I Became the Daughter of a Disgraced Duke - Chapter 2

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

Chapter 1
Who is Cassian Calypso?
Age: twenty-eight.
A war hero who led the Holy Demon War to victory five years ago and was granted the title of Duke of the Barcasia Region.
Over six feet tall.
Shoulders broad as a ox.
Muscles like a beast.
A lethal appearance and presence—the kind that makes you feel you’d experience hell itself if you tangled with him.
In every way, he’s nearly perfect.
Money?
Well, he has plenty, plenty… not. He gambled away his estate and every last coin not long ago.
Honor?
He had it when he first received his title.
Since then, he’s squandered it through his foolishness and dragged his name through the gutter.
Yet despite all that, he’s managed well enough. His one genuine worry is simple.
“No, listen, Doctor. Someone abandoned a child in front of my house, and now everyone claims she’s my daughter. I chose to be single—I even had myself sterilized on a cold surgical table—so what daughter could possibly be mine?”
A few days ago, someone had left a barely grown human child on the doorstep of his home.
About three to five years old, female, and she spoke in a tongue he couldn’t understand—clearly a foreigner.
Certain she belonged to someone else, he’d taken her straight to the Orphanage, only to be turned away.
“It’s obvious she’s your biological daughter! Your father is alive and well—are you really going to leave her to grow up in an orphanage?”
The staff member had looked at Cassian that day as though he were human refuse and a despicable creature.
He’d managed to give temporary shelter to the child who didn’t speak his language for four days.
…Or was it four days? Ten days?
Since someone else had been looking after her, he couldn’t pin down the exact number, but either way, he couldn’t take it anymore.
‘At least I won’t feel guilty since I went through with the surgery.’
Damn it all. Whoever left her here will face divine retribution—that wretched bastard deserves to rot.
“If she resembled me, I wouldn’t argue. But that kid and I look nothing alike, do we? My eyes are slanted, hers are round. I had a huge build even as a child, and she’s the size of a fist. And yet they keep saying she’s my daughter—are their eyes stuffed with cotton?”
“Your daughter?”
“Exactly what I’m saying. There are things you can say to a single man, and things you shouldn’t. Whatever lunatic is trying to ruin my glamorous bachelor life—once I catch them, they’re dead. Anyway, I figured I should get a proper confirmation so I can confidently send the girl to the orphanage or do whatever needs to be done without second-guessing myself.”
The Doctor smiled with the serene kindness of a temple statue.
“So your reason for coming in after four years is to have your surgical status verified?”
“Yes, yes. Just check that it’s been properly severed, would you?”
Flash.
The Doctor’s spectacles glinted sharply in the sunlight.
Slide.
As he adjusted them upward, his expression turned grave.
“Your surgery was flawless.”
“Right, it was flawless. So that proves she and I aren’t related, doesn’t it?”
“Flawless surgery, yet you want a verification? Young men who undergo that procedure are rare enough that the handsome ones must be busy maintaining their looks. I did my very best with the operation, that’s all.”
“What’s anyone going to say? Just check it. Just a check!”
The Doctor seemed offended by Cassian’s apparent doubt in his perfect work and stared at him with a tight jaw.
But there was no way a lifetime academic physician could win against the Capital’s most notorious war hero turned ruffian.
After a moment of examining the surgical site, the Doctor’s eyes widened in shock, and his mouth fell open—he trembled.
“Oh my… this… how can this be?”
“What? Don’t tell me…”
Thunk.
Cassian pressed his palm against his forehead.
Don’t tell me that kid is actually my daughter? Goddamn it all!
He’d survived the battlefield without dying, recovered from wounds like a cockroach, and now he ate and lived well despite everything.
Wasn’t it just his luck—this stubborn vitality—that volunteered him for suffering?
It was as he clutched his head in a mixture of boastful self-pity.
“Calypso. Your condition is now irreversible, isn’t it?”
“Even with all the drinking and smoking, my health is—Wait? What did you say?”
Irreversible? Cassian looked up, and the Doctor shook his head in pity, tut-tutting.
“I warned you last time during surgery. Once severed, reversal is difficult. But now? Even a reversal surgery would be useless. Your condition is permanent. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“So what you’re telling me is…”
“You’ll never father a child. My surgery remains perfect, after all.”
“Oh…”
He’d gone through with it of his own accord four years ago, but was this something to celebrate or to curse?
Before Cassian could even furrow his brow, the Doctor drove the final nail in.
“In a word, a seedless watermelon—a neutered male, through and through.”
It was what I’d wanted to hear, so why did it leave such a bitter taste?
Ahem, hem!
Cassian cleared his throat to collect himself and broached the real matter.
“This child who’s shown up claiming to be my daughter—she’s around three, four, or five years old. What’s the likelihood she’s actually my blood?”
“None whatsoever. At that age, the outcome was already sealed from the start. It would’ve been your one and only chance to see a child, and now it turns out she isn’t yours—well, that’s just… hang in there. Some people get many children and long lives, while others get none and die young. That’s nature’s way, I suppose.”
“An early death is exactly what I’d want, so what are you going on about? Anyway, thanks. I can relax and enjoy myself without worry now.”
Cassian rose from his seat without delay and left the hospital with a light heart.
‘Just as I thought.’
I’d suspected as much, but hearing it confirmed by a professional made my chest feel remarkably clear.
When I arrived home, a child’s voice spilled out from beyond the front gate.
“** * * *! Mama! ** **!”
The word “mama” cut through the foreign tongue with crystalline clarity.
At the child’s thin, chirping voice, Cassian’s brow furrowed.
Click.
As he opened the door and stepped inside, the first thing he saw was a small child sprawled flat on the floor.
Like a chick dipped in flour batter, the little one thrashed her short limbs about, sweeping dust across the ground.
“No! Mama eat? Mama bad? Mama!”
Beside the child stood a crop-haired boy with a scratch across his brow, clutching a soup bowl and fidgeting nervously.
As the crop-haired boy brought a spoon heaping with soup to her lips, the child burst into tears.
“Waaaaaah!”
“What on earth are you doing? Why won’t you…?”
Unable to bear it any longer, Cassian stepped inside and addressed the crop-haired boy.
“I told you to watch the child. What are you doing?”
“Brother! Why are you only just arriving?”
“Got the documents. Once you take these, the orphanage will accept her.”
“Really? That’s wonderful!”
The crop-haired boy, who’d clearly been worn ragged during Cassian’s absence, looked ready to applaud, dark circles shadowing his eyes.
“Anyway, that’s settled. I’m going inside to rest.”
“Huh? Wait—you’re not staying to watch?”
“I’m exhausted. Once you finish feeding her the soup, play with her a bit. I’ll be back this evening.”
Still not sober from last night’s drinking, Cassian had gotten excited at the hospital’s diagnosis and downed more, leaving the room spinning around him.
Cassian shut the door with a bang, abandoning the protesting crop-haired boy.
* * *
I woke up at five years old to find myself in an orphanage attached to the Temple.
The orphanage was impossibly far from the Empire, so every night I’d fall asleep yearning for my mother.
Still, all the teachers were kind.
They praised me every day, held me, kissed me.
Nurtured by their affection, I grew steadily, and by ten years old I’d become a girl.
On my birthday, as I made a wish over the candles on my cake, my friends spoke up.
“Make your wish quick!”
“That’s right! Since it’s your birthday, the Goddess might just grant it!”
I had a mother but had never known a father, so I made my wish to the Goddess.
“Goddess, my cousin Enrique has both a mother and a father, but I have neither. Mother keeps saying she’ll explain when I’m older, and whenever Father comes up, Uncle looks uncomfortable.”
My friends beside me began to whisper.
“My brother was always like that too. Said I’d understand when I grew up why I didn’t have a dad. Turns out he’d passed away.”
“My sister said even when parents run off and abandon the family, they still say that. She told me when I turned ten.”
Praying, and they do this?!
I cracked open one eye and whispered to them in a low voice.
“Shhh! Be quiet. I’m praying right now.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
I continued with my prayer.
“So… I’d really like to have a father too.”
Mother was fragile, so she couldn’t come to this distant place. Truth be told, I didn’t want her to come.
But Father… I wanted to know what my father looked like, didn’t I?
“Goddess! Please give me a father!”
I wanted to ride a sled with my father!
Perhaps my heart had reached the Goddess.
The moment my words ended, an enormous light appeared from nowhere and pierced through me.
“Liri!”
“Hagh! Liri!”
Something about the light — my body transformed in ways I couldn’t understand. I looked down at my hands in shock.
My friends’ voices rang in my ears.
“You’ve undergone transmigration!”
“They said when the marks disappear, it means the transmigration is being undone!”
Before my friends could even run to fetch the teacher, my body suddenly plummeted downward.
Their screams vanished in an instant.
My head spun in dizzying circles, and fear crashed against my heart like waves, again and again.
Terrified, I squeezed my eyes shut, then cracked them open just slightly.
“What are you?”
A frightening man was staring down at me.
Cassian Calypso.
This was my first meeting with the man known as the Capital’s greatest failure.

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