I Became the Male Lead's Adopted Daughter-Chapter 104
The infamous Black Beast of the North uttered the words “Thinking Chair” and “Wrongdoing Necklace.”
“......”
No one said anything out loud, but frankly, hearing those words come out of his mouth was just... hilarious.
Which only proved how incredible Leonia was.
She’d managed to change Ferio Voreoti, a man so arrogant he lived off his own greatness.
“......So, did you do it?”
Carnis asked, barely holding back a laugh.
“Yeah.”
The one answering, Ferio himself, was dead serious.
“Just to make sure...”
Carnis asked very cautiously.
“When you say ‘Thinking Chair’... you don’t mean something spiked and bloodstained, right?”
“I could sit you in it.”
“Can’t a guy joke with his friend?”
Carnis quickly withdrew his words before Ferio could go through with it.
Either way, Ferio was clearly struggling with how to discipline Leonia.
His daughter was a cunning little old soul.
She didn’t flinch at much, and if she got scolded once, she’d fire back with two retorts.
Trying to discipline a kid like that with a Thinking Chair or a Wrongdoing Necklace wasn’t going to work.
When he sat her in the chair, instead of reflecting, she counted wallpaper patterns. When he hung the necklace around her neck, she went around showing it off to the servants like it was a prize.
“Those kinds of things don’t really work on clever children,” said the Viscountess Kerata.
“I think so too,” Ferio agreed. He had already concluded that his daughter was too smart for such things to be effective.
Cunning was just another word for brilliant.
‘Leo really is something.’
Despite everything, her father couldn’t help but be proud.
“What if you tried calmly explaining things to her instead?” suggested Viscount Kerata.
It might be difficult for most kids, but since Leonia was exceptionally smart, he thought she would understand if things were explained carefully.
But Ferio was skeptical.
“She’s too smart. She always argues back whenever I say something.”
“Are we... actually listening to the Duke’s parenting struggles right now?”
Abipher finally couldn’t help herself.
It didn’t feel like they were hearing about a parenting problem—it felt more like an unfiltered brag session about someone else’s genius child, and it was giving her a headache.
“What do you expect me to do about Leonia being too smart and sensitive?”
Ferio shot back confidently, as if it were perfectly natural—and not at all his fault—that his daughter had no flaws worth pointing out.
His sharply defined nose looked especially arrogant.
Abipher was at a loss for words.
And yet... he wasn’t wrong, which made it even more annoying.
“......Ah.”
At that moment, Ferio seemed to recall something.
Everyone who’d been silently gagging on his child-bragging turned to look at him.
“There was one thing.”
That time when Leonia had snuck out and ridden a horse without his permission to go see Inseréa.
He had scolded her quite severely—and delivered a threat that was more like a warning.
“I said I’d take away her muscle magazines, decorate her room in floral pink, and paint a ‘The Angel and the Woodcutter’ mural on the wall.”
He remembered how she’d practically begged him to just hit her instead.
“She didn’t like that?” asked Viscount Kerata, puzzled.
Not fully knowing Leonia’s tastes yet, he found himself wondering what exactly “muscle magazines” were.
<Also, that threat...>
From his perspective, it didn’t even sound like much of a threat. It actually sounded... kind of cute.
“What’s wrong with floral pink or fairy tale murals? She’s a girl, isn’t she?”
But Abipher and the Viscountess Kerata looked horrified.
“It's not like you're decorating a lunatic’s room...!”
“That’s too cruel.”
“Y-yeah, seriously!”
“Definitely too cruel.”
As the two women shook their heads in disgust, their husbands nodded along vigorously in agreement.
“But wait, why the fairy tale?”
Carnis asked.
“My kids love that one.”
The Angel and the Woodcutter—a fairy tale practically everyone read at least once growing up.
“That’s the one where the deranged pervert steals a woman’s clothes while she’s bathing, threatens her, and forces her to have his kid. It’s just a sanitized story glorifying sexual assault.”
And people read that to their children?
Ferio looked genuinely repulsed.
The moment he heard the story from Leonia, he’d thrown the book into the fireplace and burned it.
Needless to say, the parents around him went pale.
After that day, The Angel and the Woodcutter mysteriously vanished from the estates of both the Rinne and Kerata families.
***
After finishing their conversation, the adults headed downstairs to the first-floor living room.
Inside, they saw the children gathered together, drawing and playing quietly.
Leonia was the first to notice their presence and looked up.
“Daddy!”
She waved brightly with a wide smile. The other children followed suit, waving toward their own parents. Pinu even jumped up and down with excitement.
“Pinu, be careful.”
“Uh-huh.”
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
“Shall we get back to drawing?”
“Yeah!”
Leonia gently sat Pinu back down and handed him a crayon.
“I really owe the Voreoti young lady a huge one.”
Abipher let out a breath of relief watching her children play so calmly.
They were naturally full of energy and prone to accidents.
Just a few days ago, they’d broken a vase while running through the estate.
‘Come to think of it, when the young lady was staying at the western estate, the kids didn’t cause any trouble.’
It was all thanks to her!
Overcome with emotion, Abipher covered her mouth with both hands. She felt an overwhelming wave of gratitude and admiration toward Leonia.
The Kerata couple agreed as well.
“Today, our kids are getting along so well.”
“Our eldest usually bullies the younger one a lot...”
“But since getting close with the young lady, it’s been happening a lot less.”
“Flo’s gotten more confident. She speaks up more now.”
“She really is the Voreoti young lady.”
They all praised Leonia generously, saying they’d been helped greatly by her influence.
“She’s still just a child.”
Ferio responded nonchalantly, as if no amount of praise could faze him.
“Oh come on, Duke. Try not to smile.”
Carnis chuckled, teasing Ferio for the twitching corners of his mouth. He was one second away from a full-blown smile.
It was a stark contrast from the man who had been so worried about child discipline just a moment earlier.
The adults took their seats and quietly observed the children at play. freewebnσvel.cѳm
The kids, under Leonia’s lead, were deeply immersed in drawing and coloring something.
They were so focused that not a single word was being spoken.
The watching adults smiled quietly, not wanting to disrupt them.
“...Alright!”
Suddenly, Leonia’s energetic voice broke the silence.
“Let’s show them to our parents now.”
Each child picked up their drawing and walked toward their respective parents.
“The theme I chose for today’s tea party is ‘Fun Learning.’”
Leonia explained in a shy voice.
“To match the theme, we did some learning through play together with your children.”
“You thought of all this yourself?”
“How impressive!”
“As expected of the Voreoti young lady.”
“I’m really looking forward to this.”
The parents sat their children beside them and showered them with praise.
Leonia sat beside Ferio and handed him her drawing.
The sheet was rolled up like a secret scroll.
“What did you study?”
Ferio asked, his voice warm.
Seriously, this cheeky little thing always managed to go far beyond his expectations.
“Wow, my son drew this so well!”
Carnis, seated on the opposite couch, was the first to open his child’s drawing.
“Peaches? Apricots? Two round fruits? Looks tasty!”
“Nu-uh!”
Pinu shook his head furiously, visibly frustrated. His belly jiggled along with him.
“And what’s this one, Ufi? Some kind of red sausages strung together?”
“Nooo!”
Ufikla pouted, disappointed that her mother couldn’t guess correctly.
“They’re the pectoralis major and minor.”
Then she proceeded to explain exactly what she had drawn.
“This part is the upper, middle, and lower pectoralis. And these are the outer and inner chest muscles...”
Abipher let out a silent scream.
“T-then what’s this?”
Carnis examined Pinu’s drawing again.
Now that he looked closer, those apricot-colored lumps were a little suspicious.
Right in ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) the middle of each was a tiny pink dot.
He’d thought it was a peach skin pattern—but now his spine ran cold.
“Those are pectorals covered with skin.”
Pinu answered matter-of-factly.
“You can talk that clearly?”
Carnis was stunned.
It was the clearest pronunciation Pinu Rinne had ever managed in his three years of life.
The chaos wasn’t limited to the Rinne family.
The Keratas next to them were going through something similar.
“I drew thigh muscles.”
Flomus proudly presented her drawing of the quadriceps.
“This whole area is the quadriceps, and this part in the middle is the rectus femoris. Then, on either side, we have the vastus medialis and vastus lateralis...”
“I drew an arm.”
Alches hesitated as he began to explain his drawing.
“These are the muscles connected to the ‘upper arm,’ and under the armpit here is the latissimus dorsi.”
“H-How do you know all that?”
“The young lady taught us.”
The Viscountess Kerata asked, trying her best to suppress a rising headache.
It wasn’t that she found it unpleasant or disturbing.
She had simply not expected the lesson to be this vivid.
So vivid, in fact, that she found herself absentmindedly touching her own arm.
She even started muttering, “Biceps brachii...” as she squeezed her upper arm.
“The Voreoti young lady is truly brilliant.”
To memorize all those muscles—Viscount Kerata found that far more astonishing than anything else.
And then—
“......”
Ferio, who had been watching all of this unfold, turned his head very slowly, his eyes utterly tired, toward the daughter beside him who was eagerly awaiting praise like some cheerful little menace.
“Daddy, what do you think?”
Didn’t I do great?
The innocent, glowing face of the child radiated nothing but pure-hearted sincerity.
Leonia really did just want to do a playful kind of studying with the other kids.
So she had taught them about the thing she was most confident in—muscles—and turned it into a drawing activity.
“Do you have no conscience at all?”
Ferio said this while looking at the giant gluteus maximus lump Leonia had drawn.
Teaching such things to pure, innocent children and making them draw them—Ferio felt, for the first time in his life, like he had committed a moral crime.
He couldn’t even bring himself to meet their eyes.
“It’s science.”
Leonia looked deeply wronged.
“Muscles are part of the human body! Humans are life! And life is very important.”
“The muscles that come out of your mouth are corrupted.”
