"Big Sis!"
Tike rushed forward abruptly, hugging Ultear tightly and burying his head in her chest.
Ultear's body stiffened slightly, then relaxed. She hugged Tike back gently, her gaze passing over the top of his head to look at Ur.
"Tear, where exactly have you been during this time? You..."
Ur subconsciously wanted to step forward but was interrupted coldly by Ultear.
"What? Remembering me as your daughter now? Isn't having Gray and Lyon with you enough? What need is there for a superfluous person like me?"
Ur's face paled instantly, her outstretched hand freezing in mid-air. She lowered her head, lips trembling, but unable to make a sound.
Tike lifted his head from Ultear's embrace. He felt the coldness in her words and didn't understand why she was like this.
"Big Sis, Mom Ur is very worried about you..."
"Worried about me?" Ultear sneered, a trace of pain flashing in her eyes. "If she were really worried about me, she wouldn't have refused to listen to me and drive Gray away even after he caused you to leave for so long! Even when Deliora appeared, she planned to sacrifice herself to fulfill Gray's revenge! In her eyes, I, her daughter, probably don't compare to even a single strand of Gray's hair!"
"That doesn't mean she doesn't love you. I can smell it. As for Deliora, long before that, I had already agreed with Gray and Lyon to defeat it together."
"Yeah, that's true too. You are that kind of child, always thinking of others, always so brave..."
Ultear lowered her head, looking at Tike with complex and indecipherable eyes.
"Unlike me. I don't care about them at all, and even in the beginning with you..."
Her voice stopped abruptly, unwilling to continue.
"Why say that?"
Tike had sensed it since just now. Rather than hating her mother, Ultear seemed to harbor guilt and self-blame toward him. But had she done anything to wrong him?
Ultear didn't answer his question directly but looked at Ur again.
"I'm very happy to see you again, really... very happy. But, Tike, you must make a choice now. Are you coming with me, or staying with that woman?"
Tike was stunned. He looked at Ultear, then at the pale-faced Ur, momentarily at a loss for how to answer.
In this suffocating silence, a voice with a mechanical texture suddenly spoke up.
"How about Ur and Tike both go with you?"
It was Alice speaking. She tilted her head, looking at Ultear with pure innocence.
Only then did Ultear notice the pink kitten standing beside Tike. She frowned slightly and asked puzzledly, "...This cat is?"
Alice puffed out her chest proudly and introduced herself: "My name is Alice. I'm a cat-type childcare robot, specially created by His Majesty the Demon King to take care of Tike!"
"Robot? His Majesty the Demon King?"
Ultear instantly felt that Tike's experiences over the past two years were far richer than she had imagined, even... somewhat unbelievable.
"So, have you been taking care of Tike during this time? Thank you."
Being thanked by Ultear, Alice scratched the back of her head somewhat embarrassedly.
"Actually, Tike took care of me a bit more."
Looking at Alice, the corners of Ultear's mouth rose slightly, revealing a faint smile.
"I thought so."
Seeing the atmosphere soften considerably under Alice's unexpected mediation, Ur carefully took a step forward, wanting to approach her daughter.
However, Ultear's expression instantly turned cold again.
"Don't come over. I don't want to talk to you right now."
(Ah, she's being awkward.)
"Big Sis, let's talk alone."
Saying this, Tike activated Water Mirror magic. A circular aqua-blue portal slowly opened in front of the two.
He took Ultear's hand, passed through the Water Mirror, and sat on the platform at the edge of the tower top, legs dangling, overlooking the scene below.
The subjugation operation was nearing its end. The cult members were either dead or injured, and the remnants were being arrested by the Council's troops.
Tike turned his head to look at Ultear beside him. Without beating around the bush, he cut straight to the core of the problem: "Big Sis, you don't hate Mom Ur at all right now, do you? You're just simply being awkward."
Ultear was silent for a moment, then reached out a finger and gently tapped Tike's nose, with a trace of helplessness and doting: "You really can 'smell' everything, can't you?"
This sentence was a tacit admission of Tike's statement.
"Then Big Sis, what exactly will it take for you to come back? Don't stay with those guys from Grimoire Heart; you'll get smelly!"
Tike didn't like Ultear being involved with people from dark guilds. In his view, few people in dark guilds were good.
Once Ultear left, there wouldn't be a single good one.
Just like Blake—perhaps she was a good sister to Lucia, but she was definitely not the type of person Tike liked.
"How did you know..." Ultear's pupils contracted slightly, surprised that Tike knew she was in Grimoire Heart.
Tike didn't hide anything and concisely told Ultear about Blake attacking him earlier, him countering her, and controlling her as a slave with magic.
After listening, Ultear first breathed a sigh of relief, glad Tike wasn't controlled. But immediately she felt surprised again: "Why was Blake's magic ineffective on you?"
"After all, her magic is 'Human Subordination.' Since I'm not human, of course it has no effect."
"...What do you mean?"
Tike leaned close to Ultear's ear, lowered his voice, and said in a volume only the two of them could hear: "I'm a dragon, probably."
His voice was soft, but every word exploded in Ultear's heart like a bomb.
"Dragon? Those dragons that were said to dominate the world in legends?"
Before Ultear could recover from the shock, Tike added: "I was taken away by my biological mother before. According to her, I should have been only three years old then, and not yet six now."
Compared to Tike's shocking true identity, the age issue seemed insignificant to Ultear.
She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, forcing herself to calm down, trying hard to digest this series of news that overturned her cognition.
"How many people know about this?"
Tike thought for a moment and answered, "Not counting Alice, among the people in this world, currently only you, Big Sis."
Ultear's tight nerves relaxed slightly, but immediately she instructed even more seriously: "Remember, absolutely don't tell anyone else. The one ranked first among the Ten Wizard Saints is a Dragon Slayer who has always coveted the power of dragons. If he knows you are a dragon, he will inevitably come to take your heart and turn you into a part of his power."
Regarding this, Tike didn't care at all.
After all—
"If he comes to kill me, then I'll kill him."
"You don't understand, Tike," Ultear said seriously. "You don't understand what being first among the Ten Wizard Saints means. Deliora and the like aren't even fit to carry his shoes in front of him; they can't be compared at all."
Tike curled his lips. Although somewhat unconvinced, he still nodded.
"Alright, I'll be careful. But I can't transform back anyway. Even if I stand in front of him, he won't recognize me as a dragon. Even that mother of mine took some effort to discern my identity."
Hearing the loneliness in Tike's words, Ultear suddenly realized something.
"You and your mother, did you...?"
"I don't like her. She only thinks about using me to do things I don't like. Mom Ur is much better than her. At least Mom Ur's love doesn't have a single impurity; it's pure and unreserved."