My Daddy Hides His Power - Chapter 133

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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
133
“What’s there to hide? I can read your mind like an open book.”
“I’m not, really.”
Oscar snorted derisively and completed the Magic Formula.
The moment the Barrier dissolved, the altar blazed with light and trembled.
“Ah.”
Enoch, who had been watching, gasped.
The Heart Fragment, which had been nothing but a stone until now.
The instant the Barrier fell away, it began to pulse with sacred blue radiance, beating as though alive.
“What in the world is this?”
“Ugh, look how grotesque it is. How are we supposed to use this on her?”
“I don’t know myself. All I have is what our princess wrote in her letter.”
The two exchanged glances for only a moment before moving with swift purpose.
“We don’t have time to waste. Straight to her room.”
“Same thought.”
Enoch gathered the Sacred Artifact while Oscar split the skin of his thumb and prepared to draw a Transportation Magic Circle with his blood.
They had accomplished it in just an hour and a half.
* * *
‘Ah.’
The moment I heard my father’s answer—that he would die in my place without a shred of hesitation.
The shock was so profound that I lost consciousness.
‘No, wait. I haven’t lost consciousness—I’m still thinking, after all.’
My vision has simply gone black.
And at the same time, I am sinking, as though submerged in water.
Deeper,
deeper.
Always
deeper still.
‘Now I understand. Why you’ve shown me all of this.’
The tragedies born from my very existence are being forced upon me with ruthless clarity.
I was used by the Emperor and killed countless people.
Faceless multitudes.
And not just them—Oscar, who had lived his life in peace, and Father, who could have built a tranquil world and found happiness….
Both were willing to throw away their lives for me.
‘I should never have been born.’
As these painful truths became clear to me, such thoughts consumed me.
My vow to survive, my promise to myself, grew dimmer and dimmer.
If I live on?
Will everything really be all right?
‘No.’
This lucid dream is telling me the truth.
Your existence is a calamity.
More precisely: the very existence called ‘Primera’ is a calamity itself.
‘I thought only the Emperor was evil. I believed that once he was gone, everyone would be happy.’
But was the Emperor’s father, and his father before him, and so on back through his long line of ancestors….
Were they all as wicked as he is?
And yet the divine still granted them the Power of Primera?
Perhaps they were very just and virtuous people.
Like my father.
Strong, upright, righteous—bloodlines worthy of bearing such power.
But their children’s children’s children inherited the strength in turn, and slowly, inevitably, it rotted away.
‘Even if I kill the Emperor, even if I survive—will this world truly change?’
What if I simply hide my power and stop creating those capable of wielding it?
Will it all end with me?
But what if one day I fall in love and have a child?
‘Another Primera will emerge.’
Perhaps my own child, or my child’s child, or my child’s child’s child—someone among them might become as corrupt as the Emperor.
Then should I never have children at all?
Even if I swear it now, how can I know what variables the future will bring?
‘Perhaps the ending was already written from the start.’
Primera’s complete annihilation.
That would be the happy ending—and likely the conclusion that the god who granted this power desired.
The original work had purposefully burdened the protagonist with tragedy and trauma, ending things that way for a reason.
‘If I have to die so everyone else can live happily, I really don’t want that….’
I missed Father.
So very much.
The moment I had that thought.
‘Father?’
Before me, sinking helplessly downward and downward, Father’s face appeared as if by magic.
Black and blue—an abyss like the depths of the ocean itself.
Cutting through it, Father approached me with arms spread wide, his face radiant with a warm smile.
‘Father!’
Though I opened my mouth to call out to him, no voice came, but it didn’t matter.
Father caught me in his embrace before I could fall any further.
‘Ah, I’m alive.’
The familiar scent of Father, holding me so tenderly.
I felt relief wash over me.
But it was short-lived.
‘……?’
Father thrust me upward with all his strength.
Unlike before, I shot toward the surface, rising and rising again.
‘Father?’
Father fell into the black water just as I had moments before, growing distant bit by bit.
I reached out to grab him, but he only drifted further away.
Father smiled at me all the way down.
‘Father!!!’
At the same moment I was pulled from the water,
“Gasp!”
A familiar face appeared before my eyes.
“Ah….”
Me.
I who should have died by Cheshire’s hand—and yet here I was now, alive before my own eyes.
That’s when I understood.
Father had pulled me up from the water and saved me, then fell into the depths in my place….
The ‘me’ I was looking at now was the ‘me’ who had consumed Father’s life and come back alive.
“Aaaaaahhhhh!”
It was horrible.
Seeing the situation I’d only suspected actually unfold before me was utterly unbearable.
I clutched my head and screamed, stumbling backward wildly.
I really had lived by taking Father’s life.
I had killed Father and lived.
Me.
“Urgh.”
Bile rose in my throat.
The sight of my living form there was so revolting, so sickening.
“I—I’m sorry. I was wrong. So please, just wait. Don’t—don’t do anything. I’m begging you.”
I heard Oscar’s voice.
He was kneeling before the me who had been revived, pleading frantically.
“I had it wrong. Didn’t I?”
I wiped my wet lips and forced my eyes wide open, trying to look at them both.
I didn’t want to see the resurrected me because of how repulsive it was, but I had no choice if I wanted to remember what I had lost.
“Father, I’ll see you again….”
I spoke through tears.
The revived me appeared to be less than ten years old.
It seemed the resurrected me had, without hesitation, been trying to bring Father back to life.
Oscar, gripped by terror, was trying to stop me.
‘Did it take 322 years to bring Father back? Yes, it was instant death….’
The moment I thought it, it came to pass—the Power of Primera.
I could have brought Father back to life right there and vanished in an instant.
“I understand. I understand it all…. Don’t think about it. Please.”
Oscar was afraid of it.
A twisted face forcing a smile, as though trying to console me.
With that expression, heartbreakingly grotesque, he apologized over and over.
“I’m sorry. I thought wrong, so I’ll put it all back….”
The fact that he had burned Father’s life to save mine.
“I… I made a mistake…. I’m sorry….”
* * *
“Excuse me.”
As Oscar stood atop the completed Transportation Magic Circle, he spoke.
“I apologize.”
“…For what?”
Oscar watched Enoch’s face—blissfully pleased at having successfully obtained the Sacred Artifact—and swallowed a sigh.
‘I actually killed you so I could save your daughter.’
A confession the Restriction would never allow anyway.
But even without the Restriction, he’d never have the sanity to speak it aloud.
“I felt I needed to apologize.”
“For what, exactly?”
Enoch asked again, but Oscar didn’t answer.
Or rather—
‘Perhaps the Restriction won’t let him answer.’
Enoch studied Oscar’s profile, the way his eyes avoided his own.
It must be an apology for the lost time he knew nothing of, for whatever had happened in the previous life.
What could he possibly be sorry for?
“It’s all right.”
“……?”
An unexpected response.
Oscar’s eyebrows shot up, and he turned to face Enoch fully.
“What do you mean—you don’t know what I’m apologizing for, but you’re saying it’s all right?”
“Truly, it’s all right.”
Blue light began rising from the Transportation Magic Circle as it absorbed mana.
“Whatever happened, it would have been a choice I made with my own hands.”
Oscar went rigid.
Perhaps Enoch had already pieced it together without being told.
A man who didn’t fear throwing his life away for his daughter even now—
How difficult would it be for him to guess what choice Oscar might have made in the previous life?
“So there’s no need to apologize.”
“…….”
“Rather, I owe you my thanks. I’m in your debt. I’ll make sure to repay it.”
Just as Oscar was about to speak—
The magic circle activated.
They teleported from the Ruins to the room where Lilis slept.
The room was silent.
Lilis lay on the bed with that same peaceful expression as when they’d left—tranquil and undisturbed.
“Lilis…, ah.”
Enoch, moving toward her, stopped short.
Though he’d known she suffered from the Divine Fever, seeing the collapsed child with his own eyes struck him differently.
Oscar, his face drained pale, reached her first, cradling her with urgent care.
Enoch stood transfixed, watching him.
“God, I thought she was dead….”
Oscar swept his sweat-soaked hair back, relief flooding through him.
For a moment he’d feared the fever might have taken her while they were gone, but fortunately Lilis slept on, peaceful and undisturbed.
“Our little princess probably knocked ten years off the Tower Master’s life.”
At the voice from behind, Oscar flinched.
‘Ah, damn it. Here I am making a scene, forgetting the kid’s own father is standing right there.’
Embarrassed, Oscar straightened the posture he’d leaned into.
“…….”
Then he saw Enoch approaching.
The eyes gazing down at sleeping Lilis.
A concern that cut to the heart, and an affection so tender that nothing in the world could match it….
A father who suffers for his child’s sake, yet still smiles at her safety, kissing her sleeping forehead with tenderness and gently brushing her hair aside.
Two souls in all the world meant only for each other.
“My little one, Father’s here.”
Enoch was different from her.
Tender memories like those—she carried hers alone, nursing them in solitude, but he…
He was truly different.
When the child woke, she would be happy to see her father.
Smiling with such love.
‘I’m such a fool.’
At that strange sense of being an intruder in this moment, Oscar smiled ruefully and stepped backward into the shadows.

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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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