Lucia Chapter 22 [part 2]

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< — The Ducal couple — > (10)

Translated by: Miss Ruby
Edited by: Luv Shng

TN: I put links to make chapter navigation easier and school is officially over!!!! (Until summer classes start lmao).  And I changed “Mado Empire” to “Madoh Empire”. It kept bugging me as I was translating.

The Taran family were nobles but more precisely half-nobles. They were ostracized amongst nobles because they were labeled as heresies so they lived quietly without the usual nobility ties. They were ostracized because in the Taran ancestry, a human’s blood was mixed in.

Those of the Taran bloodline were also weak in magic and were regarded as the shame of the nobles.

However, the day of the unusual event, the blood of the human that lay dormant in the Taran blood awoke and mixed with their blood or rather, it changed their body and brain, making them powerful.

Their black hair and black eyes were changed to black hair and red eyes. In a world being rampaged with the madness of the humans, the Taran brother and sister survived.

They hid themselves quietly and waited for their existence to be completely forgotten so that they could rebuild their family and preserve their bloodline.

They did not have to wait too long. The destruction of the Madoh Empire only kick-started the world of humans.

Humans who had now defeated their common enemy, started to destroy, fight amongst themselves and tear themselves apart. The losers (the nobles) disappeared quickly from their memory.

Decades later, the Madoh Empire had simply become an old story and hundred years later, it had become a myth. After a long time, the atmosphere changed again.

The magic power in the atmosphere was back and although it was not restored to the way it was before the meteor fell, it was enough for broken artifacts from the Madoh Empire to resume function.

Humans were joyous at the discovery of these Madoh treasures and began to enthusiastically excavate them and with that, treasure hunting became the most popular job.

Those of the Taran family that were in hiding, carefully and cautiously, came out of hiding.

They brought out their family artifacts that they had hidden and began rebuilding their family. It was not long before they began a charismatic and a remarkable family with a lot of influence.

Philip was one of the few human descendants that had been with the family since they began to rebuild. Philip’s family existed to fulfill their mission which was to preserve the Taran bloodline.

In the time of the Madoh Empire, no children would be born between a noble and a human. It was an irrelevant issue to the nobles but many researchers were curious as to why this was so.

After doing several researches, they found the method for conception.

From the standpoint of the nobles, the researchers had done something useless but in the first place, majority of the research they did was useless.

Thanks to that knowledge, the distant ancestor of the Taran family was born but even after that, they continued to be interested in this method.

They continued their research in secret and built up their knowledge. It was a bit different from common nobles for a half-noble and a human to combine and have a child.

After continuous research and trial and error, they finally found a way of keeping the Taran bloodline. During the time of the Madoh Empire, this method was never used. Yes, the Taran family were half-nobles but a noble was a noble.

Although the ancestry of the Taran family was mixed, apart from that instance, they never did anything like that again.

They married pure nobles to try and deepen their noble blood and get back into the main circle of nobility.

When all the nobles in the world were destroyed, the Taran family was only able to continue its bloodline by marrying humans so the knowledge that was already in the family began to show its usefulness.

However, all combinations with humans always resulted in females and they needed males to continue the family.

The solution they found to this problem was through closely related kin. The head of Taran took his half-sister as his wife and only one son was conceived between them. The son needed a wife to continue the family line. And it was the father’s job to make a bride for the son.

It was necessary to prepare for the birth of the child (the bride) by combining with an ordinary human woman that did not possess the Taran bloodline.

For this, they needed a young female that had yet to start menstruating. When the female’s menstruation began, the female would be made to take mugwort herb for more than half a year to stop it. In that state, the body was cleansed for about a year.

The male of the Taran family who would be the father of the child in the future would then take the virginity of the prepared woman. The woman would then be fed with medicine that weakened the effect of the mugwort and their body would be returned to how it originally was.

The time for menstruation to restart varied from person to person; the shortest would be a year and the longest would be three years.

The period until the menstruation began was the time to get pregnant. He would sleep with the woman and have a child. If the menstruation restarted and the woman was yet to get pregnant, she was considered a failure.

Philip’s family was involved with this process from beginning to end. As time passed, this knowledge was passed down as the vision of Philip’s family and the head of Taran family was told the specific contents separately.

The two families were in a mutual and inseparable relationship.

Philip had watched over the twin brothers from the moment there were born. When the Duke tried to kill one of the twins, he had dissuaded him to leave them in case of future uncertainties.

The Duke had showed cruel interest in them. An interest in how it would turn out if one grew up with the best background and the other grew up by surviving in the worst conditions.

Although the Duke did not stop his child from being sold as a slave to the mercenaries, he always watched from afar. Hugh did not know but when he was young, there were a few times Philip saved his life.

The gentle Hugo that did not inherit the brutal temperament unique to the Taran lineage and the spiteful Hugh that killed people without batting an eye.

Philip loved them both but between the two of them, his attachment to Hugh was stronger. To pass down and continue the Taran family line, human blood was mixed in so naturally, the Taran bloodline grew murky.

The people of Taran were becoming more and more human-like. In the middle of this, Hugh was born; the perfect sculpture of the Taran bloodline (1).

An outstanding body, a nimble brain, incredible mental strength, cold-blooded and ruthless. He was the perfect image of the master of Taran that they had wished for.

The former Duke was the same as he liked the abandoned son more and he connived to switch them again. However, he was opposed to killing off Hugo.

He had some affection for Hugo but the main reason was that it was unprecedented for twins to be born in the Taran family. He did not want to throw him (Hugo) away that easily.

However, it was impossible to predict the future. He did not know that one way or the other, Hugo would meet Hugh and learn how to read into the actions of people.

He did not know that because they did not know about the existence of the other, the two brothers would meet for the first time in ten years and end up regarding each other as existences more precious than life itself rather than as enemies.

Compared to his predecessors who were cruel but coolheaded, the dead Duke of Taran was full of greed. He was different from the other masters of Taran.

The Duke did not forget his mission to make a remarkable child and continue the family line but he did not want to lose the absolute power he enjoyed while he was alive. Greed always led one to downfall.

At the time, it was Hugo’s Taran but as Hugh survived and persisted alone, Philip could see hatred and disillusionment in his eyes. Philip could sense that he would soon disassemble the family and break it into pieces.

If Damian did not exist, Hugh would definitely have done that. It saddened Philip to see him one day, walk to the end of the world without having given his heart to someone.

Philip would never admit it nor would he be believed but he loved Hugo. For the Philip that had no family, the twin brother were like his grandchildren.

[I’m warning you now but don’t you dare try approaching my wife]

And that was why he could not forget the way Hugo looked in that instant. It was momentary but he could feel vigilance and protection from him.

It was neither empty threats nor intimidation but the feeling of a mother trying to protect her child. It was the first time Philip had seen him fixated on someone other than the dead Hugo.

‘What kind of person is she?’

It was just pure curiosity. He wasn’t thinking of doing anything nor could he do anything. He just wanted to know how the Duchess looked and what her character was like.

He wondered if it would be possible to leave once the Duke left the premises but as soon as he approached the door to the castle, a man appeared out of nowhere and blocked him.

“I will be in trouble if you were to go in, Sir Philip.”

Philip let out a low sigh. He did not know someone was watching him.

“Are you monitoring me?”

“As long as you do not enter the castle, your actions will remain unrestricted.”

“Just why? What is the reason?”

“I do not know any reasons. I just follow orders. If there are any protests, I have been given permission to get physical.”

“… I understand.”

Philip went back quietly. He sat facing the castle walls and licked his lips then he looked to the sky and mumbled bitterly.

‘Do I have to leave again…?’

He never stayed in one place for too long because his heart was never attached to it. It was his wish to meet Damian once in his life, but he had tried before and failed.

The Duke would never give Philip the opportunity. Perhaps the Duke wouldn’t even tell Damian the secret of the family and would keep it all to himself.

‘Is it an obsession?’

He had to agree that the desire of his family and their hanging onto the bloodline of Taran was an obsession. Philip’s father, grandfather, and the ones before his grandfather were the same way.

It was not that easy to change the idea which he had been infatuated with since childhood till he was an old man.

He probably would still be unable to let go of this attachment even when he was on his death bed and closing his eyes for the last time.

Translator’s Corner:

1. It reads perfect crystal but I think sculpture is more representative of what the author is talking about. I also edited the previous chapter a bit because I got confused when crystal came outta nowhere. Context, baby.

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