My Daddy Hides His Power - Chapter 125

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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 hides his strength
Chapter 125
“Cheshire….”
Enoch couldn’t find the words to console the child, so he simply held him close.
Watching the boy sob convulsively, Enoch felt his own fear rising.
Fear of facing the truth.
Whatever words could have shattered Cheshire so completely—a boy who had been so numb to emotion—Enoch dreaded to know.
“I don’t… want to kill anyone….”
……
“You promised me…. Please….”
Words that struck like a stone dropped into still water.
Enoch didn’t want to understand what the boy meant by not wanting to kill his daughter.
He didn’t want to know.
* * *
After finally calming Cheshire, Enoch brought the boy to his room, then came to his study and lingered there for a long time in hesitation.
The letter Lilis had written.
It took him an eternity to work up the courage to open it, turned face-down as it lay.
Will I be able to see this without falling apart?
Will I be able to bear it?
‘Foolish.’
Enoch laughed bitterly and turned the letter over.
Hi, Dad! By the time you read this, I’m probably already gone, right?
From the very first line, the letter unmade him.
Then it fractured him with confusion.
‘What is this….’
He’d told her nothing.
Yet Lilis seemed to perceive everything, as though she were a god looking down upon the world.
The blade he was now honing.
Everything he was preparing for the rebellion.
“How….”
Even each counter-move the Emperor had plotted against his own struggles.
‘Is she seeing the future?’
Because she’s Primera?
No—if that were possible, there would have been no hope against the Emperor from the start.
Slowly, Enoch understood.
The girl was, she was….
1789, the Non-ability User Extermination Policy.
If you’ve made it this far, then you’ve won! ㅠㅠ Dad, you worked so hard.
But this isn’t over even if you catch the Emperor…. Because people will keep dying anyway ㅠㅠ
Not seeing the future—but remembering every moment of time already lost.
Like Oscar, the Regressor.
All of her past life.
A tragedy complete unto itself.
So many innocent people are suffering.
I’ll have to kill them myself, and it’s going to hurt so much. So that’s why….
Don’t hesitate. Please.
Make it quick…. Save as many people as you can.
Breath caught in his chest. Enoch’s eyes widened in shock, his hand seizing his own collar.
In this moment, right now. Everything was rushing toward the same ending, exactly as the lost time had been.
The only thing that mattered was that the child was safe beside him.
That single fact alone.
“Why….”
Why you?
Why, when you knew everything—when you understood it all—
“Don’t run. Let’s go back to Jedo together. Rejoin the Paladin Order.”
“And I want to go with you, Dad.”
Why had she come back here?
She could have pretended not to know. She could have run.
Maybe she’d wanted to.
“Ha… haha….”
Enoch laughed hollowly.
At last, peace. A happy ending for everyone. A normal country….
His daughter had believed that for this, her father had to wield a sword.
Even knowing she would be in danger, that she might die.
“Ha… ha….”
Enoch continued to mock himself through his blurred vision.
A child—young and tender, selfish if need be….
It was Enoch himself, no one else, who had taught her this way.
“I… I made you into….”
The tragedy he had only dimly sensed proved far crueler and more shocking than he could have imagined.
What if he had simply failed?
Or never attempted it at all—would things have been different?
His desperate struggle for a meager cause.
And his daughter had been dying all the while, trying to stop her father’s struggle.
“I didn’t want to kill you….”
By Cheshire’s hand—the one he had trained. With the sword he had forged for a noble purpose.
He had taken his own daughter’s life.
“Ugh… ah….”
He couldn’t breathe. His sharp fingers clawed at his suffocating chest.
So that was it.
That was what had happened.
Because of a foolish father who didn’t know what mattered.
“Don’t go to war like this, Father. Why do you obey the Emperor’s word so obediently? Do you truly believe this is right?”
In his younger, more reckless days.
Enoch could not understand his father Nordic, setting out for an invasion campaign.
Then Nordic had said to him:
“One day, you’ll understand me.”
Enoch’s mother had fallen in battle.
By the Emperor’s command. Sent to a war that amounted to a death sentence.
And it was after that.
That Nordic, who had spoken only righteous words even before the Emperor, just like Enoch, finally took up his sword without complaint.
“Someday your principles… will be the death of you.”
You were right, Father.
Everything you said was right.
I… I killed my own daughter, my life’s treasure….
“Hah… ugh.”
Tears welled in his bloodshot eyes. His hands tore at his exposed chest again and again.
“Ah! Ah!”
Thud, thud. Fists hammering down in anguish. His chest bloomed with crimson bruises.
It was me who killed you.
My principles killed you.
“Haugh….”
The pain.
So much pain.
To imagine the tragedy my poor daughter endured alone….
So much.
* * *
‘What is this?’
I had said goodnight to Dad and fallen asleep.
The moment my eyes opened, I was standing somewhere unfamiliar.
‘Huh? That’s Axion.’
I could see Axion in armor, and knights alongside him.
I rushed toward them.
“Uncle!”
I called out happily, but he didn’t answer.
Ignoring me? No.
He couldn’t see me.
“Uncle… what?”
I noticed a small child holding Axion’s hand.
It was me!
It was how I looked a few months ago.
When I lived in Jenon.
I was wearing a threadbare dress, my eyes red from crying.
‘Oh, this is a dream!’
That thought came to me.
A strange weightlessness, and that odd sensation of watching myself from outside myself.
‘Wow, is this a lucid dream?’
It was fascinating. A dream where I could recognize it was a dream while dreaming it.
I’d been trailing after the Paladins as they headed somewhere, but I stopped short.
‘Wait. This….’
The moment I realized.
My heart hammered in my chest.
‘This is part of the original story I didn’t know about?’
I had been kidnapped.
To bring my father back, the Emperor had ordered the Paladin Order to do it.
Axion had no choice.
Now that I knew the original story, I could stay quietly by my father’s side and return to Jedo, but—
‘Originally, I wouldn’t have been. I would’ve just been kidnapped as planned.’
My suspicion proved correct. When Axion and the Paladins arrived, it was at the Ability User Training Institute.
There, I saw my mother with a pallid face.
“…You really were still in Jenon?”
“Yes.”
Mother bit her lip.
“Stupid, why….”
She’d revealed the location, but clearly she’d hoped my father wouldn’t still be staying in Jenon.
“Stupid?”
I flinched in surprise.
Axion’s expression as he looked at Mother was terrifying.
“That brilliant child of yours, Enoch—why would he do something so foolish?”
……
“He’s not your son alone. Your daughter is somewhere out there—you must have thought you still had the right to know where she was.”
Axion added through gritted teeth.
“Did you ever imagine? That long ago, he’d already passed his own location to someone through that mouth of yours—the one he trusted?”
Mother didn’t answer and avoided Axion’s gaze.
I felt unsettled.
‘Ugh, I already knew all this—why am I getting depressed again? Get it together.’
I slapped my cheeks.
Mother had retired after giving birth to my half-brother Kyle.
If only two years had passed since we fled, then the Emperor must have already learned my father’s location by that point.
Even knowing where we were hiding, the Emperor didn’t come looking until I turned seven.
The reason was obvious.
‘Figures. I needed to become incredibly precious to my father. He was giving us time to bond.’
The more I thought about it, the more the Emperor seemed like a devil incarnate.
“…I’m sorry, Axion. But thank goodness you came out unharmed. It must have been difficult dealing with him.”
“It was easy.”
Axion scoffed.
“Because I had the child with me. In case she got hurt, that mighty man became an idiot who could do nothing. It was pathetic, really.”
……
“He’s on his way to Jedo now. Everything’s gone according to His Majesty’s will.”
“…I’m sorry.”
Mother couldn’t even look at me standing there silently. But unlike her, my gaze remained fixed on her.
“I’m truly sorry. I have no words. I know how close you were with Enoch…. I can see how heavy the burden of betrayal must be for you.”
“Hold on, hold on. Excuse me?”
That was when Philip pushed his way in, irritably brushing sweat-dampened orange hair from his forehead.
“I was just going to listen quietly, but you’re talking like this whole thing makes sense.”
The Paladin Order’s mood-maker.
Uncle Philip, who usually wore nothing but a smile.
But now his demeanor was ice-cold.
“Don’t you know the Commander ignored His Majesty’s orders multiple times? Don’t you know we only went through with it because he kept stalling until our entire order was about to be wiped out?”
“Ah.”
“But what are you saying? Betrayal? Did the Captain betray us? Is that it?”
“Stop.”
Axion cut off the agitated Philip.
Mother seemed to realize her mistake at once and apologized immediately.
“I’m sorry. I… I’m just so confused. I misspoke.”
Mother trembling, Axion and Philip both furious—
it was all so hard to watch.
‘So Axion… didn’t obey the Emperor’s command right away….’
I hadn’t known because she never said.
Besides Father and Oscar, no ability user would have the audacity to defy an order from Primera the Emperor.
Yet Axion had held out until the very end.
“I have nothing more to say to you. Open your Core, accept your Rank, and that’s the end of it. The child won’t need to see your face again.”
Axion took my hand and tried to lead me into the Training Institute building.
That was when—
“Huh, Mommy?”
I, who had been watching nervously from between them, wrenched my hand free from Axion’s grip and clung to Mother instead.
“Mommy…. Are you really our mommy?”
“…….”
Mother was taken aback.
Axion and all the Paladin uncles froze, watching me.
“Um, um… Mommy. I’m, I’m scared. That man, he’s… gack. Waaaaah!”
“Hey, don’t cry. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
Mother held me, soothing my fear of Axion and the uncles.
‘Ugh, the little one’s the worst.’
I watched it all unfold and let out a hollow laugh.
The original me—a seven-year-old mind without a shred of understanding.
Which was why she had no sense at all.
Compared to the big, frightening knights, this woman was small and kind-looking, and more than that—a mother she’d never seen before.
She wept and clung to her.
As if Mother were salvation itself.
‘Fool.’
In the end, it was Mother who took me into the Training Institute.
‘No! Don’t go!’
That place was a burning pit of hell.
I reached out to grab the back of Mother as she carried me, but it was useless.
‘This is really the worst!’
I didn’t want to see any more, but just as I was about to follow along—
like someone pulled from drowning waters, I was torn from the dream all at once.
* * *
“Gasp!”
I opened my eyes to brilliant morning sunlight.
Dawn.
My first thought was amazement at the lucid dream.
Even when I’d begged to understand the original story I didn’t know, it had been beyond my ability.
‘Why did I have that dream? Could I have it again?’
Just as I was torn between wanting to see more and feeling I simply couldn’t bear to, the dream cut off sharply.
That was no ordinary severing technique.
With that thought, I flopped back up—
“Huh?”
Father was beside the bed.
He’d somehow pulled a chair over next to my mattress and was sprawled across it in an awkward position.
“Dad! When did you get here?”
At the sound of my voice, Father jolted upright.
“What, aren’t you going to change clothes? Why are you sitting so uncomfortably… Gah!”
I gasped when I saw Father’s face.
What in the world—
What had happened?
Why, exactly why—
why were the handsome protagonist’s eyes, his eyes—
“Princess. Did you sleep well?”
A voice cracked raw with dryness.
Father forced open eyes swollen like a pufferfish’s belly.
“Ah, why… Dad… Who on earth….”
“Mmgh.”
“You turned Dad into a frog!!!”

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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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