The Cub Raised in a Horror Game - Chapter 13 - Enough to Be Coveted by All Players

The baby was playing with toys on the rug, the ruby from the other dungeon world set beside her. Chu Wang sat across from her, watching the gem and lost in thought as he played along.

Inia seemed to have awakened an extraordinary ability.

Any player who witnessed the baby’s abilities would be driven mad with jealousy and greed.
The ability to ignore the barriers between dungeon worlds, disrupt the order of the Refining Space, freely travel and interact between different realms, and even break the rules to take items at will—both the dungeons and the Refining Space open to her without restriction—how terrifying an ability was that?

And it didn’t end there. Inia’s powers seemed to grow stronger as she grew. Observing her at such a young age, it was clear that this was only the beginning.

Now, she was only taking small objects. But if the baby grew a little older, could she take people with her and move freely between different spaces?

If that day truly came, the order and balance of the Refining Space would likely be completely broken and rewritten.

If news of Inia’s ability were to leak out, it would be enough to make all players in the Refining Space covet the baby, wishing to possess her for themselves.

Thinking of this, Chu Wang’s heart sank.

Perhaps sensing that he had been staring at the ruby for too long, the baby looked up at him. She simply reached out, grabbed the large gem, and generously handed it to Chu Wang.

The baby gestured: “Ah!”

Chu Wang snapped out of his thoughts. Seeing Inia’s small, proud expression that seemed to say, ‘Take this,’ he couldn’t help but smile.

As he smiled, watching her adorable appearance, the young man felt worry rise again.

The nutritional energy the baby had absorbed over the last two months was truly excellent; she no longer resembled the weak infant she once was.

Now, her face had baby fat, and her little belly was plump. She looked no different from a well-cared-for infant in the outside world.

However, babies on the 36th floor absolutely did not look like this. Not to mention children, even the adults barely had any flesh on their bones. The children were all thin and lean, having been tanned and worn down by long hours spent outside searching for supplies.

Forget letting others discover the baby’s abilities; even her current appearance posed an enormous danger—imagine: how wealthy in resources must the team be to raise an infant, who cannot work, so well?

In the past, those wandering vagrants had maintained peace with Chu Wang’s group because they looked down on the half-grown children, assuming they could barely scavenge food and couldn’t possibly have anything valuable. Thus, there was no need to offend the ‘mad dog’ Chu Wang, getting nothing but trouble.

But if anyone saw Inia’s appearance, those vagrants would certainly become suspicious, and once their attention turned toward the group, life would become extremely difficult.

Who would believe that the children genuinely lacked resources and high-grade items, and that the baby was completely sustaining herself? Even if those rogue players turned the children’s base upside down, they wouldn’t believe they hadn’t secretly stored precious resources.

And he… he did not yet have the ability to protect her for life.

Fingers tracing the ruby, Chu Wang’s gaze was obscure.

Before the other children returned, he hid the ruby. Chu Wang was not yet ready to share Inia’s secret with the other orphans; it was safest for everyone this way.

“Do not take the baby out alone to get fresh air during this time. Wait until I return for everything,” Chu Wang instructed during dinner that evening. “If she is seen by other players, we will be in trouble.”

The children all nodded seriously.

Over the years they spent following Chu Wang, they had developed excellent physiques under his training; even the six-year-old, the smallest of them, had faint abs.

However, the children’s figures remained lean. They simply couldn’t get enough nutrition; the little sustenance they did receive was turned into solid muscle through daily training and all their running around.

Compared to everyone else, the baby’s pale, tender, and plump appearance was far too eye-catching. They only felt truly at ease when Brother Chu personally took Inia outside.

Chu Wang kept his daily habit of bringing her out for walks. The container they lived in was a decent shelter, but it was cramped, airless, and windowless. He believed it would be better for her health to see the world beyond those walls—though he knew that, from now on, he would have to be much more careful.

As dusk settled in, Chu Wang once again lifted the baby into his arms, using the outing as a way to quietly cover up her recurring loss of appetite after absorbing the dark power.

Inia only rested quietly against him for a short while before she began to twist and squirm, unable to stay still for even a moment.

Before, she had longed for the freedom to crawl, though Chu Wang strictly limited her crawling time because her body had been so frail. Now that she was finally healthy, she no longer wanted to crawl at all—she wanted to stand, supported and steady.

At home, she loved grabbing onto anything she could to pull herself upright, then dropping back down to sit on the floor. If no one stopped her, she could repeat this endlessly, sometimes even taking two small steps while clinging on.

Chu Wang, a half-grown teenager raising an infant, had no outside information or experience to rely on. To him, caring for the baby was nothing more than groping in the dark. He would rather be too careful than overlook something that might affect her health. So even though Inia now appeared perfectly healthy, he still watched her closely, never letting her stand for too long.

Whenever he did this, the baby would stare at him wide-eyed, filled with disbelief and existential confusion, as if she couldn’t understand why her strict gatekeeper was so cruel to her, the noble little Hell.

She was usually easy to look after, but she had a few tiny tempers that needed gentle handling.

In Chu Wang’s arms, Inia twisted about, her small hands pushing against the young man’s chest as she hummed and fussed.

She didn’t understand the difference between being at home and being outside. Why was it that at home, one small push meant she was free, but now it didn’t? Why was he holding her so tightly? The baby didn’t understand, and the baby was unhappy.

A headache began to form behind Chu Wang’s eyes.

In the 36th floor, children’s clothes and shoes didn’t exist. They altered adult clothes for children, and there were no shoes that fit—either they stuffed paper into adult ones, made crude versions themselves, or simply let children run barefoot.

Naturally, baby products didn’t exist at all. The tiny socks on her feet were stitched together by him and his companions.

Without proper shoes, there was no way he could let her stand on the ground outside. Left with no other choice, he supported Inia under her arms with both hands and let her small feet step on top of his own shoes.

Only then did Inia settle down. His leg was right in front of her, and she pressed her chin on his knee, looking up at him with a sweet smile—every bit the angelic baby, with no trace of her earlier fussing.

The young man stroked her curls with soft affection.

When night came, Chu Wang quietly slipped the ruby back into her hand, careful not to let the other children notice. The gem brought nothing but trouble here; he would rather Inia return it to its original owner.

He stood watch at her little bedside. Ten minutes later, the baby had fallen asleep, and the gem she’d been holding had vanished sometime in the night.

Chu Wang let out a slow breath. He gazed at Inia’s peaceful face, emotions tangled in his chest, unable to pull his gaze away.

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That night, Inia’s dream once again carried her to the Vampire Grand Duke’s castle.

As for a certain Lord who looked perfectly innocent yet was thrown into a dark room just because he failed to hold onto her… the chances of being remembered by the baby seemed to be growing slimmer by the day.

As soon as Inia appeared on the familiar black bed, she was immediately embraced by Dreist. He seemed to have been waiting there all along, just to see her the moment she arrived.

Because of his rank and power, few had ever been close enough to admire the Vampire Lord’s astonishingly beautiful face; he himself kept a cold and indifferent expression most of the time.

But now, after seeing the baby two nights in a row, pure delight lit up Dreist’s refined features. His crimson eyes gleamed beneath the moonlight.

Without his usual aloof, frightening aura—and with those soft emotions gathering at his brows—it finally became clear just how breathtaking the Vampire Lord truly was.

“The Ancestor protects! My dearest Inia, you have returned to my side,” Dreist lightly kissed the top of the baby’s head.

Just then, something dropped between him and the baby. The vampire picked up the ruby. He frowned, unable to recall where it came from… Wait, wasn’t this the gem he had casually given her to play with the night before?

Dreist seemed to realize something, looking at Inia with incredulity.

The oblivious baby leaned against his shoulder. The moment their eyes met, she immediately declared, “Hungry, hungry!”

Of all her growing abilities, speech and thought were the most developed. She still used brother and sister like simple filler words, but her grasp of hungry was impeccable.

Dreist placed the ruby down and, having made all the necessary preparations, softly asked, “Would you like to try some milk?”

The Vampire Lord’s estate covered a vast area. Players entering the dungeon were usually teleported to the garden or the castle interior, but beyond those zones lay sprawling lands and livestock sheds that supported the entire castle—simply too far away to be seen.

A few skeletons under his command had once been royal chefs. They had simmered the milk slowly until it was sweet, and placed freshly picked fruits beside it. The moment the baby caught the scent, her eyes lit up, fixed eagerly on Dreist’s elegant fingers as he stirred the milk with a silver spoon.

This was the result of yet another day of Dreist’s careful consideration. He was genuinely treating the baby as his most important research subject.

Even with eight hundred years of life and no close relationships, Dreist managed to figure out several areas in need of improvement.

If he wanted to grow familiar with the baby, he first had to break the pattern of interacting only through power-feeding. Ideally, he wanted her to treat this place as her home—to engage with her in every possible way and completely prevent her from running off the moment she finished eating.

And then there was something else…

Dreist’s eyes drifted to the onesie Inia was wearing.

He had never raised a child and didn’t know what children’s clothing looked like. Their first meeting had been too brief for him to notice.

But after observing her for two consecutive nights, he noticed that although the clothes the baby wore were different each time she visited, they all looked worn. The stitching wasn’t very neat, and the fabric seemed to have been repurposed from other garments.

A plan began to take shape in his mind. He suspected that aside from himself, there were at least two other people from different worlds interacting with the baby.

One was the person who kept stealing her away—someone who also needed to summon her through dreams, meaning they too must be a Dungeon Lord.

The one who sewed her clothes was most likely the person who looked after her each day. That world might have been desperately poor, yet the fact that the baby was always dressed in fresh, hand-stitched clothes and remained clean showed that someone had been caring for her with great patience and devotion despite limited means.

Perhaps those people were the baby’s attendants in her own world?