Nixie looked up at the clone with her eyes sparkling. She quickly wiped her tears away and nodded confidently, putting on a stern expression as she did. She planted her hands on her hips as she floated into the air, puffing her chest out and putting on a regal act as she loudly declared,

"Don't you worry Gramps. I'll become the best warrior ever and then even you will fall to me one day!"

The reflections face twisted in shock before his body shattered into a hail of glass shards. The horrific mental damage the girls innocent words had dealt even bounced over to the real Fox, who immediately coughed up a mouthful of blood.

No, It wasn't because of what she said. It was because of the exhaustion, nothing else. Definitely nothing else. But despite that, as he wiped away the blood, Fox put on a strained smile as Nixie walked over to them.

"You know, Gramps is something that you call old men. And--"

"But you are old Gramps."

Fox coughed again, for completely and totally unrelated reasons once more, as he quickly corrected the girl.

"I am a man in the prime of my life, I'll have you know. My hair turned grey when I was even younger than your father, so don't you go thinking that means anything. You should be calling me Uncle, not Gramps."

Nixie tilted her head innocently, taking in the words for a few seconds, before frowning softly.

"So... if your grey hair doesn't mean you are old, then how old are you?"

A darkness descended on Fox's face as he hung his head low, his body curled up as it suddenly felt like he had been kicked in the gut. A pain not made any better by the fact he could hear Seth beside him, snickering to himself.

The metal man wasn't even trying to hold in his laughter, or if he was he wasn't trying very hard.

"Yeah... Go on, tell her. How old are you Fox? She just wants to know. I mean just look at this innocent face, how can you say no?"

Seth moved behind Nixie, squishing her cheeks together to make her look even more adorable as her twinkling, doe eyes looked up at Fox with innocent wonder and curiosity. But he was not foolish enough to become trapped by that face, mostly because he was too busy glowering at the evil, smirking demon looming over her shoulder.

Without speaking, Fox clambered to his feet and walked out the room. A dark cloud hanging over his head as he mumbled to himself about 'respect your elders'.

Nixie tilted her head at him leaving, moving out of Seth's grasp and looked up at him innocently.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Of course not sweetheart. The old man just needs his nap, that's all. Besides, you did great in training. Better than I expected even! Since when could you breathe fire like that?"

He took her hand, leading her out of the training room and started to walk through the corridors of the facility together. Nixie giggled at Seth's praise and started to excitedly tell him all about the different things she could do since she officially became a transcendent.

Nixie wasn't officially part of the system, not entirely. Whether it was because of her peculiar birth, her origins or the fact she was born with powers, they had no idea. But she simply didn't take part in the system, at least not in the mutation sense.

She still got Requitals and could develop herself with monster meat, just like the rest of them. But her development was steady instead of based in stats, she couldn't rapidly grow in power like the rest of them.

The powers she was born with were the powers she was going to have for life, nothing more, unless Seth figured out how to rework her soul or give her new stuff. However that wasn't an entirely bad thing.

Perhaps it was paternal intuition, or perhaps it was the guidance of Prometheus, but Nixie was set for life in terms of power with just two abilities.

One was her ability to grow stronger with age. That basically made it so that she didn't actually need nutrition to grow, just time. Nutrition was just a bonus.

The second was the basis of her power, her [Beast Within] as Seth liked to call it. Her soul resembling a dragon wasn't just a quirk of her birth, but the foundation of the strength she grew.

Nixie had the strength of a dragon. It allowed her to fly on spectral wings, and now it seemed like she had the ability to manifest parts of it to use as weapons. Considering the strength of the dragon she came from, and the soul power of her father, it was no wonder she was born so strong.

That wasn't to downplay Astra's contribution. Beyond Nixie's adorable looks, which Seth reluctantly had to admit were taken more from Astra than himself, he assumed that her accumulation of energy stemmed from Astra. It just needed more time to show its might.

Speaking of his lovely, not at all terrifying, girlfriend known as the Queen of Storms. That was exactly who they were going to see.

Much like Seth himself, Astra had been working on gathering the components for her own evolution so that they could finally break the boundary of transcendent. A boundary that seemed insurmountable for most and incredibly difficult for the rest.

Honestly Seth was lucky that the Black Dragon, who had mysteriously disappeared after helping him last time, had given him the Untainted Tear. Otherwise he felt he would be desperately searching for that to this very day.

While Astra's were not exactly on the same level of difficulty, they mostly suffered from the curse of Seth's final requirement. They required a lot of tedious, long winded and gruelling effort.

She had kept the details of a few of them secret, mostly because they were already complete or she simply liked to tease him, but he knew the details of the one she was working on now.

[Absorb and Store a minimum of 4,000,000 Mwh of electricity]

It was a task that would have been nearly impossible in the new world, or would have taken decades. Not without the right conditions and power source. But even if she could have gotten that energy from elsewhere, the main problem came from the 'store' condition.

This meant for the past year, Astra had barely used her powers at all. Every time she did, it counted against her total. Without the safety of the facility, or somewhere well enough defended that she could do nothing for a year as she gathered energy, there was no way she would ever be able to evolve beyond a transcendent.

It really put it in perspective how lucky Seth was to have most of his conditions filled out by other people, or by sheer luck. But even he had to spend the same amount of time working on his [Soul of a God].

As Seth and Nixie walked through the facility, or more accurately as Seth walked and Nixie bobbed in the air alongside him, Nixie greeted everyone she came across with a bright smile that was overwhelming with positivity.

On a few occasions she stopped to gossip, telling people all about the things she did in the training room. And on every single one of those questions, Seth simply had to hold her by her ankle and drag her through the air behind him like a balloon until she lost sight of the person. Naturally she shouted her gossip and excited news right up until that point, and a little bit after too.

Despite Seth using his Avatar, he wasn't really bothered about people recognising him and uncovering the identity of Lord Corvus. For one, the Avatar didn't actually look like him. Getting an exact copy of his face would be difficult enough, but actually giving his Avatar one even if he could?

He wasn't that stupid.

No, it just had a generic face that was functional enough to emote and such. Plus even if he had made it a copy of his face, he doubted anyone would recognise it still. These people only knew his burnt and disfigured appearance, and while that was still ruggedly handsome, it wasn't as handsome as his pristine face which he would model it after.

But he didn't, so it didn't really matter.

As far as the identity of his Avatar, he had heard a few theories over the year. From Robotic baby sitter, to another Dead Man that was a butler to the Lord, to basically a clone of the Lord himself. That last one spawned rumours that his Avatars face was actually the Lord's face, a rumour he was happy not to deny nor confirm.

His favourite rumour, however, was that it was just the appearance of a mutated human. The latest member of the Queen Astra's harems. A supposed harem that he was a part of three times. As the Avatar, as Lord Corvus and as himself.

In his very humble and unbiased opinion, there was no better Harem that lady could ask for.

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