The three of them looked ashen-faced, their eyes vacant. Suspicious dark-red, muddy stains even smeared the corners of their mouths and their clothes. Their bodies twitched occasionally from discomfort!
What made her sense of humanity surge exponentially was that Anaxa, who had always been at odds with her, showed not the slightest concern or intention to help. Instead, he was acting like a madman in the image, dancing around and laughing hysterically!
While roaring with laughter, he was also frantically jabbing at his message slate, bombarding her with information!
Those incoherent texts, mixed with maniacal laughter symbols, continuously assaulted Aglaea's communication slate!
...
When Aglaea, practically dragging a Cyrene whose face was livid and who radiated an aura of low pressure, arrived at the pens at lightning speed,
The scene before their eyes was even more impactful than either had imagined.
The air was heavy with the smell of earth. Phainon, Phaethon, and Mydei lay on the ground near the feeding troughs like three saltwater fish washed ashore by a wave. Their faces were greenish, their eyes hollow, their stomachs distended, embodying utter despair.
Cyrene felt a wave of immense helplessness and absurdity instantly engulf her.
She took a deep breath, forcefully suppressing the urge to strangle the twins, and quickly walked over to Phainon and Phaethon.
Bending down, she reached out irritably, grabbing one with each hand, attempting to haul the two brothers—limp as mud—up from the ground.
"Get—UP!" Cyrene pulled hard.
...No movement at all?!
She paused, refused to believe it, and applied more force, even using some skillful leverage.
Phainon's and Phaethon's bodies merely swayed symbolically, still clinging to the ground like two heavy, water-logged lumps of mud.
Cyrene: "..."
She looked down at her slightly reddened hands from the effort, then at these two "human-shaped counterweights" on the ground.
An indescribable, complex emotion—a mixture of despair, absurdity, and "what cursed karma did I accrue in eight lifetimes to be stuck with you two"—instantly overwhelmed her.
She gave up on physical pulling. Instead, she crouched down, extended both hands, grabbed their collars one in each hand, and began to violently shake Phainon's and Phaethon's heads!
"Phainon! Phaethon!" Cyrene's voice was filled with heart-wrenching distress and the anger of frustration towards someone failing to meet expectations, as if conducting a desperate interrogation of their souls.
"You two! Listen! Sister Cyrene has some heartfelt words for you today! Straight from the heart!"
She shook them so vigorously their heads nodded in the air creating afterimages: "In a few days! Just a few days! It will be your twentieth birthday! You will be twenty years old!!!"
Cyrene's voice carried a sob: "That's the coming-of-age ceremony! A new chapter in life! It's the age to be steady, reliable, to shoulder responsibilities! Look at yourselves! Look at the wretched state you're in now!!!"
She stopped shaking abruptly, pointing at the remnants of red mud on the corners of their mouths, then at the similarly soul-departed Mydei nearby, and finally at the Dromas still pitifully nuzzling Anaxa as if filing a complaint. Her voice cracked shrilly from agitation:
"Eating—DIRT?! And teaming up to steal dirt from Dromas?! Can't you have a bit more ambition?! Can't you act a bit more like 'Deliverers'?! Huh?! Tell me! Can you or can't you?!!"
"Cy... Cyrene... st... stop shaking!" Phainon and Phaethon were already seeing stars from her shaking. Their stomachs, already churning, now felt like they were in a blender.
Their faces turned from greenish to pale, then from pale to green. Their features twisted in agony, and sounds of deathly groaning came from their throats.
"St... stop! Cyrene! Gonna... gonna puke! Really going to... urgh... throw up!!!"
...
Early the next morning, Phaethon left Hyacine's Twilight Garden—filled with the fragrance of medicinal herbs—without a sound.
He didn't need to suffer like those two unlucky fellows, Phainon and Mydei, who were being "served" by Hyacine with emetics and purgatives, forced to vomit out every last bit of that damned Red Clay.
Thanks to the folder system connection with Terravox, his body already possessed the ability to digest the Dromas' specially formulated Red Clay.
According to Hyacine's diagnosis, he was just... simply overstuffed. Hmm... with a touch of indigestion.
Phaethon rubbed his still somewhat bloated stomach, feeling the power of Terravox within him divesting those inhuman "food" slowly but steadily. An indescribable sense of absurdity washed over him.
Walking along, he couldn't help but think: *"Who would have thought, who would have thought that currently, the ability from Terravox that helps me the most is... digesting Dromas Red Clay?"*
(Terravox: *I should've just rotted in the ground from the start.*)
Returning to the Golden Eatery, which was gradually getting on track and beginning to emit the enticing aroma of food, Phaethon took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the discomfort in his stomach.
Tomorrow was his and Phainon's twentieth birthday. Cyrene's "heart-to-heart talk" still echoed in his ears. At least... at least in preparing the banquet, he had to show a bit of "maturity."
He entered the kitchen, picked up pen and paper, and began focus on planning the menu, attempting to use the warmth of food to dispel the lingering gloom.
"Hmm... Cyrene likes sweets."
"Cipher likes fish, though I don't care for the smell of fish... Hmm... I'll make a few plates specifically for her. Just deliberately put them somewhere easy for her to 'borrow'."
"Droma steak? Need to keep this far from Professor Anaxa, put it in a corner."
"Castrum Kremnos cuisine, hmm... leave it to Mydei. Didn't he say he could cook too?"
"Hyacine likes light medicinal soups... Castorice prefers delicate tea snacks..."
He wrote carefully, item by item, the tip of the pen scratching softly. The kitchen gradually filled with a homely, anticipatory warmth.
"Boss..." A cautious voice interrupted Phaethon's train of thought. Evelyn gently knocked on the kitchen door, poking half her head in, her face somewhat pale. "Outside... someone is asking for you."
His thoughts interrupted, Phaethon looked up, a flicker of displeasure at being disturbed instantly passing between his brows.
Still, he tried to ask as gently and calmly as possible: "Who?"
"It's... it's those Council of Elders members..." Evelyn's voice dropped even lower, carrying obvious fear.
Phaethon's brows instantly knitted into a tight knot. The warmth in his eyes vanished completely, replaced only by icy vigilance and impatience.
"Alright, I'll go see." He put down the pen. The warmth he had just begun to foster was instantly frozen.
...
In the Golden Eatery most luxurious private dining room, thick velvet curtains blocked most of the light, leaving only the dim glow of wall lamps. The atmosphere was oppressive, like the dead calm before a storm.
Phaethon stood facing the door, his hands clasped behind him. An aura of bone-chilling cold that warned others to keep their distance radiated from him.