"Look! Look, Ramiris! It's my daughter!" I yelled as I excitedly held her up in front of her.
"Aww! So cute~" She cooed.
"I know right!?!" I replied before immediately turning away and repeating the process with Evelyn.
"Evelyn look! It's my daughter!" I yelled.
"I know, I know Alaster, you've shown me before." She said, rebuking me softly.
"I know but... she's so cute!" I said, looking at my little girl before turning to Lilith.
"Look, Lil, it's your younger sister!!!" I said proudly, ignoring the amused eye-rolling of my first daughter.
While I was busy fawning over her, the daughter in question was silently and curiously looking around the room as I ran about showing her off to everyone. The small tufts of silvery-white hair on her head accentuated the cuteness of her big blue eyes that shimmered the slightest bit purple. She was the most adorable thing I'd ever seen in my life and while I was running around quite a bit, I made sure to not shake her at all and even put a thin magic barrier around her to prevent loud noises from disturbing her.
"Calm down, Alaster. I understand you're excited, but you're embarrassing me just looking at this scene." Velda commented with his whole face, completely serious.
Everyone in the room, including Obera, who was tagging along for some reason, stopped what they were doing and looked at Velda and deadpanned. No one spoke it out loud, but we were all thinking, 'You have no right to say that!'. Velda, it seems, was completely oblivious to our stares, and was looking at us with a confused expression.
"What?" He asked.
"Dear, I think we should just let Alaster have his fun," Lucia stated with a sweatdrop on her head.
"Eh?" Velda didn't reflect at all upon his mistakes, but the entire event did allow for someone to make a move.
"That's enough running around now," Velzard said as she swiftly but gently swiped our daughter away.
I suddenly felt a distinct lack of adorable warmth in my arms and looked down to see she was gone. My heart cracked and I collapsed onto my hands and knees in despair. For I had lost my one treasure. The color drained from my body and lines of depression clung over me.
"She's gone..." I moaned, half passing out.
Velzard smiled amusedly, trying not to let out a stifled laugh. "You're such a dork." She said before walking out of the hallway that we gathered in and into a large bedroom we were reserving for our daughter's infant care. Everyone followed her, myself included. We lay her in the crib beside a soundly sleeping Milim. Without any direction from us, Milim unconsciously shifted in the bed and wrapped her arms around my daughter with a small smile on her face.
I was shaking in my boots at this point and raised crouched down to shout to the heavens, though before I was able to, Obera covered my mouth with a barrier to keep the sound down. "THAT'S TOO CUTE DAMNIT!!!" I shouted though it was muffled by Obera's barrier.
Everyone smiled softly and shook their heads at my antics. I had finally gotten that outburst out of my system and was able to just now calm myself down. I actually had to catch my breath after shouting. Running around and praising my daughter was actually pretty exhausting. Not physically, as I had infinite stamina, but mentally it definitely was.
Velda broke the ice. "Now that Alaster has calmed down, I've gotta ask. What's her name going to be?"
Velzard and I looked at each other for a moment and nodded. It seems we were in perfect agreement. We had argued about this very fact for a very long time. In one of the few bitter fights between us, we just couldn't, for the life of us, agree on a name. However, it seems that Velzard had finally come around to my idea.
We both turned towards everyone and simultaneously said it.
"Yumina," we both said.
Everyone smiled at that. "That's a wonderful name," Velda commented.
"Yeah! Its sounds so bright!" Ramiris added to which Obera nodded.
I wrapped my arm around Velzard and held her close with a big smile on my face. Velzard blushed slightly being held but didn't resist or shrink away from it like she would have when we first became lovers. "Yup, now all that's left to do is actually give it to her. Velzard decided that she wanted to be the one to name her since she has more magicules than me and was the one who actually went through the pain of childbirth." I commented.
"Really? I thought you'd name her, Alaster?" Lucia inquired.
My smile briefly became awkward upon hearing that. "I wanted to, but since we're going to have to cheat the system a bit, she convinced me not to waste the magicules," I admitted.
"Cheat the system?" Lucia asked.
"Ah... you're going THAT method." He asked.
"Yeah, I figure that if the System is going to screw with me, then I'm going to screw it right back," I commented.
Velda did that 'fair point' expression, where his mouth frowned and he nodded his head to the side briefly. "I guess it's fine for now. I'll fix the bug you create when its time for me to go."
I smiled awkwardly. "Thanks, Velda." But he waved me off.
"Don't worry about it. Just get the ceremony over with. I want to have one last night with my wife before I stop by to see Rudra, Guy, and Feldway." He commented with a slight twinge of sadness in his voice.
Everyone nodded somewhat somberly. The attack had dramatically pushed up our timetables, and since Milim herself was possibly going to be collateral in the next attempt by the world to kill Velda, he wasn't going to take any chances. Everyone here was more or less brought up to speed by Velda when we were waiting for Velzard to finish giving birth to my daughter and needless to say, they weren't pleased, however, that's a story for another day.
Velzard and I turned to look into the crib, watching the two soundly sleeping Dragonoids. It was time. Velzard bent down and gave our daughter a soft kiss on her forehead. "You're name is Yumina from now on." She whispered as little Yumina began to glow for a few moments. Yumina was only drowsy before, but after being named, she fully passed out, breathing softly and consistently to indicate there were no troubles.
I turned to my wife and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She was a lot weaker now than she was at any point since I'd known her. Her Energy Value was at roughly 60 Million now, giving her the lowest EV of all her siblings but still about 50% more than I had currently (~40M). Yumina, on the other hand, had an EV of about 8 Million now, making her in the top 15 strongest beings in the world as an infant, with plenty of room to grow.
I smiled happily, knowing that all of the major crises' had passed and it was time to look to the future.
.~.~.~.
/1\:
Originally, the name was going to be Alaya, which means Sublime (beautiful) in Arabic, but I thought I'd save the name for the MC's Manas later down the road if I ever get around to that plot point.