Chapter 307 - 24 hours of hair hell.

Zyra glared at Beauty, "you did this!" She refused to believe that the cunning system had nothing to do with the pink patches in her hair. It was getting revenge on her for all that free shopping she had done.

[Ah, that is not fair, you didn’t check the catalyst pouch. I detest the accusation that I am in any way related to your tragedy.] Beauty wheezed, wiping a tear of laughter from her eyes. [Besides, this is beast dye and you are a human. Beast fur has different texture from your soft hair. There were bound to be some hiccups. The base paste is always white. The activating gel determines the pigment.]

Zyra slowly picked up the tiny empty packet of gel from the floor. Printed on the back in tiny, microscopic golden writings so small you’d need a microscope to read them, was the word: Flamingo Pink.

Zyra gasped, her chest heaving. "You should have told me!"

Beauty waved a hand dismissively, floating upside down in Zyra’s mind space. [It’s not so bad! Bright colors are very trendy among the rich in your world.]

"Bring out the black dye immediately! Give me the stuff I asked for in the beginning!" Zyra roared aloud.

[Can’t do it.] Beauty replied with a tragic sigh, though her lips were still twitching. [That beast dye contains sensitive ingredients. If you slap another layer of pigment on your skull right now, your hair will melt, your scalp will burn off, and you’ll not be able to grow any hair for at least 6 months. You have to wait at least twenty-four hours at least to try again.]

Right at that exact second, the bathroom door creaked open.

Hunter stepped inside, scratching his belly. He took one step inside, looked in her direction, and froze. His jaw dropped. His eyes blinked rapidly once, twice, three times.

He turned around and back again, not believing his eyes. Surely, that was not a patchy, glowing pink mop sitting on top of his wife’s head!

"Zyra_?" Hunter asked slowly, his voice laced with pure bewilderment. "What happened to your hair?"

Zyra puffed out her cheeks, let out a frustrated huff, and straight-up screamed at the ceiling. "Aaaaaarrrrgh!"

Hunter blinked again, taking in the empty foil cap, the boxes on the ground and the hysterical look in her eyes. It took him all of two seconds to put the pieces together. He cleared his throat, trying desperately to keep his face completely stoic. "I am sure Beauty is somehow related to this. You don’t look so happy, but first calm down. I am sure we can figure this out."

"Calm down?" Zyra screeched, pointing a frantic, trembling finger at her own skull. "Twenty-four hours, Hunter! For twenty-four whole hours, I have to walk around looking like a ruffled scarecrow that got peed on by a mutated pink flamingo! Your grandfather will have nightmares when he sees me." She groaned. "Achilles is going to have a field day with this."

Hunter tried. He really, truly tried to hold it back. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his lips into a tight line, and tried to summon the solemn discipline of a true martial artist. But a tiny snicker escaped his nose.

Then a chuckle.

"Hey," Hunter coughed, trying to cover it up, "look on the bright side, it’s really not that bad. My sister had bright pink hair when she was six and it was....err...nice. Yours is...err...interesting."

That was the absolute last straw.

"Out!" Zyra bellowed.

She oped the tap and splashed water at his face with the speed of a flying dagger. Hunter caught the ducked with lightning-fast instincts, but Zyra was already stomping past him like a enraged feral bear, letting out a low, terrifying growl as she slammed her way out of the bedroom.

As she passed by the courtyard on her way to the bridge that connected the main house to the beast pavilion, Zyra was practically vibrating with rage, panting and growling like a wounded beast.

Her gaze flicked toward the center of the courtyard, where the Grand Elder was currently training. He was completely shirtless, still wearing the exact same white trousers he had been wearing yesterday. She stopped for a split second, watching him execute a series of razor-sharp sword strikes.

He was undoubtedly a supreme martial arts master, but that wasn’t what caught her attention_ it was his physical shape. The man was in his eighties, yet his body looked like that of a ruthless thirty-year-old special forces soldier, ripped with lean muscle and old scar tissue. He was clearly a man who took sickeningly good care of himself.

"Haaa!" The Grand Elder let out a guttural roar, whipping his blade through the air so fast it tore the wind into whistling ribbons. His face was contorted in sheer, unadulterated fury.

Zyra let out a heavy sigh. When she got the chance, she would spend some time sparring with him and steal his skills. They could go with her spear.

Expelling a gust of air through her nostrils, Zyra turned on her heel and stomped toward the beast pavilion. She was so consumed by her own inner fiery death-rage that she didn’t realize the Grand Elder’s sharp eyes had already tracked her movement. The old man’s brows were already lifted curiously at the pink abomination that was her hair.

Inside the beast pavilion, Scotty and a few other workers were bustling around, hauling heavy wooden buckets and filling the long feeding troughs with beast food. The main stalls were completely empty.

The second Zyra walked in, the workers froze. Their eyes bulged, locking onto the glowing, patchy, hot-pink disaster sitting on her head. Zyra didn’t care that they were staring at her like she was a walking, talking cartoon character. Some of the younger workers even muffled subtle giggles behind their sleeves.

"Where are the beasts?" Zyra barked, her voice dropping an octave.

Scotty released a small, pathetic snort_ a laugh he had been desperately trying to swallow down_ and pointed a trembling finger toward the heavy iron doors of the training room. "I-In there, divine maiden!"

"Right," she grunted, marching straight past him toward Spice’s designated section.

"Beauty," Zyra commanded in her mind space, "transfer the low-level snakes, dew fruit, root and the python straight into the feeding trough."

[Right away, Host] Beauty chirped smoothly. [But I turned the usable snakes into processed meat cubes.]

About twenty large meat cubes in square shapes materialized out of thin air, tumbling straight into the trough, along with the dew fruit and the poisonous root the Alpha Warden had given her.