The Baby Isn’t Yours

Instantly, light burst out from the bracelet, scattering in a chaotic manner.

The blinding white light was dazzling, but it wasn’t painful. It gently rippled through the air with a comforting warmth before gradually subsiding.

Simon, on guard due to the sudden appearance of the fairy’s power and light, directed his gaze toward the center of the radiance.

Within the streaming light, a fairy appeared in the form of a woman. Her flowing lemon-colored hair looked familiar.

Simon looked at the fairy that had stepped out of the light, and his gaze hardened unconsciously.

He had seen that lemon-colored hair, so distinctively fresh and unique, only on Kalia.

But why did this fairy have hair so similar to Kalia’s? This simple fact alone made something click in Simon’s mind.

“Who are you?”

Gaia, passing by, barely spared Simon a glance before not paying him any more attention. She immediately found Kalia writhing in pain at his side.

The moment she saw Kalia with her hair disheveled, drenched in cold sweat, and struggling on the neat bed, Gaia’s expression turned black.

-Kalia.-

In a surprised and confused expression, Gaia rushed toward Kalia, but she wasn’t allowed to approach her.

Paat!

A transparent barrier encased Kalia around the bed.

With the barrier erected by Simon to protect Kalia, he inquired once more through the barrier, towards Gaia:

“…I asked who are you?”

Thud, thud! Thud!

Gaia, infuriated, pounded the transparent barrier that blocked her way.

-Time is running out. Quickly, open this!-

Although she was muttering about allowing her to enter, Simon didn’t easily let her in.

Fairy.

It was unmistakably a fairy.

While she looked surprisingly similar to Kalia, she was clearly a different entity.

If it was past Kalia, she wouldn’t have been so guarded. She was strong enough that she didn’t need someone to protect her.

But the current Kalia was carrying a wriggling child in her womb, her eyes unfocused, not even wide open.

When she became weak, it was his duty to protect her.

‘…I have to be careful about everything.’

Bearing a child meant that life and death could easily go hand in hand, so Simon had to be extra sensitive. Especially when it came to Kalia.

Thud, thud! Thud!

It’s as if she was asking to release it, Gaia kept pounding on the barrier that isolated Kalia.

Though she opened her lips as if to say something, her mouth, unable to find the right words, merely moved emptily.

“…You’re not planning to answer, are you? Or…”

“That child is my daughter, Gaia.”

It was then.

From somewhere, a thunderous roar resonated, and an enormous presence and light unlike what he had just witnessed radiated.

It was just a release that lasted a mere one or two seconds, but the light emitted by a single being was grand enough to bathe the entire room in white.

Contained within the pouring light was the concentrated power of nature.

Although it was just light, Simon could feel the power of the being enclosed within it.

It was overwhelmingly powerful.

Even if he was a magician who had reached the Enlightenment, he couldn’t compare to the essence of nature in its true form.

In this light, there was that power – the power of the origin.

He instinctively increased the magical barrier’s strength.

As the space was small, a barrier could easily condense the power.

The barrier, containing Simon’s magic, emitted a blue light and blocked the power of nature.

Soon, at the center of the room, a giant figure appeared.

Gray-white hair that naturally swayed in the flowing air and dark green eyes with unknown depth looked at him.

He had a huge frame, and his appearance made it impossible to estimate his age.

The man who was looking at Simon glanced behind him and then sighed softly as if he was troubled.

‘It must have been quite a commotion by now.’

In the middle of a meeting with the elders of the Twelve Forests, he was suddenly summoned.

He felt the activation of the summoning power, and without a word, he left the meeting room. The elders must have been quite surprised.

And his eldest son and third son were included among them.

He had also engraved his true name, together with Gaia’s name, on the Amuntia bracelet that he gave to Kalia. If Gaia were to be summoned, he could also naturally answer the call.

‘But I didn’t know that she would come to use it one day…’

King Kalexia, the king of the fairies, observed Kalia, who was lying on the bed, gasping.

Her sweat-drenched hair in disarray, she appeared to be in agony suppressing moans with clenched teeth.

His straight brows furrowed as he looked at her.

Watching her like this, her normally calm and dignified face looked agonized. Her demeanor was strikingly different from the calm and composed Kalia he had seen in the forest a few days ago.

As he observed her, he couldn’t help but feel restless and bitter.

It was as if he were inexplicably upset, anxious, or… perhaps angry.

‘What exactly was she doing to reach such a state?’

This girl, who was stronger than anyone else and seemed capable of enduring even the most difficult trials, had suffered to the point where she couldn’t bear it.

Kalexia glanced at Simon as if he was asking for an explanation.

Simon, likewise, met his unyielding gaze with one of his own.

‘Well, well.’

For a human, he had remarkable composure.

Although he was essentially in the realm of the half-divine, the Fairy King, his confident gaze was not only met head-on but even met with a sharp retort.

“You’ve crossed over the boundaries of a human. Have you reached the line of Enlightenment?”

In the Fairy King’s eyes, which were scrutinizing the color of the soul, the light of the natural world appeared.

‘I see, it’s because of the mixed blood of the elves.’

Thump! Thump! Thump-thump!

As the king and Simon watched each other with interest, the sound of the barrier being pounded again was heard.

Causing attention, the sound of forcefully striking the barrier reached Kalexia’s daughter.

“Oh, Gaia…”

Kalexia, who was looking at his daughter, let out a lament in pain.

A faint mist was rising from Gaia’s body. It was a sign of the fragments of the soul scattering.

The infuriated Fairy King immediately unleashed his own power.

The power of the natural world filled the small room.

When the fresh air that fairies loved so much spread throughout the room, Gaia’s agitated body gradually stabilized.

The fragments of the soul that had left the fairy forest were extremely unstable and had to be replenished with power before they dissipated completely.

It was the stubbornness of a foolish father who sent his daughter first.

The kind of lingering desire to hold onto even the fragments of his daughter, which were only a few years of memories and needed to be supported by pouring out his own power each time to barely keep them alive.

Kalexia looked at the calm Gaia and stared at the blue barrier that she was urgently pounding.

“What is this barrier?”

“I’d like to ask first.”

In the face of such an overwhelmingly dominant presence before him, Simon merely furrowed his brow slightly without much of a reaction.

To him, it didn’t matter who these beings before him were. What mattered was whether these beings posed a threat to them, particularly to Kalia.

“Are you the Fairy King? Why did you come here?”

Adjusting the strength of the barrier while keeping it in place, Simon asked calmly but with a hint of detachment.

The Fairy King tilted his head quizzically as he looked at Simon, then at Kalia, who was hidden behind him, and replied vaguely.

“I came to help that child give birth.”

His voice was calm, but his furrowed brow showed that something wasn’t sitting well with him.

Simon wondered how the Fairy King was connected to Kalia’s childbirth. Was the Fairy King an ally of Kalia? Was the ‘help’ he offered truly helpful, or were there other intentions hidden beneath it?

Quickly, Simon raised his level of alertness as he considered hundreds of thoughts.

Thump, thump, thump-thump! Thump!

Meanwhile, Gaia, who was losing her patience, continued to pound on the blue barrier.

Her silent muttering was interrupted by a loud exclamation.

-…Quickly! If we continue like this, we’re in big trouble! She’ll die!-

Along with her resounding voice, mist rose from Gaia’s body.

It was due to her sudden increase in volume and the forceful effort she was making.

The Fairy King, who had been watching the fragments of the soul dispersing into the air, hastily began to chant a spell.

The fragments that were on the verge of disappearing gathered back into Gaia’s body.

“It seems that time is indeed running out.”

The Fairy King grumbled in irritation as he stared at Simon.

‘Ha. What in the world is going on?’

Simon clenched his dry fist and then extended it, considering whether he could resist the Fairy King if something happened. When he looked at it rationally, it was impossible. But damn it, what does impossible mean?

What mattered wasn’t whether he could do it but that he had to do it.

Suppressing his anxiety, Simon questioned the Fairy King.

“She said Kalia will  die. What does that mean? I won’t allow anything without a detailed explanation.”

“Being cautious is a good thing. But when things are urgent, you must know how to make a decision, magician.”

“I need to know the urgency of the situation first. I don’t want to gamble with the lives of my loved people.”

“Very well. For the baby in that girl’s womb to come out, she needs the power of the natural world. If that’s not fulfilled, the baby will die, and the mother will also be affected. You’ll see more details as the situation unfolds.”

The Fairy King’s hand, who had been staring at Simon, touched the barrier Simon had created.

As he released his power into the barrier, it shimmered brilliantly in various colors and pressed down on him.

It was as if he intended to break the barrier with an even greater force.

Simon increased his strength by drawing mana from the core.

When someone accumulated a certain amount of mana, even humans could develop a mana core. Like the dragon heart, the mana core could accumulate mana indefinitely.

Whoosh!

Seeing that Simon’s magic was able to withstand the power of nature, Kalexia looked at him in amazement.

“You are a very talented child. I haven’t felt such pure mana since Isaac. It seems that this is the first time since Isaac that I have felt such pure power.”

Even with the compliment muttered by the concerned Fairy King, Simon’s only interest was Kalia.

“Can I trust you?”

His face showed a calm arrogance that reacted without fear even in the face of raging power.

But Kalexia didn’t dislike such arrogance.

Because all those who made unexpected changes in the world were arrogant.

“What an arrogant kid. You don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to. You just have to give up.”

However, Kalexia’s power pressing against the barrier didn’t weaken. Rather, he used even more force to break it.