Jake was taken aback by the Queen’s intense stare, but even more so by how she addressed him."Sire?" Jake asked with confusion.No, wait—she had just been born, right? How did she even know how to talk? Why did she look like a fully mature woman? Why did she also give him the vibes of a fully grown adult with some innate sense of manners?"Is that not what you are?" the Hive Queen asked as she moved her limbs, stretching as if asleep for a long time. "Through your power, I was allowed to awaken and become who I am now. Given that you are the reason for my current existence, is it an inaccurate assessment to refer to you as my sire?"Jake was about to answer, but he kept his mouth closed. "It is just that the word comes with some implications I am not sure are entirely on point."He tried to keep his eyes locked on hers to not stare too much, and she seemed to notice."Excuse my indecency; I failed to consider your cultural norms," the Queen said as a yellow silken dress was summoned

"The human and Hive Queen walked out of the mansion and onto the grass lawn outside. Vesperia spoke as they walked, explaining some more things."The Hive Queen form is designed to appeal to as many of the higher-tier races in the multiverse as possible in order to optimize our ability to find mates, and like other monsters, we do possess the polymorph skill to further alter ourselves. The lower the level of a Hive Queen variant, the less humanoid its default form tends to become, which is why the Isoptera Hive Queen you encountered was not fully capable of creating a human form quite yet. However, there is one issue with this approach: The human form is far from ideal when it comes to combat.”She looked at Jake for a brief moment before further clarifying, "From the perspective of a creature classified as a monster, that is. We cannot wear equipment, we cannot truly use any weapons—though some specialized tools do exist—and we have limited skills when it comes to making use of the a

Jake, by now, realized… he had fucked up. At least, he felt like he had fucked up. But upon looking at Vesperia sitting beside him, calmly drinking her tea while Villy explained things, he couldn’t say he regretted what he had done. Despite only meeting that day, he liked Vesperia. Who couldn’t like someone with a damn stinger gun?"This is… kind of bad, isn’t it?" he finally asked, making Vesperia look at him in confusion."Why would it be bad that you managed to sire a True Royal? The Endless Empire—no, any faction—would welcome you with open arms, and no one will dare attempt to kill you for fear of the Malefic One choosing to strike back. That is not even mentioning the many other factions who will also desire your protection and growth.”"Yeah… the thing is, I am not really public with this entire Chosen of the Malefic Viper thing," Jake said, scratching his head.Vesperia looked at him weirdly for a few seconds. "I… don’t understand?""Jake here is weird; we agree on that, right

"Is he…?" the plump old alchemist asked as he looked at the screen."Yep," Vilastromoz confirmed."This scene is a bit odd, isn’t it?""Not gonna question it.” The snake god shrugged, not seeing anything wrong with the admittedly weird-looking scene.They were naturally watching Jake give Vesperia head pats, the prideful True Royal sitting perfectly still but, based on the antennas shaking slightly, clearly enjoying it. If any outsider saw this, it would look like a younger man patting the head of an older woman, which one might even find indecent."You know what Jake and I talked about?" Vilastromoz asked his disciple. "About him coming out as Chosen?""Yes, and I also know what you are going to argue." Duskleaf shook his head. "Him revealing it purposefully does not mean you win our bet on when he would leak it on a technicality.""Well, he can’t leak it if he openly reveals it, now, can he? Something already well-known can’t be leaked, can it? Or did the definition of the word leak

Bringing Irin along for Jake’s shopping trip was definitely the best decision he could have made, as there was no fucking way he would have found all the good stores she knew about on such short notice. She gladly pointed out all the shit ones that overcharged customers, had untalented hacks working there, or had just recently had a change of ownership and were still untested.Jake had never really considered it, but items could still be kinda shit even if they had a high rarity. Jake had not run into it yet due to all his gear usually being system rewards or crafted by talents, but sometimes items just didn’t live up to their rarity. For example, Jake saw a pair of leg armor with an epic rarity, good stats, and an overall nice look, but Irin pointed out that the string used to sew together the seams was of extremely low quality. The rest of the materials were good, and the item would work as advertised… until after a few battles, when the threads would simply give out. With its lack