I Don’t Need a Dad Like This! - Chapter 119

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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【Chapter 119】

In fact, Casselik knew everything.

Of course he did—otherwise, he wouldn’t have suddenly suggested looking at dresses in the middle of their conversation.

Until the day before, he had been waiting for the child’s letter, unaware that Rie had regressed.

But then the Crown Prince urgently visited the Duke’s Castle.

“Where’s Rie? Is the child okay?”

Jair immediately asked about Rie’s well-being.

The boy told him about what the Dark Mages had done and Rie’s regression, for his sake who knew nothing.

‘…Rie regressed for nearly a month?’

That she had regressed meant it was a situation too difficult to handle.

And the explanation that followed. From kidnapping to hostage situations—perhaps it was natural for the child to make such a choice.

After hearing the entire story, Casselik felt like he’d been hit with cold water.

What had he been doing to let that young child be driven to such extremes?

That’s when it happened.

‘Even if you go back… you must remember!’

A sharp pain struck his temple as a familiar voice rang out.

‘Even if you go back, Father, you must remember Rie!’

Along with that desperate cry, memories of Rie trying to turn the clock and Serena trying to stop the child flooded into his mind all at once.

“…Hah!”

Casselik breathed roughly.

This had never happened before. Somehow, all his memories from before Rie’s regression had returned.

‘How is this possible?’

He didn’t know the reason, but this wasn’t the time to stay still. There was a possibility that the regressed Rie had lost her memories.

Casselik immediately requested a report from Shadow. But Serena had already used dark magic to transfer to another body.

There was one difference from the past.

Before the regression, they said Serena’s body had become a corpse immediately after she used dark magic.

Because she had stabbed herself with a sword, her soul left her body and moved to another one.

But unlike that past, this time her sword had narrowly missed her heart.

So when they moved that body to the Imperial Palace to check, it was reported that her heart was beating again.

‘The past has changed. Then everything after that will start changing too.’

If so, there was a high possibility that the past where Serena had parasitized Countess Rioletta’s body would also change.

Originally, the flow of time could be altered by a single trivial choice.

Just like how Rie, caught up in his regression, had appeared directly at the divorce court.

He immediately sent informants toward the Birdwell Barony. First, he needed to find out whose body Serena was parasitizing.

The most likely candidates were people from the Birdwell Barony.

If she had transferred to one of them, surely someone would show behavior different from usual.

He waited for reports with an anxious heart, when an informant reported that Emilia had quit her job at the embroidery shop.

‘She didn’t quit her job before the regression—what happened?’

But they said there didn’t seem to be any particular reason for it. That meant the soul inside might have changed.

In the midst of this, Emilia came to visit the Duke’s Castle directly.

Moreover, she even blushed while saying she wanted to go to the Blessing of the Cradle together.

Though these were words he had always dreamed of hearing, unfortunately Casselik couldn’t feel excited.

He was just certain.

That Serena had entered Emilia’s body.

* * *

“That’s what you get for coveting someone else’s dress.”

At Casselik’s words that struck like a dagger, Serena trembled.

This beautiful dress belongs to someone else? When I’m in Emilia’s body?

Anyway, since I’m the one inside, all those dresses are practically mine too.

“…No, I am… I am Emilia right now. Face, body, hands. They’re all Emilia’s!”

Serena muttered as if hypnotizing herself, then grabbed and tore at the lace neckline with both hands.

“And the real Emilia’s soul must be dead. When you use dark magic, the souls should switch to different bodies, but I killed my own body myself. So she can’t be alive, right? What happened to Emilia’s soul that had nowhere to go?”

“…?”

At her words, Rie’s eyes wavered instantly.

“F-Father. Is Mother really… like that? Is Mother going to Heaven again?”

The trembling child hid between Casselik’s legs.

Finally, I get to see that little one cry.

“Haha, hahahaha…!”

Serena laughed madly, satisfied with the situation, then put on a polite tone again.

“Even if the Duke doesn’t need me, Rie is still young and needs a mother. It would be better to accept me as Emilia. I’ll act well like Emilia. As a good mother, without doing bad things…”

“Who said Emilia was dead?”

But a cold question cut off her words.

“…What?”

Serena’s expression hardened.

Come to think of it, only Rie had been shocked by the words that Emilia couldn’t be alive.

Though she thought he was stunned, Casselik neither despaired nor avoided the situation.

“Emilia is not dead.”

He simply stated with certainty, as if he knew everything.

Casselik stroked the back of Rie, who was crying in his arms.

“Mother is not dead. She’s just inside the real Serena’s body. They say she’s resting at the Imperial Palace now.”

“R-really?”

Then the child who had been burying her face in his shoulder looked up.

She had cried so much in such a short time that the shoulder part of his jacket was soaked.

But not caring about such things, he looked at the child’s swollen eyes with a gentle gaze and pressed gently with his thumb.

“Yes.”

“Phew… Thank goodness…”

Soon after, Rie’s cheek plopped against his shoulder.

In fact, Rie’s stamina had reached its limit long ago. She had come this far with only the thought of seeing Emilia.

He felt the child’s warm body temperature as small breathing sounds echoed.

Casselik gently stroked the small back of her head.

‘Seeing how she came straight here, she must remember before the regression.’

How could Rie have memories of that month?

Before such questions, he felt sorry thinking how busily this little head must have been working.

“Duke!”

That’s when it happened.

While he was fiddling with the child’s protruding silver hair, Serena suddenly knelt and grabbed his trouser leg.

“A-as the Duke knows, I know the Dark Mages’ stronghold. So if I reveal everything, could you pardon my crimes or… at least reduce my sentence?”

Even in this situation, she was appealing that although her soul was Serena’s, the shell she wore was Emilia’s.

Casselik almost felt heartache at her face with tears deliberately left unwipied around her eyes.

Because it reminded him of how she had pleaded to at least let her raise Rie on the day of their divorce.

One of the many sins he would remember and live with for life.

But.

“Take your filthy hands off.”

That made it even more detestable.

How dare she try to imitate Emilia with that filthy soul of hers.

Serena flinched at his gaze, as if he were looking at vermin.

“If even a single drop of those tears in your eyes falls, the process of transporting you to the Imperial Palace will become more painful. Nothing should disappear from Emilia’s body because of something like you. Not even a single tear.”

“….”

Serena’s tear-filled eyes quickly dried up under the murderous warning.

Pale as a sheet, Serena was seized by the knights and loaded into the carriage.

* * *

“…Hmm, Mother. Why is Father good? Father is just poop….”

Blink.

“Poop?”

The small nose bridge floating in dreamland wrinkled.

This was because a carriage filled with poop had suddenly appeared in her unpredictable dream.

Her nostrils twitched, trying to smell the stinky odor, but for some reason, instead of a terrible stench, she could smell the scent of cool wind around her.

“…Mmm?”

Rie, who had finally awakened, half-opened her eyes.

Where was this place again.

She clearly remembered discovering Aunt Serena at Theodore Ducal Castle….

But her body was unusually warm. It felt like being inside a cave wrapped in a cozy blanket.

The moment Rie turned her head to find the source of this warmth, she saw the sharply chiseled profile of a man right next to her.

It was Casselik.

‘…Am I being held in Father’s arms?’

Rie, now fully conscious, finally realized.

That for the first time since birth, she had fallen asleep in Casselik’s embrace.

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