Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 420: Enlightenment Journey

"The diving team just jumped in. We are monitoring right now."

Arkai hummed an acknowledgement as Damon’s voice crackled through the car’s internal speaker. He was seated in the back of the convoy’s lead vehicle, here with the young Saintess beside him.

Lilyca Celeste folded her hands over her lap, her silver-white eyes fixed on the dam’s approaching silhouette.

The concrete monolith loomed through the tinted windows, grey and imposing and, apparently, leaking corruption into the lower levels at a rate that had made someone, somewhere, decide that waiting for the Saintess was a luxury they could not afford.

"We will arrive at the gate in three minutes," Arkai said.

"Copy." Damon killed the connection. He was brusque and efficient as usual, especially to Arkai. They still hated each other’s guts.

But Arkai understood. That man could’ve had seventeen other crises to manage and it was his way of trusting Arkai to handle this one.

Again, the leak to the lower ground had been significant.

Significant enough that the usual protocol with Saintess first and purification first, while operations began only after the area was cleansed and blessed and certified safe by three separate agencies, had been thrown out the window.

No, perhaps it was truly better this way. Patch the leak first, stop the bleeding, then the Saintess wouldn’t need to do extra work. She wouldn’t need to stretch her divine energy further than absolutely necessary.

This was not the norm, though. Any diver who went into that water without a purification barrier was taking their life into their own hands, and the Hunter Association’s insurance policies were notoriously ungenerous about that kind of thing.

But Arkai had an idea why Damon had dared to deploy the welders first.

Eastiel had refused offshore jobs these days.

He wanted to stay close to Cecilia. To be within driving distance, emergency-response distance. You know, the kind of distance where he could rush home if something happened and not be stuck on a rig in the middle of the ocean, helpless and useless and slowly losing his mind with worry.

That meant he was available for inland jobs. Jobs like this one. Jobs that required the best underwater welder on the continent and just so happened to be within a two-hour drive of his apartment.

So Damon could rely on him. The best there was, who could jump into corrupted water with a welding torch and a prayer and come out the other side with the job done.

Perhaps it was strange, if one stopped to think about it.

Why would an heir to a multi-almost-breaching-billion old-money family jump into the water to weld?

The Edengolds had been wealthy for centuries. They had estates and investments and the kind of intergenerational influence that made new money like the Vasilievs look like children playing with pocket change.

Eastiel could have done anything. He could have sat in a boardroom and shuffled papers and collected dividends for the rest of his life.

Instead, he had chosen to become an underwater welder. A job that involved high pressure, low visibility, and the constant, looming possibility of death by electrocution, decompression sickness, or rift-spawned monster.

No. Step even further back.

Why would a lion, a water-hating creature of savannas and grasslands and the sun-baked heat of the southern territories, choose to dive into the deep body of water to weld?

Every instinct in Eastiel’s body should have screamed at him to stay on dry land, to keep his mane dry and his paws on solid ground.

But the answer was simpler than people might think.

Eastiel’s affinity had always been lightning, fire, and earth.

Get it? This battle-genius motherfucker had been welding underwater for the sole purpose of elemental training.

He was desensitizing himself inside an unfavorable and highly dangerous domain, surrounded by the one element that directly countered everything he was.

This little shit was forging himself into something that could not be stopped by a little bit of water.

This was what money could buy. Not yachts or mansions. Not the kind of performative luxury that billionaires like Arzhen Vasiliev flaunted.

This. Experience. Training. Battle strategy. The freedom to pursue his own inspired enlightenment, to spend years mastering a craft that had nothing to do with inheritance or family obligation.

All this because he still had a mother who could hold everything up while he was gone, who supported him, and a younger brother, Elias, who looked up to him and held down the fort and never once made him feel guilty for leaving.

Arkai was as privileged as Eastiel, in terms of wealth and resources. But he had not had that kind of family. His step-sister was... like that. His step-mother was... unreliable. And his father was dead.

The Dawnoro family, unlike the Edengolds, had not been a source of support.

Still. Where Arkai had ended up was a point of pride for him. He had built Aro Industry over from the ground up and created strong communities of skilled working-class people who depended on him and who he could depend on in return.

That was worth something at the very least.

Oh, well. Once he had a son or something, he would go on his own enlightenment journey like Eastiel.

Maybe to the moon?

Yes. The moon had always been special for werewolves. The lunar surface and the pull of the tides. The old fairytale connection between wolf and... heh, satellite.

Let’s go there. Build a moon base, perhaps. See what enlightenment tastes like in zero gravity.

"Mr. Dawnoro," A small voice cut through his thoughts. "These days, I feel an increased divine energy from you."

Arkai raised his eyebrows and turned his head. The young Saintess, Lilyca, was looking up at him with those unsettling silver-white eyes. She looked curious and without guile.

"Divine...?" Arkai blinked. "What do you mean, divine?"

"You usually already emit divine energy," Lilyca shrugged, as though this were a perfectly normal thing to say to someone. "But it is just triple the amount now. Did you triple the amount of time you pray at church?"

Arkai was speechless.

"I usually... already emit divine energy...?"

He didn’t know that.

He was a werewolf. Divine? He might be the opposite of divine. Also, a businessman might be further away...

Perhaps a plumber, well, an inside-joke plumber who actually owned the company, but still.

Where did emitting divine energy come from? He emitted, at best, stress and caffeine. Not to mention the low-grade annoyance after dealing with bureaucracy all morning.

Lilyca shrugged again. "Never felt something similar to that usual thing. This one, though..." Her silver-white eyes narrowed slightly, focusing on him intensely. "It feels like the gods."

The... go—

Arkai froze.

The convoy of black SUVs escorting them slowed to a stop at the dam’s security gate. The concrete walls of the infrastructure loomed around them, grey and cold, indifferent to the theological crisis happening in the back seat of the lead vehicle.

"We are... we’re already here." He said, still confused. "Maybe, if you don’t mind, Saintess, please elaborate on that later."

"Sure!" Lilyca’s face brightened. She had no idea she had just upended someone’s entire understanding of themselves. "As long as you are not busy helping the uncles with city planning!"