Tikal Entras waltz into the hall. He didn't like such events, but if the leader of the beastmen said to come, he would come.

Those were the alpha's words after all.

He scoffed at Medina's husband. Henpecked, letting a woman take over the spot of alpha however, he didn't really care that a woman or a fox-blooded was their alpha. As long as they were the strongest, he would respect them as his leader.

This was a place for young people, not an old fossil.

However, thinking about the Elves who would be in attendance, he felt decades younger immediately and gave his son a strong pat on the back to stand up straight and show off his body to look for a suitable mate.

Perhaps amongst the younger freelancers, wolf-blooded ladies. They may have thinner wolf features, but that didn't mean they were weak. Anyone invited here was strong, and he did not care about bloodline. Power was all the evidence he needed to decide if they were a good mate, better yet, if his son liked her.

With his youngest daughter in good hands, he hummed as he followed his nose to the only thing of interest this ball had to him. The food.

His light footsteps had a hop behind them, thinking about the royal chef's cooking, then his fur stood up with a blast of numbing static. His fangs and claws burst out without his active control.

'What in the world!?" His body's defence system kicked in harder than he was kicked in his manhood by his father centuries ago.

He found his feet sliding back dozens of tables away by reflex.

His heart couldn't stop pumping heated blood as they attempted to send his mind into a frenzy. A frenzy to get out of this place, not fight.

He didn't feel this even against ten Emperor Tetramyth surrounding him, but he knew those insects were weak for their evolution.

Gradually calming down, his survival instincts found the source of the threat.

An unknown black fur—haired human. He couldn't focus on her features for whatever reason but a gut feeling told him she was a beauty even by beastmen or Elven standards. The Dwarves were the only oddity when it came to their traditional beauty.

'That life force, what a terrifying beast! If I had that, I'd be elling immortal!' Tikal eyes traced her movements and the general direction she faced.

A familiar face.

Ebony….in person.

Tikal combed his fur and checked that his claws and fangs turned back to normal. 'Nothing….I don't feel anything from him. And this woman's essence, oh. The Xeng, which clan?'

He'd seen a few generations of Xeng over his lifetime of war. His latest memory was of one called Shi Ling. Although he met her while she was a Master, and her overflowing essence and overall aura vastly overwhelmed any Troll he fought till this day, the girl had a vibrant energy.

Not an ounce of deadly threat released from Shi Ling, only bright, cheerful energy. It would have been hard for him to feel danger if it wasn't for how rock-hard her life force was.

This female, on the other hand had the scent of blood all over her aura. Extremely violent but she gave off a similar feeling to those Xengs produced. They always felt as if they were fundamentally superior as a creature.

His daughter's instructor systematically ate from the terrifying female's fingers before glancing over.

Tikal was rooted to the spot when he stared into that pitch black pair of eyes.

He saw it.

An image of his body flattening to the ground.

An image of freezing on the spot down to his bones.

A large sword decapitated his head, freezing his body and a snap of vibrations shattering his hopes of survival.

A dull flame covered his sight as he watched himself burn, mana poisoned and dissipating into glitters of ice.

The sole of a boot expanding in his view, only to blow his head up.

Tikal gritted his teeth and wiped the images off. He tackled them with his skills.

Each time he countered the images with how he would react, tens of new images would appear in his mind to counter. Each counter he found against these faced another hundred images to deflect his reactions.

He saw images of his death at an increasing rate. Each one real enough to shake him down to his core. The more counters he came up with, the faster he was being killed with a single move as if to wipe his confidence of any of his skills working in his hypothetical reactions.

"Ahh, try this too." Sweat rolled between Tikal's brows when Ebony's gaze turned away to the hazy-looking female who stole his attention with a piece of honeyed fruit.

'What was that!?' It was hardly the first time his body or mind conceived how he would tackle a fight as a warrior fighting on battlefronts for centuries.

But none of them felt so real, so condensed, and so…reactive to his thoughts.

How would he know what his opponent would do to counter him?

This was not his ability.

Nonchalantly, Tikal laughed and barged in to introduce himself. "Nice to meet you in person, Tikal. This is my wife." The man tetted him and Tikal didn't skip a beat, he accepted his inferior power and raised the correct hand and fingers.

It was almost odd, he hadn't tetted as the junior to a human for a long time.

"Nice to meet you, missus! You're such a powerful pair! An unmatched coupling." He gave his true compliments. By Beastmen standards, it was pretty much one of the nicest things to say to a couple.

The positive reaction he got from her life force brimming and the gaze on him softening caused his fur to relax a bit. He must have said the right thing.

"You're the one my husband told me about. Intriguing, interested in a duel?" He felt like his fur and skin were being stripped when she looked at him. No, not at, looked through him and into his body.

"Gladly!" His blood boiled for the first time in ages.

It didn't matter how strong she felt, his entire life was spent in search of a strong opponent. A strong warrior unlike his alpha, Medina, who was a mage or those surprisingly flimsy Dwarves.

He was old, but the nature of his lineage skill set and evolution made him feel young.

Hunting thousands and thousands of Trolls, superior ants, wild monsters and dungeon spawns just didn't cut it for him.

He needed a real battle, and his excitement answered for him.

That kid Navin? That current generation's so-called 'Emperor'?

They were both defence specialists. He'd never been able to so much as touch their hair in the duels he raised against them so far.

Taking in Ebony's gaze, Tikal's excitement cooled off.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

'Her eyes are so…? I can't find the warrior in her. She doesn't share the same excitement.'

'Can I provide them a real battle…' His confidence was heavily weighed down by the fresh memories of getting crushed thousands of times within a second.

Tikal took a mug that someone who looked like the spitting image of young Navin Lord, the current King, offered him and chugged down.

One of the Lord's descendants for sure, but he doesn't remember seeing this particular child. He had a surprisingly muscular body for someone from the Arcane Mage lineage.

A little alcohol goes a long way, "Mahahahahah! Refreshing."

This next generation, the generation of their world opening up to the larger universe.

Life is going to get interesting.

There was going to be more war than he'd thought he would partake in.

'Oh~ I can't wait but these old bones might need some furious toughening.' Tikal had long put pride down.

His fur danced without any wind kicking up. His instincts kicked in again 'Something's fun gonna happen sooner than I thought?'

❅❅❅

'My cooking skills are truly lacking---I should ask Mal to let me take some of her academy's classes.' Scarlet's taste buds did not lie.

As much as cooking was more than a hobby to her, her skills were falling behind compared to her combat skills.

She faced the issue on Teheil, on the ship back to Elcra, the Xeng's cooking, her wedding's food and this ball's buffet. Everything was better in some way or the other.

She focused a lot on precision and catering to a specific individual's taste buds using her emotion sensor and her Intuition, which made customising her recipes easy. Her control over heat, knife work and cooking tools in general was as good as any human could get in a short few decades.

Even in terms of her life force control to trap a fresh ingredient's essence in so that the consumer could get some buffs was considered great, but she lost.

Her food didn't taste this good.

'Chef skill – Taste concentration, Acid Control, Scent Condensation, Contained Flavour. I have none of these skills...' Scarlet felt the limitations of being a Chef as a Profession, she didn't have the skill set as broad as a Chef Class, nor did she have any Fortifications that made her food taste better or meddle with the consumer so that it tasted better to them.

She didn't believe she lost in any technical cooking ability or control, even without the relevant Skills but there were numerous advantages a specialised chef had over her.

As a woman of action, she pulled Mallory over and whispered her desire, which got a nod of confirmation rather easily.

A cooking class shouldn't be that strict for students anyway. She should still show her friend some appreciation, perhaps by inviting her over for a meal.

Her husband shouldn't mind if they splurged on a Legendary meal. It might be challenging to cook Legendary ingredients, both in a physical sense of cooking their flesh and also the control of the life force still present in the ingredient.

It would be beyond her to make full use of most ingredients of that quality, but there were simple methods that were hard to fail, and that was boiling. She didn't lack temperature with her fire magic, at least for dead pieces of flesh.

Holding essence, infusing it into the dish by trapping it within her wok would be all it took for a simple, effective meal to be cooked. The possibility of an explosion after she pulled the remaining essence out but couldn't punch them into the dish was not low, but an acceptable risk.

She was having mixed feelings about Ebony evolving before her. She was proud even though it wasn't her own growth and readiness.

Yet her pride also fought back, not wanting to lose out to a person of the same age.

There was no doubt he would get ahead of her once he evolved; his strength would dwarf hers. They weren't the average Elcrian who evolved with the poorest of qualities and might barely see a noticeable improvement from evolving before they died.

In this regard, the old man Wilson actually got quite a bit stronger, so he must have been delaying his evolution not because he wasn't able to meet the minimum requirement, but was pushing for more.

The scrawny and short old man was a bit brash but kept a distance from the younglings and seemed to be quite a famous person amongst the nobles too so he had to go around accepting toasts.

'Elcrains aren't that weak. Is it because the Elves are here, the Xengs were here, and their footprints left a challenge and led the next generations to chase after?' Scarlet's general assessment was that there were quite a few true elites amongst their evolution rank.

The beastmen Tikal's life force manipulation was already out in the open for her. All she needed was to force him to activate his passive sleeping state to study why this Duke's life force was moving the way it was, and she could see if she could copy and implement it for herself.

At the same time, she needed to teach her husband how to sense life force more precisely, but perhaps that could wait after his evolution and his affinities with all types of energies increase once more.

Her ears twitched once, and her nose tightened for a brief moment.

The worst part of not wearing her mask was that she didn't have her fresh source of air if she smelled something unpleasant. The thick perfume wafted past them, and she hated every bit of it. Her Intuition got her pissed off.

While she was busy exposing recipes, a woman walked towards her husband.

But Black just calmly raised her arms and locked elbows with Ebony with a quick side step that no one except her husband saw coming. He wasn't more than 2 steps away from him anyway.

"Nice to meet you, Rejuvenator, I heard all about you."

"What exactly did you hear?" Black replied after sensing Ebony's absolute disinterest in talking.

Likely for the same reason, the woman's perfumed scent was not easy for sensitive noses. The beastmen around them agreed, but Tikal seemed to be smiling as he watched from the side.

"Hmm? I was under the impression that you were close with the Crimson Reaper. Is she your wife? I'm sure she's much more wonderful than the Crimson Reaper. She's beautiful, graceful, and elegant. Nothing like a crass warrior, murdering and barbaric woman wouldn't match a man of your—stature and power." The unknown woman barely glanced at her and was addressing Ebony all the while.

Red didn't know they called her by a new title, and she couldn't care less since she knew the lady was referring to her.

Red stood up from her restful slumber and knocked to be released. Actually, Red and Black had successfully recombined to be Scarlet again after the recent back and forth swapping during their night time activities as their emotions were forced to mix.

However, her Skill was able to separate them.

For some reason, her Intuition and perhaps curiosity calmed her down.

What did she want?

'Proud….snake.' Xin judged the emotions she was picking up from the woman.

Taking a better look, the woman was also a beauty with great proportions.

She had a purpose here, and Xin's curiosity stopped her from lashing out. The woman was practically pouring out with her desire, an ambitious woman even amongst the people gathered in this hall. But she looked like a hapless hare.

A light shift of Xin's arm was all it took for her husband to understand what she wanted.

"What do you want?" Ebony asked since the woman wasn't giving anyone else attention, and Scarlet hadn't gotten angry.

"Where are my manners? I'm Frey Lancheklet, I hear you're a direct man, so may I get to the point, as hypocritical and crass as that may be?"

Xin's jaw dropped when her mind went into an accelerated pace, and she saw multiple visions of their current setting, but all of them showed a ridiculous happening. She was so shocked she didn't even notice her Intuition Skill evolving. "This harlot!"

The 'vision' only lasted a few seconds or so and what words that were about to be said didn't show Ebony's reaction but with her Intuition not pushing for her to take action, her mind exited its accelerated pace and watched the situation unfold.

Her husband nodded, probably wondering why she even bothered asking if she could just go straight to the point from the get-go.

"Will you take me as your wife? I'm not the most talented mage around but, I'm a beautiful woman. I don't ask for much, just to be your first wife in status and 3 sons. You may have a second wife and a handful of concubines." Frey Lancheklet proudly let her essence loose and compressed before sending it over Xin's body with Ebony exposed to it as well.

She was trying to show off that she was stronger, more suitable as the 'first wife' compared to Black, who had a suppressed her essence.

Having seen and heard similar words multiple times just a moment ago with her Skill, Xin was once again furious at what she heard.

How dare she!

As for the release of mana and pitiful life force that perhaps rivalled the average Knight of the same level despite being a mage, she didn't recall sensing that in her 'vision', but it was forgettable anyway.

Listening to the people around them, it seemed like it wasn't even considered poor conduct of a woman amongst the nobles.

It was just a straightforward noblewoman looking for a strong mate to produce offspring that were highly likely to be strong in future with proper education and training.

To further grow their family's power and possibly mix their lineage abilities for greater improvements.

In fact, it was more common for the women to do so than the men, even though it was generally the men's family who stood to benefit more from a strong woman as a partner.

The freelancers generally didn't get close to this table with so many nobles nearby, but everyone present had decent perceptions and could hear her proposal.

Ebony was probably as speechless as she was when he didn't reply but Frey didn't even pause for more than an instant before she picked the edge of her thin dress up, half spun her waist to show off her legs and 'accidentally' lower her upper body to let her chest spill into view.

"Look, what do you think of me? I don't lose in any aspect compared to your woman over here." Frey's confidence in her physical beauty and figure shone enough to capture most people who were giving their direction some attention.

'Here it comes!' Xin got excited.

It seemed like her Intuition was forcing her to wait for this moment, and it felt like it was going to feel good!

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