67 A Nap That Lasted Twenty Years of Skill
Uh-oh.
Family.
Waking up to find a pink-haired beauty, about the same age as him, claiming to be his little daughter.
According to that logic, did he have Little Light when he was just one or two years old?
General Leon might be legendary enough to take down the neighbor’s vicious dog at five, but he wasn’t exactly heroic enough to knock a woman up at a single-digit age!
The nearby campfire crackled as it illuminated Leon’s dazed face.
Seeing his expression, Aurora realized he couldn’t accept this shocking truth. So, she stifled the excitement of reuniting with her father and decided to say, “If you don’t believe me, you can ask me anything about the Melkway family.”
Her tone was cool and detached, reminiscent of Roswiser, someone Leon had just met. But this pink-haired beauty’s tone not only held a chill but also had an undeniable ‘scientific’ vibe, as though every matter was neatly in her grasp.
Despite the turmoil in her heart, reason allowed her to think clearly. The priority was to have Leon trust her, then gradually help him accept this world that was both familiar and foreign to him.
Leon shook off his surprise slightly.
He couldn’t immediately buy that this girl was Little Light, but her suggestion had merit. So, he might as well ask a few questions to probe this girl for her background.
After pondering for a moment, Leon asked, “What’s Roswiser’s birthday?”
“October 25th, Scorpio.”
“And Noia’s birthday?”
“February 16th, Aquarius.”
“How about Moon’s—”
“They’re twins, same birthday.”
After successfully answering those few questions, Aurora dove into rapid-fire responses, “You, Leon Casmod, were born on August 5th, Leo, standing six feet one inches tall, weighing 170 pounds. You have no favorite food, but you hate eggplant and carrots.”
“Mom loves oranges, but her absolute favorite was that orange-flavored ice cream you bought her long ago at the Sky City Theatre. She said it was the best ice cream she ever had.”
“On her 218th birthday, you prepared a gigantic cake with 218 candles on it.”
“You have an older sister named Isar too, who is our three sisters’ aunt. She’s the Queen of the Red Dragon Race. If I recall right, my first words were directly to her because watching you and Mom bicker every day was just so interesting I held my tongue.”
“Constantine is the only dragon king you remember killing, and that’s the day I was born.”
“If you want to keep listening, I’ve got plenty more.”
General Leon was once again taken aback by her encyclopedic recollections.
He swallowed hard, puffed out a breath, and blurted out, “You… you investigated me!”
Aurora blinked, then sighed helplessly, “I already told you I’m Little Light! This is family business; why would I investigate you? And honestly, you can’t figure all this out just by following someone around, right?”
“……Fair enough.”
Even though it was tough to accept, she indeed seemed to be Little Light.
What helped Leon let go of his suspicions, besides that barrage of information, was the unmistakable warmth that came from family.
It’s one of those unexplainable connections; when family is together, trust binds them almost instantly.
Even a cautious fellow like General Leon couldn’t doubt the girl before him.
But still—
“No, no, no! I entered the Rift when Little Light was only four or five months old!”
As he spoke, Leon stretched out his hands, measuring the size of what he recalled Little Light looked like, then he opened his arms to gauge the pink-haired beauty standing before him, “How did you grow up in the blink of an eye like this?”
Dragon genes are impressive; Noia was using magic tricks at two.
But even that shouldn’t allow a cute little dragon girl to transform into a 1.7-meter tall glasses-wearing goddess overnight.
Aurora raised an eyebrow, “A blink? You sure took quite the nap.”
“How long was… it?”
With one hand propping up her chin, Aurora gestured at her dad with two fingers.
“Two days?”
She shook her head.
“Two years?”
Still shaking her head.
Leon twitched his lips slightly, “Tw…Twenty years…”
“Bingo~”
Aurora clasped her hands together, smiling a squinty-eyed smile as if she were celebrating Dad guess correctly. Yet her tone remained chillingly frosty, “To be precise, it’s twenty years, four months, and eight days.”
Dragons have such long lifespans that they hardly bother calculating time.
But Aurora had not only remembered those twenty years, but even down to a specific day.
Watching her bewildered father, Aurora continued, “Honestly, I’m just as jumbled inside as you are and don’t know how to face this.”
“For you, the battle with Star Dragon King, Starchaser, and stopping the Rift feels like it happened just yesterday.”
“But for me, it’s genuinely been twenty years.”
Aurora sighed, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples, “So, so I… ugh.”
After exchanging a few words with Leon, the emotions she had been holding back could no longer be contained.
After all, for her, it had been twenty long years since her father vanished into the Rift, and now suddenly he appeared; she truly didn’t know how to face him.
With mixed feelings swirling around, the most prominent was the realization that she had finally found some support.
When Leon had stopped the Rift and went missing, she was just a few months old.
But Leon left a profound impression on her:
Gentle, powerful, and with a strong sense of responsibility.
As long as he was around, all troubles seemed solvable.
So even after such a long time, the moment Aurora laid eyes on Leon, the heart that had been hanging in suspense for twenty years finally relaxed, just a bit.
But after the moment of relief came an inescapable silence.
Aurora knew she should explain everything that had happened to Leon.
But she didn’t know where to start.
There was too much to say to her father, too much pain to share.
She took off her glasses, hastily wiped her eyes, sniffled, then put her glasses back on.
Leon pressed his lips together, having noticed Aurora’s struggle and perplexity.
So, despite his burning curiosity about this “twenty years” thing, he decided to first comfort his daughter’s emotions.
Glancing at Aurora’s black-rimmed glasses, he asked, “Do you… need glasses?”
As a dad, naturally, he was concerned about his daughter’s health.
Aurora nodded, “Yeah, I’ve been nearsighted for a while, from reading too much.”
Leon responded with an intrigued “Oh,” as he examined Aurora’s lab coat, recalling what she had once told him about her dreams.
“When you were little, you said you wanted to be a scholar or a scientist. So now… have you achieved your dream?”
“Sort of… I guess.”
“Sort of?”
“Yeah, because the things I study can’t be made public, and I won’t receive any academic certification from the Dragon Race.”
Leon blinked, “So what are you researching?”
Instead of answering, Aurora asked an unrelated question, “When did you regain consciousness?”
“Today.”
Aurora lowered her gaze, whispering to herself,
“Today… which means only six months left.”
