As Dandelion made her way toward her assigned room, she allowed her gaze to drift once, briefly, toward the far end of the hall.
Alia stood there with Alisa cradled against her chest, the baby's small fist curled loosely around a fold of her mother's sleeve. Dandelion's steps didn't slow. Her expression didn't change. But something in her eyes lingered a fraction longer than it needed to, some quiet ache pressing briefly against the wall she'd built around herself decades ago, before she turned forward again and let the moment pass without a word.
Soon, after some more time passed, the other family heads began arriving not long after.
Meditation Aura surged into the hall in a wash of dark green particles, coalescing rapidly into the shape of a great tree, thick with vitality, its branches heavy with strange, unfamiliar fruits unlike anything native to Lumenia. The bark shimmered a deep yellowish brown, and as the particles settled, a section of it split open like a doorway.
An old woman stepped out from within it.
Her skin hung loose with age, wrinkled and weathered, though her posture remained perfectly upright. Long green hair fell past her shoulders, streaked through with white in slow, creeping patches, and her eyes held a striking purplish green, sharp despite the years clearly etched into her face.
This was Lady Floria, head of the Vitalis family.
"Lady Floria has finally arrived," a young boy said from a nearby round table, sitting up slightly as he watched her step fully free of the dissolving tree. He had fair skin, white hair, and pale blue eyes, dressed in a suit of white and blue that matched the coolness of his coloring.
Beside him sat a young woman in a flowing green dress, her posture elegant and unhurried, long green hair braided into a single rope down her back. Her eyes carried the same dark green as her hair, touched faintly with purple, and in her arms she held a baby girl no older than six months, small tufts of dark purple hair catching the light, her eyes a bright, striking Egyptian blue.
The baby gripped her milk bottle with both tiny hands, sucking with startling speed until the last of it vanished in seconds. The instant the bottle emptied, she released it and immediately began flailing, small arms and legs kicking with real force, a loud, indignant wail rising from her the moment she realized more milk wasn't forthcoming.
The young boy glanced over at her, a faint blush rising to his cheeks, and spoke up shyly.
"Little Lisa," the boy said, watching the baby's flailing limbs with something between fascination and mild terror, "seems to have an unending appetite. Don't you think so, Miss Sylvana?"
Sylvana sighed, staring down at the empty bottle as if it had personally betrayed her. "I've tried every formula combination known to Lumenia. High-nutrition, triple-fortified, blessed by three separate deities. This little gremlin is simply unstoppable."
Alisa, as if to prove the point, kept right on wailing.
Sylvana finally gave up and passed her over. "Ugh. She's exhausting. Chris, hold her for a bit."
Chris took her carefully, murmuring soft, useless reassurances, and received a swift kick to the ribs for his trouble. Despite weighing roughly as much as a bag of flour, each kick landed with the force of a fully grown man who'd skipped leg day exactly zero times.
A few minutes into this small war, Alia emerged from the crowd to find Sylvana lost in thought and Chris actively losing a fight against an infant.
Alisa's whole body went rigid the instant she sensed her mother, head snapping around, eyes huge and shining. She wriggled free of Chris's grip with the single-minded determination of a soldier escaping capture, flopped directly onto the round table, and began crawling toward Alia with fierce, happy grumbling noises, sliding a little on the white tablecloth every few inches.
Alia laughed softly, sitting down, crossing her legs, resting her chin on one hand, watching her daughter's valiant journey with open amusement.
Alisa finally reached the edge and tumbled straight into Alia's waiting arms.
"Good girl," Alia said warmly, stroking her daughter's hair. "You did so well."
Alisa immediately reached forward and patted, with great enthusiasm, the flat, uneventful terrain of her mother's chest.
Alia's expression froze.
"Haven't you fed her?" she asked Sylvana flatly, no trace of her usual sharpness in her voice at all, just quiet, dawning dread.
Sylvana, Hypernova of the Life Pathway, vice-leader of the Traveling Association, Alia's closest friend, granddaughter of Lady Floria, and unofficial godmother to the small terror currently assaulting Alia's chest, opened her mouth to answer.
She never got the chance.
Alisa started mumbling.
Chris and Sylvana both leaned in at once, eyes wide.
Her first words. Right here. Right now.
Alia's expression melted into pure, glowing anticipation.
"Bi... ba..."
"Go on, sweetheart," Alia coaxed, voice syrupy with hope. "Say, Mama."
"Ma..."
"Yes! Yes, keep going, you've got it—"
"BOOBO!!"
Alisa screamed the word with the pure, triumphant joy of a soul who had finally found her purpose in life, immediately burying her face against Alia's chest and hugging with everything her tiny arms could manage.
Silence.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Three adults sat frozen, mouths hanging open, eyes wide enough to catch flies, slowly turning to stare at one another as though checking whether the others had heard the same catastrophe.
Sylvana broke first, letting out a long, defeated sigh.
"That is one hundred percent Sasaki's genes."
"I did not know my brother was like this," Chris said quietly, staring into the middle distance like a man reevaluating his entire family tree.
Alia's arms tightened around her daughter, a vein pulsing steadily at her temple as she fought, with visible effort, not to scream.
She looked back to her right at Sasaki, who was happily talking to Lady Floria.
A sudden chill shot down Sasaki's spine, sharp and inexplicable, cutting straight through the middle of a pleasant conversation with a visiting envoy. He kept his smile perfectly composed on the outside while asking Nix, silently, what on earth was going on.
Sasaki could speak to Nix with nothing more than a thought, a small, private channel between them that no one else could ever intrude on.
Nix lowered its small head, closing its golden-blue eyes, reaching out through some connection Sasaki couldn't follow, gathering whatever information it needed. When it opened its eyes again, its entire body of blue flame trembled visibly, flickering with something close to genuine fear.
It swallowed audibly, an act that made no physical sense for a being made purely of fire, and somehow still managed to sound terrified doing it.
"My king," Nix said, voice unsteady. "Your queen is not going to leave you in one piece tonight."
"...What?" Sasaki's composure cracked for half a second. "What exactly does that mean?"
Nix refused to elaborate any further, deflecting instead with sudden, unconvincing enthusiasm about how important it was that Sasaki keep focusing on greeting the arriving family heads.
Sasaki turned back toward the hall slowly, smile still fixed in place, though something cold and dawning had settled behind his eyes now.
Boobo, he thought distantly, some part of his mind finally connecting threads it hadn't wanted to connect. Oh no.
He had absolutely no memory of teaching his daughter that word.
He had, however, said it. Once. Loudly. In a moment he'd assumed no one, but Alia had heard, several months ago, in a context he was suddenly, desperately hoping had not somehow imprinted itself onto an infant's developing brain.
I might not survive tonight, Sasaki thought, watching Nix refuse to meet his eyes.
Across the hall, through the crowd, he caught the faintest glimpse of Alia's face, and the murder simmering behind her carefully polite smile told him everything Nix hadn't.
...
The family head of the Veryx family, Sarshal Veryx, made a grand appearance as he appeared directly from a region of the void.
He had a handsome appearance; his short, messy black hair and dark, white eyes were very attractive.
He showed an affluent demeanor and gifted Sasaki a mega resource point and a large amount of resources and materials from various pathways.
Out of all the royal families, the Veryx family, which presided over the Boundless family, had the highest number of resource points simply because of the Boundless pathway Aura users being able to travel the cosmos and the void naturally.
The Boundless pathway also had a journey sub-pathway. It was natural that almost all the Aura users of the Veryx family used to go around to other galaxies and planets and take over them.
Even the strongest eight royal families of Lumenia couldn't compare to them in this case.
Thus, it was really normal.
...
Venerable Nexus of the Realis family arrived next with Lord Ontos of the Equilibria family and Elder Astral of the Nebula family.
These three Supernovas were the family heads of the families that preside over the Reality pathway, the Existence pathway, and the Celestial pathway, respectively.
These three were thousands of years old and looked like elders, except Lord Ontos, who looked like a man in his thirties.
Venerable Nexus had red eyes and orange hair, giving off a warm and kind aura around him.
Lord Ontos had medium-length white hair that reached his shoulders and silver eyes, looking prideful and angry.
Elder Astral had short silver hair and silver eyes, with a neutral look on his face. Having no pressure around him, he seemed like any normal person.
These three had always been on good terms, and their coming together in this wedding showed everyone the friendship these three held.
They collectively gifted Sasaki a lot of minor inheritances from their families, many inheritance clues, and a huge amount of resources from the Reality, Existence, and Celestial pathways.
They didn't gift him any large or mega resource points, but only a few medium-large ones, before being sent to their assigned rooms.
...
Lord Thanatos of the Sua family arrived with Lord Caius of the Freja family.
Both of them were young and attractive, having an elegant demeanor and an eloquent tongue.
Their charm could make anyone think of them as gentlemen.
But not everyone there felt comfortable around them.
The reason was that these two were from the Death and the Evil pathways, and their families presided over these pathways too.
They both had short, black hair, while Lord Thanatos had purple eyes and Lord Caius had red eyes.
They gifted Sasaki a large resource point together and went inside after giving their well-wishes to him.
...
A Meditation Aura with blue particles started to rise like a wave and burst into explosions, sword slashes, and the plunge of spears, and Sasaki felt his heart lift the moment he saw the old man standing at the center of it.
The one who had arrived was the head of the Alberich family, and Sasaki's own grandfather by blood.