"Oh, then sister why are you letting him get so close to you? he doesn't seem to be the loyal type or useful in any way, he seems like a kind person but he may be faking it.
Even if he isn't faking it such personality is of no use in our way.... and more importantly, it really looked like you fell for him, err.. you don't really like him… right sister?" Mia asked with some uncertainty in her tone.
"So what if I do like him? you have any problem with him," Ria said as she took out of the flower from her hair, placed it in front of her nose, and deeply inhaled its fragrance.
"No, that's not…. what I meant," Mia panicked a little after sensing the change in her tone.
Only after she confirmed that Ria didn't say anything else did she continued.
"I was just saying, he is, after all, a living being with consciousness, once he knows what we are up against then he will back off… even if he tries to fight for you sister it's only until he doesn't know what we have, once he does then he will desire it like any other person.
I don't blame him for that it's the basic nature of a person, if sister really likes him then we can take him after gaining enough strength," Mia carefully chose her words before speaking, after she finished she sensed something and looked at the back of her right hand, a tattoo of a silver snake had appeared on her hand all of a sudden.
At the same time when the tattoo appeared, Ria raised her hand and a similar tattoo of a golden snake appeared on her hand.
Ria didn't deny or agreed to her statement, she just focused on the tattoo like she hasn't listened to her at all.
The tattoo then turned into a golden stream of light and transformed into a long golden staff in her hand, the staff resembled a snake made of gold with two big fins around its head and a pair of sharp fangs coming out from its open mouth, the snake also had an opaque hexagonal crystal embedded on its head but more than half of the crystal starting from the center was emerald green in color.
Ria moved her hand and the golden staff started spinning on her hand at high speed, it looked like she had practiced the staff for a very long time, to her, the staff felt like it was an extension of her arm.
While swinging the staff with her right hand Ria again smelled the flower in her left hand then put it back in her hair.
"I take what I want, it doesn't matter if they have any use for me or not," She said then the staff disappeared from her hand again and she closed her eyes.
After a few seconds, her breathing became slow stating that she fell asleep.
Mia sighed, she was living with her sister since birth but even she couldn't predict her action, what she did know was her sister was good to her. Mia didn't bother her anymore, she placed the big bouquet on the side and started packing the luggage.
...….
On the other side…
After flying at full speed for quite a while Rex finally arrived at a place near the Zakiya's location but he didn't advance because the whole region in front of him was covered in the cold chilling black fog. The black fog was way denser than the one he had encountered before so he didn't dare advance any further.
'It's like all the black fog from before has now been collected to a single place,' Rex thought then landed in an open area near him.
Rex tried to probe the inside of the fog with his Spiritual-Sense but the fog easily blocked it, Spider-Sense was somewhat effective but it's range decreased by a lot, luckily he found out that Echolocation was much more durable here.
Echolocation was a simple ability that allowed him to send sound waves at a very high frequency and get the information about the target area after receiving the reflected waves.
When using Echolocation, Rex discovered that Zakiya was in the middle of the area covered by the black fog, he was twice as big compared to before but when Rex further analyzed the vague details brought by the interrupted waves he was shocked because at the moment Zakiya had long nine tails behind him which were covered in dense fur.
All those tails were floating around him like the tail of an eastern dragon, the big blood-red eyes shining like the red moon in the night sky added to his mighty presence.
When Rex was still shocked by the details he saw, Zakiya turned his head towards the moons in the sky and roared.
….Roooooaaaaarrrrrrrrr...
The deafening roar brought Rex back to reality.
'Not wolf but… Fox?' Rex thought.
He had heard the tales of Dragons and Hydra in the lower realm so he had naturally heard the tales of the legendary Nine-Tailed Fox too but he hasn't heard of a Nine-Tailed Fox with red eyes or the ones using black ice.
After the deafening roar, Zakiya's started to shrink in size, only after a few seconds his size became very small compared to before… he was just a little bigger than Aeneas in his Full-Beast Transformation form.
Furthermore, his shape was changing like he was going through a transformation. All his nine tails turned back to one then his body structure began to change, his front paws turned into hands, his back paws turned into legs and his wolf-like face started to develop human-like features.
Rex was excited, he noted down every detail he received from the waves and began to imagine what would Zakiya look like in humanoid form as he looked at the transforming beast.
'Go Zakiya Go, with his heavy voice he should be a big robust man, I wonder if he would have six-pack abs... Woah! he already transformed… thin hands? it's fine he may be the speed type… long legs and big thigh yeah that what I was talking about.. and long hairs too? good… bruu his waist is too thin and slender.. a macho man shouldn't have it, I will remind him to work on his waist later on, hmm… Huh? what is wrong with his chest why it is so inflate….Fuukkk…' Rex rechecked the details from the data several times.
After he confirmed that there was no error in the details, a big fuukk appeared in his head then it went blank.
Zakiya who had transformed into a humanoid woman form looked in Rex's direction like she could see through the dense fog, she then snapped her finger, and the fog which was still all this time started to rotate around her like a tornado.
When the black fog started to catch the speed and transform into a tornado, Rex was no longer able to use Echolocation to check the insides of the region anymore, and Rex snapped out of his daze.
'Zakiya is a…. female?' Rex repeated the line in his head several times to force the fact in his head and to make himself believe it.
[Well, it's not your fault with the voice she used no one could think she was a female]
'Such big betrayal? my little heart can't take it anymore,' Rex clenched his hand on his right chest, looking really hurt.
[If I remember correctly, the humans' heart is normally present more on the left side of the chest]
Rex quietly shifted his hand from the right chest to left.
'I was just absorbed in the pain, so I didn't notice… okay' (Rex)
[I believe you]
Rex nodded in satisfaction.
[I have to believe you]
'Go To Hell,' (Rex)
[With you]
"…" (Rex)
The black tornado enveloping Zakiya was big enough and strong enough to uproot the trees in miles and ravage the ground but fortunately just after the tornado formed it started to rapidly shrink in size like it was being sucked in by a black hole in its center.
When the tornado finally dissipated, Rex saw the figure of a woman standing in its place.
The dim moonlight of the night was enough for Rex to clearly see her appearance.
She had black and long hairs, she was tall, and her skin was snow white. Her facial features were solid and pretty. Altogether she had a mature and elegant yet alluring look.
As for her clothes, she was not wearing the clothes one would normally see in the lower realm. Instead, she was wearing a long black dress made of a silk-like cloth, the dress had see-through net style cloth at her waist area and fluffy black fur at her sleeve openings and the neckline, which displayed her hidden curvy and mature figure.
The woman also had a black metallic fan opened in front of her face, the fan hid half of her lower face only showing the pair of red ruby-like eyes, Rex wasn't curious about her lower face as he had already seen her rosy lips that were slightly curled upwards from the corners, it felt like she was waiting to see his reaction.
Rex blinked his eyes a few times then made a shocked expression.
"Damn it, Zakiya why didn't you tell me… was the trust between us only meant that much to you?" Rex said with a heartbroken expression.
Zakiya folded her black fan, spun it, then again unfolded it and slightly smiled, she seemed very satisfied with his reaction, when she was just going to reply Rex spoke again.
"Why? why didn't you tell me, did you think I won't accept you if I came to knew that you were a shemal.." Before he could complete his sentence Rex felt an unstoppable force on his chest and was thrown back.
"Still as shameless as ever…" Zakiya muttered in a sweet yet alluring voice.
Before Rex realized his situation he had already become the reason for the destruction of several trees.
'Telekinesis + Battle-Wings + Aerokinesis' (Rex)
Rex spared no efforts but was still only able to stop after traveling more than a hundred meters back.
[- 202 HP]
'Damn this bastard, he...no she has no mercy at all,' Rex stood from the pit below him then adjusted his clothes, he wasn't worried about Zakiya plotting against him because he had sensed that most of the force behind the attack wasn't focused on a single point but was scattered on his chest, meaning it was meant to throw him backward not to kill him.
But the attack was still strong enough to have taken 202 of his HP in one blow, this time Rex only used Regeneration to slowly heal his body to increase its level.
[Court Death(Lvl max)>>>Court Death(Lvl overmax)]
'I have noted this down, gonna pay you back someday,' (Rex)
Just after he stood up, the shadow of a tree near him fluctuated then a silhouette came out of it.
"Were you trying to kill me?" Rex looked at her in dissatisfaction.
"If you had died just by that then I would have never asked you to become my disciple," Zakiya said while still covering her lower face with the fan.
Rex just snorted at her.
"So did you think it through? are you willing to become my disciple now," Zakiya didn't mind his rude behavior and asked with a lightly expectant look.
"You are still going on about that, yeah you just reminded me of something… I encountered an idiot woman's inheritance and she forcibly tried to make me her disciple then..." Rex told her the whole story about Fairy Ren while omitting some details about subtypes of the cultivation technique and the pill.
He wasn't worried about Zakiya stealing his cultivation technique or already used pill, he just felt that it wasn't necessary to mention it.
"Hmm… let me have a look," Zakiya didn't say anything further and placed her hand on his forehead.
When she placed her hand on his forehead Rex noticed the lite black vine-like design diagonally tattooed on her fingernails.
'Even her fingernails have black design…. wait a second, what are the people in the higher realm exactly doing? did they stopped being cultivators and decided to open a women's parlor or something?' Rex thought.
Suddenly Rex felt his Sea Of Consciousness being infiltrated by a gentle but unstoppable force, he could sense the invasion but could do nothing about it.
"Found it…" Zakiya said in a low tone.
At the moment Rex got the same feeling he got when Fairy Ren placed the seal on him, but this time instead of the feeling of illusory chains enveloping his heart he felt those chains loosening then his heart getting released.
Zakiya then removed her hand from his head.
"It's alright now you are fine, there were two seals one for tracking and the other was illusion dream seal that would have put you into an eternal sleep if you had tried to sell or give the inheritance cultivation technique to someone else before mastering it to Perfection," Zakiya casually said.
Rex got chills running down his spine when he heard that, a while ago he was thinking of giving it to Jiang Shuang as the poor guy really helped him a lot these days but when thinking of the seals he decided to wait, after all giving it to him now or one-two months later won't make much difference… but now when he thought what could have happened if he had given it to him back then, he got goosebumps.