Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 199: False

GASP!

Arzhen woke with a violent start, his body lurching upright as if yanked from drowning. Cold sweat drenched his skin, plastering his hair to his forehead, soaking through the fabric of his clothes. His chest heaved. His heart slammed against his ribs like a trapped animal.

He looked outside the window.

Today was Arkai Dawnoro’s banquet.

He had sent his men, his most trusted, his most discreet, to attend in his stead. To put on their best ears and their most innocent faces and listen. To report back everything that uncle of his said, every announcement, every shift in the political wind.

They hadn’t returned yet.

It was still too early. He knew that, logically. His men would come when they could.

But knowing did not calm the shaking in his hands. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

After the incident with the alive Dragon Lord, Arzhen had not been the same. He moved through like a man walking underwater. Consciousness came and went in unpredictable waves.

He would be standing, and then he would be sitting, and he would not remember the transition. He would close his eyes for what felt like minutes and wake hours later, drenched in sweat, with the echo of a voice still ringing in his skull.

And every time, whether in dreams or in those strange, fugue states that might have been reality, the nightmare returned.

The mist. The clearing. The eyes.

The Dragon Lord’s words.

Dragons had a special magic. Only they could learn it, only they could wield it. A magic so strong, so absolute, that it could influence minds with nothing more than a voice.

Dragon Tongue.

That was why they were called living gods. Not because of their power, though that was part of it, since their power was immense, but because of this.

This ability to speak and have the world obey. A magic created by their god, Isaiah, taught to the first Dragon King, a different Isaiah, and practiced through generations, through centuries, through the endless march of their incomprehensible lives.

Of course the Dragon Lord would be the most prominent practitioner. Of course he would have mastered it beyond any other.

And Arzhen... Arzhen had faced that creature. Had stood before him, trembling, and listened.

"Go home, child."

And Arzhen had gone.

He had scrambled, stumbled, fled, white and black flashing in his vision the whole way, his mind a blank scream of terror, his body moving on instinct alone. He didn’t know if it had been the Dragon Tongue that compelled him, or simply the overwhelming, soul-deep fear of facing a god.

"Tell your divine eyes... she’s not the only divine in this world."

Ruby. He had to find Ruby. Had to tell her—

"I, Oathran Alicei, am also the divine dragon of Isaiah’s line."

Had to tell her that Oathran Alicei was not dead.

That the Dragon Lord lived.

That their entire plan, the weapons, the narrative, the future, was built on a corpse that had opened its eyes and laughed at them.

Arzhen pressed his palms to his face, feeling the cold sweat against his skin, the tremor in his fingers.

His men would return soon. They would tell him what Arkai had announced.

But nothing they said would matter as much as the truth he already carried.

***

The moment Arkai’s dismissal landed, Nikolas felt something crack inside him. Perhaps it was the sound of a foundation settling wrong. The sound of certainty developing a hairline fracture.

Beside him, Dorian Delanivis went rigid.

The lord’s face, already carefully neutral, became a mask of such absolute blankness that it was itself a confession. He stared at the Wolf King, at that raised hand, at that turned back, at that veiled woman who now commanded the room’s attention, and something dark moved behind his eyes.

Around them, the shift was subtle but unmistakable.

The nearest guests, a cluster of human nobles from the southern kingdoms, a pair of wolf lords from territories neighboring Dawnoro’s own, exchanged glances. Quick, flickering things, there and gone. Then their gazes drifted, almost imperceptibly, toward the Delanivis party.

Toward Nikolas. Toward Dorian.

And then away again.

But in that drifting, in that careful looking away, was a world of meaning. A sneer delivered without the lips moving. A judgment passed without a word spoken.

They knew. They all knew. The Saintess, the true Saintess, the one whose prophecies were supposed to shape the future, had just been dismissed like a servant bringing the wrong wine.

And the Delanivis, who had hitched their wagon to her star, who had sent an army north on the strength of her vision...

The whispers would start soon. If they hadn’t already.

Dorian felt the weight of those glances like stones on his chest.

Fatal.

This was fatal.

He had brought an army. An army. Marching on the strength of Ruby Vaiva’s prophecy, positioning himself to claim advantage in the chaos of Arkai’s supposed death.

It had been a race based on the best information available. The Saintess had never been wrong. Her visions were divine. To act on them was not faith, it was strategy.

But the prophecy had been false. Arkai lived. And now the Wolf King was not only alive but triumphant, standing before the assembled powers of the continent with a mysterious Luna on his arm and a smile that cut deeper than any blade.

And the Saintess had just been publicly, casually dismissed.

Dorian’s jaw tightened until his teeth ached.

How dare he? How dare the Wolf King treat the divine oracle with such contempt? How dare he stand there, in front of the Iondora Emperor himself, the Emperor who stood side by side with the Temple, who had sanctioned the Saintess, who represented the human authority that underpinned her credibility, and humiliated her?

The arrogance of it was staggering. The insult.

Arkai Dawnoro thought himself above prophecy. Above the gods. Above the natural order that placed visionaries like Ruby Vaiva at the center of the world’s affairs.

He stood there with his veiled woman and his gentle smiles and his joyous news, and he had no idea what he had just done.

Dorian hated him.

Always.

He always hated him with a cold, quiet, absolute hatred that settled into his bones like winter frost. He hated him for surviving when he should have died. He hated him for being right when he should have been wrong.

He hated him for making Dorian look like a fool in front of every power that mattered. Always. Ever since they were still mere princes.

And he hated him most of all for making people doubt.

Because if the Wolf King could dismiss the Saintess so easily, so publicly, and face no consequence... what did that mean for everyone who had believed in her? What did that mean for the Delanivis, who had staked their future on her visions?

Arkai Dawnoro...

That bastard...!

.

.

.

.

.

--------------------

Mass release time! This is the start of the 10 Chapters mass release! Enjoy!