of feathers.

In the ensuing confusion, Lucia quickly pulled up her hood to shield her face.

“What the…!! Who’s there!!”

“What are you doing! Catch them quickly!! They’re valuable!”

The child seemed to grow apprehensive at the men’s outcry, ultimately clutching Lucia’s hand as tightly as she could.

“…!”

Finally, Lucia had succeeded in holding onto the small hand that she should never let go.

A sincere smile graced her face for the first time in a while.

She then lightly lifted the child she had taken hold of and cradled her in her arms.

The child blinked in surprise, unfamiliar with such warmth.

And before she could regain her composure, Lucia summoned a blade in her hand, and, as though to vent her frustrations, hurled it at the severely damaged warehouse wall.

“Ahh! What, what’s that!”

The men, cowering on the ground as if an earthquake had struck, even released the birds they were attempting to seize.

And Lucia, who had fled through the newly formed breach in the wall, effortlessly scaled the roof.

Behind her and the child, a grand spectacle of dazzling birds soared freely towards the heavens.