Ricky felt like some sort of bizarre oddity—a misfit creature thrown into a high-stakes gathering of elites. It wasn't just the sheer pressure hanging in the air or the intense auras crackling like thunder around him—it was the way the others regarded one another, like ancient beasts circling prey, or royalty measuring pawns.
He even spotted two entities that seemed closer to his kind—at least in form, if not temperament.
Some distance away, a sleek black panther stood poised with effortless grace, its luminous golden eyes watching the central speaker with indifferent calm, as if none of this concerned it. Power coiled beneath its fur like a storm waiting to break, but for now, it simply observed.
Beside the beast loomed something even more alien—an insectoid queen, a haunting blend between ant and spider, with a chitinous exoskeleton that shimmered in shades of crimson and gold. Her mandibles twitched softly, her eyes crystalline and cold, calculating with clinical interest.
