The small owl perched upon the gnarled oak branch rustled its feathers before launching itself into the crisp morning air.

Midway through its descent, the beast’s miniature silhouette expanded exponentially, the soft down giving way to heavy military fabric and the hardened musculature of a seasoned commander.

By the time his boots hit the gravel directly in front of his loud-mouthed granddaughter and her rebellious brother, Roric Vale had fully shifted back into his human form.

"Look at this! Is this exactly what you have been teaching your little sister?" he barked, his voice booming across the quiet alcove like a localized thunderclap.

Ayla and Kenji froze, their wide eyes locking onto the old General. Neither of them had sensed their grandfather’s presence within their passive detection ranges before this exact millisecond.

Had he been hovering over them, eavesdropping on their entire exchange until now?

A sudden, identical realization flashed within both of their minds, causing them to turn their heads and stare straight into each other’s eyes with the exact same expression of subtle alarm.

’Did he see us kissing?’

Kenji was internally panicking, his strategic mind frantically scrambling to calculate the fallout of his grandfather discovering the distinctly un-sibling-like nature of their morning routine.

Ayla, on the other hand, merely found the entire development to be an immense nuisance. Her clinical processors began to evaluate the potential variables of human behavioral replication.

She wondered briefly if her grandfather, upon being exposed to their kiss, would become influenced by the behavior and demand the exact same physical exchange from her.

Ayla absolutely did not want to kiss her grandpa.

In a completely different timeline, Roric Vale had indeed witnessed his grandchildren kissing.

He had been fuming with absolute rage, his blood pressure spiking as he prepared to aggressively confront them, only for Amanda to interrupt the scene and subsequently get slaughtered by Ayla.

The old General had been left in a momentary daze, watching the utter emotionlessness with which his grandchildren executed a cold-blooded murder.

That too, of a fellow human soldier.

Then, to his absolute horror, Ayla had turned her razor-sharp tentacles on Kenji, who had practically smiled as his brain was exploded.

But the poor old man had not even received the luxury of experiencing a stroke, because their shared hidden trait, Death Looper, had immediately overridden the system laws, rejecting the timeline and regressing reality back to the exact moment before Roric had even reached the tree branch to spy.

In this current iteration of the timeline, Roric only felt a vague, phantom pressure lingering within his consciousness.

He knew, with the deep instinct of a high-ranked Crusader, that something incredibly wrong had just occurred within his immediate vicinity.

Yet, no matter how hard he probed his mental archives, he could not pinpoint the variable. It felt precisely as though he had forgotten a vivid memory that simply did not exist.

He dismissed the sensation as a ridiculous, irrational thought brought on by frontline exhaustion.

This was what Ayla extracted as she heard his mental thoughts.

She subtly rolled her eyes, her heart experiencing a wave of mechanical relief upon confirming that her grandfather had absolutely no recollection of the kissing incident.

He would not be influenced by their kiss then.

If Roric Vale, the legendary Diamond-ranked Crusader who had survived hundreds of war campaigns, could hear the current trajectory of his granddaughter’s thoughts, the probability of him suffering a fatal stroke would instantly reach a perfect one hundred percent.

Roric bent down, his massive, scarred hand reaching out to aggressively pinch the top of Kenji’s ear.

"Look at how you have led her astray," the General growled, twisting his wrist slightly.

"What if anyone else within the squads had heard the garbage she just spewed? Playing as an Ender? Have you lost your absolute mind?"

"Aw... Grandpa, what the hell! Let go!" Kenji squirmed in genuine pain, his dark vanguard armor clinking against the stone bench as he tried to pull away from the old man’s iron grip.

"Do you honestly believe I am the one who taught her to say that? Ayla, tell him the truth!"

Ayla nodded her silver head with absolute seriousness, her expression a portrait of pristine innocence.

"Yes, Grandpa. Brother did not teach me that. It is entirely my own independent conclusion. I simply find it fun to play as an Ender."

"Wha—fun?" Roric almost coughed up blood on the spot.

Every single harsh reprimand and military lecture he had prepared to unleash instantly vanished from his tongue the moment his eyes locked onto her large, unblinking golden gaze.

Her face looked so remarkably pure, completely devoid of any malice.

’How incredibly cute she is, trying so hard to protect her idiot brother from my anger!’

Roric’s inner monologue bloomed with a sudden, overwhelming wave of grandpaternal affection, though his physical grip on Kenji’s ear twisted even tighter.

’While look at this ungrateful brat. Instantly dumping all the blame onto his fragile little sister the moment things get difficult. Hmph. Disgraceful.’

Ayla remained perfectly silent after mapping her grandfather’s internal monologue. She saw no logical reason to correct his warped perception of reality.

It was not as though Kenji would suffer permanent damage from a simple ear pinch. Even if his head were to completely detach from his shoulders, he would simply regress the timeline back the way she wanted anyway.

And so, poor Kenji was left to suffer a painful punishment for a reason he had no role in.

Ten minutes later, the atmosphere within the alcove had shifted entirely.

Kenji and Ayla were sitting side by side on the cold stone bench, with Roric positioned comfortably right in the middle of them.

The old General’s eyes were half-closed, a deep, rumbling purr of satisfaction vibrating in his chest as he thoroughly enjoyed a coordinated shoulder massage from his two grandchildren.

Roric absolutely loved this level of domestic devotion.

As Ayla’s small hands rhythmically kneaded the dense, rock-hard muscle of his left shoulder, Roric’s mind began to drift into bizarre, long-term legacy planning.

’When this campaign concludes, I am going to order Damien to immediately sire a few more grandchildren,’ the old man’s thoughts spun, entirely transparent to Ayla.

’If his bloodline is too weak to produce results, I will simply command Sarah to get pregnant by someone else from the high houses. Yes. Two more daughters and two more sons are exactly what this family needs. Two grandchildren assigned to my left shoulder, two for the right, and the remaining two can take care of my legs after a long march.’

Ayla continued her rhythmic kneading, but her internal thoughts were currently on the verge of a catastrophic breakdown due to pure confusion.

Why was her grandfather casually planning to force her human mother to commit marital infidelity for the sake of grandchildren?

Human family kinks were sure chaotic.

Furthermore, her tiny hands were already itching with a biological urge to simply wrap around the old man’s windpipe and strangle him into silence.

However, her combat simulators immediately informed her that such an action was mathematically impossible at her current output.

The physical density of the old man’s vessel was terrifying.

As an experiment, Ayla subtly tried to guide a microscopic thread of her Blood Net trait through the pores of his skin, attempting to interface with his circulatory system.

The crimson mana failed to even penetrate his outermost dermal layer, instantly dissolving against the passive, ambient aura of his Diamond-ranked defense.

The structural difference between a baseline Bronze-ranked Crusader and a Diamond-ranked Crusader spanned three massive ranks, after all.

This stark realization of her own current limitations only amplified her clinical interest in entering the Spire Event.

Her eyes narrowed into a rare scowl as she looked down at the gravel.

She had already wasted multiple days without an increase in her strength.

She was now almost two weeks old.

Two entire weeks had passed since her birth in the dark tunnel, and she was still merely a Bronze-ranked Crusader.

Ayla creased her brows in genuine distaste, her hands slowing down on the General’s shoulder.

’I have become lazy,’ she thought bitterly, logging her slow evolution as an unacceptable failure.

Luckily for the sanity of the human race, no one else in the courtyard possessed the capacity to hear her thoughts.

If any of the hard-working soldiers or the elite officers passing by the alcove could hear her internal complaints, God only knew what kind of psychological despair would shatter their minds.

’Lady, you are a literal fourteen-day-old infant and you have already forcefully broken through the Bronze threshold, achieving a legendary Celestial Vessel. Meanwhile, the rest of the species has to bleed, lose limbs, and watch their comrades die for consecutive years just to achieve the exact same rank.’

The heavens truly did not possess a fair distribution system.