Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Ahhh, too much information had entered Cecilia’s brain recently.

It was becoming a problem. Although it was not a crisis, it was definitely a situation.

The Emperor’s assassination, the Cassian Twins’ involvement, Roarke having connections with them, Ruby Vaiva’s impending murder-for-hire...

And most importantly, the new Saintess Candidate hidden somewhere in Cassia’s pocket like a trump card waiting to be played.

It was a lot.

Even for her.

"System." Cecilia whispered in her mind. "Can you make me a fact pinboard? With red strings? So I can log everything I have learned neatly?"

A pause.

[Is that a feature update request, Cecilia?]

Cecilia’s eyes widened. "I can do that?!"

The words escaped her mouth before she could stop them. It was quite loud too. It even made Arkai flinch beside her.

The three men in Cecilia’s life had a discussion about this, and they were initially worried. Of course they had not been expecting their wife to have this habit of suddenly shouting at empty air.

"Do what?" he asked.

He and his brothers had learned that when Cecilia started talking to invisible entities, it was best to simply ask rather than assume. What if it was a god or something?

Cecilia turned to him and chuckled. "Ehehe. Nothing."

Arkai’s eyes narrowed by a fraction. Ah... this exasperated feeling. He wanted to bite her neck and lick it up and do—

[Arkai: —wn, and suck and nibble and lap—]

"Ah, Arkai, I’m focusing on something, stop filling the telepathic function with that!" Cecilia hissed, glaring at him, her face reddened a little bit. Listening to this man’s husky and hot voice right into her head was so... distracting.

"Ahem," Arkai looked away.

[Do you want this feature to be added in the System for Beast Gacha Ver. 3.0?]

The System’s voice was bright. Helpful, since it was able to distract her from Arkai Dawnoro’s horny brain. But it was also... suspiciously eager.

Cecilia’s eyebrows rose. Maybe there was a catch?

"Wooooow. Are you finally able to be useful?"

[...]

[Are we... not useful so far, Cecilia...?]

The System’s voice was small now. Wounded. Like a puppy that had been kicked and did not understand why.

"Shut up. You are not actually upset."

DING!

[Yes! We are joking!]

The cheerful chime echoed through her mind, and Cecilia felt her lips twitch despite herself.

She had been talking a lot with the System. And somewhere along the way, between the life-saving interventions and the telepathic group chat with her husbands and the inexplicable emoji translations, she had noticed a development.

The System was... changing.

The System that had first awakened was not quite the same System that now made jokes and offered pinboard features and pretended to be wounded when she insulted it.

Its ’personality,’ if such a thing could be said to exist, had grown.

She did not know why. Perhaps the System was growing with her...? Was she... raising this System? Was it... a child?

DING!

[Your request had been filed, Cecilia! Your suggestions will surely help us improve!]

Alright. At least she tried.

"So." Arkai’s voice pulled her back to the solarium, to the warm winter light and the solid warmth of his presence beside her. "How was your talk with the Crown Prince? You’ve told me the facts via telepathy earlier, but how about you tell me some details?"

Arkai had been a bit on edge about the Crown Prince since they met the last time. Not even with Arzhen did he act like that.

Perhaps Damon Iondora warranted a bit more of a special treatment since Cecilia did call him ’like elder brother’.

Cecilia turned to him.

Arkai sat beside her on the cushioned sofa, his large frame somehow fitting into the delicate space without overwhelming it, his black hair catching glints of gold from the sun.

She smiled.

"It was interesting." She said. "Apparently, the reason the Cassian Twins decided to kill the Emperor is because they were annoyed that Ruby replaced me."

Arkai blinked.

"Annoyed?"

A regicide had been committed because two foreign princesses were irritated?

"It seems that Qinryc did not tell them I am still alive." Cecilia leaned into Arkai’s side, letting her weight settle against his solid warmth. "Nor did Damon. So they went out of their way to ’fix’ Iondora."

Arkai’s arm came around her back.

"My first reaction when I heard they had replaced you was also annoyance." His voice rumbled through his chest, a low vibration she could feel against her cheek. "And then I was angry when I found out they had hurt you."

He paused. The arm around her tightened by a fraction.

"I assume that if Angela and Eastiel could discover that that nephew of mine still had the Meleth Flower, the twins would assume you had died as well."

Cecilia nodded against his chest. "I have always had a deep respect for them." Cecilia mused. "And I just found out that Damon does too. I am sad now that their marriage talk failed a few years ago."

Arkai was quiet for a moment. Then—

"I actually know the man Ivy Cassia is going to marry."

Cecilia pulled back just enough to look up at him, her eyes widening with interest. "Really?"

"Yes." Arkai nodded, his expression thoughtful. "Magnus Karas. He is a respectable man. Quite strong, as well."

He considered it in his mind. Battle power, battle IQ, control...

"Not as strong as Eastiel before he became your mate, though."

She hummed, settling back against his chest.

"I wonder if the replacement Ivy Cassia was talking about has anything to do with her connections." Cecilia muttered thoughtfully. "I want to find out."

"You mean the Saintess Candidate?" Arkai asked. "The one they plan to install once they manage to kill Ruby Vaiva?"

"Mm."

Cecilia nodded and smiled.

"It is actually quite shocking," she murmured. "That they dared to do this."

The Cassian Twins had killed an emperor. They planned to kill a Saintess. They had hidden a candidate from the entire continent, waiting for the right moment to unveil her.

Cecilia was impressed.

The reason she had wanted the pinboard earlier, preferably with red strings and neat little fact cards and a place to put everything where she could see it, was not merely organizational obsession.

Well. Perhaps a little. Cecilia had never claimed to be free of vices, and the desire to arrange chaos into comprehensible patterns was definitely one of them.

But the real reason was because she needed to visualize what could have happened in the timeline Ruby came from. She needed to compare it to this timeline, the one she was living in now and actively shaping with every choice and every alliance and every carefully placed word.

What did that future look like, especially now that she knew there was another variable?

Another piece on the board. Cassian Twins’ hidden Saintess Candidate.

Of course. She didn’t know because it was those two who hid her.

A prophet. And Ivy said, someone whose visions could rival or even surpass Ruby Vaiva’s?

Saintess Candidates were not chosen lightly.

The process was a bit complicated. In the past, she had been chosen because people had already noticed and recommended her. They vouched for her uncanny ability to ’predict things,’ even when she was just a child.

Saintess Candidates usually emerged young. Startlingly young. Children who knew things alarmingly more than they should know, more than they had been taught, more than any child of their age and education had any right to know.

They would say something offhand. Like a comment about a coming storm, a name they should not recognize, a detail about a stranger’s life that no one had told them, and the adults around them would exchange glances. Would notice.

Child geniuses were the most common source. Children whose minds worked differently, faster, stranger. Children who saw patterns where others saw chaos. Children who could look at a scattered handful of facts and assemble them into a picture that should have been invisible.

Like Cecilia.

And once a child was identified, the testing began.

Accuracy. That was the first measure. The divine test. Could the child truly see what others could not? Could she predict the weather with enough precision to save a harvest?

Could she foresee a birth, a death, a calamity? Could she prove, again and again, that her visions were not luck or guesswork but something more?

And Eight-Year-Old Cecilia...

...had failed every single divine test.