Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 439: Lesser Goddess

"Hello, Mother? Huh? Elias? Why are you answering Mom’s phone?"

Eastiel wanted to sound casual, like a grown man trying very hard not to sound like he was feeling anything at all. He was failing. The back seat of the car suddenly felt very small, very warm, and very exposed.

A pause. His younger brother’s voice crackled through the speaker.

"Oh. Mother. Don’t... leave your phone in random places in the house..."

Another pause. Arkai’s hands were steady on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead indifferently. But he was clearly listening. Eastiel knew.

In the passenger seat, Oathran gazed out the window at the passing cityscape but he knew he was also absolutely listening—

Eastiel was calling home. The place he had left years ago to chase underwater welding and elemental enlightenment. He was a lion who needed to prove he could survive without his family’s billions, after all.

But home was a place he was supposed to be the first son. The heir, the responsible one, the pillar his younger sibling could lean on. Not this... ugh...

He shrank deeper into the leather seat, his lion ears pressed flat against his skull, and wondered if it was possible to die of awkwardness before they reached the facility.

"No, I don’t need money—ahem. No." Eastiel shifted awkwardly in his seat, his lion ears flattening against his skull. "I want to tell you that I am returning to the company."

The silence on the other end stretched. Then his mother’s voice, warm and surprised, mortifyingly delighted, filled the car’s interior through the speakerphone.

"T-training journ—W-why are you saying that, Mother?" Eastiel’s face was approaching the color of a ripe tomato.

Was he feeling so shy because he was talking to his mother? Or because he was talking to his mother in front of the two men whose respect he valued more than anyone else’s in the world?

"Well... yes, I want something—no, it is not a bet. It is a girl—sssssssssshhhhh!"

He shrank smaller and smaller into the back seat, as though the leather upholstery might swallow him whole. He could swear Arkai and Oathran had just glanced at each other. He didn’t know what kind of look that was.

"Anyway, I will tell you the details at the next Monday meeting. See you later."

...

...

...

The call ended and the car was quiet. From the back seat, Eastiel attempted to become one with the upholstery, his face still burning.

Until...

"It’s good that you still have a mother," Oathran said casually, as though he were remarking on the weather.

"H-huh?!"

"Yes." Arkai nodded, his eyes still fixed on the road. "Treat her better, Eastiel."

"D-don’t say that as if I don’t treat my mother well!" Eastiel’s blush deepened from tomato to something approaching solar flare.

As expected, they were teasing him. Of course they were teasing him!

"You shouldn’t call home for money."

"I NEVER DO THAT!"

"Remember, you are the elder brother."

"I AM, BUT WHY DID YOU ASSUME I AM A BAD EXAMPLE?"

The two men in the front seat were visibly struggling now, their shoulders shaking in suppressed laughter. They didn’t mean to tease him, but this guy was practically begging to be teased!

"Just see..." Eastiel’s voice dropped to a dangerous mutter. "I’m going to steal your wallets the moment you put them carelessly at the apartment and make you beg for me to give them back—"

Oathran’s and Arkai’s smiles vanished simultaneously. If this man said wallets, it could also mean everything else they carelessly left around the apartment and forgot to secure.

"Stop with your pranks, Eastiel. Ahem." Arkai cleared his throat.

"Yes. You can use my shampoo, alright?" Oathran said, barely above a whisper, the olive branch extended with the desperate hope that the golden menace in the back seat would accept it.

Eastiel glared at both of them with a narrow-eyed intensity. "Or I will tell Cecilia everything you two told me about he—"

"Yo, don’t breach the bro code—"

"I knew it. Those videos are blackmail material, huh?!"

"If you do that, I am not cooking one of your favorite foods at Thanksgiving!"

"DON’T FORCE MY HAND!"

***

Cecilia found out what a press conference meant.

In her real world, nobles and influential people didn’t particularly care what commoners said or thought, as long as it didn’t harm them. If they want to, they could also say what they wanted to say to the public by sending their words via letters or announcements.

The opinions of the masses were like the weather. They were occasionally inconvenient, rarely worth addressing directly.

But in this world, people needed to be told the "official story" directly to show sincerity.

They needed the performance of transparency, even if the transparency itself was carefully curated, elegantly controlled, and devoid of anything the powerful didn’t want them to know.

As we know, transparency could still be shaped by the people in charge. Press conferences were just a pretty way of saying, I will tell you what is your business and what is not.

Cecilia watched from the privacy of the government facility as Damon Iondora stood on a podium and delivered exactly what the crop of the top wanted people to understand.

Not necessarily what people needed to know, just the things they must.

Damon had been managing public relations crises for years and it was clear from his gait and voice.

First, he narrated what happened at the dam. The broken sluice gate, the welder team deployed to repair it before the contamination spread downstream, and the dormant rift that everyone had assumed was the only threat.

Then, he narrated the discovery. The structural failure that had turned out to be an active rift outbreak, hidden inside the concrete itself, was bleeding corruption directly into the dam’s foundation.

Like any other rift outbreak, the breach had started small. When the divers first discovered it, there was only a little bit of corruption leaking through the concrete.

Then it gradually ripped wider as the divers escaped to the surface, creating bigger and bigger cracks, weakening the dam structure by the minute.

By the time the backup team dived in to stabilize the site, the rift had reached four meters in diameter. And then it kept growing.

Of course, Damon didn’t outwardly tell the press who had been on the field.

He didn’t mention that one of the diver and backup team was Eastiel Edengold, eldest heir of the Nevaeh Group.

He also didn’t mention that the other backup was Arkai Dawnoro, owner of Aro Industry.

He didn’t tell them about the White Mist, the legendary S-Rank hunter who had burst through the rift to fight corrupted oceanic monsters in their own domain.

He didn’t tell them about the other hunters who were being summoned—he didn’t even tell them the dragons’ identities. Not Baswara, Serayu, Jenggala, and Lazuardi.

He just told them there were Welders A, B, and C. Specialists. Hunters A, B, and C. Anonymous heroes whose names did not matter.

Because all attention fell on the blonde-haired Goddess.

"To prevent misguided speculation and malicious rumors, we, the Hunter Association, have decided to confirm the identity of the blonde woman on the dam."

Damon paused, letting the weight of the moment settle over the packed conference room. Journalists leaned forward in their seats. Cameras zoomed in. The world, quite literally, was watching.

"Our beloved Saintess, Lilyca Celeste, has declared her as a Divine Deity comparable to the Divine White Dragon Lord’s lineage."

"Her name is Miss Cecilia Araceli." Damon’s violet eyes swept across the crowd. "Or, as our Saintess preferred to refer to her, Lesser Goddess Sees, which the world’s governments have agreed to also refer to her as."

The room erupted. Not loudly, but in the restrained way of journalists who had just been handed a headline beyond their wildest expectations.

Pens scratched against notepads. Phones were hastily angled toward the podium—

The man immediately raised his hand.

"Please wait a moment before we open the question session. We will first continue with the ground report regarding the disaster and our plan to address it."