Chapter 336: A Hundred Husbands?!
Syris followed Ren’s finger. The moment his eyes landed on the pink fox and the blue-haired fish beastman, his face twisted into a scowl.
He looked like a man who had just found a slimy cockroach floating in his wine.
"I recognize them," Syris sneered. "That pink fox is Selestia. The fish beastman is named Uriel."
"Selestia?" Ren echoed, her brow furrowing. The names definitely didn’t ring any bells, but then... "Wait a minute. Isn’t Selestia the name of the Moon Goddess?"
"No. The Moon Goddess’s name is Selene," Syris corrected. "But I am certain that pink fox believes she is the moon goddess. She demands to be treated as such."
He narrowed his eyes at the couple. "They live somewhere within my swamp, but I haven’t been able to find where yet. They constantly pop up out of nowhere, always meddling in affairs where they do not belong. I did not even invite them here tonight."
Ren stared at the magical-looking duo. They definitely stood out against the other rough-looking beastmen filling the courtyard.
Syris leaned in closer to Ren, lowering his voice. "Uriel is only one of her hundred mates. She simply favors him at the moment."
Ren choked on her spit.
She recoiled, her green eyes widening to the maximum capacity of her eye sockets. "I’m sorry, did you just say a hundred mates?!"
"Perhaps more by now," Syris shrugged casually.
Ren’s brain short-circuited. One hundred husbands. If she thought of a year in the Beast World being roughly the same as Earth, that meant each husband only got about three and a half days of her time per year!
Ren was struggling to survive the demands of just three mates. Her back constantly ached, her legs were constantly trembling from their supernatural stamina, and she was always dealing with their massive egos. ’How in the world did this pink fox manage a hundred horny, territorial beastmen?!’
"Are... are all one hundred of them fish beastmen?" Ren asked, her voice a horrified squeak.
"No," Syris replied, wholly unbothered. "She collects many different types. Avians, serpents, felines. She hoards them."
Ren honestly didn’t know if she was supposed to be in awe or completely repulsed. A hundred mates meant a hundred giant, needy beastmen to sexually satisfy, feed, and give emotional attention to. Ren was certain she would pass away from exhaustion by day four. Selestia definitely had to be one of those ultra-rare, special females with a specific magical ability that allowed her to have a harem.
Ren desperately wondered what Selestia’s ability was, but she firmly decided to stop asking questions. The couple was clearly shrouded in mystery, and considering Syris’s distaste for them, they were undeniably bad news. Ren had enough on her plate. She didn’t want to concern herself with them anymore.
As the night wore on, the feast grew significantly rowdier.
The courtyard descended into a loud, chaotic prehistoric frat party. Beastmen were dancing wildly around the roaring bonfires, howling at the moon, and telling booming stories of legendary hunts. They played bizarre, primitive games of strength and skill that were entirely foreign to Ren. She watched them with great curiosity, safely tucked beside Syris.
However, as the wine flowed, the night began taking a very, very uncomfortable twist.
In the dark, shadowy corners of the wide courtyard, several beastmen were aggressively mating with females. The loud, wet sounds of uninhibited primal passion and echoing moans began competing with the crackling fire and chatter.
Ren kept her eyes glued to the plate of roasted boar, her face burning hot. She had never been to an orgy before, but she felt certain that if she were to be a VIP guest at one, this is exactly what it would look like.
"Look at the interesting crack on that wall," Ren muttered to herself, staring desperately at a random pillar to avoid looking at a panther beastman mounting two females near the buffet line. "Very... very sturdy stones."
To make matters worse, she was currently sitting alone. A few minutes ago, Selestia had strutted up to the table and politely, yet forcefully, requested a private word with the Snake King. Ren had watched Selestia leave with Syris into the castle corridors. Ren could only hope they were talking about territorial politics and not discussing expanding her own harem. Selestia was a commanding presence; she obviously completely dominated Uriel, and Ren was praying she wouldn’t try to dominate Syris too.
Now alone at the table, Ren tried to focus on a game of throwing stones happening nearby, but she couldn’t concentrate.
A glare was burning a hole straight into the side of her head.
Ren knew exactly who it was. The blue-haired fish beastman had moved from the center tables and was now leaning against a stone pillar just a few feet away, staring at her with undisguised hostility.
Ren had finally had enough of his creepy staring. She took a sip of her water, refusing to turn her head to look at him.
"It is bad manners to stare," Ren spoke quietly, staring straight ahead at the fire. She knew his beastman hearing would pick up her voice perfectly, and he would know exactly who she was talking to.
A deep, chilling voice, smooth and cold drifted back to her.
"It is bad manners to enter someone’s home uninvited, too."
A sudden, icy chill ran straight down Ren’s spine. The hair on her arms stood on end. She tried her hardest to ignore the shiver. Home? She had no idea what he was talking about.
Before Ren could say anything, a badger beastman stumbled backward, laughing uproariously, and bumped directly into her table.
"The Snake King’s mate!" the badger cheered, his breath smelling strongly of fermented berries. He grabbed Ren by the wrist with surprising gentleness and hoisted her right out of her seat. "You must play!"
"Wait, no, I don’t know how to play!" Ren yelped as she was shoved into a small, cleared circle near the fire.
Before she could escape, three other players were pushed into the circle with her. One was a tall, scarred female panther. The second was a grinning boar beastman.
And the third, stepping smoothly into the firelight with a cold expression on his handsome features, was Uriel.
Ren groaned internally.
The game was very strange. It involved tossing small, intricately carved bones into a hollowed-out turtle shell placed twenty feet away, combined with a complicated system of predicting the other players’ moves. From what Ren could gather as the drunken badger slurred the rules, it was a game designed strictly for those with phenomenal luck and elite strategic skills.
Ren did not stand a chance. She didn’t play games. She cooked.
But it was the stakes of the game that made her blood run cold.
From their strange rules, Ren finally understood the ultimate consequence. The final loser of the match would be forced to wash the winner. If it were a beastman winner and a beastman loser, the losing beastman would have to command his female mate to wash the winner. If it were two females, the losing female washed the mate of the winning female.
Ren broke out in a cold sweat. She did not want to win, and she did not want to lose. She desperately just wanted to fall somewhere safely in-between.
There were four of them in the match. A winner and a loser would only be decided between the final two surviving players. If she dropped out first or second, she was safe!
"Okay. Just throw the bone terribly. Miss the shell entirely. Lose quickly," Ren coached herself in a frantic whisper.
The game commenced. The boar beastman went first, landing his bone near the edge. The panther female threw hers inside. Uriel flicked his wrist, sinking his bone perfectly into the dead center of the shell.
It was Ren’s turn.
She picked up the bone, aimed three feet to the left of the turtle shell, and threw it with a deliberately awful, limp-wristed toss.
The bone sailed through the air, hit a loose pebble on the courtyard floor, ricocheted sharply to the right, bounced off the drunken badger’s foot, and landed flawlessly in the exact center of the turtle shell.
The crowd of beastmen erupted into cheers.
Ren’s jaw dropped. "Are you kidding me?!"
The game continued into a heated frenzy. The harder Ren prayed to the heavens to lose, the more she won. Her terrible, deliberately sabotaged throws kept miraculously bouncing into the shell. When forced to guess the opponents’ moves, she would blurt out the most ridiculous, impossible answers, only to be one hundred percent accurate every single time.
She was suffering from success. Her luck was completely broken.
The boar beastman missed his throw and was eliminated.
The panther female guessed wrong and was knocked out.
Ren stood frozen in the firelight, her hands shaking as she held the final bone. The cheering crowd faded into a dull buzz in her ears.
She looked across the circle, but Uriel’s eyes were focused on the turtle shell.
It was just the two of them left.
This final match was going to decide who washed who.
Ren’s stomach dropped all the way into her toes. She felt like the loser either way.
This was truly just her terrible, rotten luck.