Chapter 290: Ulysses Squeezes the Rings Out of Him: He Was Cornered by Ulysses, Who Squeezed the Rings’ Whereabouts Out of Him

It took An Ruo only 0.1 seconds to realize what Ulysses was asking him for.

His eyes immediately widened in shock. His hand instinctively pressed against the spatial button on his pocket, his gaze darting around as he still tried to cover it up.

"What—what are you talking about? I don't know."

An Ruo was so flustered that the heat was practically spreading from his face all the way to his scalp as he frantically tried to think of a way out.

How did Ulysses know?

Then again, he had gone out in an aircraft arranged by Ulysses, with Zergs from the Marshal's residence accompanying him. Although they hadn't followed him into the shop at his request, they at least knew he'd gone to a jewelry store. It was only natural for Ulysses to make certain connections.

Besides, Ulysses seemed to know even more. He apparently even knew what An Ruo had bought and what he'd had custom-made.

No wonder he'd been rubbing the base of An Ruo's finger all this time, full of expectation and hints. And here An Ruo had thought he was hinting that he wanted...

An Ruo grew even hotter from embarrassment, the tips of his ears burning red.

Everything else aside, the problem was that he wasn't ready yet!

Something like this required a sense of ceremony! He hadn't prepared anything at all!

Who just handed over a ring like that?

Even if he didn't prepare some grand and incredibly memorable setting, there should at least be flowers and candlelight. At the absolute minimum, there should be one of those surprises from movies and TV shows where someone found a ring inside a cake...

Of course, An Ruo had ruled out hiding the ring in food from the very beginning.

The hygiene issue and the danger of accidentally swallowing it were one thing. An Ruo was also worried that, given the Zergs' teeth, Ulysses might simply chew it a couple of times and swallow it, then look at him blankly afterward and say, "The ring? I thought it was icing."

There was actually a very real possibility of that happening. One bite from a high-ranking Female Zerg could absolutely inflict irreversible damage on even the hardest ring!

In any case, An Ruo had nothing prepared right now. He hadn't even made the worst possible preparation of stuffing it into a cake.

Ulysses's surprise attack had come far too suddenly. The matching rings he'd had custom-made were still inside his spatial button, sitting completely bare in their ring box.

And Ulysses's silver eyes were sweeping over him like the most advanced scanner in existence, searching for the truth. An Ruo went rigid, his scalp tingling, with absolutely no confidence that he could hide anything from him.

Suddenly, Ulysses smiled.

The deity truly was terrible at lying. His entire body was full of openings. He probably couldn't even fool a hatchling that had only just broken out of its shell.

Ulysses desperately wanted to stop pursuing the matter, to neither listen nor look, and simply let the deity deceive him.

But even if he closed both eyes, the truth was still right there in front of him, leaving him unable to deceive himself.

Ulysses leaned forward and braced one hand against the doorframe, trapping the deity between himself and the half-closed bathroom door. Lowering his head, he lightly bit the rim of An Ruo's ear, his voice brushing against him like the flicking tongue of a snake.

"If you're not giving it to me... then who else could it be for? Helios?"

As he spoke the name belonging to the protagonist of the original novel, Ulysses's eyes darkened.

When the deity went out, Ulysses had arranged for his personal guards to accompany him, but had deliberately refrained from sending Helios.

He had his own selfish motives.

According to the memories of that other world in the dream, Helios had a Male Zerg of his own. Unfortunately, that Male Zerg was still on Hidden Star, and it would still be several years before the two of them even met.

In other words, Helios was currently completely unattached.

That made Ulysses dislike the sight of him even more.

Couldn't he just get married sooner?

Of course, perhaps it wasn't that Female Zerg either.

Ulysses continued searching through his memories for other Female Zergs who were familiar with the deity.

The deity knew many Female Zergs, but there weren't actually many whom he could be said to know closely or have a deep relationship with. He was a male who loved shutting himself away in his own world and genuinely enjoyed being that way.

At the same time, he wasn't someone who would fall in love at first sight and quickly become close to another person. He was extremely slow to warm up.

Ulysses's hand moved to the deity's waist, feeling the warmth of his body.

This was the male he had warmed little by little, step by step.

Ulysses's dark gaze slowly traveled upward. He excelled at area attacks and covering an entire zone with firepower. Since accurately identifying a single target to strike wasn't easy, he simply treated every Zerg equally and got jealous of them all, regardless of whether they were male or female.

An Ruo truly felt like he was in mortal danger now.

He still hadn't figured out why Ulysses had suddenly brought up the protagonist of the original novel when he realized that the current situation was very wrong. Ulysses seemed prepared to do him right here in the doorway, without even giving him the chance to shower first.

It wasn't that he absolutely couldn't do it, but he felt that this sort of thing was better suited to two freshly washed, nice-smelling people (Zergs?) doing it together.

He had gone out today and hadn't showered yet. Even though Zerg physiology meant they rarely sweated, and he'd spent the entire trip inside aircraft and buildings rather than running around, there would still inevitably be dust from the air clinging to him!

An Ruo felt awkward about it and couldn't quite get past that thought.

Besides, he thought the tone Ulysses had used when mentioning the original protagonist, as well as the question he'd asked, were both very strange. The fact that he wanted to do him immediately afterward was even stranger, filling An Ruo with an intense sense of impending danger.

It was as though An Ruo had done something wrong and Ulysses was about to devour him.

An Ruo's Psychic Power was sounding a warning.

The alarm wasn't particularly strong. His life wouldn't be in danger.

It was probably only at the level of being unable to get out of bed for three days.

Terrifying!

An Ruo decided he should at least struggle a little. He pressed a hand against Ulysses's chest and, under Ulysses's relentless teasing, weakly said, "I haven't showered yet."

From that weak but determined resistance, Ulysses understood that this genuinely mattered to him. Seeing An Ruo lean his neck so far back against the doorframe in an attempt to escape, Ulysses found him both adorable and amusing, and a trace of a smile unconsciously appeared on his face.

He clearly cared very much about An Ruo refusing to give him the ring, yet he still thought An Ruo was adorable.

He simply couldn't get angry with him.

So Ulysses wrapped an arm around the male in his embrace and brought him into the bathroom.

The half-closed door opened, then shut completely, sealing away every sound from within.

An Ruo felt as though he was going to drown beneath the shower water. His fingers nearly scratched Ulysses's back raw. When he realized what he was doing, he instinctively reduced his strength, only to remember immediately afterward that he couldn't possibly scratch through the skin of a top-tier Female Zerg anyway.

He immediately deflated in helpless frustration.

Water vapor blurred his vision, while the sound of running water muddled his hearing, yet Ulysses seemed completely unaffected. He kept An Ruo confined between his body and the bathroom wall, one leg braced against the wall, moving with effortless control. His silver-gray eyes were unwavering and burning.

An Ruo didn't dare look at him.

He had the urge to cover his face.

Even during the communal living of high school and university, he'd never shared a bathroom with anyone. He had never imagined that one day he would find himself in such an embarrassing situation—and with Ulysses, no less, when they weren't simply showering together.

He was more nervous and embarrassed than he'd ever been before. Even his skin had turned pink, and he couldn't tell whether the water was too hot or Ulysses's gaze on his body was too heated.

Perhaps it was both.

Ulysses's body was very hot as well.

Just as his psychic warning had predicted, An Ruo couldn't get out of bed for three whole days.

Ulysses would go deal with some government affairs while An Ruo was resting. Whenever An Ruo woke up, Ulysses would feed him some food and water, accompany him while he ate, and then continue what they had been doing.

The frequency, the closed-off environment, and the meticulous way Ulysses cared for his body gave An Ruo the strange illusion that, despite not actually being a Male Zerg, he was going through physiological awakening.

Could it be that Ulysses even intended to make up this special Male Zerg experience for him?

When An Ruo saw that his three-day "physiological awakening" was showing signs of being upgraded by Ulysses into an entire week, he hurriedly raised both hands in surrender and handed over the rings he had been guarding.

Watching the dark red ring box finally land in Ulysses's hands, An Ruo actually felt a sense of relief.

It wasn't that he couldn't keep going...

Given this body's constitution, along with Ulysses constantly feeding him and taking care of him, they could probably keep this up until the end of time without a problem.

But this was ridiculous.

An Ruo thought about the new novel for which he hadn't even created a document yet and decided he couldn't continue being this decadent and wasting his days away. Nor could he allow Ulysses, the supreme military commander, to become a ruler who "never attended morning court again."

He wasn't mentally prepared to become a femme fatale yet.

His only regret was that he'd handed over the rings just like this, without any romantic ceremony or setting.

He was still sitting on the bed in loose pajamas, his body covered in fresh kiss marks and saturated with Ulysses's pheromones.

No matter how he looked at it, this presentation was downright embarrassing.

Remembering what he currently looked like and the chaos of the past few days, An Ruo wanted to cover his face again. Instead, he simply buried his face in the pillow and refused to face reality.

Ulysses looked at the exquisite rings in the box, which were obviously a matching pair.

One black and one silver.

The silver—or rather, platinum—ring was set with an emerald-green gemstone, while the black ring held a silver-gray psychic source crystal.

What concerned him even more was the Psychic Power contained within them.

Psychic Power belonging to the deity.

It was like a unique psychic brand, something that mattered immensely to him.

Ulysses's emotions were complicated, and he was also puzzled. Of course, there was joy at finally obtaining the ring, but he was still even more curious about the reason behind everything.

"These really were custom-made for me, weren't they? Why wouldn't you give me the ring before?" Ulysses asked.

He could see the special significance of everything from the design of the two rings to their color scheme. That black ring was unquestionably meant for him.

As for Helios...

Ulysses really could become jealous when emotions overwhelmed him, but once he calmed down, he knew perfectly well that Helios wasn't actually his direct rival.

The only explanation he could think of was that the deity had been stringing him along—

No, that wasn't right.

It should be called a test.

He needed to pass the test before he could receive the ring bestowed upon him by the deity.

Thinking about everything he'd done over the past few days, Ulysses suddenly felt somewhat guilty.

He definitely hadn't passed this test.

No matter how one looked at it, a Female Zerg who had kept his male tangled up with him inside the room for three straight days couldn't possibly have passed any test.

The fact that the deity hadn't given him a cold look and kicked him out was entirely because he was simply too gentle by nature, endlessly tolerant toward Zergs, and completely incapable of losing his temper with Ulysses.

An Ruo had no idea what Ulysses was thinking. Hearing his question, he lifted his face slightly from the pillow and sighed heavily to himself.

Since things had already reached this point, he simply gave up and said,

"Because I wasn't ready yet. There wasn't any ceremony. If I just gave it to you like this, it would make it seem like I didn't take it seriously enough or put enough thought into it. It would feel too careless."

There was one more thing An Ruo didn't say.

Rings often represented a proposal, the formal establishment of a relationship, and the responsibility that came with it.

He didn't think Ulysses was ready either.

Ulysses had been hurt before and might resist the idea of marriage. An Ruo wanted to wait until Ulysses was truly ready to accept him—to accept a new and genuine marriage.

He was willing to give Ulysses time, and he was willing to keep waiting.

Even if he had to wait his entire life.

Marriage was only a formality, not a necessity. If Ulysses wanted, An Ruo could simply date him for the rest of their lives. As long as they were together, that was enough.

That kind of lifelong companionship was no less intimate than marriage and was considerably more relaxed.

Originally, that was how it should have been.

But in the dream, Ulysses had accepted marriage with him and wanted to marry him. And in reality, Ulysses wanted to have eggs with him—even planning to lay five of them one after another...

Those things had changed An Ruo's mind and prompted him to move his plans for the rings forward.

Since Ulysses had already decided he wanted eggs, An Ruo couldn't very well let him end up in the same situation as in the dream—"pregnant before marriage."

Regardless of whether Ulysses was willing to accept it, An Ruo had intended to give him the ring first and then decide what came next according to Ulysses's wishes.

It was just that Ulysses was far too perceptive—and far too impatient.

Before An Ruo could even put his plan into action, Ulysses had already cornered him and squeezed the whereabouts of the rings out of him.