Reincarnated as a step-dad in a fantasy world

Chapter 322 : Anomaly

"What the...," Talia stammered, her voice laced with shock, as her eyes darted between the two women.

"What?" Marina said casually, a smirk tugging at her lips. "If you don't want him, we do. Did you notice how handsome he was? There's no way we're letting him slip from our grasp!"

"Well said," Celine chimed in, her green eyes shining with mischief as she nodded in agreement.

"You two aren't serious, right?" Talia asked, her tone incredulous.

"Why wouldn't we be?" the two replied in unison, looking at Talia as if she was the strange one.

"You do remember that he is our cousin, right?" Talia shot back, exasperation clear in her voice.

"Vaguely," they both responded nonchalantly, shrugging in perfect sync.

"And it doesn't strike you as... a problem?" Talia pressed, rubbing her temples as a sudden headache began to take hold.

"I mean, it's not illegal or anything," Marina said with a dismissive shrug.

"What about Amelia?" Talia asked, narrowing her eyes at the two. "He is her brother, after all, and you know better than anyone how insanely protective she is of him."

The two exchanged a glance, their mischievous smiles growing wider. Turning back to Talia, they shrugged. "We'll dodge that bullet when we get there," they stated in unison.

"Why are you trying so hard to dissuade us, though?" Celine asked with a curious smile, tilting her head slightly. "Is it because you truly care about our family bond?"

"Or," Marina added, her mischievous smile widening, "because you want him all to yourself?"

Talia's cheeks flushed crimson as she vehemently shook her head. "I already told you, I feel nothing for him!" she exclaimed.

Yet, despite her protests, the wild pounding of her heart as she recalled the intense kiss they had shared moments ago told another story entirely.

****

Unaware of the discussion the girls were having about him, Alex could be seen leaving the nobles' district with a light smile under his mask.

Although they spent most of their time together arguing or bickering, Alex was genuinely glad to know that Talia was alright—not that he had any doubts about that.

When his mind drifted back to the moment he entered her bedroom and found her naked, his cock couldn't help but immediately stiffen.

Her body was truly a feast for the eyes!

'I'm going to claim her as mine,' he decided, licking his lips in anticipation.

'In hindsight, Celine and Marina also aren't so bad. Maybe I'll add the two of them as well,' he mused, chuckling to himself. 'If that happens, that means I will have seduced all the members of their little group.'

A few minutes later, he reached the matriarch's mansion and returned to his room. Along the way, the guards made no attempt to stop him; they merely checked him briefly before letting him pass.

'For a day that started at noon, today was specifically eventful,' Alex yawned.

Amelia was already sleeping soundly when he returned, so he quietly undressed and slipped underneath the heavy blankets.

The instant he did so, Amelia, still asleep, snuggled up to him. Her leg intertwined with his, her arms wrapped around him, and she placed her head on his torso, a peaceful smile appearing on her face.

'Too beautiful,' Alex thought, his eyes softening and turning into loving orbs as he gazed at Amelia. 

Despite how much time had passed, his love for his sister never seemed to dwindle. In fact, the more time passed, the more he fell in love with her. 

Taking her in his warm embrace, Alex closed his eyes and immediately fell asleep.

***

Early in the morning, before the first rays of sunlight could fully illuminate the city of Drisidd, Alex's eyes fluttered open. He stretched lazily, letting out a soft, unhurried yawn as the quiet stillness of dawn surrounded him.

He glanced down at Amelia's peaceful face, smiled, and gently kissed her on the forehead before carefully getting up and off the bed, making sure not to wake his sister.

He would have loved to stay in bed a little longer, nestled against Amelia's warmth, but there was no real need. His stamina was so high these days that he needed only a few hours at most to recuperate—as long as he wasn't utterly drained, that is.

Besides that, he also had his work cut out for him today. Since he had successfully made a deal with the Drazen family to sell his potions, he now had to create said potions. He had several bottles of potions with him right now, but nearly not enough for all the enthusiasm his potions would generate among people once their existence was known.

Fortunately, he had made sure to take thousands of containers for his smoke potions before leaving the mansion.

Alex took a few minutes to completely stretch his muscles before sitting down, just a few meters away from the bed, on the wooden floor, in a meditating position. He took out a bottle containing the yellow healing smoke and unsealed it.

Before the cloud of smoke had time to dissipate, Alex took control of it. Spending a little of his mana, he made the cloud grow and grow still until the whole room was filled with smoke. Of course, he made sure that the smoke came nowhere near Amelia so as not to disturb her sleep.

He then retrieved several glass containers from his space ring, placed them before him, and began to fill them with the healing smoke potion, after making sure to enhance its healing potency to be above what a normal grade 3 healing potion could achieve.

He repeated the same process for a good while before he deemed that he had made enough healing potions. He then began making his potions that alleviated one's exhaustion.

By the time Alex was done, more than two hours had passed, and he had successfully made two hundred and fifty of each type of potion. He would have gladly made more potions, but he simply couldn't—not right now, that is.

Although there was nothing complicated about the process of making smoke potions, it was still a process that cost him far more mana than Alex would like to spend otherwise. 

As the Smoke Sovereign, the act of expanding and enhancing the potency of smoke, although taxing in mana, wasn't overly demanding. The real issue was that to perfectly encapsulate the smoke within the glass containers. To do so, Alex had to channel his mana directly into each bottle, and it was this precise step that heavily drained his reserves. If not for this, he could have probably created thousands of these potions in one sitting.

'It doesn't matter that much though,' Alex thought, a hint of exhaustion furrowing his brows. 'By the time we leave Drisidd, I will have made several thousand potions.'

With the intensifying war at the borders of Imperion, the competition to decide the heir of the Eswald family had been postponed. This meant Alex was no longer pressed for time and could spend more of it in Drisidd. He planned to use this time to properly train and create more smoke potions.

However, he wouldn't be spending all his time on training. He had other priorities, one of which was to learn and acquire knowledge to leave behind his previous state of cluelessness regarding topics that even random people knew.

And he wasn't going to hold back until he achieved that goal.

With his mana reserves depleted and the sun barely beginning to rise, its faint light glittering on the snowy expanse surrounding the city, Alex found himself with nothing to do. So, he retrieved the stack of books Lilia had given him and carefully selected one to read.

Usually, he would be reading about the various other races inhabiting Imperion and beyond. But today, his focus shifted to a specific set of books—those that explored the differences between known levels and sub-levels of power.

By reading such books, Alex hoped to gain a clearer idea of how to gauge his strength compared to others of the same or different levels. In a sense, he was a unique existence. Thanks to the lust artifact, he had physical abilities well beyond those of a mere level 4, and he wanted to pinpoint just how far beyond he truly was and where he stood in comparison to others.

Around thirty minutes later, after going through dozens of books, Alex found what he was looking for. In fact, he found even more information than he had anticipated. The conclusion he came to was that he was indeed an anomaly strength-wise.

However, he wasn't the only anomaly recorded, and among anomalies, he wasn't even close to being the strongest.

In fact, even among those at level 4, he wasn't at the top of the list!