Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 97: Best Friends

"CECEEEEE—YOU LITTLE BITCH, I THOUGHT YOU DIED! YOU GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!"

The roar from inside the cell was pure, unadulterated fury, scraping against the iron door with a force that seemed to make the very stones vibrate.

Oathran’s, Arkai’s, and Eastiel’s gazes, previously scanning the dungeon corridor with predatory alertness, snapped in unison to Cecilia. She was standing perfectly still, her hand still resting on the cold metal door’s knob, her expression an arrested motion and dawning ’oh-shit’.

Arkai’s dark wolf ears twitched forward. His voice, when he spoke, was dry with understatement. "Is this the ’friend’ you mentioned? The one who could connect us to an alchemist who ’wouldn’t betray us’?"

Eastiel’s golden lion ears flattened slightly against his mane of hair. He recognized the woman inside. Suspicion crossing his features. "I didn’t know you were on intimate terms with La Vixenette Princesse."

Oathran simply blinked his ancient, draconic eyes, looking genuinely perplexed. "Who?"

"YOU NASTY LITTLE CUNT—I’VE REVEALED ALL MY TRICKS TO STEVAN JUST TO GET OUT OF HERE TO FIND YOUR COLD SHIVERING CORPSE! YOU’VE RUINED MY ENTIRE RETIREMENT PLAN AAAAAA—!"

The second furious outburst from behind the door was even more specific and more personally outraged. Ahh... the fury of a master strategist whose five-year, emotionally-manipulative gambit had just been blown at the finish line by the supposed corpse she was trying to avenge.

The three men stared harder at Cecilia.

Under the weight of their collective gaze and the muffled, creative swearing from the cell, Cecilia slowly removed her hand from the doorknob as if it had grown teeth. A faint guilty smile touched her lips. "So," she said, her voice unnaturally bright. "About that alchemist... let’s forget about it."

"CECILIAAAAAAAAA!"

***

Stevan felt the solid, damp stone of the dungeon floor beneath his boots, but his mind had detached entirely. This was a dream. A fever dream born of stress, manipulation, and whatever exotic pheromones Angela was currently exuding.

His own disheveled state, the tousled black hair graying at the temples, the narrowed green eyes bleary with shock, the uniform jacket hanging open over his lean, muscular frame, all of that was secondary.

The impossible sight before him was the main text.

There was a dragon in this secret heart of the Iondoran Empire’s deepest dungeon. A being of myth with horns that spoke of ancient mountains and eyes that held the weight of centuries. He stood there as casually as a man might stand in a garden.

And he was not alone. Flanking him was the Black Wolf King, Arkai Dawnoro, a figure from northern war-ballads. And beside him, the Golden Lion King, Eastiel Edengold, whose very name was synonymous with sun-drenched power and dangerous political grace.

That was it? Nope. In front of them all, hands clasped, was her. The Saintess. Cecilia Araceli. The woman whose death Angela had just been sobbing over, whose body she’d been begging to find.

Stevan felt his sanity creak.

Then, Cecilia moved.

She didn’t address the kings or the dragon. She turned fully to the cell, to the silent, furious woman with her back turned inside.

And she prostrated herself.

"All hail, Empress Gigi."

Her voice was clear, reverent. She pressed her forehead to the cold, filthy stone of the dungeon floor.

"All hail, the most beautiful. The most exalted."

Another bow, even deeper.

"All hail. All hail."

Meanwhile, Angela—Gigi?—remained perfectly still on the other side of the bars, her back a rigid line. She was wiping her face with silent motions, erasing the evidence of her tears.

Cecilia, her face still near the ground, continued her groveling soliloquy. "Angie, please forgive this humble common woman... I know she has made a grave mistake. But you are benevolent. You are the wisest of them all."

Silence.

Cecilia took a breath, changing tactics. "Gigi... I should have listened to you. You were right. Arzhen was a dick."

A beat.

"Damn right."

Ah. A response. The ice cracked, just a hair.

Cecilia didn’t miss a beat. She kowtowed again, her voice brimming with theatrical relief and devotion. "You are the rightest of them all! All hail Gigi the Great! Your wisdom is a shining beacon in this dark and foolish world!"

Stevan simply stared, his mind blank. He was definitely dreaming. Or dead. This was the afterlife.

"I TOLD YOU!" Angela shrieked.

"YOU TOLD ME! I WAS WRONG, GIGI! I DIED BECAUSE I DIDN’T LISTEN!" Cecilia wailed back, her own voice cracking with remorseful despair.

"WAH—SISTER—"

"SISTER—"

In an instant, the fury and the groveling dissolved. The two women collapsed against the cold iron bars, arms thrusting through the gaps, clutching at each other’s clothing, hair, shoulders.

Sobs, loud, messy, racked both of them. Relief, grief, guilt, and sisterly fury, all expressed at a volume that echoed painfully off the stone.

In the corridor, the four men stood frozen. A silent communication passed between them in a single exchanged glance.

Oathran’s slightly bemused gaze met Arkai’s weary, practical one, which slid to Eastiel’s expression of aristocratic ’what-in-the-actual-hell’, which finally landed on Stevan’s shell-shocked, green-eyed stare.

The collective sentiment in their eyes was an unanimous, ’I don’t know anything anymore.’

Then began The Story.

It was a long, winding, dramatically punctuated epic, narrated in turns by both women through heaving sobs and sudden, violent bursts of profanity.

It covered betrayal in a forest, a stolen heart, a mysterious power from the void, a dying dragon, miracle elixirs, and the acquisition of multiple husbands through a combination of near-death experiences and strategic bonding.

The four men, having reached their limit of interpersonal emotional meteorology, had retreated to the furthest, darkest corner of the corridor. They sat on the cold stone floor like chastised schoolboys, their backs against the wall, listening in blank-faced silence.

Oathran looked contemplative, as if parsing a complex magical theorem. Arkai had his head tipped back, eyes closed, possibly meditating or asleep. Eastiel stared fixedly at a patch of moss on the opposite wall, his regal composure a thin veneer over deep confusion.

The story swerved into particularly uncharted territory.

"—it just happened, though. I love all three of them, Angie..." Cecilia sobbed.

"I understand you lucky bitch... I understand... you’ve been through a fucking lot..." Angela burst into tears again.

At this point, Stevan, who had been absorbing tales of divine intervention and heartless survival, finally turned his head. He looked past the weeping, gesticulating women and directly at the three legendary beasts sharing his corner.

"Excuse me... what did you do to my junior guard, Kit?" He’d believe a dragon ate the boy and spat out his bones at this point. Why not?

Before anyone could answer, Angela, mid-sob, suddenly snarled, "ARZHEN—RUBY, THAT LITTLE WHITE EYED WHOR—" and launched into a fresh, creative diatribe against the weretiger prince and the new saintess.

Oathran waited for a lull in the feminine fury. He turned his mild smile toward Stevan. "I used my Dragon Tongue on him," he explained pleasantly. "I told him to ’leave’ and ’forget everything.’ He seemed quite suggestible in his shocked state. My mind magic worked exceptionally well."

Stevan absorbed this. A dragon had just casually confessed to mind-wiping one of his men. In any other context, this would be an act of war. In the current context, it felt almost... courteous. "Oh," he said, his voice hollow. "Thank you... for not killing him, Sir."

Oathran’s smile deepened. "Do you want," he offered, his tone gentle, "a little memory wipe too, child?"

Stevan’s already pale face lost another shade. The casual, paternal offer was more terrifying than any threat. "N-no," he stammered, pressing himself back against the stone. "Please. Spare me."

Angela’s grip on him was so deep that the mere sight of a romance novel would still make him hard anyway.

"—and that’s why I’m here to find you personally, Gigi," Cecilia concluded, wiping a final tear. "I can’t just tell our usual romance publishers to sneak a poem into the next edition. That would take ages. I need your help now to find me a loyal alchemist."