The Crazy Duke

(Flashback continued)

It had been ten years since Commander Peterlor had cultivated to the god stage and his prestige in the army was unmatched amongst his peers. He led the 'First Order' fleet of the imperial army and was on the frontlines of the war against the Insectoid races.

The insectoids were considered as the plague of the universe and consisted of several thousand different races of monsters. Some were humanoid and had intelligence rivalling that of humans while others were mere beasts of slaughter.

Humanity had been engaged in bitter battles with the Insectoids for hundreds of years over the ownership of certain planets and star systems. Too many atrocities had been committed by both sides so the push for diplomacy was never considered as a viable option.

While the other galactic empires of the Unova and Federines could be negotiated with....to a certain extent.

The blood feud between humanity and Insectoids meant that neither would be satisfied until the other was wiped out. Humans held advantages in terms of raw power and strength with additional power of cultivation along with technology, but the sheer reproductive power of the Insectoid races made victories almost meaningless.

The state of the war was at a standstill and neither side could get an advantage over the other.

During that time, the duke was posted on the border planet of Neptune to reinforce and protect the trading wormhole located near the planet.

It was an uneventful couple of years until one night a sneak attack was launched during the Lumonisa Festival. Commander Peterlor led his army to defend the wormhole with his life and managed to succeed against all odds.

There was a hefty price to be paid and the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers were lost. The duke in his fight with the enemy commander dragged the both of them into the wormhole to turn the tides of battle.

There was an urgent message sent from the base and hundreds of local guards arrived at the end of the wormhole to give support to the duke.

But no one exited the other side.

The wormhole had sent both the young duke and the enemy commander to an unknown location in the universe and the tracker implanted in his uniform could not locate him.

Naturally the duke was assumed to be dead and there were several sighs of relief from the other noble houses in the capitol.

His cultivation talent was too dangerous.

The attack itself was highly suspicious as there was no indication or warning of a breach by the border troops and how would the insectoids know that a festival was taking place without being told remained a mystery.

There were a few mummers of complaint from the first order officers that the attack should be investigated for potential spies within their ranks, but no official investigation was launched.

It was almost as though the royal family turned a blind eye, perhaps they too were glad that a dangerous element was culled in its infancy. No other person had ever reached the god stage in less than five hundred years and many even with that time did not have the talent to ascend their limits of mortality.

Should the duke reach the Ascension stage, he could challenge the authority of the royal family singlehandedly.

Ten years later the duke returned to the planet Gaia with a child.

He looked visibly different to the point that the border guard at the transport gate thought that he was an imposter. The duke regained his youth due to his high cultivation techniques but upon his return seemed to have aged decades.

He now resembled a handsome middle-aged man with greying hair that added to his charm. This led to rumors that he had regressed in his cultivation level, but higher tier cultivators sensed that his aura was now unfathomable.

While the duke from before emitted the sharpness of an unsheathed sword, the man before them now was as calm as a lake and no one could see the depths of his strength.

His arrival stirred up waves in the capitol and he was immediately summoned before the royal family to explain his disappearance. The story he gave was that the wormhole had taken him and the enemy commander to an unknown ice planet in the Tera System which was one of the systems controlled by the Insectoids.

He killed the commander and spent the past ten years travelling deep in enemy territory trying to find his way back to a federation outpost.

There were numerous questions asked such as,

How was it possible for him to survive? Why did it take him so long to get back? Who was the child that he brought with him?

The duke stayed silent and just gave vague explanations of his journey without revealing too much information, the king was naturally unsatisfied by the answers given but his advisors warned him not to make an enemy of the duke so he could only swallow his anger back into his chest.

The child brought back was named Sophie Peterlor and her facial features rivalled the duke in terms of attractiveness so there was no doubt who the father was.

Her dad was fiercely overprotective of his daughter and she was usually kept in the family estate. There was a great deal of curiosity about the girl and it was not until a maid was bribed by a news network that the fact, she was a hybrid was revealed to the world.

This would not have been shocking news by itself, but the duke declared no intention to remarry and that Sophie would be the heir to the Peterlor house.

He was then considered as a madman.

There were a couple heads of houses among the lower nobility that were not fully human, but they were few and far between.

No upper rank nobility had ever named a hybrid as the heir to their household.

Despite all the advice and opposition from those around him, the duke remained steadfast in his declaration and retired from the first order to personally raise his daughter.

When asked questions about the race of the child's mother, the duke would claim that even he had no idea. The only clue to the mother's racial heritage were the golden eyes and pointy ears inherited by her daughter.