Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 169: Worthy

Arzhen didn’t know what possessed him.

He had watched the entire scene from his table, his lunch forgotten. He had seen Cecilia’s apocalyptic entrance, the hurricane of her hair, the raw tracks of tears on her cheeks, a sight so alien it short-circuited his understanding.

He had seen the slap, the violent, shocking punctuation to her distress.

Cecilia never cried.

Not when he’d dismissed her with practiced cruelty. Not when he’d turned his back, leaving her in corridors thick with scorn. Not when the gossip had painted her as a desperate, pathetic stalker, a failed copy. Not ever. Her composure had been a fortress, impenetrable. Not even for him.

But today, that fortress lay in smoking ruins.

He saw Cecilia, the constant, the fixture, the quiet, brilliant girl whose emotional landscape he’d assumed was as flat and manageable as a painted backdrop, reduced to a public, sobbing wreck.

And the catalyst was this pale, silent ghost of a transfer student. He heard the stranger roar her name with a possession, a desperation, an intimacy that felt like theft. It clawed at something deep in Arzhen’s chest.

Cecilia who never cried.

A stranger he knew nothing about.

His body moved on a mandate older than thought. Blood boiled, surged, a geyser of pure, unprocessed outrage. By the time conscious thought reasserted itself, he was already standing over the stunned white-haired boy, the words already out of his mouth, hot with a fury he had no right to claim.

"What... did you do to make her cry?"

Why?

Why was the sight of her shattered composure so viscerally unacceptable? Why did his lungs feel like a vacuum, like all the air had been stolen along with her dignity?

He never should’ve cared. This wasn’t Ruby, whose tears were delicate pearls he would go miles to soothe. This was Cecilia. The substitute. The placeholder. The woman he had never wanted. The fake who would never be the true Sai—

What?

The thought aborted, a corrupted file trying to load. A glitch. A name that wasn’t a name, a concept that slipped through the cracks of his understanding like smoke.

He didn’t get to dissect the error. The man in front of him moved.

It wasn’t fast. There was no blur, no explosive launch. Oathran simply turned his head fully towards Arzhen, his grey eyes no longer frantic.

"Did you just," Oathran asked, his voice a soft, almost curious rasp, "touch me where she just did?"

Then, everything went white.

Not metaphorical white. A physical, concussive blankness that erased sight and sound. Arzhen’s ears filled with a high, thin ringing, and the universe seemed to blink.

He came back to awareness still standing. The gasps of the crowd were muffled, distant. Before his brain could process the disconnect, standing, but why does my face feel strange?, the white returned.

This time, it came with a sickening, wet crunch from the center of his face. His nose. The pain delayed but his skull registered the impact first, the vibration shivering through his teeth.

His eyes fluttered open. Oathran was there, closer now. He had a gentle, almost polite grasp on Arzhen’s uniform collar. The contact was steadying, strangely courteous.

Then, white.

Again.

He was horizontal. Floating. The grip on his collar was the only anchor point, the only reason he wasn’t already a heap on the ground. Oathran held him up with ease, like a man dangling a sack.

White.

A jolt to his snapped neck. The breath left him in a soundless rush.

White.

A hammer-blow to his jaw. His vision swam with static.

Again.

Again.

He lost count. There was no rhythm, no telegraph. He never saw a fist, never caught a glimpse of winding up. His eyes, when they were briefly functional, only registered the tranquil, almost scholarly calm on Oathran’s face in the microseconds between impacts.

The unhurried adjustment of his footing. The slight tilt of his head. The terrifying gentleness of the hand grasping his collar that kept him from falling.

Somewhere around the thirtieth strike, a number his addled brain plucked from the void, a new figure entered the blurry periphery. Headmaster Lazuardi, his usually impassive face etched with alarm.

He moved between them, hands coming up, his mouth shaping words Arzhen couldn’t hear as he pulled Oathran back.

The gentle grip on his collar vanished.

Arzhen had time for one final, clear thought. I’m going to hit the floor.

And he did.

The impact was a dull thud. It drove the last of the air from his lungs.

Finally, blessedly, everything resolved into a solid black.

"Oathran!"

Lazuardi’s voice cut through the ringing silence, sharp with authority and burgeoning panic. He moved between the crumpled form of Arzhen and the unnervingly placid young man, his hand coming up to grasp Oathran’s arm.

The moment his fingers made contact, a jolt of instinctive terror shot up Lazuardi’s spine. Different from magic. It was something deeper, older. The primal fear of a smaller creature brushing against a predator it had mistaken for stone. His grip loosened instantly.

"What... are you doing?" he breathed, the question barely a whisper.

Oathran turned his gaze from the ruined boy at his feet to the Headmaster. His grey eyes were calm misty lakes, reflecting no fury, no passion.

The silence that followed his look was an absence of sound, active, oppressively seizing the hall. Hundreds of students watched, but after the initial, shocked gasp at the first strike, no one dared make another sound.

To draw attention was to invite the same unseen violence. They held their breath in fear.

"Do you take care of it," Oathran asked, measured, calm, "or I take care of it?" He gestured minimally towards Arzhen’s motionless form. "I still have five days."

Five days. His mind scrambled. This boy, this carefully placed, terminally special guest his senior Baswara had entrusted to him for his final days, was supposed to be a quiet, fading soul.

Not this.

Not a creature who could reduce the Tiger Prince to pulp with detached brutality and then discuss cleanup with the headmaster.

Lazuardi’s knees felt watery, the bone-deep urge to kneel warring violently with his position, his pride. To this boy? This condemned sacrifice?

Oathran understood the disconnect. He knew he was just a ’special human’ here, not the Dragon Lord. But the core of him, the authority, the weariness, the centuries of command, could not be fully muted.

It bled through in his posture, in his eyes, in the utter lack of doubt in his voice. "Lazuardi," he said, commanded that brooked no title, no deference. "Do as I say." 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The response was automatic, a muscle spasm of ingrained obedience from a deeper part of Lazuardi’s being he didn’t recognize. "Yes—"

He bit his own tongue, hard, the coppery taste of blood mixing with his shock. What was that? Why did his very soul feel compelled to answer?

Oathran didn’t wait for further coherence. He turned, his purpose singular. Cecilia. He had to find her. He had to explain.

"Hey, Oathran Alic—"

Lazuardi’s voice, attempting to reclaim some shred of control, stopped him.

The white-haired young man turned back. Not fully. Just a quarter-turn of his head, a slicing glance over his shoulder. It was devoid of anger. It was a look of dismissive disdain that felt like a slap.

"Who are you to call me that?" The question was frost. "Know your place, skyborn."

Skyborn. The title, an ancient, almost mythical term for their kind, landed like a verdict. Lazuardi’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged. His throat locked. The entire room seemed to freeze under the weight of that single, archaic word.

Oathran didn’t linger. He resumed his walk towards the doors. The crowd did less than a part, more of a recoil, stumbling back as if his mere proximity was a physical threat, creating a wide, terrified aisle for him.

As he passed the threshold and disappeared from view, the immense, suffocating pressure in the hall lifted like a dense block being removed.

The release was violent. Dozens of students collapsed where they stood, falling to their knees, trembling uncontrollably. Others clutched at table edges, their legs unable to support them.

The sound that returned wasn’t chatter, but a cacophony of ragged gasps, choked sobs, and the dry heaves of pure, animal fear.

But one figure did not collapse. One figure launched herself forward.

Angela landed in front of Oathran in the sunlit corridor beyond, skidding to a halt. Her entire body trembled violently, a leaf in a hurricane, but she planted her feet and raised her chin. Her voice, when it came, was a fractured thing. "Wait. No. D-don’t hurt... don’t hurt my best fr—"

"I love her."

Oathran said.

The words stopped her mid-plea.

It was gentle.

Oathran looked at her, this shaking, defiant girl. "Tell me where she might be."

Angela stared. The ’I love her’ should have been a comfort. From anyone else, it might have been. From him, it sounded like a sentence. She wanted to be stubborn. To be the wall between her friend and this... this force of nature. She gathered the dregs of her courage, ready to refuse.

But then she met his eyes again. That calm, gentle strength. The absolute certainty. Apparently, this was not a request. It was the only rational path forward, and he was merely informing her of it.

Her shoulders slumped. The fight drained out of her, replaced by a desperate, protective pragmatism. "B-but..." she stammered, a last condition, a final bargaining chip for Cecilia’s safety. "You can’t speak to her alone. I must be there."

Oathran considered her. This trembling human girl. In this world, he was human too. But he saw the steel in her spine, the ferocity in her eyes beneath the fear. She was brave. She was Cecilia’s chosen shield. His Cecilia’s closest friend.

Worthy.

He inclined his head, a minute, regal nod of concession. "Please," he said, the word polite, almost courtly, but the command beneath it unchanged. "Lead me to her, my lady."