Every place they took for their bond comprised dresses, lunches, and artistic portraits. For this time, they had been wandering around the broad hall of picturesque paintings with a variety of unique styles on the wall. Their feasting eyes were rolling with a gape of smiles and inspiring nerves. Their fingers on each hand intertwined each other with tight relief.

To Aoki, he couldn’t believe the portraits to be unsustainable for his style since he was an otaku and amateur manga artist who could draw classical round eyes, stunning shapes, and vivid outfits which you could find around Akihabara Station in Tokyo such as posters and screens. Compared to these prolific vintage portraits, it astounded him with his envious eyes and brisk turn of his head. It was too far for him to illustrate from this standard, but he also wondered if Lilith had some compelling capacity in painting.

“Do you know how to paint?” he asked Lilith.

“I c–can do a little,” she slurred, giggling with her fluttering shoulders. “I also want to paint… better with you.”

“Are you serious with that?”

“Happily serious,” she winked.

He blushed, thinking her interests flattered him. He then turned his head and eyes over to grin for his stupefaction. His chest was pumping with heavy-driven breath; his tight lips were wiggling like a brush, and his cheeks were blushing from her teasing response into his ears and her tender touch onto his hand.

While processing his heartbeat, she swung their arms from their intertwined hands and quavered her head with a joyous hum. It was her way to bloom and allure his mood, even if he resisted by gazing at every painting while they were meandering together.

Abruptly, she found a spectacular painting to her eyes, tugging his hand and arm to usher him while the pull startled him from his lingering gaze. He almost fell from his stumble, but he could fix his position by rushing to catch up with her.

Until they reached closer to the spectacular king-sized framed landscape with the label below on it as “Nymph’s Peace”, they googled at the oily-coated illustration of a group of naked nymphs, bathing themselves amid the peaceful cold pond with raw trees and concrete pillars of an open roof. The view was eagle eyes from a side angle, posing several alluring figures of a nymph in different varieties of the nature-belonged vivid locks such as watery blue, leafy green, sunny blond, and flowery pink. The illustration on the landscape portrayed an ancient vibe and natural environment.

“Is this your favorite painting?” he asked.

“Oh, dear. It reminds me of something,” she shook her head. “Apparently, it’s a long story which I can’t tell you like several hours.”

“Can you sum up your ‘long story’?”

“I only think about how beautiful it is to live there.”

“Does the illustration on the painting exist?”

“Yes, although it rumoured to be.”

“That’s interesting. If we can travel around in any means, we’ll promise ourselves to go there since it’s beautiful,” he smiled.

“Don’t forget Spica.”

“Since she came from the orphanage, I hope it will be a worthwhile adventure for her… and us.”

“If it will be possible to come.”

She lowered her head, glancing on the floor for her hopeful thought. Gazing back at the painting, she stroked her fingers against each other for three times and inhaled heavily without making a strange commotion to show her worry in front of his eyes. Her strong tight lips wiggled as her nerves drenched in unease, but her dimples stifled from it even if he still beheld on the painting.

She turned her head toward him. Smiling to mask her worried look, she asked, “Want to have a solo stroll around the city? It’ll be worth it for you to explore deeply if you are curious to know something.”

“Why? What if I’m lost?”

She sighed, “Did I remind you about the pocket watch inside your coat?”

He nudged on the blazer coat, checking for the pocket watch, and tucked his hand into the coat pocket to grip it on his palm. He then unlatched the half-case of it and saw the magnificent screen like a GPS. Except the pair of marks were a different-colored smoky bit—one was blackish gray while the other was crimson. It showed the color of magic which connected the aura between two of them in unique styles. Thinking about it, he was the “Envoy of Sloth” while she was the “Envoy of Lust” which these colors on their respective mark symbolized as their role in mysterious benefits.

“The screen might guide you for the share of our whereabouts,” she said.

“That’s fascinating. It’s... a world map, except it runs like a radar.”

“It is a ‘radar’, though,” she giggled.

“Then, how about you? Why are we parting our ways?”

“.... I have to withdraw some credits in the bank in the Northern District since I have a short amount of coins in my purse. At least, you’re somewhat a grown-up man with self-care.”

“Okay,” he nodded, frowning over her business. “I’ll walk anywhere I like then.”

Observing his frowned lips, she patted on his head and brushed it to comfort him with a tender flick.

She smiled, “Don’t worry. I’ll give you more than what you expect.”

He suddenly got blushed on his cheeks from her pat. After she drew back her hand from his head, he combed his hair with his finger to fix back his standard bowl cut. Then he saw her walking away towards the exit and waving her hand to depart for her withdrawal of money.

“I guess it’s my time to spend personally.”

With that, he exited the hall of art exhibitions after she disappeared from his eyes.

* * *

Aoki Sasaki on this time was maundering around the streets of Capital City of Dore with traffic of moving carriages on the streets between the concrete buildings and wander of people including himself on the walkway. The people with strange frilly clothes bewildered him with RPG-like vibes as his first impression. The otherworldly reincarnation made him curious with his awed eyes, rolling around like a day-tripper. He was the solitary, introverted boy who lingered over illustrating manga-styled figures on a digital screen with smooth yet amateur capability, but his naive failure caused him to dawdle such as reading mangas and surfing some interesting sites. Leading to some unknown context of death, he was sent to this world with a horrible beginning until Lilith extricated him with caring intentions, which he found her humble and solicitous despite being a prostitute for her earnings.

“To think I’m a high school dropout and aspiring manga artist from my world. Compared to this, it has more unique and practical traditions like a video game, but I still doubt it. Seriously, what the hell is going on?” he mumbled.

He sighed. He could have stopped his feet from walking anytime to rest his limbs and think about the circumstances regarding his excusable struggles. Since he came from Japan, blocking amid the walkway would be absurd for him to bother other people’s business. Between the busy walkway, he looked around to find an alley where he could sit on some convenient platforms. It was difficult for him to roll his eyes around. Until he found it. He walked towards the place and sat on it with his catch of breath, bending his torso in a right angle to relax his lungs.

Looking around the walls of the building, he found and stood up from the stairs since he eyed something that piqued him with curiosity. It was the poster of a charcoal-shaded image, portraying an ideal spiky-haired boy with a familiar hoodie garbed on his collar, and his eyes and chin were similar in his vision on the mirror—or perhaps it matched his facial features. There was also the symbolic text on the bottom of the portrait which labelled as:

Nefastus: The Greatest Threat Is Here!

Princess Sara Als Dore claimed the hazards from this boy with keen sense.

The bounty reward is 2,500,000 gold coins — either individually or collectively.

“What the hell? This is indeed my face before the change of my hairstyle.”

He could seek a mirror to check his looks, but the empty alley of junk had it otherwise. All he could cover himself up with was his bowl-cut hair, and he thanked Lilith for that suggestion. Thinking about it, she advised him first to change his hairstyle, which she told him that there was a sort of taboo in this entire society. He also remembered that he was chained and arrested by the hands of Princess Sara and Caroline, who led the forces of orange coats. His puzzled thought caused him to rub his chin while staring at the poster.

“Is this why Lilith put me some fresh looks?”

He licked his lips around and fastened it for no reason as he toyed with his puzzled mind. He then drifted away and shifted his eye from the wall, changing his habitual look for relief.

“Ahhhh!!!!!”

Suddenly, the wail of a kid piqued his ears, and it came from the right. He gaped his eyes and stretched his ears from the sharp sound. He felt convulsing from his spine down to his knees. At first, he wanted to avoid appearing himself since his face had been put on the bounty, but hearing it multiple times had bothered him with a rushed throb of sympathetic trauma—it was the reason for his excusable, fallen change from his childhood version. Remembering the strained memory of his youth, he wheezed that he hunched his chest and palmed on it.

“No! No! No!.... Please~!”

The continuous wail irritated him, biting his lips with panicked eyes and pressing his wrinkled forehead. He gnashed his teeth, and his chest pumped with a nerve-racking grumble. His tensive mind puzzled if he could throw his fist for a vengeful dare or run away for the fright. As he clenched his fist, he sought and gripped the wooden axe on the ground near where he sat on. He then walked towards the right to see what was going on.

“I can’t take it… I can’t take it… I must wonder,” he muttered, searching the worst-case scenario.

Until he reached it, he found the scene—three adult brutes in brown garbs with their callous faces were glaring down on the laid boy, kicking and stomping on his stomach. The boy had been struggling with filthy dirt and bloody bruises around his bare skin, especially arms with vibrating nerves and face with weeping tears on his purplish-swollen eyes.

“Last kick or we’ll break your ribs like you can’t breathe anymore,” he cackled.

The boy still groaned with a dying tremble.

“Ha ha ha ha…. A boy like him who came from orphanage should know the reality before growing up to be a crazy man-child.”

“This is business after all, so we can contribute our earnings by dealing with this wasted being.”

Hearing the grumpy insults from the brutes and seeing the laid boy with miserable aches, the clenched boil of anger had feasted within Aoki’s mind as he remembered the nightmarish case of chained corpses with fierce bruises and shallow pool of blood which the old priest had done with them. He gritted his teeth with the tight grip of the wooden axe. His eyes gaped beyond the limit, and his lids shivered. He puffed with his pumping chest. His soothing attempt had faded out. No decent words came up in his fuming mind, so he glared at them one more time to inspire his lesson-learned leverage.

“Ha…. Ha…. Ha….”

With that, he hurtled towards them, preparing to strike with his axe against one guy near his front. Then, he battered onto a brute’s necks, crouching on the fallen body and gushing the blood through the open wound, mouth, and nose.

“Ahhhh!!!”

The blood had splattered on his blazer coat, yet he omitted from it since he was enjoying his enraged feast, keeping his gritted teeth in front of his out-of-miserable eyes.

“W–What… the… hell… is… going… on?!” another brute slurred with a panicking puff.

“Don’t! You! Dare! Learn! Him! Like! This!” Aoki screeched while battering the dead brute.

“Kill him!! I don’t know where he came from… but just kill him!!”

Each brute gripped the knife from their pocket and rushed towards the young killer, but the killer heard the tapping sound behind him, so he dashed—or perhaps swung deep into his stomach. After which the axe had stuck on the belly, the remaining one of three brutes stabbed on his rib, probably piercing through his side lung. It gaped his eyes and mouth from its pain.

“Ha ha ha ha! Take that as my revenge on killing my friends!!”

Aoki coughed out of blood, feeling the prickle on his palpitating chest. He couldn’t utter his painful groan since the blood plugged in its air passage, sprinkling out of his mouth and nose.

He thought—as his dying message? Is this it? How come I have stumbled on misfortune? Lilith, I’m sorry for everything, but thank you.

And then he fell and faced down on the ground, lying with a pang of guilt.

Meanwhile, the unharmed brute shoved him, pointing the knife at his throat.

“For a finishing mo–”

However, a sudden bang of gunshot had heard from behind his back, and it halted his sentence of triumph. The bullet went through his head, making him fall down on the body of a killer—dead.

Behind the incident, it was the curly blue-haired, young-looking man who wore a gray garb and blue cloak, gripping a flintlock with smoky clouds above its flint.

“After hearing a cackling echo while walking through near, I stumbled on here… just to see you doing a bloodfest,” the blue-haired sighed.

Walking near the scene, he found and checked five unconscious bodies by touching the pulse on their neck; four of them including the kid had died while one youth with a bowl cut still respired. Reacting from the kid’s death with the tears in his miserable eyes, he clenched his fist with his glaring eyes from the irritable sight of pain, and yet he shook his head to restore his standard mood.

“This pal is still brea—“ he suddenly paused, eyeing at the black smoke on the stab-wound of his side chest. “.... Hold on, what am I seeing here?”

Observing it, the black smoke was rotating while the wound had been shrinking until it finally enclosed with regenerated flesh—which surprised him with his curious acknowledgement of its unusual phenomenon.

“Fancy seeing this rare instance, but I hope it’s not what accorded to the archive.”

* * *

“Thirty gold coins, please.”

Lilith Rose was standing in front of the receptionist’s desk, claiming dozens of coins into her palm. She thanked the receptionist and settled the coins in her purse, putting back into her pocket to receive in. It was the process to withdraw her money from the bank.

She then walked out from the hall of the bank and gripped the round-shaped pocket watch, unlatching it to check for Aoki’s whereabouts. Stepping amid the alley, she stood still to locate the spot with her keen eyes since she didn’t want to waste her limb’s energy from meandering.

“I wonder where he was wal—”

Suddenly, she felt the prickle behind her neck, putting back her pocket watch into her pocket. At first, she was tickled from something pierced on where it hit on; however, a delayed dosage caused her vision to fade out in black and her mind to sleep from a lively day, dropping herself on the ground.

“Wha… happ…”

Meanwhile, four men in black hooded garb rushed from their hiding spot and seized her unconscious body, carrying her into the carriage.

“Hurry before someone will see us,” one of them commanded with vigilant eyes.

After they laid her and entered altogether in the carriage, the driver whipped the rein on the neighing horse and left the place—casually.