"Edward, I'm tired too…"
Lilith mumbled softly, curling up in Edward's arms.
Edward immediately tapped her nose. "You've been lounging in my arms the whole time—what are you even tired from?"
"I just am~!"
"Alright, alright, whatever you say."
They found a large boulder nearby to serve as cover. Edward pulled out a tent and swiftly set it up before slipping inside.
"Come in."
As soon as Bernadette entered, she was surprised to find that the tent's interior was as spacious as a living room. Simple furniture had been arranged inside, making it downright luxurious for a campsite in the middle of nowhere.
Her eyes flickered with a trace of emotion. "This…isn't something a Traveler should be able to do, right?"
Edward looked blank. "What do you mean? It's just a mystical item."
Bernadette's gaze lingered on his face for a moment before she nodded.
"Do you have another one like it? Sell it to me."
"This is the only one."
Edward collapsed onto a plush sofa, the exhaustion melting from his body. "Once we get out of the Forsaken Land, I'll give it to you."
She replied coolly, "Father always taught me not to accept rewards I haven't earned. I'd rather pay."
"You stepping in to save me this time is already more than enough."
"I didn't save you. I was just afraid that if you died, there'd be no one left to translate Father's notes… or to teach me Rosellean."
She paused, then added, "Besides, I didn't actually manage to save you."
Bernadette sat down across from him. "Alright, it's time. Teach me Rosellean."
"Uh…you really want to learn it?"
Edward scratched his head. Once she learned Chinese and could read Roselle's diaries, who knew—she might abandon her obsession with finding her father altogether, convinced he was already dead.
Seeing her nod, Edward reluctantly pulled out the material he'd organised earlier to teach Lilith.
"Let's start with pinyin."
"Pinyin?"
"You can think of it like phonetic markings in Loenese or Intisian—it helps with pronunciation."
Lilith immediately darted over with a smug expression.
"Miss Lilith has already learned it~! A, e, i, o, u, v…"
She proudly swayed as she recited the phonetic alphabet.
Compared to Lilith's "brute-force" memorisation method, Edward took a far more systematic approach with Bernadette—starting from consonants and vowels, explaining their principles thoroughly.
She listened intently, absorbing the material quickly.
Before long, she'd fully grasped pinyin.
But instead of moving on to Chinese characters, Edward decided to expand the lesson—digressing into the origins of the alphabet, then using that as a segue into teaching English. From phonetics to grammar, from phrases to sentence structure—he covered it all.
Eventually, when Edward pulled out a thick Level 6 vocabulary book and asked her to start memorising, Bernadette finally caught on. Frowning, she asked, "Wait…you're not teaching me Rosellean, are you?"
"….."
Edward coughed a few times. "Technically, this is part of Rosellean…"
Her deep blue eyes stared into him with an intensity that made his whole body uncomfortable.
Fortunately, Lilith broke the tension.
"Edward, Miss Lilith is hungry!"
He handed her a dried fish. "Didn't you pack those dried rats?"
Munching noisily, she mumbled, "Can't always eat the same thing~ gotta change it up sometimes."
"Your Majesty, would you like something to eat?" he asked Bernadette.
She nodded. "Just a piece of bread and a cup of water."
Edward handed over two pieces of bread and two bottles of water, sharing equally with her.
He'd already had meals with her a few times. Unlike a typical noble lady, she ate with no pretence—biting into bread and downing water in big gulps.
No doubt, that was a habit she'd developed after decades, maybe centuries, as a pirate queen.
From the moment she received the food to the moment she finished, it took barely three minutes.
Bernadette stood up. "Let's move on. Next rest, we continue the lesson—the real Rosellean this time."
"Alright."
Edward packed up the tent, and once again, the three of them stepped onto the pitch-black, deathly silent path.
———
Beneath the half-destroyed temple of the True Creator…
Amon lounged idly against a mural of the True Creator. He wore a black, old-fashioned robe and a pointed soft hat, with a monocle perched on one eye. From time to time, he casually picked up a stone and tossed it at the mural.
Smack.
"Tch. Boring."
Smack.
"Can't believe I got kicked out."
Smack.
"Finally found something amusing, too…"
Smack.
"So, where to next?"
Smack—
His hand froze mid-throw. He turned his head slightly upward.
"Hm? That's the Hanged Man's power…? What's he doing wandering around out here?"
Amon lazily sat up, muttering, "My intuition tells me…something fun's about to happen again."
He stretched out a hand and casually swiped forward. His figure vanished and reappeared just outside the temple. Yawning, he strolled toward the entrance like he was out for a casual walk.
"Well, since I'm bored, might as well take a look."
As he stepped into the darkness alone, hidden monsters stirred and surged from all sides—but in the blink of an eye, every creature that lunged at him had already been parasitised. Now they served as his scattered, watchful eyes.
———
Back in Backlund, in the rented apartment at Cherwood Borough…
Fors returned in a hurry. Seeing that Xio was safe and sound, she finally let out a breath of relief.
Then, without another word, she rushed inside and began packing.
"Fors, what are you doing?" Xio hurried after her. "Where have you been the past two days?"
"I'll explain on the way."
Fors shoved a packed suitcase into her hands. "Hurry up. Help me pack."
"What happened?"
"I can't say for sure…but it's serious. Really serious."
Fors ruffled her hair in frustration, clearly overwhelmed.
She didn't know what those photographs represented, but she was certain that getting entangled with the royal family was never a good thing. On top of that, Klein had specifically warned her on the way back. So she hadn't even had time to celebrate surviving with Xio before she began hurriedly packing up.
Seeing Fors so anxious, Xio didn't press further and silently helped her gather their things.
——
Half an hour later, they left in haste and arrived at a safe house Xio had secured long ago in East Borough.
With her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face, Xio asked, "Now can you finally tell me what happened?"
"Aaaghh!"
Fors clawed at her hair in distress and, after a long sigh, slumped down. "This time…it's really not the same."
She then recounted everything that had happened to her in vivid detail.
At first, Xio simply furrowed her brows as she listened. But her eyes gradually widened, her mouth opened in disbelief, and by the time Fors finished, she was completely stunned.
"So…you got dragged into something involving the three major churches and the royal family—with demigods and even angels involved?"
"And…and this whole thing might even tie into royal scandals and conspiracies? And now you're worried they'll try to silence you?"
Fors nodded gravely. "That's what my friend who went through all of this with me said—and I trust him."
Xio's heart suddenly jolted.
Could it be that her father had also been falsely accused of treason…because he got caught up in something like this?
Her mind spun into chaos, and she slumped into a seat, her fingers clenching unconsciously.
"What's on your mind?"
"N–nothing…" Xio rubbed her temples. "But…if things are really as bad as you say, then changing our place of residence isn't going to solve anything. MI9's spy network is everywhere in Backlund."
As a temporary auxiliary for MI9, even with limited contact, Xio had already seen enough to understand just how terrifyingly efficient the intelligence agency was.
Fors froze. "Wait, what? Then what do we do?"
She instinctively reached for a cigarette before remembering she'd run out back in the Book World.
"…Maybe I should ask my friend. He happens to be planning to leave Backlund as well."
Xio frowned. "You keep saying 'this friend' and 'that friend'—who exactly is it?"
"Uh…his name's Sherlock Moriarty. Just…a friend."
Xio stared at her thoughtfully. "Does this Sherlock Moriarty have some sort of special background? Or is he unusually powerful?"
Fors blinked. "He seems like an ordinary person—probably just a Sequence 7."
"Then how do you expect him to help you?"
"He…"
Fors recalled the harrowing days she'd spent alongside Klein.
"He's just helping me come up with ideas—it's not about power."
Xio narrowed her eyes. "Wow…Fors, you really trust this guy, don't you?"
There was something strange about her gaze—an unmistakable hint of gossip.
———
[Forsaken Land of the Gods]
Another two hours passed since they'd set out, and still there was no reply from the Fool.
As Edward fielded Bernadette's questions about the Forsaken Land, he also began seriously contemplating other ways to escape—ways that didn't rely on offering sacrifices to the Fool.
"Edward, I think I see firelight ahead~"
Lilith suddenly pointed with a paw toward the distance, where faint flickers of flame glowed a few hundred meters away.
Edward and Bernadette immediately halted.
Bernadette asked, "Is it the land's inhabitants…or monsters?"
"As far as I know, the monsters in this place always hide in darkness before attacking. They don't emit light like that for long periods."
"Shall we check it out?"
"Let's."
Edward dimmed their floating lanterns, leaving only two active. He handed one to Bernadette, and together they cautiously approached the firelight.
Several hundred meters away, they found a camp built upon the ruins of some collapsed structure. Torches had been lit around the perimeter, casting a warm, flickering glow that pushed back the darkness and granted the weary campers a fragile sense of security.
The people huddled near the fire were dressed in crude garments made of beast hide or unidentifiable materials. Their appearances were deeply unsettling—some had clusters of tumours on their skin, others had eyes squeezed unnaturally close together, and some lacked noses entirely, the space replaced by gaping black holes.
Around the bonfire, a group was butchering a grotesque beast they had just hunted. Though they knew the flesh contained poison and corruption, the people of Moon City had no choice but to consume such meat to survive.
They had been doing so for thousands of years.
"Captain!"
One of the younger men, his face covered in growths, suddenly pointed toward the distance and whispered urgently, "Over there—there's light!"
"Light?"
The captain—whose nose was entirely missing—looked up, his expression turning serious.
As someone newly assigned to the hunting squad, Karl instinctively shrank back beside the captain.
"Could it be…a monster?"
"Unlikely," the captain replied, standing up at once. "But just in case—everyone, on alert!"
The seven or eight people in the camp immediately grabbed whatever weapons they had on hand and stared intently at the approaching lights. At the captain's command, they would not hesitate to strike with deadly force.
His heart pounded wildly.
If the behaviour of the monsters hadn't changed…
Then the newcomers might very well be outsiders—people not from Moon City.
———
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