My Daddy Hides His Power - Chapter 120

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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 hiding his strength
Chapter 120
Is this really happening?
Father tore across the Library lobby at a beast’s pace!
He was stealing restricted books and making his escape….
“Dad! This, this is….”
My mouth fell open.
“This is theft!”
Father, his eyebrows flying as he sprinted, seemed troubled by his own actions—his expression startled, caught off guard.
So I told him:
“But it’s amazing!”
“Right! So we pay a fine, so what!”
Oskar’s voice reached us from behind.
“Stop right there! You madman!”
I dangled from Father’s side and prayed.
‘Lord, please grant that the protagonist may become a righteous thief!’
Who could possibly stop him?
In moments, Father slipped from the building and vaulted with perfect timing into the waiting carriage.
He opened the window beside the coachman and called out:
Our destination: where the Warp Gate lay.
“Hurry! To the Temple! We can’t get caught!”
“Yes? A chase…is it?”
In that instant, I caught the coachman’s eyes blazing.
“That’s right!”
I stoked his racing instinct.
“Then hold tight, sir! Hyah!”
The coachman cracked his whip.
The carriage lurched forward, and through the window I saw Oskar’s ashen face finally catching up behind us.
Even as he refused to give up and pursued for a good while longer, his lips formed silent curses.
Once Oskar, dejected, slowed and dwindled to a speck in the distance, I finally felt safe and sat properly.
“Whew.”
Beside me, James, committing his second crime after desertion, was catching his breath.
I threw myself at Father and smothered his cheeks with kisses.
“Dad, you’re the best! So cool!”
“…My dear, being cool isn’t right. It was an unavoidable situation, but theft is wrong. You mustn’t do such things, yes?”
Father held me as he spoke.
“Of course!”
Though the heavens might forgive this.
I quietly added a keyword to my protagonist.
#Righteous Thief (←New!)
* * *
“Damn it!”
Oskar Manuel was devastated—he’d let the book thief slip through his fingers.
He hurried back to the Library to see which books had been taken, and what he found was appalling.
Enoch Rubinstein….
This madman….
That brilliant mind of his.
From all those volumes, he’d selected with surgical precision only those containing crucial information and taken them.
“Gods, I’m losing it.”
There was no single volume that explained the precise conditions for Regression, that one Forbidden Magic among many.
Yet the varieties of Forbidden Magic, research cases, and records of those who’d attempted them were documented—enough to allow for educated guesses.
And if that person was Enoch Rubinstein, he’d deduce everything after reading just a handful of books.
“Should’ve destroyed them sooner….”
Oskar tore at his own hair.
When Enoch had first come to the Magic Tower, something had felt wrong, so he’d gone through and disposed of all related texts.
And yet this had still happened.
‘No. It’s fine. Even if he figures it out, what can he do about it?’
Oskar calmed his turbulent mind.
“I absolutely must survive to the very end. No—I will survive. I won’t die, and I’ll live long and happily.”
“And… Master will be by my side then, won’t you?”
“I’ll make something exist even if it doesn’t.”
If he was being honest, it was the child’s words that had unsettled him, made him want to hide the truth.
Even if she noticed that he’d undergone Regression, he couldn’t let her know what price he’d paid for it.
“It’s fine, it’s fine.”
Oskar tried to soothe himself.
He didn’t know how far Lilis’s power extended, but if anything were possible, this child would pour her Life Force into it without hesitation.
So rather than let the child figure it out alone, it wasn’t such a bad thing if her father knew instead.
‘He adores his daughter beyond measure, so he’ll be careful.’
Enoch wasn’t the type of man to let his child run wild.
No matter how much Oskar pitied him, the man wouldn’t commit the stupidity of shortening his daughter’s life.
Please. It had to be that way.
One bout of foolishness was enough—when father and daughter had nearly thrown their lives away for each other in meaningless sacrifice.
‘How am I supposed to keep you alive this time….’
Thinking of Lilis, Oskar bit at his lip anxiously.
* * *
After the child’s death.
When Enoch had come to him.
Oskar had already failed multiple times trying to resurrect the child with his own life.
The sacrifice required for Resurrection was the life of another Ability User.
But it wasn’t a simple Equivalent Exchange of life for life.
You couldn’t resurrect a more powerful Ability User by sacrificing one with lower ability stats.
Lilis was an existence whose power couldn’t be quantified in normal terms.
But if she were converted to a standard Ability User’s metrics, the child would have far exceeded Oskar’s own ability stats.
So he’d thought there was no other way.
‘Perhaps… if it were this man….’
The moment he saw Enoch, who had lost all will to live.
“Would you die in her place? For that child?”
“Without question.”
Consumed by desire, Oskar didn’t hesitate—he used the father’s life to resurrect the child.
It was a foolish thing to do.
The child opened her eyes at seventeen, her true age.
Since she’d regained all the Life Force she’d spent using her powers, she appeared to be less than ten years old on the surface.
A child reborn whole—able to think normally like others, capable of clear communication, fully intact.
Oskar trembled with rapture.
Now he could finally call out that name he’d been so desperate to know.
“…Lilis.”
But the first person the child looked for was her father.
“Father? Where is Father?”
Her memories of Oskar, who had stayed by her side all along, were fragmented—perhaps because she’d lost her sense of self.
There was only one memory the child held with clarity.
Only the memories she shared with Enoch, who had raised her with love for seven years.
“Father, where is Father….”
The child wailed.
She cried and shouted, desperately searching for only her father.
“It’s all right, don’t cry. Yes? Father said for you to live happily, to be happy. If you do that, Father will be happy too. Don’t cry. And… I’m here. I’m here with you.”
……
The child’s eyes, robbed of light, were hollow and vacant.
No matter how much he tried to soothe her, to plead….
Her eyes wouldn’t meet his.
The child was like a doll that merely moved and breathed.
Empty, vacant, she stared blankly down at her own wrist.
“No!”
Oskar seized the child’s hand in alarm.
A bracelet that displayed the Life Force consumed each time she used her power.
It was the first gift Oskar had given her when she was brought back to life.
“Don’t… don’t do this….”
Oskar understood what the child was trying to do—resurrect her father again.
“Father….”
“Wait, wait please. Just… please.”
……
“Are you an idiot? If you do this, it means nothing. Even if I save your father, you’ll just die again soon.”
“It’s all right.”
“Please!!!”
Oskar pressed the child.
He’d thought everything was perfect.
A world at last at peace.
A child brought back to life.
He’d believed that Enoch’s single life could make them all happy.
“…I understand. I’ll let you see your father again. So wait. Don’t do this…. Just wait a little longer.”
To save someone like Enoch, the child would have to pour out nearly her entire lifespan.
Oskar began searching for a way to give the child her father back.
Three Forbidden Magics.
Resurrection, Creation, Regression.
Of these, the only method was Regression.
The peace and happiness Enoch had finally achieved in this land—it would all come to nothing, but….
‘No one has ever succeeded?’
Unlike Resurrection and Creation, where the cost and results were clearly recorded, there was no information about Regression Magic.
No one had succeeded. No one had even tried.
There were no records left behind.
‘They couldn’t have left records.’
The Regression Magic Formula certainly existed. But could there truly have been no one to cast it?
Even if Regression succeeded, those who cast it couldn’t leave behind the results in word or writing.
That was the Geis.
Moreover, there were quite a few ancestors who were not dead yet had suddenly vanished from this world without a trace.
That was the price.
Those who had disappeared were probably the ones who had used Regression.
Oskar understood.
To turn back time, one had to offer up one’s own existence itself,
and even if one turned it back, nothing could escape the weight of the Geis.
“If I go in here, will I be able to see Father?”
A Magic Circle of Regression, woven from thousands of Magic Formulas.
The child stood within it with a face so full of excitement that it pierced Oskar’s heart.
“No. I’m the one who goes in.”
“……?”
The child didn’t understand the principles of magic at all, yet instinctively feared what was coming.
She was afraid Oskar would disappear like her father had.
That look of worry….
Even that alone was enough to make Oskar believe he was not doing wrong.
“Listen carefully. Now I’m going to let you see your father.”
Only Oskar, the caster, would remember all the time that was about to be undone.
But the Geis had its limits. Even if time turned back, it would only mean repeating the tragedy.
“You can do anything.”
But the child was Primera.
“Just wish it in your mind. Ask to remember everything.”
Oskar made his plea.
“All the time from outside that you never knew existed. Everything your father did for you, all the time that passed outside while you were trapped in here—all of it.”
“…….”
“You have to know it all. You have to remember. Only then will you not repeat the same tragedy.”
“…….”
“Picture yourself remembering everything.”
The child nodded.
Oskar bent down one last time and pressed a brief kiss to the child’s trembling forehead.
“Forget all the painful memories from this life.”
A final goodbye.
The child asked through eyes brimming with tears.
“Will you… still be here?”
“…….”
“You won’t disappear like Father did, will you?”
“That’s right.”
Oskar spoke with a smile.
“…If you wait for me, I’ll come find you.”
* * *
“You solved that when you were seven years old?”
“I did.”
“You’re a genius.”
“That’s right. You’re the dull one.”
Oskar chuckled as he recalled his first conversation with the child upon their reunion.
A bright, beautiful child, grown well.
She seemed happy at her father’s side.
“I’ll try to solve that problem again.”
“You?”
“Yes. If I get it right, please accept my apologies to Father and Grandfather for speaking disrespectfully.”
So she does remember everything.
She must, given that she returned safely to Jedo.
Yet strangely, when he looked at her face, she showed no sign of joy—so he’d deliberately set this test to see if she remembered.
“The Tower Master is seventeen years old.”
The child who had solved difficult problems so fluently.
She clearly remembered all of it.
But why, then.
Why had she forgotten only him?
“Ah.”
As Oskar stood lost in thought, he suddenly dropped the books he’d pulled from the shelf to discard.
“No way.”
“Forget all the painful memories from this life.”
Was it because of that final farewell?
All the child’s painful memories.
Parted from her father, handed over to the Emperor while holding her mother’s hand, locked in the Tower, her abilities exploited….
The child had forgotten all of it.
Because of his request.
“Hey! But I’m not included!”
Oskar cried out, bewildered.
Am I part of her painful memories too?
Laughing hollowly, Oskar began picking up the fallen books one by one.
‘Well, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing.’
If she remembered those ten years locked in the Tower.
He might have become something more precious to her because of it.
Then parting would have been harder.
And so….
Perhaps this was for the best.
Thinking it through this way, Oskar smiled.

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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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