“Mommy, look!” Nelly jumped around the room, “What awe all these chains fow?”

“Don’t touch those, Nel.” Cecily warned her, “They’re dirty, and I don’t want you getting any kinds of sicknesses from them. Who knows how many people were cuffed in them before…”

This sort of made Nelly anxious as she finally realized that the place we’re in isn’t really a five star resort or anything of the sort. Still, she’s brave. She didn’t at all cry, despite how teary her eyes got from the fear, she just shook her head back and forth as if to get all the anxiety off of her before slapping herself on the cheeks to psyche herself up. This cute little action of hers made Cecily and me chuckle a bit.

“Don’t wowwy, mom and dad!” Nelly proudly proclaimed, “I’ll find us a way out of here, just you wait!”

“That’s all well and good, Nelly.” I replied, “But we’re not worried at all.”

“Huh?”

Immediately, I flicked my fingers up in order to demonstrate my ability to use Spark. Her Green eyes glowed brighter than ever as she approached the flame. Yeah, I really couldn’t care less about being in jail for the nth time, since I can just as easily leave the place as I so please. That being the case, it seems my dear daughter really wants to learn how to use her first Iro Ability, so why don’t I teach her while I’m at it?

“Look here, Nel!” I waved the flame around, “This is Spark! Want me to teach you how to do it yourself?”

Slowly nodding without looking away from the flame, her puppy-like expression showed absolute interest in the notion. “Want…”

“Lune, just get us out of here, please?” Cecily gave me a worried expression, “We managed to spread some misinformation about the Lis army, effectively upping their chances of winning out in the war, but that still hasn’t assured anything just yet.”

“Hold on…” I put away Spark, leaving Nelly a bit disappointed, “Don’t tell me you wanna go back there? Cecily, I was joking back when we were talking to that rookie a couple minutes ago, but that thing about us not being affiliated with either side wasn’t a lie.”

“But Pierre is Jorgen’s brother!” She shot back, “I told you before that the guilt of killing all those people in the past has been haunting me, and now I finally feel like I can atone for it with this! If I help the Lis side, then all of those people can happily go back to their families! It all evens out!”

“Evens out?!” I furrowed my wide open eyes, “Have you gone mad? Cecily, we need to think about Nelly first and foremost! A foreign friend of mine taught me this while I was stranded in Cardina, but if there’s ever a choice between saving yourself and saving another, you choose yourself, got it?!”

“That’s…” She bit her tongue, “That’s so selfish! How many people saved your ass for no reason at all, and you have the gall to say that?! You’re getting cocky, Lune! Because the only reason you’re alive right now is because countless people risked their lives to get you here!”

This girl…! Just what the hell does she mean by that? Is she trying to somehow mock me or something? I swear to all Four Gods I’m gonna slap her again…!

No, wait. Calm down… I need to talk with her, not at her. Cecily and I have a goal to complete, and that’s to get back home safely with Nelly. This means we can’t just go ahead and try and stop a war, right? This isn’t a gang dispute, however she still keeps insisting it is. And don’t get me wrong – I wanna help Pierre, I really do. I mean, if anyone’s against war, it’s me, but there are just some things that are impossible to do.

Taking a deep breath and counting to ten, I confronted her, albeit peacefully. “What do you mean cocky? Cecily, it’s exactly because I’ve endured so much that I wanna stray away from danger. Why are you so adamant about rejoining the war?”

“Because life is important.” She explained, “And if there’s ever an option to save someone’s life, I wanna take it. Lune, if you could save the people you’ve lost in your life, wouldn’t you take that choice yourself?”

These words sent me back a few years. I immediately recalled the words of Linus after he cut off my fingers. Treasure your life, he said, you’re not immortal. Falling to the ground while still examining the stub where my pinkie finger used to be, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of it all. Linus, the man who I’ve hated more than everything after all the things he’s done to me, I had finally understood his words completely. I, of all people, was the one that was propagating saving your own skin instead of looking out for others, and the very thought made me sick to my stomach.

“You’re right.” I uttered, “We need to save those guys! Each and every one of them! But, no matter how much we want to, there’s just no way to do so… I mean, if it was so easy to just end a war, then it wouldn’t be raging for the past couple of years, right?”

“So you finally understand?” Cecily chuckled, “It doesn’t really matter how we’ll do it. I’m just glad we’re on the same page on this, hehe!”

This girl…! Heh, that smile of hers is adorable. It looks like controlling my rage really does have its benefits, huh? I’m certain that if I didn’t do so, then I’d probably have just repeated what I had done outside the sleeping quarters back in the Lis base… Thankfully it never came to that.

She’s right, though. As long as we’re all safe and sound, as long as we’re all getting along, then we can do anything we set our minds to!

“Ahem!” Nelly caught our attention, “Now that you guys settled everything. Dad, please teach me that fiwe twick!”

“She really wasn’t paying attention to our quarrel at all, huh?” Cecily stood confused.

“Yeah, looks like she’s used to it…” I felt a tinge of shame form in me.

***

“So you stick out your pinkie and ring finger, then think of something that really makes you angry!”

“Like what?” Nelly stood confused.

Gah, looks like it’s not gonna work after all. Nelly’s still a child, too young to get mad about anything in life. Meil faced the same issue, so I annoyed the crap out of him and even dug deep into his mind just to see what makes him tick artificially, but I really don’t wanna do that to my five year old daughter. Well, looks like she’ll have to wait a bit before she gets it…

“Whoa!” Cecily suddenly shouted, a bright little flame glowing on her fingertips, “I did it!”

“Wha-?! You were following along as well?” I jumped in surprise.

“Ehe~!” She giggled before donning a serious face, “I just imagined you having relations with another girl and the flame came naturally.”

“…” I didn’t know what to say, “Sorry…”

“Even mom can do that, but I can’t?” Nelly sulked.

“Aha-ha, don’t worry about it, Nelly!” I nervously chuckled, “You’ll get it eventually. Actually, this Iro Ability is kind of a sign of mental stress, so I’m glad you can’t do it, at least for now.”

She still didn’t seem satisfied with my answer, but for now that didn’t matter. Indeed, a Red Iro’s Ability is that of rage, it manifests into a fiery passion that glows like none other, burning whatever it touches with ease. It’s really not befitting of a young girl’s mind, despite her less than optimal parents, as well as her even worse upbringing.

Honestly though, just what the hell was Cecily thinking, bringing Nelly all the way to Abyssus Solis? I get that she wanted me to feel a bit worse for what I had done by seeing my dearest daughter all grown up, but she’s still far too young to be seeing all this stuff!

Well, then again, I doubt Cecily had expected us to be going through Sulfury and getting caught up in some more issues. Really now, I wanna go home, but it’s been so long that I don’t even know what I consider my home to begin with. Thinking back, I’ve lived a pretty nomadic life thus far – be it in the ARA base, the inn in Cardina, and even Oden for a short while. All of these places served as temporary homes until I could get my bearings, but to think I still haven’t found a suitable place to settle down even this many years later…

Well, the closest I ever got to that was probably with Marina, but due to obvious reasons, I can never get that time back. I mean, I do own Lichtenstelle, but I never even got around to making a shelter there. Also, given our wanted level, I can’t even go there now and request a couple builders to make a house there! The only thing that’s waiting for us there is Marina’s resting place and the prison. Shame too, I really envisioned a cool little safe haven for us there…

“Alright then, let’s go.” I made sure I still had all our passports safely tucked in my pockets.

“Go whewe?” Nelly questioned.

Using Materialize without giving her any time to think about it, I had taken the metal bars that were covering the hole to the outside and keeping us in. “Where? Humu, the answer is Outta here!”

Barely squeezing through the tight hole, I had managed to exit the jail cell and was now officially on the other side of the base. Now there was nothing stopping us from making it to the dock. Oh, and so as not to have them endure the same pain as I did, I simply decided to summon Nelly and Cecily in my arms using Materialize.

This is something I’ve learned back in Oden while training Meil, but we figured out that you can apparently summon any person freely, as long as you can imagine how they look like and know the basic composition of a human body. By the way, it’s Water (35l), Carbon (20kg), Ammonia (4l), Lime (1.5kg), Phosphorus (800g), Salt (250g), Saltpeter (100g), Sulfur (80g), Fluorine (7.5g), Iron (5g), Silicon (3g), as well as some other minor elements... What? D-Don’t ask how I know all this stuff, it’s just something I read in a chemistry book, okay? Then again, it might’ve been an alchemy book now that I think about it…

“Can you at least teach me that, dad?” Nelly gave me puppy-dog eyes while I was carrying her in my arms.

“Maybe later, right now we gotta book it!”

And so, without any more obstacles in between us and the dock, we…

“We’re going east!” Cecily shouted, “That’s where the battlefield is, after all!”

“Right! And I think I just might have the perfect plan for us to stop the war!”

Hehe, you didn’t really think I had forgotten about all those poor soldiers fighting a war they don’t wanna be a part in, did you? Lune Grimheart is a lot of things, but he’s nothing if not a man of his word… most of the time.

Currently, the people of Sulfury are fighting neck and neck in an endless stalemate just to the far right side of us, if looked at on the map. In the dead center of the battlefield, located in the dead center of the continent, stands Auros’ Throne. I think you can already guess what my plan is from just this much…!