2700 Talent and Mana (Part 2)

"Deal." Salaark said.

"Wait!" Zinya stepped between them before their hands could touch. "I wish to come as well. Please."

"One more person means nothing to me. Salaark shrugged. "But at this point, I feel entitled to a similar concession."

"Why?" Tezka snorted. "We both know that you can share everything with your Nest via your Call of the Blood. Whatever I do, your runts will know anyway."

"Not my runts." The Overlord shook her head. "I want to bring those two as my guests."

She pointed at Lith and Friya.

"Hey!" Kamila said in annoyance.

"Fine, you too. You'll keep company to your sister." Salaark rolled her eyes.

"Let me think about it." Tezka walked towards the trio, his eyes wandering on each one of them and then on Solus.

He had often met those people, he had seen them in the past but he had never bothered really looking at them. In his eyes, they were as pretty and ephemeral as butterflies. There was no point in memorizing the pattern of their wings.

"Let me guess. These two are a package deal.'

Salaark nodded, knowing that any attempt to hide the pocket dimension from the inventor of dimensional magic was as stupid as trying to deny the existence of the sun.

The Suneater could feel the same dimensional space stretching from both Lith and Solus, leaving him only one logical conclusion.

"This one is funny!" Tezka bent down until his head was at the same eye level as Friya, covering her in a cold sweat. "There's talent in her as well and she's even been dabbling with my magic for a while now."

Friya was proud of her ability as a dimensional mage and calling her seven years of blood, sweat, and tears in perfecting her skills "dabbling" was offensive at best. Yet she couldn't move or even breathe under the gaze of the nightmare in front of her.

She felt like he was looking past the clothes and flesh covering her. Like Tezka was staring at her true essence, making her feel naked and completely at his mercy.

"Deal. I like both Yehvals and Lith is my little brother. I can allow him a plus one." The two ancient monsters shook their hands and the tension in the air disappeared as fast as it had manifested.

Friya could finally start breathing again and her knees buckled up. She panted like a bellows, feeling exhausted as if she had fought for her life against impossible odds.

"Do you really think we are talented, Uncle Tezka?" Filia asked him.

For some reason, the kids looked at Friya in a funny way, finding her weird. Friya was the only one who had experienced Tezka's pressure. To everyone else, he had just talked.

"I don't think, I know." He replied. "Talent and mana capacity are two completely different things. The first is decided at birth while the second can be expanded through Awakening."

"What's Awakening?" Frey asked with a puzzled look on his small face.

"Ask your mother." Tezka disengaged before Zinya's glare could bore a hole through his skull.

"How the heck does she do that?" Salaark had noticed how the Suneater respected that weak human woman more than her and it pissed the Overlord off beyond belief.

The party resumed as normal and since there was no boring etiquette hindering the fun, everyone talked, ate, and laughed as much as they pleased without a care for differences in social status or bloodline.

Lith's Demons in particular were able to move around without people being scared of them and to interact with their respective families without the other guests treating them like freaks for consorting with lost souls.

Trion spent most of the time with Aran and Leira, helping them with their games in the hope of reconnecting with them. He was still a stranger to them and their least favorite sibling/uncle but he could only blame himself for that.

Between Trion's long absence and ill reputation among the family, the kids had no reason to trust him. That day he had decided to take control of Raptor and alter its size and properties to those of a normal magical beast in order to let the other children play fairly

Elina and Raaz looked at their lost son with pride, recognizing the progress Trion had made to better himself. Once he would have never accepted the demeaning role of a steed whereas now there was no trace of his past arrogance.

Locrias hugged and kissed his wife non-stop, greatly embarrassing Gilly, his daughter. The fact that he also paraded her around like the most beautiful girl on Mogar didn't help either.

Valia just laughed her ass off at Gilly's expense while her parents scolded her for her lack of tact. Then, her father asked Leegaain if there was a nice Dragon among his Brood that might be interested in Valia and the hilarity stopped.

"Dad!" Valia's soul inhabited her own body but it was still a corpse.

Yet she managed to blush up to her ears.

"Overlord Salaark, can you please introduce someone to my daughter?" Valia's mother asked, revealing that her parents had planned for a two-pronged attack. "I know that an undead's ferility is low but we'd really love to have a grandchild."

"Mom! 1-" The rest of the words died on Valia's lips as she noticed her mother's watery eyes as she looked at the many youths assembled.

"I'll see what I can do." Salaark nodded and returned to the party.

Only Remphas Varegrave, former colonel of the Kingdom and current Demon, sat alone in a corner. He had no family and with no soldier to train, there wasn't much he could do.

"The War of the Griffons is over and Thrud is dead. He thought while nibbling at the food on his plate. 'My duty is over. Maybe it's time to move on.'

"Remphas, come here please. He recognized Lady Verhen's voice, the only one in the family who called the Demons by their name.

He didn't bother walking, fusing with the nearest shadow and jumping next to Kamila to save time.

"What do you need, my L-" Varegrave's dead heart skipped a beat and his shadow form almost seeped out of his own corpse in surprise.

He inhabited his original body, like Valia, and he was always raised as a Demon of the Fallen as well.

Right next to Lady Verhen stood a blonde woman in her mid-thirties with blonde hair held up in a chignon that was more suited to the daily chores than to a party. She had blue eyes and the pained expression of someone who had recently lost a loved one.

The blonde woman wore day clothes of good quality but they looked haggard compared with the rest of the guests.

She had dark bags under her bloodshot eyes, signs that she slept little and had recently cried a lot. She kept wringing her hands while looking at Varegrave so much that her dry skin cracked and bled under the pressure of her nails.

"What is Shya doing here? Why did you tell her that I'm alive, I mean, a Demon? You had no right to do this without asking my permission first, Lady Verhen!" The Demon said in outrage, without worrying to hide the edge in his tone.