"So, where did you find them?" Qingyue excitedly asked Minami after they sat down for their lunch, having spent a good hour playing around with the Heavenly Unicorns, their laughter still resonating in the warm air above the lake.
"They live in the valley nearby, and they come here every week to play in the lake," Minami informed them, her gentle voice carrying a hint of amusement as she answered their eager questions.
"I wish I could speak to them too," the grey-eyed Demiliore pouted, and Celine laughed at her daughter's playful antics.
"You will be able to talk to them one day," Minami replied with a warm smile, and all her sisters felt a surge of reassurance at her words.
They all envied her ability to converse with the Beasts and hear their stories. And since she could speak and connect with them, all these Magical Beasts felt an intimate bond with her.
"Eee!"
Suddenly, the little white cub, who had been scampering about with the two foxes, leapt into her lap and squeaked, and Minami furrowed her brows at its words.
"What's wrong?" Kiara asked curiously, and everyone stopped to turn her way, their chatter fading.
"Milo caught Zor perving on the ladies of the Nemeron Tribe. He is thinking about harming one of them."
As soon as her words fell, Qingyue shot an angry glare at Keith.
"I want him gone," she declared firmly, and nearly everyone at the table shared her sentiment. "Why do you even keep him?"
"He is a mad dog, who is there to do mad things that sane people would hesitate to do," Iseul said indifferently, a slight smile playing on her lips as the grey-eyed Eldeilyon narrowed her eyes at her words.
"And that's exactly why we shouldn't be keeping someone like that on our side. Such a person cannot be trusted. Even if you force them into slavery, they will still end up doing something outrageous one day that would harm their Master."
Qingyue's spirits lifted when Amelia took her side, and she gave her a grateful smile. However, Kiara's next words stiffened her expression.
"He will be better off as a living puppet. Just wire his mind the way you want him to act," Kiara said casually, and her grey-eyed sister sensed Rebecca's influence in her tone.
"Is that what Rebecca suggested?" she asked, and sure enough, received a nod that confirmed it.
"We don't really need Zor anyways," Kiara shrugged. "Just kill him off."
Hearing her words, Keith couldn't help his chuckles.
"What? It isn't like you trust him or want to keep him for long either. Had that been the case, you would have bestowed him a Bloodline as well. You haven't made him swear a Vow of Servitude either," she said, smiling at him, and he nodded at her words.
"He's an experiment," Keith told them, and they all turned to him with curious eyes.
"Experiment?" Celine raised her brow quizzically.
"Yes," he nodded. "He's an Esper with the Shape-shifting ability, which is quite handy. And he will soon fully unlock it. Once that happens, I will extract that ability and grant it to someone who can be trusted and is more obedient."
"What will you do to him after you extract that ability?" Qingyue asked, but the answer came from the far end of the table, where Venessa was quietly eating her meal, the faint clink of her fork against the plate barely audible.
"He won't survive the extraction. If you steal an Esper's ability, they die. It is the same for stealing certain Special Physiques. Even if it is a Blank Physique which has not been awakened yet, stealing it would kill the person," she said lightly.
The answer made Qingyue feel deeply unsettled in her heart.
Keith was basically raising Zor as a sheep meant to be slaughtered, and though the latter was a bad person, he still looked up to Keith as his Master.
"He trusts you," she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the table, but everyone heard her.
"Does he?" Keith smiled. "He chose to submit to me because he knew I could make him stronger. And he is already growing very agitated with me after seeing how much I have helped Iseul, Julian, and Naomi but have not helped him the same way. He no longer trusts me. And this is why he is subconsciously becoming more and more disobedient," Keith informed her. "Once a Slave becomes insincere to his Master, he loses his right to live."
The atmosphere at the table grew heavy after his words, the warmth of the meal overshadowed by the gravity of the discussion.
"But you have always viewed him as a sheep," she frowned.
"He has not given me a reason to view him differently."
Qingyue and Fiona were clearly no longer in the mood to eat. Amira and Reina were disturbed as well, and seeing their unease, a few others frowned.
Eventually, someone raised a curious question.
"What did you mean by it when you said that you wanted him gone?" Zoey asked curiously.
"I just wanted him gone," Qingyue whispered.
"Alive?" the chestnut-haired girl smiled.
"Yes."
"Even when he knows a lot about us?" she asked again, and Qingyue raised her head to meet her eyes.
"There are Vows of Silence."
"Minds can be read in this world."
"There are Mind Seals for that."
"Which can be bypassed," Helena, who had been quiet, pointed out, reminding everyone how Rebecca and Avriel managed to gather information about this world.
Qingyue fell silent after those words and lowered her head.
"He's a bad person anyway. If he is allowed to live and is sent away, he would harm people," Zoey said calmly. "You think that what Keith is doing is wrong, fine. I might even agree with you on that. However, I really believe that your decision would possibly cost more lives than his decision and also holds the risk that someone might learn about us and Aerzar."
"I don't care about Zor's life and death, and I understand that eliminating him is a logical move. But I just don't want Keith to do wrong things," she whispered, and everyone at the table either sighed aloud or in their hearts.
"He is not doing anything wrong, Yue. Zor is not a good person. And he is certainly not worth risking our information falling into the wrong hands," Kiara said, smiling at her sister. "Killing him is doing him a favour. Maybe he will be given a chance to be born again, and maybe next time, he will become a better person?" she teased.
"You should stop spending so much time with Rebecca," Qingyue rolled her eyes. "You can't justify the killing of people, even if they are bad, by thinking that you are doing them a favour. Killing them means that you are depriving them of their right to repentance. You never know when someone bad might turn into a better person and prove helpful to the people in need."
"And you never know when someone bad might turn into someone truly evil and end up harming innocent souls. Zor isn't someone who will repent. I can tell you that," the little Miss of the Demiliore Family said meaningfully. "Kill him, and you will save innocents from harm's way. Don't kill him, and you will risk a lot of innocent lives getting harmed at his hands." She then turned to Amelia. "When you agreed that he should be gone, did you mean to let him go alive?"
"No," the Inheritor of the Runic Monarch shook her head.
"See," Kiara giggled when she looked at her sister again, and Qingyue could only sigh after glancing around the table.
Even Fiona, Amira, and Reina seemed to be in a much better mood, having convinced themselves that it was the right thing to do.
It was indeed the right thing, but it was just the idea of playing God that bothered her.
"Do whatever you want with him. I just want him gone," she said, but was lost in her thoughts for the rest of the meal.
Keith too stayed silent, but once he finished his meal, he looked at his grey-eyed wife.
"He is going to be killed because he is insincere, not because I don't want him to harm innocent lives. He is going to be killed because I believe his Esper Powers can prove useful to us if they are in the hands of someone who can be trusted. I want him dead before he decides to do something that directly or indirectly harms us," he said to her and continued when she raised her head to meet his eyes. "My decision is solely based on costs and benefits. It isn't a matter of right or wrong to me. When you have the responsibility of a family or goals that need to be achieved, you can't afford to fall into the dilemma of right and wrong when it comes to making decisions. Your decisions must always be in the light of the costs and benefits that they entail."
Qingyue furrowed her brows and nodded to him before lowering her head again, the weight of his words settling like a heavy mist.
Keith smiled at seeing her lose herself to her thoughts again and stood up to plant a kiss on her head before turning to look at Amira and Reina.
"Let's go."
"Yay!" Reina excitedly got up on her feet, pulling her sister along, and the two followed Keith out of the Cabin, their footsteps echoing softly on the wooden floor.
"Can I join?" Someone suddenly jumped on his back, a small figure, perhaps eight or nine years old, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him like a koala.
Keith chuckled at her antics and kept walking.
"Of course."
"Thank you!" Helena happily said and then turned to look to the right, where a little figure was rushing towards them, trying to act a little sneaky.
"You can come too, Gigi," he said to her, and the little girl giggled before she rushed into the woods and grabbed Amira's hand, happily skipping as she looked around, the scent of pine and damp earth filling the air.
"Where are we going?" she asked cutely, and all of them smiled at her.
"We are just going to follow the stream that is ahead of us. Let's see where it leads," Reina said excitedly, and Keith had no issues with her plans, the gentle gurgle of the stream already audible in the distance.