Chapter 173
The noble families of the Tri-Alliance were closely connected, frequently interacting and forming deep personal ties.
Still, no matter how familiar they were with one another, it was outrageous to speak that way to someone who was about to become a Grand Duke.
But they didn’t care in the slightest.
In fact, the Tri-Alliance—especially the Blood-Drenched and Beast Demonic Houses—were notorious for their lack of tact and blatant rudeness. They never cared for social niceties unless they recognized someone as being stronger than themselves.
Now, as if to make sure Christian could hear them, they began speaking even louder with gleeful mockery.
“A lover? Isn’t the age gap a bit much?”
For context, these individuals were all in their thirties.
“What does age matter? The younger they are, the cuter they are. That just makes it better.”
“Keh-heh. True enough. With that face, he looks perfect being wrapped up in a mature lady’s embrace.”
“Tch. What’s up with a man looking that pretty anyway? How’s he that fair-skinned without a single hint of sunburn? What trick is he using?”
The hall fell quiet.
Even if they inwardly looked down on the Dark Demonic House, this was a clear line crossed—an open and excessive insult.
The faces of the Dark Demonic House’s devils flushed red with rage.
The air turned so tense it seemed like a sword fight could break out at any second.
But the nobles of the Tri-Alliance—these young lords and ladies—weren’t provoking Christian without reason.
‘Let’s see how he reacts.’
They hadn’t forgotten the true reason they came here.
They were here to probe what kind of person Christian truly was.
‘He seems to have some talent, but beyond that… nothing all that impressive.’
They were provoking him deliberately, wanting to see his reaction firsthand.
‘If he hears this kind of insult and uses his house's subordinates to threaten us, then we’ll know—he’s not worth watching any further.’
They knew full well he wouldn’t be able to kill them—after all, they were official envoys. That made them feel no need to hold back.
Fortunately for them, Christian responded exactly as they had hoped.
Rather than exploding in anger, he raised a hand and silently stopped the Dark Demonic House’s enraged members from reacting. Then, calmly, he began walking toward the instigators.
Step.
As the distance between them narrowed, the eyes of everyone in the banquet hall followed him.
Everyone was eager to see how Christian would respond.
‘There’s no way Young Lord Christian can handle those three alone.’
‘Even if they’re outcasts from their own houses, they’re all 5-star class.’
The tension was thick.
At last, Christian stood before them.
“A pleasure to meet you. As I’m sure you know, I am Christian of the Dark Demonic House.”
Christian extended his hand.
Toward the young lord of the Beast Demonic House, who stood front and center.
The moment the Beast House noble reached out to take his hand—
“I heard a dog barking around here just now. Would you happen to know anything about that? You're quite similar to a dog, aren’t you? I thought maybe you'd understand their language.”
“!!”
For context—the Beast Demonic House is a clan of beastkin.
Its current patriarch is a lycanthrope lord.
And right now, Christian had just equated beastkin to lowly animals—an outright racial insult.
That was one of the most unforgivable provocations to beastkin.
“You dare…!!”
“No? Someone was barking nonsense without knowing time or place. I just couldn’t tell what made a lycanthrope any different from a mutt. Ah, though I suppose a mutt at least knows how to be house-trained. That puts them a step above, doesn’t it?”
“You…!!”
The young lord from the Beast Demonic House glared at him, his face twisted with anger.
Behind him, the expressions of the two nobles from the Blood-Drenched and Illusion Demonic Houses also stiffened.
“Apologize for insulting our kin.”
“Apologize?”
Christian’s face turned cold and expressionless for a moment.
“But you are a mutt, aren’t you? Want me to prove it?”
And in that instant—
The moment their eyes met, the young lord of the Beast Demonic House felt an unexplainable chill crawl down his spine.
A primal sense of danger gripped him.
Every instinct screamed that he needed to get away immediately.
‘What kind of nonsense is this…?’
He tried to shake off the fear. After all, he was a 5-star lower-rank. He wasn’t weaker than Christian—at least in theory.
But that instinct… should not have been ignored.
And then—something impossible happened.
“Woof?”
A sharp, high-pitched sound came from the Beast House noble’s mouth.
It was a dog’s bark.
He froze in horror.
‘W-What the hell?! Why?’
“Woof, woof?!”
It didn’t stop there.
His body began to move entirely against his will.
As if he’d actually become a dog, he dropped to all fours—
“Woof, woof?!”
—barking repeatedly like a trained mutt.
Only then did he realize what had happened to him.
‘Did he… cast a Beast-Control Curse on me?!’
It was a black magic art known as Beast Domination—a forbidden spell used to control monsters.
It should have been impossible.
The spell only worked on beasts without reason, without will.
And yet…
“Ah, well, I am a genius, after all,” Christian muttered with a smirk, twisting his lips as he placed his hand on the Beast House noble’s head.
Just like one would pet a dog obediently sitting on all fours.
“Treating a dumb beast like you as a beast… isn’t that just natural?”
“!!”
“Strictly speaking, beastkin are a type of monster. So if I want to control them with Beast Domination, there’s nothing stopping me.”
The banquet hall erupted into a storm of whispers and gasps.
Though Christian said it casually, everyone understood just how absurd and impossible this feat was.
“This can’t be real… Even if beastkin share some monster traits, how could anyone use Beast Domination on them?!”
“He’s… he’s even handling him like an actual dog?!”
The young lord of the Beast Demonic House flushed bright red, his face about to burst.
‘You bastard—what kind of black magic did you use on me?! I’ll kill you… I’ll kill you!!’
To be made to act like a dog—right here, in front of so many eyes.
His fury and shame tangled together, and he lost all sense of reason.
The result?
“Woof! Grrrrrrr!! Woof, woof!!”
…He began to act even more like a dog.
Christian clicked his tongue.
‘What a fool. Does he not even understand why the spell worked on him? Doesn’t he know the basics of Beast Domination? And he calls himself a direct heir?’
As people had mentioned earlier, using Beast Domination on beastkin was theoretically possible.
But in practice, it was near impossible.
Beastkin were intelligent beings. Unlike mindless monsters, they weren’t governed by pure instinct.
The foundation of Beast Domination is to manipulate a beast’s instincts. Unless a beastkin had entered a Berserk state, there was no way to exploit that opening.
But Christian had used a clever trick.
‘First, I shook his emotions.’
That was why, right from the start, Christian deliberately provoked and insulted him.
By upsetting his emotional balance, he created the faintest crack.
Then, he used a technique he had once stolen from a black mage of the Mystic Demonic House—a cursed truth technique that could slip through even the smallest of gaps.
It wasn’t pure Beast Domination—it was a fusion, an adaptation of a curse-based truth technique.
For Christian, blending two different black magic arts into one was trivial.
‘Of course, that alone wouldn’t have been enough.’
The true key had been in the handshake.
‘That’s when I secretly let my dark mana seep into him.’
While the beastkin noble had been distracted by his anger, Christian had injected his dark mana, which immediately asserted dominance over the beastkin’s yellow-attribute mana.
Naturally, dark mana possessed innate superiority over most other attributes.
Experienced devils knew to avoid direct mana contact with members of the Dark Demonic House for this very reason.
But this fool—blinded by arrogance and prejudice—had casually grabbed Christian’s hand without hesitation.
It was practically a request to be dominated.
Especially considering Christian’s dark mana was 100% pure. And since they were both 5-star level, there was barely any gap in their total mana reserves.
In that brief instant, Christian had completely overridden his opponent’s mana and layered a Subjugation Curse over it.
Using a curse to amplify the effect of Beast Domination—this was a secret technique of the Tyramin branch family, a lesser lineage under the Dark Demonic House.
Christian had once stolen and mastered their hidden arts and now, by fusing both black magics in his own way, he’d utterly subdued his opponent.
‘Damn it, damn it, damn it!! I’ll kill you!!!’
The beastkin noble screamed with bloodshot eyes, writhing in rage.
But his resistance was useless.
“Woof! Grrr! Woof, woof!!”
Christian sneered.
‘The more agitated you get, the better for me.’
The more overwhelmed he became, the more his defenses crumbled.
If he’d remained calm and collected, he might’ve been able to break free from the technique.
But now? There was no way.
It was nearly impossible for a Lycansloth—naturally wild and hot-tempered—to maintain composure in a situation like this.
Desperately trying to break free, the young lord of the Beast Demonic House surged his mana to its limit in resistance. But Christian's masterful control over his mana wasn’t something brute force could overcome.
Like a seasoned beastmaster restraining a rampaging monster, Christian had the beastkin’s mana completely immobilized.
“Our little mutt here doesn’t seem very well-behaved. I’ll have to teach him some manners. Sit.”
“!!”
A horrific sight followed.
The beastkin dropped into a sitting position—just like a dog.
His face flushed beyond crimson, contorted into an expression that looked on the verge of fainting from sheer humiliation.
Only then did the nobleman of the Ghost Sword Demonic House and the noblewoman of the Illusion Demonic House step forward.
“What are you doing?!”
Christian glanced at them and replied indifferently.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m training an unruly mutt.”
He extended his hand—right toward the beastkin’s nape.
“But he’s not listening very well. I’m honestly debating whether I should just kill him. What’s the point in letting a disobedient dog live?”
The two nobles flinched.
That wasn’t an empty threat.
Christian’s gaze was low and chilling.
If provoked, he was ready to take a life.
And given that it was the Tri-Alliance who had started the insult, the moral high ground was clearly on Christian’s side.
“So what do you think? Do you believe this guy deserves to live?”
Silence descended on the banquet hall.
Everyone was overwhelmed by Christian’s sheer presence.
“If you go that far, the relationship between the Dark Demonic House and the Tri-Alliance will be shattered.”
“And yet, knowing that, you dared to bark that kind of disrespect in front of me?”
“……”
The nobles from the Ghost Sword and Illusion Houses had no choice but to fall silent.
“If I simply let this pass, won’t people start thinking our Dark Demonic House is weak?”
“……”
“Now, if you want to spare this guy, you'd better show some proper sincerity. Don’t tell me you thought you could run your mouths like that and walk away clean?”
Their lips tightened.
Christian was demanding an apology—one loud and clear enough for everyone to hear.
A humiliating act, but there was no room left to argue. Christian had seized both momentum and justification.
With no way out, the two nobles bowed their heads.
“W-We… we apologize. We take back what we said earlier.”
“What was that? I couldn’t quite hear you. Mind speaking a little louder so everyone here can hear you properly?”
Their faces turned pale with shame.
“I-I…!”
“So you refuse? Then I’ll take this mutt’s life as your compensation.”
Backed into a corner, the two had no choice but to raise their voices and humiliate themselves even further.
“W-We’re sorry! We sincerely apologize!”
“M-My deepest apologies…”
The hall stirred with murmurs.
What they’d just witnessed was beyond shocking.
Christian nodded in satisfaction, accepting their apologies with arrogant ease.