"I can sense it" Pyro, the Fire Spirit whispered mentally to Julie as its gaze was fixed on Klaus’s back.
"He is dying to mate with you, Raphael! Congratulations, you have successfully seduced him!"
almost immediately a retorting voice sounded
"Don’t get her bullshit to your head, Raphael. She is really just a pervert," Gale, the Wind Spirit, immediately interjected, her mental voice filled with disdain for Pyro’s words.
"Oiii!" Pyro retorted, her voice indignant.
"Old hag! I have mastered the concept of lust through and through! I can tell someone’s desire to mate just by looking at them! My senses are sharp!"
"That is why I call you a pervert, Pyro," Gale replied, her mental voice cutting, filled with profound disdain. "Your interpretation of emotion is limited to the most basic desires."
Meanwhile, Julie was entirely out of this conversation. Her conscious mind had detached the moment Pyro had told her about Klaus’s desire to mate with her.
"OMG, he wants to do that..! OMG! I thought we should take it slowww..." A wave of delight, mixed with a sudden, overwhelming surge of anticipation, washed over her.
"No, no, Raphael! You are the Spirit Queen! You don’t give in first! You must maintain your dignity!" A huge load of overthinking started, her attention drifting to God knows what realms of hypothetical future scenarios.
Julie’s inner monologue spun wildly. "... What should I name our babies? If it’s a boy, it will be Kael (Klaus + Raphael)! Yes, perfect! That sounds strong!
Or, or it could be Jinn (Julie + Finn), right? That’s also good, hmmph, a bit simpler.
A girl’s name? What to name if it’s a girl... Lyra? Or Aura? So many choices!
We’ll need a big garden, like the one in my realm, for them to play... And maybe a small pet for every child... Oh, will he like one?
But will he be a protective father? Of course, he’s strong!"
"Mmm... Miss?" Klaus looked back, pausing his walk, his voice soft, almost a murmur. He looked at the dazed Julie, who was clearly lost in thought, a faint, dreamy smile on her face.
Julie, caught completely off guard, didn’t even hear his voice. Her mind was too far away, planning their hypothetical family life.
"MISS!!!" Klaus spoke louder this time, his voice sharper, pulling her abruptly out of her daze.
She looked at Klaus, her eyes wide, her face flushing with embarrassment as she realized that all of these wild thoughts had been spinning in her mind.
Her private ramblings had nearly dazed her. She raised her eyebrows a bit, a silent question in her eyes, as if asking why he had stopped and why he had spoken so loudly.
Klaus looked into her eyes. He chose his words carefully, trying to bridge the gap.
He produced a long, sturdy stick from his inventory.
He then handed it over to her, his gaze holding hers.
"I thought we should introduce ourselves properly," he said softly, a hint of a smile on his lips.
"My name is Klaus Bennet, the grandson of William Bennet and the sole heir of the Bennet family."
He waited, offering the stick, giving her a means to communicate her own name.
Julie smiled, her eyes bright and expectant.
She took the long stick Klaus offered and wrote on the ground. Her delicate hand moved carefully, forming clear letters in the virtual sand:
She wrote her name. When she woke up in that body, after her reincarnation, she had given herself this name.
She still remembered the day she woke up in this world, the disorienting shock of finding herself in a new form.
She had opened her eyes in a dark cave somewhere, surrounded by strange, shadowed figures. She soon realized that the previous owner of the body she now inhabited had been abducted by a demonic cult .
The cultists intended to offer the body as a sacrifice, believing it would allow a new member to awaken some skill in exchange for these grim offerings to their so-called Demon God.
She had never heard of that name, "Demon God," before. The cultists claimed that this Demon God was the underworld’s ruler.
But she, Raphael, knew that the undisputed ruler of the underworld was her uncle, Hades, a formidable being who commanded the very essence of death and souls.
She was sure Hades never asked for sacrifices, nor did he interact with mortals in such a crude, direct, or violent way. The cult’s beliefs were just a prank by a cosmic entity that showed them a few tricks.
Well, at the end of the day, before she could take any action herself, before her suppressed powers could fully manifest, Magnus had arrived.
Her father, the Principal of the Guardian Academy, appeared with a battalion of Academy teachers and powerful hunters. They swiftly and ruthlessly wiped out everyone from the cult.
Ultimately, Magnus saved her. He later told her that he had received a letter from Julie’s maternal grandmother, a message that revealed Julie was his actual daughter that her wife had birthed with him.
he had immediately run a DNA test on her resulting in a positive result, He had then told her to accompany him, bringing her to the guardian academy.
Somehow, Julie was not able to utter a single word due to some restrictions put on her by the local laws of this world.
This was most probably to prevent her from accidentally dwelling in the secrets of celestials and other non-mortal affairs to mortals of this world.
It was a like a censorship imposed on her to prevent her from revealing anything major, a way to keep the mortal realm ignorant about the higher planes.
Julie returned from this brief flashback as she saw the expression on Klaus’s face. It was tense, etched with a mixture of surprise and internal thought.
Klaus, right now, was thinking,
"Julie? Another Julie? Why do all the weird-ass girls I encounter always seem to be named Julie?" He remembered the cute little girl from his dreams, the innocent chatterbox with whom he shared some peaceful moments with.
Then he looked at the Julie in front of him, the elegant, angelic daughter of Magnus. The coincidence was unsettling, almost too good to be random.
"What a coincidence," he muttered silently, his voice low as he looked at her.
His voice reached her, but she did not register anything properly. His words were too low. She just smiled faintly, waiting for him to speak further.
Klaus nodded, acknowledging her written name. Then, they proceeded to walk ahead, deeper into the map.
Before long, they reached the central part of the map, which contained some ancient ruins. The crumbling stone structures were overgrown with thick vines.
Klaus looked at his Omniscient Tracking map. A very significant energy signature, even greater than the SSS-ranked monsters they had encountered earlier, glowed brightly near the ruins.
This was it. The EX-rank monster was present here most probably.
the size of this marker was immense, radiating a unique glow that stood out among other dots on his map.
"Julie," Klaus asked, as he turned around, his voice clear and serious. He paused, looking directly at her. "I am about to face the strongest boss on the map. The EX-ranked monster."
"Do you want to join?" he asked. Strangely, his Draconic Pride had not flared up at all, not even a flicker of its usual disdain for weaker beings or its compulsive need to assert dominance.
He just felt a calm in her presence and the strange thing was that he still hadn’t noticed the absence of the effects of draconic pride.
"Raphael nodded at his offer" she was excited to fight alongside Klaus.
"Alright, let’s just eat something before we proceed," Klaus noted.
At the entrance of the massive rocky ruins of a building he began setting up a small, portable tent, its sturdy frame clicking into place.
Having been thoroughly calmed by his recent interaction with Julie and the brief moment of vulnerability he had allowed himself, he decided to take it easy.
His immediate goal was to secure the first rank in this battle royale, so he needed to focus his energy.
He understood his limitations for this specific battle. He could not draw any new skills because the quest assigned by the mysterious question mark guy had imposed a strict restriction on the usage of newly acquired skills for the duration of the event.
This meant he had to work with his existing, non-elemental arsenal.
Klaus sat down on a compact camping chair he had pulled from his inventory. A few steps away, Julie, her form small and graceful, was already cooking some noodles over a small, smokeless burner.
Klaus had a habit of carrying all essential emergency supplies with himself in his inventory.
This habbit now came in handy for unexpected situations like camping in a forest.
Klaus, while waiting for the food, looked at the ranking list being updated live on his virtual display.
Participants just had to mentally request it for certain features of the VR interface to appear in front of them. He had called out the "ranking list" and the following display had appeared:
1. Arthur: 1260 points
2. Damian Blade: 1200 points
3. Julie Ashburn: 1150 points
4. Michael Helios: 995 points
5. Klaus Bennet: 950 points
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