Cheat Awakening

"Now we can talk more easily. You guys don't have to look up to talk to me," Cetus said with a smile, hugging Waffle, who had thrown himself into her embrace, allowing her to stroke his back, which he liked a lot.

"So, Myne, will you take care of my daughter? Please, I beg you," Cetus pleaded, her face contorted in a pitiful expression like a helpless mother entrusting her precious child to her son-in-law.

She's really good at acting, Myne thought, the corner of his mouth twisting as he watched Cetus's performance. If it wasn't for the deal they had made a moment ago, he might have thought she was a kind and naive milf mother, who was easy to fool.

"Myne!"

While Myne was wondering what to say next before agreeing to take child Cetus under his wing, so his sudden change of mind wouldn't feel abnormal—after all, just a few minutes ago he had strongly refused to accept Cetus's daughter, but now if he suddenly accepted her without making trouble, Amy would surely be suspicious—Just then Waffle called his name. When he looked at him, Waffle immediately used his ultimate weapon: puppy eyes on him.

Not this puppy eyes shit again, Myne muttered, rubbing his forehead in annoyance. Nowadays, God knows what has happened to everyone in his family. Whenever they needed anything from him, and if he refused, they immediately started playing the emotional card against him.

"Myne, your concern is understandable, but this is my child after all. I can't keep pace with her running around outside alone. With you being with her, I can feel relieved. It's the same with Fenrir; otherwise, why do you think she never cares about Waffle?"

"Because she knows he's in good hands... well, not completely, but still, you understand what I mean, right? Anyway, my point is that a flying whale child is certainly ultra-rare, but it's not like they don't exist at all."

"People who live near the sea definitely have seen them. It's just that the area we live in is a bit far from the sea. Also, she's not that weak. Unless thousands of people surround her, nothing can harm her, at least escaping is no problem, so you can rest assured."

"I have left quite a few protection spells on her, as well as other luxury spells, believe me, even if at one point you're caught in a life-and-death situation, she would be safer than you. Just don't take her out of our world."

"Your past deeds weren't too assuring in this regard," Cetus reminded him worriedly. Although she had heard from Fenrir that all divine beasts were working on closing all space creaks and there shouldn't be incidents of other-world invasions for the foreseeable future, such things were not absolute. With Myne's super bad luck, he might just walk out of the house and find a space creak.

As Cetus finished speaking, her daughter, the pink whale, floated before Myne, staring at him with her big pink eyes on the verge of tears. She spoke softly with her sweet voice.

"Brother Myne, am I bothering you? If you don't want me, that's okay. I don't want to be a burden on you."

Hearing her words spoken with a disappointed expression, Myne instantly received a thousand points of a critical hit, and he felt his heart melt like wax. He let out a chuckle and rubbed her back.

"Sigh, fine then. Welcome to the family."

...

After this not-so-little episode, and having an additional member in the team, Myne and the others said goodbye to Cetus and entered the dungeon by touching the teleportation crystal.

Although Myne yearned to return home and introduce child Cetus to everyone at home, the majority vote favoured continuing their exploration. His single vote was overruled, and he found himself leading the way into a dark passage made of roots, the supposed first floor of the Dungeon of the World Tree.

"Brother Myne?"

Just as Myne was yawning, and wondering when this tedious passage would end, Child Cetus floated in front of him.

"Yes, sweetie," Myne, as always, was very gentle and patient with good children, especially since she was his soon-to-be stepdaughter.

"Brother Myne, can... can you give me a nice name like Waffle? Waffle is such a cute name... I'm extremely jealous!"

"I wish to have a cute name too! When I asked Mother, she said I didn't need one, but now that I'm with you, I feel like it would be convenient for everyone to call me if I had a name too," Child Cetus explained, blinking her big pink eyes excitedly.

"Well, you have a point. Then what kind of name do you think would suit you? Do you have anything in mind, or have you thought about any name?" Myne asked, pondering, but seeing her shake her head, he didn't know what to say.

On one hand, she was jealous because Waffle had a name, but on the other hand, she hadn't even thought about looking for a good one for herself. As expected when it came to being lazy, no one could beat divine beasts.@@novelbin@@

"Since you are an aquatic creature... Amm... How about... Ocea?"

As Myne spoke, the child Cetus's eyes shone brightly with excitement, and she began circling around his head, clearly very thrilled. Like her name, she was spirited and lively.

Amy, on the other hand, who was silently listening to their conversation, couldn't help but twist her mouth in disbelief. Finally, she understood why Aisha and Sylphy always complained Myne had no sense of naming. He was so lazy that instead of thinking of a good name, he simply removed one letter from "Ocean" and made it a name.

"Why are you looking at me like I'm stupid? It's called art, all right? Not everyone can be as creative as me," Myne, feeling Amy's disdainful gaze, retorted. He decided to ignore this "grandma" who, in his opinion, had no sense of aesthetics at all.

"Thank you, Brother Myne, I like the 'Oesa' name a lot! It is countless times better than Waffle's name!" Ocea rushed into Myne's arms, thanking him joyfully, before flying away and seemingly talking to someone in the air, probably telling her mother about it.

"Tsk, see? This is called art. You untalented people could never understand the beauty of simplicity," Myne gave Amy a disdainful look, leaving her speechless. But before she could protest, he walked away with his head held high, not wanting to talk to her.

...

[ Name: Mandragora

LV: 21

Race: Fairy Race

Gender: Male

[Skill]

Wide Range Sleep (Small)

[Ability]

Night Vision

Roar

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Steal Claw

[Seed's Skill](New)

Wind Seed ]

After passing through the dark passage, Myne and the others appeared in a big but plain and simple hall. There wasn't anything worth mentioning, except a group of purple creatures, the size of dwarves, with yellow pupilless creepy eyes that glowed with an eerie yellow light.

They had sharp teeth coming out from their lower lips, literally touching their big noses. They had bald heads, long pointy ears like elves, and two-inch-long black nails. They only wore skirts made from leaves around their waists, and without the help of the appraisal skill, it was really hard to differentiate between males and females as, unlike humans, they didn't have any obvious physical differences.

Seed Skills? Wind Seed, what the hell are those now? Does planting it in the ground give me wind? Myne looked at the appraisal result dumbfoundedly.

[ Wind Seed: ??? ]

No description? Weird. Although I always knew that my appraisal skill wasn't as reliable as I originally thought, but seriously? Now it can't even tell me about the skill of a random monster I found in a dungeon... Wait... Could it be... No way, did the appraisal level up? Myne suddenly realized something, his eyes widening with surprise and delight. But the next moment, his excitement died down.

[ Appraisal・Complete LV4 (559/1000) ]

There's still a long way to go, but then why can it show hidden information? If I'm not wrong, those seed skills should be something like bloodline skills—mysterious and rare, something I've been looking forward to for a long time. But sadly, appraisal has never shown them to me. Who would have thought there would be more types of skills?

Now, the only thing is to find out what the hell this skill is and how to use it, Myne thought while checking the other monsters' statuses. Only after ensuring that most of them had similar skills with different qualities did he pick out the best one, cut them off, paste them on himself, and close the appraisal window.

He then focused his gaze on the group of ugly purple monsters in front of him, who had already picked up their weapons (wooden sticks and stones) and gathered together to face the formidable enemies that had suddenly invaded their home.

"Myne! Shall we start? How long are you going to stand there like a stone?" Waffle, who couldn't wait to show off in front of Ocea, asked impatiently.

"Huh? Since when did you start caring about my permission? Have you ever done something like this before?" Myne looked at Waffle confusedly, finding it a bit hard to digest the other party's sudden change in behaviour.

"Tsk, idiot," Waffle stuck his tongue out at Myne annoyingly and flew toward the group of Mandragora. He took a deep breath and, like a machine gun, started shooting finger-sized bullets made of flame from his mouth at them. Although they looked small and weak, every time a Mandragora's body was touched by those flame bullets, a big hole appeared in their bodies.