Chapter 67: This Twenty Years of Power in One Sleep

This is bad.
Everyone.
Waking up to find a pink-haired beauty about his age saying she’s his youngest daughter.
If that’s the case, he would have had Little Light when he was only one or two years old?
Though General Leon was awesome enough to single-handedly kill the neighbor’s vicious dog at age five, he wasn’t awesome enough to get women pregnant while still in single digits.
The campfire beside them crackled, illuminating Leon’s confused face.
Seeing his expression, Aurora knew he couldn’t accept this fact, so she temporarily suppressed the excitement in her heart at reuniting with her father and instead said,
“If you don’t believe me, you can ask me anything about the Melkvi family.”
Her tone was light, with a kind of cool flavor, very similar to how Rosvitha spoke when Leon first met her.
However, besides the coolness, the pink-haired beauty’s tone also carried a ‘mechanical feeling’ unique to ‘researchers’, as if everything was under her control.
Even though her heart was turbulent at this moment, rationality could still help her calm down and think.
In the current situation, she needed to first gain Leon’s trust, then slowly let him accept this world that was both familiar and strange to him now.
Leon slightly recovered from his surprise.
He indeed couldn’t immediately believe that the person before him was Little Light, but her suggestion made sense.
So he decided to ask a few questions first to probe this girl’s background.
Leon thought for a moment and asked, “When is Rosvitha’s birthday?”
“October 25th, Scorpio.”
“Noia’s birthday?”
“February 16th, Aquarius.”
“Muen’s—”
“They’re twins, same birthday.”
After successfully answering these questions, Aurora began the speed answer round,
“You, Leon Casmode, birthday August 5th, Leo, height 186cm, weight 77kg, no favorite food, but most disliked foods are eggplant and carrots.”
“Mom likes oranges, but what she likes most is still that orange-flavored ice cream you bought her in front of the Sky City Theater long ago. She said it was the best ice cream she’d ever eaten.”
“On her 218th birthday, you prepared a huge cake for her with 218 candles on top.”
“You also have a sister named Isabella who is our three sisters’ aunt, she’s the Queen of the Red Dragon Clan. When I was little, the first person I called was Aunt Isabella because I found it amusing watching you and mom bicker and argue every day, so I kept refusing to speak.”
“Constantine is the only Dragon King you remember exactly which day you killed, because that was the day I was born.”
“If you want to hear more, I can keep going.”
General Leon was once again frightened by these answers that came as smoothly as reciting a menu.
He swallowed and blurted out, “You… you investigated me!”
Aurora paused, then sighed helplessly, “I told you I’m Little Light, these are all family matters to me, why would I need to investigate you? Besides, these things aren’t something you could find out just by investigation, right?”
“……That’s true.”
Although it was hard to accept, looking at this situation, she really was Little Light.
What made Leon put aside his doubts, besides that string of rapid-fire answers, was that innate sense of familiarity between family members.
It was an inexplicable connection – when family members get together, they easily build trust with each other.
Even someone as cautious as General Leon couldn’t bring himself to doubt the girl before him.
However—
“No no no no no, that’s not right, when I entered the spatial rift, Little Light was only four or five months old.”
As he spoke, Leon stretched out his hands, measuring the size of Little Light in his memory, then spread his arms wide, measuring the pink-haired beauty before him, “How did you grow so big after just one sleep?”
Dragon clan genes were impressive, with Noia wielding the Chidori at age two.
But even though they were impressive, they shouldn’t be impressive enough to turn an adorable baby dragon girl into a 170cm tall glasses-wearing beauty overnight.
Aurora raised her beautiful eyebrows, “One sleep? Well, that was quite a long sleep you had.”
“Long? How… long?”
Aurora rested her chin on one hand and held up two fingers toward her father.
“Two days?”
She shook her head.
“Two years?”
Still shaking her head.
Leon’s mouth twitched slightly, “Tw-twenty years……”
“That’s right~”
Aurora clasped her hands together, smiling with narrowed eyes, as if celebrating her father’s correct guess, but it was just her expression – her tone remained ice-cold, “To be precise, twenty years, four months, and eight days.”
Because dragons live such long lives, they usually don’t bother spending effort calculating time.
But Aurora remembered these full twenty years, even down to the exact day.
Looking at her still dumbfounded father, Aurora continued,
“To be honest, my heart is also in chaos right now, not knowing how to face this situation.”
“For you, the battle with Radiant Star Dragon King Star and stopping the spatial rift just happened yesterday.”
“But for me, it has indeed been twenty years.”
Aurora let out a long sigh, closed her eyes and rubbed her acupoint between her eyebrows. “So, so I… tch.”
After the brief exchange with Leon, Aurora’s emotions, which she had been suppressing until now, finally began to surface.
After all, from her perspective, her father had disappeared into the spatial rift for exactly twenty years, and now that he suddenly appeared, she truly didn’t know how to face him.
Her heart was filled with mixed emotions, but Aurora’s most prominent feeling was that she finally had someone to rely on.
When Leon disappeared while trying to stop the spatial rift, she was only a few months old.
Yet Leon had left a deep impression on her:
Gentle, powerful, with a strong sense of responsibility.
It seemed that as long as he was around, all troubles would be resolved.
So even though so much time had passed, the moment Aurora saw Leon, her heart, which had been suspended for a full twenty years, finally began to settle.
But after the initial relief came an inevitable silence.
Aurora knew she should explain to Leon why everything had happened.
But she didn’t know where to begin.
There were too many things she wanted to tell her father, too many hardships she wanted to share.
She removed her glasses, hastily wiped the corners of her eyes, sniffled, and then put her glasses back on.
Leon pressed his lips together, seeing Aurora’s difficulty and uncertainty.
So even though he very much wanted to know what this “twenty years” business was all about, he decided to first try to comfort his daughter’s emotions.
He looked at Aurora’s black-framed glasses and asked, “You’ve… become nearsighted?”
As a father, he naturally cared about his daughter’s health.
Aurora nodded, “Mm, I’ve been nearsighted for a long time, from reading books.”
Leon thoughtfully made a sound of acknowledgment, examining Aurora’s white lab coat and recalling what she had once told him about her dreams.
“When you were little, you said you wanted to become a scholar or scientist, so now… have you achieved your dream?”
“I suppose… sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Yes, because the things I research can’t be made public, and will never receive academic recognition from the Dragon Clan.”
Leon blinked, “So what are you researching?”
Aurora didn’t answer, instead asking an unrelated question, “When did you regain consciousness?”
“Today.”
Aurora lowered her gaze, murmuring softly,
“Today… which means there are only six months left.”