"What did you do to them?" I asked, sitting back down at the table while giving Dan a look.

His eyes went towards Ava who was busy pretending to be occupied with the cup of apple juice that she had ordered for herself.

"What did you do to them?" I asked again, this time directing my question to Avatasia instead.

She giggled and gave me a coquettish look, "Ufufufu~ I just did a little magic, my dear, that’s all~"

"And what kind of magic did you do?"

"Mmm... Did you know... Space isn’t really that empty? And I believe you have a saying here... Something like if you gaze into the abyss, it gazes back into you?"

I frowned, "You didn’t do anything permanent to them, right?"

"Ufufufu~ You need not worry my dear, I would not do anything like that without your expressed permission. After all, they are just some people who are just a little lost, isn’t that right, Miss Rachel?"

Oh no... You should not have asked her that...

Rachel sucked in a breath and I could see Dan grimacing and both Amanda and Joanne covering their ears and looking away.

"You went too easy on them. These people are just trash of society that don’t deserve to live. For them to even think about wanting to do what they did is already something that is enough to make them beneath redemption. If they aren’t punished severely, they would not learn anything. You should not have shown them mercy at all."

Ok... So... First of all... Don’t let Rachel’s usual temperament fool you... She’s actually way more ruthless than Dan or myself.

In our culture, she’s someone who we would call a tigress.

Mind you, it’s not the tigress mother parenting but just a tigress in the sense that she becomes really aggressive when she’s angry or pissed but otherwise, she’s as calm as a kitty.

And one of the things that could set her off is threats to her family which she is overly protective of and she does see me as part of her family so the fact that they tried to do that to us was enough to trigger her.

The other thing about her is that her awakened power is also related to her voice.

If I remember correctly, it’s something called Siren’s Song which allows her to use her voice to influence other people’s emotions and actions if she were to focus on it.

Unfortunately, if she was agitated and she speaks while in that state, she might also inadvertently activate her powers which might cause pain to the people who hear her voice.

As much as she wants to stop that, it seems like her powers are too strong for her to perfectly control so even now, she still has trouble stopping the power from activating when faced with instances like these.

Dan has his damage negation skill which allows him to mitigate the damage that her voice might cause and the Siren’s Song ability seem to be ineffective against the offspring of the ability holder unless they really concentrate on activating it.

But to Joanne and Amanda, it still sounds like an uncomfortable ringing in their ears if they were to hear her voice.

I have heard it once at full force before I awakened as a Mortal God and I can tell you it was not a good experience.

At that time, we had gone on an outing to let the two sisters play at a park and some guy had knocked over Joanne while walking through said park. And instead of feeling sorry, he felt annoyed and was planning to kick her while she was down.

We had not been close enough to stop him from doing so and Rachel let out a scream directed at the guy when she saw what he was about to do.

The feeling was similar to getting punched in the gut without any skills to mitigate that damage and I ended up doubling over despite not being the target of her skill.

The guy who she was targeting ended up keeling over and fainting on the spot with his eardrums ruptured and blood pouring out from his nose, mouth, ears and eyes.

Needless to say... The police were involved but thankfully, with the witnesses around and the fact that the guy was actually a wanted person for several public disturbance cases, there were no charges against Rachel.

She was quite apologetic about hurting me though and actually spent quite a bit of time fussing over me despite my assurances that I was alright.

Now, even though she was not actively using the skill, her emotional state was activating it slightly and I was experiencing her skill for the first time since I awakened as a Mortal God and...

Well... I felt nothing.

But I knew that it was definitely in effect because I noticed Ava wince a little before her body seemed to glow slightly to protect her.

Around us, there were a few others who were nearby and within earshot jumped slightly from experiencing the skill but they probably did not know what was the cause of it so I guess we were safe.

Rachel realised what she did and quickly covered her mouth with her hands as she fought to get her emotions back under control.

"Ah... I’m so sorry everyone! Is everyone alright?"

Avatasia tilted her head at her, "My, my~ I certainly was not expecting something like that? Is that your power?"

Rachel covered her face in embarrassment, "Ahh... Yes it is... I’m so sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"Mmm... It’s alright, more like it was a surprise than hurting~ Are you alright, my dear?"

Rachel immediately turned her attention to me, "Qing! Are you ok? Did I hurt you again?"

I waved my hand at her, "Not at all, you don’t need to worry, Rachel. I’ve actually grown stronger and I didn’t feel anything from that."

She frowned, "Qing... There’s no need to do that to make me feel better you know? I can own up to my own mistakes..."

I shook my head, "I’m not saying that to make you feel better. I’m just speaking the truth. It really did not hurt me at all. I’ve really grown stronger, Rachel."

Dan came to my rescue, "Don’t tell anyone else, but he awakened again so he really did become stronger. Why do you think they accepted him as a Guardian? If it was the normal Qing, he would have been too weak to be taken seriously."

Rachel scowled at him, completely forgetting about what she was apologetic about, "That’s not true. Even without that Qing is already really strong. Enough to be considered as a Guardian!"

Avatasia giggled, "Ufufufu~ I agree to that as well~ My dear really is strong~"

Dan chose not to argue and sipped on his tea instead, feigning defeat.

Amanda heard what Dan said however as she turned to me with sparkles in her eyes.

"Uncle Qing? You awakened again? What ability did you awaken?"

I scratched the back of my head, "Well... It’s a little complicated and hard to explain... I guess the gist of it is that I really did get stronger?"

"But Uncle Qing was already really strong before..." Joanne commented, tapping on the side of her cheek thoughtfully. "How much stronger did you get?"

"Strong enough to beat those thugs from earlier," I grinned at her.

The two sisters giggled at my words.

Thankfully that seemed to bring the atmosphere around the table back to normal as we started small talks around the table while waiting for the rest of our food to arrive.

We didn’t really talk about anything important, mostly just some gossip about current events though the family seemed careful not to bring up the Anomaly attack that happened just a few days ago.

Ava seemed quite interested in Dan’s and Rachel’s relationship, asking questions about how they would plan their dates with their children involved. To which they revealed another reason why the two girls were close to me as I would sometimes be asked to be their caretaker when the two of them wanted to have some private time for themselves.

I didn’t really mind of course, so I was happy to help them and sometimes my sister would join in too. Being in front of the two girls also made her behave so that was a bonus too.

On the other hand, they seemed very interested in Ava’s work relationship with me and asked her questions about her work and how I was doing in that work.

As for me... I was entertaining Amanda and Joanne who were asking me questions about my new awakened powers which they were trying to dig out of me and that I was feigning ignorance on.

At that point, the food arrived and our conversation was cut short in favour of eating the local dishes and savouring the food the locals had prepared for us.

I have to say... This is pretty good.