Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 435: Without Guile

Damon stood at the edge of the temporary command center, his phone pressed to his ear and his free hand massaging the bridge of his nose.

Crisis had been averted, somehow. It escalated so quickly he didn’t believe it could somehow be resolved. Exhaustion weighed on him, even when he wasn’t the one directly facing danger.

He had racked his brain to find all the specific solutions and beg for the right people to come. But right now, after managing a crisis for hours, he was finally dealing with something somehow more stressful than the crisis itself.

The evacuation was still underway and the pumps were still running. The news helicopters had finally been shooed away, but not before broadcasting footage of a pregnant woman holding back a reservoir to every screen on the planet.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, Damon Iondora had seen a face he couldn’t quite place.

"Look, I’m not saying it might be ’her’," he said into the phone. "I’m saying she looked like them. The woman on the dam."

The voice on the other end of the line was silent for a moment.

"If she looks like them just because she had blonde hair and somewhat blue eyes," the woman said, her voice having no mercy, "I am gouging your eyes out with a spoon."

"That’s—that’s a bit extreme—"

"Send me pictures, and I’ll scratch your eyeballs if you’re getting it wrong. Seriously, you have been together for so long and you dare say things like this out loud before confirming it first? Steal her hair or something, do a DNA test."

"I am just saying—the same cheekbones, and... ah... same way of standing? No, the gait..."

"I watched the news," the woman’s voice shifted, the sharp edge of her threat softening into something gentle. "Everyone watched the news. So come home. Our siblings are worried about you."

Damon sighed.

"Angela..."

"Come home. There is something I need to tell you in person, alright?" Her voice had lost its sharp edge entirely now.

"What?" Damon’s brow furrowed. "What is it? Is everyone okay? Is it—"

"What did I say? In person." The steel was back, just for a moment.

"Fine." He exhaled, relenting. "Take care of yourself."

"You are the one taking care of me, what do you mean?"

Damon smiled a little bit, the tension in his shoulders easing by a fraction. "Next week. I will be home."

"Good. Talk to you then."

"Alright."

The connection severed. Damon lowered the phone and watched as the team of dragons lifted off into the grey sky. Below them, four people and a child were walking back toward the command center.

Two men supported a third, a woman and a young Saintess walking hand in hand. The woman in the middle of them was apparently human, not a dragon at all. But even the dragons had called her Goddess.

Angela was right about one thing. There were millions of blonde, blue-eyed women in the world. The odds that this one was connected to the Cassian Twins were astronomically slim.

But Angela had not seen what Damon had seen.

Damon needed to steal her hair.

***

"Lesser Goddess, how did you use magic without a Beast Bond?"

Lilyca asked with a bright tone. Her curiosity showed as she looked up at Cecilia, her small hand still wrapped around the woman’s fingers. They were walking back toward the command center, the dry basin crunching under their feet.

The three men turned to her too. Arkai’s eyes flickered into intense focus. He was the one who had seen it the closest, and had been wondering the exact same thing. But he was too afraid of the... presumably crazy answer.

Eastiel’s golden gaze was wide and unguarded, his lion ears pricked forward with undisguised curiosity. Even Oathran, battered and exhausted, turned his head to look at her. They didn’t even try to hide it.

Cecilia wasn’t nervous about it, though. She simply chuckled warmly. "What about you? How do you have this great of a divine power when you are just human?"

Lilyca tilted her head, her brow furrowing in thought. "Is Lesser Goddess trying to say that our source of power might be the same?"

"Yes," Cecilia answered. "Just a different type."

"But... what kind of blessing is that...?" Lilyca quietly asked reverently.

"Not a blessing in particular. Just the source of power," Cecilia said in the patient cadence of a scholar. "Beast Bond gave humans a source to draw out mana and use it to train and master magic. My working theory is that humans already have the potential to use magic in the first place. They simply don’t have a source of power to draw mana naturally. At least, not yet."

The three men stopped walking abruptly, their bodies going very still. Their faces, all three of them, wore the identical expression of men who had just experienced a paradigm shift so profound it had physically halted their forward momentum.

"What do you mean ’not yet’?" Eastiel said, breathless, his golden eyes blazing with hungry curiosity. "You are saying humans can potentially draw mana themselves too? Without bond? That is such an incredible theory, Cecilia!"

Cecilia nodded, her smile widening by a fraction. "This time, if you ask Arkai, I was using mana potions and magic stones. They’re artificial sources of mana, which I myself don’t know how to recreate with alchemy yet. But since I have proved that as long as we have a source of mana, with or without beast bonds, we can still use magic..."

"Then it made sense if humans might be able to awaken magic by themselves," Arkai finished, low and thoughtful, his eyes distant as he worked through the implications.

"We just don’t know... what power source humans can use yet..." Oathran whispered roughly.

"About that—" Cecilia chuckled, "—I also already have a working theory."

Four heads snapped toward her. Lilyca’s silver-white eyes went wide. Eastiel’s mouth fell open. Arkai’s ears pricked forward. And Oathran, despite his exhaustion, straightened.

"Really?"

"You—"

"Lesser Goddess... you are so cool!"

"Cough—I want to hear more—"

"Let us go back and treat you so we can hear more. Come on..."

The three men shuffled at the edge of the basin, their movements suddenly awkward and eager. It looked adorably endearing.

The younger brothers moved to support the eldest, helping Oathran jump up toward the command center carefully. They left Cecilia and Lilyca temporarily alone at the bottom of the basin, their figures silhouetted against the grey sky.

"Lilyca," Cecilia called softly.

Lilyca looked up at her again, then watched as the woman knelt down in front of her. Cecilia’s blonde hair fell around her face like a curtain, and her eyes met the young Saintess’s.

"Do you only have divine power... or can you communicate, or hear the gods’ words too?"

Lilyca blinked. This.. is not the kind of thing people usually asked her. There was a distinction between what most people wanted to know. People usually wanted to hear her visions and prophecies, or simply wanted her ability to purify corruption.

They didn’t ask about the voices, or what manner of communication the gods were having with her.

After all, it could be just "Hey, this is a prophecy" and that was all, or more intimately, conversationally... "My child... this is what’s going to happen and all the possibilities, so listen carefully."

"Of course I can," she said without guile. She smiled at Cecilia, trusting and warm.

"After all, they are the ones who told me about you, Lesser Goddess Sees."

...

...

...?!

Cecilia’s eyes widened.