Ayla stared at the scrawny, hollow-cheeked messenger in cold silence. The man was inherently ugly, his sharp shoulder blades jutting awkwardly against the fabric of his pristine Central Command uniform, and his posture carried a brittle, defensive arrogance that made her active parameters twitch with sudden revulsion.

Roric saw his dear granddaughter standing at the threshold, and he was instantly taken aback when he watched the intense, dark expression settling on her face.

’Is my little milk baby angry at this guy because of me?’ the old General thought, a sudden surge of warm, paternal pride swelling in his chest, entirely melting the residual anger of his Diamond-rank aura.

Only then did Ayla turn her attention to him, her golden eyes blinking once. Internally, she was thoroughly confused.

The deep animosity she felt toward the scrawny man was not because of his disrespectful behavior toward her grandfather. There was absolutely no logical reason for her to be upset on Roric’s behalf.

Grandpa was good to her, certainly, and she fully intended to reciprocate that human goodness in the future by ensuring that when the time came to finally eat him, she would devour his brain without causing him a single shred of physical pain.

That was her highest form of gratitude.

For Ayla, the old General was not particularly different from the rest of her high-grade food supply; he simply occupied a slightly softer corner within her storage parameters.

If there was anyone in this entire world whose emotions genuinely affected her own core, it was Kenji.

Still, Kenji was also her food. But for that specific food, she had already resolved that she would ask for his permission before eating him.

That was the fundamental difference.

The true reason for the sudden repulsion she felt against this scrawny messenger was entirely unknown to her logic.

Some kind of deep, ambient aura radiating from his skin repulsed her biological sensors. The reason for this instinctive hatred was her own Celestial Vessel.

For a legendary, system-forged vessel to display such immediate animosity, this man had to possess a vessel or a trait of completely opposite qualities to her own.

Celestials were renowned throughout the world for their absolute purity.

Then...

’Is he impure?’ Ayla wrinkled her nose slightly, her lips thinning as if she had suddenly smelled something profoundly disgusting.

’Like he didn’t bathe, or clean his skin properly?’ She wondered about this silently, beginning her walk across the polished stone floor toward her grandfather while carefully maintaining a wide, deliberate distance from the messenger.

The young messenger had already run completely out of breath the moment she stepped fully into the room.

His prominent Adam’s apple moved rapidly up and down against his collar as his eyes locked onto her form, entirely incapable of tearing themselves away from the sheer, hypnotic symmetry of her face.

So when she openly displayed such a disgusted expression—even going so far as to keep three handfuls of distance from his position as she bypassed him to reach the General’s desk—a deep, ugly scowl appeared on his face.

’Bitch...’ he thought bitterly in the privacy of his own mind.

Ayla froze. Her golden eyes snapped directly to his face, her gaze flaring with a sudden, lethal sharpness that pinned him to the spot.

The messenger’s heart instantly dropped into a cold pit of horror. ’Did I say it out loud?’ his mind panicked, his palms turning slick with sweat. ’No, right. It must be a coincidence. There is no way she heard that.’ But his thoughts lacked conviction.

The only person in the entire office who remained in a thoroughly good mood was Roric Vale. He completely mistook Ayla’s sudden detour and her icy demeanor as an intentional choice to take his side, viewing her distant path as a calculated insult meant to degrade this daring little worm from Central Command.

"Mi—ahem—little baby, why are you awake this early?" Roric asked, his deep voice turning incredibly tender, all traces of the Diamond-rank powerhouse vanishing as he smiled down at her.

Ayla blinked her eyes at him. To her, this was simply a regular, scheduled activity. Back in the city lord mansion of Oldyork, whenever her she woke up for the day, she would immediately navigate her way to Sarah.

The purpose was always to consume human food. She was merely following that established formality here in the estate, because her palate had developed a distinct interest in the special, human-cooked delicacies prepared by the mansion’s chefs.

It was a pleasant distraction that did not involve devouring human brains.

"Oh... let me guess," Roric said dramatically, rubbing his long, coarse beard with a heavy hand, pretending to be in the middle of a deep, complex thought.

Ayla innocently waited for him to finish his deduction, fully expecting his mouth to say, ’Let’s eat. The kitchen has prepared something special for you today.’

But what actually came out of the old man’s mouth was, "Baby missed her grandpa, right?"

Ayla parted her lips, entirely speechless. Even the scrawny messenger, standing a few feet away, could see that her real reason for coming to the office had absolutely nothing to do with grandfatherly affection.

The blank, unreadable look of disappointment was literally written across her face. But the messenger was not nearly daring enough to say that out loud.

He had already offended the commanding General of the Eastern Front once; considering how intensely the old man protected his granddaughter, the result of offending him a second time would undoubtedly be immediate execution.

It was common knowledge within the sector barracks that the Young Miss of the Vale house was thoroughly spoiled by her family. In a detached way, the messenger actually agreed with Roric’s weakness.

Who wouldn’t spoil a girl who possessed the literal epitome of human perfection?

’Alas...’ the messenger sighed internally, his eyes narrowing slightly as he remembered the report from the battle fronts. ’It isn’t going to last much longer for this house.’

Roric Vale’s attention shifted back to him in an instant, his thick brows furrowing as the warmth vanished from his features.

"Scram," the General said, the single word carrying a heavy, dismissive weight.

"About the mandate—"

"I will do as the Marshal ordered," Roric interrupted, his voice flat. "Get out of my sight."

"I will report this directly to Central Command, General," the messenger replied. After delivering a stiff, clinical military salute to the old man, his eyes took a final, lingering peek over Ayla’s body, his gaze tracing every line of her curves before he turned on his heel and left the office.

"Can I eat him?" Ayla involuntarily muttered, the words slipping past her teeth before she remembered that the person standing beside her was Roric, not Kenji.

She thoroughly hated the specific trajectory of the man’s final thoughts. The messenger had looked at her with a raw, biological drive, a disgusting human instinct that indicated he wanted to mate with her. But she didn’t.

Her face scrunched up in pure disgust.

"Ugly swan..." she muttered under her breath.

Roric burst into a sudden, booming laugh at her quiet mumblings, the sound echoing off the stone walls of the courtyard.

"Baby, you can’t eat such dirty people," he said, completely misinterpreting her vocabulary as the typical, dramatic hyperbole of a sheltered child. "Come with me. I will give you something tasty from the central pavilion."

He reached out, his large, calloused hand gently pulling her by the sleeve toward the grand dining hall. He was incredibly happy inside, thoroughly charmed by the idea that his precious granddaughter had actively backed him up against the bureaucratic bully from the inner ring.

On the way down the long corridor, the old General continuously complained about his political grievances, detailing how he was constantly getting targeted by the higher-ups in Central Command.

He gloated openly as he walked, visibly satisfied to see that his granddaughter was finally starting to mirror his own deep-seated hatred for the politicians.

He remained entirely unaware that as they walked, Ayla was calmly calculating the structural density of his windpipe, seriously considering the logistics of permanently sealing the mouth of her excessively over talkative grandfather by devouring his brain.