163. What is love?

“So, you cloned yourself and used an item to block off your status… and you’re the real one,” Gray clarified whilst pointing at the large wolf. “And you’re the fake one,” he added and pointed at ‘Fray’.

The two nodded at his words and he scowled.

“Why not the opposite?”

“In case of emergency,” Rakna replied with a grunt as countless eyes followed his every movement while on their way to the city hall. “I have a few tricks that can improve the authenticity of my act. What I want here is to give the illusion that I’m too powerful for anyone to mess with my supposed ‘student’ or ‘disciple’. Get it?”

“Uh uh,” the clown raised an eyebrow. “How long can your cloaked status last? And your puppet.”

“An hour and half an hour respectively. A bit more if I drink a potion before arriving there.”

Gray pondered on what he should do. It was a risky bet. If they were found out, a big-ass can of worms would fall in their hands. The Nine-Tailed Clan would start hounding Rakna for one of two reasons; the crime of posing as a Nine-Tailed Wolf or the irregularity of being a therian with actual Nine-Tailed Blood which could lead to the discovery of his race. Either way, it was a bad thing.

‘Should I let him do it…?’ He thought with a groan. ‘No, even before that…’ He turned toward Rakna and attempted a few scans on him and his clone. As anticipated, the scan was rejected. That meant they were good in that regard but…

“There’s one issue in your plan,” he finally said aloud and Rakna glanced at him. “Your aura. And even your mana and soul. All of these have personal imprints. Someone at Hybran’s level can easily tell that you and your puppet share the same.”

Rakna squinted his eyes. “I know,” he said and Gray was taken aback. “It’s not hard to do. Even I could tell if I was in his position. Even more so when I can compare people through smell.”

“So, what? Can you use your item to cover that up as well?”

“I could but…” The wolf droned and recalled the system window that had appeared the second he used a Joker Card of his Trickster’s Sleeve.

❮ ◈ ❯

1 STR, INT, and SPD were randomly taken as payment.

The Joker will hide the user’s and his puppet’s status for the next hour.

---

You have used the Joker. Your karma has been affected. Beware.

❮ ◈ ❯

Not even mentioning that this had cost him three attribute points; that last line had been was too ominous for his liking. After a use of Appraisal, he found out that karma was something that every living being possessed and essentially defined how one’s luck would manifest.

In other words, if he messed up too much with it… situations like the dark elf village would happen more and more and possibly with even worse collateral consequences.

Rakna almost grimaced at the thought. “I won’t use the item for this,” he said. “But I have another solution for it,” he declared and two of his tails abruptly moved and, with their impressive length, reached his head. He gathered mana at the tips and started tracing lines with cold energy. At the same time, he purposefully surrounded himself with the rest of his tails so that no one would see what he was doing.

The lines gradually began to form the shape of the Gemini. He had decided to test a new way to summon his constellations. He took inspiration from writing his runes and as he expected, tracing the constellation instead of placing several spheres was faster.

And when he was done, each corner of the line shone and became slightly bigger. Then, it vanished rapidly and the next thing Gray knew, Rakna had suddenly become a stranger to his senses. A new aura signature had suddenly replaced his original one.

“You…” The clown blinked. “You have an answer to everything or what? And here I was thinking I’d help you mask your aura...”

“However, even if I used a new version with more focal stars, this spell won’t last more than fifteen minutes,” Rakna said and pulled a mana potion from his storage. He used one of his tails to uncap it and then stuck it between his fangs before drinking it. “That’s the city hall, right?” He inquired whilst pointing at a large building to the front with his muzzle.

“Yeah,” Gray nodded and sighed. “All right. We’ll go with your plan. Don’t screw it up.”

“I’ll try,” Rakna snorted and glanced at Nyx who was silently walking beside his clone. “You don’t need to come if you don’t want to. There’s no point in putting you in the spotlight.”

“It’s fine,” she shook her head. “In fact, ever since I heard about the Basilica of Eternal Night, I’ve been wanting to meet one of their members. This is a good occasion.”

“In that case, let’s get to it. I only have fifteen minutes. Let’s make a dynamic entrance.”

“A dynamic what?” Gray mechanically retorted but before he could even finish, Rakna had already flash stepped to the city hall. He stood in the air with his tails spread out, making sure that people could see him clearly.

He inhaled and enfolded his throat with mana. If there was one thing that he had learned about magic during the last week or so was that even a small understanding of mana allowed countless applications.

That was exactly why he could do this; Rakna stamped on his Flash Step’s invisible platform and faced the sky before howling as loudly as he could. His mana vibrated together with his voice and amplified the sound. His howl was heard across the entire area around the city hall and numerous citizens stopped what they were doing to look at the source. Many vehicles stopped moving and several parked on the side of the road.

When he was finished howling, Rakna closed his mouth and sat still in the air as the surroundings became incredibly quiet for the middle of a bustling city like Black Steel.

Gray rubbed his temples while Nyx and Fray stood stupefied at the stunt. But it soon proved itself to be efficient as a group of people borderline flew out of the city hall. Amidst that group, there were two individuals that Rakna identified instantly; Angela from the Church and O’Gram from the Basilica.

But the one who caught his attention the most was the one who led them. He was a handsome middle-aged man with black hair that reached his shoulders and profoundly dark eyes. He wore a professional suit that failed to completely contain the bulging mass of muscles hidden under it.

Rakna used Flash Step coupled with Shadow Step to appear as swiftly as possible in front of him and his group. Almost all of them nearly stepped back from the sudden apparition and Rakna fully immersed himself in the role he was about to take before speaking up coldly and with a prevalent flair of superiority as if everything was below him.

“Hybran Blacksteel. You may refer to me as Obsidian. I am here to discuss my pupil.”

* * *

A few moments earlier. Somewhere in Old Eden, in the Fox Branch of the Nine-Tailed Clan, Kaelith was sitting on a porch that bordered an interior garden hundreds of meters wide.

Next to her was an older woman that most wouldn’t fall short of calling a goddess. Her beauty felt like a blessing to the living. Her aura of maturity and strength, conveyed by the nine tails that were of a vibrant shade of dark red, was simply too overwhelming for ordinary mortals.

Her appearance was a carbon copy of Kaelith save the obvious difference in age and her hair that was cut shorter. Their relationship was confirmed the moment the younger woman spoke.

“So, what do you think, mom?”

Kara Yahkshasa, the Matriarch of the Nine-Tailed Foxes and Kaelith’s mother. She chuckled softly at her daughter’s question and sipped on her tea before answering, “That is natural, Kae. But do not misunderstand. You feel jealous not because you fancy him, but because you are being a little possessive of what is probably your first genuine friend in over a decade.”

“That isn’t much better now, is it?” Kaelith snorted and fiddled with one of her tails on her lap.

Kara smiled gently. “Tell me… were you scared that you were enamored with that boy?”

“W-well, it would be uncouth and unbecoming of me to suddenly fall for a rude brat after only a week of knowing him!” She countered with a small blush.

“But would you be against the idea?” Her mother followed up with a knowing tone.

“…not really.”

Kara giggled. “Kae, hear me out. Strangers can sometimes feel a strong connection as if they had known each other for years. It is not shameful to feel happy around someone that you met just recently. But… even if I will not tell you to stay behind it, I have to teach you where the line stands.”

“The line?”

She nodded sagely. “What do you think falling in love means?”

Kaelith blinked. “What’s wrong so suddenly? That’s an odd question coming from you.”

“Just answer, dear.”

“I don’t know… How would I know?”

“You are right. We don’t know. And it is because we don’t know that it leads us astray,” Kara said with a melancholic smile. “Kae, would you fight for him?” She asked.

Kaelith’s eyes widened a bit. “I think I would…”

“Then… would you die for him?”

The younger vixen froze at the question. “I… I don’t know.”

“What about him? Would he die for you?”

Kaelith looked down for a brief moment and shook her head with a wry smile. “Wolfy… I don’t see him die for my sake. He’s not one to sacrifice himself.”

Kara laughed lightly. “I see… Then, you can keep your worries for now. As long as you don’t answer these questions positively, it is not a love that either I or your father would acknowledge.”

“If you say so,” Kaelith replied with a chuckle and leaned back until she was lying her back on her tails as if they were a luxurious cushion. She looked at the sky outside where three suns formed a triangle and grinned. “Then I guess I’ll just have to get to know him better and pressure him until he admits he would die for me,” she declared and her mother cackled.

“My Lady!!” A sudden shout startled the mother-daughter pair as a maid entered the room. She was quite a young four-tailed fox girl and the fact that she could enter the matriarch’s quarters this way showed how close she was to her.

“Nina?” Kara sent her a worried look. “What’s wrong?”

“You have to see this!” The young girl said and took out a small device. She placed it on a table of the room and a large high-definition screen was projected above it.

Kara and Kaelith instantly recognized the view of Black Steel’s city hall and for some reason, the cameraman was filming upward as if he was scared of catching what was below in the picture.

The two vixens were confused by that at first but when they saw the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen summarizing the situation, their expression became aghast.

“| Lord Obsidian, we need your spoken permission to film you. Your Lordship’s Clan is unyielding about this rule. Could you permit it? |” The voice of a nervous reporter sounded and was followed by a loud grunt.

“| I allow it. |” The voice was authoritative, prideful, and noble at the same time. Right after it stated its permission, the camera finally shifted down and the three foxes were met with the image of an ebony wolf with nine tails, looming over Hybran Blacksteel.

Kara frowned. “So, he is the cause of the Elders’ latest headache… Obsidian… that does not hint at any of the wolves’ divisions. But… those tails are not illusions and Hybran would definitely be able to discern an impostor. So, he is truly one of us… who could he be?”

Kaelith was silently watching the faceoff between the Nine-Tailed Wolf and the mayor of Black Steel when she saw a shocking scene. A certain therian with an albino snake around his neck went to the wolf's side along with Gray Whisles, the Clown Warlock, and a woman she didn’t recognize.

“Wolfy…?”

AhraManyu

"Baby don't hurt me... no more..."

I hate it that this is the first thing that I thought of when I wrote the title of this chapter. I hate it so much. I feel dirty as fuck.