<h4>Chapter 28: -28- In the Redstone n</h4>
Ss, Red, and for the first time, Kai, finally made it back to the Armstrong n.
Ss walked through the streets of his homnd, the North Prefecture, with Kai and Red on each side of his shoulder.
"Greetings, young master!" "Wee back, young master!" People who crossed his path constantly bowed down to him. Ss had always been the young master of the North Prefecture since he was in the running to be the Lord Prefect, but now, even after giving up his chance to be Lord Prefect, he was even more famous. At 16 years old, he went to the Battle of the Region and became the reigning king.
"You sure are popr, boss," Kai said with augh after another group of people stopped and bowed.
"Ignore it, don''t let it get to your little head," Ss said to Kai, knowing the little mouse would likely try to take advantage of this in some way.
***
Soon, Ss had made it to his home, and with a knock, he opened the front door.
"Mother, Father, I''m home!" he said as he entered.
"Ss?!" His mother and father immediately stopped what they were doing and ran to the front door to greet their son.
"How are you, my baby? Are you okay?" his mother asked, giving him a huge hug.
"How were your travels?" his father asked with a pat on his shoulder.
"I''m fine, Mom, I promise," Ss assured his mother.
"And my travels were great. I learned a lot and made several breakthroughs," he said, looking at his father. He had left as a Peak Mortal lifeform, with mastery in both his movement and weaponprehension, and hade back an Early Transcendent lifeform with minorpletion in two daos on different dao paths.
"That''s great, son. Tell us about all of it from start to finish," his father said with a huge smile as he led him to the living room.
As Ss sat down, his mother finally asked, pointing to Kai, "I see that Red is okay, but who is this little guy?"
"This is Kai. He is a strong beast I found and managed to be friends with, and before I left, he became my beastpanion," Ss lied.
"Well, it''s a pleasure to meet you, Kai," his mother said, and his father nodded.
Kai then transformed into a human, still looking like a shorter version of Ss. He then reached forward with a smile and shook both their hands.
"The pleasure is mine," he said.
Ss''s eyes widened a little at this; he didn''t think Kai had it in him to be this courteous.
***
A week went by with Ss catching up with his entire family, and as he suspected, after a couple of days, his great-grandfather at first, and then other family memberster, started to insist he go to the Redstone n and start to get to know Thea.
He could, of course, tell them that he had already run into Thea and spent thest several months traveling and getting close to her, but he also wanted to go to the Redstone n and spend more time with her.
So, a week after he came back from his travels, he set off again toward the Redstone n''s Central Prefecture.
***
A couple of dayster, Ss, Red, and Kai were standing inside arge building in the Redstone n''s Central Prefecture, waiting to meet Thea and her great-great-grandfather, the patriarch of the Redstone n.
After waiting for a couple of minutes, a door finally opened, and Oscar, followed by Thea, walked out. Both Oscar and Thea had smiles on their faces at the sight of Ss. Oscar was happy Ss had kept his promise, and Thea was happy to see Ss again.
"Ss. Wee to my Redstone n," Oscar said as he walked in.
"Thank you for having me, Redstone Patriarch," Ss said with a slight bow.
"Ahh, please call me Grandpa. You will soon marry Thea and be my grandson anyway," Oscar said with augh, causing Thea to blush.
Ss smiled, not quite sure if he was going to be able to call him that, but soon put the thought out of his head.
Oscar then smiled even more and said, "Ss, I''d first like to thank you. My Thea told me that if it wasn''t for you, she wouldn''t have touched the dao so early, and while I don''t know how you did it, I do believe it would have been a long time before she was able to touch the dao with my own low insights and ability to teach her."
Ss wanted to shrug it off, but he didn''t want to be disrespectful, so he just said, "It was my honor to teach her."
Oscar then looked to Ss''s shoulder, "And you must be Kai and Red. She has told me about you two as well, and I''d like to thank both of you for helping out and watching after her for the past several months."
"It was nothing," both Kai and Red said at the same time.
Oscar then moved on.
"You must have just entered the prefecture, so why doesn''t Thea give you a little tour of the ce since you will be calling it home for the next little while?" Oscar said, looking over to Thea.
"I''d be fine with that," Ss said.
"Well, what about you, Thea?" Oscar said, looking at his granddaughter.
Thea nodded, "I''d be okay with that." She was ready to get Ss and her grandfather out of the same room before he could embarrass her any further.
"Alright, well, I''ll leave you two to it. I know you''ve already gotten to know each other, so this is nothing more than a formality, but I do hope you two can grow closer," Oscar said as he took his leave.
After Oscar left, Thea and Ss just kind of stood there awkwardly. While they had spent months together, this and that werepletely different. Before, they were just traveling together mostly for the sake of convenience, but now they were directly spending time with each other for the sake of their future marriage.
After a moment of silence, Thea, with a red face, said, "Well, I guess I''ll show you around."
Ss nodded, "Please, lead the way."
<i>"Hey, boss, why are you two being so awkward and embarrassed? You spent months together just fine, and it''s not like you''re getting married tomorrow,"</i> Kai asked.
Ss just sighed and followed Thea. How was he supposed to exin this to the young, inexperienced, yful, and unshy Kai?
Soon, Thea was showing Ss around the prefecture, and the longer they spent together, the more they started to revert back to their old andfortable selves.
***
***
[A/n: I changed some of the ranks it now goes:
1. Mortal
2. Transcendent
3. Revolving Core
4. Golden Core]