Archive of Our Own

Natsuki Subaru, once a venerated master of the Eastern Heavenly Realm, calmly adjusted the long, flowing sleeves of his silken robes. The air in this bustling street was thick with an unfamiliar, chaotic energy—mana, perhaps, rather than the refined spiritual Qi he was accustomed to—but it was of little consequence to a cultivator who had long ago breached the transcendental realm.

Following the tragic destruction of his sect during a bitter celestial conflict, Subaru had abandoned the heavens to walk the path of a vagrant. He had seamlessly embedded himself within the mundane mortal realm, perfectly playing the part of a wealthy, eccentric scholar who spent his days trading poetry, expensive teas, and political musings with the local magistrates. It had been a peaceful, brilliantly unassuming life.

That hard-won peace, however, had been repeatedly interrupted by a peculiar and persistent nuisance: grasping, shadowy hands that only his divine sense could perceive. They constantly reached out from the void, carrying a dense, obsessive miasma, attempting to caress his very soul. Earlier that afternoon, rather than ignore them as he usually did, Subaru had gathered his Qi to finally confront the phenomenon. He had intended to forcefully sever the connection and reprimand whatever dark spirit dared to harass a heavenly master.

Instead, the moment his spiritual intent collided with the shadows, the fabric of space warped entirely. There was no grand heavenly tribulation, no dramatic celestial gate. He had simply taken a step within his quiet garden courtyard and placed his foot down onto the busy cobblestone streets of an entirely foreign metropolis.

He stood in the center of the thoroughfare and scanned his surroundings. Merchants with feline ears and reptilian scales haggled over strange, apple-like fruits. Grand wooden carriages, pulled by massive, ground-bound dragons, rolled past him. The architecture was quite different from the grand jade pavilions of his former home, yet it held a certain vibrant charm.

Subaru let out a slow, measured breath, his expression the absolute picture of scholarly placidity. Internally, he felt a bit cheated by the abrupt spatial transfer—robbed of the chance to actually strike the shadowy entity that had brought him here—but a true master of the Dao does not lose his composure over a mere change of scenery. He would simply assess the laws of this new dragon kingdom, conceal his unfathomable cultivation, and perhaps find a quiet local teahouse to gather intelligence.

He relaxed his shoulders, opening his mouth to utter a quiet, serene observation about the unpredictable flow of destiny.

“I’ve been summoned to another world?!”

The sudden, ear-splitting scream shattered the tranquil aura Subaru had just established.

Subaru slowly turned his head. Standing barely a foot away was a teenage boy with unruly hair, wearing strange, brightly colored garments made of cheap synthetic fabric. The boy had his fists clenched in absolute ecstasy, his eyes wide and sparkling as he stared dramatically at the sky.

Subaru blinked, silently folding his hands deep into his voluminous sleeves as he regarded the stranger. It seemed this particular detour was going to be significantly louder than he had anticipated.

Choosing to remain unnoticed, the cultivator concealed his presence with a fundamental breath-hiding technique and decided to observe this strange, boisterous youth. There was something profoundly unusual about a mortal who possessed no spiritual pressure yet carried himself as if he were the center of the universe.

The youth wandered the bustling thoroughfare, his eyes wide with an exaggerated sense of wonder. He eventually drifted toward a fruit stand managed by a scarred, formidable-looking merchant. The boy pointed at the red fruit on display. He asked what an ‘appa’ was, demanded the price, and then offered a variety of strange, colorful paper notes and flat metal discs as payment. The merchant’s initial customer-service smile quickly morphed into a scowl of disdain. Recognizing a beggar when he saw one, the merchant brusquely ordered the boy to beat it.

Shortly after, a commotion erupted further down the street. A massive earth-dragon, pulling a heavy wooden wagon, had broken its stride, barreling dangerously close to a small child who had wandered into the street. Instead of rushing to push the child out of the way, the strange youth widened his stance. He crossed his arms, thrust his hands forward, and executed a series of erratic, highly dramatic poses, shouting as if trying to bend the will of the heavens themselves to halt the beast.

Watching from the eaves of a nearby building, the cultivator furrowed his brow. He expanded his divine sense, anticipating a sudden surge of hidden power or a secret martial technique. There was absolutely nothing. The boy was merely flexing his limbs at the air. Fortunately, a passing knight moved at a blurring speed, snatching the child from the dragon’s path in the blink of an eye. The boy in the strange clothes awkwardly straightened his posture, seemingly coming to the heavy realization that he did not, in fact, possess any mystical power.

The cultivator continued to trail the youth out of sheer, morbid curiosity. The boy’s journey was a masterclass in misfortune. He wandered into heavily guarded courtyards where trespassers were strictly forbidden, blundered into private baths meant only for women, and eventually slipped off a stone bridge, splashing unceremoniously into a city canal.

Soaking wet and shivering, the boy retreated into a dimly lit, narrow alleyway to wring out his strange garments. He believed himself to be alone, but the cultivator easily sensed the approach of three individuals reeking of cheap alcohol and malicious intent. The daylight robbers stepped from the shadows, blocking the exit and demanding tribute from their cornered prey.

To the cultivator’s surprise, the boy did not cower. He stood tall, a sudden, invisible energy radiating from his posture. Acting as though he were tapping into a latent physical power sleeping deep inside his meridians, the youth challenged the three robbers as if they were a heavenly trial meant to forge his destiny.

He lunged forward, his fist striking clean against the jaw of the largest thug. The blow landed, but the boy instantly recoiled, howling in agony as he clutched his own raw, bleeding knuckles. Realizing their prey was willing to fight, the robbers drew their steel. The boy’s bravado vanished in an instant. He dropped to his knees, throwing his arms over his head as the thugs surrounded him and began driving their boots into his ribs.

Watching from the shadows, the cultivator let out a soft, measured sigh. The boy was a fool, entirely lacking in martial foundation or common sense, but the scholar could not simply stand by and watch him be beaten to death over a few empty pockets.

The cultivator stepped out from his hidden vantage point. He did not draw a blade, nor did he chant an incantation. He simply raised his hand and elegantly flicked his wrist.

The spatial laws of the alleyway distorted for a fraction of a second. Without a sound, the three robbers simply ceased to be there, forcefully and instantly relocated miles away to the grassy plains outside the city’s towering outer walls.

The sudden silence in the alley was deafening. The battered boy on the wet cobblestones coughed, struggling to hold onto his fading consciousness. Through heavily bruised and blurring eyes, he looked up to see his savior—a serene, silken-robed figure standing amidst the damp shadows. The loud boy, Natsuki Subaru, finally succumbed to his injuries, his eyes rolling back as he lost consciousness entirely.

It was profoundly strange for the cultivator to see himself so young.

Yes, it took a while for Subaru to accept it but after scanning the boy’s soul, he had concluded a stark realization.

He stared down at the unconscious boy on the wet cobblestones, studying the painfully familiar, albeit unrefined, features. The youth was far younger than the master could vividly remember being. Young, hurt, and heavily bruised by his own sheer recklessness. A quiet wave of nostalgia washed over the scholar as he observed the boy’s peaceful, sleeping face. Had he truly been this brash and hot-blooded back in his youth, before centuries of cultivation and the Dao had tempered his spirit?

Dismissing the thought, the cultivator focused his will. It was entirely effortless to mend the beaten boy. He did not need to chant, form hand seals, or even offer a gesture. A mere, silent pulse of his boundless internal Qi washed over the youth, and the boy’s raw knuckles, bruised flesh, and battered ribs knit themselves back together perfectly within a single second. The painful grimace on the boy’s face smoothed into a tranquil sleep.

Satisfied with the recovery, the master considered his next move. This bustling, foreign city was far too chaotic. He was just about to transfer the sleeping youth into the absolute sanctuary of his own inner world for proper rest when a sudden disturbance broke the quiet of the alleyway.

A blur of blonde zipped past him with impressive agility. It was a young girl, incredibly fast and light on her feet, dressed in the ragged, practical clothes of a street urchin. As she dashed through the narrow passage, she casually tossed an empty leather purse directly at the cultivator’s feet. Without breaking her stride, she launched herself upward, gracefully scaling the brickwork and disappearing onto the rooftops in a heartbeat.

The cultivator simply lowered his gaze to the abandoned purse, his expression remaining perfectly placid as he processed the trivial interruption.

Then, another figure burst into the alley.

It was a young woman draped in a heavy, concealing hood, breathing frantically. She was clearly in pursuit of the blonde urchin, her amethyst eyes sweeping the dead-end street in desperation. Her gaze quickly snapped to the serene, silken-robed man standing calmly in the shadows, and the sleeping boy beside him. Then, her eyes dropped to the discarded, empty purse resting conspicuously at the tips of his shoes.

The air in the alley instantly grew cold and tense. The maiden lifted her gaze back to the cultivator, her delicate features hardening beneath the shadows of her hood as she leveled a piercing, accusatory glare directly at him.

The temperature in the alley plummeted rapidly. Frost began to trace delicate patterns across the damp brickwork as the hooded maiden raised her hand. Her amethyst eyes were sharp, locked onto the serene scholar, while a faint, icy glow radiated from her palm.

“Return what was stolen,” she demanded, her voice carrying a melodic but stern authority. “That item is incredibly important to me. If you hand it over peacefully, I won’t have to use force.”

The cultivator did not flinch at the sudden drop in temperature or the display of hostility. Instead, he simply folded his hands deeper into his voluminous silken sleeves, tilting his head slightly as he observed her. With a sweeping pulse of his divine sense, he assessed the maiden’s foundation. She was not channeling Qi, but rather drawing upon the ambient energy of the environment, filtering it through a spiritual gate within her body. It was an elementary but remarkably pure form of elemental manipulation.

More intriguing, however, was the profound spiritual signature resting near her shoulder.

“A hasty judgment often leads a traveler down a thorny path, young miss,” the cultivator spoke, his tone smooth and entirely unbothered. He gestured lazily with his chin toward the empty leather pouch at his feet. “If you are referring to this discarded coin purse, you will find it entirely devoid of valuables. The fleet-footed blonde child who darted across the rooftops mere moments ago tossed it here, undoubtedly hoping you would stop to interrogate a bystander rather than continue your pursuit.”

The maiden blinked, her stern expression faltering as she looked closer at the flattened purse. The frost creeping along the walls halted its advance. “She… she went to the rooftops?”

“Indeed,” the cultivator nodded gracefully. “Though, if I may offer an observation, the item you seek was likely not within that particular purse to begin with. A thief skilled enough to outpace you would not discard her true prize so carelessly.”

Before the maiden could respond, a small puff of smoke materialized at the crook of her neck. A small, grey, bipedal cat with a pink nose and a gold earring floated into view, rubbing its eyes as if waking from a long nap.

“Lia, you should listen to him,” the floating cat said, its voice light and cheerful, though its small, dark eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the cultivator. “And you should probably lower your hand. Right now.”

“Puck?” The maiden, Lia, looked at her companion in surprise. “Did you sense which way she went?”

“No, but I can sense what’s right in front of us,” Puck replied, floating slightly in front of Lia as if to shield her. The small spirit’s tail twitched. To Emilia, the robed man looked like a defenseless, eccentric noble. To Puck, staring at the cultivator was like peering over the edge of a bottomless, silent abyss. There was no mana leaking from him, no malice, no intent—just a staggering, incomprehensible depth that defied all reason.

“He’s telling the truth, Lia,” Puck continued, maintaining his cheerful facade while silently urging his contractor to de-escalate. “He isn’t with the thief.”

Lia lowered her hand, the icy glow fading from her palm. She let out a heavy, frustrated sigh, her shoulders slumping as she lowered her hood, revealing striking silver hair that shimmered even in the dim alleyway. “I lost her,” she murmured, a trace of panic bleeding into her voice. “If I don’t get that insignia back…”

Her gaze then drifted from the empty purse to the cobblestones, finally registering the second figure in the alley. Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of the sleeping boy in the strange track jacket.

“Is he… is he alright?” she asked, taking a hesitant step forward, her previous hostility entirely replaced by genuine concern. “He looks like he was in a fight, but there isn’t a scratch on him.”

“He was merely overwhelmed by the rigors of the city,” the cultivator replied smoothly, gently sweeping his sleeve to conceal the faint residual aura of his healing arts. “A temporary exhaustion. He is resting peacefully.”

Subaru’s eyes snapped open. He did not merely feel awake; he felt invincible. The lingering aches from his earlier misadventures and the brutal beating were completely gone. In their place was a surging, boundless vitality. The cultivator’s Qi had not simply repaired his injuries; it had restored his mortal vessel to its absolute, most pristine condition, leaving him thrumming with an energy that made him feel as though he could sprint up a mountain without breaking a sweat.

He pushed himself off the damp cobblestones with astonishing ease, blinking away the last remnants of sleep. As his vision cleared, the first thing his eyes focused on was the tall figure standing a few paces away.

The man was dressed in flowing, intricately embroidered silken robes, looking exactly as though he had just stepped off the set of one of the ancient Chinese historical dramas his mother liked to watch on late-night television. Subaru stared, his mind struggling to process the sight. For the life of him, the man looked incredibly familiar, yet Subaru was absolutely certain he had never met anyone possessing such an otherworldly, refined appearance. He was handsome in a way that commanded immediate attention, possessing the pristine, untouchable aura of a top-tier TV celebrity, yet there was a bizarre, echoing resonance in his sharp amber eyes and the shape of his face that made Subaru’s brain itch.

“Whoa,” Subaru muttered under his breath, scratching the back of his head as he looked the tall man up and down. “Did I just get saved by a wandering cultivator?”

The cultivator offered a serene, barely perceptible nod, his expression a mask of perfect, tranquil detachment. He remained silent, content to observe his younger, significantly louder self.

Before Subaru could press the mysterious man for his name, a soft, melodic voice broke his train of thought.

“Are you fully awake now? You took quite a heavy fall. I was getting quite worried for a moment.”

Subaru turned his head, and his breath instantly caught in his throat.

Standing just beside the robed scholar was a young woman of staggering, unparalleled beauty. She possessed shimmering silver hair that seemed to catch and reflect the faint ambient light of the alleyway, and large, expressive eyes the color of polished amethysts. She looked down at him with genuine, unfiltered kindness. Even standing amidst the grim and dirt of the city’s backstreets, she looked like an ethereal fairy who had lost her way.

All the surging, boundless energy in Subaru’s perfectly healed body suddenly rushed straight to his cheeks. He scrambled to his feet, frantically dusting off his tracksuit, completely captivated by the sight of the beautiful maiden standing before him.

The cultivator folded his hands neatly into his sleeves, watching the display unfold with a profound sense of amusement hidden entirely behind his stoic expression. He truly did not know whether to laugh or cry. Despite the vast differences in their cultivation, temperament, and life experiences, it seemed that even this reckless, unrefined youth shared his exact, undeniable taste for otherworldly jade beauties with hair of a paler hue. Some foundational aspects of the soul, it appeared, were simply immutable across the vast expanse of time and space.

The boy in the strange tracksuit puffed out his chest, the lingering surge of the cultivator’s Qi giving him an absurd amount of unearned confidence. He pointed a thumb at his own face, striking a dramatic, wide-stanced pose.

“My name is Natsuki Subaru!” the boy declared loudly, his voice echoing off the narrow, damp walls of the alley. “I am clueless, absolutely broke, and currently beyond saving! But it is an absolute pleasure to meet you, my beautiful silver-haired savior!”

The maiden blinked, taken aback by the sheer volume and bizarre honesty of the introduction. She took a slight step back, her amethyst eyes wide, clearly unused to such an overwhelming and direct personality.

“I… I didn’t save you, though,” she corrected gently, her gaze shifting toward the silent scholar. “You were already resting when I arrived. If anyone helped you, it was likely this gentleman here.”

The boy named Subaru dropped his pose, turning his head to look back at the tall man in the silken robes. The gears in his head seemed to visibly turn as he processed the flow of events. He had been beaten by thugs, magically healed by a handsome stranger who looked like an immortal from a television drama, and now a beautiful girl was standing right in front of them.

“Wait, so you’re the one who bailed me out of that beating?” the boy asked, bowing his head slightly in an awkward but genuine display of gratitude. “Thanks, man. Seriously. I thought I was a goner. What’s your name?”

The cultivator regarded the youth for a long, quiet moment. To speak his true name would undoubtedly shatter the fragile reality of the situation and invite a storm of unnecessary complications from both the loud youth and the wary feline spirit resting near the maiden’s shoulder.

“I am but a humble, wandering scholar of the Dao,” the cultivator replied smoothly, his voice a calming, resonant baritone. He offered a polite, shallow bow to both the boy and the maiden. “You may refer to me simply as Qixing.”

“Qixing,” the maiden repeated softly, the name foreign but pleasant to her ears. She then offered a graceful curtsy, her manners impeccable despite the obvious urgency clinging to her posture. “Thank you for looking after him, Lord Qixing. And I apologize for my earlier hostility. I am in a desperate hurry to recover something precious that was stolen from me, but I couldn’t just leave an injured person lying alone in the dirt.”

“A stolen item,” the youth chimed in, his eyes immediately lighting up with a fierce, determined spark as he looked back at the silver-haired girl. He smacked his chest with his fist, the sound ringing loudly in the alley. “Well, you stopped to check on me when I was down, and that’s a debt that needs repaying! Let me help you find your thief!”

Qixing observed the interaction with a placid, unwavering gaze. The loud youth’s enthusiastic offer of assistance hung in the damp air, but the silver-haired maiden’s expression immediately shifted. The gentle concern that had softened her features was rapidly replaced by a guarded, distant mask.

“I appreciate your sentiment, but I must decline,” she stated, her voice returning to its earlier, stern cadence. She took a deliberate step back, wrapping her arms slightly around herself as if to physically close off the conversation. “This is my burden to bear, and I work much better alone. You have already been hurt today it seems. There is absolutely no reason for you to involve yourself in my troubles.”

The boy deflated visibly, his dramatic posture crumbling as his outstretched hand dropped awkwardly to his side. “But I owe you one! You were ready to help me, even when you were in a rush.”

“Again, I didn’t save you. I was simply distracted,” she replied, her tone leaving no room for further argument. She turned her back to the two of them, reaching up to pull her heavy cloak back over her head, once again concealing her striking silver hair and amethyst eyes in shadow. “Please, just stay safe. Good day.”

She did not deign to offer him her name. Without another backward glance, she swiftly turned on her heel and marched toward the exit of the alleyway, entirely determined to resume her solitary pursuit of the blonde urchin.

As her footsteps echoed away, the small feline spirit lingered behind for a brief moment. He floated closer to the boy and the scholarly cultivator, offering a helpless, remarkably human-like shrug and an apologetic smile.

“You’ll have to forgive my daughter’s bluntness,” the spirit said cheerfully, though his dark eyes darted cautiously toward Qixing one last time, still unable to fathom the depths of the scholar’s presence. “She is actually very sweet, but she gets incredibly stubborn when it comes to relying on other people. We really are in a huge rush. Thanks again for looking after this guy, mister Qixing. Bye-bye now!”

With a playful, two-fingered salute, the cat popped out of existence, vanishing into thin air. He left Qixing and the thoroughly bewildered youth standing alone once more in the quiet shadows of the cobblestone alley.

Silence settled over the damp cobblestones once more. The boy in the tracksuit stood perfectly still for a long moment, staring blankly at the empty space where the silver-haired maiden and her floating feline spirit had vanished. His shoulders were slumped, the undeniable sting of rejection visible in the slight downturn of his lips.

Qixing remained standing in the shadows, his hands neatly tucked within his silken sleeves. He observed his younger counterpart with a mild, analytical gaze. The maiden had made her boundaries exceptionally clear. A sensible mortal would accept the dismissal, count his blessings that his life had been preserved, and find a safe tavern to plan his next move in an unfamiliar world.

But Qixing knew the soul of Natsuki Subaru better than anyone in the cosmos.

Suddenly, the youth raised both hands and delivered a sharp, resounding slap to his own cheeks. The loud smack echoed sharply in the narrow alley.

“Alright!” the boy declared, the sudden burst of volume startling a nearby flock of pigeons into the sky. His eyes burned with a renewed, irrational fire as he turned to face the cultivator. “She might not want my help, but I can’t just let a girl like that wander into danger alone! I’m going to find that blonde thief, get that stolen item back, and return it to her!”

“A rather bold declaration,” Qixing noted, his voice smooth and entirely devoid of judgment. “She explicitly forbade you from involving yourself. Furthermore, you have no currency, no local knowledge, and as demonstrated mere moments ago, no martial prowess to speak of. How do you intend to track down a seasoned street thief in a metropolis of this magnitude?”

The boy pointed a confident finger toward the sky. “By asking around, of course! A thief has to stand out, even in a big city. Besides, I have the power of youth and grit on my side!” He paused, his expression softening slightly as he looked at the tall scholar. “Hey, Qixing. You don’t have to tag along if you don’t want to. You already saved my life, and I’d hate to drag a refined guy like you into my mess.”

Qixing considered the offer. As a transcendent master, he had absolute freedom to traverse this world as he pleased. Yet, the prospect of letting this fragile, powerless version of himself wander blindly into the city’s criminal underbelly felt like a profound waste of a perfectly good healing technique. Moreover, uncovering the nature of the shadowy hands that had brought him here might require observing the flow of destiny surrounding this particular youth.

“I find myself without pressing engagements,” Qixing replied, his amber eyes serene. He took a graceful step forward, his silken robes gliding seamlessly over the rough ground. “And it would be a shame to see the mortal vessel I so recently mended immediately broken again. Lead the way, young Subaru. Let us see where this grit of yours takes us.”

A wide, genuine grin spread across the boy’s face. He pumped his fist in the air. “Awesome! Let’s go, team! Next stop, the local information network!”

With bounding, energetic steps, the boy marched out of the alleyway, completely undeterred by his earlier misfortune. Qixing followed at a measured, unhurried pace, casting a long, quiet shadow behind the foolish youth.

Subaru marched back onto the bustling main street, his fists clenched in determination. He felt absolutely incredible. Whatever magic Qixing had used on him had not only wiped away the pain of his bruised ribs and bloody knuckles but had left him feeling lighter than air. It was as if his max HP had been permanently buffed.

He stole a quick glance over his shoulder at his new companion. Qixing was following at a leisurely pace, though ‘following’ felt like the wrong word. The tall man seemed to simply glide across the rough cobblestones, his silken robes undisturbed by the chaotic foot traffic of the capital. He looked completely at ease, exuding this insane, untouchable ‘main character’ energy that made Subaru simultaneously grateful and fiercely jealous. It was totally unfair for one guy to be that ridiculously handsome and powerful. Every time Subaru looked at Qixing’s face, a weird, phantom itch crawled at the back of his mind, like trying to remember a word that was right on the tip of his tongue. He brushed the feeling aside. There were more important things to worry about right now.

“Alright,” Subaru muttered to himself, scanning the sea of demi-humans, armored knights, and merchants. “Tracking down one specific thief in a massive fantasy city. Classic RPG quest. Where do we start the information gathering phase?”

His eyes landed on a familiar splash of red across the thoroughfare. The fruit stand. The intimidating, scarred merchant who had chased him off earlier was still there, aggressively polishing a pile of those apple-like fruits.

“Perfect,” Subaru grinned. The starting NPC.

He marched confidently across the street, dodging a passing lizard-man, and planted himself right in front of the stall.

The merchant stopped polishing, his heavy brow furrowing in instant irritation as he recognized the tracksuit. “You again? I already told you to beat it. I’m not running a charity here.”

“I’m not here to buy your appas, old man!” Subaru declared, leaning over the wooden counter with what he hoped was a cool, intimidating glare. “I’m looking for information. She ran past here not too long ago. Tell me where she went.”

The merchant snorted, completely unimpressed by the display. “And why in the dragon’s name would I tell you anything? You don’t have a single copper coin to your name.”

Subaru bit his lip. Damn it. Fantasy capitalism was harsh. He instinctively patted his pockets, searching for anything of value. His fingers brushed against the crinkling plastic of his convenience store bag.

“Oh, ho!” Subaru dramatically whipped his hand out of his pocket, slamming a brightly colored, foil-wrapped package onto the wooden counter. “You dare say I have nothing of value? Behold! A rare, incredibly exclusive culinary treasure from my distant homeland! The legendary Corn Potage snack!”

The merchant stared at the plastic wrapper, his face a mask of profound skepticism. He poked the crinkling bag with one thick, calloused finger.

Qixing, who had silently stepped up beside Subaru, observed the exchange with his usual placid expression. Subaru felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck, praying the merchant would take the bait. He desperately needed a lead if he was going to find that thief and see his beautiful, silver-haired savior again.

Subaru held his breath, fully expecting the scarred merchant to be awestruck by the modern marvel of Japanese snack food. The man merely stared at the crinkling foil bag, his expression remaining completely unimpressed, before shifting his gaze back up to Subaru’s wildly expectant face.

“Get that shiny piece of garbage off my stall before I throw you out,” the merchant grunted, swatting the corn potage bag right back into Subaru’s chest. “If you don’t have proper coins, you don’t get information. Now scram!”

Subaru fumbled to catch the bag, his jaw dropping in sheer indignation. “Garbage?! Do you have any idea the complex flavor profile contained within this airtight seal? The crunch? The sweet, savory balance? This is the pinnacle of culinary convenience!”

“I said beat it, kid!” The merchant gave silent glare that could kill, a clear, unspoken threat.

Defeated, Subaru shoved the snack back into his tracksuit pocket and stepped away from the counter. He shot a desperate, pleading look at his tall, silken-robed companion. “Come on, Qixing. A little help here? You look like a guy who carries a heavy coin purse. Just slide the man a few coins so we can get this quest moving! I’ll pay you back once I get a job, promise!”

Qixing stood perfectly still, his hands remaining neatly folded within his voluminous sleeves. Subaru didn’t need to be a mind reader to notice the faint, almost imperceptible upward curve at the corner of the scholar’s mouth.

The man was absolutely loaded. Subaru could practically smell the wealth radiating from those impeccable, impossibly clean robes. Given how easily he had performed that healing magic, Subaru wouldn’t be surprised if Qixing was carrying pure, unrefined gold or rare gems that would make this fruit merchant weep tears of joy.

“Hmm…” He hummed without judgement in his eyes.

Yet, Qixing made absolutely no move to help. His amber eyes simply watched Subaru with a serene, infuriatingly patient gaze.

He was doing this on purpose.

The realization hit Subaru like a sack of heavy bricks. This wandering immortal wasn’t following him out of a sense of duty, camaraderie, or even pity. Qixing was treating this entire ordeal like a front-row seat to a daytime comedy show. He was perfectly content to stand on the sidelines and watch Subaru fumble, fail, and make an absolute fool of himself purely for his own silent entertainment.

Subaru groaned, dragging a hand down his face in frustration. “Fine. Fine! I see how it is. The master makes the disciple suffer to build character, right? Keep your secrets and your money. I don’t need it.”

He turned his back on the fruit stand, his mind racing as he scanned the crowded street for another angle. If he couldn’t buy his way to the truth, he was just going to have to find it the hard way.

Subaru marched away from the fruit stand, his mind frantically drawing up a new game plan. If the direct approach to finding the blonde girl was gated behind a paywall, he would just have to rely on his knowledge of basic fantasy tropes.

“Think, Subaru, think,” he muttered, tapping his temple. “If she’s a thief, she has to report back to a thieves’ guild, or at least a fence to sell her stolen loot. I just need to find the bad part of town.”

Filled with renewed confidence in his gamer logic, he picked his next target: a well-dressed man carrying a leather briefcase. Subaru jogged up to him, pasting on what he assumed was a friendly, approachable smile.

“Excuse me, sir! Quick question for you,” Subaru asked brightly. “Do you happen to know where the local thieves hide out? Like a slum, or a black market, maybe an underground tavern?”

The man stopped dead in his tracks. He took one look at Subaru’s bizarre, alien tracksuit, his unkempt hair, and the eager glint in his eyes. Without a word, the man clutched his travel bag tightly against his chest, turned sharply on his heel, and fast-walked away in the opposite direction.

Subaru blinked. “Well, that was rude. Maybe he was just busy.”

He tried again with a woman carrying a basket of groceries. “Pardon me, ma’am! If someone were to steal a highly valuable, shiny trinket, where exactly would they go to sell it?”

The woman gasped, taking several hurried steps back. She pulled her basket defensively, eyeing Subaru up and down with blatant distrust. “I don’t want any trouble! Keep away from me, you delinquent!” She practically sprinted down the street.

Over the next twenty minutes, Subaru’s strategy spectacularly imploded. He asked a baker where the criminal underbelly operated, and got threatened with a rolling pin. He asked a passing carriage driver for directions to the nearest den of iniquity, and was told to wash his mouth out. He even tried asking a passing city guard about the location of stolen goods, which resulted in the guard placing a firm hand on the hilt of his spear and demanding to know Subaru’s business. Subaru had to deploy an emergency tactical retreat to avoid getting arrested on the spot.

Panting, Subaru leaned against a brick wall in a quiet alleyway to catch his breath. It dawned on him, entirely too late, that loudly asking normal citizens about the whereabouts of criminals did not make him look like a heroic investigator. Combined with his foreign clothes, it made him look exactly like a novice criminal trying to find his gang.

He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the dirt, burying his face in his hands. His charisma stat was clearly in the negatives.

A few feet away, Qixing stood in the shade under a cloud. The scholar’s silken robes were completely pristine, and his posture was as elegant and composed as ever. He simply watched Subaru’s string of consecutive social failures with a mild, tranquil expression, looking perfectly at peace with the world while Subaru’s reputation plummeted into the dirt.

Subaru peeled his face from his hands, staring blankly at the dusty cobblestones between his sneakers. Pouting in a dirty alleyway wasn’t going to get the silver-haired girl’s insignia back, and it certainly wasn’t going to impress the silent, judgmental immortal hovering a few paces away.

He pushed himself up off the ground and dusted off his tracksuit pants. “Okay. If the NPCs in this town have their hostility meters cranked up to maximum, we just have to bypass the dialogue options entirely.”

He looked around, his eyes scanning the architecture of the capital. If this world operated on standard fantasy city planning, the wealthy merchants and nobles lived in the center, closest to the castle, while the poorest residents—and the criminals—were pushed out to the fringes. He just needed to find where the architecture changed from pristine stone to rotting wood. He needed a vantage point.

“Come on, Qixing,” Subaru muttered, marching past the scholar with renewed purpose. “Time to use some actual brainpower.”

He led the way out of the alley, keeping his head down to avoid making eye contact with any more easily spooked citizens. After a few minutes of navigating the winding streets, he spotted a tall, spiraling stone staircase that wrapped around the exterior of a massive clock tower. It was unguarded and offered a clear view of the surrounding districts.

Subaru took the stairs two at a time, his perfectly healed body carrying him up the steep incline without a single drop of sweat. By the time he reached the viewing platform, he felt like he could have sprinted up another hundred flights.

He leaned over the stone parapet, taking in the sprawling expanse of the dragon kingdom’s capital. It was genuinely breathtaking. To his left, grand mansions with terra-cotta roofs gleamed under the afternoon sun, surrounding an impossibly huge white castle in the distance. But as he traced his gaze to the right, toward the outer walls, the vibrant colors faded into a dull, muddy brown.

The buildings there were cramped, leaning precariously against one another like a stack of haphazardly placed wooden blocks. The streets were significantly narrower, choked with shadows and a faint, visible haze of smog.

“Bingo,” Subaru grinned, pointing a triumphant finger at the dilapidated district. “The slums. If our thief is hiding anywhere, it’s going to be in that maze.”

He turned to look at Qixing. The scholar had ascended the stairs just as quickly, though he hadn’t seemed to move his legs fast at all. He simply stood at the edge of the platform, the gentle breeze catching the wide sleeves of his robes as he gazed placidly out over the city.

“A logical deduction,” Qixing offered smoothly, his amber eyes shifting to meet Subaru’s triumphant grin. “To seek a rat, one must look in the gutters. Though, a word of caution, young Subaru. The gutters are rarely forgiving to those who wander in without fangs of their own.”

“Hey, I’ve got plenty of fangs,” Subaru countered, slapping his chest confidently. “Besides, I’ve got you hanging around to watch my back. What could possibly go wrong?”

Without waiting for an answer, Subaru turned and began his descent down the tower stairs, setting a direct course for the slums.

The transition from the grand capital to the slums was jarring. The smooth cobblestones gave way to packed dirt and muddy puddles, and the sweet scent of appas and fresh bread was instantly replaced by the heavy, stagnant odor of unwashed bodies and rotting refuse.

As Subaru ventured deeper, the sheer scale of the district began to dawn on him. The slums didn’t just line the outer wall; they sprawled inward like a massive, festering wound upon the city. Rickety wooden shacks were stacked on top of each other, creating a claustrophobic labyrinth of narrow, winding alleyways that seemed to stretch on endlessly. At the back of his mind, a sobering thought took root: Why are there so many people living like this? For a capital that looked so majestic and wealthy from the clock tower, the sheer volume of citizens relegated to this squalor was staggering. It was a heavy question, one he quietly shelved for a future time.

Right now, survival and navigation were the priorities. If the people in the wealthy districts had been unfriendly and suspicious, the residents of the slums were outright hostile.

Every corner he turned, he was met with hard, dangerous glares. Emaciated men leaning against the wooden walls paused their low conversations to watch him pass, their hands subtly drifting toward their belts. Doors were slammed shut as he approached. Children in rags stared at him with hollow, assessing eyes, likely calculating how quickly they could strip him of his strange jacket if he were to trip and fall.

He pulled his collar up, sticking close to the center of the muddy path. Searching this massive, hostile territory for a single person felt less like finding a needle in a haystack and more like finding a specific grain of sand in a desert.

Then, Subaru stopped dead in his tracks. His sneakers squelched in the mud.

Qixing, gliding effortlessly behind him without so much as a speck of dirt touching his silken robes, paused a respectful distance away.

“Is there an obstacle, young Subaru?” the scholar asked mildly.

Subaru slowly raised both hands and dragged them down his face, letting out a prolonged, agonizing groan that echoed off the cramped wooden walls.

“I don’t know what the thief looks like,” he whispered, the sheer magnitude of his own stupidity crashing down on him.

When he met the silver-haired maiden, he had been so completely, utterly mesmerized by her amethyst eyes and ethereal beauty that he hadn’t bothered to ask for a single descriptive detail about the thief they were supposed to be hunting.

He was wandering through a dangerous, sprawling maze of criminals, looking for a thief whose face he had never even seen.

Qixing did not offer a comforting pat on the shoulder, nor did he sigh in exasperation. The scholar simply gave a slow, serene nod, as if Subaru’s profound lack of basic investigative foresight was merely a fundamental law of the universe. The Dao flowed, the sun set, and this reckless youth inevitably stumbled over his own feet. It was the natural order of things.

“I didn’t even ask,” Subaru muttered, frantically clutching his hair as the realization set in. “She told me she was looking for a thief. That’s it! That’s the entire quest log!”

He paced a tight circle in the muddy path, ignoring the hostile glares of the slum dwellers watching him from their porches. His mind raced back to his embarrassing display at the fruit stand. He had confidently demanded information about a thief, without a detail that hinted his brain couldn’t conjure entirely out of thin air to fill in the blanks.

“Wait a second,” Subaru gasped, stopping in his tracks. He turned wide, horrified eyes toward the placid Scholar. “Do you know what the thief looks like?”

Qinxing didn’t answer with his voice. He just nodded simply.

Subaru grabbed the sides of his head, his voice pitching higher in panic. “I’ve been wandering around without a clue who or what I’m looking for and you didn’t say anything?!”

Qixing folded his hands neatly, observing the youth’s meltdown with mild, untroubled amber eyes. The cultivator, of course, knew exactly what the thief looked like. He had seen the agile blonde girl dash through the alleyway while Subaru was unconscious. However, correcting the boy now would deprive him of a crucial, character-building epiphany regarding the dangers of making baseless assumptions.

“The mortal mind is a fragile vessel, easily clouded by its own desires and expectations,” Qixing mused smoothly, his voice a calm breeze against Subaru’s rising panic. “To chase a phantom of your own deduction is a common folly.”

“You’re not helping, Qixing!” Subaru groaned, squatting down and burying his face in his knees. “I’m in the middle of a hostile slum, looking for an entity who could be literally anyone in this city. I don’t have a map, I don’t have money, and I don’t have a clue.”

He remained crouched in the dirt for a long moment, the heavy reality of his situation pressing down on him. The slums were vast, the residents were dangerous, and his heroic quest had hit a massive brick wall of his own making.

Subaru remained curled in his muddy squat, the absolute weight of his own incompetence threatening to crush his spirit. He had confidently marched into the city’s underbelly armed with nothing but sheer willpower and a fundamental misunderstanding of his own quest.

From his serene vantage point a few steps away, Qixing decided it was time to say something. The youth’s despair was amusing, but the cultivator could sense the mortal’s internal energy waning. The healing had restored his body, but a mortal vessel still required basic sustenance to function.

“Young Subaru,” Qixing began, his rich voice cutting easily through the ambient noise of the slums. “You fret over a locked door while holding no key, but you have forgotten the most crucial truth of this entire endeavor.”

Subaru peeked over his knees, looking up at the impeccably dressed immortal. “What truth? That I’m an idiot?”

“That this door was never yours to open,” Qixing corrected gently, a faint, amused smile finally gracing his lips. “The maiden of silver hair made her stance unequivocally clear. She did not seek your aid, nor did she desire your companionship. You owe her no debt, and this burden you carry is entirely self-imposed.”

Subaru frowned, slowly standing up and brushing the dirt from his tracksuit pants. “Well, yeah. But you can’t just walk away when someone is in trouble. That’s not how a protagonist is supposed to act.”

“A protagonist,” Qixing echoed, tasting the unfamiliar mortal word. “Perhaps. But a wise man knows when to yield to the current rather than exhaust himself swimming against it. Your blind pursuit has yielded nothing but frustration and a thorough demonstration of your lack of preparation.”

Before Subaru could launch into a defensive tirade about grit and determination, his stomach let out a sudden, violent rumble that echoed loudly in the narrow alley.

Subaru froze, his cheeks burning red. He wrapped his arms around his midsection, suddenly very aware that he hadn’t eaten anything since a convenience store snack back in what felt like a different lifetime.

Qixing let out a soft, elegant chuckle. It was a rare sound, rich and completely unbothered.

“It seems your mortal vessel protests your current course of action more loudly than your pride,” the scholar noted. He gracefully reached into the wide sleeve of his robe, producing a small, intricately embroidered silk pouch that clinked with a heavy, metallic weight. “Come. Your sheer foolishness has provided me with a highly entertaining afternoon. It is only fitting that I offer a reward for the amusement.”

Subaru stared at the silk pouch, his eyes widening as the universal sound of currency reached his ears.

“Let us leave this squalor and find a respectable tavern,” Qixing offered, turning his back on the hostile depths of the slums. “I shall purchase you a meal. Once your stomach is full, perhaps your mind will find the clarity it so desperately lacks.”

The burning desire to be a hero warred violently with the agonizing emptiness in Subaru’s stomach. He looked back toward the maze of the slums one last time, then back to the retreating figure of the wealthy immortal.

With a heavy sigh of defeat, Subaru jogged to catch up. The quest to save the silver-haired girl would simply have to wait until after lunch.

Qixing walked with an absolute certainty that seemed to bend the very world around him. As they left the slums and transitioned back into the affluent districts, the dense crowds of the capital naturally parted before him. It wasn’t an aggressive shove; it was as if his mere presence commanded the physical space to yield. Even the heavily armored city guards posted at the strict borders of the noble district simply stood at attention, not impeding his progress in the slightest as the silken-robed scholar glided past without a second glance.

Subaru hurried closely behind, using Qixing’s wake to bypass the checkpoints. He expected them to end up in a cozy, rustic tavern with wooden mugs and loud patrons. Instead, Qixing led him up the pristine marble steps of an incredibly extravagant restaurant. The architecture was breathtaking, framed by crystal windows, and the scent of roasted meats and rich spices drifting from the doors was absolutely divine.

Standing in the grand foyer, surrounded by nobles in velvet and fine fabrics, Subaru suddenly felt painfully aware of his dirt-smudged, cheap synthetic tracksuit. He tried to shrink behind his tall companion, but the agonizing cramp in his stomach reminded him that dignity was a luxury he could not afford right now.

A finely dressed hostess approached them, her professional smile faltering for only a fraction of a second as she took in Subaru’s attire before focusing her attention on the immaculate Qixing.

“Welcome, my lords,” she greeted with a deep, practiced bow. “May I ask if you have a reservation for this evening?”

“A table for two,” Qixing stated smoothly, his tone pleasant but carrying the subtle weight of a man accustomed to absolute obedience. “Under the name Qixing.”

The hostess retrieved a leather-bound ledger from her podium, tracing a manicured finger down the long list of names. She shook her head politely. “I apologize, Lord Qixing, but I do not see your name on our registry for tonight. We are currently fully booked for the—”

Qixing did not argue. He simply reached into his wide sleeve and produced the small, intricately embroidered silk pouch he had shown Subaru earlier in the alley. With a graceful, unhurried motion, he placed it onto the podium. The pouch landed with a heavy, muffled clink that suggested immense density.

The hostess blinked, her professional facade slipping into silent understanding as she loosened the drawstring. As she peeked inside, a brilliant, unmistakable golden light reflected directly onto her face. It was not the dull gleam of the kingdom’s standard gold coins, but the blinding radiance of pure, unadulterated precious metal forged in a higher realm.

The woman snapped the pouch shut with lightning speed, her eyes widening to the size of saucers. She cleared her throat, seamlessly slipping the pouch into the hidden pocket of her apron while looking back down at the very same page of the ledger.

“My deepest apologies, Lord Qixing. It appears I misread the ledger entirely,” she corrected herself without missing a beat, her smile now radiating an almost painful level of bright, excessive accommodation. “You are indeed on the list. Your table is right this way. Please, follow me.”

Watching the entire exchange unfold from a few steps back, Subaru stood completely dumbfounded. His jaw hung slightly open. He had expected some profound, mystical display of ancient power or mind-altering magic to secure them a meal. Instead, the immortal had just effortlessly, blatantly bribed his way into a VIP dining experience. A deep, agonizing wave of jealousy washed over Subaru as he trailed behind the hostess and the impossibly rich scholar, wondering when exactly it would be his turn to effortlessly throw gold around.

The hostess guided them past tables of murmuring aristocrats to a secluded, opulent corner booth lined with velvet cushions. A sharply dressed waitress was already standing at attention by the table, offering them each a heavy, leather-bound menu the moment they were seated.

Subaru settled into the plush booth, his stomach doing a happy flip at the prospect of actual food. He eagerly opened the menu, scanning the pages for anything recognizable.

He stopped. He blinked hard. He tilted the menu slightly to the left. He flipped it entirely upside down, checking the back, and then brought the parchment extremely close to his face, squinting at the ink.

It was complete gibberish. The elegant, swirling text wasn’t Japanese, wasn’t English, and certainly wasn’t anything he had ever seen in any book. It looked like a series of stylized squiggles and runes. The bubble of confidence he had briefly inflated upon entering the restaurant popped instantly, replaced by a suffocating wave of helplessness. He was functionally illiterate in this world.

Across the table, Qixing opened his own menu with a practiced, elegant flourish. His amber eyes scanned the looping runes. Much like his younger counterpart, the immortal scholar could not read a single syllable of it. However, unlike the sweating, panicking teenager across from him, Qixing found the situation deeply fascinating. It was a testament to the fact that he had truly crossed into an entirely different dimensional plane, one with its own unique linguistic foundation completely untouched by the heavenly realms.

Naturally, a true master of the Dao would never allow something as trivial as illiteracy to break his composure.

Qixing softly closed the leather menu and set it aside. He looked up at the attentive waitress with a polite, disarming smile.

“The sheer variety of your establishment is impressive,” Qixing spoke smoothly, his tone rich and unbothered. “However, I find myself in the mood to defer to the expertise of the house. What is your most exquisite recommendation for this evening?”

The waitress beamed, her posture straightening with pride. She launched into a passionate, highly descriptive explanation of their limited-time seasonal special. She enthusiastically described a main course of roasted ‘white-plume boar’ glazed with a ‘sweet-sap berry reduction’, accompanied by a side of heavily spiced ‘ground-root puree’, and paired with a vintage, sparkling ‘moon-vine nectar’. She finished the pitch by describing a layered dessert that sounded vaguely like a frosted pastry, though Subaru couldn’t be entirely sure.

Subaru listened to the entire description in a daze. He had absolutely no idea what any of those fantastical ingredients were, what they looked like, or what a white-plume boar was. The only thing he could estimate with absolute certainty was that it was definitely not omurice, nor was it a convenience store ramen.

“That sounds entirely adequate,” Qixing nodded gracefully. “I shall have the recommendation, then.”

The waitress jotted down the order with a quick flourish of her quill and turned her bright, expectant smile toward Subaru.

Subaru froze, acutely aware of his inability to read the menu still clutched tightly in his hands. He swallowed his pride, desperately hiding his embarrassment behind a forced, nonchalant grin as he placed the unreadable gibberish flat on the table.

“Yeah, I’d like…” Subaru said, hoping his voice wasn’t shaking. “I’ll just have the exact same thing.”

The waitress bowed deeply and hurried off toward the kitchens, leaving the two travelers alone in the plush velvet booth. With the immediate distraction of ordering food gone, a heavy, expectant silence settled over the table.

Subaru fidgeted. He tapped his fingers lightly against the polished wood, shifted his weight on the cushions, and repeatedly glanced around the opulent dining room. The ambient chatter of the kingdom’s elite provided a dull hum of background noise, but it did nothing to ease the awkwardness sitting heavily in his chest. His eyes inevitably wandered back to the man sitting across from him.

His mind was buzzing with an absolute swarm of questions. Who exactly was this guy? Where did he get that absurd amount of gold? How did he perform that instant, flawless healing magic without chanting a single spell or incantation? And most pressingly, why did looking at Qixing’s face feel like trying to recall a forgotten dream? The resemblance wasn’t just passing; it was an echoing familiarity that made Subaru’s instincts scream that he should know this person intimately.

Across the table, Qixing sat in perfect stillness. His posture was impeccably straight, his hands resting comfortably in his lap. His amber eyes gazed calmly out the nearest crystal window, observing the bustling street below with an expression of mild, detached interest.

In truth, the cultivator was acutely aware of the youth’s burning curiosity. He could sense the restless, chaotic energy rolling off Subaru in waves. Qixing was perfectly willing to provide answers—or at least, carefully constructed truths that wouldn’t shatter the boy’s fragile understanding of reality and the cosmos. However, the path of the Dao required a delicate touch. To speak first, to offer unprompted answers and guide the conversation, would be to assert dominance over the boy’s narrative. Qixing had no desire to appear as a manipulative force shaping a pawn for his own amusement. He would serve merely as a mirror, reflecting only what the youth was brave enough to seek.

So, the immortal waited, matching the boy’s nervous energy with an ocean of infinite patience.

The silence stretched on for several long minutes. Subaru picked up his crystal water goblet, took a small sip, set it down, and finally let out a long, defeated breath. The sheer tension of holding his tongue had simply become too much for his naturally loud and inquisitive nature to bear.

“So,” Subaru began, leaning forward slightly and resting his forearms on the table. He lowered his voice, casting a quick, wary glance at the nearby nobles before locking his eyes onto the scholar. “Qixing. I really have to ask.”

“Were you the one to summon me?”

Subaru didn’t wait for an answer before the dam completely broke. The questions he had been frantically bottling up came spilling out in a rapid, breathless torrent.

“Are you really a Daoist like those immortal hero webnovels? Do you really live forever? Do you have a flying sword? Have you met the Monkey King? Is Buddha real?!”

He leaned so far over the table that his nose was nearly touching the crystal vase serving as a centerpiece, his eyes wide and practically sparkling with the desperate, concentrated curiosity of a lifelong otaku who had just met an actual, living fantasy trope.

Qixing did not recoil from the sudden barrage. He simply blinked, a faint ripple of genuine amusement breaking his placid expression. He raised a single, elegant hand, signaling for the youth to pause before he accidentally asphyxiated himself.

“Breathe, young Subaru,” Qixing instructed smoothly. He picked up his own goblet and took a leisurely sip of water, organizing the chaotic volley of questions within his mind.

“To answer your first, and perhaps most pressing inquiry: no,” Qixing began, his resonant voice keeping to a discreet volume. “I did not summon you to this realm. Like yourself, my arrival in this bustling metropolis was sudden and entirely unscheduled, brought about by… an annoying spatial anomaly I attempted to correct.”

Subaru sank back into his velvet cushions slightly, a mix of relief and disappointment washing over him. “Okay. So we’re both stranded. What about the rest of it?”

“As for your other questions,” Qixing continued, resting his hands neatly on the table. “I am unfamiliar with the term ‘webnovel,’ but I am indeed a cultivator who walks the path of the Dao. Through centuries of gathering Qi and comprehending the laws of the universe, my mortal vessel has transcended the cycle of aging. Barring a catastrophic heavenly tribulation or a lethal strike from a being of higher realm, I suppose I do live forever.”

Subaru swallowed hard, his eyes going wide again. “Centuries… wait, so how old are you?”

“Time loses its strict meaning when you no longer race against it,” Qixing replied gracefully. “Regarding your fourth question, manifesting a blade to traverse the skies is a rather fundamental technique for one of my standing. Yes, I possess a flying sword.”

Subaru pumped a fist under the table, his inner fanboy screaming in absolute triumph. He has a flying sword. This guy is the real deal.

“And as for the Monkey King and the Enlightened One,” Qixing’s amber eyes grew slightly distant, carrying the weight of the vast, boundless heavens he once called home. “The cosmos is infinitely larger than this single mortal sphere. Within the Eastern Heavenly Realm and the planes beyond, there are legends and profound presences that echo across the stars. I have not shared a cup of wine with the Great Sage Heaven’s Equal, nor have I sat at the feet of the Buddha, but to deny their existence would be as foolish as a frog at the bottom of a well denying the existence of the ocean.”

Subaru sat completely paralyzed, his mind struggling to process the sheer, staggering scale of the man sitting across from him. He had been so focused on elves, magic, and standard RPG mechanics that he hadn’t prepared himself for the possibility of full-blown eastern mythology existing right alongside it.

“That is… incredibly cool,” Subaru finally whispered, entirely stripped of his usual bravado. “I’m sitting across from a literal immortal.”

“Do not let the titles overwhelm you,” Qixing said, a gentle, surprisingly warm smile touching his lips. “Whether a mortal youth from a distant land or a scholar of the heavens, we currently share the same table, the same lack of direction, and the exact same order for dinner.”

Subaru sat frozen, his starry-eyed gaze fixed on the man across the table. The sheer magnitude of sitting opposite a genuine, centuries-old Daoist master was entirely overwhelming. His mind was already racing with fantasies of begging Qixing to take him on as a disciple, picturing himself soaring through the clouds on a flying sword.

Qixing watched the myriad of emotions flash across the boy’s face. He let the silence stretch for a moment, allowing the youth to bask in the grand illusion, before deliberately shattering it.

“Yet, I must observe,” Qixing said, his tone shifting from grand to mildly chiding, “that you are remarkably gullible to accept my words purely at face value.”

Subaru blinked, snapping out of his daydreams. “Huh?”

“How are you so certain I speak the truth?” Qixing asked, leaning back against the velvet cushions and steepling his fingers. “Consider your own mundane world. If a strange man in elaborate clothing approached you on the street and loudly claimed to walk the path of the Dao, possessing eternal life and mythical weapons, what would your immediate conclusion be? You would assume he is either entirely delusional or a cunning scam artist looking to separate you from your coin.”

“Well, yeah, back home I would,” Subaru argued, sitting up straight. “But we’re in a fantasy world! Plus, you instantly healed me without using bandages and medicine as far as I can remember! And you threw down a bag of pure gold to get us this table! Scam artists don’t usually pay for VIP dining.”

“A fair observation,” Qixing conceded gracefully. “However, healing arts and heavy purses can be acquired through many less-than-heavenly means. A skilled illusionist or a wealthy rogue could easily replicate the feats you have witnessed today.”

Subaru opened his mouth to protest, but found he didn’t really have a solid counter-argument. He was operating entirely on gut feeling and a heavy reliance on anime logic.

“I freely admit, your immediate, unquestioning naivety is highly entertaining to me,” Qixing continued, his amber eyes narrowing just slightly. “It is a rare and amusing thing to find a mortal who so readily accepts the impossible. But you must understand the precariousness of your position. We are strangers in an unknown land.”

The scholar lowered his hands to the table, his demeanor shifting into something vaguely resembling a stern, albeit detached, mentor.

“You leap into the slums for a girl whose name you do not know, and you place your absolute trust in a man simply because he wears fine silk and speaks with eloquence,” Qixing warned softly. “Your good nature is commendable, young Subaru, but if you continue to navigate this world with such blind faith, those with malicious intentions will see you only as easy prey. They will cheat you mercilessly, and they will leave you with far worse than bruised knuckles.”

The weight of the warning settled heavily over the table. Subaru looked down at his empty water goblet, the harsh reality of Qixing’s words cutting through his protagonist fantasies. He had already been beaten in an alleyway and chased out of a market today. If this world really was as ruthless, acting like a trusting fool was going to get him killed.

He looked back up at Qixing, his expression sobering. He offered a small, hesitant nod, absorbing the immortal’s lesson just as the waitress reappeared carrying two steaming, heavily laden silver platters.

The waitress gracefully set the heavy silver platters down, the rich, savory aroma immediately filling the space between them. She offered a final, polite bow before retreating to attend to other nobles, leaving Subaru to stare down at the meal placed before him.

Growing up in modern Japan, Subaru’s diet had been remarkably predictable. His culinary world consisted of white rice, miso soup, whatever mom cooked, and the occasional late-night convenience store bento. He was no stranger to Western cuisine—he enjoyed a good hamburger and a glass of cola as much as anyone—but looking at the steaming plate on the table, he realized he had never seen food quite like this in his entire life.

The slab of roasted ‘white-plume boar’ did not look like normal pork. The meat was a deep, rich crimson, heavily seared on the outside and glistening under a thick, almost luminescent purple glaze—the sweet-sap berry reduction the waitress had mentioned. Next to it sat a generous mound of the ground-root puree, which was a vibrant, unnatural shade of teal, speckled with unfamiliar black spices that smelled faintly of cinnamon and pine. Even the accompanying drink, the moon-vine nectar, fizzed gently in its crystal glass, radiating a soft, golden hue that looked more like an alchemy potion than a beverage.

Subaru picked up his heavy silver fork and knife, his stomach rumbling violently even as his mind hesitated. It was an incredibly intimidating plate of food. There was no point of reference, no familiar texture or color to ground him. It was a stark, edible reminder that he was no longer on Earth.

He glanced across the table. Qixing, in stark contrast, did not display a single ounce of hesitation. The immortal scholar handled the foreign silverware with the same effortless, refined grace he applied to everything else. He neatly sliced a piece of the glazed boar, gathered a small amount of the teal puree, and brought it to his mouth. His expression remained a mask of perfect, tranquil composure as he chewed, though a slight, approving nod indicated the dish met his heavenly standards.

Taking a deep breath, Subaru decided to trust the immortal’s judgment. He clumsily sawed off a piece of the meat, dragging it through the vibrant purple glaze, and shoved it into his mouth.

His eyes widened instantly.

The texture was incredibly tender, melting almost immediately, but it was the flavor that completely overwhelmed his senses. It was deeply savory and rich, perfectly balanced by the sharp, sweet tang of the berry reduction. The spices in the puree added a warm, earthy depth that he couldn’t even begin to categorize. It was entirely alien, completely different from anything he had ever tasted, and it was absolutely spectacular.

The intense flavors completely washed away his lingering anxiety and the sting of his earlier failures. He didn’t care that he was broke, that he couldn’t read, or that he was trapped in a fantasy world. Right now, the only thing that mattered was the sheer culinary masterpiece sitting in front of him.

Subaru abandoned all attempts at proper aristocratic manners. He began shoveling the food into his mouth with reckless abandon, his cheeks bulging as he eagerly chased down the rich meat with large, refreshing gulps of the fizzy, golden nectar.

The decadent layers of the frosted pastry dessert had been thoroughly demolished, and the sparkling moon-vine nectar was entirely drained. To conclude the extravagant feast, the waitress brought them each a small, porcelain bowl filled with a clear, fragrant broth that she referred to as tea soup. It was warm, savory, and possessed a deeply herbal quality that perfectly settled the heavy, rich meal they had just consumed.

Subaru leaned back against the plush velvet cushions, clutching the warm porcelain bowl in both hands. He let out a long, contented sigh, his earlier panic and frustration completely pacified by the sheer volume of excellent food in his stomach. For the first time since he had unexpectedly dropped into this fantasy city, he felt genuinely relaxed.

Across the table, Qixing took a slow, measured sip of his own tea soup. He set the bowl down with a quiet clink, his amber eyes shifting to observe the youth.

“Now that you’re adequately nourished,” Qixing began, his voice a calm murmur amidst the background chatter of the dining room, “I must ask, do you have any actual plans for your immediate future?”

Subaru paused mid-sip, lowering his bowl. The comfortable haze of his food coma lifted slightly as the reality of his situation crept back in. He stared down at his reflection in the remaining broth.

“Honestly? I’ve got nothing,” Subaru admitted, the bravado completely stripped from his voice. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking out the crystal window at the darkening sky. “My grand quest to find the thief and return the stolen item is a total bust. I don’t know her face, I don’t know the city, and going back into the slums blind is just asking to get mugged again. Without a goal, I’m just a broke guy in a tracksuit with nowhere to sleep.”

He expected a lecture on preparation, or perhaps another amused remark about his foolishness. Instead, Qixing simply nodded, accepting the honest assessment without judgment.

“A lack of direction is not a fatal condition, young Subaru. It is merely an empty page,” the scholar stated smoothly. “To force a path when the way is obscured often leads one straight into a snare. Sometimes, it is best to simply observe the world and allow the flow of destiny to reveal the next step.”

Qixing elegantly dabbed his mouth with a linen napkin and placed it neatly on the table. He stood up, his silken robes falling perfectly into place without a single crease.

“The afternoon air in this capital is growing quite pleasant,” Qixing noted, looking down at the youth. “Since you have no pressing matters to attend to, would you care to join me for a light walk around the city? A leisurely stroll aids in digestion, and it will afford us a better opportunity to map the geography of our new surroundings without the pressure of a misguided crusade.”

Subaru looked up at the immortal, then down at his empty bowl. He really didn’t have anywhere else to be, and sticking close to the ridiculously wealthy, super-powered Daoist seemed like the best survival strategy he had available.

“Yeah,” Subaru agreed, pushing himself up from the comfortable booth with a renewed, if slightly unfocused, energy. “A walk sounds perfect. Lead the way, Qixing.”

Stepping out of the grand restaurant, Subaru was mildly surprised to find the sun was still resting comfortably above the horizon, casting a warm, golden glow over the capital. The extravagant meal had felt like a lengthy, grand affair, but the day was far from over.

While the noble district boasted several pristine, meticulously manicured nature parks that offered a quiet reprieve, Qixing deliberately steered their path away from the serene gardens. The immortal scholar opted instead to guide them back toward the bustling, chaotic commercial markets. To a master of the Dao, observing the unfiltered ebb and flow of mortal life was far more engaging than staring at arranged flowerfields. Subaru, his stomach comfortably full and his spirits revived, simply walked beside him, matching the scholar’s unhurried pace.

Minutes passed fleetingly as they navigated the crowded thoroughfares, the sights and sounds of the foreign city washing over them.

Then, a sharp, distinct sound cut through the ambient noise of haggling merchants and rolling wooden wheels. It was the high-pitched, desperate wailing of a child.

Qixing and Subaru slowed their pace, their eyes naturally drawn toward the source of the commotion. Just a few yards away, near a stall selling colorful fabrics, a little girl with braided brown hair stood rooted to the spot, tears streaming down her red, puffy cheeks as she cried out for her mother. She was clearly lost and completely overwhelmed by the crushing crowds of the market.

Kneeling on the cobblestones beside her was a very familiar figure.

The heavy hood of her cloak was pulled up, but the distinctive silver hair peeked out from the edges. The maiden was leaning in, her hands hovering awkwardly as she tried to soothe the frantic child. She spoke in soft, frantic whispers, offering gentle pats to the girl’s shoulder, but her efforts were yielding no results. The maiden clearly possessed zero experience in dealing with crying children, her own growing panic mirroring the little girl’s distress.

Subaru didn’t even need to think. The elaborate plans, the fear of rejection, and Qixing’s earlier warnings simply evaporated from his mind. He stepped forward.

“Hey there!” Subaru announced, his voice loud but incredibly warm, deliberately injecting a playful energy into the tense air.

The silver-haired maiden jumped slightly, her amethyst eyes widening in shock as she looked up.

Before she could utter a word of protest, Subaru dropped to one knee right in front of the crying girl. He didn’t ask what was wrong or try to shush her. Instead, he reached into his tracksuit pocket and pinched a single, grooved 10-yen piece between his fingers—a leftover piece of worthless currency from his own world.

“You see this coin?” Subaru asked, his expression shifting into an exaggerated mask of intense focus.

The little girl hiccuped, her wailing pausing for a fraction of a second as her tear-filled eyes locked onto the shiny metal.

With a flourish of his wrists, Subaru began an intricate, rapid-fire sleight-of-hand routine. He rolled the coin across his knuckles, made it vanish into his palm, pulled it from behind the girl’s ear, and then made it seemingly pass straight through his other hand. It was a silly, practiced parlor trick he had mastered years ago out of sheer boredom in his bedroom, but he executed it with the absolute dedication of a master illusionist.

The little girl blinked, rubbing her wet eyes. Her crying ceased entirely, replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated amazement. When Subaru finished the routine by pretending to swallow the coin and then dramatically coughing it back into his hand, a bubbling, genuine laugh escaped the girl’s lips.

Subaru smiled brightly, the tension in his own shoulders melting away. He reached out and gently pressed the warm coin into the little girl’s small palm, closing her fingers over it.

“Keep it safe,” Subaru whispered conspiratorially, giving her a small wink. “It’s a very lucky coin. As long as you hold onto it, I promise your mom will find you in no time.”

“Thank you, big brother!” The girl nodded enthusiastically, clutching the coin tightly to her chest, a bright smile wiping away the last traces of her tears.

Still kneeling on the cobblestones, the silver-haired maiden stared at the boy in the ridiculous tracksuit. She had fully expected to never see him again after dismissing him in the alleyway. To have him suddenly appear and effortlessly solve the very crisis she was failing to manage left her entirely speechless. She slowly raised her gaze from the laughing child to Subaru, and then to the tall, silken-robed Lord Qixing, who stood a few paces back, watching the entire scene unfold with a warm smile.

The silver-haired maiden knelt on the cobblestones, her amethyst eyes wide beneath the shadow of her hood. She could barely contain her surprise. One moment, she had been drowning in the rising panic of a lost, inconsolable child, and the next, the very same loud, strange boy she had dismissed in a dirty alleyway had magically restored the peace with nothing more than a coin trick and a goofy smile.

Before she could find the words to address him, a frantic voice pierced the din of the marketplace.

“Plum! Oh, Plum, there you are!”

A woman holding a basket of vegetables pushed her way through the thick crowd, her face pale with terror. The little girl, Plum, immediately spun around. Her face lit up with absolute joy, the lucky copper coin still clutched tightly in her small fist.

“Mommy!” Plum cheered, abandoning Subaru and the maiden to sprint directly into her mother’s open arms.

The woman dropped her basket, entirely uncaring as a few round tubers rolled across the cobblestones, and pulled her daughter into a desperate, crushing hug. She buried her face in Plum’s braided hair, weeping tears of profound relief. After a long, emotional moment, the mother gently pulled back, checking her daughter for injuries before turning her tear-streaked face toward Subaru and the maiden.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the mother gasped, bowing deeply toward them both. “I only turned my back for a second to pay the grocer, and she was gone. I was so terrified. Thank you for keeping her safe and keeping her company. Please, tell me how I can repay you!”

Subaru stood up, brushing the dust from his knees. He waved his hands frantically, offering a bright, genuine grin.

“Oh, no, no need for any of that!” Subaru insisted cheerfully. “Seeing her back with her mom is all the reward we need. Really, it was no trouble at all.”

The silver-haired maiden stood up beside him. While she agreed with the boy’s sentiment, the pressing weight of her stolen insignia was still a heavy burden on her shoulders. She stepped forward, gently pulling her hood a little tighter around her face.

“We are just glad she is safe,” the maiden said, her voice soft but urgent. “However… if you truly wish to help, there is one thing I must ask. We are searching for someone. A young girl, very small and fast, with bright blonde hair. She is a thief. Have you happened to see anyone matching that description pass through this part of the market?”

Subaru blinked, his eyes darting toward the maiden. It was a brilliant, highly tactical move. He had spent the afternoon aggressively interrogating random, suspicious strangers, but he hadn’t once considered simply asking someone who was already indebted to them and willing to help.

The mother furrowed her brow, tapping her chin thoughtfully as she recalled the afternoon’s foot traffic.

“A small blonde girl… no, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen anyone like that around the stalls today,” the mother admitted, looking genuinely apologetic. However, her expression quickly brightened. “But my husband might know! He manages a fruit stall that thieves would take chances stealing from. He knows all the street kids and the troublemakers who pass through there. He would definitely know if a thief was stirring up trouble.”

Subaru stood perfectly still, maintaining his friendly smile, but internally, he was viciously kicking himself. Of course, he thought, screaming at his own lack of foresight. You don’t ask the random bakers and shopping women! You ask the ones who are stolen from the same thieves in the first place!

“That would be incredibly helpful,” the maiden said, a distinct spark of hope returning to her amethyst eyes. “Could you point us in the direction of his fruit stand?”

“He shouldn’t be hard to find at all,” the mother explained cheerfully, adjusting her grip on her vegetable basket while holding Plum’s hand tightly. “He runs an appa stall right on the main thoroughfare, just before you hit the plaza.”

Subaru felt a tiny, icy prickle of dread form at the base of his spine. “A… an appa stall, you say? On the main thoroughfare?”

“Yes!” the woman nodded enthusiastically. “He can look a little intimidating at first glance. He’s quite heavily built and has a rather large scar running across his face, but I promise he is an absolute softie once you get to know him. Just tell him Raksha sent you, and he’ll be more than happy to help. He sells the absolute best appas in the entire capital!”

The icy prickle of dread instantly bloomed into a freezing glacier. The color rapidly drained from Subaru’s face.

A large stall. A scarred face. Sells appas.

It was the starting NPC. It was the exact same aggressive fruit vendor who had already chased Subaru away twice today.

“That is wonderful news,” the silver-haired maiden said, completely oblivious to the sheer terror gripping the boy beside her. She bowed to the mother. “Thank you so much, Raksha. We will seek him out immediately.”

“Good luck finding your thief!” Raksha called out warmly, giving them a final wave as she and the happily skipping Plum merged back into the crowded market.

As the mother and daughter disappeared from view, Subaru remained rigidly frozen in place. His mind raced through the disastrous implications. If he walked up to that stall, Kadomon would recognize his bizarre tracksuit immediately. The vendor might refuse to answer any questions out of pure spite, entirely ruining the silver-haired girl’s only lead.

A quiet, elegant rustle of silk drew his attention. Qixing stepped up beside him.

The immortal scholar did not laugh, nor did he make a grand show of his amusement. His posture remained perfectly composed, but the amber eyes looking down at Subaru held a distinct, profound glint of pure entertainment. To see the invisible threads of destiny weave such a flawlessly comedic snare for this reckless youth was a masterpiece of cosmic irony.

“The flow of destiny works in mysterious ways, young Subaru,” Qixing murmured softly. “It seems your earlier lack of tact has circled back to greet you.”

Subaru groaned quietly. “He hates me. If he sees me, he’s going to clam up or throw an appa at my head.”

The maiden turned to face them, her expression entirely serious. She pulled her hood up slightly to secure it. “Thank you both for your assistance with Plum. You saved me a great deal of time. I will go find this Kadomon and secure my lead.”

She turned on her heel, fully prepared to resume her solitary pursuit.

Subaru’s survival instincts and his desire to stay involved collided, producing a sudden stroke of strategic brilliance. He didn’t have to talk to Kadomon. He just had to get her there and hide.

“Wait!” Subaru called out, taking a quick step forward. “The main thoroughfare is huge, and the crowds are thick right now. I know exactly where his stall is—I passed by it twice today. Let me guide you there so you don’t waste time searching.”

The maiden paused, glancing back over her shoulder. Her amethyst eyes studied him carefully. She had insisted on working alone, but the boy made a valid point about the crowds, and he had just proven himself surprisingly capable with the lost child.

“Very well,” she agreed, her tone measured. “But only to the stall. I must handle the questioning myself. This is my burden.”

“Absolutely,” Subaru nodded furiously, a wave of profound relief washing over him. “You do all the talking. In fact, I’ll stand far back. Way back. You won’t even know I’m there.”

Qixing offered a faint, approving smile at the youth’s sudden display of self-preservation. “A wise delegation of duties. Lead the way, young Subaru.”

Subaru treated the walk down the main thoroughfare with the intense, hyper-focused gravity of a military stealth operation. He navigated the dense crowds of merchants and demi-humans while keeping his head low, constantly scanning the horizon for any sign of a scarred face and a pile of red fruit.

Behind him, the silver-haired maiden walked with a brisk, determined stride, her heavy hood pulled forward to conceal her features. Qixing, as always, brought up the rear. The immortal scholar seemed entirely unbothered by the crushing foot traffic, his silken robes flowing effortlessly as the crowd naturally parted to accommodate his serene presence.

“There,” Subaru hissed suddenly, grabbing the edge of a nearby stone pillar and pulling himself out of the main flow of traffic.

He pointed a cautious finger down the street. Nestled between a baker and a blacksmith was the prominent wooden stall. Kadomon stood behind the counter, his thick arms crossed over his chest, sporting a fierce scowl that effectively deterred casual window-shoppers.

“That’s the guy,” Subaru whispered, pressing his back flat against the pillar as if avoiding enemy crossfire. “Kadomon. The appa vendor. Just like I promised, I’m going to stay right here, completely out of sight. You go do your talking.”

The maiden gave him a somewhat perplexed look, clearly struggling to understand why he was acting as though the fruit vendor was an armed assassin. However, she did not waste time questioning his bizarre behavior. She offered a brief, polite nod.

“Thank you for guiding me,” she said, before turning and marching directly toward the stall.

Subaru peeked around the edge of the stone pillar, holding his breath. Qixing stepped up beside him, ignoring the cover entirely and simply standing in the open, observing the interaction with mild interest.

At the stall, Kadomon noticed the hooded figure approaching. He leaned over his counter, his deep voice carrying easily over the market noise. “Appas are ten copper a piece, lady. If you aren’t buying, don’t block the display.”

The maiden did not flinch at his gruff demeanor. “I am not here to purchase fruit. I am looking for information. Raksha sent me. We helped Plum in the market earlier.”

The transformation was instantaneous. The fierce, intimidating scowl vanished from Kadomon’s scarred face, replaced by an expression of profound, wide-eyed relief. His rigid posture completely melted.

“Raksha sent you? You’re the ones who helped my little Plum?” Kadomon’s booming voice dropped into a warm, genuinely grateful register. He reached under his counter, suddenly looking eager to help. “My wife just ran by here crying about how Plum wandered off. I can’t thank you enough, miss. Anything you need, you just name it.”

“I am tracking a thief,” the maiden explained, leaning in slightly to keep the conversation private. “A very small, very fast young girl with bright blonde hair. Your wife mentioned you might know the troublemakers who pass through this area.”

Kadomon rubbed his heavy jaw, his brow furrowing as he processed the description. “Small, fast, blonde hair… yeah, that sounds exactly like Felt. She’s a slum rat. Quickest feet in the capital, and sticky fingers to match. If she snagged something valuable off you, she isn’t keeping it. She’s looking to fence it.”

“Fence it?” the maiden repeated, the term unfamiliar to her.

“Sell it to a buyer,” Kadomon clarified. “And if it’s a high-end item, there’s only one place she’s taking it. Old Man Rom’s loot house. It’s a massive, rundown storage building deep in the slums. You can’t miss it; it’s twice the size of the shacks around it.”

Kadomon reached into a woven basket and pulled out his largest, shiniest appa, pressing it firmly into the maiden’s hands. “Take this, on the house. But listen to me, miss. The slums are dangerous, especially as the sun starts going down. You watch your back in there.”

“I will,” the maiden promised, bowing her head in gratitude. “Thank you, Kadomon.”

She turned away from the stall, the red fruit clutched in her hand, and walked briskly back toward the stone pillar where Subaru and Qixing waited.

“I have my destination,” she announced, her amethyst eyes locking onto the distant, hazy border of the dilapidated district. “She is taking it to a loot house in the slums.”

She turned her gaze back to the two strangers who had unexpectedly aided her. She offered a deep, respectful curtsy to them both.

“Thank you, truly, for guiding me here and for helping little Plum,” the maiden said, her voice softening with genuine appreciation. “I am in your debt. But I must take my leave now. Please, enjoy the rest of your evening and stay safe.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and began marching confidently toward the dangerous, darkening edge of the city.

Subaru stood completely still behind the pillar.He was entirely done. His epic quest of grand adventure ends here.

Yet, as he watched the girl’s small, solitary figure walk deliberately toward the absolute worst part of town, the vendor’s warning about the setting sun echoed loudly in his mind. But his feet felt as though they were glued to the cobblestones.

Subaru stood rooted to the cobblestones, his eyes locked on the maiden’s retreating silhouette as it grew smaller against the backdrop of the crowded street. The sun was dipping lower, casting long, ominous shadows that seemed to stretch out from the slums, waiting to swallow her whole. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Every rational survival instinct he possessed screamed at him to stay put, but a stubborn, foolish knot in his chest pulled him in the opposite direction.

“You project an immense amount of unnecessary distress, young Subaru,” Qixing observed smoothly, his voice breaking through the youth’s internal conflict.

Subaru glanced up at the immortal, his brow furrowed in frustration. “How can I not be stressed? You heard Kadomon. The slums are incredibly dangerous at night! She’s walking straight into a den of thieves all by herself. What if she gets ambushed? What if she gets hurt?”

Qixing let out a soft, elegant hum, shaking his head with a mixture of amusement for the boy’s profound ignorance. He stepped forward, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Subaru to watch the maiden disappear into the distant crowd.

“Your concern is a testament to your kind nature, but it is entirely misplaced,” Qixing stated, his tone as casual as if discussing the weather. “You view her as a fragile flower requiring your protection. In truth, that maiden is physically ten times stronger than you are, and magically a hundred times your superior. If a conflict were to arise in those gutters, her chances of survival are vastly greater than your own.”

Subaru’s jaw went entirely slack. He stared at Qixing, completely failing to process the casual bomb the scholar had just dropped. “Wait. What? Ten times stronger? Physically?”

“At a minimum,” Qixing nodded serenely. “Her vessel courses with a dense, highly pure energy. You, on the other hand, possess the physical constitution of a sheltered youngster and no magical abilities to speak of. To put it bluntly, she does not need your protection. In a physical altercation, you would only serve as a cumbersome liability.”

Subaru winced, the blunt assessment of his own weakness stinging his pride. But before he could muster a defense, Qixing continued.

“Furthermore, she does not travel alone, despite what her solitary march suggests,” the immortal added, a faint smile playing on his lips. “Surely you noticed the spirit beast concealed within her hair?”

Subaru blinked rapidly, his brain coming to a screeching halt. “The… the what?”

“The spirit beast,” Qixing repeated patiently. “The small, talking feline construct resting near her left ear. It possesses a formidable amount of icy energy. That creature is certainly not meant for mere decoration or show. It is a guardian.”

“You mean the talking flying cat from before,” Subaru repeated flatly, staring blankly down the bustling thoroughfare. “She has a magical, super-powered talking cat hiding in her hair.”

“Indeed.”

Subaru grabbed the sides of his head, groaning loudly into the evening air. The fantasy tropes were stacking up faster than he could keep track of them. Not only was the beautiful, silver-haired girl secretly a magical powerhouse, but she also had a mystical mascot character riding on her shoulder. Qixing was absolutely right; compared to her, Subaru was nothing more than an entirely ordinary, defenseless NPC in a cheap tracksuit.

He slumped against the stone pillar, sliding down until he was sitting on the ground, entirely defeated by the sheer absurdity of his own weakness.

“So, I’m useless,” Subaru mumbled to his knees. “I tried to play the hero, but I’m basically the weakest thing in this entire city.”

“Weakness is merely a temporary state of being, not a permanent definition,” Qixing noted gently, looking down at the brooding youth. “However, acknowledging the reality of your current limitations is the first step on the path to true wisdom. Now that you understand she is perfectly capable of handling the slums, perhaps you can finally lay your manufactured anxieties to rest.”

Subaru drew his knees tightly to his chest, the bustling noise of the capital fading into a dull, disconnected hum. The cobblestones beneath him felt cold and unforgiving. He was officially spiraling.

For the past few hours, he had desperately clung to the belief that his sudden arrival in this world meant something. He was supposed to be the chosen hero. He was supposed to awaken a hidden, overpowered cheat skill, save the beautiful girl, and embark on a grand destiny. But the brutal reality had just stripped away the last of those illusions. He had no magic. He had no strength. He couldn’t even read the local alphabet. If the silver-haired maiden didn’t need him, and if he couldn’t protect anyone, then why was he here?

What was he supposed to do if he was entirely, fundamentally useless?

“Your mind is a tempest of its own making,” Qixing’s calm voice drifted down from above. The immortal scholar had not moved, his posture remaining perfectly upright as he gazed down at the spiraling teenager. “You equate purpose entirely with martial prowess and the capacity for destruction.”

Subaru buried his face in his arms. “In a world with magic, talking cats and people with animal traits, yeah. That’s kind of the only thing that matters. Without power, I’m just a bystander.”

“A profoundly narrow view,” Qixing countered, a note of gentle reprimand entering his tone. He slowly crouched down, bringing his amber eyes level with Subaru’s hidden face. “Tell me, young Subaru. When the child in the market was weeping, did the maiden’s vast reserves of power calm her? Did the icy spirit beast upon her shoulder bring her comfort?”

Subaru peeked over his arms, his brow furrowed in confusion. “No.”

“Indeed. The maiden possessed enough raw power to level the surrounding market stalls, yet she was entirely helpless against the simple terror of a lost child,” Qixing stated smoothly. “If you had not intervened, the little girl’s panic would have only escalated. She likely would have bolted blindly into the crushing crowd to escape the stranger trying to comfort her, creating a far more dangerous situation.”

Subaru blinked, sitting up slightly as the memory of the market replayed in his mind. He hadn’t used a legendary sword or a high-tier spell. He had used a grooved 10-yen piece and a parlor trick he learned on a rainy Tuesday back in Japan.

“You did not require heavenly cultivation or arcane arts to alter the flow of that child’s destiny,” Qixing continued, standing back up in a graceful sweep of silk. “You required empathy, a steady hand, and the simple, mundane ability to bring joy to a frightened heart. Do not be so quick to declare yourself entirely useless merely because your strengths do not align with the crude metrics of a warrior.”

Subaru stared at his own hands, turning them over. There were no calluses from a sword hilt, no crackling energy resting in his palms. But Qixing was right. He had done something the magically gifted, physically superior maiden couldn’t do. He had helped.

The heavy, suffocating weight of his existential dread didn’t completely vanish, but it lightened significantly. He wasn’t the overpowered protagonist he had wanted to be, but he wasn’t entirely helpless, either. He pushed himself off the cobblestones, dusting off his tracksuit pants with a slow, thoughtful breath.

Subaru stood a little taller, his eyes tracing the exact path the silver-haired maiden had taken. Qixing’s words echoed in his mind, settling the turbulent storm of his insecurities. He wasn’t a master swordsman, and he certainly wasn’t a magic-wielding prodigy. If he walked into the slums, he would be relying entirely on his wits, his loud mouth, and a ridiculous amount of luck.

Yet, even knowing that she was vastly more powerful than him—even knowing she had a magical cat hiding in her hair—the thought of her wandering into Old Man Rom’s loot house entirely alone sat wrong with him. Strength and magic were great for a fight, but Kadomon had called the thief a “slum rat.” Rats didn’t fight fair. They used traps, numbers, and deceit.

What if she was ambushed in the dark? What if she needed a distraction? Or what if she just needed someone who knew how to talk their way out of a bad situation without instantly resorting to blowing up a building?

“I have to go after her,” Subaru blurted out, the decision solidifying in his chest before his brain could fully talk him out of it.

He turned to look at Qixing, half-expecting the immortal to scold him or point out the profound lack of logic in his plan.

Instead, the scholar simply folded his hands comfortably within his wide silken sleeves. His amber eyes held no judgment, only the serene acceptance of a man watching a river carve its natural path through the earth.

“The heavens do not shackle the feet of mortals, young Subaru,” Qixing replied smoothly, a faint, almost imperceptible smile gracing his lips. “You have recognized your limitations, yet you choose to stride into the shadows regardless. It is a foolish endeavor, undoubtedly. But you are entirely free to pursue it.”

“Thanks for the food, Qixing! I owe you one!” Subaru shouted, a wild, determined grin breaking across his face.

Without wasting another second, Subaru pivoted on his heel and bolted. His sneakers slapped rapidly against the cobblestones as he broke into a full sprint, weaving frantically through the evening crowds of the market. He didn’t have magic, and he didn’t have a flying sword, but he had a healthy set of lungs and legs perfectly conditioned by years of running late to school. He set his sights squarely on the darkening border of the slums, determined to catch up to the silver-haired maiden before the sun completely disappeared.

Deep within the concealing veil of the maiden’s silver hair, a small, grey feline spirit finally let out a long, shuddering breath.

“I am incredibly relieved we put some distance between us and that man in the silk robes, Lia,” Puck murmured, his telepathic voice lacking its usual playful cadence.

The maiden kept her pace steady as she crossed the threshold into the dimly lit, dilapidated streets of the slums. “Lord Qixing? He seemed rather eccentric, but he was perfectly polite, Puck.”

“Yeah, he was kinda weird, wasn't he?” the spirit replied, a distinct tremble in his tone. It was his presence. When he looked at him, it felt as though I was being scrutinized by Volcanica himself. He hadn't felt my very core shaken like that in a long time. There is a terrifying depth to that man.

Lia notices Puck growing quiet, and filing it away, but her primary focus had to remain on her stolen insignia. She couldn’t afford to be distracted. As she navigated the muddy, winding paths, her thoughts drifted briefly to the boy in the strange, colorful clothing. He had been so effortlessly kind, stepping in to help little Plum without a second thought. More importantly, when he looked at Lia, his eyes held only genuine warmth and a bizarre sort of awe.

There had been no fear. There had been no simmering hate or disgust, the usual reactions she inevitably received the moment people recognized her as a silver-haired half-elf. It was wonderful to have met such a good boy, but that very goodness was exactly why she had to leave him behind. Her existence was a magnet for prejudice and danger; she absolutely refused to burden him with the weight of being associated with her.

As she delved deeper into the sprawling shantytown, the atmosphere grew suffocating. The slum dwellers watched her from the shadows with naked hostility. It had nothing to do with her race—with her hood pulled tight, they couldn’t see her ears or hair—but simply because this was a place where weakness was preyed upon, and a lone girl walking at dusk was a prime target.

Realizing that Old Man Rom’s ‘loot house’ could be any one of the hundreds of massive, rotting wooden structures in the district, Lia closed her eyes. She reached out with her mana, communing with the faint, glowing micro-spirits that danced invisibly in the stagnant air. In exchange for a small offering of her energy, the lesser spirits bobbed forward, creating a subtle, guiding trail of pale light that only she could see.

She followed the path for several minutes until the frantic, slapping sound of approaching footsteps echoed off the narrow alley walls.

Lia stopped, turning sharply. Her hands hovered near her cloak, ready to draw upon her mana. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Had someone followed her from the market to ambush her?

“Wait! Wait up!”

Bursting around the corner, entirely out of breath and clutching his knees, was the boy in the tracksuit. He heaved for air, his face flushed from the sprint.

“You… walk… incredibly fast,” Subaru panted, standing up straight and wiping his brow. He looked at her with sheer determination. “I’m coming with you. I want to help.”

Lia’s suspicion wavered, replaced by utter bewilderment. Before she could formulate a rejection, Puck manifested physically, floating out from beneath her hood. The small grey cat drifted toward Subaru, his whiskers twitching as he inspected the panting teenager.

“Well, his heart is beating like a frightened rabbit, but there isn’t a single drop of malice in him,” Puck announced cheerfully, the heavy dread from earlier completely gone. The spirit floated back to Lia’s shoulder, patting her cheek with a small paw. “His wishes are entirely genuine. Congratulations, Lia. I officially assign him to be your meat shield.”

“Puck!” Lia gasped, her pale cheeks turning red with indignation. She swatted lightly at the spirit before turning a stern glare upon the boy. “That is a terrible thing to say. And to you—I absolutely do not approve of this. I do not need a meat shield, and I do not want your help. This is my problem, and it is far too dangerous for you to be involved.”

“You definitely don’t need a meat shield,” Subaru agreed, finally catching his breath. He took a step forward, completely unfazed by her strict tone. “But you do need a plan. And right now, your plan is to walk straight into a criminal’s hideout and demand your stuff back.”

Lia frowned, her posture stiffening. “I am perfectly capable of retrieving what is mine.”

“With magic, right? By force if you have to?” Subaru countered, tapping his temple. “Kadomon said this girl is fencing the item. She’s selling it to a professional black-market dealer. These people are paranoid. If you kick the door down and start blasting ice magic, the fence is going to panic. They might have a hidden escape route, or worse, they might destroy the insignia or toss it down a drain just to spite you.”

Lia’s stern expression faltered. She hadn’t considered the logistics of a black-market transaction.

“You can’t just go in swinging,” Subaru pressed, sensing her hesitation. “You need someone to walk in first. Someone who doesn’t look like a threat. I can pose as a lost customer, or a rival buyer, just to get eyes on the room and confirm the insignia is actually there before things get violent. You need a negotiator, or at the very least, a solid distraction. That’s me.”

The pale, guiding lights of the micro-spirits led them through a suffocating maze of crooked alleys and dead-end streets. True to Kadomon’s description, the loot house was impossible to spot from a distance, hidden behind a cluster of leaning shanties until they turned the final, muddy corner.

It was a massive, cavernous building that dwarfed the surrounding architecture. The roof sagged heavily in the middle, and the exterior walls looked as though they were held together by nothing more than sheer stubbornness and a prayer.

Standing in the shadows of an adjacent alley, the silver-haired maiden gave Subaru a firm, serious nod. She pulled her cloak tight, melding perfectly into the encroaching darkness of the twilight, ready to intervene the moment things went wrong.

Subaru took a deep breath, puffed out his chest to feign an air of absolute confidence, and marched up to the entrance. He raised his fist and banged loudly on the heavy wooden door. The entire frame rattled ominously, the dry, rotting wood groaning under the force as if the sheer structural integrity of the building was deeply offended by his knocking.

“Finally! Took you long enough!”

A bright, genuinely excited voice rang out from the other side. The heavy latch clicked, and the door swung open violently.

Subaru finally found himself face-to-face with the phantom he had been chasing all afternoon. The thief was indeed a young girl, incredibly petite, with wind-tossed blonde hair and sharp, vibrant red eyes. She had a nimble, athletic build perfectly suited for sprinting across rooftops, and she wore a light, ragged outfit that prioritized freedom of movement over defense.

The bright, welcoming smile on the girl’s face vanished the instant she registered Subaru’s strange, colorful tracksuit. Her red eyes narrowed into defensive slits, her posture shifting immediately into a wary crouch.

“Who the heck are you?” she demanded, her tone sharp and completely lacking the earlier excitement. “You aren’t my client. How did you find this place?”

Subaru’s eyes lit up. Although she wasn’t what he was expecting, he finally found the thief. He kept his hands visible, offering a calm, practiced smile that completely masked his hammering heart. “I’m not your original client, no. But I am a buyer. And I represent an interested party who wants to purchase the specific item you acquired earlier today.”

The blonde thief blinked, her hostility faltering for a fraction of a second as her agile mind processed the situation. Suspicion warred openly with raw greed on her face. Selling stolen goods was a dangerous business, and unexpected guests were usually a terrible sign. However, the prospect of pitting two desperate buyers against one another to drive up the price was an incredibly lucrative opportunity she couldn’t easily ignore.

“A bidding war, huh?” she muttered, a calculating gleam replacing the suspicion in her eyes. She stepped back, gesturing with her chin for him to enter. “Alright, Mr. Deep Pockets. Come on in. But keep your hands where I can see them.”

Subaru stepped across the threshold, his eyes quickly scanning the interior of the cavernous loot house. It was filled to the brim with towering stacks of questionable merchandise, crates, and broken furniture.

Sitting behind a massive wooden counter at the center of the room was a man who looked like he had been carved out of a mountain. He was an absolute giant, entirely bald, with thick muscles and a heavy club resting casually within arm’s reach.

“Take a seat right there,” the blonde girl ordered, pointing to a sturdy wooden stool near the counter. She crossed her arms, fixing Subaru with a fierce, uncompromising glare. “We’ll wait for the other buyer to show up so we can get this auction started. But let me make one thing crystal clear right now: if you cause any trouble, or try any funny business to grab the loot without paying, Old Man Rom is going to bash your skull completely open. Understand?”

The giant behind the counter let out a low, rumbling grunt of agreement, his massive hand shifting slightly closer to the wooden club.

“Loud and clear,” Subaru replied smoothly, taking his designated seat while keeping his posture perfectly relaxed. He had successfully infiltrated the base, verified the thief, and bought them time. Now, he just had to keep the act going.

Subaru sat on the sturdy wooden stool, the heavy gaze of the giant, Old Man Rom, pressing down on him. The tension in the dusty loot house was thick, but Subaru knew the golden rule of haggling and negotiation: you had to strike first to set the anchor. If he waited for the other buyer to show up and start throwing around local currency he didn’t possess, he would lose the initiative completely.

He didn’t have a single coin to his name, but he did possess something arguably much more valuable in a fantasy world.

“Since we have a moment before your original client arrives,” Subaru began, reaching carefully into his tracksuit pocket to ensure Rom didn’t mistake the movement for a weapon draw. “Why don’t I show you what I’m bringing to the table? We can consider this my opening bid.”

He pulled out his cell phone and placed it gently on the massive wooden counter.

Felt leaned in, her red eyes squinting at the strange, sleek black rectangle. “What is that? A lump of polished obsidian? That isn’t worth an insignia.”

“It’s not obsidian,” Subaru said, tapping the side button. The screen instantly lit up, casting a crisp, artificial glow across the dark wood of the counter. The battery icon showed a solid eighty percent. “Where I’m from, we call this a metia. It’s a magical device capable of capturing the exact likeness of a moment, freezing time in a perfect image.”

To demonstrate, he swiped to his camera, pointed it at the surprised blonde thief, and pressed the button. A soft synthetic shutter sound chimed, and a brilliant flash temporarily illuminated the gloomy room. He turned the screen around, showing Felt a perfect, high-resolution digital image of her own startled face.

Felt gasped, jumping back half a step. “Whoa! Is that… me?! That… that’s incredible!”

“I see that you instantly like it,” Subaru chuckled, feeling a surge of genuine confidence. He pushed the phone closer to the giant behind the counter. “I assume you’re the appraiser around here, Old Man Rom. Take a look. What’s a flawless, one-of-a-kind metia worth to the nobles in the capital?”

Rom picked up the phone with surprising gentleness for a man of his immense size. His large, calloused thumbs traced the smooth glass screen and the seamless casing. He held it up to his eye, examining the lack of any visible magical crystals or mana conduits. The sheer impossibility of its craftsmanship left the veteran fence deeply impressed.

“The materials… I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years,” Rom rumbled, his deep voice carrying a note of genuine awe. He carefully placed the phone back onto the counter, looking at Felt. “If I took this to the right noble in the upper districts, they would easily drop twenty, maybe thirty holy gold coins for it without batting an eye. It’s a fine crafted metia.”

Felt’s jaw practically unhinged. She stared at the small black rectangle as if it were entirely made of pure diamonds.

“Twenty to thirty gold?” Felt squeaked, her voice cracking slightly. She looked from the phone, to Rom, and then to Subaru, her eyes practically turning into currency symbols. “Thirty gold… my client only promised me ten for the insignia!”

She reached out, her fingers twitching with the overwhelming desire to grab the phone and seal the deal immediately. Twenty gold was enough to buy her way out of the slums permanently. It was a life-changing amount of wealth sitting right in front of her.

But her hand stopped inches from the screen. She bit her lower lip, her professional pride and innate greed warring fiercely within her.

“No, wait,” Felt declared, pulling her hand back and crossing her arms stubbornly. “A deal is a deal, and I was hired for a job. Ten gold is what she offered, but maybe she can pay more if she’s desperate. I’ll wait for the client to make her counteroffer first. If she can’t beat twenty gold, the metia is mine, and you get your shiny trinket back.”

Subaru smiled, leaning back on his stool. He had successfully cornered the market. Unless this mysterious client was rolling in cash, the insignia was going straight back to the silver-haired maiden waiting outside.

Before anyone could say another word, three sharp, distinct knocks echoed against the heavy wooden door.

Felt’s ears twitched. “That’s the signal. She’s here.”

The thief turned away from the counter and unlatched the heavy door, pulling it open to allow the shadowy figure of her employer to step out of the slum’s twilight and into the loot house.

The heavy door swung open, letting a gust of cool evening air into the stale, dusty atmosphere of the loot house. A tall, slender figure stepped over the threshold, pulling the door softly shut behind her.

As she moved into the dim light of the magical lamps hanging above the counter, she lowered the hood of her dark cloak. She was a strikingly beautiful woman with pale porcelain skin, midnight-black hair styled in a thick side braid, and eyes the color of dark amethyst. She possessed an alluring, voluptuous figure wrapped in dark fabric. Yet, despite her polite, almost gentle smile, there was a strange, suffocating weight to her presence. The temperature in the room seemed to drop the moment she entered.

Subaru felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine. His instincts, usually dulled by modern, peaceful living, were suddenly screaming at him, ringing like a frantic alarm bell.

“Good evening,” the woman said, her voice smooth and enchanting, like velvet sliding over glass. “I apologize for my slight delay. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long.”

“You’re fine,” Felt replied, crossing her arms and shifting her weight. Her tone was casual, but her posture was visibly more guarded than it had been with Subaru. “But things have changed a bit. We have a bidding war on our hands.”

The woman tilted her head, her dark eyes shifting from the blonde thief to the giant behind the counter, before finally settling on Subaru. Her gaze was piercing, dissecting his strange clothing and unarmed posture in a fraction of a second.

“A bidding war?” she repeated softly. “How very unexpected. I was under the impression our arrangement was exclusive.”

“Yeah, well, this guy showed up with an artifact,” Felt said, gesturing toward the sleek black phone resting on the counter. “Rom appraised it. It’s a flawless metia worth at least twenty gold coins. Unless you brought a fortune with you tonight, the item goes to him.”

The woman stepped closer to the counter, her movements entirely devoid of sound. She didn’t walk so much as she glided. She peered down at the black rectangle, her expression one of mild, polite curiosity.

“Twenty gold,” she mused, her eyes tracing the smooth edges of the screen. “That is indeed a steep price. Far more than what I brought with me.”

Subaru let out a small breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. He had won. The negotiation was effectively over. All he had to do was hand over his phone, secure the stolen item, and walk out the door to reunite with the silver-haired maiden waiting in the alleyway. It was a flawless victory without a single drop of blood spilled.

The woman turned her gaze back to Subaru, her gentle smile remaining perfectly intact.

“Before I concede defeat to such a wealthy buyer, I must ask a simple question,” the woman said, folding her hands neatly in front of her. “If you take possession of the item, what are your plans for it?”

Subaru didn’t see the trap. He was riding the high of a successful infiltration and a masterfully executed haggle. He gave a relaxed, triumphant shrug.

“I’m just the middleman,” Subaru answered honestly, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m buying it back so I can return it to the girl it was stolen from.”

The atmosphere in the room completely shattered.

The woman’s polite smile did not vanish, but it twisted, transforming into something deeply unsettling and predatory. The subtle chill in the air rapidly condensed into a suffocating, physical pressure that tasted like copper.

“I see,” the woman whispered, her hand sliding smoothly beneath the folds of her dark cloak. “So you are returning it to the original owner. What a pity.”

The sudden shift in the room’s atmosphere wasn’t just a feeling; it was a physical manifestation of raw killing intent.

Subaru didn’t understand magic, nor did he possess the honed instincts of a warrior, but human survival instincts were universal. He recognized the terrifying, hollow look that had just overtaken the woman’s eyes. She wasn’t a disgruntled merchant or a frustrated noble. She was a predator who had just decided it was time to eat.

“Look out!” Old Man Rom roared, his deep voice shaking the rafters.

Before the giant could even fully wrap his thick fingers around his massive club, the woman in black moved. She didn’t sprint; she simply vanished from her spot, crossing the distance in a horrifyingly unnatural glide. From beneath the dark folds of her cloak, a wickedly curved blade whipped through the air, aiming perfectly for Subaru’s abdomen.

It was impossibly fast. Subaru’s brain registered the flash of metal, but his limbs were frozen, entirely incapable of dodging.

He survived the initial strike entirely by accident. As sheer panic hit his nervous system, his leg violently twitched, kicking the support of the wooden stool. The stool tipped backward, sending Subaru crashing hard onto the dusty floorboards.

The curved blade hissed through the empty space where his stomach had been a fraction of a second earlier, slicing cleanly through the front fabric of his tracksuit jacket but missing his flesh by a hair.

“My, my,” the woman cooed softly, stepping forward and looking down at him. She didn’t look frustrated by the miss; she looked profoundly entertained, like a cat watching a mouse scramble. “How remarkably fortunate. I do love a target that squirms.”

“What the hell are you doing?!” Felt shrieked. The blonde thief had already leaped away from the counter, scrambling halfway up a towering stack of crates with a small dagger drawn in her hand. Her red eyes were wide with shock. “Are you insane? You can’t just slaughter a buyer in Old Man Rom’s house!”

“If he intends to return the item to the original owner, then he is an obstacle,” the woman replied, her tone remaining impeccably polite, though her dark eyes were devoid of any warmth. She slowly turned her gaze toward the thief and the giant. “And since you have witnessed my hand, leaving you alive would be terribly unprofessional.”

“You think you’re going to silence us all?” Rom growled, stepping heavily out from behind the counter. He hoisted his massive wooden club onto his shoulder as if it weighed nothing. His scarred face hardened into a mask of veteran fury, his muscles tensing. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, lady. I don’t care who hired you, you don’t spill blood in my establishment.”

Subaru scrambled frantically backward across the floorboards, kicking up dust until his back hit the solid wood of the counter. His heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The situation had gone from a tense, successful negotiation to a desperate fight for survival in the blink of an eye. He was unarmed, practically defenseless, and trapped in a closed room with a professional assassin.

His mind raced back to Qixing’s brutal assessment of his weakness in the market. He couldn’t fight her. If he tried to be the hero now, he would be dead in seconds.

He didn’t need to fight her. He just needed to survive long enough for the vastly superior magic-user waiting right outside to intervene.

Taking a massive, desperate breath, Subaru filled his lungs to absolute capacity and screamed toward the heavy wooden door.

“Help! We’re under attack! Get in here!”

Outside in the dark alley, the silver-haired maiden had maintained a silent, tense vigil. Despite the ambient noise of the distant slums, her pointed, elven ears picked up the subtle shifts within the massive structure. She heard the muffled thud of a falling stool, followed immediately by the deep, echoing roar of the giant.

Then came the boy’s scream. It was raw, frantic, and filled with unmistakable terror.

Lia didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. She threw off her heavy hood, letting her silver hair cascade freely, and surged toward the entrance. Mana flared brilliantly around her fingertips, instantly drawing the ambient moisture from the air and condensing it into a shimmering, biting frost. She didn’t bother reaching for the latch. With a sweeping motion of her arm, three jagged spears of solid ice materialized and slammed violently into the heavy wooden doors, blowing them off their hinges in a spectacular shower of splinters and frozen dust.

The sudden explosion of wood and ice brought the deadly confrontation inside to a screeching halt.

The woman in black paused her advance, her curved blade lowering just an inch as she turned to face the ruined entrance. Rom tightened his grip on his massive club, shielding his eyes from the flying debris, while Felt let out a startled yelp from her perch atop the crates.

Lia stepped through the shattered doorway, a localized blizzard swirling furiously around her boots. The temperature in the loot house plummeted instantly. On her left shoulder, Puck materialized completely, his small, grey feline form radiating an intense, freezing aura that chased away the assassin’s suffocating pressure.

“I heard a cry for help,” Lia announced, her amethyst eyes sweeping the room in a rapid, tactical assessment.

She took in the giant, the blonde thief, the boy scrambling backward on the floorboards, and finally, the woman in black holding the drawn weapon. Without a word, Lia glided forward, moving with a fluid grace that easily rivaled the assassin’s. She stepped smoothly between the woman and Subaru, planting her boots firmly on the floorboards. She kept her back to the boy, staring directly toward the immediate threat.

“You…” Felt gasped from the rafters, her red eyes wide as she recognized the half-elf she had robbed earlier that day. “You tracked me down?”

“I came for what is mine,” Lia replied, her voice ringing with a cold, undisputed authority that demanded the room’s attention. She didn’t take her eyes off the woman in black. “However, I will not stand by and allow you to murder if that’s what you came here to do.”

“Yeah, you tell them, Lia!” Puck, coming out of her ear, exclaimed with a cheer as he summoned floating sharp ice pieces at the black dressed lady.

Subaru stared up at the maiden’s back, his chest heaving as he gasped for air. Qixing’s words echoed loudly in his mind. She does not need your protection. Seeing her stand there, radiating an overwhelming aura that effortlessly pushed back the assassin’s killing intent, Subaru realized just how profoundly true that statement was. He wasn’t the knight in shining armor here; he was the damsel in distress who had just been rescued.

The woman in black tilted her head, observing the sudden influx of powerful magic. Her unsettling smile did not fade; rather, it widened into something dangerously ecstatic.

“A spirit arts user,” the assassin murmured, her dark eyes flashing with a twisted delight as she registered the maiden’s silver hair and pointed ears. She gripped the hilt of her curved blade tighter, sliding into a low, predatory stance. “How delightful. This job just became vastly more entertaining.”

“I don’t like your tone, lady,” Puck warned, his voice echoing sharply in the room, entirely devoid of his usual playfulness. “If you wanna die so badly then can you please do it away from my Lia?”

The assassin did not wait for another warning. She kicked off the floorboards with a burst of terrifying speed, leaving a shallow crater in the wood where she had just been standing. She moved in a jagged, unpredictable zigzag, her dark cloak snapping behind her as she closed the distance to the silver-haired maiden in the blink of an eye.

“Puck!” Lia called out, extending her hands forward.

“On it!” the spirit replied.

A thick, crystalline wall of solid ice erupted from the floorboards right in front of Lia, forming a heavy barricade. A split second later, the assassin collided with it. Her blade slashed out in a flawless, horizontal arc. Instead of bouncing off, the curved knife carved straight through the magically reinforced ice with a sickening screech, shattering the upper half of the barricade into glittering shrapnel.

Lia did not flinch. Using the momentary delay, she stepped back, her amethyst eyes glowing with concentrated mana. From the freezing mist hanging in the air, a dozen jagged ice spears materialized, suspended for a fraction of a second before launching themselves at the woman in black like a barrage of heavy arrows.

The assassin laughed—a melodic, genuinely joyful sound that felt entirely out of place in a death match. She danced through the hailstorm of magic, her blade twirling with impossible precision. She deflected three spears, dodged four more, and used the flat of her blade to redirect another straight into the wooden rafters, showering the room in splinters.

“Wonderful! Truly wonderful!” the woman praised, her eyes wide with a manic thrill. “It has been far too long since I’ve faced a spirit arts user of this caliber. I am Elsa Granhiert, the Bowel Hunter. Please, let us enjoy this dance until your warm insides paint this floor!”

Before Elsa could press her counterattack, a massive shadow fell over her.

Old Man Rom had closed the distance, his enormous wooden club raised high above his bald head. With a furious roar, the giant brought the weapon crashing down with enough force to cave in a boulder.

Elsa gracefully leapt backward, letting the club smash into the floorboards where she had been standing. The impact shook the entire building, cracking the foundation and kicking up a massive cloud of dust and debris.

“Keep your twisted blades away from my family!” Rom bellowed, sweeping the club in a wide horizontal arc to force the assassin further back toward the center of the room.

Felt used the distraction to her advantage. Dropping from her perch atop the crates, the blonde thief landed lightly on her feet. She didn’t charge blindly into the fray; she skirted the edges of the room, her small dagger drawn, looking for an opening or a blind spot to strike while Elsa was occupied with the giant and the magic caster.

Subaru, meanwhile, scrambled completely out of the drop zone. He pushed himself backward until his shoulders hit the far wall, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. The sheer scale of the violence unfolding before him was entirely outside his realm of comprehension. The clash of steel, the booming impacts of Rom’s club, and the freezing shockwaves of Lia’s magic created a chaotic, deafening storm inside the loot house.

His hand brushed against a smooth, hard object on the floorboards. It was his phone. It had slid off the counter during the initial chaos.

Subaru grabbed the phone, clutching it tightly against his chest. He watched Elsa effortlessly parry a sweeping blow from Rom while simultaneously dodging another volley of ice from Lia. The assassin was heavily outnumbered, yet she didn’t look pressured in the slightest. She was playing with them, her movements fluid and utterly lethal.

He couldn’t swing a sword, and he couldn’t cast a spell. But as Subaru pressed his back against the wall, forcing his panic down and observing the frantic movements of the combatants, he realized he still had a role to play. He just needed to find a single, crucial opening.

The interior of the loot house had become a whirlwind of destruction. Rom’s massive club systematically demolished the environment, turning towering stacks of crates into splinters and crushing the floorboards beneath his sheer physical might. Yet, for all his devastating power, the giant could not land a single solid blow.

Elsa moved like a phantom. She stepped lightly off falling debris, her black cloak billowing as she twirled in mid-air to evade the crushing strikes. Every time Rom overextended, her curved blade lashed out, aiming for the exposed joints of his armor or the thick tendons of his arms.

“You are strong, giant, but your swings are far too wide!” Elsa chimed delightfully, ducking under a horizontal sweep that sheared the top off the wooden counter.

Before she could capitalize on his compromised stance, a wave of biting frost washed over her. Lia thrust her hands forward, sending a dense, swirling barrage of ice shards directly at the assassin’s flank. Puck floated beside the maiden, his tiny paws glowing as he manipulated the ambient temperature, causing patches of slippery frost to bloom across the floorboards to hinder their enemy’s footing.

Elsa simply laughed. She kicked off a frozen patch of wood, using the slip to slide underneath the barrage of ice. As she rose, Felt lunged from the shadows. The blonde thief aimed her small dagger directly at the back of the assassin’s knees.

It was a perfect, silent ambush, but Elsa’s instincts were monstrous. Without even looking back, the assassin spun, her blade deflecting Felt’s dagger with a sharp clang. Elsa seamlessly continued the motion, bringing the pommel of her knife crashing into Felt’s ribs. The thief gasped in pain, tumbling backward across the dusty floor to narrowly avoid a follow-up slash that would have disemboweled her.

“Three against one, and yet you all remain so wonderfully desperate,” Elsa purred, her eyes locking onto Lia. She recognized the silver-haired maiden as the core of the group’s defense. If the magic caster fell, the rest would be simple butchery. “Let us see how beautiful your insides truly are, spirit user.”

Elsa’s muscles tensed. She dropped into a frighteningly low stance, preparing to launch herself directly through the freezing storm to close the distance with Lia.

From his corner, Subaru watched the deadly sequence unfold. He saw the assassin hyper-focusing on the maiden. He looked down at the sleek black phone clutched in his sweaty palm. The screen was still glowing.

He didn’t have magic, but he understood the biology of the human eye. The loot house was dimly lit, illuminated only by a few magical lamps and the pale, blue glow of Lia’s ice magic. Elsa’s pupils would be wide open to track high-speed movements in the gloom.

Subaru swiped his thumb across the screen, bringing up the camera application. He tapped the small lightning bolt icon, forcing the flash setting to ‘Always On.’

He couldn’t afford to hesitate. If he missed this window, Lia would be in fatal danger.

Subaru pushed himself away from the wall and stepped right into the edge of the battlefield. He raised his arm, pointing the phone’s glass lens directly at the assassin.

“Hey! Bowel Hunter!” Subaru screamed at the absolute top of his lungs, his voice echoing violently over the clash of steel and magic.

The sheer audacity of the unarmed, terrified boy yelling her name broke Elsa’s concentration just enough. Her deadly focus shifted. She paused her forward lunge and snapped her head toward the corner, her dark amethyst eyes locking onto Subaru.

Subaru hammered his thumb down on the capture button.

The phone’s LED flash detonated in the gloom of the loot house like a miniature sun. The brilliant, searing white light cut through the dim room with blinding intensity, reflecting off the floating ice crystals and amplifying the glare.

It was a flash of pure, artificial luminescence that didn’t exist in this world.

Elsa shrieked—a sharp, genuine sound of pain and surprise that held no trace of her previous amusement. Her sensitive, night-adjusted eyes took the absolute full force of the blast. She violently recoiled, her hands flying up to cover her face as her vision was instantly replaced by a blinding white void.

“Now! Hit her!” Subaru roared, his own eyes squeezed tightly shut against the glare.

The veteran giant and the magical maiden did not waste the golden opportunity.

“Raaaagh!” Rom bellowed, stepping directly into the assassin’s blind spot. He swung his massive wooden club in a brutal, upward arc.

Elsa tried to dodge purely on instinct, but without her vision, her timing was critically flawed. She leaped backward, but the heavy club clipped her side. The sheer kinetic force of the glancing blow lifted her completely off her feet, sending her flying through the air.

Before she could recover in mid-flight, Lia stepped forward. Her amethyst eyes blazed with focused determination. The air around Elsa instantly plummeted to an absolute zero, and a massive, crystalline pillar of solid ice erupted from the floorboards, slamming into the assassin’s airborne form and pinning her violently against the far wall of the loot house.

The silence in the ruined loot house was sudden and absolute, broken only by the heavy, ragged breathing of Old Man Rom and the soft crackle of Lia’s dissipating frost.

Subaru blinked rapidly, rubbing his eyes to clear the lingering purple spots burned into his vision from the camera flash. He looked toward the far wall. The massive, crystalline pillar of ice stood solid, pinning the dark-clad assassin firmly against the splintered wood. She wasn’t moving.

Felt slowly peaked out from behind a shattered crate, her dagger trembling in her grip. “Did… did we get her?”

“Stay on your guard, Lia,” Puck warned, his small form floating closer to Lia’s shoulder. The spirit’s fur was standing entirely on end. “I don’t think that killed her.”

As if responding to the spirit’s voice, a sharp, echoing crack resonated through the room.

A single hairline fracture appeared in the center of the massive ice pillar. Then another. And another. A web of deep fissures rapidly spread across the frozen surface.

“My, my. I must admit, I did not anticipate such a radiant trick,” Elsa’s voice echoed from within the ice. It was not strained, nor was it pained. It sounded profoundly, terrifyingly elated.

With a deafening shatter that sent jagged chunks of ice rocketing across the room like shrapnel, the pillar exploded outward.

Elsa stepped down onto the floorboards, completely unfazed by the freezing temperatures. The dark fabric of her cloak was torn where Rom’s club had struck her, revealing a deep, gruesome gash along her side. Yet, to the absolute horror of everyone in the room, the wound was not bleeding. Instead, it was steaming, the flesh actively knitting itself back together at an impossible, unnatural rate.

Within seconds, the lethal injury was completely gone, leaving only smooth, unblemished porcelain skin.

“That was exhilarating,” Elsa sighed, rolling her shoulders. She reached up and unclasped her heavy, shredded black cloak, letting the dark fabric drop to the dusty floor. Beneath it, she wore a form-fitting, sleeveless combat dress that offered zero restriction to her movements. She raised her blade, her dark amethyst eyes locking onto the group with a chilling, hollow intensity. “But I suppose that is enough playing. The night is short, and I have a job to finish.”

The atmosphere in the room did not just drop; it collapsed. The previous killing intent she had emitted felt like a gentle breeze compared to the suffocating, crushing pressure that suddenly filled the loot house.

She vanished.

There was no warning, no subtle shift in stance. One moment she was standing by the shattered wall, and the next, the floorboards beneath her original position exploded into splinters from the sheer force of her launch.

“Where did she go?!” Felt screamed.

Then, by sheer instinct, the giant roared, swinging his massive club upward to intercept, but he was swinging at a phantom. Elsa was already inside his guard. She twisted mid-air, a blur of silver steel flashing in the dim light.

Rom let out a booming cry of pain as the curved blade carved a deep, vicious blood seam across his thick arm before it separated from him with blood flowing out. The giant stumbled backward, his heavy club slipping from his grasp to crash uselessly against the floor. He dropped to one knee, clutching the bleeding wound, completely incapacitated in a single, effortless strike.

“One,” Elsa counted musically.

She didn’t even land. Using Rom’s falling form as a springboard, she kicked off his shoulder, launching herself directly at the silver-haired maiden.

“Lia!” Puck shouted, channeling a massive surge of ambient mana.

Three thick, layered shields of magical ice instantly formed between Lia and the incoming assassin. Elsa didn’t attempt to dodge them. She hit the first shield with a spinning slash, her blade humming with a terrifying vibration that shattered the magical barrier like cheap glass. She carved through the second shield just as easily, her momentum entirely unbroken.

Lia hastily stepped back, raising her hands to reinforce the final barrier, but Elsa was simply too fast. The assassin’s boot crashed into the center of the third ice shield, shattering it inward.

The resulting shockwave sent Lia tumbling backward. She managed to stay on her feet, sliding across the floorboards, but her defensive line was completely broken. Elsa landed gracefully on the tips of her toes, her blade raised, relentlessly advancing on the retreating magic caster with a flurry of blindingly fast strikes that forced Lia entirely on the defensive.

Subaru stood completely frozen by the wall, the phone still clutched tightly in his hand. The reality of the situation crashed over him with the weight of an anvil. She hadn’t just been holding back earlier; she had been treating them like an amusing warmup. The camera flash had been a clever trick, but against an immortal predator who could move faster than the eye could track, clever tricks were no longer going to save them.

The air in the loot house was thick with the chilling mist of shattered ice and the terrifyingly sharp hum of Elsa’s blade. She was a blur of dark fabric and silver steel, her strikes raining down on the silver-haired maiden with a relentless, mechanical precision.

Lia was entirely on the defensive, forced to step backward with every parry. She rapidly condensed the moisture in the air to form short-lived bucklers of frost, but Elsa’s curved knife sheared through them effortlessly.

“You have vast reserves of mana, spirit user, but your casting is far too rigid!” Elsa chimed, her voice melodic and entirely devoid of exertion. She spun under a desperate volley of ice spears, her blade flashing upward. “You leave your beautiful abdomen completely exposed!”

“Lia, guard your left!” Puck shouted from her shoulder, his tiny paws working frantically to drop the ambient temperature further, trying to slow the assassin down.

It wasn’t enough. Elsa moved with an explosive burst of speed, slipping entirely past Lia’s magical guard. The assassin’s blade drew back, aimed flawlessly at the maiden’s stomach.

Subaru’s body moved before his brain could process the overwhelming terror paralyzing his limbs. He didn’t have a weapon, and he couldn’t reach them in time to physically block the strike. But his hand was tightly gripped around the smooth, heavy casing of his phone.

With a raw, wordless shout, Subaru wound his arm back and hurled the black rectangle as hard as he possibly could.

The heavy device sailed through the air and struck Elsa squarely on the wrist just as she thrust her blade forward. The impact wasn’t enough to injure the Bowel Hunter, but the sudden, unexpected collision with a dense object threw her aim off by a fraction of an inch.

The curved blade hissed past Lia’s stomach, tearing a clean slice through her cloak and grazing her side instead of landing a fatal blow.

Lia gasped, using the momentary reprieve to scramble backward, putting a few precious yards of distance between herself and the assassin.

Elsa halted her advance. She slowly lowered her blade, turning her head to look at the floor. The phone lay on the dusty floorboards, its glass screen completely shattered into a spiderweb of cracks from the impact. She tilted her head, her dark amethyst eyes shifting from the ruined artifact to the trembling boy pressed against the far wall.

“You destroyed a treasure worth twenty gold coins just to buy her a single second of breath,” Elsa murmured, her polite smile returning. “How wonderfully tragic. But you only delayed the inevitable.”

Subaru ignored the assassin’s gaze. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He looked frantically toward the stacks of crates, spotting the blonde thief who was still recovering from the brutal strike she had taken earlier.

“Felt!” Subaru screamed, his voice cracking with desperation. “Run! You have the fastest feet in the capital! Get out of here and find the guards! Find anyone!”

Felt flinched, her vibrant red eyes darting from the bleeding giant on the floor, to the terrifying assassin, and finally to the shattered doorway. The slum rat instincts that had kept her alive for years screamed at her to flee, but leaving Old Man Rom behind felt like tearing out her own heart.

“I… I can’t just leave Rom!” Felt shouted back, her grip tightening on her small dagger.

“If you stay, we all die!” Subaru roared, stepping away from the wall to draw Elsa’s attention. “Go! Now!”

Felt gritted her teeth, tears of sheer frustration prickling the corners of her eyes. She knew he was right. Against a monster like this, she was nothing more than extra meat to be carved. Pushing off the wooden crates, she channeled the wind around her legs. She became a literal blur, a streak of blonde hair and ragged clothes that darted past the combatants and launched herself out the ruined entrance of the loot house, disappearing into the dark alleys of the slums.

Elsa let out an elegant, disappointed sigh. “My, my. It seems a little mouse has escaped the trap. I suppose I will have to hunt her down before she raises an alarm.”

The assassin turned her body toward the doorway, her muscles tensing to give chase.

Immediately, the temperature in the room plummeted to an absolute, biting zero. A massive, impenetrable barricade of solid, spiked ice violently erupted from the floorboards, completely sealing the shattered entrance and blocking Elsa’s path.

Lia stood in the center of the room, her hands outstretched and glowing with an intense, blue light. Her chest heaved with exertion, but her amethyst eyes burned with an unyielding resolve.

“You will not pursue her,” Lia commanded, her voice ringing with icy authority. “Your opponent is right here.”

Elsa slowly turned her back to the frozen door, her dark eyes sweeping over the exhausted maiden and the defenseless boy. Her polite smile twisted into a look of pure, predatory anticipation as she raised her blade once more.

Felt ran as fast as the wind, a literal blonde blur tearing through the winding, muddy alleys of the slums. Behind her, the muffled, violent echoes of shattering ice and clashing steel spilled from the ruined loot house, each sound a terrifying reminder of the monster she had left behind.

Her lungs burned, but she didn’t dare slow down. Her mind was a chaotic storm of pure, suffocating regret.

She should have just grabbed that strange black metia and vanished. She should have taken the boy’s offer and abandoned the initial deal. Deeper still, she wished she had never stolen the silver insignia in the first place. When her client had first approached her in the dark alleyways, offering a ridiculous sum of ten gold coins for a simple pickpocket job, Old Man Rom had warned her. He had specifically told her that the payout was too high for a simple theft, that the job reeked of hidden dangers and suspicious motives.

She hadn’t listened. Her pride and her desperate desire to escape the slums had blinded her.

Now, Rom was lying on the floorboards, bleeding from a vicious strike. That terrifying woman in black, an assassin who moved faster and struck harder than the veteran giant ever could, was going to slaughter everyone inside that wooden building. The magic-user and the loud boy in the strange clothes were merely buying time with their lives. And once they were dead, Felt knew with absolute, chilling certainty that the Bowel Hunter would come for her next.

Her vision blurred with unshed tears, her focus wavering for just a fraction of a second.

It was a fatal mistake in the treacherous terrain of the slums. Her foot caught violently on an exposed, jagged cobblestone protruding from the mud.

Felt pitched forward, losing her balance completely. She hit the ground hard, tumbling over her shoulder and rolling across the harsh dirt before finally skidding to a halt flat on her stomach. A sharp, blinding spike of pain shot up from her left foot, radiating through her leg.

She scrambled frantically to push herself up, desperate to keep moving, but the moment she put weight on her left ankle, it gave out completely. She collapsed back into the mud with a sharp cry.

It was sprained. Badly.

The terrifying reality of her situation crushed her. Her speed was her only weapon, her only shield, and her only means of survival. Without it, she was nothing more than a sitting duck waiting for the butcher’s blade. The tears she had been fighting back finally spilled over, leaving hot, dirty tracks down her cheeks as she clutched her throbbing ankle.

“Such a frantic pace for the evening, little one.”

The voice was incredibly calm, rich, and entirely out of place in the grim, panicked atmosphere of the slums.

Felt gasped, her head snapping up. She reached instinctively for the small dagger at her waist, dragging herself backward through the dirt.

Standing just a few paces away, illuminated faintly by the moonlight filtering through the smog, was a tall man dressed in flowing, immaculate silken robes. His posture was perfectly composed, his hands folded neatly within his wide sleeves. He looked entirely untouched by the filth and despair of the surrounding shantytown. Amber eyes looked down at her with a mild, observant curiosity.

“You have taken quite a harsh tumble,” the robed stranger noted smoothly, stepping closer without a hint of hostility. “Are you alright?”

Felt gripped her small dagger tightly, pointing the blade at the strangely dressed man. “Stay back!” she warned, her voice trembling despite her best efforts to sound tough. “If you know what’s good for you, mister, you’ll turn around and run the other way as fast as you can. There’s a monster back there at the loot house killing everyone!”

The man in the silken robes did not flee. He didn’t even flinch. He simply tilted his head, his amber eyes shifting from her tear-streaked face down to her rapidly swelling ankle.

“A monster, you say?” the man murmured, his tone remaining perfectly conversational. “I suppose that explains the rather dramatic exit. Tell me, child, does this monster currently have a boy in strange, colorful garments and a silver-haired maiden trapped within its grasp?”

Felt’s red eyes widened in shock. She lowered her dagger slightly. “You… you know them?”

“I am an acquaintance of the reckless youth, yes,” the scholar replied casually. He took a slow step forward, completely ignoring the weapon still pointed in his general direction. He knelt gracefully in the mud, entirely unbothered by the filth touching his pristine robes, and extended a hand toward her injured leg. “It appears your foundation has been compromised. Allow me.”

Felt wanted to pull away, her slum-born instincts screaming at her not to let a stranger touch her when she was vulnerable. But before she could scramble backward, the man’s fingers lightly tapped the top of her leather boot.

A warm, soothing current of energy flowed directly into her skin. It didn’t feel like the biting chill of the half-elf’s mana; it felt like a gentle, natural heat spreading through her veins. In the span of a single heartbeat, the blinding pain in her ankle vanished entirely. The heavy swelling subsided, and the torn ligaments knit themselves back together.

Felt gasped, pulling her foot back and testing her weight against the dirt. She rotated her ankle without a single twinge of pain. It was completely healed. She stared up at the man in sheer disbelief. “What… what did you just do? Are you a healer?”

“I merely smoothed out the disrupted flow of your physical vessel,” he stated simply, standing back up and smoothly tucking his hands back into his wide sleeves. “Your warning is duly noted, little one. Since you have regained your mobility, I suggest you continue your flight to safety. The city guards would likely be your best destination.”

The man stepped past her, his gaze lifting toward the distant, crumbling roof of the loot house where faint, erratic flashes of blue light were still visible through the wooden slats.

He did not break into a run, nor did he draw a weapon. He simply walked toward the sounds of violent destruction with a serene, unhurried pace, leaving the bewildered thief sitting safely in the alleyway.

The interior of the loot house had been transformed into a frozen, splintered wasteland, yet it was not enough.

Lia fell to her knees, her breath pluming in the freezing air as her chest heaved with absolute exhaustion. Her magical reserves were pushed to their absolute limits. Every barrage of icicles, every frozen floorboard, every desperate barrier had been effortlessly shattered or evaded.

“I’m sorry, Lia,” Puck’s voice echoed weakly. His small, grey form almost translucent like a dying candle, the intense aura of cold surrounding him rapidly fading. “My time in this form is up. I have to return to the crystal.”

“It’s okay, Puck. Thank you,” Lia whispered. The feline spirit vanished, retreating into the green gemstone at her chest. Stripped of her primary guardian, Lia reached out to the faint, glowing micro-spirits hovering in the dusty air. They gathered around her, offering their meager light and energy, but against a monster of this caliber, it was a tragically inadequate defense.

Subaru stood beside her, his body bruised and battered from diving out of the way of falling debris. He had nothing left to throw. There were no more tricks, no more distractions. They were completely backed into the corner of the ruined building, trapped with a predator who hadn’t even broken a sweat.

Elsa stepped delicately through the shattered ice, her blade held loosely at her side. Her dark amethyst eyes were wide, dilated with a raw, intoxicating bloodlust. The polite facade had melted away entirely, leaving only the twisted ecstasy of a killer standing before her prey.

“You fought so beautifully,” Elsa cooed, her voice trembling with dark delight. She glided forward, her movements a terrifyingly smooth dance of death. She maneuvered her steps perfectly, herding the exhausted maiden and the terrified boy closer together until they were practically shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall.

She wanted them grouped. Her mind painted a vivid, glorious picture of the impending strike. A single, flawless horizontal arc of her blade.

“To open you both at the exact same moment,” Elsa whispered, a flush rising to her pale cheeks. She raised her curved silver knife, her muscles tensing for the final launch. “To see your warm bowels spill out together, mingling on the floorboards… it will be a truly breathtaking display of death.”

Subaru gritted his teeth, stepping slightly in front of Lia in a final, futile gesture of defiance.

Elsa vanished into a blur of terrifying speed.

The blade swept forward in a deadly, unavoidable arc, aimed perfectly to sever them both in a single motion. The steel hissed through the freezing air. The sharp edge was a mere inch away from Subaru’s torso.

Then, the blade stopped.

There was no resounding clash of metal, no violent explosion of magic. The catastrophic momentum of the assassin’s strike was simply halted, abruptly and entirely, as if the steel had struck an immovable mountain.

Elsa’s eyes widened in genuine shock. Her arm trembled, pushing with all her monstrous strength, but the blade refused to move a single millimeter further.

A hand covered in pristine silk had appeared from the shadows. Two slender, elegant fingers rested lightly on the flat of the blade, pinching the steel with a casual, effortless grip.

“Such a violent obsession with the internal workings of the flesh,” a serene, rich voice echoed in the suddenly silent room.

Standing perfectly composed beside the assassin, entirely unbothered by the bloodlust or the freezing temperature, was the immortal scholar. Qixing looked down at the trapped blade between his fingers, his amber eyes reflecting the dim light with profound tranquility.

Elsa’s dark amethyst eyes narrowed. With a sharp exhale, she channeled her monstrous physical strength, violently yanking her arm backward to free her blade from the scholar’s grasp.

It did not move.

The steel remained suspended between Qixing’s two fingers as if it had been forged directly into the bedrock of the earth itself. The sheer impossibility of the resistance sent a thrill of alarm through Elsa’s honed instincts. She didn’t waste another fraction of a second trying to win a contest of brute strength against a man who looked like he had never lifted a sword in his life.

With her right hand anchored in place, she smoothly drew her second curved blade from beneath her waist sash with her left. In a seamless, fluid motion, she slashed upward, aiming the jagged steel directly for Qixing’s exposed neck.

She never even came close.

Qixing did not shift his stance. He did not raise his free hand to block, nor did he chant a spell to summon a magical barrier. He simply stood there, his posture perfectly serene.

A sudden, invisible wave of overwhelming pressure erupted from the space immediately surrounding the immortal scholar. It was not a physical strike, but a profound assertion of raw, unyielding authority over the physical realm.

The invisible force slammed into Elsa’s chest like a battering ram. The breath was violently driven from her lungs as she was launched backward. The sheer kinetic—no, the sheer force of the impact tore the hilt of her first blade right out of her grip. She sailed through the air like a discarded ragdoll, crashing brutally through a towering stack of wooden crates before slamming into the far wall of the loot house, collapsing into a heap of splintered wood and dust.

Qixing remained exactly where he had been standing. His expression had not changed in the slightest. Between his two fingers, he still held the assassin’s first curved blade. He gave the expertly crafted steel a brief, mildly disappointed glance, before casually tossing it aside. It clattered uselessly against the frozen floorboards.

Behind him, Subaru and the silver-haired maiden simply stared, completely paralyzed by the effortless display of dominance.

Across the ruined room, the pile of wooden debris shifted.

A heavy, jagged beam of wood was shoved aside. Elsa slowly pushed herself up from the wreckage. The damage she had sustained from the invisible impact was catastrophic. Her left arm hung at a sickening, unnatural angle, the bone clearly snapped. Deep, ragged gashes covered her legs and torso from the splintered shrapnel, and her breathing was a wet, ragged wheeze.

Yet, within seconds, the horrifying sound of bones violently snapping back into their proper alignment echoed through the silent room. Her pale flesh steamed, knitting the deep wounds closed at a miraculous, unnatural pace.

She stood up straight, brushing the dust from her dark combat dress.

A normal combatant would have felt terror. A sane person would have recognized the insurmountable gap in power and fled into the night. But as the assassin looked across the ruined floorboards at the man in the silken robes, her dark eyes dilated wildly. Her polite, enchanting smile returned, but it was twisted to its absolute limit, stretched into a manic grin of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.

“Oh… oh my,” Elsa breathed, her melodic voice trembling with a profound, terrifying elation. She raised her remaining blade, the metal catching the pale light. “I have never felt a force quite like that. You are not a simple magic user it seems. How utterly exquisite.”

Qixing remained entirely unmoved by the terrifying display of her rapid regeneration and manic joy. His amber eyes simply looked at Elsa, peering effortlessly past the suffocating layers of her bloodlust and ecstasy. He looked into the very core of her being. There, burned deep into her soul, he saw the foundational trauma that had warped her—a memory of biting cold from a brutal, unforgiving blizzard and the warmth of spilled blood that had frozen her humanity and left a monster in its wake.

But understanding the origin of a monster did not mean he had to tolerate its existence.

Qixing made no move to physically confront her. He offered no wise statements about redemption, nor did he extend the grace of a second chance. She was an adult who had walked the path of slaughter with eyes wide open, actively choosing the darkness at every crossroad. Qixing possessed boundless patience for the foolishness of the young and the lost, but he had absolutely none for those who took genuine, deliberate pleasure in the infliction of violence.

“Begone from my sight,” Qixing stated quietly, his voice carrying the finality of a falling judge’s gavel.

Elsa lunged. With a terrifying burst of speed, she launched herself off the splintered floorboards, her remaining blade raised to carve the arrogant scholar into ribbons.

She did not reach him.

Before her mind could even fully register the motion of her own strike, the dusty, claustrophobic air of the loot house vanished entirely. The dim light of the magical lamps was violently replaced by the blinding, unfiltered glare of the moon and stars. The wooden floor beneath her simply ceased to exist.

A blast of freezing, impossibly thin air slammed into her lungs.

Elsa gasped, her eyes snapping wide open. She was no longer in the slums. She was suspended high above a sprawling sea of thick, white clouds.

And she was falling.

Gravity seized her instantly, dragging her downward through the dense, freezing vapor. As she broke through the bottom of the cloud layer, the breathtaking expanse of the capital city stretched out far below her, looking like a scattered collection of miniature toys. She was unimaginably high. Higher than the peaks of the tallest mountains. Higher than any bird had ever dared to fly.

How?

The question flared in her mind, only to be immediately swallowed by raw, primal panic. Accelerating rapidly to terminal velocity, the wind roared in her ears with a deafening, physical force that tore at her clothes and hair.

Elsa was a master of close-quarters slaughter, a predator who danced gracefully on solid ground. She had absolutely no experience with the helpless, terrifying reality of a freefall from the heavens. She thrashed wildly in the air. She swung her blade at the empty sky, her boots kicking frantically as she desperately tried to acquire some sort of foothold, searching for any surface to leverage her monstrous strength against.

There was nothing but the vast, empty sky. Her regeneration, her speed, her lethal skills—all were rendered entirely, pathetically useless against the undeniable pull of the earth.

It felt as though she had been falling for countless, agonizing minutes, trapped in an endless plunge of sheer terror. Her desperate flailing slowed as the sheer inevitability of her situation took hold.

The dark green plains just outside the massive walls of the capital city rushed up to meet her with terrifying speed. There was no time to brace, and no magic to cushion the blow. The impact was instantaneous and absolute. The Bowel Hunter’s body splattered violently against the earth, painting the grass a great splash of stark, brilliant red blood.

The fight ended not with a triumphant roar or a final, desperate clash of steel, but with an abrupt, hollow silence.

Subaru remained frozen against the wall, his eyes wide and unblinking. He stared at the empty space where the terrifying assassin had stood just a fraction of a second ago. He rubbed his eyes, half-expecting her to burst out of the shadows with a manic laugh, but the air remained completely still. The immortal scholar had simply said the word begone, and the monster had ceased to be there.

It was so thoroughly anticlimactic that Subaru’s adrenaline-soaked brain entirely failed to process the reality of their survival.

A few feet away, the silver-haired maiden stood with her hands raised, her breath caught in her throat. She looked around the ruined loot house in utter bewilderment. When she finally realized the suffocating, murderous pressure had truly vanished, a profound wave of relief washed over her pale features.

Without wasting a moment on questions, she dismissed her defensive ice barriers and hurried to the center of the room. She dropped to her knees beside the bleeding giant.

“Hold on,” the maiden urged softly. She closed her eyes, drawing upon the ambient mana lingering in the cold air and reaching out to the lesser micro-spirits hovering in the dust. She asked for their aid, gently pressing her glowing hands over Rom’s deep, jagged wounds. A pale, soothing light began to radiate from her palms as the spirits answered her call, slowly knitting the damaged flesh back together.

With the immediate danger resolved, Qixing turned his attention away from the empty air. His immaculate silken robes drifted smoothly over the splintered floorboards as he approached the trembling youth leaning against the wall.

“Are you well?” Qixing asked softly. His tone was perfectly measured, holding the gentle cadence of a falling leaf.

Subaru swallowed hard, his throat dry and tight. “I… yeah. I think so. I’m not cut anywhere.”

Qixing nodded once. He let a comfortable, unhurried silence pass between them, allowing the boy to simply breathe before gently offering the next inquiry. “Are you frightened?”

Subaru looked down at his own shaking hands. He wanted to lie, to put up a brave front, but the serene amber eyes looking down at him effortlessly dismantled any attempt at bravado. “I’m terrified,” Subaru admitted, his voice cracking slightly. “I thought we were all going to die.”

Again, Qixing simply nodded, accepting the raw admission without a hint of judgment. He waited patiently for Subaru’s breathing to steady. “Has that unpleasant woman traumatized you?”

Subaru leaned his head back against the wall, staring up at the shattered rafters. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Whenever I close my eyes, I just see that blade coming right at my stomach. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that feeling.”

“To remember the edge of the abyss is the mind’s way of guarding the vessel,” Qixing murmured softly. Another long, measured pause stretched between them in the dim light. “Do you hate her?”

Subaru frowned, the question catching him entirely off guard. He thought of the woman’s manic joy, her twisted desire to see them bleed, and her unsettling smile. “I don’t know if I hate her,” he said slowly, parsing through his own chaotic emotions. “I’m disgusted by her. I’m deeply afraid of her. But I don’t think I have the energy to hate her right now. I just wanted to survive.”

“A profoundly natural response,” Qixing noted gently. The scholar lowered his posture slightly, bringing himself closer to Subaru’s eye level. The final question was delivered with the same quiet, unhurried grace. “Do you blame someone for your circumstances?”

Subaru’s breath caught. His mind raced back to his sudden, inexplicable arrival in the capital, the complete lack of power, and the terrifying realization of his own helplessness. He looked at the immortal scholar, and then toward the maiden working desperately to save the giant’s life.

“I…” Subaru hesitated, his fists clenching at his sides. “I wanted to blame the world for making me weak. I wanted to blame whatever brought me here. But… I chose to walk into this loot house today. I chose to stay when she pulled her knife. If I have to blame someone for being trapped in this exact corner right now, I can only blame myself.”

Qixing listened quietly. There was no right or wrong to be found in the boy’s admissions, only the raw, unpolished truth of a mortal grappling with his own fragility. The scholar simply remained present, a quiet pillar of calm amidst the emotional wreckage of the night.

The heavy silence of the ruined loot house was broken by the frantic slapping of boots against the cobblestones outside.

Felt practically threw herself through the shattered entrance, her blonde hair messy and her chest heaving. She scrambled over the splintered debris, her vibrant red eyes darting around the room in absolute panic until they landed on the massive form lying in the center of the floorboards.

“Rom!” Felt cried out, sliding to her knees beside the giant.

She reached out with trembling hands, expecting to find the horrifying, deep gash that the assassin had left. Instead, she found only smooth, unbroken skin beneath his torn shirt. Rom was unconscious, but his breathing was deep, steady, and entirely free of pain.

Felt let out a choked sob of profound relief. She looked up at the silver-haired maiden, who was leaning heavily against a nearby crate, wiping beads of sweat from her brow.

“You healed him,” Felt whispered, her voice thick with emotion. She bowed her head deeply. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“He was protecting us as much as he was protecting you,” the maiden replied softly, offering a weak but genuine smile. “It was the least I could do.”

Footsteps crunched softly on the frost-covered floorboards behind Felt. Stepping into the dim light of the loot house was a young man of striking appearance. He possessed fiery red hair and eyes the vibrant, piercing blue of a cloudless summer sky. He wore the immaculate, pristine white uniform of the Royal Guard, completely untouched by the mud and grime of the surrounding slums.

The young man surveyed the catastrophic damage to the building—the shattered ice, the pulverized wooden pillars, and the craters in the floor—with a calm, professional eye.

“I am a knight of the kingdom,” the young man announced gently, his voice carrying a natural, reassuring warmth. “This young lady informed me of a terrible danger, and I hurried to offer rescue. However, I surmise that the situation has already resolved itself, for I see no enemy remaining on the battlefield. Nonetheless, as an officer of the law, I must ask what exactly transpired here?”

He directed his question generally, but his blue eyes lingered for a moment on the man in the silken robes.

Qixing offered little to satisfy the knight’s curiosity. “A fleeting shadow sought to extinguish the light within this room,” the scholar replied smoothly, folding his hands within his wide sleeves. “It has been dispersed to the winds.”

Sensing the scholar’s dismissal, Subaru eagerly stepped forward. The adrenaline was finally leaving his system, replaced by a desperate, overwhelming need to verbalize the sheer terror he had just survived. It felt as though speaking the events aloud would somehow unburden his chest.

“She was an assassin dressed in black,” Subaru explained, his words spilling out in a rapid, breathless rush. “She moved impossibly fast, completely ignoring the laws of physics. She had these curved blades, and she could heal from getting completely crushed by a giant wooden club in seconds. She called herself the Bowel Hunter. If it wasn’t for her,” he pointed to the maiden, “and him,” he gestured to Qixing, “we would all be dead on the floor right now.”

The young knight listened patiently, his expression serious and attentive as Subaru recounted the terrifying details of the Bowel Hunter’s assault and her abrupt, inexplicable disappearance. He did not interrupt, allowing the boy to fully empty the fear from his mind.

When Subaru finally finished, taking a deep, ragged breath, the young knight nodded in profound understanding.

“I see. The Bowel Hunter is a very dangerous criminal known to the guards. You have all survived a truly harrowing ordeal,” the young man said gently. His posture softened, and a look of genuine relief washed over his striking features. “I am deeply thankful that you are all alright.”

The knight then turned his attention to Qixing. He stood perfectly straight, placed a hand over his heart, and bowed with the utmost sincerity and respect.

“And to you, sir,” the red-haired knight said earnestly. “I offer my deepest gratitude. Thank you for stepping in and protecting the citizens of this city where I, a knight sworn to defend them, failed to arrive in time.”

The young knight shifted his gaze from Subaru to the silver-haired maiden leaning against the crates. As his striking blue eyes met her amethyst ones, a flicker of immediate recognition passed between them. The maiden’s posture stiffened slightly, clearly recognizing the man in the white uniform just as he recognized her.

Yet, the knight maintained his formal, professional composure. He did not speak her name aloud.

“Are you entirely unharmed?” the knight asked, his tone respectful and cautious, ensuring the inquiry remained politely ambiguous to the other occupants of the room.

The maiden gave a small, weary nod. “I am unharmed. Thank you for your concern.”

The knight then looked down at the massive, breathing form of Old Man Rom resting on the floorboards. “To witness such a miraculous recovery… you have my deepest gratitude for utilizing your spirit arts to save the life of a civilian. Your compassion is a credit to the kingdom.”

By Rom’s side, Felt finally wiped the last of the tears from her dirt-streaked face. The profound relief of seeing the giant breathe steadily seemed to wash away the last remnants of her stubborn pride. She pushed herself up to her feet and reached into the ragged pocket of her shorts.

Slowly, she walked over to the maiden and held out her hand. Resting in her palm was the intricate silver insignia.

“Here,” Felt muttered, looking down at her boots. “I’m… I’m giving it back. I never should have taken it in the first place.”

The maiden’s face softened. She gently took the stolen item from the thief’s palm, cradling it carefully against her chest. “Thank you,” she said warmly. “I only ask one thing in return. Please, promise me that you will never steal again. It only brings danger to you and the people you care about.”

Felt opened her mouth to reply, but before she could form the words, the atmosphere in the room shifted dramatically.

The young knight, who had been observing the exchange with a gentle smile, suddenly froze. His blue eyes locked onto the silver insignia in the maiden’s hands. A look of profound, undisguised shock crossed his features.

The small, polished gemstone embedded in the center of the silver crest was no longer inert. It was softly, steadily emitting a faint red glow.

The knight’s shock instantly hardened into intense alarm. He took a rapid, urgent step toward the blonde thief, entirely abandoning his previous polite distance.

“You,” the knight commanded, his voice sharp and demanding. “What is your name? How old are you? Do you have parents? Where do you reside?”

Felt recoiled, completely taken aback by the sudden, aggressive interrogation. The slum rat instincts that had kept her alive flared up immediately. She didn’t know why the knight was suddenly looking at her like she was the most important thing in the world, but she had absolutely no intention of sticking around to find out.

“That is none of your business, pretty boy,” Felt snapped defiantly.

She pivoted on her heel, preparing to sprint out the door. But the knight was impossibly fast. Before Felt could even channel the wind to boost her speed, the young man closed the distance. His white-gloved hand shot out, wrapping firmly but carefully around her upper arm.

“Let go of me!” Felt shouted, struggling wildly against his grip.

“Forgive me,” the knight murmured apologetically.

A faint shimmer of mana transferred from his grip into her arm. Felt’s struggles ceased almost instantly. The frantic energy drained completely from her body, her eyes rolling back as a forced, magical sleep overtook her system. She went entirely limp, collapsing forward into the knight’s waiting arms. He caught her gently, lifting her unconscious form with ease.

The silver-haired maiden stepped forward, her brow furrowed in deep concern. “Wait, what are you doing? Are you arresting her? I already have the insignia back, and I forgive her—”

“The theft is of little relevance to me at this moment,” the knight interrupted respectfully, his gaze remaining fixed on the sleeping girl in his arms. The urgency in his striking blue eyes had not faded. “This is not an arrest for a petty crime. The situation is far more complex, and I must take her back to my abode immediately.”

The knight in the pristine white uniform adjusted his hold on the unconscious blonde girl. He offered one last, reassuring smile to the remaining occupants of the ruined loot house.

“Do not worry about the aftermath here,” the knight promised smoothly, his striking blue eyes reflecting a quiet, absolute authority. “The knights will secure the area and ensure the peace is kept. Have a safe evening.”

With a final, respectful bow, he turned and vanished into the dark alleys, carrying the thief away and leaving the heavy silence of the slums to settle over the shattered building once more.

The silver-haired maiden watched him go until the white of his uniform disappeared completely into the shadows. She let out a long, exhausted sigh, the adrenaline finally leaving her delicate shoulders. She turned back toward the center of the room, her amethyst eyes shifting between the boy in the tracksuit and the serene scholar in the silken robes.

She stepped forward, clasping her hands together in front of her chest, and bowed deeply.

“Thank you. Both of you,” she said, her voice ringing with absolute, profound sincerity. “If it were not for your assistance, I would have lost my insignia forever, and likely my life as well. I owe you a great debt. Please, if there is anything I can give or do to repay you, name it.”

Qixing looked at the bowing maiden, his amber eyes entirely tranquil. Within his mind, he considered the vast, impassable chasm between a mortal’s gratitude and a cultivator’s existence. The concept of karmic debt was a heavy, complex chain that bound the universe together. For a mortal to attempt to repay a life debt to a cultivator of his profound realm was an impossible endeavor; the scales of cause and effect simply could not balance such a discrepancy in existence.

However, he knew that attempting to explain the intricate laws of karma and the Heavenly Dao to a mortal magic-user would be entirely fruitless. It was a concept far beyond the scope of their understanding.

“I require nothing,” Qixing replied softly, his voice carrying the gentle cadence of a falling leaf. “The river simply flows where it must. However, if your heart feels heavy with an unpaid debt, you are free to settle it in whatever manner brings your spirit peace.”

The maiden blinked, looking slightly bewildered by the scholar’s cryptic deflection, but she nodded respectfully before turning her attention to the teenager beside him.

Subaru, on the other hand, had no complex, cosmic views on karma or universal balance. He rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous, genuine smile breaking across his bruised and dirt-streaked face. He didn’t want gold, and he certainly didn’t want a magical favor.

“Well, I’d actually like my reward right now, if that’s okay,” Subaru said, taking a small step forward.

The maiden’s eyes widened in mild surprise, her posture stiffening just a fraction. “Right now? I do not have much currency on me at the moment, but if it is within my power…”

“It’s nothing like that,” Subaru interrupted quickly, waving his hands to dispel her worry. He dropped his arms and looked her directly in the eyes. “I just want you to answer a question.”

The maiden tilted her head, her silver hair catching the pale moonlight filtering through the shattered roof. She studied his bruised, determined face for a moment, finding no trace of malice or deceit. Slowly, the tension left her shoulders, and she offered a soft, curious smile.

“A question?” she repeated softly. “Alright. I accept. What is it?”

Subaru took a deep breath. He had chased her through the city, bargained with thieves, and nearly been gutted by a professional assassin, all for the sake of a girl whose identity was a complete mystery to him.

“What is your name?” Subaru asked.

The silver-haired maiden blinked, her amethyst eyes widening in genuine astonishment. The pale moonlight filtering through the broken roof illuminated the absolute surprise on her face. She looked at the boy in the dirt-streaked tracksuit, searching for some hidden motive or a catch, but found only an earnest, hopeful expression.

“My name?” she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper. “After everything you just went through… the danger, the fear, the blood… all you want as a reward is my name?”

Subaru smiled, though his legs were beginning to tremble slightly from the aftershocks of the night. “To me, it’s the most important thing I could ask for. We fought together, we survived together, and I don’t even know what to call you. So, yes. Just your name.”

The tension that had carried the maiden through the grueling battle finally melted away entirely. A soft, breathtaking smile graced her delicate features, a genuine expression of warmth that made the dreary, ruined loot house feel infinitely brighter.

“Emilia,” she said clearly, the sound like a gentle chime in the quiet room. “My name is Emilia. Just Emilia.”

“Emilia,” Subaru repeated, letting the syllables roll over his tongue. He committed the sound and the smile to memory, his own grin widening despite the exhaustion weighing down his bones. “It’s a beautiful name. I’m Subaru. Though, I think you already knew that.”

Qixing stood a few paces away, his hands resting comfortably within the wide sleeves of his pristine robes. Hearing the exchange, the scholar offered a warm, grounded smile of his own. He deliberately stepped away from the cryptic phrasing he often leaned on, recognizing that this moment required simple, human connection.

“A name given freely is a sturdy bridge built between two people,” Qixing observed, his voice rich, clear, and perfectly eloquent without a trace of distance. “You fought very hard to build that bridge tonight, Subaru. It is a reward well-earned.”

Subaru turned his head to look at the scholar, his smile turning slightly sheepish. “Thanks, man. I didn’t exactly do much fighting, though. Mostly just a lot of running and yelling.”

“Courage is not measured entirely by the swinging of a sword,” Qixing replied kindly, bowing his head in a gesture of profound, mutual respect. “You stood your ground when every instinct demanded you flee. That is a strength entirely its own.”

Subaru opened his mouth to reply, perhaps to offer a self-deprecating joke, but the words never left his throat.

Without warning, the world tilted violently. The sheer, overwhelming toll of the day finally crashed down upon him. He had been chased by thugs, haggled with thieves, and faced down a professional assassin. The massive influx of adrenaline that had kept him on his feet suddenly evaporated, leaving behind a profound, crushing exhaustion.

His vision blurred, the edges of the room turning dark. His knees buckled completely.

“Subaru!” Emilia gasped.

She closed the distance in a flash, catching him by the shoulders before he could hit the floorboards. She carefully lowered him down, resting his head gently against her lap. Her amethyst eyes were filled with immediate concern as she brushed a few strands of dark hair away from his sweaty forehead.

Qixing stepped closer, kneeling smoothly beside them. He placed a gentle hand over Subaru’s chest, feeling the steady, rhythmic beat of the boy’s heart.

“Do not be alarmed, Emilia,” Qixing assured her, his tone soothing and deeply empathetic. “His physical vessel is uninjured. However, his mind and spirit have been pushed far beyond their natural limits tonight. He has simply collapsed from sheer mental and physical exhaustion.”

Emilia let out a heavy sigh of relief, her shoulders dropping. She looked down at Subaru’s peaceful, sleeping face. The boy had risked absolutely everything for a stranger he had met just a few hours ago.

“He told me that he only wanted my name but that’s not a proper reward for a savior,” Emilia murmured softly, her expression resolving into one of gentle determination. She looked up at the scholar. “I cannot just leave him here. I am going to take him back to my sponsor’s estate. It is the only proper way I  can ensure he recovers safely.”