I Became the Daughter of a Disgraced Duke - Chapter 38

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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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Chapter 38
Eyes so clean they knew nothing of the world’s filth.
So innocent they gleamed like a still lake.
I knew those eyes would change someday……but.
“I could give my life for you.”
The oath I’d made in childhood wasn’t simply about keeping Iris safe.
I wanted to shield her from the world itself—from the wounds people inflict, from sorrow and war and calamity and everything else that exists beneath the sky.
So if I’m her father, if I’m truly her real father, shouldn’t I protect my child’s innocence?
Kassian’s hand went slack. He took only his share: eighty million gold.
“No. I just took what was originally Dad’s money. This isn’t gambling at all.”
“It isn’t?”
“Of course not.”
Kassian wiped the sauce from the child’s mouth and lifted her into his arms.
Though it was summer, it was dawn, and neither of them had thought to dress warmly.
He borrowed a blanket from the Tavern owner and wrapped her up tight.
If she caught a cold and ran a fever, it would be serious.
“Hey, owner. They’ll cover the bill.”
But even so, having won and walked out empty-handed heated his blood.
Kassian stuck the Tavern tab and food costs to those men and silently addressed them.
‘Consider yourselves lucky.’
When he drew a finger across his throat, the gamblers went white and began gathering their things.
Kassian watched their retreat with a bitter smile and stepped out into the street.
* * *
“Haaaa-yawn.”
Iris draped herself over Kassian’s neck and yawned so wide her mouth seemed to split.
“Aren’t you scared of the dark?”
“Dad’s here.”
His daughter, so easily frightened that she could only fall asleep by playing on the couch with him until she collapsed—now said the darkness held no terror because her father was beside her.
If it hadn’t been nighttime, his grin would have split his face.
“Your dad will slice through any Bed Monster or Demon God.”
“No. Dad runs away really well.”
“Hmm?”
“That time when you went whoosh and ran from the witch lady—it was kind of fun.”
That witch was a deranged stalker; hiding was simply the most practical option when conversation failed…… and anyway, he couldn’t exactly beat a woman. Did she want her father to become some depraved lunatic who went around hitting women?
He’d meant to correct the record with his daughter—who now remembered the man who’d saved the world as nothing but a runner—but he had too much to say and his thoughts short-circuited.
With the result that.
“N-no, uh—not really.”
Nothing but an unconvincing denial came out.
So this is why people with loose lips keep talking.
Kassian let out a heavy sigh of self-reproach.
Just then, Iris pressed herself against him more tightly than usual.
Gulp.
He heard her take a small breath.
“Ack! C-can’t breathe! Dad’s breath……!”
“Dad! Quiet! There’s a Bed Monster over there!”
She clung to his neck so tightly he couldn’t breathe, and she whispered urgently, scolding him.
As Kassian choked, he followed the child’s gaze.
In the darkness, he saw a shape shuffling forward.
Too feeble to be human.
‘Not a Demon Beast…… what is it? An Evil Spirit?’
Before his mind could analyze, he was already holding the child tight.
He’d left his sword behind after the war ended, so he had no immediate weapon on hand—but at Kassian’s level, his entire body was a blade.
‘First priority is escape.’
As long as there was someone to protect, unnecessary conflict had to be avoided.
Especially since Iris was only five years old.
Kassian assessed his opponent with far sharper focus than he’d shown his anger at the Tavern.
The exit was in the alley at five o’clock.
Once through, he’d scale the roofs, quickly change direction, and run home.
First, grab a sword, and if a situation came that forced evacuation, pack the child’s clothes and hair ties in a bag, then head to Genovion’s house…….
In the darkness, the creature moved.
Hunched over and doing something—if he was unleashing magic of any kind, Kassian would immediately—.
Slap! Slap!
A familiar sound.
Kassian’s eyes narrowed.
Iris, catching his tension, began squeezing his neck again. And then.
“……A Lamp?”
Men stood in a line centered around the lamp’s glow.
Every one of them wore the face of exhaustion.
“Huh. Dad. So it wasn’t a Bed Monster after all.”
“Gasp. Dad, you’re squishing me.”
“Sorry.”
Only then could he breathe a little easier.
Kassian approached the men and asked.
“What’s this line for?”
“It’s a queue for the Limited Edition Lulu Princess Doll sale. It’s just so dark out here, we lit this lamp to see.”
One of the men showed him a flyer.
Iris’s eyes went wide the moment she saw the picture of the black-haired Lulu Princess Doll.
“Dad. That’s it. The Holy Maiden, Princess Lulu!”
“What, what?”
“The Princess Lulu who received the oath of the Holy Knights. And it’s the black-haired Princess Lulu. She’d be so pretty…….”
The child couldn’t even read yet, so how in the world did she know about black-haired Limited Edition dolls?
Was it something like how she knew the auction date for a 320-year-old Limited Edition vintage liquor salvaged from a shipwreck?
The senseless thought faded quickly.
It was because of Iris, who couldn’t tear her eyes from the doll in the picture.
Iris had never asked him to buy her anything.
She’d never had the chance.
In the past, he hadn’t been there, and now they’d only just been reunited.
‘It’s just a flyer.’
Watching his daughter fidget with the advertisement, her eyes full of longing, Kassian felt his heart grow heavy at how far there was still to go.
‘Isn’t five the age when children throw tantrums?’
He’d heard that five-year-olds were supposed to wail and thrash about like demons.
“Let’s buy one for ourselves too.”
Kassian walked to the back of the line and took his place.
“For ourselves too?”
“Why? You don’t want to?”
“No! I want to! I really want to!”
It was a dark night. Stars glittered thickly, and a luminous moon peeked through the clouds.
But the night sky was already cradled in his arms.
Iris’s eyes sparkled like stars, bright with anticipation.
Her smiling face glowed like moonlight.
Kassian kept vigil all night. He lit the lamp and spoke casually with the other fathers waiting in line.
“They say children graduate from Princess Lulu around age eight.”
“Our house nearly went bankrupt over Princess Lulu. I don’t know where so much money goes for some princess doll.”
For Kassian, who was buying a Lulu Princess Doll for the first time, he only now learned how popular she was among girls.
He felt a pang of self-reproach for his own inattentiveness.
In the meantime, Iris fell asleep as if unconscious. It hadn’t even been ten minutes since they started waiting in line.
Once the child was asleep, the other fathers stopped talking for fear of waking her and sat down on the ground, nodding off.
Kassian also sat on the ground and waited through the night.
‘This reminds me of the war.’
Back when he first went to the battlefield, his rank was low, so he often stood watch.
Then too, he’d spent the early hours sleepless.
The difference was that back then he couldn’t sleep, whereas now he simply chose not to.
Of course, he could have sat and dozed like the other fathers.
There were plenty of nights he’d feigned death, pretending to be a corpse among Demon Beast corpses.
But he had a very important duty.
Which was.
Slap!
Killing mosquitoes.
Eeeeeee.
Slap!
Kassian caught the mosquito with a sharpness honed like a blade.
‘How dare it try to bite her.’
If the mosquito were feeding on him, he’d simply bleed and close his eyes to it.
But when the target was Iris, everything changed.
Slap!
Some mosquitoes carried disease depending on their kind, and the thought of the girl scratching her delicate skin raw from the itching made it impossible to let them be.
‘Disgustingly many of them.’
That made seven.
Kassian brushed the mangled mosquito corpse from his hands onto the floor and adjusted the blanket wrapped around Iris.
Even in summer, the nights held a chill that demanded care. A cold could be serious.
‘Those bastards must be celebrating—they lost the wager but saved their lives.’
If not for Iris, they’d have drained him to the bone.
Kassian stroked his sleeping daughter’s hair.
Since she was born, the thing he feared most wasn’t debt—it was becoming a parent he couldn’t face.
He didn’t need to be a father to be proud of. But a shameful one was unforgivable.
Raised under a worthless father, Kassian knew exactly how much that kind of pain cost.
All night watching Iris, hunting mosquitoes.
Unable to sleep, Kassian sat on the floor and watched the office workers heading to their jobs as dawn broke.
‘What’s the difference between me and a homeless man?’
After spending the whole night awake and watching the morning commute pass by, the toy shop owner finally arrived for his shift.

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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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