Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 89: Deniability

"Show that you can’t do anything, that she left you and died somewhere unrelated to us. Make him take you back, somehow!"

Since Anton refused to heed their words, they needed a language he couldn’t refute. Cold, hard evidence. A corpse was the ultimate truth-teller. And if Arzhen could make it look like it wasn’t related to them—

"We have to act fast, Arzhen. We... let’s just leave. Pack what we can and ride south before dawn. At least we won’t be here when they finally put it all together and come for our throats—"

"Calm down, Mother."

Arzhen’s voice cut through her panic. He peeled her frantic hands from his arms.

Elara looked up at him, her breath catching. Why... why did he sound so sure? Where was the same terror that was clawing at her own insides?

"They don’t have enough proof," he stated.

"How can you be so—"

"If they had proof," he interrupted, "they’d already be on us. Arkai Dawnoro is not a man who plays politics with traitors and patricides. He doesn’t convene councils or stage investigations for the guilty he is certain of."

"If he knew, it would already be too late for talk. He would have torn my head from my shoulders the moment I stepped into this keep and fed it to his wolves."

A cold, humorless smirk touched his lips. "I’m sure they haven’t found anything conclusive."

He turned away, pacing a few slow steps on the thick rug, his mind whirring after it had momentarily been overridden by the ghost of a scent his mother brought back.

"And if they couldn’t find anything even now, with my father right here under their roof," he concluded, "it means they will never find anything."

Elara frowned. "But what if they find witnesses? What about the scent—?"

"What scent?" Arzhen countered, turning back to her. "You eliminated the proof around the poison. As for me, just like the attack on the Delanivis lord," he said, "they claim they saw and smelled a tiger. So what? It will be the same for Uncle. Even if my uncle’s wolves claim the scent on my father is mine, or my personal guard’s... we have a dozen plausible excuses."

He began to list them. "Our scent has always been mixed with his. He is my father, my lord. Why wouldn’t my scent be on him? As for the absence of an attacker’s distinct scent..."

He shrugged. "It was a blizzard. Scents fade, disperse, are buried. Or perhaps the attacker was a reptilian beast, a scaled thing with minimal musk. Unless there were cold smell of its blood, saliva or venom. There are a hundred possibilities."

He stopped before her, his gaze steady. "There is no physical proof, Mother. There is nothing they can hold that won’t shatter under the slightest pressure of a reasonable doubt."

Elara searched his face, the terror receding, replaced by a wary hope. He sounded so sure.

"Alright, Mother," Arzhen said. "I will do as you say. I will find her body. I will... manage that loose end. If you wish to return home to stabilize our position there, you may. But listen to me now."

He leaned in, his eyes hard. "Do not. Fucking. Panic. Their entire strategy hinges on our reactions. They are watching for a stumble, for a slip. The more you flinch, the more mistakes you make. And mistakes are the only proof they will ever get."

***

Cecilia stared at the gacha ledger glowing in her mind’s eye. 360 rolls. Three hundred and sixty pulses of hope, desperation, and escalating irritation, all spent chasing the final copy of Arkai’s bond to Rank 7.

And guess how many times the System had laughed in her face? How many times the promised 50/50 chance had tipped into the abyss?

Three times.

As expected. But fuck that.

The three consolation prizes, the five-star items that were not the bond she needed, materialized in her inventory. She examined them with a sigh.

The first made her pause.

[Five-Star Skill Orb: Belly Dancing!]

"Whuh...?"

Hmmm...

I see," she murmured internally. "I get it now. I will simply never receive skills like diving in deep ocean trenches. No poison immunity. No rock climbing. No parkour, no alchemy, no surgery, no photographic memory, no carpentry, no ability to talk to anima—"

[Cecilia... This time, Belly Dancing is actually a respectable cultural art form!]

"—no painting," she continued, ticking off an endless list on mental fingers. "Crochetry, talking to plants... Sound mimicry. An innate sense for magnetic fields for navigation. Microscopic vision—"

[...]

"—see-through-everything vision... thermal vision—"

[...but... with Belly Dancing, you can... move sexier in bed!]

"—HA!" Cecilia’s mental shout rang violently in her head. "THERE IT IS! Every single ’skill’ you shovel my way is naughty! ’Fellatio’? ’Belly Dancing’? Which horny god is it? TELL ME!"

[...]

[...but at least!] it finally squeaked, a last-ditch attempt at justification. [You have the skill set to comprehensively manage three men in bed!]

"YOU’RE THE ONE WHO ALWAYS CHIRPS ’WE ARE SHY’ EVERY TIME SOMETHING ACTUALLY HOT HAPPENS!" Cecilia fired back, the absurdity of arguing with a cosmic gacha mechanic hitting her anew. "Don’t play coy now, you little voyeuristic gamble den!"

[Adding Five-Star Skill Orb: Belly Dancing to your skill tree!]

The System announced hastily, its chime overly bright, clearly trying to change the subject and bury the evidence.

[Processing...]

A flood of knowledge poured into Cecilia’s mind. Ah... the precise, fluid control of isolated muscles, the sinuous rolls and shimmies, the intricate hip articulations, the art of expressing rhythm through the very core of one’s body. It was detailed, professional, and undeniably masterful.

She sighed. Well. At least the knowledge flooding her synapses wasn’t as blatantly, graphically instructional as the ’Fellatio’ orb had been. This was more... theoretical. A potential. A weapon of seduction, rather than a step-by-step manual ready to use.

The other two—

"Oh, I can’t believe I get a copy of the Presence Concealing Ring..."

The gacha had coughed up a duplicate.

Her mind weighed the options. Would it be better to never rank them up, to keep two separate rings? Double the subterfuge. One for her, one to plant on an ally or a dupe. The utility of two independent tools was immense.

Or... just rank them up to see what hidden effect the fusion unlocks?

The System loved its layered secrets. A ranked-up ring might not just conceal presence, but erase memory, bend light, or shunt the wearer a half-second out of phase with reality. Presence concealing could be a lot of things, after all. The gamble was tempting.

Hmm... she’d decide later.

The final item’s description loaded.

[Love Potion]

[Turn anyone who isn’t a 5-star Love Interest into a 4-star Love Interest you can capture!]

...Huh?

"Cece."

Arkai called. They were walking the dim, torch-lit hallway back toward the heart of Winter’s Keep. He sounded worried. He leaned closer, his whisper brushing her ear. "Wouldn’t Arzhen notice your smell on his mother since we met her just now?"