Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 115 - 2.0

"Leave," Eastiel snarled. The golden lightning still crackled at his fingertips, barely contained. "Leave now, before I kill you where you stand."

"You know I can. And you know there is not a single soul in this world, not your father, not the Empire, not the gods themselves, who could do a damn thing to stop me."

Arzhen knew it was true.

The part of his brain that wasn’t screaming with insult and fury acknowledged the truth. Even at the height of his power, with his father’s army in his full command, acknowledged by everyone, a force of nature like the one Eastiel had just unveiled could not be contained by politics or armies.

This raw power... it was on a level he had only ever associated with the legends of Arkai Dawnoro. And Eastiel was not yet thirty.

People in the courts whispered that the Tiger Prince of the East, Arzhen, was a peer to the Golden Lion King. But Arzhen knew the secret fuel for his own ascent. It was his bond with Cecilia.

A human bond, especially with a soul of profound power like a Saintess, would complement a beast’s strength and multiply it, unlocking latent potential in ways a beast-beast bond never could.

It was a controversial advantage, seen by purists as a dilution of blood, but it was his advantage.

Eastiel, by contrast, was the product of centuries of meticulously curated, purebred Lion-kin lineage. His clan would sooner see him mate with a common lioness from the plains than sully their royal blood with a noble human.

The idea that he had fallen for one, and for Arzhen’s human wife, no less, was a scandal.

But if an unbonded Eastiel, grieving and enraged, could summon this level of cataclysmic power... what would he be like if he had bonded with Cecilia? What kind of god the world would witness?

So, why was Arzhen still breathing?

Eastiel had no proof of murder. But did a man radiating this much world-ending grief and fury truly need proof? Would the lack of a corpse, a witness, a smoking spear, have stayed his hand if he truly believed Arzhen guilty?

The fact that he was being allowed to walk away felt like a postponement.

Retribution would surely arrive.

Leaving the searing heat of the desert palace behind, Arzhen turned to the two pale, shaken Temple acolytes trailing him. The desert wind felt cold now, scraping against his skin.

"You may choose what to believe," he stated, his voice flat, all pretense of the concerned ex-husband gone. The mask had shattered in the face of Eastiel’s lightning.

"But remember this as you file your report. For seven years, I was wed to the heart of your Temple’s operations. The Temple’s dirt... I possess a significant portion of it."

He didn’t elaborate. It was a threat.

The two acolytes merely bowed, their faces carefully blank. No pious outrage, no defensive bluster. Just a nod. They had come seeking a missing Saintess and had walked into a war between titans.

But now, one thing was clear in their minds.

The relationship between Cecilia Araceli and Eastiel Edengold, was more complicated than it seemed.

Anger bubbled up in Arzhen’s mind.

Was Cecilia... ever truly his?

***

DING!

[System Update Notice: Beast Gacha 2.0!]

A notification panel emerged, shimmering in Cecilia’s mind’s eye.

[Download and Maintenance Time: 24 Hours]

[Would you like to update?]

"Hmm," Cecilia hummed, setting aside the mental ledger she’d been reviewing. "What is this, System?"

[Congratulations, Cecilia! Our developers have finalized a comprehensive system update tailored for you!]

[This will include multiple quality-of-life improvements, enhanced mechanics, seamless integration with your daily existence and lots and lots of surprises! You may, of course, choose to decline.]

[Would you like to update?] 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

[Yes / No]

"You won’t even give me a preview?" Cecilia tsk-tsked. "Do I need to pay for this ’upgrade’? Sacrifice a bond level? Sell my firstborn?"

[Of course not, Cecilia!]

[We simply wish to optimize your user experience!]

Suspicious.

Suspicious as hell!

Well, a forced update would have just happened. The fact it was asking implied she could refuse, and refusing a potential upgrade with no stated downside seemed... foolish. Even if the ’improvements’ were just more layers of gacha greed, foreknowledge was power.

"Alright," she conceded. "Let’s update it."

DI-DING!

[Starting the downloading process...]

[Downloading...]

[23:59:59... 58... 57...]

A digital timer materialized and started to tick down. As the countdown began, Cecilia felt a... silence. The ever-present, faint hum of the System’s presence in the back of her consciousness faded to nothing. The channel was closed. For the next twenty-four hours, she was on her own.

Tap—tap—

"Cecilia, are you finished with your meditation today?" Oathran’s warm voice preceded him. He tapped the stone archway of her study with a knuckle, announcing his presence before entering fully.

Meditation?

"Why..." she asked, turning from the tall window where she’d been staring at the endless sky, "...do you think I’m meditating?"

Oathran smiled. That small curl of his lips still made something warm unfold in her chest. He came to stand beside her. "I can see you are physically still, but your mind is a thousand leagues away."

"The focus in your eyes... it’s the same look you get when you’re conversing with your mysterious power. Are you struggling with it?"

He looked concerned. Helpless. He truly seemed to want to aid her, to fix whatever it was, but lacked the how.

"I’m not struggling," she said, her voice softening. "It’s just tedious work. I was inventorizing the... items I’ve acquired from it." She gestured vaguely at the air. "And then, out of nowhere, it announced it’s going to upgrade itself."

"Upgrade?" Oathran tilted his head, curious. One of his majestic horns tink-ed softly against the crystal-clear glass of the window pane.

Cecilia had to forcibly suppress a smile. These past two weeks alone with him in his mountain aerie had been... something.

She’d noticed his habits, the fastidious way he magically tidied spaces no one else used, the subtle, centuries-old snobbery about certain vintages of wine that no longer existed, the scattered relics of past fascinations...

"I think it just means more things I can do with it," she shrugged, playing it down. "Or, more accurately, more ways for it to be capitalistic."

Oathran’s eyes narrowed. "So... you must monitor this ’upgrade’? For how long?"

Ah—

How adorable—

He was sulking. The thought that she might be mentally occupied, inaccessible to him for an extended period, had put a faint cloud over his blue sky.

Aaaahhh—

"There’s absolutely nothing I can do for the next twenty-four hours," she clarified, a giggle escaping her. "It’s completely offline. I’m just... me."

BEAM.

It was as if someone had turned the sun directly onto his face. The mist vanished instantly, replaced by a smile so bright and unguarded it could have lit the castle for a week. The sky outside was his blue again.

"Then," he said, "what shall we do today, my Saintess?"