Iowa Pass, South Slope Castle, inside the Lord's reception room.
Fanil's grandfather, Sonitu Fox, stood in a corner of the reception room, doing his utmost to hide the trembling that ran through his body. Less than ten meters from him, a huge Magic-Patterned Tiger had wrapped her nearly three-meter-long tail around the neck of Suvila, the seven-tailed Fox Clan master.
So long as this weakened Master dared to so much as twitch, every girl in the territory could get herself a fox-tail scarf.
Sonitu had been invited here by several Human Race knights an hour ago. The Senior Knight leading them, along with the Frost-Wolf beneath him, had given him no chance to flee or resist. Like Suvila, Sonitu had put all his skill points into intelligence, mental magic, dream construction, and such. In close combat, he was only marginally stronger than a Mana-Less human.
Yet once he reached the castle, he discovered that his teacher—the Master's true body, an existence nearing Legend—had long since been hauled over here and was being pinned down so thoroughly by a talking intermediate Magic Beast.
"My lady, could you loosen your... tail a little? My neck can't take much more," Suvila carefully begged the tiger. Ever since gaining his fourth tail, he had never been this humble. Who would have thought that, on the verge of becoming a Legend, he would suffer such abuse?
"I heard that if a neck is strangled tight enough, it can produce certain hallucinations. Tell me, if that happened to you, would you receive some special revelation and break through into Legend in one stroke?" The Magic Pattern Tiger's tone was teasing, and her tail suddenly tightened.
"Ahhh! I'm dying—I'm dying! Loosen your tail, loosen it..."
Before the big fox could finish, the doors were shoved open. Landen