Chapter 263
Noa knew what Leon was like on a normal day, but Noa wasn't surprised by his unusual behavior at this moment.
She gave a soft hum, then lowered her head and said seriously, "I just feel... scared."
Upon hearing this, Leon was slightly taken aback.
It was an unexpected answer.
"Afraid of... what?"
"We used to have a very happy family, didn't we?"
Noa whispered, "I also responded passionately to your love for me. You know, I've always been very proud to be your daughter, Leon Casmod."
"I know my father is very powerful, the kind of power that is unparalleled in the world."
"I am proud to have a father like you."
"The same goes for my Mom. Being your daughter is the luckiest thing for me."
"But... all of this vanished with that disaster."
"What I cared about, what I cherished, what raised me, what loved me deeply... along with my passionate love, were buried twenty years ago."
"I thought that as long as you came back, all the troubles would be solved."
Noa buried her mouth and nose in her arms, her fingers gripping her arm tightly.
But that's not the case.
"I'm actually more afraid of the day when all of this will come to an end."
"What if we fail, and you leave me, Mu En, and Xiaoguang again? What will we do then? What will Mom do?"
"I do love you, I love you deeply, but I dare not love you as recklessly as I did when I was a child."
She slowly raised her head from her arms, looking at her father beside her with tears in her eyes.
At that moment, Noa's face, bearing faint scars, seemed to overlap with her childhood self in Leon's eyes.
Her voice choked with emotion, yet every word was clear.
"Because I'm afraid of losing you—twice."
The strongest girl has the most fragile heart.
Noa always considered things more deeply than Leon did.
Looking back at his daughter, Leon slowly reached out and gently placed his hand on Noa's shoulder.
Once he was sure she didn't intend to shake him off, Leon slowly pulled her close and let her lean on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Noa, it was my departure that caused all of this, and made you and Mom suffer so much."
"I don't want to make any promises to you, because no one can predict how this will end."
"But Noa, please believe me. For you sisters and Mom ... I can do anything."
Noa leaned on her father's shoulder, wiped away her tears, and whispered, "People who talk big... are bound to have bad ends."
Leon blinked, glancing at the empty space behind him. "This is a bit of a problem for Daddy. Even if I wanted a rotten tail, I don't have that thing..."
Noa stopped crying and started laughing. She sat up, sniffled twice, then clenched her fist and presented it to Leon.
"Then, that's settled."
Seeing Noa's slightly clenched fist, Leon immediately understood.
When she was little, Leon used this gesture to vouch for her.
"Good."
Leon nodded and extended his hand.
The father and daughter gently touched fists together, just like they did back then.
"But I won't call you Dad until you save the world."
Noa's stubbornness kicked in, which was very much like her headstrong parents.
"Ah... why?"
"What do you mean 'why'? This is the stubbornness that's passed down in the Melkwy family. You're not convinced?"
Leon chuckled, "I admit it, of course I admit it."
Besides being stubborn, the Melkwy family's Dragon Queen, from the oldest to the youngest, are all very good at manipulating General Leon.
After having a heart-to-heart talk with Noa, Leon felt a weight lifted off his shoulders.
In the days that followed, Leon focused on storing up Magic Power and cultivating the Gate of Nine Hells.
With Aurorla's guidance, Leon's practice of the Gate of Nine Hells progressed much faster.
However, the storage of this Magic Power remains the same as before. The Dragon Mark and some unknown 'thing' in his body are forced to split the power 20/80, resulting in a very slow storage speed.
To this day, Leon still doesn't understand what's wrong with his body.
He asked Aurorla had any clue about it.
The youngest daughter expressed regret, saying that her research focus was mainly on magic arrays, and she wasn't very good at things like human anatomy.
With no other option, Leon could only resort to the old method, accumulating Magic Power little by little within the Dragon Mark.
In this secluded underground space, the father and his three daughters guarded Losweiser, cultivated themselves, and waited for Aurorla to complete her research.
Three months later.
Aurorla decided to conduct the first test of the Reversal Magic Array.
The group arrived at Losweiser's crystal room, where Aurorla activated a magic circle on the ground.
Inside the magic circle, various incantations were intricate and chaotic. Even professors and scholars specializing in magic circles would exclaim at the sheer scale of the project.
After all, this was the culmination of ten years of research by Aurorla, and what she wanted to reverse was not just ordinary magic.
Rather, it is the key that can change everything.
Aurorla walked to the magic circle and waved her hand to activate it.
The light immediately shone, and the magic circle slowly began to react.
The three people standing nearby also became nervous.
Aurorla succeeds or fails will determine the future of her family.
The light emitted by the magic array gradually became dazzling, and the entire secret chamber began to tremble.
Leon instinctively raised his arm to shield Noa and Mu En behind him. "Xiao Guang, are you alright?"
Aurorla, with her back to them, waved her hand and said, "No problem."
Upon hearing this, Leon frowned slightly.
Her tone was off.
It wasn't the excitement of impending success, but rather...
The next second, the light of the magic circle vanished like a snapped string, disappearing without a trace.
The secret room returned to calm.
The magic circle pattern on the ground looked as if it had been burned, leaving charred marks.
Aurorla slowly lowered her hand, paused for a moment, and then whispered...
"It failed."
It was a very brief summary, but the tone revealed an undeniable sense of frustration.
Despite ten years of dedicated research, he ultimately failed.
This was undoubtedly a blow to her, who had aspired to become a scholar since childhood.
Most importantly, there were less than three months left until the day Mom fell into a coma.
If the reversal magic cannot be completed before then, allowing Leon to return to the past, then his Mom's final fate will still be the same as it is now.
No one wanted to accept this outcome.
But the cold, hard defeat was like a knife, deeply piercing Aurorla's heart.
"Xiao Guang—" Mu En opened his mouth, wanting to comfort his sister, "It's, it's okay, it's just a test."
However, Aurorla did not respond.
Her shoulders slumped down little by little, as if the invisible burden was about to crush her.
After a moment of silence, Leon stepped forward and stood beside Aurorla, looking down with her at the magic circle marks on the ground.
"Where did the failure originate?"
Her pink pupils trembled, and her voice shook as well, "I... I don't know."
Leon looked at his youngest daughter, whose face was filled with fear.
At that moment, Leon understood that what she feared most was not failure, but the inability to save her family.
"Xiao Guang, have you ever heard this saying?"
Wu Yiqi Baba Phosphorus Flag slipped clothes in silence.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Leon said, "My master taught me this phrase for a long time, but later I found that it also makes sense when said the other way around."
Aurorla blinked, slowly raised her dejected little head, and looked at her Dad.
"The greater the responsibility you bear, the greater your ability is."
"Everyone believes you can do it, which is why they entrusted this task to you."
"But you shouldn't treat responsibility as a shackle that binds you. Remember what Noa once told her Mom: accept yourself?"
"Accepting yourself is important, and accepting failure is also important."
"If a person cannot even bear failure, then she does not deserve success."
Leon reached out and gently placed his hand on his daughter's shoulder.
Her shoulders had just been crushed by invisible discouragement and frustration, 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, Xiao Guang. You've been researching this reversal magic for ten years. Believe in yourself, you can do it."
My Mom once said that what fascinated her most about my Daddy was that he always gave her the most reassuring feeling.
It seems that as long as he is there, she has inexhaustible courage.
At that time Aurorla did not understand what kind of power it was.
But at this moment, she seemed to understand the feeling her Mom was talking about.
The pink pupils behind the glasses regained their calm and sharpness.
She lowered her brows, turned her head, and looked again at the extinguished magic circle on the ground.
After observing for a long time, Aurorla slowly spoke.
"The fact that the magic array just flashed means that it can be activated, at least the first stage is without any problems."
"The problem can only arise in later stages."
"To complete a magic circle, there are four stages in total:"
"Start-up, operation, maintenance, termination."
"We just stopped at the operational stage. In most magic arrays, sufficient power is needed to ensure that they can function properly."
"I knew this, so I prepared plenty of energy storage crystals in advance, but it doesn't seem to have any effect."
As she spoke, Aurorla over to the energy storage crystals and picked up a few of them to examine them closely.
"The energy here has not decreased, which means that these crystals did not participate in the operation of the magic array just now."
"But why is that... I've done a lot of tests on this crystal. It works in any kind of reversal magic, but it doesn't work in reversing Ravi's spatial magic."
"If the magic array doesn't have enough energy during the operation phase, we will also fail during the maintenance phase."