“DAMN IT!!! Why did I lose to yoou?!! DAAAMMNN IIITT!!!” [Arka]

Arka slammed the long table with his fist and cried out miserably. His other hand was holding a glass with some amber colored liquid inside. His shoulders were slumping forward and his handsome face was slightly red.

“It was a tough match, Arka. You’re still plenty strong~.” [Maya]

Maya answered him with a grin on her face before emptying her glass and refilling it from the big bottle next to her.

“Yooouu! You should address me more respectfully! Like older brother or something! I’m older than you by two… Three years!” [Arka]

“I’ve been disowned, so I don’t need to anymore~.” [Maya]

“Daaamn *hic* iiit!!” [Arka]

The others, who were present in the room, were watching their exchange with troubled expressions. Maya, who was kicked out of the house, showed her might to the clan and was now leisurely drinking among them. A member of the branch family himself silently guided her to this guest room and bowed before leaving.

The expression on his face was cold the whole time, but he properly did his task without showing any rudeness. They didn’t welcome her with open arms, but they didn’t treat her disrespectfully either. Such was the peculiar position she was in.

When she showed up at their doorstep with a bottle of alcohol in hand, they didn’t think that things would turn out like this. She lightheartedly greeted them and easily shrugged off all of the offensive remarks of her older brother that was fuming mad. For some reason, their father allowed her to set foot in their house whenever she wanted, so no one could touch her.

She was definitely taking advantage of that to make fun of them. He tried to drive her off by telling her to leave at every chance he had, but ended up being challenged to a drinking contest. Still bitter after losing to her, he accepted when she taunted him, telling him that he was afraid he might lose again.

“How could I lose? I have the biggest mana pool in the family, almost on par with dad. How’d I lose…? AND WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?!!” [Arka]

Unable to keep up with her pace, he was reduced to this state in a few minutes. Arka, who was mumbling with a gloomy mood around him, lifted his glass in the air and shouted his question.

“This is something I got from my friend as a gift before I came here. It tastes great, doesn’t it?” [Maya]

“It’s not bad… Hand me another one!” [Arka]

“I’m busy. Do it yourself~.” [Maya]

“What?! Do you know who you’re talking to!” [Arka]

“The guy that lost to his little sister~.” [Maya]

“DAAAAAMMNN IIITTT!!!” [Arka]

The words that Maya said in a teasing tone caused Arka to hold his head and scream out in grief. Right now, he looked like a man whose wife ran off and was drinking his grief away in a bar. However, his two beautiful wives were in fact sitting on both of his sides and gently patting his back.

“There there.” [Wife]

“It’s alright.” [Wife]

Being of similar age to him, they were twins that looked completely identical from their long green hair to their purple eyes, and to their lizard tail. Green scales covered the skin near the corner of their eyes. They seemed used to dealing with his current drunken state. Perhaps Arka was a bad drunk. He was in the middle of crying and being comforted like a child.

Maya watched this scene with a mischievous smile and a sense of satisfaction. It might have seemed like a childish revenge to others, but to her, after punching his face in, nothing made her feel better than watching her big brother cry. She wanted to see him drunk and this was an unexpected bonus.

At the same time, she observed the women by his sides. Since they were his wives, she often saw them, but didn’t remember ever talking to them. These two caught their husband’s interest and married into the Catallard clan. It was an honor for them and they were happy with their current lifestyle, which was why to keep it, they didn’t actively persecute Maya when she was young, but didn’t show her kindness either.

“Uoooooh! Ysmay! Peronell! You two are the best wives ever! Uooooh! Damn you, Maya!” [Arka]

“There there, your no-good side always shows up when you get drunk. You can’t show this to your two sons.” [Ysmay]

“It’s kind of cute though. But, I agree. Seven years old shouldn’t see their father like this.” [Peronell]

“It looks like taking care of him can be a handful.” [Maya]

“Y-yes…” [Ysmay]

“S-sometimes…” [Peronell]

They ignored her so as to not go against the opinion of the majority of the clan. Now that Maya wasn’t considered a disgrace anymore, they weren’t sure how to act around her and kept avoiding eye contact. The former Catallard didn’t care and leisurely drank the delicious liquor that tasted great with her brother’s current appearance.

“Miya! You saw the fight! How did I lose to her?!” [Arka]

“Don’t talk to me when you’re drunk. This is just pathetic.” [Miya]

Arka directed his really important question to his little sister that was one year his junior, but got a cold reply thrown at his face.

“HOW?!!!” [Arka]

“Act your age, you damn drunken kid!!” [Miya]

She yelled at her brother and told him to shut up and to stop acting so undignified. Unlike Arka and Maya, she had inherited all of her father’s traits: deep purple hair cut short and dark blue eyes. She had watched over their drinking bout with a tired expression on her face. The little sister that she and her family never acknowledged won against Arka and came back the next day to get him drunk.

Sitting next to her was her husband that had married into the family just like Ysmay and Peronell. However, unlike these two, he came from a famous family: the Terdims. Just like her younger twin brothers who were whispering to each other, he was keeping to himself and staying out of this mess.

“I’m a damn S rank, for f-*hic* sake! I’m even stronger than mom! And stronger than you! So whyyyy?!” [Arka]

“Blame the adventurer guild for introducing the ranking system! It only evaluates your strength based on your mana pool, not your hand-to-hand combat, alright!? Or do you actually think you could beat mother without mana?!” [Miya]

“Damn the adventurer guild!” [Arka]

Miya slammed her fist on the table. Magic was their claws and the mana pool one was born with determined how big and sharp they were. Training would be used to sharpen them, tempering them like steel swords. If one was born with a small mana pool, one didn’t have any claws to go into battle with. They would be at a huge disadvantage for magic could easily change the course of the battlefield.

“And you’re not stronger than me!” [Miya]

“Haah?! I beat you in a duel, damn it!” [Arka]

“Yeah, but you’re awful at one-against-many fights! Without body strengthening, you’d lose for sure!” [Miya]

The Catallard’s fighting style was a straightforward one that was offensive-oriented and heavily relied on magic, mainly body strengthening. Although they trained by sparring without using magic, it was still just training. They would never go into battle without magic since it’s the same as sheathing their claws. They could never show their full might like that.

“I can take on two with no magic!” [Arka]

“I can take on four! Our parents can take on ten guys, so why don’t you shut up?!” [Miya]

Miya was starting to get a headache for having to deal with him. Her older brother was a hothead that respected their parents, especially their father, and tried to act like them. His talents that his blood gifted him and the prestige of the Catallard clan made him confident and arrogant. Of course, she was no exception, but that may change because of a certain someone.

“Maya! How many can you take?! You’re still weak in many-to-one fights, aren’t you?! Aren’t you?!” [Arka]

When Arka asked Maya in what seemed like desperation, she took a peek at her little sister that was refilling her glass. “Damn, she can drink” was what went through her mind for a second. Although it wasn’t to the extent of Arka, Miya used to casually make fun of her every now and then when she wasn’t ignoring her. She didn’t need to try hard since the whole family was practically leaving her alone.

However, now she couldn’t ignore her. She couldn’t ignore someone who displayed such skills in her match with Arka. She must have honed them during intense fights to have improved to the point that she could keep up with him. But, more importantly, Miya was dying to ask her how she did it.

The rest of the clan probably felt the same way. No one knew how to act around her, but everyone wanted to ask her one question. They wanted to ask her how she increased her mana pool. Unfortunately, Argos, her father, forbid them from doing so and she couldn’t understand why. If the quantity of mana in her little sister’s body really increased, then information on the method to do so would be extremely valuable.

“Well~, I’m still horrible against multiple opponents.” [Maya]

Maya, who wet her throat before answering her big brother’s question, spoke as she remembered the ten bandits that overpowered her with their numbers. The feeling of disgust and the urge to butcher them again surged inside her. Luckily, she learned to deal with it by thinking of Ryner’s face and all he did to her during mating season. Doing so had the downside of exciting her, but with the season of love over with, she didn’t get in heat so easily anymore.

“So, Master taught me a trick to it.” [Maya]

“Your… Master?” [Miya]

“Yes.” [Maya]

When Miya asked with a questioning gaze, Maya turned her head and looked at her dead in the eye, something she never did before.

“Master told me to think of it not as a one-versus-many fight, but as a one-versus-one fight many times.” [Maya]

Since Ryner didn’t plan on spending a lot of time training Maya, he didn’t fix all of her weaknesses. As such, so that she could deal with multiple opponents, he only gave her a small advice which was to focus on one enemy at a time and to ignore the rest.

“Pick a target, take him out quickly and move on to the next. Repeat until there is no one left standing.” [Maya]

“How is that supposed to help you?” [Miya]

“It helps when you have enough mana to ignore all their attacks.” [Maya]

Maya looked at Miya in the face and she flinched. The older sister wasn’t used to talking to her little sister like this. She had an easygoing yet bold personality that was never there before.

“Your master! That human! We need to talk about him! Daaamn it!” [Arka]

Arka, who was mumbling to himself, suddenly declared loudly.

“Why are you a slave?! Do you know how it makes me feel to lose to a slave?! Get that collar off! And stop calling that guy ‘Master’!” [Arka]

“No~.” [Maya]

He ordered while pointing at Maya’s collar, but she refused him in her carefree manner and brought her glass to her lips.

“You used to be a Catallard, damn it! A CATALLARD! It looks bad for us if you follow a human around as his slave! And he’s some scrawny weakling at that!” [Arka]

Arka pounded the table with his fist, stopped, drank a bit and pounded again. His wives, Ysmay and Peronell, were doing their best to soothe him, but to no avail. Deep down, they were glad that their sons weren’t here to witness this sad scene of their father throwing a tantrum. As if to prove their point, the two youngest siblings were whispering to each other while staring at him.

“I don’t want to turn out like that as I get older.” [Twin sibling]

“Me neither. But, Arka did manage to marry pretty early, unlike our sister that married Terryn only this year. So, that’s a good thing he has, besides his huge mana pool.” [Twin sibling]

The two of them had deep purple hair and their mother’s eyes which were light brown. These two were in their teens with the oldest called Carac and the youngest called Urik.

“Yeah, I want to marry young too, like father. Speaking of which, this year was our second mating season, did you find a girl at the festival?” [Carac]

“No. There was no one interesting. You?” [Urik]

“Same.” [Carac]

“Why don’t we look for twins next year?” [Urik]

“Twin wives for twin husbands?” [Carac]

“Yeah.” [Urik]

“Sweet.” [Carac]

They slapped hands and exchanged smiles which earned them a glare from their big sister Miya.

“Master isn’t weak.” [Maya]

When Maya spoke up after falling silent, all eyes turned towards her. Taking the big bottle of alcohol that was half-empty, she filled her glass again.

“Mom and dad can take on ten opponents without magic. I saw Master do the same thing without breaking a sweat.” [Maya]

Everyone fell silent as they processed this information. Arka, who had stopped beating the table, was staring at her with his unfocused eyes as if trying to discern the truth in her words.

“That guy? That damn *hic* human?” [Arka]

“Yes. That human. And his name is Ryner.” [Maya]

She nodded to Arka’s question with a carefree smile. Everyone recalled the face of the man that accompanied her and interrupted the duel between her and Arka. After hitting her head a few times and telling her something, the flow of the fight drastically changed. He didn’t look strong at all because of his slim figure, his sleepy-looking eyes and his overall lazy attitude. As such, no one really believed her words.

“Maya.” [???]

Amidst the silence, one person called her name, attracting everyone’s gaze on him. The man who was in his late twenties had dark red hair and black eyes. Two white animal ears were on each side of his head and his white dog tail was hanging down behind him. It was the one person that had kept quiet all this time. It was Miya’s husband: Terryn.

“How strong is this… Ryner?” [Terryn]

Prompted by his question, Maya began boasting about Ryner.

“He’s the strongest man I’ve met~.” [Maya]

She told them of her beloved master.