Beast Gacha System: All Mine

There was no way.

That thing was colossal. It was clearly a creature that had torn Oathran from the sky and left him broken and bleeding in the sand. It had coiled damn through the clouds like they were nothing!

Cecilia frowned, wanting to shake her head. "Are you asking us to defeat it, dear gods?"

she whispered, her voice barely audible over the distant rumble of the vortex.

"Do you want to try?"

The voice came from directly behind her.

Cecilia spun, still cradling Oathran’s head against her chest. Arkai and Eastiel whirled as well, their bodies instinctively moving to shield her and their fallen brother.

The figure behind them was seven feet tall.

He was handsome, yet terrifying.

Elegant bones and perfect symmetry interrupted by open wounds that did not heal. Scars ran through his visage like rivers through ancient earth, pulling back the skin of his cheek to reveal the bone beneath, the straight edge of teeth that should have been hidden.

His deep-set eyes were gentle, the color of a winter sky just before snow, and his eyebrows arched like twin swords above them, striking, heroic, yet melancholic.

His long black hair fell past his feet and dragged behind him across the sand, a length of silk and shadow that seemed to absorb the malicious light of the vortex above.

All three of them froze.

Cecilia’s arms tightened around Oathran’s unconscious form, pulling him closer against her chest. A tremor ran through her body. It felt like the primal quaking of a soul that had just recognized something greater than itself.

His presence felt infinitely larger than he looked. And he already looked bigger than any normal human.

Even Arkai and Eastiel, both warriors, were shaking. Their beast instincts, honed over decades of combat, screamed at them to submit, to kneel, to look down. They couldn’t move or speak. They could only stare at the scarred god who had appeared behind them.

"The boy gave it a try." The man looked up at the sky, at the black leviathan still coiling through the churning clouds. "Apparently it was still just a bit too much for him. Managed to injure it, though."

His grey eyes tracked the creature’s movement calmly. "He’ll need to learn more of how to use the flame."

Cecilia, Eastiel, and Arkai were still frozen when the man’s gaze shifted away from the sky or from them, toward the distant rooftop where Cecilia was. His lips twitched.

"I-I will... Y-yes..." The long black-haired god looked down, his massive shoulders hunching slightly. His voice, which had been calm and measured a moment before, took on a defensive and sheepish tone of a child who was being scolded. "But you said they’re in a training camp...?"

He flinched. His head jerked back as though someone had raised a hand in front of him, and his scarred hands rose in a gesture of surrender. "Sigh... Yes, Dearest Sister..."

Cecilia couldn’t understand.

Who was this man?

This scarred, beautiful, terrifying god had appeared from nowhere...

Why did his mere presence make them tremble from the depth of their souls?

"Uugh—" in her embrace, Oathran groaned. It shattered Cecilia’s paralysis instantly.

Oathran stirred in her arms, his eyelids fluttering and his chest heaving with the effort of returning to consciousness. His bruised hand found her wrist and gripped it weakly.

"Oathran!" She looked down at him, her tears falling onto his upturned face. His mist-grey eyes opened, clouded with pain, but open, seeing her. For one brief moment, his expression softened with relief.

His brothers were here. His wife was here. He was alive, and they were alive.

Then his gaze drifted upward to the vortex, and his face crumpled. "A-ah—i-it wasn’t enough—" He tried to sit up, his muscles screaming. Then he saw the long black-haired man standing a few feet away, and his entire body jolted as though struck by lightning. "F-Father God! I failed you—"

"SSSSsssshhhh—!" Isaiah hushed him with a frantic wave of both hands, his grey eyes going wide with panic.

Oathran froze mid-word, his mouth still open and his eyes blinking in confusion.

W-what could make this mighty dragon god act like this?

Oathran, who had torn through corrupted orcas and faced down the leviathan itself, was now staring at his Father God with the bewildered expression of a child who had just watched a parent act very strangely.

"It’s fine, it’s fine. You lay there and go back to sleep. I’ll handle this—" Isaiah’s reassurance was cut short as he flinched again, his head jerking sideways and his massive shoulders shrinking. "Yes, I know, I’m going—"

He looked like he was being scolded again.

Cecilia observed.

Oathran had called him Father God, and this same Father God was now seemingly conversing with the gods on the rooftop, acting less like an all-powerful deity and more like a younger brother being told to clean his room. Who was this man?!

C-could it be... Isaiah, the Dragon Go—

The man suddenly clapped his hands together. The sound was sharp and clean, cutting through the distant rumble of the vortex.

In a blink, Momo and Bunny were standing right in front of him.

"Alright, we’re going to close it now," Bunny said casually, as though he were suggesting they grab lunch. He reached up because Isaiah was still seven feet tall, and pushed down on the scarred god’s shoulder.

Isaiah, the ancient and terrifying being whose presence had frozen three warriors in place, complied without resistance, bending his knees slightly to accommodate the shorter god’s reach.

Cecilia’s, Arkai’s, Eastiel’s, even Oathran’s, half-conscious and bleeding in her arms, let their jaws loose, slowly lowering to the ground, witnessing something their brains simply refused to process.

The mighty black-haired figure, Dragon God, was lowering himself to give Bunny a piggyback ride.

"See you on the other side, sexy," Bunny winked at Momo, who was giggling.

"See you in the next lifetime." Momo rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to Bunny’s cheek, who was forcing Isaiah to lower himself to receive the little wet peck.

Isaiah’s eyes twitched. The expression on his scarred face was one of profound, bone-deep exasperation.

"Child," he said, turning his winter-grey gaze toward Oathran, "I must go now. Or these two lunatics won’t leave my behind alone."

Oathran couldn’t answer at first. His mouth opened and closed several times, his eyes still wide with the shock of seeing The Isaiah himself, acting as a pack mule for the couple who lived above his apartment and argued about cheese.

Finally, he managed a hoarse whisper, "Y-yes... Father Isaiah..."

Bunny’s legs clamped around Isaiah’s waist enthusiastically like a child mounting a pony. He raised his shovel toward the sky, pointing it at the vortex like a general leading a charge. "To infinity and beyond!"

"Brother... shut up, please..." Isaiah’s voice was muffled, his long black hair pooling around him on the sand, eyes blank now.

Momo waved at them, her smile bright. Isaiah crouched, Bunny still clinging to his back, shovel still raised, and then he launched.

F—FWOOOOOM—

In a blink of an eye, they became a streak of black light shooting toward the vortex, Bunny’s whoop of joy trailing behind him like a comet’s tail.

And then—

ROAAAAAAAAR—!

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM—

Momo smiled and gently sighed.

"The containment is complete."