Back to the present—

  Chris lay bored out of his mind in a clearing next to the hunter's cabin. The evening sky was shrouded by a few heavy, gray clouds. Their shadows crept slowly across the grass. Broken moonlight spilled down, casting Chris's long, pure-white braid in flickering light and shadow.

  Unbidden, the scene that had just unfolded inside the cabin replayed in his mind. The newly awakened Lune had clearly been drenched in sweat, even convulsing in pain due to magic overdraft, yet those amber eyes had remained pure, clear, and utterly devoid of malice. The very first words out of his mouth had actually been to worry about Chris and Silvan's safety.

  "Uncle Chris! Uncle Silvan! Are you guys okay?"

  Lune’s anxious, childish voice lingered in Chris's heart like a hex, refusing to fade. That innocent, worry-filled boy and the cold-blooded, overwhelmingly powerful, and terrifying "War God Shumanton" gave off completely different vibes. It was like night and day. There was no way they could be the same person!

  "...Tch! You've got to be kidding me." Chris clicked his tongue in irritation, cursing under his breath at the empty air.

  "Silvan explicitly said that 'Lune' is nothing but a 'human barrier' Shumanton fabricated for himself using that god-tier sealing power, just to escape reality. Sooner or later, I’m going to drag that damn old geezer Shumanton right out of Lune’s body!"

  Not far away in the cabin, after his brief moment of lucidity, Lune had once again fallen into a deep sleep from sheer exhaustion. Silvan had thoughtfully toasted some dry bread and buttered it to line the boy's stomach, but the moment he turned around, the little brat was already snoring loudly.

  However, Silvan didn't show any look of disappointment. He calmly packed the bread away into a basket, picked up a gently glowing alchemy lantern with one hand, and silently exited the hunter's cabin. For this quiet military doctor-turned-retainer, as long as his master was safe, nothing else mattered—he had long grown used to these days of silent dedication.

  On the grass, Chris heard faint footsteps. He sat up, watched Silvan approach with the lantern, and casually pulled off his coat, spreading it on the grass beside him to save a seat for the other man.

  Silvan sat down quietly. Pale blue magical particles gathered in the air, and text slowly surfaced on the translucent screen:

  [You can leave, Chris. Verbonia's War God has long fallen. You are only thirty, still relatively young. You could easily return to the Empire and achieve great things. For you, this would also be very...]

  Click!

  Chris abruptly reached out, shoving his hand inside Silvan's cape, and with extreme practiced ease, flicked off the hidden golden switch inside. The alchemy screen instantly dissolved into motes of light.

  "Silvan! You're so damn wordy." Chris rolled his eyes in annoyance. "You're an old hag even older than that old monster Shumanton, so save your spit! Besides, I have zero interest in casually becoming a lapdog for those self-righteous Imperial officers."

  Having said that, Chris unceremoniously shoved his hand into the basket in Silvan's arms, snatched a piece of buttered bread, and started chomping down on it in big bites.

  "Stinky old hag. I do still consider Shumanton my master, you know. After all, that guy picked me up when I was six. Now that he's turned into this half-dead, ghostly state, I can't just pat my butt and walk away, can I?"

  Chris chewed his bread, his cheeks bulging into little round balls. Under the moonlight, his azure eyes flickered with a clear, sharp light, as if they could see right through the mask on Silvan's face.

  "What? Or are you saying you want to abandon Shumanton yourself? You could totally go find some handsome young meat and remarry! That stingy bastard Shumanton isn't paying you a salary anyway, so why the hell are you so willingly staying here as his free labor?"

  Silvan sighed helplessly and flipped the switch under the cape back on. Text began to dance across the screen again:

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  [You are always picking fights with me over nonsense we've discussed hundreds of times, Chris.] [I have never planned to remarry. Fraschi and his legion have always wanted to drag me back. Who told me to be so useful? If anyone really did marry me, they would definitely have scored a massive bargain. On that point, Chris, you should deeply understand and feel grateful—after all, your prosthetic right arm, as well as all the big and small matters in your master Shumanton's daily life, which of them haven't I managed flawlessly?]

  "Hah! You should just be straightforward and admit that deep down, you're actually a guy, right?" Chris snorted with laughter. "I mean, what normal woman gets all hot and bothered over cold machinery all day like you do, and loves dressing up like this? Ah! I've got it!"

  Chris slapped his thigh hard, as if he had just discovered a new continent:

  "Silvan, in your past life, you must have been a damn gay guy who prayed to God right before dying to become a woman in the next life, and then your wish came true in this one, right! Oh, I'm an absolute genius at seeing through the truth!"

  [Chris, your understanding of homosexuality is so appallingly impoverished it makes one's hair stand on end!] The text on the screen flashed noticeably faster, carrying a distinct vibe of gnashing teeth. [Get this straight: those gay men have absolutely no desire to turn into women! Furthermore, my dressing as a man and changing my name was merely to make escaping easier. Add to that the fact that the Empire's most advanced magi-tech equipment is exclusively sold to men! I can only say that the Empire's higher-ups clearly don't understand how to make women willingly and wholeheartedly lay down their lives for them. Their brains are as stiff and utterly devoid of romance as your mouth!]

  "Pfft—haha! Silvan, you really ought to take that speech to a feminist rally." Chris nearly choked on his bread. "You always get so bent out of shape over this boring topic. With your skills, living as a woman wouldn't be an issue at all. Not to mention, you've got that max-level monster Shumanton around. I really don't get what you're so conflicted about in that head of yours."

  [You clearly suffer from a severe lack of the empathy and common sense a normal person should possess, Chris.] The text floated up coldly. [You should count yourself lucky that back then, you only lost an arm, instead of accidentally getting castrated and ending up impotent!]

  "Do you have a death wish?! Silvan!" Chris almost leaped to his feet, roaring in humiliated fury: "Why the hell are you throwing another inexplicable tantrum? What did I even say wrong this time?!"

  The screen went quiet for a few seconds before popping up with just one short sentence: [You will never understand me!]

  After the text vanished, Silvan's shoulders began to tremble slightly. Seeing this, Chris instantly felt a splitting headache coming on. How does this person just start crying at the drop of a hat?

  Despite his verbal complaints, Chris awkwardly reached out and threw an arm around Silvan's trembling shoulders, attempting to offer some rough comfort. Silvan sobbed for a bit, then simply grabbed the hem of Chris's shirt, lifted the bottom of the mask slightly, and unceremoniously blew all her snot right into the fabric.

  [This physiological identity of 'female' only brings me endless agony. I've told you this clearly before.] Grievance-filled text surfaced on the screen again. [Yet you constantly dig at my painful past, time and time again. You are acting exactly like a terrible little boy who refuses to grow up!]

  "Oh, alright, alright, I'm sorry!" Chris rolled his eyes in sheer disgust, looking at his ruined shirt hem. "How was I supposed to know your mind is made of glass? If you ask me, it's just your own paranoia acting up."

  He stood up and dusted the grass clippings off his pants.

  "You can hurry up and roll off to bed now, old lady. Look, your snot is all over my clothes. It's so friggin' gross. Hurry up and dive into your blankets before you catch a cold and get a fever! After all, you still have to wait on that little pipsqueak Lune tomorrow. If you collapse, I quit too, and we can all just disband the party!"

  [Chris! Your mouth really does get more and more obnoxious as you get older!] Silvan stood up in a huff. [I am going to bed! Take off that dirty shirt and put it in the basket. Don't always make me nag you like a mother hen!]

  "The way you're acting right now is no different from a mother hen! Dammit!" Chris yelled at her back.

  Chris watched Silvan's retreating back until she disappeared behind the door of the hunter's cabin. He casually snapped a long blade of grass and stuck it in his mouth, his gaze growing somewhat profound. He remembered the past, back when this person went by the codename "Pu-Ying." Even though she had constantly been treated as a "calibration tool" with zero human rights, sent off to be used by a legion commander named Heos... back then, at the very least, her face had still been intact and flawless.

  "Tch. Who would want to sell their life for a cold-blooded Empire like that? They're all a bunch of lunatics. This world has been fundamentally broken for a long time." Chris muttered under his breath, unable to stop himself from gnashing his teeth.

  However, right at that moment—

  Rustle...

  From deep within the nearby grass, an extremely unusual rustling sound suddenly rang out.

  Chris's eyes sharpened, instantly entering a state of high alert. Like an agile panther, he sprang up from the ground, silently darting behind a dense patch of tall grass to take cover. His right hand had already gripped the hilt of the sword at his waist.

  (What the hell? Don't tell me the Empire's pursuers... have already tracked us here this fast?)