My Daddy Hides His Power - Chapter 205

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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 205
* * *
Lunch hour.
In Oscar’s office, I kept staring at the bracelet.
‘The Imperial Guard! How do I break the Holy Knight’s Binding Magic?’
Three months.
‘Right, it all checks out.’
After numerous attempts, I’d come to a definite realization.
‘It’s the Sacred Relic.’
Unlike the Original Story,
something I didn’t have back then, but do have now.
A Sacred Relic that could remake Fate itself.
The Apostle’s Heart.
If my hunch is correct, unfortunately the Law of Power hasn’t disappeared.
But the brainwashing cast on the Guard—I can break it regardless of that law.
Why?
Because they’re innocent lives who die for the protagonists’ victory.
In other words, it falls within the range the Sacred Relic permits—changing Fate.
‘If that’s the case, then perhaps….’
In that final moment, I thought of Father, about to be brainwashed by the Emperor.
“What a pathetic sight.”
Just then, Oscar, who’d been gazing out the window, spoke.
“Who?”
I scurried over to his side and looked out.
“Oh my!”
The Festival of Conquest—celebrating the subjugation of the Moarte Archipelago.
And its perfect finale:
The criminal receiving his just deserts!
‘Serves him right!’
A middle-aged nobleman was being paraded barefoot through the archipelago in rags.
It was Count Jenkins.
The moment I saw his face, the Original Story reflexively came to mind, so I shook my head to clear the thought away.
Lico’s episode—sheer horror incarnate.
“Phew.”
I’d done all I could now; I just hoped Lico would dispose of him as brutally as possible.
“What’s with the sigh? Feeling sorry for him?”
“Not at all? It’s a sigh that came out thinking about all the awful things that man’s done.”
“Really? That’s all? Not thinking anything else? You made him like that, didn’t you?”
“Yes. And?”
I lifted my chin without a shred of shame.
Count Jenkins would never know, even in death, that his current state was something I’d orchestrated.
He’d be dead soon anyway. I felt no pity whatsoever.
“When you do wicked things, you ought to remember you’ll be taking showers in hellfire later.”
* * *
Richel, a guild member of the Red Sparrow.
She was a spy for the Onyx Marquis Household and had once helped Cheshire escape when he was abused as a child.
The reason Richel felt particular compassion for Cheshire was that his life bore many similarities to that of her boss, Lico.
“Lico.”
“What.”
Richel had come to the guild after a long absence.
“Your standing has become enormous. Duke Rubinstein.”
Enoch Rubinstein, the nobleman who stood alongside the Red Sparrow, was strong and just.
And since the Red Sparrow had helped him for quite some time now, Richel thought:
“What about Count Jenkins? Why not ask the Duke to help?”
Perhaps she could make a personal request of him once.
“Help with what.”
“Isn’t he the one you wanted to tear apart with your own hands? He’s still out there swaggering around, and if you can’t even get your revenge, won’t you die in anguish?”
……
“The Duke can help you, can’t he.”
Lico fell silent.
And she recalled her childhood—her mother’s desperate cries, begging to be spared.
There were many nobles who preyed on servants.
So Lico’s story was nothing special.
“Please. For her, dealing with a count like Jenkins would be nothing.”
“Did the count commit some crime?”
Lico sank into the sofa and let out a bitter laugh.
“My sister nearly became crippled, and my mother was beaten to death while pregnant. Even after that, bodies were carried out of the count’s house regularly. He didn’t even bother hiding it. Because it wasn’t a crime.”
……
“If he committed no crime, how can I punish him? How can I kill the count without justification?”
Could she ask Enoch to kill the count in secret?
When she knew exactly what kind of person he was?
“Just fabricate some justification. The Duke of Rubinstein could do it.”
“You’re right. If I wanted revenge, the Duke would fabricate evidence and seize the count for me. But that’s exactly why I can’t.”
Lico closed her eyes firmly.
“My personal vendetta can’t become an obstacle in his path.”
“How frustrating. In the first place, why did you decide to walk this path? You wanted to avenge your mother, didn’t you?”
“I did at first, but not anymore. I was young then. I’ve grown enough that I can abandon my thirst for revenge if that’s what success demands.”
Lico rose and spoke with cold clarity.
“I don’t want to throw a childish tantrum to the Duke over personal feelings. And you shouldn’t do anything reckless either.”
“Ha, you really are something.”
That was when—
“Brother, brother, brother!”
“Lico, are you here?”
Two guild members in robes came rushing in.
Jetti, a maid of the Rubinstein household.
Billy, proprietor of a tavern in Jedo.
Their true occupations were respectively a spy for the Red Sparrow and its field commander.
“What’s happened?”
“It’s showtime outside right now!”
Jetti grinned wickedly as she pulled back her robe.
* * *
Lico’s eyes widened in disbelief.
The nobleman who always wore expensive clothes and smiled viciously now stood before the crowd in ragged sackcloth, his swollen bare feet exposed in pitiful humiliation.
“What is Deprivation Punishment?”
“They say it turns you into a non-ability user?”
“Tsk, tsk. What crime could he have committed to anger His Majesty so much?”
Lico stood dazed, listening to the whispers around her.
Deprivation Punishment.
The highest form of penalty that Primera inflicted—sealing an ability user’s Core permanently closed.
Unlike opening a Core, closing one required Life Force proportionate to the ability user’s strength.
Because it was a burden on Primera, it was almost never carried out, and Lico had never actually witnessed it.
‘What… what is happening?’
The nobleman subjected to Deprivation Punishment was none other than Count Jenkins.
A knight dragging him like a dog through the streets of Jedo unfurled a scroll of an Imperial Edict.
Then the knight’s voice rang out, laying bare the count’s crimes.
“This, this madman!”
“He deserves death!”
“It’s horrifying!”
The enraged crowd hurled stones and spat at the count, sickened by the heinous charges.
Lico was bewildered.
“How did the count’s crimes reach the Imperial Household?”
Every charge the knight was reading aloud was information the Red Sparrow had collected from the Jenkins household.
Information that should never have been leaked.
Information that must never have been leaked.
“Who did this?”
Lico turned sharply to the guild members beside her.
Not Richel.
Not Billy.
“Was it you?”
Jetti laughed awkwardly.
“I’m sorry, Theo.”
“Are you insane? You stole information without telling me? Who did you give it to?”
“…Our lady.”
Lilis Rubinstein.
In that moment, Lico recalled what Lilis had said when she’d come to visit him before.
“Hehe. Something that Lico’s always wanted to have…….”
“……Can’t you guess~? You must’ve wanted it so badly~?”
“To be honest, when the lady asked for information on Jenkins, I got my hopes up. It seemed like she knew about your situation. I thought maybe she was trying to help.”
Jetti added timidly.
“But I never imagined it would turn out to be such a perfect gift.”
“Ha.”
Once a Non-ability User, one naturally lost one’s title as well. In an instant, they were cast down to the very dregs of this tower.
“Aaagh! Stop it, will you?! Do you know who I am!”
“Who do you think you are! Now you’re no different from us!”
The Count screamed as stones flew at him.
“H-hold on! Is my escort only you? What if I get cut down on the way to the harbor!”
Frightened by the crowd’s hostile demeanor, the Count clung to the knight with a blanched face.
“That’s your fate too!”
“Listen! Aaaaagh!”
The Count had received not only Deprivation Punishment, but an order of exile as well.
Given the severity of his crimes, it would hardly be surprising if he were killed by someone before he safely boarded a ship.
“Tsk tsk. He still wants to live after all that.”
Billy clicked his tongue.
The crowd was entirely commoners, Non-ability Users, yet the Count trembled in fear.
For now he no longer possessed the Ability—a blessing in its own way.
As a lion tears a rabbit to pieces with ease.
As a rabbit cannot charge at a lion.
Such was the chasm between Ability Users and Non-ability Users.
Even without a Rank system, those who wielded magic could still threaten those without power.
For this reason, Lico could not imagine tearing the Count—an Ability User—to pieces with her own hands.
“Bringing him in?”
Billy flexed his thick forearms menacingly.
The same muscles he’d once boasted about when arm-wrestling with Enoch at a Children’s Day festival, long ago, remained.
“Lico?”
“Ha ha, hahaha….”
Lico covered her face and laughed.
“I’m sorry, my son…. I’m sorry for leaving you alone in a world like this….”
Mother had lamented right to the end.
Leaving both her children in such a hellish world and departing.
“In the next life, let us be born again in a good place, together….”
She was gone now, but Lico wanted to show her.
A place no longer a hell, a nation finally at peace.
The way she would live out her remaining days.
‘So that’s why….’
So for that.
For a dream just a little larger.
It was vengeance—something she had resolved to set aside.
Vengeance.
The emotion that had transformed Lico from a helplessly weak boy.
Into the towering figure she was now.
The moment a sword was finally placed in her own hands, Lico felt it.
That emotion had never faded at all—it had remained, utterly intact.
“You’re bringing him in, right? Yes?”
“…Yes.”
Lico answered, gazing at the Count from afar with a chilling stare.
A debt repaid only now, more than ten years later.
‘Ah.’
Suddenly, Lico hastily rummaged through her pocket and pulled something out.
A note that Lilis had left behind.
Lico had never spoken of her circumstances, yet Lilis must have understood it all.
‘So that’s how it was.’
Lico smiled.
A gentleman’s vengeance loses nothing by waiting ten years.
Only now could she grasp its meaning.

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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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