The night, when Aria returned from her adventure from the Poison Valley fog zone.

After crying and being both physically and emotionally exhausted, Aria fell asleep in her mother’s lap.

Maria gently caressed her daughter’s head as she slept in her lap. She only hoped that her daughter would find happiness.

In her youth, Maria was also like Aria. She used to go hunting in the forest to hunt many strong monsters for food for the tribe. Because of regular hunting, she was naturally very strong.

No one knew, not even her daughter that she was a veteran. She had an Intermediate Stage Spear Mastery. But she never showed her true strength in front of others.

She was strong but still didn’t have the guts to run away from the beast men. There were many reasons for that. The first was that she knew that as a veteran she may be stronger among the mortals, but the true power holders were the extraordinary. If any of them found that she was a veteran, they would annihilate the entire Wildfang tribe.

The second was of course the fear and indoctrination she received from the birth that invisibly became her crutch. The shackles that prevented her from moving forward.

And the third, the most important one. She never found someone like Drake in her younger years.

If she did, then the first two points would hold no sway against her. She was confident enough to destroy those shackles in a heartbeat, as long as she found someone worthy to give her loyalty to.

Even if under the influence of those shackles, she was not ignorant and was wise enough to understand that those shackles were merely glass shackles built upon the fear ingrained after hundreds of years of oppression and indoctrination. But she never found anyone who gave her the motivation to shatter those shackles.

After one of the bull-man impregnated her, she gave birth to Aria. For the bull-men, all the fox women, even those who were their daughters, were considered less than slaves. So, she never received any care from the bull-man, who impregnated her after playing with her body for weeks and never even considered Aria to be his daughter.

When she gave birth to Aria, she gave up finding someone. She spent all her time taking care of Aria. Despite knowing the negative effects of indoctrination, she still taught her daughter all about that. She hoped Aria would break the shackles on her own.

She never wanted to do that, but she was helpless against her situation. Even if she wanted to run away with her daughter, there was no place to hide. In the entire Black Forest, they were treated worse than slaves. In the Black Forest Kingdom, there were still some beast-men who traveled but due to the friction in shadows between the two giants, that happened rarely. And if they went there, there was a big chance, they would either be enslaved again. The last option remaining was leaving the territory, but that was nothing less than a death sentence for a lone explorer especially one traveling with a toddler.

As Aria grew up, she found her own shadow in Aria. She had decided if Aria found someone worthy enough to follow, she would submit together with her daughter. But if she failed, she would accompany her and protect her, till the day she would die.

The fox women had a rather low life expectancy because many died as they reached middle-aged, as they did not have the same allure as before. So many times they were either killed by the bull-men to vent their anger or when they were fcked too hard by them. Among the thirteen members of the Wildfang tribe, only one other tribe member was from her generation, rest were from Aria’s generation.

As Maria was having such thoughts while caressing Aria’s head in her lap, her beast instincts suddenly warned her.

Her eyes widened, her ears perked up, and she became vigilant of any movement. Then she noticed a note lying on the table. She remembered that there was no such note there.

After gently laying Aria on the bed and covering her with the sheets, she carefully moved towards the table. She picked up the note when she failed to notice any malicious intents from it.

“Meet me outside the tribe.”

That was all that was written on the note.

But Maria who guessed who left the note, had a smile on her face.

She left the tribe. There she noticed marks on the trees that looked inconspicuous but she guessed that her secret guest left them to help her follow them.

After running for two hundred meters she stopped as the marks ended. She looked around and her gaze stopped at a tree. The tree looked no different from other trees in the night sky.

“You can show yourself, Lord Drake. I have come alone,” Maria said with a smirk facing the tree.

As if an invisibility spell was lifted, Drake appeared. He was leisurely standing while leaning on the tree Maria pointed. He had used a limited-time use invisibility prop he purchased from the system shop.

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After returning to the mansion, he left alone without telling anyone and came to the forest. He knew the general direction of Aria’s tribe and easily found it. He came to the tribe to see Aria’s reaction to think of further plans.

He used the invisibility prop to turn invisible and saw the interactions between the mother and daughter. He found Maria interesting after he understood her thoughts. So, he decided to meet her. That was his first meeting with Maria, unknown to anyone.

Drake laughed and greeted her, “Hello Maria. It's nice to meet you.”

Maria walked towards him gracefully and said with an elegant smile, “The pleasure is all mine, Lord Drake.”

They were smart people, so they didn’t waste time asking how they knew about each other.

Drake blatantly checked her out and said with a smile, “I can see where Aria got her skills from.”

“Thank you for your praise, Lord Drake,” Maria said with a seductive smile.

But the smile suddenly disappeared as her temperament suddenly changed and became menacing, she said with slight killing intent, “But Lord Drake, I am a little angry that you made my dear daughter cry. That girl is a piece of my heart.”

Drake didn’t care about her changes. He watched her with an amused smile and asked, “So, should I have reduced the difficulty of her test?”

Maria’s temperament took another one hundred eighty degrees turn as she was back to her seductive and elegant smile, she said, “Absolutely not. It is perfect. A competent lord will never tolerate that his subordinates live in fear and submission of another person.”

“That’s right,” replied Drake. Then continued, “Since you know that, you should know why I wanted to meet you.”

“Of course, I know, my Lord. But I have to remind you that what you want to do may take too much effort”, said Maria as if persuading him to give up whatever he wanted.

Drake ignored her fake persuasion and just asked with a smile, “Is the outcome worth the effort?”

Maria’s smile matched his as she said, “It’s more than worth it.”

—------------

For the next few days when Drake decided to rest after the Poison Valley adventure, he explained to Aria about their upcoming adventure to the goblin tribe. He gave her a basic overview of the entire tribe and their main mission to annihilate the tribe. He gave her time to think about the strategies to be used there.

Drake’s second meeting with Maria, and first official meeting according to Aria, was unplanned. It only happened because Maria wanted to tease her daughter by making her introduce Drake to her.

Drake wanted to take a longer rest for the next adventure. He wanted the twins to take at least a week to get used to their new powers by practicing in the training room. But he cut it short as Maria told him about the visit of the bull tribe’s representatives. So, he decided to complete the Goblin Valley mission that day.

Then on the day of the goblin tribe adventure, the real plan began.

After Aria left the tribe, Maria purposefully left the door open, which normally, she would never do. She adjusted the bag with the loot that Aria brought such that, if anyone spared some effort, they would be able to see the bag peeking out of the gap.

She knew that among all the tribe members, only Willow and Brooke were the ones who were unruly enough to not only peek inside the tribe leader’s hut but also try to sneakily check out her belongings.

And as expected, Willow took the bait. When all the tribe members gathered, she acted dismissive to both of them just to increase their hidden resentment.

She purposefully kicked them both in from of the tribe to humiliate them.

Their greed and resentment that had crossed all limits was more than enough for them to snitch her to the bull tribe representatives.

Then, as expected those muscle-brained idiots hit her. She was even prepared to be fcked by them but as she guessed those two sluts kept the leader Torix occupied.

She took all her beatings as those were not new to her. With her strength that was more than enough to kill them easily, though she never did. Together with her resilience as a beast-human, she could recover from most injuries in a month.

The next part of the plan started when Aria arrived. Because of the deeply ingrained indoctrination, for which she was partly to blame, Aria didn’t attack the bull-men. But she was happy she talked back to them for the first time. A good progress in her dictionary but nowhere near enough for their plan to work.

She felt pain in her heart when she saw her being beaten by Torix, but she held on.

Then everyone’s focus turned to Drake who was standing leisurely leaning against a tree. Drake had asked Yumi to stay behind as he didn’t want any unexpected variable to occur in their plan due to her presence. She was mainly present as a failsafe in case everything went south.

Maria was deeply impressed by Drake’s willpower when she saw him being beaten by Torix continuously. She was different. With her strength and beast human physiology, she was still in too much pain. But Drake was much weaker than her but was taking much more beatings than her.

Many times she wanted him to stop as she could not see him getting her. But the resolute look he hid behind his bored eyes as he was beaten continuously stopped her every time.

Then the moment both of them were waiting for, finally came. Aria cut the head of one of the bull-men. Never in her life, had she felt so much pride for her daughter. Her daughter did something that she never dared to do.

Aria proceeded to cut the second bull-men in the middle horizontally, leaving him to die a slow painful death. She knew that was Aria’s way of taking revenge against the bull-men for disrespecting Drake.

After killing the third one, Torix, the leader ran away. Then Aria suddenly knelt and started sobbing bitterly. Maria felt as if someone twisted a knife in her heart when she saw her daughter like that. She wanted to hold her close to her heart and console her. She wanted to tell her that everything was alright. She wanted to gently pat her back and head to comfort her. She wanted to do so much but held her back.

“You are finally worthy!”

She saw the badly beaten boy reach towards her daughter with difficulty. Then he something that her daughter wanted to hear desperately for a long time.

“Do you mean...”

That boy who hid his pain behind a carefree but gentle smile, nodded his head to confirm his affirmation for her daughter.

Even if his face always had a carefree expression, she had seen the pride and arrogance hidden deep inside his eyes. The eyes that fascinated her when she first met him.

Never once did his eyes leave that pride and arrogance, whether he was talking to someone, taking a violent beating or just looking at her daughter with a gentle smile.

Seeing that Aria jumped up, hugged him tightly, and started crying.

Despite the pain he felt because of being hugged like that, he hid it behind his smile, hugged her back, and gently patted her back.

At that moment, she realized that her daughter was in good hands.

Name: Maria Wildfang

Loyalty +30, 100 (Zealot)

As Drake looked at Maria while still hugging Aria, they exchanged glances. They gave each other evil smiles to confirm their relationship and acknowledge that the plan was a resounding success.