Chapter 502: Caught In The Act
Fauna gasped. Nadia’s jaw dropped.
Mika stared in dazed disbelief. Before he could ask—
BANG!
The other cheek.
He reeled backward, his hands flying up to protect his face. But the hand was relentless.
It raised the shoe high and brought it down again—BANG, BANG, BANG—raining blows on his head, his shoulders, his arms.
Mika ducked, dodged, tried to block—but the hand followed him, the portal shifting to track his movements.
It smacked his back, his bum, his thighs. It whacked his elbows and knees. It caught him on the side of the head, on the neck, on the ribs.
"Why?!" Mika cried out, his voice cracking. "What the hell is going on?! Why are you hitting me?!"
Smack!
"Ow!" He rubbed his arm. "Why are you hitting me even harder?!"
Smack!
"Not there—not there—that’s my privates!"
Smack!
"My butt! You hit my butt! What kind of punishment—"
Smack! Smack! Smack!
"At least hit me in one place! Why are you hitting me all over?!"
The hand didn’t answer. It just kept swinging.
Soon, Mika was curled on the ground, covering his head with his arms, while the hand smacked him relentlessly with his own shoe.
He looked like a misbehaving puppy getting swatted with a newspaper—pathetic, pitiful, and utterly defeated.
Fauna and Nadia watched in stunned silence.
This was unprecedented.
After all, Mika was the golden child. Their oldest sister doted on him, spoiled him, treated him like her precious little treasure.
She scolded him sometimes, yes. She corrected him when he stepped out of line.
But she had never beaten him like this.
Fauna finally found her voice.
"Big Sister...there’s no need to do that, right?"
Her words came out timid, hesitant.
"No matter what Mika did, you can’t just smack him around like that. He’s an adult now. This might be embarrassing for him."
Nadia nodded, finding her own courage.
"You shouldn’t lay your hands on your own child like that. It’s not right."
The hand stopped.
It turned toward them.
No words were spoken. No expression was visible.
But both sisters felt it—a pressure, a weight, a silent question hanging in the air.
’Do you want some too?’
Fauna’s eyes trembled in fright. She scrambled onto Nadia’s back like a koala, hiding behind her sister’s shoulders.
"No!" She called out, her voice bright and strained. "Don’t listen to us! You go ahead—beat Mika however much you want!"
Nadia nodded, looking away guiltily as she said,
"I have no relationship with that boy at all. Do whatever you deem fit."
"TRAITORS!" Mika wailed from the ground. "ABSOLUTE TRAITORS!"
The hand resumed its assault.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
After a long, brutal minute, the hand finally stopped. It tossed the shoe aside.
Mika let out a shaky breath of relief.
"Finally—it’s over—"
The hand reached back into the portal and pulled out a broom!
"WHY DID YOU CHANGE WEAPONS?!" Mika scrambled backward. "THAT’S CHEATING!"
WHACK!
"Ow! Don’t use that broom—it looks so dirty—"
WHACK! WHACK!
The broom was discarded. A belt emerged.
"NO, NO, NO—NOT THE BELT—THAT’S GONNA HURT LIKE HELL—"
CRACK!
"AARGH—"
The belt was joined by a ladle.
"The ladle?! That’s for soups! Not for hitting people!"
Bang!
A rolling pin.
"Why do you even have a rolling pin?! When do you cook?!"
Smack!
A pair of slippers. A wooden spoon. A flyswatter. A spatula.
Whatever household implements the hand could find, it wielded against Mika with relentless fury.
Through it all, Fauna and Nadia watched in growing confusion.
"What do you think he did?" Fauna whispered.
Nadia shook her head slowly. "I have no idea. But it must have been bad."
Very bad. Their sister was not someone who got angry easily.
She was authoritive, calculating, always several steps ahead.
So, for her to react like this. To physically punish him, to beat him with household objects like a disappointed mother disciplining a reckless child—meant that Mika had crossed a line.
A serious line.
But...what could he have possibly done?
Mika himself, for his part, felt no real pain. The hits didn’t hurt—nothing mortal could hurt him.
But he felt the sensation of punishment, the raw maternal fury behind each swing.
His oldest mother was furious. Genuinely, deeply, wrathfully furious.
And that was far more terrifying than any physical pain.
And he too desperately wanted to know what he’d done to provoke this.
—
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the hand stopped.
It hovered in the air, slightly sweaty from exertion, as if the one wielding it on the other side had just finished a marathon.
A small sigh escaped the portal—tired, exasperated, but somehow satisfied.
Mika slowly, weakly pushed himself to his feet. His clothes were disheveled, his hair a mess. He looked like he had been through a war.
Then a voice came from the portal.
It was beautiful, the kind of voice that made you stop whatever you were doing just to listen.
Melodic, rich, with an authoritative edge that could make grown men weep.
And behind that authority, a cold, simmering anger.
"Mika..."
He flinched.
"...Don’t change the fate of this family any further."
That was it. There was nothing else she said after that and the words hung in the air.
Fauna blinked. She turned to Nadia, whispering.
"Do you understand what she meant by that?"
Nadia shook her head, her expression genuinely puzzled.
"I have no idea what she’s talking about."
Fauna scratched her head adorably.
"Yeah, same. She’s always speaking in riddles. It’s impossible to understand her."
They exchanged confused glances, both of them utterly lost.
But Mika understood.
And it was exactly because he knew, that his face went pale.
The blood drained from his cheeks, leaving them chalk-white. His eyes trembled. Goosebumps erupted across his arms.
For the first time in a very long time, perhaps the first time since childhood—Mika was genuinely, viscerally terrified.
She knew.
The oldest Battle Angel, the Maiden of Fate and Fortune, the one who could see the threads of destiny and pluck them like harp strings—
—she knew what he was doing.
She had seen his plans, his manipulations, his slow, patient seduction of her sisters.
She knew he was trying to turn his mothers into his lovers.
That he was trying to reshape the entire family, bend it to his will, make every single one of them his.
He had been so careful. So methodical. He had isolated each sister, made his moves in the shadows, kept his true intentions hidden behind smiles and jokes and ’pranks.’
But she had seen through all of it.
And the relentless, exhausting beating had been her warning. Her first strike. Her way of saying: I know what you’re doing. And I will not tolerate it.
Mika stood frozen, his mind racing.
This was bad. This was very, very bad.
He had always known she would be the most difficult—the final boss, the last obstacle.
He had planned to deal with her after securing the other four, when his position was stronger, when he had already won over the rest of the family.
After all, she could see fate. She could divine the future, read the threads of destiny that connected every living being.
But she had caught him early. And now she was watching.
He didn’t know how much she had seen. Didn’t know if she had been observing everything all along, or if she had only recently divined his intentions.
Either way, she was aware. And that changed everything.
Honestly, for a brief, terrible moment, Mika considered giving up.
If she truly knew everything, had seen through his plans, his manipulations, his slow, patient seduction of her sisters—then what was the point?
She could expose him with a single word.
One message to the family group chat, one private conversation with each sister, and his carefully constructed web would collapse.
They would be on guard. Every move he made would be anticipated, countered, thwarted.
Even the daughters would turn against him, united in their horror at his betrayal.
And she herself would not just watch. She would intervene. Personally. Forcefully.
He would then have to resort to a much more direct approach, one that would not only be nearly impossible against such prepared opposition but would also tear the family apart.
Chaos. Conflict. Destruction.
Everything he had worked for, everything he had dreamed of, crumbling to dust.
He felt so helpless in that moment. So defeated.
He had been so confident. Riding high, progressing at a good rate, feeling like he was on top of the world.
And now, with this one revelation, it all seemed lost.
He was on the edge of despair, genuinely feeling like everything he had tried so far had been for nothing.
He even felt like crying because his dream, his vision of a future where his family was truly, completely his, was slipping away.
But just as he genuinely started to tear up, he looked at the portal in front of him and realized something.
A look of intrigue appeared on his face.
Something was wrong.
The oldest Battle Angel was not subtle. She was confrontational by nature, unafraid to speak her mind to anyone—outsiders, officials, even her own family.
If she had a problem, she would say it directly.
If she was angry, she would scream.
If she wanted to punish someone, she would do it with her own fists, looking them in the eye the whole time.
But right now? She had done none of that.
Instead an extremely small portal. Only her hand emerging. A single sentence.
No reprimand, no lecture, no demand that he stop. She was maintaining minimal contact, limiting her presence to the barest possible degree.
Anyone else would have thought she was simply too ashamed or angry to look at him. That she couldn’t bear to see his face after what he had done.
But Mika knew her. And he knew her blessing.
And in that moment, everything clicked.
’She...can’t stop me.’