EPISODE 26: Grey Owl

Night finally descended over the city of Koreson. Cold wind blew through the streets carrying the last traces of the afternoon rain. For Zenoda Blanco, today had been one of the longest, most draining, and thoroughly tiresome days since he had made the decision to reincarnate as a human being.

After confirming that Meoda had been evacuated and the immediate Academy business was concluded for the time being, Zenoda walked back toward the Silver Swan Inn. Midway through the journey, his human stomach voiced a loud complaint. He made a brief detour to a street stall sending up clouds of fragrant smoke, purchasing several skewers of low-tier monster meat satay in a spicy sweet-soy glaze.

Back in his VIP room, Zenoda tossed off his coat, set his katana on the desk, and dropped himself into the wooden chair. The room was quiet and comfortable.

He unwrapped the parcel on the table. The savory aroma of grilled meat filled the room immediately. He picked up one skewer and bit into it.

"Hmm, I bought a bit too much today," Zenoda muttered while chewing, his eyes drifting over the more than a dozen remaining skewers. Eating alone in this spacious room somehow felt slightly quiet.

Then, he thought of the creature that had helped him in the colosseum.

Zenoda snapped his fingers at the air. "Summon."

At once, a softly glowing magic circle materialized above the dining table. From swirling light particles, the Grey Owl appeared and perched elegantly near the plate. The owl with its three-toned feathers — white, ash-grey, and transparent crystal — tilted its head, looking at Zenoda.

Zenoda smiled slightly. He took a small clean plate, slid two pieces of grilled meat off the bamboo skewers, and placed them in front of the owl.

"Eat. You worked hard enough today holding off that lunatic's lightning," Zenoda said casually.

The owl let out a soft, very contented-sounding hoot, then began pecking at the pieces of satay meat with its small beak. The two of them ate dinner together in comfortable silence.

But as the chewing of satay continued, Zenoda began to think. His brow drew together slowly. His divine mind started connecting pieces of a puzzle he had been too busy fighting to examine earlier.

(Wait a moment...) Zenoda murmured internally, eyes fixed on the owl eating with extraordinary elegance — too much elegance for any ordinary bird.

(The first time I summoned this creature in the colosseum, I felt as though every hoot it produced was a telepathic sentence appearing directly in my head. And fifteen minutes before the fight with Meoda began, it made a sound again, and the telepathic words came through with startling clarity. The tone of that telepathy, the resonance of its vibration... is very familiar.)

Zenoda set down the rest of his satay. His eyes narrowed sharply as he began studying the owl from the tip of its beak to the end of its tail feathers. He reached out with his cosmic senses to peel back the physical illusion in front of him.

The owl, feeling the intensity of being stared at, stopped chewing. It froze, staring back at Zenoda with its large, round eyes.

"What exactly are you?" Zenoda asked suddenly, his voice very low and penetrating.

The owl lowered its head slightly — and then, a crystal-clear telepathic voice, melodious and full of deference, resonated directly inside Zenoda's skull.

"It's me, my Lord."

Zenoda's eyes went wide. His human heart seemed to stop beating for a full second.

"Ehhhhhhhh?!" Zenoda lurched backward until his chair scraped loudly.

This time, no owl hoot came out — only the pure voice of the woman he knew more well than any other being in existence. The telepathic voice that had accompanied him across billions of years in the dimension of Zenith.

"You... that voice, don't tell me..." Zenoda swallowed, pointing at the owl with a trembling finger.

The owl gave a gentle wing-spread. "Yes, my Lord Ursilium. I am Mincilia."

The moment those words were spoken, the small owl's body began emitting a blinding silvery-blue light. Mana particles in the room swirled into a small vortex. The satay parcel on the table nearly took flight before Zenoda caught it with a quick gravity spell.

From within the radiance, the owl's form expanded and transformed.

The light faded — revealing a figure now sitting on Zenoda's dining table. Her overall shape was very similar to the real Mincilia, yet there were several significant differences adjusted for this mortal dimension.

Mincilia was no longer a fully grown woman with galaxy wings. She had taken the form of a young girl who appeared to be sixteen years old — the same age as Zenoda's current vessel. She wore an elegant short dress in grey and white, the pattern reminiscent of owl feathers. Her hair was now clean white, neatly cut to shoulder length.

But the most striking feature was her eyes. The teenage Mincilia had Heterochromia — each eye a different color. Her right eye was pure sapphire blue, representing her original hue, while her left eye glowed white, representing the divine essence of Zenoda that bound her as a Familiar.

The teenage Mincilia smiled sweetly, tilting her head with an endearing tilt.

Zenoda could only sit frozen, staring at his attendant's new form.

"You look... slightly different," Zenoda commented, still working to process the fact that there was now a teenage girl sitting on his dining table.

Mincilia smoothed the edge of her dress with graceful composure. "I simply adjusted to the base form of the summoned owl avatar, my Lord. If I used my true adult appearance, the mana circuit of this planet would detonate. So this is the form I take as your mortal Familiar."

Silence fell over the room.

Zenoda slowly lowered his head. His black fringe covered his eyes. His shoulders began to shake. His hands clenched tightly on the wooden table.

Mincilia, watching that reaction, began to sense something was very wrong. Her smile faded, replaced by mild, building panic.

"M-my Lord...?" Mincilia called uncertainly.

Zenoda drew a very deep breath. "Why..."

"Ehhh?"

Without warning, Zenoda looked up, his eyes radiating absolute fury. The seal on his patience had shattered into pieces.

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THISSSS?!"

Zenoda shouted at Mincilia with every ounce of frustration in him. The shout was not merely sound — it was a frequency wave from Ursilium's soul detonating from sheer exasperation at having his privacy invaded yet again.

GRRRRRRUUUUMMMBLE!

The impact of the god's shout instantly caused a localized micro-earthquake. The entire Silver Swan Inn shuddered violently. Tea glasses on the table rattled, the hanging lamp swung wildly, and dust rained from the ceiling.

Mincilia, confronted with her master's rage, immediately panicked. She scrambled off the table, dropped to her knees, and bowed her head in front of Zenoda, attempting to explain herself in a rushed and somewhat stuttering voice.

"Y-yeahh! Eehhhh! Ummmm! Please listen to me first, my Lord!" Mincilia waved both hands frantically. "Here's what happened, my Lord... When you performed the summoning ritual at the Academy for the first time this morning... the golden mana — the divine soul essence belonging to you — was slowly seeping out and flowing into the summoning crystal!"

Mincilia swallowed nervously, meeting Zenoda's gaze with her heterochromic eyes that were beginning to glisten. "A-as a result, not a single monster or Familiar from the Earth could withstand the pressure and purity of your power! If left unchecked, the crystal would have exploded and destroyed the entire capital city! So... under the circumstance, purely to protect your identity... I drew my own consciousness inward, slipped into the summoning dimension, and took the form of an owl Familiar so your ritual would complete successfully!"

Hearing that explanation — entirely logical and deeply reasonable — the rage in Zenoda's chest receded like a fire drenched in ice water.

He went quiet. The vein at his temple eased. The truth struck him hard: the chaos in class that morning was entirely his own fault for failing to properly reseal his residual divine energy after the Crimson Forest fight the night before. Mincilia had not been following him. His attendant had just saved his life and the entire city of Koreson from a golden mana detonation.

A very human pang of guilt crept into Zenoda's heart. He cleared his throat awkwardly, looked away, and scratched the back of his neck.

"I see..." Zenoda murmured, his voice shifting to something considerably softer. He settled back in his chair. "Alright. If that's the case... with you here in this teenage girl form, who is managing the divine realm for Earth back in Zenith?"

Mincilia rose slowly, dusting her knees off, relieved that her master's anger had subsided.

"Don't worry about that, my Lord," Mincilia explained with a professional smile. "Before I came to Earth with this fragment of divided consciousness taking this form, there was already a local Goddess assigned to watch over this planet's divine realm. When I first entered Earth's orbit billions of years ago, that Goddess recognized my cosmic identity and voluntarily elevated me as the Principal Goddess of this world."

Mincilia puffed out her chest with a note of pride. "So right now, that local Goddess is covering for me — acting as Earth's balance-keeper while a portion of my consciousness has been called into this room by you."

Zenoda pressed two fingers to his suddenly throbbing nose bridge.

"Ughhhhh... this sits somewhere between correct and completely wrong," Zenoda groaned in resignation. "What kind of divine bureaucracy is this, reassigning deity positions without any consultation?"

But in the middle of that sacred, universe-scale conversation, Zenoda's instincts suddenly caught something — the sound of rapid, heavy footsteps pounding down the inn corridor, headed directly toward his room.

Before Zenoda could tell Mincilia to return to her owl form, a loud impact rang out.

CRASH!

The door to Zenoda's VIP room was kicked in from outside with such force that the hinges nearly tore free.

Three young men burst through with panicked faces, gasping for breath, and swords half-drawn. The ones who had just demolished his door were none other than the three clownish nobles: Agru Droman, Cedric Thundra, and Valerius Hinno.

"ZENODAAAA!" they shouted in perfect unison.

Zenoda, sitting in his chair, stared at them in alarm. "Ehhhh?!"

After breaking through the door, Agru — standing at the front — rapidly scanned the room. "Zenoda! I sensed an incredibly powerful energy surge that caused that brief tremor just now, so we—"

Agru's heroic sentence died in his throat. His voice locked up completely.

All three clownish nobles froze like ice sculptures in midwinter. Their eyes went as wide as humanly possible, their jaws plummeting to the floor.

Inside Zenoda's room, right beside the dining table, stood an extraordinarily beautiful teenage girl of about sixteen. She had white hair, captivating heterochromic eyes, wore an exquisite short dress, and was gazing at them with a completely innocent expression. And the most devastating detail of all — Zenoda was alone in a closed room with this girl, at night.

Three seconds of absolute, agonizing silence.

Their mortal teenage brains processed this scene in the most spectacularly creative way possible.

And then all three of them screamed hysterically at the same time.

"EHHHHH?! ZENODA BROUGHT A GIRL TO THE INN!!!"

Cedric's face went crimson immediately. As a noble who deeply upheld etiquette — at least since his recent reformation — this was a scandal of the first order.

"Valerius! Zenoda has lost his mind! He's consorting with a young woman!" Cedric announced in a panic.

Valerius, equally thunderstruck, immediately clapped Cedric on the shoulder. "Cedric! Run downstairs and get Master Vivaldi! The innkeeper needs to know about this before the Silver Swan Inn's reputation is completely ruined!"

"On it!" Cedric could only nod in obedient compliance and immediately turned, sprinting down the inn stairs at maximum speed to find Master Vivaldi.

On the other side of the doorway, Agru and Valerius remained at the threshold. They didn't enter, but continued monitoring Zenoda with expressions combining suspicion, shock, and overwhelming curiosity in roughly equal measure.

Zenoda sat frozen. His mind had gone blank. He looked at Agru and Valerius with the single most vacant expression his face had produced in this entire lifetime. Mincilia, panicking that her divine identity was about to be exposed, chose to say absolutely nothing and stand perfectly still.

Given the thoroughly awkward and absurdly bizarre situation he found himself in, Zenoda dragged a hand roughly down his face and asked the only question that mattered.

"So... what exactly is the reason you two demolished my door?!" Zenoda asked irritably.

Valerius cleared his throat, working hard to maintain what was left of his composure despite his still-stunned expression. "Uhhm... well. We felt the tremor, and then I wanted to investigate the enormous mana surge that flared and disappeared in an instant from the direction of your room. We thought Purple Snake was attacking you!"

Agru crossed his arms, his eyes narrowing at Mincilia. "However, since we can see that you have brought an extremely beautiful unknown woman into your room at night... we are now suspecting something entirely different. That... YOU WANTED TO MESS AROUND WITH THAT WOMAN, ZENODA!"

"Ehhhhhhhgggghhh!"

Zenoda let out a long groan of pure frustration that originated somewhere deep in the foundation of his soul. The misunderstandings of mortal teenagers were going to kill him faster than Demon's Ash ever could.

"Uaaahhh... the state of your minds and your filthy imaginations," Zenoda moaned, massaging his temple. He then pointed toward the white-haired girl. "You want to know something? This is my Familiar."

Hearing that, the operating systems of both Agru's and Valerius's brains experienced a critical error.

"Ehh?" Agru blinked.

"Ehh?" Valerius looked the girl up and down. "Familiar? Since when did that ugly little owl from this afternoon turn into an extremely beautiful young woman?!"

Zenoda rolled his eyes with maximum laziness. "Huhhhh. Grey Owl."

At the command of that name, Mincilia immediately emanated silver light. Right before Agru and Valerius's eyes, the form of the sixteen-year-old girl shrank, faded, and transformed back into her original disguise: a three-toned owl, perched peacefully on the dining table, tilting her head innocently and making a small hoot.

Watching a high-tier shape-shifting spell occur directly in front of their faces, Agru and Valerius could only gape. Their understanding of magic collapsed entirely. Both of them stood silent, staring at the owl, then at Zenoda sitting with arms crossed and a flat expression.

Internally, Agru and Valerius were thinking exactly the same thought.

(Why... why does this young man sometimes look like he's constantly cursed and dragging misfortune behind him, and yet in reality he keeps getting absolutely insane, irrational luck?! A Familiar that can transform into a beautiful girl?! What kind of ridiculously charmed life is this person living?!)

Not long after that awkward silence settled, the sound of hurried footsteps came from the direction of the staircase.

Cedric came running back, dragging Master Vivaldi along by the arm — Vivaldi who was still wearing his sleeping robe and carrying a lantern. Cedric pointed toward Zenoda's room and shouted with the hysterics of a neighborhood gossip.

"THERE HE IS, MASTER VIVALDI! IN THIS ROOM! ZENODA IS CONSORTING WITH A WOMAN AT NIGHT!"

Vivaldi, panting, immediately scanned the inside of the room with wide eyes, fully prepared to reprimand his favorite hero. But all Vivaldi actually saw inside was Zenoda calmly sitting and drinking tea, accompanied by a small owl on the table, and Agru and Valerius standing frozen in the doorway.

Cedric and Vivaldi both furrowed their brows. There was no woman to be found.

Cedric turned in confusion and tapped Agru on the shoulder. "Agru! Where is she?! Where's the beautiful girl?!"

Agru, still halfway in a daze, slowly raised one index finger and pointed at the Grey Owl — currently pecking at the last piece of satay meat.

Feeling somewhat misled by Agru, Cedric turned and asked the same thing of Valerius with a demanding expression. The result was identical. Valerius also pointed at the small owl in silent misery.

Cedric stared at the owl. Then looked at Vivaldi, who was now glaring at him for being woken from a sound sleep for what appeared to be an extraordinarily stupid joke.

At the dining table, Zenoda — who had been suppressing his collective aggravation since being interrogated by the King, beaten by a monster, lectured by Mincilia, and now falsely accused of cavorting with a woman — stood up. His knuckles cracked.

A dark, deeply terrifying, yet somehow entirely comedic aura began radiating from Zenoda's body. He walked slowly toward Cedric with a psychopathic smile.

"If you had actually found me alone with a woman tonight..." Zenoda's voice was very quiet and very dangerous. "...just what exactly were you planning to do about it, Cedric?"

Cedric stumbled backward. Corn-sized beads of cold sweat poured down his face. He had realized he had awakened a sleeping lion. Every cell in the noble's body trembled violently.

"Ehhhhh... L-look, Zenoda!" Cedric raised both hands in a desperate attempt to de-escalate, explaining with quivering lips. "I... I only didn't want to see you fall into worldly temptation and momentary corruption! So I called Master Vivaldi! M-maybe as an adult, he would have useful advice or wise guidance for you!"

Zenoda stopped directly in front of Cedric's nose. His eyes narrowed to lethal slits.

"Ohhhh. Wise guidance, you said?" Zenoda replied with a tone so saturated in sarcasm it was almost a physical thing. "You've now slandered me in front of the innkeeper. Come to think of it... your little brother Meoda is probably quite lonely being treated at the royal infirmary right now, with his face in that condition. Would you like to go join him and keep him company tonight, Cedric?"

At the clearly implied threat of broken bones, Cedric swallowed with great difficulty. His legs shook.

"I-ihhhhhh..." Cedric whimpered in pure terror.

Beside them, Vivaldi exhaled a long, exasperated sigh. As a firm businessman, he fixed Cedric with a deeply displeased look.

"Slander and disturbing the peace of a neighboring tenant in the middle of the night — that's genuinely unacceptable behavior, isn't it?" Vivaldi said, crossing his arms over his chest. He glanced at Zenoda. "In that case, as the owner and head of the Silver Swan Inn... I believe I have an obligation to join in punishing this troublemaker."

With Vivaldi's agreement, Zenoda's smile widened considerably.

That night, the sound of Cedric begging for mercy echoed through the third-floor corridor. Vivaldi and Zenoda dispensed justice with cheerful determination, venting their accumulated irritation on the noble. Not with swords or purifying punches, naturally — but with a sequence of comedic punishments: Cedric received a firm flick to the forehead, had his ear twisted by Vivaldi, and was made to perform five hundred push-ups by Zenoda while singing a children's song, while Agru and Valerius watched from the sidelines laughing at their friend's suffering.

When the punishment concluded and Cedric lay face-down on the floor gasping for air, Zenoda finally gave a brief, logical explanation of what had actually happened. He explained that his Familiar possessed a high-level illusion and shape-shifting magic used to confuse enemies, while keeping Mincilia's true identity as a Zenith Goddess firmly concealed.

Agru, Valerius, and Cedric — still feebly completing push-ups — all nodded with belief, deeply impressed by the rare magical ability of the little owl.

Once all the misunderstandings had been resolved and the nobles had been sent back to their respective rooms, Vivaldi — on the verge of departing — suddenly remembered something important.

"Oh, that's right, Master Zenoda," Vivaldi called from the doorway.

Zenoda, who had just been about to close the door, turned. "Hmm? What is it now, Master Vivaldi?"

The middle-aged man reached into the pocket of his sleeping robe. "Before I came upstairs to witness that ridiculous so-called 'scandal' just now, I was actually coming down to the lobby because an urgent mail delivery arrived. A royal courier left this for you. And I rather feel... this is not an ordinary letter."

Vivaldi produced an envelope with silver-edged borders and handed it to Zenoda.

Zenoda accepted it. His eyes immediately fixed on the wax seal closing the envelope. It was not Elara's Ice Rose seal. It was not King Ronan's Lion seal either. It was the official seal of Koreson Academy — specifically from the disciplinary and high-tier investigation department — and bore an additional mark from Koreson's high nobility council.

Looking at that seal, and thinking about the battle against Meoda and his use of Demon's Ash just hours ago...

Zenoda dragged one hand down his face. His eyes narrowed sharply.

His instincts had never been wrong. He had only wanted to rest. But looking at this summons letter, Zenoda began to feel that something very troublesome, very potentially bloody, and very thoroughly entangled in the dark conspiracies of the capital... was about to begin tomorrow.

(Thanks for reading! If you want to support the story and read up to 10 chapters ahead, check out the https://www.patreon.com/c/nightpen90. Otherwise, see you on Wednesday!)