Chapter 36: Eating Is the Way to Get Stronger

"Celeste, my darling." Azelith stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. "Look how much you’ve grown. The last time I saw you, you were still a snotty little brat who hadn’t even passed your third trial."

Celeste returned the warm hug, ignoring her biting words. "You look like you haven’t changed at all, Aunt Azelith."

Even though Celeste called her aunt, they weren’t actually connected by family or blood.

But Azelith and Seraphina were close. They could even be called best friends. Because of that, Celeste had grown used to calling her aunt since she was a child.

Azelith looked at her face fondly for a long moment. Then she turned her eyes to the huge man covered in frost armor standing behind her.

"My dear Celeste, you’ve got just as bad a taste in men as your mother has."

She walked closer to get a better look at him.

She wanted to see his eyes, but the height difference between them meant she would have to tilt her head back to look up at him. She hated doing that, so instead she gave an order.

"Kneel."

Titus’s body suddenly began to shake.

He felt the gravity pressing down on him, making his body heavy. In the end, he couldn’t fight it, and he fell to his knees.

"Even with that ice helmet of yours, your mind is as weak as a child’s." Azelith gave him a mocking smirk, looking straight into his eyes now.

The frost helmet, along with the armor, was one of the Winterborne family’s artifacts. It gave the wearer a calm mind, along with an enchantment that suppressed their emotions.

But in front of a Witch like Azelith, who specialized in mind and illusion spells, it had almost no effect.

"Aunt Azelith, can you stop it, please?" Celeste, watching her Shadow, or more importantly, her husband, being humiliated like this, couldn’t stay silent.

She was holding herself back only by using her calm state. If not for that, she would already have grabbed the Witch by the throat and been choking her.

Luckily, Azelith didn’t push it too far. She turned back and laughed. "Calm down, dear. I was just checking if he’s worthy of the Winterborne name."

She made it sound like she was doing a favor, but the look on her face made it clear she was enjoying this quite a lot.

"So where is the boy? I’m very interested in that brat." She asked, but a second later her eyes lit up as she added, "Nevermind, I found him."

Her body started to blur to the eyes of Celeste and Titus. Then she vanished from their sight.

Titus, finally free from the mind shackle, stood up on shaking legs and removed his helmet.

His face was pale, and blood was trickling down from both corners of his mouth.

He had been biting his tongue to help his mind endure her charm.

He looked at Celeste. He had many things to say, but when he saw the worry written on her face, he just chose to stay silent.

—

In the dining hall, Magna was living the best moment of his life right now.

"How can a fruit that looks like a banana but tastes like a plum be this good?" he muttered with his mouth full, trying to shove even more into it.

He wasn’t even sitting down. He just kept walking around the table, grabbing anything that looked good or smelled good.

He was only chewing everything he put into his mouth a couple of times, then swallowing it, making room for more.

After months of eating and tasting nothing but goblin milk and goblin flesh, he felt like he was in heaven.

There was also something else giving him satisfaction besides just the taste of the food. It was the blue text currently flowing in front of his eyes.

[New substance detected... A banana-shaped fruit with a plum-like taste....]

[Energy particles detected...]

[Converting nutrients into energy...]

[New substance detected... A piece of meat so good it made his eyes water....]

...

[New substance detected... A small golden cake that felt like biting into clouds....]

...

..

.

[New substance detected... A pepper that looked hot and turned out to be really, really spicy.]

"Hot..." As the burning suddenly spread through his mouth, he grabbed a glass of red liquid nearby and drank it all in one gulp, forcing all the food down into his stomach with it.

While he was caught up in his eating frenzy, part of his mind was still following Gaia’s messages. In that short time, he realized two things about it.

The first was that the way Gaia named the food matched what Magna himself was thinking about it.

This finally made him fully understand something about the AI. It didn’t have any knowledge of this world either. It was only using what he himself already knew.

Or maybe she was just messing with him. He couldn’t be sure.

Another thing he realized was that despite eating so much, he was still far from filling it up enough to trigger the next set of options.

When he thought about how much energy Faye’s small cookies had given him and compared that to the feast in front of him, there was a huge gap between the two.

Only then did he realize that her cookies weren’t just ordinary snacks.

"I should probably apologize to her," he mumbled, shoving more food into his mouth.

The only thing he wished for right now was a bigger mouth so he could eat and taste even more of it.

He was so caught up in eating that he didn’t even notice Azelith had already appeared behind him, watching him with disgust in her eyes.

"What kind of animal are you?" She couldn’t hold back her displeasure any longer and said it out loud.

Magna flinched and quickly spun around. He looked at the black-robed Witch with black hair and black eyes, a faint blush of embarrassment appearing on his face.