After Gaius polished off an entire chicken, the raucous cheering had been replaced by more abstract words and cheers, some of which would have created fear and horror within Orb’s denizens before the Worldshaper descended upon the world. Now, these exact words, which would have been nothing short of blasphemous another era ago, were being yelled out loud.

He placed the fork back down on his plate, feeling full. The blend of bloodlust, fear and hate was getting to him, and the fact that the others here were bonding over such sentiments was creating a sense of dread within him. Gaius could feel that this entire phenomenon was nothing short of unnatural — he’d experienced it once itself, after all.

“Are you feeling better, uh, Gaius?” A man — the Lord who’d been in the centre of attention for the past few days — walked over to the boy.

“Yes. Thank you for your concern.” Gaius looked at him, and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Gaius.”

“Nice to meet you too. I’m Jing Xian, one Feng-Lang’s Lords.” He looked at the card-like artefact on Gaius’ chest, and said, “The Display reveals its owner’s name if someone stares at it for more than five seconds. Which is why I know who you are.”

Gaius narrowed his eyes at the artefact — the Display — floating behind Jing Xian, and blinked as a name popped up on it. “That’s useful. But disturbing.”

The Lord pondered over the meaning of his words for a moment, and his eyes lit up. “Ah. You can turn that off. There’s a switch at the back.”

“Glad the designers included that…” Gaius peeled the Display off his chest, after a second or so of fumbling around in the darkness. A panel fell off, revealing a bunch of switches. “Which one is it?”

“The one in the middle. The red one.”

Gaius flicked it, and after placing the panel back, he stuck the artefact back on. “I don’t think you came to visit me just to ask about my body, right?”

Jing Xian looked at the hundred-plus Knights. One of them was splashing what looked like beer on his drunken buddy, while spewing out fire from his mouth, eliciting cheers from the onlookers. His lips twitched. “Yes. Paragon Ying Xin wants to meet you.”

“Paragon Ying Xin?”

“One of the four Paragons holding the line here,” replied the Lord. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t bite. Rather, she’s quite worried about your condition…and the duration of your stay here.”

He shot another glance at Gaius’ Display, which was displaying a number slightly shy of fifty, and rubbed the back of his neck. He beckoned at the boy. “Come on. Let’s go. Paragons get antsy when we make them wait too long, even if their invited guest is a little kid.”

Gaius followed the Lord closely as they took to the skies. In the night, the boy could only make out some dim details of the defence line below them, which soon faded into a blur of darkness as his guide continued to fly higher and higher.

“It’s a big battlefront,” Jing Xian said quietly. “There are four landing zones, four defence lines laid out in Eo-Seu, each of them too far away from each other to be seen at this height. Most fliers who came from either Feng-Lang’s or Mi-Zu’s capital landed in this zone; the other zones usually see volunteer fighters from other regions.”

Tsurugi’s face flashed through Gaius’ mind for a moment, and the boy idly wondered why this Lord was taking so much time to explain what looked like insignificant details to him.

“Is this zone the most populated one?” Gaius asked, after spending some time pondering on his next words.

“In terms of elites, yes.” Jing Xian gestured towards the north and the south. “But the other zones have the thickest defence lines. A lot of people were displaced by the invading armies, and each of them have more than enough motivated to take up weapons against them once the massacres began. Half of Eo-Seu’s population have died; the other half have been formed into militia. Most of us now curse at the gods when we’re free.”

Guilt weighed down on the boy’s mind. His attack on the Demigod Nox, and how he did it, was almost certainly the reason why these gods were forced to descend on Orb. The boy didn’t know about these particular consequences at that time…and frankly, even if he had, Gaius would still have done it all the same.

But that didn’t make him feel any better. Gaius glanced down, to a featureless patch of black, and sighed. The boy’s sigh was swiftly followed by Jing Xian’s own, and with that, conversation between the two ended. The boy didn’t want to know, and the Lord didn’t want to say too much, either.

It didn’t take long before they approached a floating house. It was the kind that reminded Gaius of the fairytales he’d read to the orphans he’d taken in back on Earth — it was a small, cozy house that even had smoke spewing out of the chimmey.

“Uh.”

“Yes, it’s possible. No, I don’t know how to get one,” Jing Xian replied, in what looked like an amazingly conditioned reflex. “And don’t try asking her that question either. She’s tired of people doing that.”

“A-alright.”

The two landed on the porch, which, when considering that the entire house was literally floating a kilometre above the ground, seemed excessively large. The door swung open, and after a second of hesitation, Gaius followed the Lord in. A warm orange glow fell onto the boy’s clothes as he entered, created by a small candle flickering cheerfully.

“Paragon Ying Xin, I’ve brought Gaius over.”

“If you’re going to say that, at least do it before stepping into the house. You seem both stupid and impolite otherwise.”

Jing Xian tripped over something and fell over at these words, sending the entire place shaking from his fall. He muttered some unintelligible words, before forcing himself back up. Glaring at the inside of the house, Jing Xian beckoned at Gaius to follow him.

Someone was waiting in the middle of the living room. A woman, whose long jet-black hair reached all the way down to her hips, was swirling a glass of red liquid around, eyeing its surface.

“I think you knocked some dust into my wine when you fell down, Jing Xian,” the Paragon said, pouting slightly. “Feels like a waste to toss this away, however.”

“M-my apologies.”

“Who knew that a house floating even above the shores of the Never-ending Ocean could still get dusty?” She sighed. “I feel cheated by the realtor, but I can’t exactly do something to the perp directly.”

Silence followed after her words.

“There’s an awkward silence,” Jing Xian muttered.

“It’s only awkward if you point it out!” Paragon Ying Xin blasted back. She looked at Gaius, who was suppressing a smirk. “Oh yes, you. Gaius.”

“Mm?”

“I have a proposal for you.”