Claud took another glance at the silvery sphere as they walked out of the large, glamourous building that served as the city centre. He had no idea what that sphere was, nor the reason behind its sudden appearance, but it seemed as benign as his little Crown.

“Alright,” said Lily, “nothing’s happened so far.”

“Yeah.” Claud raised his index finger and placed it close to the sphere, and it immediately rolled over to Lily’s other shoulder. “Although it doesn’t seem to like me much.”

“You think?” Lily smiled. “Maybe it’s just scared of you.”

“Of me? But I’m so good-looking,” Claud replied.

The sphere trembled as he said those words, and an odd look crawled up on Lily’s face. Claud didn’t need her to interpret either; he could tell that the little ball was laughing at him.

Clicking his tongue, Claud decided that looking down on a ball was beneath him and turned to look at the rest of the ruins. “What should we do now? Should we call it a day?”

“Yes, please,” Lily replied. “I’m tired. And I just want to hug someone to sleep. Today’s events have been both surprising and scary. I don’t think I can handle anymore shocks.”

Claud nodded. “I’m glad you feel that way. I also want to go back home and sleep. We can spend the next few days lounging in our house and eating the supplies on us. How does that sound?”

“Lovely.” Lily’s smile faded slightly. “But maybe we should spend a few days in Lostfon first. I’m worried about the situation on the warfront. If you’re there, anything can be resolved with a single blow.”

Claud thought through her words for a moment, and then smiled. “Sure. Still, they won’t know it’s us, though.”

“Well, if we wanted to tell the others that we’ve been here, we would have used our full name,” Lily replied. “As it stands, we’re Mister and Mrs Primus…which, now that I think of it, it’s a not-so-rare surname.”

“I presume some old geezer who’s now a set of rotten bones got to the down and dirty with many, many ladies as a young man,” Claud replied. “It can very well be the commoner family.”

“Really?”

“There’s a reason why quite a few people in Licencia use their first names,” Claud replied. “Anyway, if you want to stay in Lostfon for a while, I don’t mind. Someone there has the recipe for making fizzy drinks anyway; I could do with a daily drink.”

“Which will cost a lot,” Lily added. “They’re in hot demand now, after all. But…we aren’t going to sign up with Duchess Lacuna’s forces, right? We’ll just be normal tourists that’ll poke around the place for fun, yeah?”

Claud patted Lily’s head. “Yeah. Unless, of course, you want to use our newly discovered tools to do the touring instead.”

“That’s…” Lily licked her lips. “Well, the ability to look around the place without being bothered by adverse weather conditions is indeed rather reassuring, yes. We could just sit in the inn and look around the place as shadows…well, we should check what kinds of other us-es we’re producing first, though.”

“True. Maybe it’s actually something like the divine clone of the Coloured Gods. That’ll be awesome,” Claud replied. “I’m actually feeling really optimistic too, since the Second Shadow came from the Celestia Ruins.”

Stopping once to let a bunch of illusory metal carriages past, Claud stared at the weird items zipping by. “Maybe the copies we create look like those carriages. Seems quite possible, does it not?”

Lily nodded. “The possibility is quite high, yes.”

She picked up the silver sphere, which had been sitting obediently on her shoulder, and lifted it to the sky. “What are you, anyway?”

The ball jiggled once and hopped off her palms. Once again, it flew a few laps around Lily, and then rubbed up to her neck, like a pet begging its owner not to abandon it. Claud felt his heart twist at the sight, despite the fact that there would probably be a fellow that would spoil their lovey-dovey time together.

“Maybe you should verbally promise to keep him or something,” Claud replied. “Or drip some blood.”

He didn’t know why that last part came out, but those words seemed very natural to him, as if he’d done it before.

Regardless, the silver sphere whirled to face him — he could tell that it was looking at him, despite the absolute lack of any features to indicate the position of any eye or something along those lines — and then bobbed over slowly.

It nudged his hand a moment later, and Claud could sense a profound gratefulness for some reason.

“Huh.” Claud reached out a finger slowly, and the silver sphere rubbed it gently. “Well, aren’t you a good kid. You should keep this fellow. Maybe give him or her a name too.”

“Do you even have a sex or gender?” Lily muttered, before tilting her head. “You have Crown. I don’t know why you called that little guy Crown, but with such a predecessor…how does Throne sound?’

“Throne?” Claud echoed. “I suppose that’s a good name, yes.”

The two of them glanced at the silver sphere, which was now flying in figures of eight for some reason.

“Blood left, huh.” Lily took out a small knife and pricked her thumb. The sphere froze up immediately afterwards, before fixing its…gaze, or whatever that passed for it, onto Lily’s thumb, and then did a little roll.

Like a poodle asking for permission. Claud found Lily’s expression utterly entertaining a moment later, and he cleared his throat slightly. “Go on. Press your thumb down. Keep a look out for a skill or something.”

“You sound very experienced at this,” Lily muttered.

“Yeah, well, remember my Crown?” Claud shook his head. “You can call me a professional when it comes to sentient objects that are absolutely adorable.”

Lily eyed him once, and then shrugged. “Well, if I can’t trust you, then I can’t trust anyone.”

She pressed her bloodstained thumb down on the sphere. Without warning, the sphere shrank into the size of Crown. At the same time, Lily froze up, her eyes glazed over as they looked at something he couldn’t see. Claud didn’t need to think too hard to know what she had seen; a notification must have popped up, informing her of an acquisition of some weird passive skill.

“What skill did you get?” Claud asked, prompting her out of her daze.

“Artificial Life Contractor,” Lily replied.

“Eh?” Claud blinked. “Uh, do you, by chance, have a skill called Understanding too?”

“No, why?” Lily paused. “You seem to be skipping a few very important steps. Why not start from the beginning?”

The sphere bobbed up and down. “Meep!”

“You too?” Claud muttered. “Is it a given that all sentient objects make meeping sounds, or are you two just extra-special?”

Lily found herself stumped by the sphere’s sudden utterance too, but like him, she too clearly had no knowledge on the very niche topic of the language sentient objects used.

“We’ll deal with that later,” Lily decided. “Anyway, like I said, let’s start from the beginning, okay?”

“Alright, alright. Anyway, when Crown somehow bonded with me, I gained this really odd skill. It had three letters and a bunch of question marks. D-i-L, three question marks, and C.” Claud smiled. “It didn’t make sense to me back then, so I thought that it would be the same to you.”

“Oh, so that’s what you meant,” Lily replied. “Hmm. Interesting. So Crown is an anomaly?”

“Shh. The little guy’s sleeping now, but if he hears that, he’ll probably be sad or something,” Claud replied.

The sphere spun in circles for a few seconds, and Lily glanced at it. In a weird voice, she said, “Throne wants to know who Crown is, and why we keep talking about Crown.”

“Go on, tell Throne about…you know what?” Claud shook his head, and then addressed the sphere. “I’ll wake the little guy up once we’re safe and sound. I don’t want to do it here.”

“You know,” said Lily, “you’ve been oddly resistant to waking up Crown here.”

“Huh? Where did that come from?” Claud asked. “We never even broached that topic until just now.”

“That’s the point,” said Lily. “The Claud I know would have pulled Crown out the moment he saw Throne. Either your instincts are warning you not to do that, or something in this place is trying to make you ignore that possibility.”

It was Claud’s turn to freeze up. “Like…”

Lily nodded. “At that time, when we were patrolling.”

They exchanged glances as Claud ran through his thought processes. Yes, more than once, he had thought about Crown, but never did the idea of taking the fellow out to interact with Throne enter his mind.

Why?

However, the mere thought of taking Crown out here was generating a sense of danger within him. In fact, now that he thought about it, Crown had been silent ever since the two of them arrived at the Celestia Ruins. Did the little guy have something to do with this place?

He glanced at Lily. “We’ll go back first. I think this is a warning. Or something. But I get the feeling that I really shouldn’t wake Crown up here, at least.”

Lily nodded. “Alright.”

With some trepidation, the two of them and one silvery ball hurried out of the city.