My Daddy Hides His Power - Chapter 78

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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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Dad’s hiding his strength
Chapter 78
I fumbled the Princess Lala Magic Wand out of my Bear Bag and hurried after Cheshire.
“Cheshire! Cheshire! Wait up!”
We slid down the gentle slope of the entrance like it was a playground slide.
“Hey there, Lilis! You made it?”
Bruce, spotting us, flashed an irritatingly smug grin.
“You two—get down here!”
Gerard didn’t even glance our way.
He just kept hunting monsters ruthlessly.
‘Wait… could he really be…?’
Gerard.
His true colors had clearly been showing all along.
‘He’s doing this on purpose so we can’t rack up points!’
Panic seized me, and I rushed toward Gerard.
“Haven’t you two hunted enough already?”
……
Gerard glanced at me sideways.
Then, as if to make a point, he hurled his sword to the ground and focused his concentration—
Whoosh!
He incinerated the wolves in front of him with magic.
Ten of them at once.
‘What—what is that? Area Attack Magic? Seriously?’
My mouth fell open.
“Awesome, Gerard!”
“Grab the cores quick!”
Bruce and the other team members eagerly scrambled to collect the fallen cores.
“Wait, wait you guys! Hold on! Stop, Gerard!”
“Lilis.”
Gerard smiled and turned to face me.
“If you’d just joined my team in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“What?”
He incinerated another swath of monsters and brushed back his sweat-drenched hair.
“You’re not seriously doing this on purpose just because I wouldn’t team up with you, are you?”
“Think what you want.”
Unbelievable.
He was from the Physical Combat Department, yet he wielded the kind of magic those from the Magic Department specialized in.
‘This bastard planned to sabotage us from the start.’
Area Attack Magic—capable of taking down multiple targets at once.
C-rank, no less.
It was grueling even to memorize, casting it was a nightmare, and the Mana consumption was astronomical.
‘He mastered something completely outside his field like that…?’
This is infuriating.
The sheer maniac determination—to sabotage us from the beginning, he’d spent all this effort perfecting a C-rank Attack Magic that wasn’t even his specialty.
There was no way reasoning with him would work.
233, 228, 222…
Watching the monster count plummet rapidly, I bolted toward my team.
“You guys!”
Just then, Cheshire brought down a monster, and the score screen appeared.
! Team B Standings !
Lilis Rubinstein: 46 points
Cheshire: 0 points
Jem: 0 points
Rom: 0 points
I shouted urgently.
“Cheshire! Absorb that one right now! And you two—the moment any cores drop, absorb them immediately!”
“What? But what about you? Don’t you need to get points first?”
Jem looked bewildered.
“No, I’m fine! Remember—once we hit a thousand points combined, we can split the rest among us!”
“B-but they’re catching everything. The monsters will be gone soon, and we won’t have enough to reach a thousand. We should really prioritize you first…”
That was when a wolf lunged at Gem from behind.
‘Oh no! C-rank Nullifying Shield!’
30sec
Life Force: thirty seconds.
A blue shield flared into being, absorbed the attack, and shattered.
Gem trembled, startled.
“See? This is serious, Gem! We don’t have time—listen to me!”
“Y-yes! Okay!”
“L-Lilis… w-without a shield, I th-think it might be t-too hard….”
Rom, watching from the sidelines, spoke as though on the verge of tears.
I glanced toward Gerard’s group. All his team members stood safely inside a hemispherical shield.
One of them caught my eye and twisted his lips in mockery.
‘So he has a defensive Ability user. He really put together a proper team.’
Rom hung his head low.
“S-sorry, Lilis…. I’m j-just so u-useless….”
“No, wait! Rom, that’s not it. I’ve actually memorized a few defensive spells—I know how to cast them.”
I looked at Cheshire and Gem.
Physical Combat Department specialists who needed to charge straight into enemy territory to cut and strike.
They both required shields that could shift with their individual movements.
‘Let me see…’
I quickly consulted Oscar’s Bracelet and began calculating.
‘C-rank would burn through Life Force too fast… D-rank! D-rank Fluid Shield for two of them!’
10sec/min
Ten seconds of Life Force per minute?!
‘Ugh. Fluid shields keep draining Life Force every minute….’
I’d never cast this type before, but there was no time to hesitate. I threw shields onto Cheshire and Gem immediately.
“Listen up, you two! I’m using D-rank shields because I need to conserve Mana! You might take some scratches, so if you can’t bear it, come to Rom for healing in between!”
“Y-yes! Understood!”
“Rom and I have shields too, so don’t worry—go as far as you need and catch as many as you can!”
I wrapped a B-rank Shield around Rom and myself.
Being B-rank, it lasted a full ten minutes of Life Force.
But since it was a fixed shield, it didn’t require constant Life Force drain, making it quite cost-effective.
“Rom, let’s stay here for now and think this through. With a B-rank shield, even if C-rank monsters keep charging….”
Clang!
Grrrrr.
A wolf raked its claws across the shield and growled.
“See, Rom? Even C-rank beasts can’t scratch it no matter how hard they throw themselves at it. Don’t be afraid—we’re safe.”
“O-okay… but Lilis, it feels like we’re already f-falling behind….”
“Huh?”
I quickly checked the score screen.
A-rank (1000 points): 2 beasts
C-rank (50 points): 85 beasts
Eighty-five C-rank monsters remaining.
My shoulders sagged.
‘It doesn’t look like all our kids will graduate after this.’
Just then, Gerard—right in front of me—incinerated another pack of monsters with a flourish.
“Wow… what a character….”
“Puhahaha!”
Bruce trailed behind him, collecting and rapidly absorbing cores.
“W-what do we do, Lilis?”
“Oh, wait! That’s right!”
I clapped my hands together.
“Where are the A-rank monsters?”
“Oh, um, I th-thought I saw one when I w-was lifting up that…. I th-think it’s… m-maybe over there….”
“Huh?”
Rom pointed to a spot nearby.
A single cliff rose up sheer and tall.
My gaze traveled upward in stages.
“What.”
At a dizzying height where I had to crane my neck far back to see the summit, a single bear-type monster stood alone.
“Come on, don’t grab it. I said not to grab it….”
“Yeah, okay.”
I couldn’t climb up there directly.
Cheshire’s sword energy wouldn’t reach that distance yet.
So they’d released a magical beast that only Mages—those with the Ability to cast Area Attack Magic—could handle.
But….
‘How am I supposed to cast something at that height, that distance, with the students currently at the Academy?’
Catching that thing would require A-rank Casting Magic.
But the Academy textbooks only covered up to B-rank.
‘This is ridiculous, honestly.’
Of course, I don’t need to trace spell formulas in my head, but I can’t risk exposing myself, so I’m restricted.
I can only use the magic formulas I learned at the Academy.
“Huh?”
That’s when I noticed something—small text carved into the cliff face below.
Cliff height: 60m
‘Ah, now I see how to do this!’
Of course. There’s no way they’d expect us to use a spell formula we’ve never learned.
I felt my shoulders relax as I checked the scoreboard.
A-rank (1000 points): 2 beasts
C-rank (50 points): 0 beasts
The fifty-point ones were already wiped out.
And our team….
Lilis Rubinstein: 46 points
Cheshire: 0 points
Jem: 1050 points
Rom: 0 points
“Mo, wait! Cheshire, why do you still have a zero? Did you give all your points to Jem?”
That didn’t make sense though.
Cheshire was the type to snatch three or four beasts at a time, yet somehow the two of them had only caught around twenty altogether.
“Lilis!”
That’s when Jem came running over.
“Jem, Jem! What’s going on? Why does Cheshire have nothing? Did you take his points?”
“No, no! Cheshire told me not to absorb them and to save them instead, so that’s why. He’s already caught over thirty by himself.”
“Ugh! I told you to just eat them!”
“This isn’t the time, Lilis. We need to get over there. I found an A-rank magical beast.”
“Really?”
I hurried after Jem, rounding back behind the Gorge.
Cheshire was there.
And in front of him was….
“What, what is that? That’s terrifying.”
A Carnivorous Flower stood there, easily three meters tall.
Every time it shook its leaves repulsively, poison sprayed out, making it nearly impossible to approach.
‘Can’t get close? Then I’ll just blast it from a distance with magic!’
Long-range attack―!
“Wait, hold on. It has a Shield?”
―I realized it was surrounded by even an A-rank Shield.
I clicked my tongue.
Of course. If it were easy to catch, why would it be worth a thousand points?
“Lilis.”
“Yeah, Cheshire.”
Cheshire approached and explained calmly.
“Looking at that magical Shield, you can tell—you won’t be able to catch this. It reflects all magic. It seems they left it for Physical Combat Department Ability users to handle.”
“Right, looks like it. So I have to get close and take it down with the sword, yeah?”
“Exactly. But there’s that poison.”
A violet mist of poison hung thick in the air around it.
“The problem is, I don’t know what kind of poison it is.”
“Ah! So if you upgrade my Shield so it doesn’t take poison damage, that’s all I need?”
Cheshire smiled slightly.
“Yeah. Can you cast a B-rank Shield?”
“I can!”
We really did move as one after all.
‘One B-rank Fluid Shield user!’
30sec/1min
I immediately reinforced Cheshire’s shield.
That’s when it happened.
“Can’t you cast a Fluid Shield?”
“I-I still can’t use that yet…. Sorry, Gerard.”
That relentless Gerard!
Not content with wiping out those fifty-point monsters, he’d followed us all the way here and was now eyeing a one-thousand-point beast.
“What’s his problem, seriously?”
Just as I was bewildered, Gerard walked straight toward the carnivorous flower that was spewing poison everywhere — with nothing but bare skin.
No shield whatsoever!
His determination to keep us from claiming that thousand points was plain to see.
“Is he saying he’ll just take the hits since it’s all an illusion anyway and catch it like that?”
Jem looked flabbergasted.
Whether that was his real intention or not, Gerard swung his sword while getting hit by the murky poison.
But then….
“It’s Paralysis Poison.”
“It was Paralysis Poison.”
“It’s Paralysis Poison.”
The moment the poison struck, his body went rigid — unmistakably Paralysis Poison.
The carnivorous flower stretched open its maw-like leaves above Gerard’s head, now stiff as a statue.
“Kyaaaah!”
I gasped in horror.
The carnivorous flower swallowed Gerard whole.
And then.
The moment we saw that, without hesitation, the ones who bolted to save him were—
“You two?!”
Cheshire and Jem.
‘Even Jem?’
I quickly reinforced Jem’s shield as well.
“Hah.”
Unlike our team, who charged in without a second thought to save someone from another group, Bruce’s team just stood there gawking.
How they could so casually abandon the bus driver who’d been struggling alone all this time — what a character.
“Wow….”
Apparently feeling some shame about it, Bruce glanced sidelong in my direction.
“You guys really are pathetic….”
I spoke with a look of disgust.

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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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