“Alright! Fine! There is no rule that says a servant needs to tell his former master everything. You don’t want to tell me how you got that name? Sure, just don’t say a word.”
Arlo looked away from Mister Bat like he had really given up on knowing how he got that name.
Hearing his words, every single aura monster present in this location felt shocked.
“Holy shit, what did we hear?”
“Our top advisor was once a slave to this person?!”
“W-what shocking news!”
As his shameful past was revealed, Mister Bat’s eyes twitched.
He glared at Arlo.
“Argh! You did that on purpose, right?!!”
Arlo flashed him a smile, as if to confirm his guess.
To piss him off even further, Arlo added, “Yeah.”
“You bastard!!!” Mister Bat fumed.
Arlo, as if to taunt him even further, looked away from him.
Mister Bat felt this was his way of saying that he wasn’t worth his time.
‘This b-bastard has become more annoying than before.’
Mister Bat gritted his teeth and cursed Arlo in his mind.
‘Thank God, I left him when I had the chance. If I had stuck with him over the years, I would have been frustrated to death.’
Mister Bat thanked his lucky stars and flew up in order to sit on the shoulder of his new master.
Arlo looked at Ganesha with a friendly gaze.
“How about you tell me how he got that name.”
“He insisted every day for 14 years that I give him a new name, and after 14 years, I became fed up with hearing the same thing coming out of his mouth the first thing in the morning, so I changed his name.”
“Clearly, you were too uninterested in naming him, so you gave him such a silly name. I expected nothing less from you.”
Arlo and Ganesha were mentally communicating with each other.
Thus, no one overheard what they said.
“Retract your aura.” Ganesha turned to his people, eying them like merciful rulers.
“As you wish!”
All of the aura monsters pulled back the ferocious and suppressing aura they were subconsciously or consciously emitting, retracting it into themselves.
The tension in the air disappeared.
The maids eased up and breathed out a sigh of relief as they no longer felt pressured or repressed.
The way the beasts were looking at the group of humans also changed.
Instead of glaring at them like they were targets, they looked at them with either indifference or interest.
Seeing how their superiors were treating the bold and bald man, they understood that he was on an equal standing with them or above them.
The people around him must be equally special.
Some of them wondered who they were, while the others clearly didn’t have any intention of interacting with humans.
“What about you? What made you leave your palace?”
Arlo hadn’t expected to see Ganesha or his hunting dogs here, of all places.
He was surprised to see them on the outskirts of the icy, cold land.
It was a known fact that Ganesha liked to sleep his days away, and when he was awake, he would oversee his realm from his palace, never leaving the innermost area of the icy, cold land and making changes that would benefit his people until he fell asleep again.
So what was he and his strongest subordinates doing out here?
“Creatures of all types have escaped the swarms in large numbers; a portion of them migrated to my realm. Seeing that I had a place to harbour them and taking my ministers’ and advisors’ advice into consideration, I accepted them with open hands. I provided them with food and shelter.”
A flash of anger flickered in Ganesha’s large sunken eyes.
“Who would have thought several tribes would ignore my orders and hunt beasts and humans on the outskirts?”
“On top of that, they helped outsiders invade my realm and conspired with them to destroy its ecosystem. That’s why I have set out to kill all of them.”
Ganesha was trying to remain calm and collected but found it hard to. That’s what Arlo and his nephew could tell.
“This reason alone shouldn’t warrant the presence of the great Ganesha.”
It’s exactly as Arlo said; Ganesha didn’t need to make a move to annihilate the tribes of monsters that had invaded his realm. His subordinates were enough to do that.
“One tribe stole our lord’s cherished fruit!”
“We have been guarding it, tending to its every need, and waiting for it to bloom for more than a decade! And just a day before it was supposed to bloom, a damn bastard took advantage of the fact that we were busy sorting out the disobedient tribes, invaded our herb garden, and picked up and ran away with our cherished fruit!!”
“How can we or our lord sit still and not make a move personally to retrieve it?!!!”
Before Ganesha could say a word, the left and right ministers and Mister Bat spoke in turn, drowning Arlo in the spittle of their bottled-up anger.
Hearing their words was enough to make Ganesha’s motives clear to Arlo.
“To dare to steal from you, heh…” Arlo chuckled, “It must be quite a gusty beast.”
It might seem as if Arlo was mocking someone at this moment, but Ganesha knew it wasn’t him but the damn bastard who stole his fruit.
Arlo asked, “Who was it?”
Bat answered, “Based on the scent they left behind, I believe it’s a flesh ripper.”
Ganesha had been guarding the shape-shifting fruit, hoping to consume it once it ripened.
It’s a fruit that helps beasts at his level gain human form, and it was going to bloom in a day.
However, while their attention was elsewhere, a flesh ripper roughly pulled it out of the ground even though it was yet to bloom and flew away with it in its mouth.
They found out that their fruit had been stolen after a while.
This angered Ganesha so much that he mobilized his entire force and went out of his palace in search of the thief.