Chapter 76 Heart Dragon Scale

After having a heart-to-heart talk with Noia, Leon felt like a weight had been lifted from his heart.
In the following days, Leon focused on storing magical power and practicing the Nine Hells Gate.
With Aurora’s guidance, Leon’s practice of the Nine Hells Gate progressed much faster.
However, the magical power storage situation remained the same as before, with the dragon markings and some unknown ‘thing’ in his body being forced to split the account 20-80, making the storage speed very slow.
Even today, Leon hadn’t figured out what exactly was wrong with his body.
He asked Aurora if she had any clues about this.
His youngest daughter regretfully expressed that her research focus was mainly on magic arrays, and she wasn’t very proficient in matters of human body structure.
With no other choice, Leon could only follow the old method, accumulating bit by bit, storing magical power in the dragon markings gradually.
The four father and daughters stayed in this hidden underground space, watching over Rosvitha while practicing and waiting for Aurora’s research to complete.
Three months later.
Aurora decided to conduct the first test of the reversal array.
Everyone came to Rosvitha’s crystal room, where Aurora activated the array on the ground.
In the array, various incantation patterns were complex and intricate – even professors and scholars specializing in arrays would exclaim at the massive workload.
After all, this was Aurora’s ten years of research results, and what she wanted to reverse wasn’t just ordinary magic.
It was the key that could change everything.
Aurora walked to the front of the array and waved her hand to activate it.
Light immediately rose, and the array slowly began to respond.
The three people beside her also grew tense.
Whether Aurora succeeded or not would determine their family’s future.
The light emitted from the array gradually became dazzling, and the entire secret chamber began to shake.
Leon instinctively raised his arm, shielding Noia and Muen behind him, “Little Light, is everything alright?”
Aurora had her back to them and waved her hand, “No problem.”
Hearing this, Leon slightly frowned.
Her tone wasn’t right.
It didn’t sound like the excitement of impending success, but rather…
The next second, the array’s light scattered like a broken string, instantly disappearing without a trace.
The secret chamber returned to silence.
The array pattern on the ground looked as if it had been burned, leaving black scorch marks.
Aurora slowly lowered her hand, remained silent for a moment, then said in a low voice,
“It failed.”
A very brief summary, but her tone contained undisguisable disappointment.
Ten years of dedicated research, and still no success.
For someone who had aspired to be a scholar since childhood, this was undoubtedly a blow.
Most importantly, there were less than three months left until the day mother fell into a coma.
If they couldn’t complete the reversal magic before then, allowing Leon to return to the past, mother’s final outcome would remain as it was now.
No one wanted to accept such an ending.
But the cold failure was like a knife, deeply stabbing into Aurora’s heart.
“Little Light—” Muen opened her mouth, wanting to comfort her sister, “It’s- it’s okay, this was just one test.”
However, Aurora didn’t respond.
Her shoulders sank bit by bit, as if that invisible burden was about to crush her.
After a moment of silence, Leon stepped forward, standing beside Aurora, looking down with her at the array marks on the ground,
“What caused the failure?”
Pink pupils trembling, her voice shaking as well, “I- I don’t know.”
Leon looked at his youngest daughter, her face written all over with the word ‘fear’.
At that moment, Leon understood that what she feared most wasn’t failure, but being unable to save this family.
“Little Light, have you heard this saying?”
Silence.
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
Leon said, “My master taught me this for a long time, and later I found that this saying also makes sense when reversed.”
Aurora blinked, slowly raising her dejected little head to look at her father.
“The more responsibility you bear, the greater your power becomes.”
“Everyone believes you can do it, that’s why they entrusted this task to you.”
“But don’t let responsibility become the shackles that bind you. Remember what Noia once told mother about accepting yourself?”
“Accepting yourself is important, and accepting failure is important too.”
“If a person can’t even bear failure, then they don’t deserve success.”
Leon reached out his hand, gently resting it on his daughter’s shoulder.
Her shoulders had just been crushed by invisible dejection and disappointment, but now, when her father’s warm large hand rested on them, she felt a sense of complete security.
“Try to kick those thoughts about the consequences of failure out of your little head, Little Light. You’ve been researching this reversal magic for ten years, believe in yourself, you can do it.”
Mother once said that what fascinated her most about father was that he could always give her the most reassuring feeling.
It seemed that as long as he was there, she had endless courage.
Aurora didn’t understand what kind of power that was at the time.
But at this moment, she seemed to understand the feeling mother had described.
The pink pupils under her glasses became calm and sharp once again.
She lowered her brow, turned her head back to look at the extinguished array on the ground.
After observing for a long while, Aurora slowly said,
“The array flashing with light just now means it can be activated, at least there’s no problem with the first stage.”
“The problem can only be in the subsequent stages.”
“For an array to complete, there are four stages:”
“Activation, Operation, Maintenance, and Completion.”
“We just stopped at the Operation stage. In most arrays, to ensure they can operate normally, sufficient power is needed.”
“I knew this point, so I prepared adequate storage crystals in advance, but it seems to have had no effect.”
Speaking, Aurora walked to those storage crystals, picked up several and carefully examined them.
“The energy inside hasn’t decreased, which means these crystals didn’t participate in the array’s operation just now.”
“But why is this… I’ve tested these crystals many times, they work in any kind of reversal magic, except for this spatial magic to reverse Ravi.”
“If there isn’t enough energy in the Operation stage, then we’ll fail in the subsequent Maintenance stage as well.”
“So we must solve the problem of energy not being able to participate in the magic array…”
Leon came to her side, slowly crouching down to observe the energy storage crystals with her.
After thinking for a moment, Leon said, “You just mentioned reversing Ravi’s space magic… right?”
“Yes, because Dad, you were transported here by his space magic at that time.”
Leon: “But Ravi’s space magic was out of control then, wasn’t it? And the cause of the loss of control was Ravi’s heart dragon scale—”
“Heart dragon scale!”
Aurora suddenly lifted her head, excited as if she had caught hold of a lifeline.
“The reason the energy storage crystals aren’t working is that their energy nature is different from Ravi’s space magic.”
“The space magic that transported Dad here contained the power of Ravi’s heart dragon scale.”
“So we must use something similar to Ravi’s heart dragon scale to successfully operate the current reversal magic.”
Leon smiled with satisfaction, and while appreciating how quickly his daughter caught on, he had to raise the next crucial question:
“Where can we find a similar heart dragon scale…”
Aurora paused, scratching her head, “Normally, dragons need to be at least over a hundred years old to slowly form a heart dragon scale, but the three of us sisters combined aren’t even a hundred years old…”
“And even if we had heart dragon scales, according to what Little Light just said, their energy nature would definitely be different from Ravi’s.”
Noia said, “We are originally Silver Dragons, while Ravi was from the Star-Wandering Dragon clan, our powers come from different sources.”
“Yes, Big Sis is right.”
Aurora let out a long sigh, running both hands through her messy pink hair, “Ah~~ where can we get a heart dragon scale similar to the Star-Wandering Dragon clan’s? And it needs to be from a Dragon King level like Ravi!”
“I actually received some reliable intelligence recently.”
Noia said casually, “There, we might be able to find the heart dragon scale we need.”
Leon looked at her, “Where?”
“The Empire.”