SGT CH206

206 The Little Cakes’ Tea Party 2

◎Little Tentacle Monster: “Tie him up! Pierce him through! Let him be full of eggs!”◎

“Wait, you said… a cub?”

Ability User Mu Si was profoundly shaken.

Because their communication occurred on the level of conscious soul-forms, no language barrier or semantic drift existed among them.

Thus, Ability User Mu Si was entirely certain that the “cub” in the Prince’s words did not refer to a small animal or pet, but an actual child of him and X.

Him, and X… a child???

The Prince across from him bore an appearance and build uncannily like his own. Though sporting long hair and exuding an ethereal, androgynous beauty, he was distinctly not female.

Could it be that X…

Ability User Mu Si’s brain crashed completely.

He could not fathom X genderswapping and getting pregnant.

“Is that something to be astonished by?” The Prince arched an eyebrow, perplexed.

“Do you all not have cubs?”

The Imperial Consort was equally puzzled, adding:

“His Majesty and I share a cub, named Ai Mu.”

“Ai Mu… that truly sounds like a name X would pick,” the Prince chuckled.

Little Tentacle Monster raised a limb enthusiastically: “We have an entire clutch of cubs!”

“A clutch? What sort of bizarre quantifier is that?”

The Zergs and Tianjia, for whom reproduction was famously difficult, voiced sheer bafflement.

“Aren’t they always counted by clutches? Counting them one by one is far too tedious,” the Tentacle Monster—whose species ranked among the apex breeders of the cosmos—remarked offhandedly.

“Though our first clutch yielded relatively few, only six eggs.”

Little Tentacle Monster did not wish for X’s entire body to be occupied by eggs.

Those spots belonged to him.

Every single inch was his domain.

Therefore, after X laid that first clutch of eggs, he did not pursue further breeding for twenty years.

Among adult tentacle entities—especially well-fed ones—such restraint was vanishingly rare.

It meant the tentacle creature’s possessiveness over its incubator had completely overwhelmed its primal reproductive instincts.

“Only…”

“Six eggs…”

Now, it was not merely Ability User Mu Si who felt struck dumb; even the Prince and the Imperial Consort were rendered speechless in shock.

Given the reproductive rates of high-ranking Zergs and Tianjia, even if they spent a lifetime of unbroken romance with X, they might not produce that many cubs.

Why did everyone here have children?

And six in a single clutch? Is that something a human could birth?

Well, evidently none of them were human.

Ability User Mu Si chose to bypass these alien entities, casting his gaze upon the only seemingly normal man present—an ancient dynastic sovereign—hoping to find mutual ground.

“Ahem. We have been wed to Shadow One for a decade, with two imperial scions to our name,” Emperor Mu Si remarked, before asking in return:

“Do you not possess Pregnancy Fruits in your realm?”

“What kind of thing is that now?!”

Ability User Mu Si had assumed his own world was surreal enough.

After all, it featured an apocalypse, ravenous zombies, and superhuman abilities.

Who could have guessed that the parallel versions of himself resided in realms where each setting proved more unhinged than the last?

Even an ostensibly grounded, ancient feudal empire possessed things as wildly impossible as “Pregnancy Fruits.”

Ability User Mu Si turned his glazed gaze toward Little Zombie Mu Si, who sat nearby gnawing happily on a strip of jerky.

He had never imagined that one day, the only ally sharing his baseline reality would be a zombie.

“Awoo?“

Little Zombie looked up in innocent confusion.

Little Zombie returned to gnawing on his jerky.

The Prince swiftly seized upon the critical phrase in the Emperor’s words.

—Wed for a decade.

“You two have been together for so long? Has your passion never cooled?” the Prince probed cautiously.

“How could it cool?”

Recalling how Shadow One clung to him behind the bed curtains, the Emperor could not suppress a quiet smile.

Yet he answered in earnest:

“Since becoming Our Empress, Shadow One has been ever mindful of his conduct, carrying regal dignity in public. In private, however… he remains exceptionally clingy toward Us.”

Prince: So sour.

The Prince took several bites of the lemon cake on the table, tasting only overwhelming sourness, to the point where his pheromones felt as though they were souring into pure lemon scent.

Done eating!

Stabbing his silver fork into the cake, the Prince finally could not help asking:

“In your daily lives, does X truly never… show a lack of passion?”

“…”

The gathered Mu Sis exchanged silent glances, deciphering the subtext in each other’s eyes.

None of them had the heart to crush this Zerg version of themselves; some cleared their throats behind raised palms, some sipped their floral tea, while others lowered their eyes to pick at their confections.

The straightforward Little Tentacle Monster, however, possessed zero tact.

“X always drinks me with overwhelming passion! After all, I am the most delectable jelly in the universe.”

Little Tentacle Monster flushed a faint pink, swaying its gelatinous form with both bashfulness and smug pride.

“…”

The Prince said expressionlessly: “Manifest a serving of jelly.”

A plate of jelly—identical in appearance to Little Tentacle Monster, only miniature—appeared on the table before the Prince.

Scooping up a spoon, the Prince gouged a massive chunk straight out of the jelly’s crown.

“Whimper…”

Little Tentacle Monster lifted several limbs, clutching its head.

The alternate selves here were all so vicious.

Terrifying.

It needed to burrow into X’s egg chamber to be properly soothed.

The Imperial Consort could not bear watching Little Tentacle Monster get bullied, nor could he watch the Prince stew in bitter gloom.

“What precisely transpired? Can you recount it to us in detail?”

The Imperial Consort fixed a reassuring, steady gaze upon the Prince, his tone gentle yet carrying grounded strength.

“We are all yourself. You can trust us.”

The Prince fell quiet for a moment.

He knew that pretense was futile before versions of his own soul.

No one understood oneself better than oneself.

Even if their personalities carried slight variances shaped by differing life journeys, their fundamental essence was identical.

“Very well…”

Deflating, the Prince chose to confess.

“X has grown increasingly distant toward me, losing his fire.”

The other Mu Sis exchanged glances, surprise flashing in their eyes.

“That is truly bizarre…”

The Imperial Consort voiced the consensus of the room.

“From when did this begin?” The Imperial Consort set a cup of floral tea before the Prince, smoothly sliding the mutilated jelly away.

“Probably around… our seventh wedding anniversary.”

Recalling the night, the Prince stated: “That evening, I prepared a grand fireworks display for X and hosted a banquet at the Prince’s estate. I invited many of his military comrades and peers, alongside official associates and some sycophantic aristocrats.”

“That sounds unproblematic,” the Emperor noted.

In the Mu Dynasty, imperial festivals were marked by palace banquets and celebrations.

The Emperor’s birthday aside, the birthdays of the Empress and the Crown Princess were occasions Mu Si held in the utmost regard.

Even without lavish excesses, appropriate imperial pomp was never neglected.

For an anniversary, however, the Emperor never invited court ministers to intrude; they simply dined with their immediate family, admiring the moon.

Once the imperial offspring were sent off to bed, he would retire with Shadow One, leisurely admiring the tail accessory his Empress had newly fastened.

The Prince continued:

“I shared the opening dance with X, and then gave him room to mingle with his friends.”

The Imperial Consort nodded, finding this arrangement entirely standard.

Whenever the Tianjia Emperor hosted palace banquets, he similarly granted him private space to converse with male companions.

Presumably, the dynamic was identical in the Zerg Empire.

“Then, another female invited me to dance. X was chatting with friends just a short distance away, yet he made no move to approach. He turned his back entirely, deliberately looking away!”

The Prince grew increasingly indignant with every word.

The most egregious part remained unsaid:

After he glared daggers at X’s back, X had actually walked out.

He left the banquet hall entirely, abandoning him on the floor!

“That is far too outrageous!”

Little Tentacle Monster waved its appendages in fury, finding common cause with the Prince for the first time.

If X ever abandoned him like that, he would explode with rage.

Beyond appeasement.

The Prince glanced at Little Tentacle Monster with rare warmth, briefly finding the creature tolerable.

Then Little Tentacle Monster waved its limbs wildly, proclaiming: “Tie him down! Pierce through him! Fill his belly with a whole clutch of eggs! Make him hold my tentacles in his mouth! He cannot expel them until birth! And he cannot leave my side!”

Prince: “…”

He was a fool to empathize with an eldritch abomination.

While Zergs, Tianjia, and tentacle entities were all viewed as cosmic villains, even villains had tiers of depravity.

Tentacle monsters occupied a tier of pure malice all their own.

Ability User Mu Si covered his ears, his expression complicated.

Was this something fit for human ears?

He felt mentally contaminated.

Emperor Mu Si similarly pressed a hand to his brow, averting his face.

His expression matched the time Shadow One had offered to serve as his chair, footstool, blade, hound, and chamberpot.

Only Little Zombie cheered enthusiastically: “Awoooo!“

Bite him! Eat him! Hang from his neck! Tear at him! Bite him until he swells up!

The two non-human entities, matching each other in intellectual scarcity, hit it off instantly.

They launched into an entirely disjointed debate on the finer points of capturing incubators versus devouring sustenance.

Massaging his temples, the Imperial Consort stuffed a bag of jerky into the Little Zombie’s hands and dropped a glass jar over the Little Tentacle Monster, banishing them to play elsewhere.

Steadying his composure, he addressed the Prince:

“Let us return to the matter at hand. For X to leave you alone surrounded by other females is exceedingly abnormal.”

If any female so much as stood in his vicinity, the Tianjia Emperor’s jealousy would flare uncontrollably, let alone permitting him to dance with another.

Had he actually danced with another female, the frosty aura and bitter possessiveness radiating from the Tianjia Emperor would have leveled the banquet hall.

His psychic pressure alone would have forced every female present to their knees.

Suddenly, the Imperial Consort realized something.

The Tianjia and the Zerg were fundamentally different.

Though the Tianjia Empire was progressively evolving, societal doctrine still treated males as the possessions of females.

Tianjia females could brazenly display their territorial claims over their males.

High-ranking females were especially accustomed to sole possession.

Should any outside female dare make advances toward a bonded male, she had to be prepared to enter the dueling arena.

That it was confined to a duel, rather than an immediate bloodbath on the spot, was purely due to imperial law reining them in.

In the Zerg Empire, such a scene was impossible.

Female Zergs were long conditioned to share males with others.

Much like lower-caste Tianjia females who, willing or not, had to band together in groups to jointly support a single male.

The distinction lay in authority: even a lower-caste Tianjia female retained immense control over her male.

Though supporting and sharing a male collectively, the choice of partners rested in the females’ hands.

It functioned like business partners selecting co-investors.

Naturally, for domestic peace, the females would consult the male, and unless the male objected vehemently, the proposal stood.

In the Zerg Empire, all final authority resided with the male.

A high-ranking Female Monarch might recommend an esteemed candidate to join the household, but the final verdict belonged exclusively to the Male Master.

The Imperial Consort had never lived among the Zerg.

Yet as an outsider observing a mirrored, inverted society, he perceived the crux far more lucidly.

“Perhaps your Female Monarch did not hold back from your side out of a lack of desire, or because he refused to claim his territory before those scheming females. Perhaps he simply could not.”