“…there is a perfectly good explanation to this,” Rakna eventually spoke after a two-minute stare-off between him and Kaelith.

“Ohoh?” She crossed her arms with a raised eyebrow. “Please tell me. I’m all ears.”

“…” He froze. “…on second thought, can you tell me what I have to explain exactly?”

The vixen huffed and walked toward him. She forced him to step back until he was at the edge of the building and then pushed on his muzzle with her finger. His eye twitched at the contact but it wasn’t like he could do anything to her.

“All right then. First; you will tell me why you hid from me that you were a Nine-Tailed? I believe that this is quite an IMPORTANT thing to explain, no?”

Rakna stayed silent for a moment before opening his mouth, “Before I answer… how did you know it was me? And how did you even find me here? I’m pretty sure I was far enough, and I concealed my presence.”

She harrumphed and stepped back. “And you have the nerve to ask questions.”

“…”

“It was easy. I could tell with a glance that the fake down there wasn’t you. First of all, Pronos was not as relaxed as usual but he didn’t seem tense because of the Nine-Tailed Wolf but instead seemed to want to be closer to him. That was the first hint. The second hint was that ‘your’ eyes were way too lively. Yours are way more dead than that.”

The wolf was speechless. “What about the second thing…?”

“You’re the kind of felon that would prefer to monitor the scene of his crime until he is sure that he’s out of trouble. So, the narcissistic prick that you are would probably pick some place with a good view of the city hall. Thus, I just flew around and until I spotted you here.”

“You’re being quite mean out of nowhere …”

“And whose fault is that?!”

“Right…”

Kaelith sighed. “Do you even understand what you risk?” She asked with a worried look. “Not only the consequences of the Nine-Tailed Clan’s rules but also… me. Do you have any idea what would happen if I, the heir to the Nine-Tailed Foxes, am found out to be close to a Nine-Tailed Wolf?”

Rakna’s eyes widened at her saddened expression.

“Even now, if I’m not careful, they might just try and forbid me to ever interact with you again due to you being close to ‘Obsidian’,” she said whilst making brackets with her fingers. “So, please, just tell me. I want us to trust each other,” she said in the most genuine tone he had ever heard her.

Rakna looked at her for a moment before sighing. The scents of sincerity and melancholy he could smell from her were already more than enough to make him incapable of refusing whatever she would ask from him.

“You don’t need to be so somber about it, foxy,” he retorted and circled her before standing in the center of the roof. He breathed in and activated his Shape Shift as Kaelith watched intently.

Then, she gradually became more and more dazed as Rakna grew a mane around his neck and five of his tails retracted inside his body. The sound of his bones popping into place was deafening to her because of how incredulous the sight in front of her was. Before she could wrap her head around the situation, Rakna had already finished transforming into a five-meter-tall werewolf.

A werewolf with four tails…

She opened and closed her mouth in shock. “Uh… uh? What?”

Rakna snorted and crouched to match her height. “I wasn’t lying when I said I was above the Nine-Tailed. From a purely objective point of view, I’m technically a superior race,” he jested.

Kaelith’s mouth twitched. “Shameless bastard… what are you?”

The werewolf smiled internally and doubled the shock of the vixen by deploying his pair of silvery wings. “Before all, I might as well tell you right now… I’m the one who killed the Nine-Tailed Wolf that was abducted the day of the Initiation.”

Kaelith.exe stopped working that day.

* * *

“{You can leave without me. Let Pronos do what he wants. We can sense each other’s presence so he can just have fun and come back to me whenever he wants,}” Rakna told Gray through telepathy after he had dispelled his puppet and retrieved the soul of Fray.

“{Got it. By the way, I heard an interesting thing from the Exalted Quill,}” the clown responded as he made his way back to the Pavilion through the streets. “{You recently added a new member to your little group; Marie, was it? A lamia. So, she is why you asked the guild how to free a Boss from a Dungeon.}”

“{Yes.}”

“{Hm… how did you turn her into a Host though?}”

“{I struck a deal with the infamous spoiled child.}”

“{Aah, Eva, huh? Well, don’t forget you can ask help from us again if you need it. Anyhow, I wanted to recommend you something; strength attracts people, I’m sure there’ll be quite a bunch around you in the future. Why don’t you make a Guild of your own? You can also officially pretend that Obsidian is either part of it or its founder. It would be a good idea to expand your ‘protection’ to the rest of your group.}”

Rakna paused. “{Is that possible?}”

“{Yes. To be exact, even if you already joined the Throne of Glory, you are eligible to establish what we call a Sub-Guild at the Pavilion. It will be a subsidiary of your current one but the good thing about it is that you’ll get part of the privileges of a Full-Fledged Guild. You will notably get your own Guild Channels and Quests.}”

“{I see… I’ll look into it then. Thanks.}”

“{No problem. See you later, kid.}”

Rakna terminated the telepathic link and glanced at Kaelith who was sitting beside him with her legs swaying back and forth at the edge of the building. He had obviously already returned to his therian form and was resting with her.

“So…” She started calmly. “Your Nirvana Skill is called The Harvester. You eat the hearts of your preys and integrate their racial traits. But since the Nine-Tailed Cub was your first, it changed your very race into a mutated version of it; a werewolf.”

She sighed. “I can’t even get mad at you. It’s truly a perfectly reasonable reason. No wonder you decided to do something as senseless as creating a fake ‘Master’ to protect yourself.”

Rakna shrugged. “Do you think you can keep that a secret from your family?”

She huffed. “For who do you take me for? Do you think I would betray my friend?” She exclaimed. “Though, I will ask you beforehand, can I tell my mother? She would be more helpful than me in keeping the Clan in check.”

“I assume you trust her to not say anything?”

“Yes… but if you don’t want to-”

“It’s fine,” he interrupted her. “If you trust her, I do too.”

Kaelith smiled. “Thank you.”

Rakna nodded. “However, there’s something else I think your Clan should focus on.”

“Something else?” She asked in confusion.

“What? Did you already forget? Why was Fenriu in the Initiation dimension in the first place?”

Kaelith immediately understood. “Right… We still don’t know who abducted him. If we don’t do anything, it’s plenty possible that the culprits will try something again. What are they trying to do in the first place?” She mused. “Do they want to take over the Clan through internal conflict?”

“Do you have any idea of who it is? Is it internal or external?”

“Internal,” she replied unhesitatingly. “It’s unquestionably one of the seven branches. There is no way that some outside enemy could have abducted one of our cubs so easily.”

“Seven branches, huh? What are they exactly?” Rakna asked in curiosity. He had seen wolves and foxes, as well as an eight-tailed tiger during the guild recruitment but he didn’t know further than that.

“The seven branches consist of us; the Foxes, the Wolves, the Tigers, the Monkeys, the Horses, the Racoons, and…”

“And what?”

Kaelith’s eyes narrowed as an assumption struck her. “The Scorpions…”

Rakna blinked. “Why is there an Arachnid species among you? Horses and raccoons are already weird but now that?”

“Nine-Tailed creatures are born from legends. You could say we exist because people fantasized and feared us until we were real. Mystic Magic manifests in each of us because it is a magic that is essentially born from ‘mysticism turned real’. The System brought the branches from all kinds of parallel worlds and dimensions.”

“While foxes are generally the ones with nine tails in most of them, in certain worlds, the legend happens to turn into something different due to changes in history. Among those, the Scorpions claimed one. What gave birth to them was the legend of the Oryad Scorpion. It was a creature with nine tails, each with a different venom in them that could kill even God if all nine were to be injected at once.”

“The Nine-Tailed Scorpions, fruits of the crystallization of that legend, are vicious and deadly. They are the odd ones out of our Clan but they are still part of it,” Kaelith finished with a long breath.

Rakna hummed. “I see. I guess they’re the prime suspects then.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them. But I’m not sure about the possible motive they would have. They’re indeed cruel and trigger-happy but they must need some sort of incentive to target the Clan out of all things.”

“Well, that’s for you to find out,” Rakna deadpanned. “As long as they don’t come at me, it’ll be nice if you keep me, and by extension, ‘Obsidian’ out of it.”

Kaelith smiled wryly. “You truly are brazen, wolfy.”

He simply shrugged at the accusation.

“By the way, didn’t you say the cub you assimilated was inside your soul scape? Can’t you ask him who kidnapped him? He’s still young but he should be able to speak at a basic level.”

“I already did just now,” Rakna replied as he heard the huff of a wolf inside his mind. “Putting aside the fact that he doesn’t seem to be willing to speak to me, he shook his head when he was asked if he had seen who captured him.”

“I see… that’s a shame,” she whispered and the two settled in a comfortable silence as they viewed the animated landscape of the city.

This peace between the two of them was broken by a sudden spike of mana. And the source was none other than Rakna. The latter stood up in attention as his mana continuously dropped until he was forced to swallow a pill.

Kaelith also stood up worriedly. “What happened? You dispelled your puppet, right?”

“It’s not because of the puppet…” He muttered darkly, his eyes flickering to red, as a notification informed him of the cause behind the siphoning of his mana.

❮ ◈ ❯

Tyrannos Mors suffered a deadly injury.

Mana sourcing from the Host Flavia Jeina is insufficient to heal the pet. The secondary master has requested emergency help from the primary master; Rakna Xiorra. Mana will be taken to satisfy the requirements.

-5 MP

-10 MP

-15 MP

…

❮ ◈ ❯