A Father's Duty

After August left, the customers started leaving after paying for their meals. The kids finished playing and were tired and when Brandish didn't find August in the seat, she panicked.

"Uncle, Uncle!" She said to me.

"Yes?" I asked.

"Where is my gwandfathew?" She asked me.

"Your grandfather has tasks to do back at home and said he'll pick you up by dinner so you can play with my daughters until then." I explained to Brandish but suddenly she teared up and had a hiccup.

"D-did gwandfathew *hic* leave me? D-did Bwandish do *hic* anything wong? I-is Bwandish a * hic* bad gewl?" She sobbed and I was about to make a move but mother took action first as she kneeled down and hugged Brandish and started rubbing her back.

"No, no. Brandish didn't do anything wrong. Brandish is a good girl. Your grandfather said he has to work. Your grandfather will be back later, so you could have fun with the chipmunks." She coaxed Brandished as she stopped crying and mother separated with her.

"Is G-Gwandfathew *hic* going to come back?" She asked as she stared at my mother's eyes.

"He'll pick you up later after he finished working." Mother said.

"Willy?" Brandish asked.

"Really." Mother replied.

"Willy willy?" Brandish asked again.

"Really, really." Mother patiently answered. As a mother of two children, she's a veteran in terms of coaxing a children as she looked at Brandish with sincere eyes.

"He'll be back okay?" Mother said as she wiped Brandish's puffy and red eyes.

"Want to eat some ice cream?" Mother asked. One of the best things that could stop a child from crying is by giving her something to distract her from the sad thoughts.

"What's an ice kwim?" Brandish asked as her curiosity took over the sudden loss of her grandfather by her side.

"Its one of the best things that father made for us. Strawberry shortcake is still my favorite though." Erza suddenly chimed in with her big sister persona as we chuckled hearing her sudden intervention and declaration of her favorite food.

"But, have you eaten yet?" I asked Brandish and she shook her head.

"You can't have ice cream yet or you're going to have a bad stomach." Hearing my words, the chipmunks remembered asking for their grandmother for ice cream without eating breakfast and a few minutes later their stomach started aching. Mother started panicking but I told her that they ate ice cream without taking their breakfast to warm their stomachs first.

"Okay..." Brandish said slowly.

I then started making soft food for Brandish and mother started feeding Brandish since she still can't grip the utensils tightly. After eating, I started giving bowls of ice cream to the kids as they can't get enough of it and ate two bowls of it. When Brandish was about to ask for third serving, Kagura stopped her.

"No no, Brandish. Father said that eating too much ice cream will make your teeth bad." She said while showing her, her own set of pearly white baby teeth. Brandish became scared because she didn't want her teeth to go bad so she stopped herself from asking another serving.

After the small fiasco nothing extraordinary happened as the customers came in, dined and left. No one's causing trouble because I called Fenrir to guard and he just slept at the shadows of the tavern while keeping vigilant of its surrounding.

August came at dinner and first noticed Fenrir's presence, in fact many strong people noticed, but the wolf king didn't even bother make any action even after being felt as he just slept lazily. August is amazed to see that the owner have tamed the Ferocious wolf king and he felt like the army who was obliterated for subduing Fenrir, was its work. How could a normal army of mages defeat something strong like Fenrir.

He then had a meal before he took Brandish with him to go home. Brandish then started telling the stories of what they played and shared the story that Erza told her like Cinderella, Mulan, and many more.

After closing up, Irene went up with the chipmunks to sleep while father and mother also went up. As for me, I am still cleaning up and due to the sudden removal of time schedule, it caused a sudden influx of customers. With the sudden influx of customers, I was able to get tons of points and the first thing I did was change the walls of the tavern to a soundproof one, I didn't want the commotion outside to wake up my family who's sleeping peacefully.

The second thing in my plan is to go to an isolated place where no one could hear me. Because the system said that what I'm going to do will be painful.

I went up after cleaning and told Irene that I'm going to the farming space to check the livestock's wellbeing to which she nodded as she slept beside the chipmunks.

The system then teleported me to the farming space and started doing what I planned tonight.

I took out a barrel and filled it with water enough to cover my head as I'm going to be submerging in it. After that, I bought a bunch of expensive rare herbs and started processing them into paste before pouring them to the barrel of water.

That's right, I'm going to start reforming my body. I'm going to use Gandora - X body refinement.

Looking at the red water I felt uncomfortable because the system said this is going to hurt on a whole new level and when I dipped a finger in, it felt painful. My body is bathed in dragon's blood so you could say that its gonna be hard but I still felt pain. (Like when Kuma made Zoro a taste of Luffy's pain and fatigue.)

'No pain. No gain.' I thought

Staring at it for a second before I removed my clothes as I made my mind and jumped in and submerged myself.

Pain. It was all I could feel.

It was so painful that I tried to scream underwater and it caused me to open my mouth and the water entered my body and it caused me even more pain.

[Stay strong host, Gandora-X body refinement doesn't only make your outside body strong, but also your insides. Bear with it because you're going to be in there for a while.] The system said.

I heard the voice but I don't have the time to process it because the pain from bathing in the concoction took my focus more than anything else.

The concoction that entered my body, travelled downwards and my body, my veins, arteries, and my organs. The way the concoction strengthened my body is it made the insides of my body as hard as steel but with the flexibility of a rubber. If someone touched my organs, they would feel it was soft but if they pierced it with something, it will be hard as steel.

After what seemed like days to me, finally stopped as my body absorbed all of the concoction down to the single drop.

"Huff... Huff... that was one hell of a bath... and it was just the first bath. I will have to submerge my body nine more times to reach its peak... System how many days did I submerged in that water?" I asked.

[You were only submerged for 32 minutes host.] The system said.

Hearing what the system said, I was surprised. I felt like I was being tortured for days and the system said it was only 32 minutes. According to the manual, the second bath requires me to submerge in the next concoction for an hour or more and the next concoction requires more precious herbs and more painful than the first one because the next one includes the muscles and the third one includes the bones.

"Ugh... this is going to take a long time." I said as I opened and closed my fist as I felt power coursing through my body.

"I need to get back. Irene must be worried about me." I said as the system opened a portal and went back home.

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There won't be chapters for a while because I'm seriously grinding the battle pass now. As for those who are curious, I'm playing Dota 2 right now, though I have played league and other offline games. I also suck at FPS games, I mean really suck.

The reason why I'm grinding really hard is because the things offered by this year's battle pass is really outstanding and can earn you more than you invested. For example, just look up Anti Mage's Golden Basher's price in the steam market it was priced as $1539 dollars which, to me, is a lot and this years battlepass' rewards is not a pushover as well. That's why I'm grinding really hard right now and only had time to write earlier. Why? Because, although the rewards were outstanding, to level up the battlepass is really hard and would need your more than 100% effort to achieve that's why I had no time to write it.

Well that's all. Back to the grinding lands!