Chapter 200: The Savior (End)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 200: The Savior (End)
Children grow up fast. Before having his own, Yohan had never truly understood what that meant.
A newborn can't even walk properly after their first birthday, it takes them a long time to start talking, they can't feed themselves, can't change their own diapers, can't even wash themselves.
They were beings who could do nothing on their own, so fragile they might break at the slightest touch.
“Dada-!”
“Aaaah…! Yoanna!”
Yohan scooped up his daughter as she toddled toward him and hugged her tight. His daughter, just four months old, was already running around on two feet, as expected of a witch's child.
Now that the child, who he couldn't trust to be left alone for a second, could run, Yohan found it even harder to take his eyes off her.
The only problem was, he didn't just have one daughter.
“Beira! Vita! Settle down!”
Looking after the children born to the various witches—Evangeline, Beatrice, Margaret, and the others—was an exhausting task, even if he had ten bodies.
Perhaps it was a blessing that he had earned enough money to live without having to work. It meant he could always stay by his children's side.
“Dada... Daddy.”
“Yes, Hytriss. What is it?”
“Bathroom…”
“Go ask your mom to take you.”
“Mommy's not here…”
Of course, he wished the witches would help more with childcare, but there were often times they couldn't. Beatrice, who was practically indistinguishable from a child herself, and Hekaterina, who showed little interest in her own daughter, were prime examples.
In the end, raising the children fell almost entirely on Yohan's shoulders. He had never been more grateful for the fact that he was a superhuman who could use magic power.
“Whoaa-! Mommy!”
“H-Hey, Eva! The baby's flying!”
“What's the big deal, Yohan? She's a witch's child. She can fly a little.”
“But what if she gets hurt…!”
In Yohan's opinion, the biggest problem in raising the children was the gap in common sense between the witches and himself, a human.
The witches didn't seem to care much whether a child was flying through the air or breathing fire. The problem was, they didn't seem to care that the children could get hurt while using magic like that.
So, it was always Yohan's job to worry sick about the children getting injured. This was especially true after one of them had dozed off while flying, crashed headfirst into the ground, and ended up with a bleeding hole in their forehead.
‘Seriously, why are they so uninterested?’
Was it because, unlike humans who become fiercely protective after giving birth, these witches had lived for hundreds, even thousands of years without ever engaging in the act of reproduction? They showed very little maternal instinct to protect their own children.
On the rare occasions they did act motherly, the motivation was always Yohan himself. They took care of the children because it pleased him, not because they loved the children.
Yohan had a gut feeling this gap would become a major problem someday, but for now, he was too busy raising the kids to do anything about it.
“Ugh… Why is everyone so indifferent…”
“Because we don't know what to do.”
“…Hekaterina.”
Exhausted, Yohan, who had collapsed onto the sofa, craned his neck toward the voice behind him. There stood Hekaterina, licking an ice cream cone, having apparently abandoned her child to go out somewhere.
Yohan glared at her, dumbfounded.
“…Where have you been?”
“To buy ice cream.”
“At a time like this?”
“The kid asked for it, you know?”
Hekaterina frowned slightly, as if to say she had her own side of the story, then put the ice cream in the fridge and came back.
She plopped down next to him and naturally rested her head on his arm, continuing what she had started to say.
“We've never given birth to human children before. No, more than that, I doubt any witch ever thought she would have a child at all.”
“It's not like other people are fully prepared when they have kids, is it? They have them first and figure things out as they go…”
“—Exactly. We don't know how to raise them. We don't know what expression to wear when we approach them, or how we should look when we hold them.”
As she spoke, Hytriss, having caught her mother's scent from somewhere, scrambled up the sofa and snuggled tightly between Hekaterina's large breasts and thighs.
Hekaterina looked down at Hytriss with a fed-up expression, but she didn't toss her child aside, simply letting her be.
“It's not that we're uninterested or that we hate them. If that were the case, we would have thrown them out long ago.”
“…I see.”
“Right. We just… don't know.”
Even the witches, who he thought knew everything, were just beginners.
A rookie mom and a rookie dad.
Knowing nothing, and therefore, not knowing how to act.
“…Daddyyyyy—.”
Pfft.
Crying in Hekaterina's arms, the seat of Hytriss's pants began to bulge. Seeing this, Hekaterina pinched her nose and lifted her daughter by the back of her shirt.
“Hey, you do it.”
“…Didn't you just say you couldn't because you don't know how?”
“I don't know, whatever.”
Watching Hekaterina toss their daughter at him and scurry away, Yohan let out a deep sigh and changed his daughter's diaper.
He hadn't known, but witches don't poop or pee. Except when they're babies.
That's why she insisted she could never do it, having never touched such a thing before…
‘Right, if I don't take care of my own kid, who will?’
With that thought, Yohan resolved to endure it for just a few more years. If he could just hold on for a few more years—.
Ten years passed.
The number of children grew.
It doubled.
“Daddyyy—!”
Yoanna, the eldest, rushed toward him. Just like her mother Evangeline, her chest, already large despite her being in elementary school, smothered his face.
Yohan leaned his head back slightly and wrapped his arms tightly around his daughter's waist. Giggling, Yoanna slid right between Yohan's legs and sat down.
“Daddy, I got another confession today.”
“Oh yeah? Is there any boy you like?”
“I'm going to marry you, Daddy.”
“Your mother would murder you.”
“It's fine! I'm stronger!”
As she said that, Yoanna created a small explosion in mid-air. An explosion in thin air. It meant she could kill any opponent just by making eye contact, but…
‘My daughter… your mother can do things far worse than that…’
Recalling the time Evangeline had separated the hydrogen in the air to cause nuclear fusion—a nuclear explosion, that is—Yohan let out a laugh and patted his daughter's head.
He was patting her head for a moment when Yoanna, who had been humming and swinging her legs in his lap, was suddenly sent flying as if struck by something. Thwack—
“Kyaaah!?”
“Where do you think you're going? Yohan's lap is mine.”
“Ah— Mom!”
“What? If you have a problem with it, you should have been born earlier than me.”
Evangeline, who had appeared from nowhere and sent Yoanna flying, quickly took the empty spot. Ten years had passed since she gave birth to Yoanna, yet her looks and behavior hadn't changed a bit.
Caught between a growling Yoanna and an Evangeline baring her teeth at her own daughter, Yohan began to mediate.
“Both of you. Quiet. Eva, how can you fight with Yoanna?”
“Yohaaan… No, she started it—”
“What kind of mother fights with her own daughter?”
Sighing deeply, Yohan stepped between them and, imbuing his hand with magic power, gave them both a bonk on the head. The magic protecting their bodies shattered, and engulfed in intense pain, the two of them clutched the tops of their heads and began to groan.
“Ugh… Daddyyy…!”
“Y-Yohaan… your hand has gotten pretty heavy lately…”
“Both of you, be quiet.”
Yohan let out a sigh and looked at Yoanna. Born as a witch's daughter and able to wield magic, she didn't suffer from the curse.
It was a trait unique to the second-generation half-bloods, different from their mothers.
Considering Evangeline had awakened her magic and received the curse at around Yoanna's current age, it was likely she would never be cursed.
‘What a relief.’
He had almost become the kind of man who would have to feed his own daughter an antidote made from his semen. Even Yohan wanted no part in that.
And the fact that the children born between him and the witches were not cursed was quite a shock to the witches as well.
They had always thought they were cursed because they could use magic, but this proved that the curse was cast by an entirely different entity.
Thanks to this, Makina, who handled machines, and Regina, who handled records, were constantly running experiments and documenting their findings on their daughters every day.
“Don't fight. Yoanna. She's your mother.”
“But…”
“Ahem. Apologize, and tell her you love her.”
“…I'm sorry, Mom.”
“And 'I love you'?”
Yoanna bit her lip as if she couldn't possibly say it, but then quietly opened her mouth and whispered that she loved her. Seeing this, Evangeline started to provoke her.
“Love? I don't love anyone but my Yohan— so I win, right?”
“Eeeek! Daddy! See what Mom's doing!?”
“Yes, yes, I know, just quiet down—.”
Trrrring-!
Yohan, who was trying to stop the mother-daughter fight, dropped his playful expression and took out his cell phone. He answered the call and exchanged a few words with the person on the other end.
While the mother and daughter were swooning at his serious expression, Yohan finished the call and immediately stood up.
“Daddy has to go.”
“Where are you going?”
“Something came up.”
“Oh, Daddy! I got a homework assignment from school.”
“What is it?”
“I have to find out what your job is!”
Hearing his daughter's words, Yohan thought for a moment before speaking.
“Savior.”
From disease.
From famine.
From poverty.
From war.
The savior who saved humanity.
Right now, I'm on my way to stop a meteor.
- The End-