Chapter 72 - Beast Core
Looking at him, Riley chuckle and then poked him before saying in a playful tone: "What are you saying? Wasn't I the only one playing the bad guy in this household? All you did was ignore everything and leave for work as an excuse and don't even come home. All because you could not bear to do it yourself."
"H-Haha…" Nathan laughed sheepishly, clearly embarrassed about his own actions.
And then he seriously spoke: "Well, who would be able to do that to their own son."
After saying this, he then turned to his wife, looking at her with a gentle gaze before saying: "But it's been hard on you… Having to act like a bad mother to him all this time…"
Hearing his words, Riley's expression froze for a brief moment, and very soon, she was instantly overcome by emotions.
And she started tearing up once again, clearly unable to hold back her tears unlike before: "Hic… Hic…"
Nathan was also overwhelmed by emotions when he saw his wife crying next to him, however, he held back his emotions, and instead patted his wife's back as he gently caressed her in his arms.
Under the luminous light in the living room, the couple held each other as they sat on a couch, the woman was crying fervently, and the man held her as he gently caressed her back to calm her down.
They stayed in that position for a long time and only when their daughter came downstairs, did they fix their appearance, revealing a warm smile.
"Mom, Dad, where is brother? I thought I heard brother speaking a while ago." Lydia asked her parents.
"Dia, why do you know that your brother was speaking a while ago? Were you perhaps not in your room this entire time?" Riley smiled and said to her in a slightly hoarse voice.
"Ah"
"So you were not, huh? Forget it, your brother went upstairs to take a shower. He should be coming out soon to join us for dinner." Riley said to her.
"That's right, your brother does not spend too much time when taking shower after all." Nathan also chimed in.
"Okay, then I will wait for him with mom and dad."
Lydia said to them as she quickly said between them, separating the couple.
Seeing this, Nathan and Riley exchanged glances before they both shook their heads with a bitter smile on their faces.
…
After a while, Randy finally came down to have dinner with his parents.
That night, the family was full of smiles and happy conversations about things that were relevant and irrelevant.
Randy felt like he had returned to when things were very peaceful, and his parents were not acting differently towards him.
He had always missed those days, so much so that when he awakened his ability, he quickly tried to get along with his family despite withholding the fact that he awakened his ability.
At the time, he thought of whether they would accept for him regardless, and not for the fact that he had finally awakened his very own innate ability.
He may not be aware of it; however, he was afraid that even if he had awakened his ability, he may not be treated any different from before.
And the thought of that possibility weighed heavily on his consciousness, leading him to withhold the fact of his awakening and thus revealing it in a form of a surprise to his parents.
And although things were not as simple as he had thought initially, nevertheless, he was still able to confirm his second doubt, that was his parents were indeed acting strange, rather actually being bad parents.
When he was a child, he remembered that they had never treated him like that, so what could make them change so drastically enough to treat their child like that?
Randy pondered about his matter for a long time as he sat next to the dinner table, however after a long deep thought, he could not come up with any logical reason as to why his parents acted the way they did.
In the end, he decided to heed their words and get stronger, because it seems only by getting strong would he be able to know the truth.
With that thought in mind, Randy smiled as he answered some questions that his parents were asking about his registration and various other things regarding his school life.
After dinner, Randy immediately went upstairs to his room under the excuse that he had some assignment to attend to, when in fact there was no such thing.
Nevertheless, Randy still had to leave them since there was something that he wanted to try when he heard his parents' words of encouragement that he should get stronger.
And Randy had a method by which he could potentially increase his strength if his guesses were correct,
And as such, there was no time to waste as the earlier he does this, the better.
Very soon, Randy sat on him his bed with a few shining blue crystal-like stones strewn on his mattress.
Randy quickly grabbed one of the crystals that was visibly smaller than the rest of the crystals and tightly held it in his grasp.
A moment later…
⟪[[Discovered a 'Magical Beast Core' of a mutated beast]]⟫
⟪[[Due to your special physique 'Myriad Energy Devouring Physique,' you would be able to absorb the energy essence contained within this beast core and thus using it to increase your cultivation in the correlated type of energy of this beast core. In other words, the host can increase his magic energy cultivation by absorbing the magical energy contained within this magic beast core]]⟫
⟪[[Would the host like to activate his special physique, 'Myriad Energy Devouring Physique' to absorb the energy contained within this magical beast core]]⟫
The system's announcement flashed across the projected screen in front of Randy's eyes.
This was not the first time that he had seen this notification from the system.
In actuality, ever since he had acquired his first magical beast core from one of the mutated beasts that he hunted in the Beast Forest, Randy had received this very same notification, shocking him greatly at the time.
And so, when he was leaving the forest, he decided to keep some of the magical beast cores for himself before giving the rest to Jiang Chen to sell for him.
But now that he had heard those words from his parents, he was now motivated to use these beast cores more than anything, since he already had them anyway.