"King Xander! I have come to challenge you for the position of the King of the Castle!"
Xander was spending his leisure time chatting freely with the cute little Metlhy when a voice arrogantly called him out. He looked up and saw a small kid with gaunt gaits, along with his cronies following him from behind.
He looked at them, recognizing that they weren't there when he bullied the bullies, men and women to shame with his amazing expertise in eloquence, and fell into deep thought.
Tsk, clearly, they only heard the great title 'The King of the Castle' and was completely unaware how he attained such a title.
However, he thought of what he could do with his time instead, such as searching for nametags and prying out interesting information out of Metlhy, and decided that it'd be best if he could ignore this.
Heh, time to put them to use.
"My people, handle them!" Xander merely looked at the gaunt kid with disdain and waved his hand. He also recited solemnly, his golden eyes flashing dashingly, "Rule Number 2: A King cannot be insulted!"
Metlhy, who sat beside him, had her eyes lit up, clapping excitedly, "Big Brother Xander, so cool!"
Soon, Onyonyo and the kids resolutely appeared, blocking Xander from the gaunt kid's sight, their eyes solemn and firm.
Onyonyo stomped the ground firmly, his crooked mouth trembling, "The King does not wish to be disturbed. Leave, or else!"
The gaunt kid became even more arrogant, snorting dismissively, "What kind of King would refuse a challenge? Coward!"
"What did you say?!" A bowl-haired boy's rage was immediately ignited. The sight of their king dominating the Yellow Death was eternally imprinted on their mind. To insult their king, this is intolerable!
"Go against my mother if you have the guts!" The odd little girl, attempting to imitate Xander, boldly declared. Both sides turned silent for a moment, then they continued their intense clash.
The atmosphere was tense, and a clash between the two forces seemed to be unmistakably imminent!
Meanwhile, Xander simply slipped out of the playground, leaving those kids to play around with themselves. Metlhy, of course, followed him out like a good girl she was.
Looking at the naive Metlhy behind him, who looked left and right curiously, no different than a baby, Xander had this inexplicable feeling of guilt.
Even though Metlhy was technically older than him by one or two years, she was clearly a great young lady born from an astounding family, sheltered and loved.
If her parents knew she was bullied when she played at the playground... Tsk tsk, that would be like crushing an egg with a refined super aon laser beam with a width magnitude of 70 and destruction index of 9000, manufactured in the core of the sun with its core energy originating from a collapsing star.
The bullies couldn't handle it, they truly couldn't! The thought of a moment of bullying inviting a disaster befalling an entire province, even an entire kingdom, was very funny to Xander.
The scary thing is, with the way Metlhy said about spaceships and how her family could casually own them, this may not be just a joke but an actual consequence of this whole fiasco.
Childish bullying? In Xander's eyes, no matter what age, bullying is bullying. And bullying is definitely worse than killing. Kill someone and they're dead. Bully someone and they'd die slowly. The latter was clearly much, much worse.
Those who even mentioned such a r*tarded combination of syllables should be tormented in hell.
As Xander fell further and further into his own thought, a small voice resembling a kitten snapped him out of his reverie, "Big Brother, what do you want to do now? Would they be okay?"
She was referring to his 'people' who now were fighting against a group of 'foreign rebellious people'. Xander casually waved it off, walking on the refined, smooth sidewalk with a relaxed pace, "They could handle it. Don't worry. I, King Xander, guaranteed it."
Now indifferent to the cringe that manifested within his very being, Xander turned his head to Metlhy, who followed him from behind, and asked suddenly, "By the way, Metlhy, may I ask, why would you go to the playground in the first place with that black mark on your face?"
As a young lady from a great family, she should know that her black mark eerily resembled a Calmos, so why would she go out without a mask?
To test the people, to pry out something or perhaps a whole different purpose entirely?
Don't be fooled by his relaxed attitude towards her this whole time. In his heart, he never considered Metlhy as simple as a 'naive and cute little girl'. With such a great background, even if a diviner said that she was that simple, he wouldn't believe it even if he was beaten to death!
The moment Metlhy casually said that her family owned spaceships, Xander's heart turned vigilant. Not towards her, but towards his own attitude. He must not show that he was close to her, but he also had to remain casual.
Such a daughter of significance could never be so simple!
Metlhy rubbed her chubby cheek perplexedly, "Um, Big Brother, what is a Calmos?"
Xander fell into silence.
Is she pretending? Is she testing me? Is she perhaps trying to pry out my intention towards? Is she acting cute so I would lower my guard? Is she trying to test my character? Is she searching for something and found a lead from me?
As Xander's intelligence, ten times that of an average adult, furiously processed and investigated the information he'd received, Metlhy just stood there cutely, her big dark-purple eyes naive and adorable.
Xander: (≖_≖)
Metlhy: (◕⩊◕)?
After a great brainstorm, Xander smiled and answered slowly, "Well, Metlhy, from the books I read, Calmos is a person who unfortunately fell into what we called a 'Calamity Sublimation', where they couldn't control the Extraordinary Factors that they had absorbed. They turned into horrific, grotesque entities who existed all for the sake of destroying humanity. It was an insolvable case even after a hundred million years of struggle."
Metlhy hugged her doll tighter, and her big eyes showed a hint of tears, filled with grief and sadness, "S-So, I would turn into a Calmos soon...? I-I would turn into an enemy of humanity...? N-No, M-Mommy... Daddy... I don't want to hurt you all..."
Xander froze. Even ten times the intelligence of an average adult was useless in this case. It took a second from him to react. However, it was too late.
"Waaaah!!!"
Metlhy immediately burst into tears, her chubby soft face turned red in grief and sadness.
Metlhy: .·°՞(≧□≦)՞°·.
The bystanders and the people who happened to pass by scrunched up their face as they looked at Xander with a look of disdain and contempt, as if he had done something unbelievable and unforgivable.
Bystanders: 凸（#￣へ￣）凸
"Damn! What a piece sh*t, making a little girl cry!" A man in a tracksuit said.
"I can't believe someone that young made a little girl cry. What a piece of sh*t." Another man in a security officer uniform followed up.
"Tsk tsk, if he's already a piece of sh*t now, he'll be a piece of sh*t square in the future. What a piece of sh*t!" A man with a hoodie also followed up.
A woman in a neat suit furrowed her eyebrows, "Hey, but did you guys see that the girl has that black mark on her face? She's... She's a Calmos—!"
"I don't care, I don't care if she's a Calmos, a pig or a dog, to make a little girl cry is a quality harboured by a piece of sh*t. What a piece of sh*t!"
"Yeah! Woman, you're also a piece of sh*t. Damn! What a piece of sh*t!"
The woman's face turned white. She looked at these unreasonable men and huffed indignantly.
She clearly said the right thing, yet she was called a piece of sh*t by these hateful men. Why waste time with these scoundrels?
"Y-You... You guys are unreasonable!"
With a wronged look, she embarrassedly left the scene.
Xander indifferently stood in place, his eyes and mouth twitching at the endless 'piece of sh*t' barraging at him. He really wants to ask seriously: Why do they keep repeating the same insult over and over again?
He felt like even if he explained seriously and eloquently, they would still remain unreasonable. His ten times of an average man's wisdom told him that the way they simply looked at him and insulted him seemed to be... Involuntary?
Xander furrowed his eyebrows. How could they 'involuntarily' insult him? Does that even make sense?
As Xander turned puzzled by his own wisdom, his experience shallow and lacking, he tried to understand what's the problem here, his ears automatically blocked off the noises from outside to stop them from interfering with his deducting session.
His golden eyes shone with brilliance of wisdom as he looked at each of the men, their stiff movements and simple insults clear in his ears and eyes, and finally, there seems to be a click in his mind, and his eyes landed on the only possible variable near him.
Metlhy.
She was still crying, her chubby, cute face flushed, tempting someone to pinch it. It was especially so for Xander, who did not mind her smudgy black mark at all, even finding it charming, which formed a great contrast to her porcelain, chubby pinch-able face.
However, why didn't he do so? A naive little girl like Metlhy surely wouldn't mind right?
The answer, which was still murky and confusing before, like an instinct etched deep into his very being, revealed itself.
A voice, similar to a high-pitched meow of a kitten, called him out from his blind spot. It was undoubtedly Metlhy's. However, a sense of authority and sharpness could be heard from it clearly.
"You're not bad!"
Xander's heart jolted, grateful for his earlier conduct. As expected, a young lady of a great family who had such a great compatibility with Extraordinary Factors could never be simple!
Xander turned around, his brilliant golden eyes meeting those big dark-purple ones. However, now, a sense of detachment and arrogance could be seen within those dark-purple eyes that resembled the sea of stars in the cosmos under the light of the sun.
Metlhy: < (｀^´)>
Xander took a deep breath and cautiously asked, "May we re-introduce ourselves, My Lady?"
"Hmph! Be grateful that you were not presumptuous towards me earlier. If you were to touch a single hair on my body, I would make you suffer a fate worse than everything you could've imagined!" Metlhy, who used to be naive and cute, now exuded a sense of haughtiness.
An aura of inexplicable origin that brought great pressure on his being was emitted from her body. However, Xander could deduce immediately that it was definitely a sign of significant accomplishment in the path of the Extraordinary.
Metlhy's fine black dress swayed, and her cute voice, amplified by coldness and arrogance, answered his doubt, "I am Metlhy Aes Havillias, the first daughter of the current head of the Havillias Clan. It is your honour to know me!"