Free Web NovelChapter 126: Jace’s Bi-Lateral Thumbs-Up Approval Matrix
Midnight wrapped herself completely around his left arm, her small dark wings fluttering with a level of frantic, unadulterated thirst that suggested she was ready to strip him bare right here in the dirt. Her eyes were completely dilated, glazed over with absolute devotion. She glanced at the floating, translucent stream window hovering near his shoulder, completely unfazed by the audience, and then looked straight up into Liam’s face.
"Midnight thinks master can ride her instead!" she blurted out, her voice entirely too loud and breathless, eyes dewy, tongue out, even drooling a little.
The entire clearing instantly went dead silent.
Jace’s smug, ego-driven grin froze mid-sentence; a wide smile and two thumbs up shot up quickly.
Rogue choked violently on his own breath, coughing into his fist as his ears turned a deep, shameful crimson. Rogue kicked the dirt in frustration, looking around towards Mirra, raising an eyebrow.
Even Mirra’s eyes widened slightly, a faint pink dusting her cheeks as she quickly turned back to her horse, suddenly finding a random buckle intensely fascinating, completely ignoring Rogue sadly.
Right next to Liam, Elizabeth’s cat tail instantly exploded, puffing up to three times its normal size in pure, defensive shock and explosive jealousy. Her face burned red-hot, her fangs baring slightly as her gaze darted between Midnight and Liam like she was deciding which one to decapitate first.
Liam didn’t fumble. He didn’t stutter, and his pulse didn’t even skip. His analytical mind registered the absolute structural collapse of his party’s hierarchy, and he knew exactly how to lock it down.
Step one: eliminate the jealousy.
Before Elizabeth could launch into a furious, cat-eared tirade, Liam stepped directly into her space. His hand slid down with zero hesitation, catching the soft, tight arch of her lower back, and firmly hoisted her body flush against his chest. Elizabeth gasped, her breath catching in her throat as her puffed-up tail completely froze. Before she could utter a single syllable, Liam leaned down and caught her lips in a deep, unhurried, heavy kiss right in front of the floating broadcast drone.
Elizabeth melted instantly, her claws sinking into the fabric of his shoulders as the sheer weight of the kiss completely erased the smell of ash around them.
Her claws curled into his shoulders, and the burnt-ash reek of the clearing thinned to nothing under the press of her against him. Practical, he reminded himself. Tail metric, deflating. Yet his hand stayed flat on her back longer than the math strictly required, and he found he didn’t want to move it.
Liam pulled back slowly, his hand remaining steady on her lower back. He looked down at her completely dazed, flushed face, his voice entirely calm and level.
"It’s okay," he said softly, his eyes locking onto hers. "I won’t leave."
Elizabeth blinked up at him. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. "You! I!" She swallowed. "That was a terrible way to win an argument," she whispered, and made absolutely no move to step back.
"Worked," he said.
Her tail gave one helpless, traitorous swish against his leg.
Over in his peripheral vision, the stream chat, which had been hovering at a quiet 480 viewers, completely ruptured. The collective, caps-lock energy of a high school locker room erupted.
[Byran_Echevarria]: BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKKKK
[Bartack329]: NO WAY NO WAY NO WAY HE JUST BAGGED HER LIVE ON STREAM!
[JudeTradore]: W LIAM!!!! W LIAM!!!!! TYPE W IN CHAT BOYS HE’S AN ABSOLUTE DEMON
[Cmurdock]: Jace and Rogue looking like absolute virgins in the background, I’m fucking crying bwhahaa
[Mahesvar4]: YOOOOOOOOOOO MAN DROPPED THE STEAK AND TAUNTED THE HAREM
Midnight, still wrapped around his arm, sniffled with deep emotional investment. "Master kissed Elizabeth Warrior first," she announced to the entire stream, solemn as a funeral. "Midnight will wait her turn. Midnight has a number now. Midnight is number two." She held up two fingers. Then, after a beat: "Master, is there a snack while Midnight waits?"
Rogue made a sound like a deflating kettle.
Liam released Elizabeth with the same unhurried care he’d use setting down a hot pan, one hand briefly cupping the back of her head before it dropped away. Her tail had gone soft, swishing slowly and content behind her.
Suddenly, the wind shifted. A sharp, freezing chill cut directly through the residual heat of the previous explosion, making the hair on Liam’s arms stand up.
He turned his head, his sharp eyes instantly locking onto the high ridge overlooking the eastern plains. The smoke from the volcano horse was clearing, but up there, standing perfectly still against the cold grey skyline, was a different beast entirely.
It was a massive, heavy-set stallion, but it wasn’t burning. Instead, its entire mane, tail, and hooves were completely shrouded in a thick, heavy, swirling white mist. As the beast took a single, slow step along the ridge, the vibrant winter grass beneath its hooves didn’t scorch; it literally withered. The colour vanished instantly, the grass turning translucent and dead as its entire lifeforce was sucked up and absorbed directly into the swirling fog around the horse’s legs.
It was quiet. It was oppressive. It took everything for itself and left an absolute, cold void behind.
Liam stared at it, his internal mana instantly resonating with the sight. A sharp, cold smile slowly cut across his face.
"Yep," Liam murmured, his voice laced with absolute certainty. "That one. It’s absorbing the grass under it. It’s perfect. It’s me."
Beside him, Elizabeth’s flush deepened. She looked at the void-stallion, then at him, then back. "That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s said to me, and you said it about a horse," she muttered.
Midnight raised her hand again. "Midnight is still number two."
Liam glanced down at Midnight he reached over and ruffled the top of her head. Her ears flattened, then twitched back up.
He pulled his hand back and let his gaze drift across the open field. The grass was pale and thin here, bending in long waves toward the tree line. Nothing moved for a long moment. Then something did.
It was wrong. That was the first thing. The shape was horse-shaped—long legs, a neck arched like a question mark, a tail that hung low and heavy—but it wasn’t solid. It moved the way smoke moves when there’s no wind, curling into itself and pulling apart, and the ground beneath it dimmed where it passed. Patches of grass went grey and still, like the colour was being drawn up out of them. A small rock near its foreleg lost its shadow and then its texture, going smooth and blank as a river stone.
Liam tilted his head.
The thing turned. Its eyes were red. Not the warm red of a sunset or the sharp red of a warning light, the deep, flat red of old blood, the same colour that stared back at him every time he caught his reflection in still water. It looked at him, and its nostrils flared, and a slow curl of mist poured out and pooled at its feet before the ground drank it.
Then it started walking toward them.
Not running. Trotting. Slow, deliberate, each hooffall leaving a soft print of white vapour that faded after a breath. Its ears were forward. Its tail swayed.
Liam raised one eyebrow.
Whatever this was, they didn’t usually walk at people like that unless they wanted something. He lifted his arm, palm open, fingers loose, the way you’d hold your hand out to a dog you weren’t sure about.
Behind him, Elizabeth made a sound.
It wasn’t a word. It was a sharp intake of breath that caught halfway and came out strangled, like she’d been punched in the stomach. He heard her take a step back, the crunch of dry grass under her boot.
"That’s..." Her voice cracked. She swallowed. "Liam. Liam, that’s a mist spirit horse."
He didn’t turn around. The horse cloud thing was maybe thirty meters out now, close enough that he could see the way its mane dissolved and reformed with each step, threads of white pulling apart and knitting back together like yarn being worked by invisible hands.
"It’s not really a horse," Elizabeth said, and her voice had gone thin and high the way it did when she was trying to talk fast and think faster. "And it’s not really a spirit either; that’s just what people call them because nobody knows what they actually are. I’ve never... I’ve never heard of anyone seeing one out here. They’re supposed to be in the deep forest. Near water. Lakes, rivers, places where the mist pools. Not, not empty plains. Not like this."
[Tool Tip]:
Status: Midnight’s Rank: #2
The Foot-Fetish Nostalgia Glitch: Elizabeth attempting to explain the complex, deep-forest atmospheric parameters of a Mist Spirit Horse only to randomly blurt out that she misses "that foot-fetish weirdo" has introduced an unprompted cognitive distraction. The system registers her immediate, self-flagellating panic as a total validation that the party’s collective sanity is actively decomposing on the open plains.
The Locker-Room Stream Rupture: Transitioning a low-tier taming broadcast into a live-streamed, alpha-dominance kiss has completely shattered the behavioural thresholds of the 480 feral chatters. The system notes that the sudden explosion of caps-lock vulgarity and locker-room hype has permanently compromised the stream’s classification, turning a standard progression fantasy into a live tutorial on how to effortlessly handle a harem.
