Chapter 384: A Very Unusual Bloodline

Mark loved his children. There was no doubt about that.

He loved them with an intensity unlike anything he had felt before, and it was almost ironic considering how long he had spent terrified of becoming a father.

For years he had thought he wouldn’t know what to do, that he would make mistakes or that, when the time came, he would discover he wasn’t enough.

Even after arriving in this world he had kept having doubts.

What kind of father could someone be who, in his previous life, had barely managed to take care of himself, and who in this one had built much of what he had by killing and reviving people?

Everything had changed when he held them for the first time.

Mark didn’t suddenly become a baby expert, nor did all the doubts he had accumulated over the years vanish.

He simply stopped caring.

Because every time he looked at one of his children, the answer was always the same: he would learn what he had to learn and do whatever was necessary to keep them safe.

So yes, that week had been happy.

Extremely happy.

But it had also been a nightmare for his sleep schedule.

Mark had no problem getting up in the middle of the night, changing diapers, or walking around for hours with one of them in his arms until they calmed down.

He could handle all of that.

The problem was that his children weren’t exactly normal babies.

And today it was his turn.

Since their mothers were still recovering, Mark and the rest of his wives took turns looking after the little ones during the day and giving them a few hours of rest.

He had come in first thing in the morning, convinced it would be a quiet shift and that he would arrive with plenty of time to spare for the lunch he had promised Mary.

However, he had been in there for almost four hours now.

And at that moment, Elowen was floating near the ceiling.

The girl had risen from her crib without making the slightest sound, still wrapped in her little green blanket, and now floated a couple of meters off the ground, turning very slowly on herself.

Mark approached, stood on tiptoe, and caught her carefully in his hands.

"We’ve talked about this, Elowen," he said in a low voice, lowering her to his chest. "Princesses don’t float around the ceiling."

Elowen looked at him with her enormous green eyes and grabbed a lock of his hair in her fist.

"Yes, yes, I know you like it. But your mother is going to have a heart attack if she comes in and sees you up there."

He put her back in her crib, tucked the blanket around her, and stroked her head until the girl closed her eyes.

Then he turned.

Lucian was floating by the window.

Unlike his sister, who tended to rise toward the ceiling, Lucian had a habit of floating sideways.

At that moment he had his nose almost pressed to the glass, watching the birds in the garden with his red eyes wide open.

Mark sighed, crossed the room, and took him in his arms.

"You too, champ. I know the window is very interesting, but if one day it’s open, I don’t want to have to go looking for you on the rooftops."

Lucian put a hand on his cheek, just as he had done with Rose the day he was born, and Mark felt his heart soften.

"Don’t look at me like that... You know I can’t get mad at you when you look at me like that," Mark murmured as he laid him in the crib and tucked him in.

Lucian also closed his eyes, clearly tired.

For a moment he thought things had finally calmed down.

He was wrong.

Then Mark heard a whistle in the air. He turned his head just in time to see a wooden toy horse flying straight at his forehead.

He raised his hand and caught it a hand’s breadth from his face.

He stared at the toy for a second. It was a solid wooden horse, carved by the dwarves, which they had given to Ulric the day before.

On the other side of the room, in his crib, Ulric watched him with his little wolf ears perked up and an expression of absolute satisfaction, flailing his arms excitedly.

Mark walked over to him.

"Is this yours?"

Ulric let out a happy gurgle.

"I see." Mark crouched beside the crib and held out the horse. "Next time, try not to throw it at your father’s head, okay? I don’t mind, but if you throw it at a maid, you’ll send her to the infirmary."

Ulric grabbed the horse with both hands, and when he did, the splintered leg cracked and snapped off.

Mark stared at the piece of wood on the mattress. Then he looked at his son, who was now gnawing on the horse’s head with total happiness.

"...We’re going to have to ask the dwarves for a metal one," he murmured with amusement.

He had no time to think more about it, because at that moment a cry rose from the other side of the room.

Ruby.

Mark turned to her crib and found it wrapped in flames.

Blue flames, intense ones, covering her whole body and rising nearly half a meter above the wooden bars, lighting the wall with a cold glow.

Ruby was in the center, her little face redder than usual, crying with all her might while her little demon tail thrashed from side to side.

Seeing his daughter, Mark couldn’t help remembering the first time it had happened. Literally half the palace had panicked.

Cali had fainted, Ely had run to fetch water, and Mark had plunged his arms into the flames without thinking to pull her out, convinced his daughter was burning alive.

But little Ruby wasn’t burning.

That was because those flames didn’t burn. Not Ruby, not the crib, not the sheets, not anyone who touched her.

According to Rose, who had spent an entire afternoon examining them, it wasn’t even real fire.

It was simply the way the girl’s mana manifested when she got upset. Too much mana for such a small body, searching for a way out.

Since then, that "spontaneous combustion" had become normal.

Or as normal as it could be for a baby who caught fire every time she was hungry.

Mark put his arms through the flames, which gave a slight tickle on his skin, and lifted her out of the crib. He rested her against his shoulder and began to rock her slowly, patting her back gently.

"There, there... It’s okay... I know you’re hungry. Someone is coming with your milk right now."

Ruby kept crying a while longer. But little by little, with the rhythm of the rocking, the sobs grew weaker, and the flames dropped along with them, until they were a faint blue glow around her shoulders and went out completely.

Mark let out a long sigh upon seeing that all his children were finally asleep.

"If this is how they are now, I don’t want to imagine when they grow up," he murmured with amusement. "I only hope the palace can withstand six more..."

As much as it sounded like a joke, it was a real concern for Mark.

Ulric had been born with a strength that made no sense for a one-week-old baby. By the second day he had already bent the bars of his crib, and by the fourth they’d had to build him a new one reinforced with iron.

Elowen and Lucian, for their part, had been born with a sensitivity to mana that neither Emilia nor Rose had ever seen in anyone.

They absorbed ambient magic without realizing it, and when they accumulated too much, they simply began to float.

And that’s not even mentioning Ruby with her natural affinity for the elements.

Mary had been the first to propose an explanation that made some sense.

According to her, the reincarnated carried something different in their blood, a trait that people born in this world simply didn’t possess.

Over generations it seemed to weaken but not disappear entirely, which explained why Rose, Emilia, and Luna still retained part of that heritage despite being only descendants of reincarnated.

Mark, on the other hand, was one directly.

Putting both things together, perhaps it wasn’t so strange that his children had been born displaying abilities at an absurd age.

The explanation seemed reasonable.

Until he looked at Ruby sleeping on his shoulder and realized a rather worrying detail.

Those four children had been born of a reincarnated and a distant descendant of another.

The child he was expecting with Mary would have two reincarnated parents.

’Shit... that little one is going to be literally a final boss,’ Mark thought.

And although the idea should probably have worried him more, Mark ended up letting out a small laugh.

The door opened shortly after and Alice came into the room with her usual calm. She took a quick look at the four children, checked the state of the room, and finally looked at Mark.

"My lord, you can go to your lunch with Mary now," she said, taking a chair. "It’s my turn."