Chapter 3438: Balanced Approach
"Hey..." A soft, feminine voice drew his attention from behind, breaking him out of his reverie.
He turned, finding the tired figure of Fae walking up to him, crouching next to him as she gazed at her baby boy with a blissful expression of love. "Ah..."
The faintest of breaths escaped her as her hand rested on her heart, feeling it beat hard with all the love it had for her baby boy and for Kane.
"My precious baby..." her hand gently brushed across the top of his head. "I love you so much..."
Her complexion was pale, the kind that suggested that she wasn’t exactly doing the best. The bags beneath her eyes were even darker than Kane’s. She simply tilted, allowing her head to rest against Kane’s shoulder while his hand wrapped around her, pulling her into him.
"How are you holding up...?" he asked her gently with an expression of concern.
Fae had experienced a turbulent postpartum period as her body tried to return to normal after pregnancy and childbirth. The physical recovery had gone well, of course, with some help from Kandria’s world-class postpartum care along with her own constitution as a Martial Artist. She had experienced an immense mental and physical fatigue that seemed to stick no matter how many physical rejuvenation potions she consumed.
She felt like someone had added weights to her body, making each movement tiring. More significantly, the emotional impacts on her mind via the shifts in hormones had been the hardest. She felt anxious and depressed for no apparent reason, struggling to enter into a truly joyous mood for long.
Yet, that didn’t diminish her love for her son by even a little.
If anything, it was precisely because of the boundless love she had for little Runark that she couldn’t help but grow anxious for him, for his safety and well-being. Of course, on a rational level, she understood that her baby was one of the safest babies in the entire continent.
He had the full protection of the Dullahan Family and even the Arrancar Family, even though Kane was no longer a part of it.
His mother was a Martial Master.
His father was a Martial Sage.
They had arranged for the most brilliant doctors in Kandria’s world-class medical care to perform the most scrupulous check-ups on him to ensure that absolutely nothing problematic with the baby.
Kandria’s healthcare technology had grown exponentially superior in the past few decades, thanks to an entire generation of doctors who had learned from the Divine Doctor, directly or indirectly. The supreme genius’s knowledge and skill had partly assimilated into Kandria, making it unparalleled in medical services, exceeding even the vaunted Esocline Federation.
Only after both of them had done everything in their power to protect their baby from everything could they finally feel some measure of relief and satisfaction.
"He must be dreaming..." Fae smiled as her mind sense allowed her to sense the nascent emotions within her baby’s mind. "He is happy..."
Kane smiled softly. "I hope he remains that way forever..."
His expression grew serious.
"I will ensure that he does."
Fatherhood, even just one month in, changed not only his perspective on the future of human civilization, but also his perspective on his father.
Shortly before his father had become a Martial Transcendent and faded away, he had managed to fully patch his relationship with his father. The eleven years that they had spent in the Beast Domain had allowed them to grow closer and develop a mutual understanding with each other.
Kane hadn’t forgotten all the torture that his father had put him through, absolutely not, but he had come to understand why his father did it. His father was caring for him and looking out for him in his own messed-up way, as insane as it was. And the outcomes had ended up positive.
Kane had ended up becoming the youngest Martial Sage in existence, surpassing even Rui. However, the breakthrough age had lost much of its significance since the introduction of the manifold.
His father’s decisions had allowed him to maximize his potential to the very limit.
In comparison to someone like Fiona, who had been even more talented than him but was still only a Martial Senior after all these years, working her way up to the Master Realm painstakingly.
Kane had not been fond of what his father had done to him, but he had understood the rationale and, to a very small extent, could even agree with it.
Now, however, after becoming a father, Kane’s sense of distance from his father grew. He couldn’t fathom what his father had done to him and how he could possibly allow it to happen. The very thought of torturing his son the way Kane had been tortured evoked horror and disgust within him.
His father had sought to maximize his potential even at the cost of miserable suffering.
Kane didn’t want that for his son.
"What’s the point of having power if your life is horrible?"
Kane had lucked out in part due to having met Rui, but that was a privilege, as far as he was concerned. If he hadn’t met Rui, he would have had no idea where he would be at the moment, probably not nearly as strong as he was.
At the same time, he didn’t want to go with the route that Fiona’s father had taken, raising her without any intention of making her maximize her potential. He knew that Fiona today had a lot of regrets about not realizing her potential as strongly as possible in a turbulent era where, increasingly, power was all that mattered.
"There is surely a balance that I can go for to ensure that our son can lead a rich, nourishing life, but also one where he is able to maximize his potential," Kane remarked out loud. "A balance between both approaches."
Fae nodded at him with a serious expression. "...It would be nice if our son were a Martial Artist, but at the same time, I don’t want to force him into the path. There are many other directions one can go in life."