No time to think more, the temple gate was right in front of him. Leon, dragging his extremely exhausted body, rushed forward.
However, when he arrived at the temple gate, he was completely shocked by the scene before him.
The silver gate hung precariously on the stone wall, swaying as if it would fall at any moment. Weeds grew wildly at the entrance;
Inside the yard behind the door, the flower beds had collapsed and broken, and the ground tiles were covered with moss;
What surprised Leon the most was the temple itself, the walls were full of scorch marks, and the buildings on the left side had been completely blown away.
It was clearly a scene of decline.
Leon's pupils shook, and he couldn't care about the pain on his body. He hurriedly rushed into the courtyard.
"Noah!"
"Luna!"
"Little Light!"
He shouted the names of his daughters.
But the only response was the sound of wind sweeping over the grass.
"Rossweise! Are you guys here?"
Thud! Thud!
A few stones tumbled down from the ruins nearby.
But still, there was no sign of anyone.
Fear exploded in Leon's heart.
'Did I fail to stop that rift?' [T/N: Talking like there is no enemy other than the rift]
Had his wife and daughters already...
In a daze, a pink figure swiftly darted past from the side.
Leon's sharp peripheral vision caught that afterimage.
"Who? Who's there? Silver Dragon Clan?"
He no longer had time to care about the person's identity and directly ran toward that direction.
"Hey, I saw you! Stop hiding and tell me quickly, where did the Silver Dragon Clan go?"
Leon circled behind a wall, but didn't see anyone.
He frowned. The little flame of hope that had just been ignited in his heart was extinguished again.
"Did I see wrong..."
He muttered in disappointment, just about to turn around — when that pink figure appeared before him like a ghost.
Immediately after, Leon felt a sharp pain in his jaw.
Then, everything went black, he lost consciousness.
———
No idea how much time passed before Leon slowly regained consciousness.
It was already nighttime. A campfire was lit beside him.
Looking to the side, a girl sat on a stone.
She was very young, around twenty years old. Long pink hair, black-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of her nose, making her fair skin appear even more delicate and smooth;
Her side profile was exquisite, like a finely crafted artwork, and kind of familiar.
She wore a tattered white lab coat over a shirt and fitted pants.
The pants were also slightly damaged, a few slits exposing the skin of her thighs.
She held a skewer of grilled meat in her hand, probably her dinner for the day.
Leon slowly sat up, rubbing his still sore jaw.
Seeing him awake, the girl's pink pupils flashed with a hint of surprise, and her beautiful, frozen expression also showed a slight ripple.
The man in front of her seemed to stir up a heavy memory.
But Leon didn't seem to notice her emotional change. He pursed his lips and cautiously asked, "You... knocked me out?"
The girl nodded blankly.
"With one punch? Just one punch knocked me out?", General Leon, for the first time, doubted his physical resistance.
Even Dragon Kings couldn't knock him out with one punch, yet this girl did.
The girl looked at her right hand, clenched her fist, just as puzzled as Leon, "Yeah, I don't know why either. As soon as I saw you, I couldn't control the urge to uppercut you."
Leon didn't lash out at her just because she knocked him out.
First, because he was currently too weak. If a fight really broke out, he might suffer a loss;
Second, if she was truly an enemy, she wouldn't be leisurely grilling skewers here.
So that uppercut was probably a misunderstanding.
Leon looked at the girl's face.
Very familiar.
Too familiar.
She looked like she was carved from the same mold as that dragon lady.
"Have I... seen you somewhere before?", Leon moved closer to the campfire.
The girl blinked, gave a faint smile, then turned her gaze to the fire. The flames reflected in her pink pupils like magnificent gemstones.
"What a terrible pickup line. How did you even manage to court mom back then?"
That one line almost crashed General Leon's CPU.
His eyes widened, stammering, "You, you're—"
"My name is Aurora. Aurora K. Melkvei."
She handed the skewer in her hand to Leon, "Of course, if it's you, you can also call me by another name, Little Light."
———
Oh no.
Folks.
Woke up and found a pink-haired beauty about the same age as himself saying she's his youngest daughter.
If that's true, then he must've had Little Light when he was one or two years old?
General Leon may have been badass enough to kill the neighbor's vicious dog at age five, but not badass enough to get a woman pregnant while still single digits.
The campfire crackled beside them, lighting up Leon's bewildered face.
Seeing his expression, Aurora knew he couldn't accept this fact. So she suppressed the excitement of reuniting with her father and calmly said instead,
"If you don't believe me, you can ask anything about the Melkvei family."
Her tone was flat and carried a cool chill, a speaking style very similar to Rossweise when Leon first met her.
However, aside from the cool tone, the pink-haired beauty also had a unique "scientific mechanical" vibe, like everything was under her control.
Even though her heart was in turmoil, her rationality allowed her to calmly think.
Given the current situation, the first step was to gain Leon's trust, and then slowly let him accept this world, one that was both familiar and unfamiliar to him now.
Leon gradually recovered from the shock.
He truly couldn't immediately believe that the girl in front of him was Little Light, but her suggestion wasn't unreasonable.
So, he decided to ask a few questions to test her.
Leon thought for a moment and asked, "Rossweise's birthday?"
"October 25th. Scorpio."
"Noah's birthday?"
"February 16th. Aquarius."
"Luna's—"
"They're twins. Same birthday."
After smoothly answering these questions, Aurora began rapid-fire mode.
"You, Leon Casmodeous, birthday August 5th, Leo, height 186, weight 77 kilograms. No favorite food, but you hate eggplant and carrots the most."
"Mom loves oranges. But her favorite was the orange-flavored ice cream you bought for her at the entrance of Sky City Theater long ago. She said it was the best ice cream she ever had."
"On her 218th birthday, you made her a huge cake with 218 candles on it."
"Your family has a sister named Isabella, who is also our aunt, queen of the Red Dragon Clan. My first words as a child were 'Aunt Isa' because I found you and mom bickering every day amusing, so I didn't bother speaking to you two."
"Constantine was the only Dragon King you remembered the exact day you killed, because it was the day I was born."
"If you want me to keep going, I've got plenty more."
General Leon listened to her fluent, menu-like list and was stunned again.
He swallowed, suddenly blurting, "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 investigate you? Besides, these aren't things you can just look up with investigation."
"...True."
Though it was hard to accept, from the looks of it, she really was Little Light.
What made Leon finally let down his guard, besides that whole list, was also the instinctive sense of closeness among family.
That kind of unexplainable connection, when family gathers, it's just easy to trust one another.
Even someone as cautious as General Leon couldn't bring himself to doubt the girl in front of him.
Except—
"No, no, no, no—this isn't right. When I entered the space rift, Little Light was only four or five months old."
As he spoke, Leon stretched out his hand to show Little Light's size from memory, then opened his arms to measure the pink-haired beauty in front of him, "How'd she grow this big after just one nap?"
Dragon genes were badass, Noah could use Chidori at two years old.
But even with that, it shouldn't be this badass. No way a cute baby dragon girl could become a tall, bespectacled onee-san overnight.
Aurora raised a delicate eyebrow, "A nap? That nap of yours was really long."
"Long? How... long?"
Aurora rested her chin in her hand and raised two fingers toward her dad.
"Two days?"
Shook her head.
"Two years?"
Still shook her head.
Leon's mouth twitched, "T-Tw... twenty years...?"
"Bingo~"
Aurora pressed her palms together and smiled with squinted eyes, as if celebrating her dad's correct guess. But it was only her expression. Her tone remained cold, "To be exact, twenty years, four months, and eight days."
Dragons don't bother counting time because their lifespans are so long.
But Aurora remembered the full twenty years, down to the day.
Looking at her still completely dumbfounded old man, Aurora continued,
"Honestly, I'm pretty messed up inside too. I don't know how to deal with this situation."
"To you, the battle with Star Dragon King and stopping the space rift just happened yesterday."
[T/N: Should I continue translating or stop at this point? I am really frustrated with this insensitive MC. He knew that rift wasn't the only danger to his family but there was a whole fu*king empire behind him, and he still gave his life for something so shallow and now direct fast forward to 20 years. If you all are gonna read, I am gonna continue. If everyone is same pissed off as I am, I might as well stop at this point]
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