Read Novel Full Chapter 1001: The Greatest Weapon
Chapter 1001: The Greatest Weapon
The rest of the week until the birthday party passed swiftly.
Preparations were constant, chaotic, and—thanks to Rosie—occasionally adorable. The tiny strategist wielded her childlike innocence like the greatest tactical weapon to have ever existed, and her main target was none other than the reclusive Fox Auntie, Yoruha.
The ancient illusionist had no intention of helping with party preparations. None whatsoever. In fact, her plan was to sleep for an entire century and pretend the outside world didn’t exist.
According to her, she’d barely survived the last three months during Quinlan’s absence. With most of his lovers off hunting monsters for XP, there had only been one person left in the house who refused to be ignored. The green dryad girl. Rosie.
Yoruha’s voice dropped an octave when she spoke the name. Her eye twitched. Her tails, usually pristine and flowing, now hung limp like bedraggled mops.
"I have dueled Black Fang in the Dead Gardens. I have once faced down a whole Wyvern court with two broken limbs and 10% mana to my name. But that child..." She stared off into the distance, looking visibly haunted like a soldier who returned from war. "That child made me play house. For days."
The ladies who listened to the tragic tale were concerned until they stepped closer and actually saw the woman. Truly saw.
The glamorous nine-tailed illusionist—normally the embodiment of sultry fox-like perfection—looked like she had gone twelve rounds with a divine prankster. Her silk kimono was technically clean, but half the sashes were misaligned, and the intricate purple embroidery was wrinkled in places that betrayed violent cuddling.
Her lustrous hair, which was always the definition of perfection, was tied in a crooked ponytail. Her fur tails had the frayed edges of one too many naps rudely interrupted.
For a woman who could clean and glamor herself in a second just by thinking about it, the disheveled state was telling.
She didn’t look like a seductive immortal anymore. She looked like a real auntie. An exhausted, soul-wrung auntie who’d been chased through the halls for weeks by a hyperactive dryad yelling "Story time, auntie! You promised!!!" every ten minutes.
"Let alone my body, my very essence is dry," Yoruha whispered hoarsely. "Dry. Not even my illusions want to respond to me properly anymore. Do you know what that means, children?"
None in the audience of this generational whining session could answer. They were too busy trying not to laugh.
But Rosie wasn’t about to let her favorite auntie off the hook that easily. She was a daughter on a mission entrusted by her father and mothers, after all—and Rosie took her assignments very seriously. Especially when they came from her father. Mothers could be... ignored, should the situation demand it. She refused to do the same for Quinlan.
Thus, Rosie activated Childlike Innocence Turbo Mode.
The moment Yoruha tried to escape, Rosie struck like an assassin who specialized in preying on emotions.
She toddled up with impossibly wide eyes, with her lower lip trembling as if she’d been tragically abandoned in the woods by uncaring parents and left to raise herself among squirrels. Her little hands clutched the edge of Yoruha’s kimono sleeve with just enough pressure to be adorable but not overly pushy. It was an art form at this point.
"Please, Auntie..." she whispered in the most heartbreakingly soft voice imaginable. "Rosie really needs your help... She’s worried for her Daddy and Mommies..."
Yoruha visibly froze.
Then turned her head slowly. Her bones sounded as if they were a door creaking open in a horror movie. Her eyes, once mystical pools of ancient knowledge and wisdom, now looked like they belonged to a fox who’d been emotionally mugged.
"No! Your parents are back, bother them instead! I’m sure Mister Primordial will find a way without me," she growled, but her voice, instead of sounding hostile, was that of a woman on her knees, pleading desperately. "I have nothing left to give. I have stared into the abyss, and it asked me to play house." She twitched. "I was the flower girl. For two days straight!"
Rosie leaned her head on Yoruha’s leg, rubbing her cheeks into the cloth. "Rosie knows Auntie loved every second of it..."
"Hah?" Yoruha snapped. "The dolls all had names. You named one of them Quinlan. He kept falling over. I laughed. You cried. Then made me apologize to him."
"... Hehe!"
"I did. I apologized to a doll," Yoruha muttered to herself, rubbing her temples.
Rosie’s eyes began to shimmer with extra tears, seeing that an extra push was needed this time around. Her lip wobbled harder.
Yoruha groaned with all nine tails of hers twitching violently. "No! No, don’t you do that. I know that face. I’m not falling for it this time."
"Rosie’s scared..." the tiny girl sobbed into the fox’s thigh that the dryad girl refused to let go of. "If Rosie’s parents go to the party and the bad guys see Mommy Ayame or Mommy Lucille or even Papa without good disguises, they might get hurt... and Rosie can’t protect everyone as she is locked to her tree for now..."
Yoruha closed her eyes. A long, slow inhale. Then came a shaky exhale, the sound of a woman who had finally lost the will to fight.
"This is emotional terrorism."
Rosie looked up at her with the purest, most innocent smile in the universe.
"Pretty please?"
"Ugh... Fine..." Yoruha muttered like someone surrendering to divine punishment. "I’ll do it. But if anyone but Celeste disturbs me..."
She turned, dragging herself toward her lab she’d set up in the Elysiar family’s home like a war veteran returning to the frontlines. Her tails trailed behind her like wilted flower petals. Ꞧᴀ₦ổBË𝙎
As she disappeared into her sanctum, Rosie gave a bright smile to her mothers and decreed triumphantly, "Mission complete! Will Daddy praise Rosie? She wonders."
...
By the time the week was over and it was time to depart for the king’s 1000th birthday, the courtyard was buzzing with arrivals.
The last to walk in was Jasmine.
She arrived with a strut of someone who was on a warpath; hips swaying with a great deal of confidence that was a new air for the woman to have, and golden jewelry catching the sunlight with every step of hers. Jasmine’s presence screamed danger and luxury in equal measure.
"I’ve never felt more alive!" she decreed as soon as she stepped out of Quinlan’s portal. A giant, satisfied grin adorned her lips.
Behind her trailed the rest of her contingent.
Lyra arrived looking like she hadn’t slept the whole week. Behind her, Shallan, the Tempest Empress, was muttering under her breath, face completely blank from exhaustion. Even Liora, who never looked anything less than celestial, had her staff slung sideways as if she’d been dragged across realms.
"Why do your companions look as if they were undead, my love?" Quinlan inquired of Jasmine with a wry smile.
"Hmm? I have no idea whatever you could mean, husband~"
Turns out, Jasmine’s week-long escapade into the capital had come with a price, and the others were the ones paying it. She’d used her experience, her resources, and her class’s loopholes to do her bidding... which included ’utilizing’ her bodyguards for nearly every deal, transaction, and auction she raced through over the week.
And that wasn’t all.