The First Patriarch: Streaming My Cosmic Harem

Chapter 28: Chapter 28: The Multiversal Double Standard

The silver, razor-sharp constructs of Aether sliced through the air, their sub-zero pressure threatening to freeze the very marrow in Azriel’s bones.

But before the lethal energy could even clear half the distance, the world shifted in a blur of pure kinetic violence.

Rosalind vanished from beneath him.

Her movement was so incomprehensibly fast that Azriel couldn’t even register the physics of it.

One millisecond he was pinning her to the table, the next, a heavy, unyielding warmth slammed into his chest, forcefully pulling him backward.

He stumbled, only to realize he had been placed securely behind her towering, slender frame.

"Step back, Azriel!" Rosalind hissed, her golden eyes burning with absolute fury.

With a vicious, fluid snap of her wrist, she flicked her hand toward the incoming attack.

Her manicured nails tore through the empty air, and a massive set of spectral claws erupted from her palm.

Constructed from pure, blindingly white Aether laced with dangerous, wispy tendrils of black energy, her strike mirrored the old hag’s technique but carried a far more lethal, predatory weight.

The moment Rosalind’s white-and-black claws manifested, the ambient temperature in the library didn’t just drop, it plummeted into a catastrophic frost.

Azriel gasped as the moisture in his breath instantly turned to ice crystals in mid-air.

But before his blood could freeze, Rosalind casually raised her left hand, deploying a translucent, humming dome of golden Aether around the two of them.

The biting, localized blizzard instantly snapped out of existence inside the barrier, returning him to a comfortable warmth.

From behind the safety of the shield, Azriel watched the two massive, ceiling-high elemental claws hurtle toward one another like rogue meteors.

Anticipating a world-ending explosion that would level half the palace, Azriel instinctively ducked his head, tensing his muscles and dropping his shoulders to brace for the inevitable sonic shockwave.

But the expected impact never came.

There was no deafening blast, no shattering marble, and no explosive kinetic recoil.

The moment the old librarian’s silver claws collided with Rosalind’s localized white-and-black strike, the Aether seamlessly neutralized one another.

The terrifying energies folded inward, canceling out with a soft, gentle hiss, and dissolved into a harmless, cascading flurry of glittering white snow that drifted lazily onto the polished floor.

Rosalind’s jaw clenched as she lowered her hand, the golden barrier dissipating into mist.

"Miserable old hag," she angrily muttered under her breath, her slitted pupils slowly widening back to normal.

She didn’t look in the direction of the front desk.

Turning around, she aggressively grabbed Azriel by the hand, her grip tight and possessive.

Before he could ask a single question about the casual display of reality-warping power he had just witnessed, Rosalind channeled a dense surge of Aether through her boots.

The space around them warped violently, turning the pristine white library into a rushing tunnel of light.

At the front desk, the old lady slowly lowered her book.

The cold, unyielding pressure she had radiated just moments prior vanished completely, replaced by a soft, wrinkled smile filled with genuine, grandmotherly affection.

"Still as hot-tempered as ever, little Rose," she murmured to the empty room, her raspy voice carrying a rare warmth.

With a casual, lazy flick of her withered wrist, a gentle ripple of silver Aether rolled across the marble floor.

The cascading snow and frost instantly dissolved, vaporizing into thin air and leaving the polished stone completely immaculate, as if the brief, violent exchange had never happened.

Satisfied, she picked up her heavy book and went right back to reading.

Meanwhile, the violent distortion of space snapped to an abrupt halt.

Azriel blinked away the lingering afterimages of the displacement magic, his boots landing heavily onto a pristine white surface. He glanced over at Rosalind.

Her jaw was still tightly clenched, and a dangerous, crackling tension rolled off her shoulders.

An awkward, heavy silence settled over the training ground.

Realizing he needed to defuse the ticking time bomb standing in front of him, Azriel cleared his throat.

"Umm... so," he started, keeping his tone casual. "Who exactly was that?"

Rosalind snapped her head toward him, her golden eyes narrowing into an annoyed, lethal glare.

Azriel involuntarily gulped under the sheer weight of her stare.

"My mother," she stated flatly.

Azriel blinked, the words failing to compute for a second. "Y-your mother?"

"Yes."

"Well... she is really old," Azriel stammered, scrambling for words. "I mean, a thousand years is sky-high."

He wasn’t exaggerating based on his own frame of reference.

From the host’s integrated memories, the absolute longest-lived elder in his massacred Nocthari tribe had barely scraped three hundred years old before kicking the bucket.

A millennium was a completely mind-boggling concept.

"Well, she is," Rosalind replied dryly, her irritation lingering.

Pushed by a sudden wave of genuine curiosity, Azriel leaned in a bit closer. "So... what exactly is your age, Rose?"

The exact millisecond the question left his mouth, a suffocating, bone-chilling murderous intent locked onto his soul.

The ambient temperature dropped right back down to zero.

"Azriel~" Rosalind purred, her voice dripping with a terrifyingly sweet, venomous edge.

"Don’t you know you never ask a woman her age?"

Azriel froze, utterly dumbfounded as a cold sweat broke out on his neck. "Um... sorry."

He quickly held up his hands in surrender, but internally, his mind was screaming in pure, unadulterated disbelief.

’What the absolute hell?!’ he thought, throwing his hands up in his mental palace.

’This is a fucking matriarchal world! Shouldn’t the social taboos also be completely reversed here? Like, you don’t ask a woman about her salary, and you don’t ask a man about his age!’

He wanted to facepalm so hard his skull would rattle.

’Fucking hell, they didn’t even give that small courtesy to the men here. They’re literally hoarding every single double standard for themselves!’

-x-

A/N:

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