Much to Dante's dismay, the days passed by way too quickly. Although he basically did the same thing with Little Ava every day, he never got tired of it. Just being in her presence had some sort of calming effect on him which is saying a lot!
Normally Dante is incredibly high-strung and he'd rather die than sit there and do nothing, but such thoughts never crossed his mind whenever he looked at Little Ava.
Also, whenever he is in this calm and relaxing state, he can barely feel the passage of time. Maybe it's because he's been so hardworking over the past hundreds of thousands of years, but having a short break like this feels nice.
Days went by and then weeks started to go by.
Little Ava's behavior hadn't changed at all and Dante would even say that she literally sleeps at least 20 hours per day. The other 3.5 hours are feeding/bathroom time and the last 30 minutes are reserved for playtime.
As the months started to tick by, Dante couldn't help but feel a bit worried about his daughter. She literally only eats and sleeps all day! One time he tried waking her up while she was sleeping, but it was like she was a fucking rock! It took him a good 30 minutes of constantly pestering her for Little Ava to finally wake up!
The hell?!
Over the past few months, Dante has spied on a bunch of couples and babies all over the Immortal Realm and learned a few things about babies.
From what he gathered, babies are generally fairly light sleepers and occasionally a baby will be a deep sleeper, but even those babies who are called deep sleepers are only relative to other babies.
If you thro-cough dropped them on the ground, they would definitely wake up. But Little Ava didn't even wake up after tossing her around, pinching her cheeks, loud noises, or anything else he tried. Obviously, he would never do anything to hurt her and was only doing these things to make sure she was okay, but the results were still surprising!
Was she a fucking boulder in her past life or something?!
Dante figured out the answer to that question and unsurprisingly, she was not a boulder in her past life. Nor did she even have a past life.
Knowing that something must be happening, Dante reluctantly scanned her body again to see what the hell is going on when she sleeps.
And apparently, she requires a literal shit load of energy to survive and grow. It seems his bloodline is more potent than he originally thought. But how would he know that? He's self-sustaining at this point so his energy consumption and usage in order to live are zero!
He's definitely the most environmentally friendly existence in the universe! Haha!
If people that knew Dante's past deeds listened to his thoughts, they would surely curse him to death!
Environmentally friendly? Environmentally friendly, my ass!! He's probably caused more death and destruction than any other person in the history of the Immortal Realm! Wherever he goes, death and destruction are sure to follow leaving nothing but a wasteland in his wake!
Nevertheless, although Dante is very 'environmentally friendly', his daughter seems to be the opposite. She is a waste machine! Literally! She poops like 5 times per day!
From his studies, he's learned that Little Ava is basically sleeping all of the time to prevent any energy from being wasted. This energy is then used to fuel her growth, which although it is incredibly slow requires much more energy.
And her relieving herself is essentially her body ridding itself of any impurities. Whether it be in the air she breathes, the milk she drinks, or the Qi around her, all of these contain tiny bits of impurities. Naturally, her bloodline can't stand these nasty impurities and removes them at all costs.
After finding this out, Dante wasn't quite sure what to do. He can filter out the impurities from her milk, air, and Qi but he's not really sure if it's such a great idea to do that. If he does remove the impurities from everything then he's basically forcing her to always stay by his side.
Although this idea sounds perfect to Dante, he also understands that his Daughter might want to explore the world and if she does that then just by breathing, she'll be absorbing all sorts of impurities. If her body doesn't learn how to reject these impurities from an early age, like she's doing now, then he might ruin her future!
Well, he says ruin, but there is nothing in this universe that he can't fix. It'll just ruin her future if she tries to fix it herself.
So after some thinking, he decided to leave things how they are considering there are only benefits in doing so.
Plus, why would he need to force his daughter to stay with him? After she understands how amazing he is, she'll be asking him to stay with her! Hehehe~
Just like that, 20 years went by.
On Little Ava's 20th birthday, her mind and body had finally reached the equivalent of a 3-month old human baby!
At this point, Little Ava has only been sleeping around 18 hours per day and with those extra 2 hours, she likes to spend her time playing!
Not only that, but her favorite thing to do is play with her father! What bliss!
She mostly plays with her stuffed animals, but now instead of just ramming them into each other or trying to eat them, she likes to rip up the ones she doesn't like.
Well, it's hard to say whether she actually dislikes them… Dante may or may not have had a part in demonstrating which stuffed animals to destroy.
It's not his fault, okay?! He just really wants to see his baby girl go and wreck those shitty Dragons! And those lusty mermaids too!
Wouldn't it be hilarious if he traveled to the Dragon Clan and had his little baby daughter beat up dragons like cabbages? Even though they pride themselves on being peak existences and having extraordinary physical might!
Hahaha~
Another hobby that she has taken up, definitely not something Dante made her do, is she likes to hold weapons.
Obviously, she doesn't know what to do with them, but when Dante showed her that she can destroy stuff with them… Well, you can probably guess the rest.
You might be thinking "*Gasp!* He's giving weapons to a child!?", but that's where you're wrong! These are fake weapons. They are only made out of wood and have no sharp edges! Obviously, he wouldn't give her the real thing! What would be the point of all those trials he set up if he did that?!
One that Dante is a little saddened by is Ava doesn't seem to be interested in chess or any of his strategy games.
He's tried to introduce those games to her, but either he tries to eat the pieces or she just overturns the board.
He could only sigh in disappointment and try to introduce these games at a later date.
But! Right now, he is thinking of something much better! He's been waiting for this moment for 20 years now!
Little Ava is finally at an age where she can socialize with other people and actually be semi-conscious of what she's doing!
And although Dante doesn't like dealing with people, he is willing to put up with it for the sake of his daughter. He's also very curious as to what kind of mischief she'll cause. Needless to say, he's very much looking forward to it!