But… it was also because of this unyielding spirit…
That the atmosphere, which should have been silent, changed once more.
The mother and daughter chatted about the trivialities of daily life as they changed their clothes…
After the bath, they returned to Ileya’s room; in truth, there was no need to step outside.
Yet Lady Shudrian insisted on going out… saying she wanted to see the flowers in the garden.
“You… haven’t you caught a bit of a chill lately?” Ileya hesitated slightly…
But, just now, she hadn’t heard her mother cough much.
“If you want to see the flowers, let’s go change our clothes first…”
“Mama~ My body’s feeling much better~ And today… it’s rather warm~”
Lady Shudrian waved her hand at her obedient daughter, then, still wearing slippers and a bathrobe, dashed out like a little girl.
“Eh! Ah…”
Ileya reached out helplessly, but failed to grab the hem of her mother’s robe.
Honestly… just who is the daughter here…
She shook her head in exasperation, then slipped her hands into the wide sleeves of her bathrobe, and followed her out at a slow pace.
But the moment she stepped through the door, Ileya paused in surprise.
Because her family’s garden… was glowing with a soft, luminous green light…
So this is what the garden looks like at night?
The young lady was momentarily dazed, but soon… she saw her mother, as youthful as a little girl, strolling slowly…
Into the white rose garden.
In truth, Ileya didn’t even know if these flowers were really roses. It seemed that even before awakening the memories of her “previous life,” she had never cared much for such minute details.
She wasn’t particularly fond of flowers either.
Such things only bloomed quietly where they were planted; beautiful, yes, but frail…
They were things that couldn’t protect anything… Ileya felt they didn’t have much meaning.
However…
Watching Lady Shudrian walk in the garden, seeing the breeze lift her white hair, seeing her slender, fair hand gently caress a petal…
For a moment, the young lady’s mind changed completely…
“Hey~ Yaya, do you like flowers? Baiteer Yaluo~” Her mother suddenly turned back.
As she spun around, the hem of her bathrobe brushed across the white blossoms behind her…
Rustle—
At that moment, dots of pale green light rose from the flowers! They shone even brighter… illuminating the dim garden until it was aglow!
And this instant, Lady Shudrian, laughing softly amid the blossoms like a maiden who had just entered the world… was forever etched in Ileya’s heart.
“Hmm… As long as they set off Mother’s smile, I suppose they’re acceptable.”
Ileya answered with a gentle smile, her red eyes softer than ever before.
At that moment, she truly felt a little jealous of that old man in the family… What virtue or ability did he possess to win such a lovely wife?
(Achoo!! A protest from the old father away on business in the royal capital.)
“Pfft~ Hey now, that’s treasonous… Baiteer Yaluo is a name personally given by the Hero King of the First Generation of Halonza~”
Though she said that, Lady Shudrian couldn’t hide her delight at being praised by her own daughter, and smiled happily.
“Baiteer Yaluo… is that the name of the Hero King’s queen?” Ileya asked offhandedly.
“Nope~ She was the Mo Fa Shi of the ‘Golden Apple Adventurers’~ The White Mo Fa Shi ‘Tiyaluo.’ Legend has it that, before humans ever received the Supreme God’s blessing… this great hero could already wield magic power~”
That really was a formidable person…
Ileya was slightly amazed in her heart.
As expected… every world has its own geniuses, different from ordinary people~
With such thoughts, Ileya followed behind her mother… the two strolled together… passed through the garden, and walked along the corridor…
At last, they returned to Ileya’s room.
“Hey~ Yaya…”
It wasn’t until they were both lying on the bed that Lady Shudrian spoke again, her tone a little more formal.
“Hmm?”
Ileya turned her head to look at her mother lying beside her.
“I actually know what she wants to investigate… As for the old woman you found, I have no idea who she is…”
“But all these years, I’ve always been looking into the cause of Aleris’s death, you know… and the result I found was, she’d gotten… a chance to become a Transcendent.”
Lady Shudrian spoke of her sister’s death with a calm that was almost frightening.
Clearly, she was very skilled at controlling her emotions, separating investigation from grief.
Still, her tone unconsciously… became somewhat heavy.
“But for some reason, after she got the chance to become a Transcendent, I could no longer find any news about her… It seems, when she underwent the Transcendent ritual… something went wrong.”
Normally…
For ordinary people, becoming a Transcendent is indeed dangerous. But Aleris, whose strength had already reached the Silver Rank and whose body far surpassed an ordinary person’s… as long as she got the chance, becoming a Transcendent shouldn’t have been especially dangerous.
But… it happened all the same.
For a long time after becoming a Transcendent, Aleris completely vanished.
It was as if she’d evaporated from the world, and it wasn’t until her sister’s wedding that she reappeared, shrouded as the Black-Robed Figure.
Although Lady Shudrian had tried everything within her power at the time to search for her…
But, having just become the Marquis’s wife, she was still quite restricted.
While the Marquis could trust Shudrian unconditionally… the other members of the House of Bartios
Did not share that trust in the Marquis’s wife…
And after marrying, Shudrian was forbidden by the Kingdom to have any contact with her birth family.
So, in the end, the matter faded away unresolved.
“As for the last clue… it was five years ago… that was when I found Aleris’s corpse.”
At this point, Lady Shudrian paused for a moment.
“The state of the body… it was horrifying, to say the least… If she hadn’t been wearing the Seredon Family’s pendant around her neck… I might not have recognized the remains as Aleris.”
“Was… her whole body covered in black hair?”
Ileya asked instinctively.
After all… if she had just been encased in crystal, Mother wouldn’t have called it ‘horrifying’ or had trouble recognizing her.
“Yes… that’s right.” Shudrian nodded slightly, a shadow of that horrifying corpse flashing again in her eyes.
It made her hands, hidden under the blanket, tremble uncontrollably.
Not out of fear… but from sorrow…
She couldn’t imagine… how much hardship Aleris must have endured for her dream to come so far.
Yet such an effortful person… still died on the eve of dawn.
Compared to her sister, who had followed the family’s wishes, married childhood friend Grosset, and become the Marquis’s wife, happy and blessed.
But just as Aleris said—
She herself was a coward, someone who neither dared… nor wanted to resist.
That’s also why… even though she could have continued to be an innocent, naïve girl under the Marquis’s protection…
She gradually became the deep, calculating Lady Shudrian whom the surrounding nobility dared not take lightly.