Dad is Back From a Deserted Island - Chapter 79

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Father has returned from the Deserted Island
Chapter 79

Vivian had disappeared.
A week without word had become routine, but it was rare for the silence to stretch beyond a month.
If Vivian didn’t seek me out first, there was nothing I could do. Only patience remained—the bitter art of waiting.
Had those damned people locked her away again?
This time it’s been longer than usual.
She probably hasn’t been eating properly.
I wonder if her health is holding up.
Should I steal some medicine from the servants’ quarters and leave it for her?
My thoughts spiraled endlessly, cascading like a flood, but Vivian never reappeared.
One month. Two months.
A year.
By then, Vivian had come of age.
We’d promised that once we both grew up, we’d visit another village together.
But the person I was waiting for never came back.
‘Why?’
‘Did I upset you again somehow?’
‘Did something happen to you?’
My world lost all its color in an instant.
As I came of age, the forces seeking my death grew bolder.
I’d lost even the will to swat down these insignificant insects one by one. I decided I needed to uproot the source itself.
The one who wanted me dead.
The Emperor.
I killed my biological mother first. I killed my younger sibling too, the one who wailed while clutching her corpse. Since I’d never considered them family, my blade never hesitated.
“M-monster.”
Only one remained—my biological father.
Crouched on the ground, he looked up at me, drenched in blood. His eyes burned with hatred. Not a trace of familial affection could be found in them.
“You… you should have been killed the moment you were born!”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
It would have been easy enough when I was just a newborn.
I didn’t even grant my father time for final words. With a wet thud, the Emperor’s severed head rolled across the floor.
I kicked the obstruction from my path with indifference and sat upon the blood-soaked throne.
“….”
My eyes surveyed the scene of carnage, hollow and empty.
Nothing remained that could stand in Dietrich’s way.
Now that he had reached the pinnacle of this nation, he could truly give Vivian everything.
“Will I be able to find her?”
The very person he wished to give everything to had vanished.
The first task Emperor Dietrich undertook was to search for her.
Should the nation fall into chaos, Vivian’s life—wherever she might be—could become difficult, so he did not neglect his duties as Emperor.
Yet no matter how thoroughly he turned the Empire upside down, he could not find Vivian.
It was inevitable. By then, Vivian was already dead.
No one remembered Vivian, who had never left the small rural village and had not even been granted a proper grave.
Ron and Mary had long since devoured all the remaining assets of House of Lamber and played the role of village benefactors, so even the villagers who might have remembered her kept her name hushed.
Dietrich heard Vivian’s name again through a murder case that seemed entirely unrelated.
‘She’s dead.’
The investigator in charge had conducted such a thorough inquiry, driven by public interest, that reading the documents alone revealed every detail of the circumstances.
Confronted with a reality he had never wished for, Dietrich abandoned everything.
He could not even muster the will to kill Vivian’s foolish father. Had he simply not abandoned Vivian, she would never have suffered such a miserable death.
Of course, had that been the case, he would never have met Vivian—but perhaps that would have been better.
Dietrich’s daily life deteriorated at an agonizingly slow pace.
He could not remember when he last ate on time. He lost count of the nights he spent awake, unable to sleep.
His body, more dragon than human, did not break down even under such conditions, but his mind steadily wore away.
Dietrich wondered countless times whether what he had desired was truly so grand.
For that small girl who appeared like a phantom in his garden one day to live happily.
That was all he had wished for. Only after losing Vivian did he understand—if Vivian could be happy, it mattered not whether he stood beside her.
As Dietrich sank into profound despair, an opportunity was granted to him that could undo everything.
Dietrich made a wish and paid the price.
Thus he turned back the hands of time.
Yet he had no intention of explaining his circumstances in detail to Vivian.
He would die anyway.

* * *

Dietrich looked down at the Divine Beast. His gaze carried a reproach for making things troublesome.
At that piercing stare, Kiki flinched and hid behind Vivian’s legs.
“Why are you glaring at her? Just tell me why you suddenly demanded she leave.”
Dietrich’s lips remained sealed. Even he could understand that Vivian wouldn’t be pleased once she learned the reason.
That’s why he hadn’t sought her out even after returning from the Deserted Island. Though his weakened body couldn’t venture far anyway.
How could he explain this in a way that would make Vivian stop pressing him and willingly return?
Dietrich had never been given many opportunities to speak, so he lacked any gift for words.
[Reversing time is not something a Dragon can do without paying a price.]
“Enough.”
The Divine Beast clearly feared Dietrich, yet she didn’t stop.
Kiki’s priority had always been Vivian. And in Kiki’s judgment, this was information Vivian needed to know.
[That prince must have sacrificed his own power or lifespan as the price for turning back time. There’s no other way he could have lost all that overwhelming strength and ended up looking like a corpse.]
Dietrich and Vivian both furrowed their brows simultaneously.
“He sacrificed his lifespan…?”
‘I should have just let him keep sleeping.’
Whether Dietrich regretted his actions or not, Vivian felt betrayed.
Her gaze as she turned to look at Dietrich was sharp and cutting.
Sharp as it might be, it posed no threat to Dietrich, who stood a head taller than her. He flinched and averted his eyes.
“Is that true? Did you really… sacrifice something like that?”
“….”
“You said you wouldn’t lie.”
“…Yes.”
Before the girl who had first shown him what the world was like, Dietrich always became weak.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to save you.”
“…You saved me and didn’t even come to see me? If I hadn’t come here, I would have only remembered you as a child from a few dreams…”
“That’s fine. I just wanted you to live.”
Kiki, still hiding behind Vivian, let out an exasperated sound.
[Vivian. That man isn’t normal. Do you really expect a senseless person to give you a proper answer?]
“If he sacrificed his lifespan, what does that mean? If that’s why his body is like this, coughing blood with every breath—”
[When the point in time he reversed reaches its end, his time will also end.]
Her breath caught in her throat.
“You mean he’ll die…?”
[He’s already as good as dead. His body merely breathes according to what time remembers. That’s why I said he looks like a corpse.]
Now even her hands trembled. Vivian was not the type of person who could brush aside her gratitude for someone who sacrificed their life for her with a vow to live diligently in their stead.
Diti was going to die.
It was an odd thing to say for someone who had lost her mother at birth, but Vivian was not accustomed to death.
She had no memory of when her mother died, and since becoming old enough to understand death, she had never had to say goodbye to anyone close to her.
That’s why she was so afraid. Death encountered only through stories and words seemed far more dramatic and terrifying.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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