Chapter 122: Distress

The exact same brand and the exact same words...

Shani couldn’t help but feel Jeryon was deliberately paying her back, especially when his usually calm face gradually broke into a playful smile.

Shani, who initially felt hesitant to accept such an expensive gift, quickly buried those thoughts deep down.

She was terrified that if she refused, Jeryon would use it as ammunition to reject any gifts she gave him in the future.

Shani opened the velvet box. Inside rested a single, sleek platinum bar necklace against the dark velvet.

It was clean and understated. A polished strip of white metal with a tiny, dark sapphire inset near the base. What caught her eye was the subtle, precision-engineered notch along its edge.

At the same time, Jeryon reached under his collar and pulled out a sleek platinum chain from beneath his shirt, revealing a bar pendant nearly identical to hers.

The only difference lay along its edge, Jeryon’s featured a raised, perfectly sculpted tab.

Without having to ask, Shani realized they were a matching set, couple pendants designed to interlock perfectly when brought together.

"Thank you, Jer," Shani said at last, not daring to voice a single objection.

"I’m glad you like it," Jeryon replied, leaving his necklace displayed openly against his blazer.

Shani could sense that Jeryon was in a remarkably good mood. ’Is he really this happy about getting even with me?’ she mused.

Shani glanced down at the rose gold watches adorning her wrist and his, and now this matching couple’s necklace on top of it...

She shook her head briskly, refusing to let her mind wander into dangerous territory.

...

Over the following days, Shani’s routine settled into a steady rhythm. An hour of essence control practice at six in the morning, followed by her regular classes.

During her afternoon breaks, she studied the essence pistol Elias had entrusted to her.

Once her afternoon classes wrapped up, she grabbed a quick dinner before heading straight to the apartment to continue her resonance sessions with Aster.

Since she had to be up at the crack of dawn for morning training, Shani headed back to the dorm after four hours of resonance, arriving in her room around eleven at night.

Nyx’s ears twitched. With sleepy, watery eyes that made it obvious it had just woken up, the little panther surveyed the dark room.

It immediately spotted its mother taking off her jacket, still wearing the suit glove she used for essence control practice.

The furball leaped down from its bed, nuzzled against Shani’s calf, and began complaining. "Mother! Bedtime is at ten at the latest! Why are you only coming home at eleven?"

Shani switched on the lights to get a proper look at her indignant little panther’s face.

"Since when can you read the clock, baby?" Shani scooped Nyx up, nuzzling her cheek against its soft fur.

"Father told me to go to sleep before ten while pointing at that blinking box thing!" Nyx gestured with its chin toward the square digital clock sitting on the nightstand.

"And after I fell asleep, I woke up again because Father was making too much noise tossing and turning in his bed! When I complained, he just ignored me and kept wondering out loud if Mother was asleep yet at eleven o’clock..."

Hearing Nyx expose Jeryon’s private life once again, Shani could only giggle uncontrollably.

She couldn’t begin to imagine Jeryon’s reaction if he ever found out Nyx was tattling on his late-night antics directly to her.

"Mother, if you’re tired, you need to rest! You’re the one who forbade me from running on my wheel because you didn’t want me to overexert myself!" Nyx babbled indignantly.

"You’re worrying about Mother, aren’t you? What a good baby!" Shani hugged Nyx tightly and showered its face with kisses, ignoring the little furball’s energetic protests.

"Mother, let go! Let go! Your furless face feels weird!"

Shani reflexively let Nyx go, bursting into laughter at the baby beast’s hilarious complaint.

"Mother, don’t laugh! Hurry up and rest! Otherwise, you’ll get sick and have to live inside that weird pod, and then you won’t be able to see me!"

Despite the complaining tone, Shani could feel how deeply her little baby genuinely cared about her.

Through their bond, Nyx could instinctively sense that Shani was secretly pushing through an overwhelming, grueling schedule, even without her ever saying a word.

Shani planted one last kiss on the furball before heading into the bathroom to wash up.

Taking a heavy breath, Shani admitted to herself just how exhausted she truly was.

In the cab on the way back, her eyes had kept fighting to stay open, yet she had stubbornly forced herself to practice her essence control.

Her entire body ached from hours of sitting in class followed immediately by long resonance sessions.

Nyx could feel every bit of that fatigue through their connection, and it was clearly causing the little beast distress.

"Should I just buy a stamina booster potion from the system?" she pondered.

Thinking of the system brought back memories of the Bond-Break Pill she had received as a reward the previous week for giving Aster 100,000 Credits’ worth of gifts.

At the time, Shani hadn’t paid much attention to the reward, completely consumed by the sheer joy of receiving a two-million-Credit cashback.

Besides, as its name implied, the pill’s function was merely to temporarily sever the bond between a baby beast and its parents, an item she couldn’t imagine anyone ever needing.

Only now did she realize the pill was far more useful than she had initially thought.

Even now, she was worried seeing Nyx so distressed on her behalf. What if she or Jeryon ended up in a dire predicament down the line?

Shani couldn’t bear to imagine the psychological weight on Nyx, who would feel all of it through their bond.

Thinking back, she recalled hearing about cases involving frontline soldiers whose baby beasts refused to eat or move simply because they could sense their parents’ lives were in danger.

Baby beasts with weaker mental fortitude could fall into permanent unconsciousness, surviving only if placed inside a healing pod.

On this continent, no item or medicine existed with a function like the Bond-Break Pill. If someone could mass-produce it, perhaps those baby beasts wouldn’t have to endure such agony.

...

Shani stretched her tired body after a three-hour afternoon resonance session. The weekend was no day off for her.

Across from her, Aster headed toward the kitchen.

"I bought some seafood yesterday. I’ll make us some seafood noodle soup," Aster said, looking completely unbothered by fatigue.

Shani gave a tired nod and slid over to the long sofa to lie down. ’System, how is my egg progressing?’

[Baby Beast Progress: 55.7% (Egg Phase). Growth Speed: 1.5%/hour. Baby Beast Genes: Starlight Arctodus 35%, Night Panther 35%, Crimson Eagle 25%, Ash Sparrow 5%. Gene Regulation: Stable.]

Shani reflexively sat bolt upright upon hearing that one of the potential genes was Starlight Arctodus.

Arctodus wasn’t an unfamiliar term, not because many beastmen possessed the gene, but because one of the most famous fictional superhero characters was based on it.

’Wait, but that’s fiction! That gene isn’t real!’ Shani shouted internally before a flicker of doubt crossed her mind. ’Wait... the gene IS real, but it’s been extinct for ages!’

Shani opened her smartwatch to search for information on Arctodus, and sure enough, the profile for the fictional superhero popped up first.

The superhero’s official backstory stated that this gene was of a tier even higher than Emperor-grade, and that the superhero was the sole individual in lore to possess it.

’Jeryon is already the highest-ranked beastman on this continent, and now Aster turns out to have the same gene as a legendary superhero?!’

Shani wasn’t sure if this was the perk of possessing the System or if she was just ridiculously lucky to be surrounded by such extraordinary people.

Not lingering on the thought for too long, her mind shifted to what her second baby beast might look like if it inherited the Arctodus gene.

’Will it not be as cute as Nyx?’ As far as she knew, Arctodus resembled a bear, but infinitely more terrifying.

Shani searched for images of an Arctodus on the official government website, since most images online were stylized versions from superhero movies.

Her brows furrowed when she couldn’t find Arctodus anywhere on the official list of registered beast genes. She narrowed her search parameters, only for her eyes to widen in shock.

’Arctodus isn’t even listed as a registered beast gene?!’

Shani turned her gaze toward Aster, who was busy cooking in the kitchen. Aster had missed his beast gene test the previous Monday due to a sudden pop-up class.

Even if Aster had taken the test, he likely would have been categorized under a common-grade ursine gene, probably an Ironclaw Bear.

"Aster, you don’t need to get your beast gene tested until our egg hatches," Shani called out, raising her voice slightly to ensure he heard her.

Aster turned around, looking confused. "Why, Shan?"

"Just to keep it a surprise!" she replied with a reason that made zero logical sense.

Yet Aster simply smiled and nodded, accepting whatever reasoning Shani offered without a second thought.

...