Chapter Thirty-One: The Meeting

Although Andy was quite surprised to discover he had killed the wrong person, in the end, it was merely a shadowy figure pretending to be Viscount Colin. He didn’t know the man anyway, so after a brief moment of stunned silence, he simply let it go.

With the recent upheavals, Andy was growing ever more accustomed to battle and bloodshed. He was no longer the fledgling who, when he first arrived in this world, would retch for ages and be tormented by nightmares after taking a life.

Influenced by his gaming days back on Earth, Andy began the habitual looting of the corpse.

After a thorough search, he found only a few items that seemed of any use: a mask that had fallen from Schmidt’s face, a mirror the dead man had been clutching, and a dark gray ring he wore on his finger. There was also one object Andy recognized well—the “Castellon Flame Medal” that Sir McCann had snatched from him.

While Andy was busy rifling through the corpse, Diga’s voice was raging in Bill’s mind: “How can this be? How could that thing appear here, and in the form of that mirror? Impossible, impossible! But that’s unmistakably its aura.”

Muttering to himself for a moment, Diga then addressed Bill directly: “Bill, you must get that mirror, whatever it takes!”

Perhaps overcome by agitation, he paid no heed to the awakened one beside him, who bore the bloodline of the Blind Prophet, and kept urging Bill to seize the mirror.

Having gathered his spoils, Andy was considering where to dig a hole to bury the fellow, when he heard a rustling sound behind him.

A moment later, a girl’s voice called out, “Andy, is that you?”

Turning around, Andy saw a boy and a girl emerge from behind a tree. He recognized the boy—Bill.

As for the girl, Andy stared for a long time before finally realizing it was Jera.

He hadn’t seen them since the coming-of-age ceremony; he hadn’t expected Jera would have changed so much when they met again.

Andy was struck by how much Jera’s appearance had transformed, entirely oblivious to the visual shock his own gleaming bald head was giving Bill and Jera.

Just then, Andy felt a tickle in his arms—it was Catherine.

She reached out and traced a message on his hand: “Don’t tell anyone about me!”

Andy nodded gently, and Catherine burrowed back into his arms. At some point, she had grown quite used to treating this as her little nest.

Andy felt a tumult of emotion upon seeing Jera, for the tragedy that befell the Phillips couple was, in part, a consequence of his own actions.

Though Jera now tried to present herself as mature, Bill knew she was only a year older than Catherine—back in his previous life, she would have still been in middle school. To lose her parents at such a young age—Andy, himself an orphan, felt a deep understanding of the loneliness and hardship of growing up alone in the world. He couldn’t help but feel a surge of guilt and pity toward Jera.

He looked steadily at her and suddenly declared, “Jera Phillips, from this day forward, you are my sister.”

He didn’t know if Jera could grasp the weight such words carried for someone like him, who had grown up with no family. Nor did he know whether she blamed him for the fate that had befallen the Phillips couple.

Yet he spoke his heart plainly, intending, from this day onward, to take care of Jera as if he were the Phillipses themselves.

Andy braced himself for Jera to lash out at him, to scream or accuse him, even to hit him. He was ready to take it all in silence, never raising his voice, determined to gently heal the pain and resentment in her heart.

As he waited for Jera’s response, Andy drew on his “Enhanced Memory” talent, recalling everything he’d ever read about psychology in his previous life.

“Alright!” Jera looked him in the eye and replied, adjusting her glasses. No tears, no reproach.

Her answer caught Andy off guard. Yet, strangely, he knew she understood him. Seeing her now, Andy felt a pang of sorrow.

If not for such calamity, how could that wild little girl have matured so swiftly?

Suddenly, Jera staggered. Andy reached out to steady her, just as Bill did the same.

“Back off!” Andy shot Bill a fierce glare, which, together with his bald head, made him look truly menacing. Yet in the next instant, his face softened as he gently asked Jera if she was alright.

Startled, Bill instinctively drew back his hand, then, realizing the situation, put on a fierce expression and glared back.

He reached out again, but suddenly, a jet of flame burst from Jera’s body, scorching Bill’s hand before he could react, forcing him to snatch it back.

The flames danced perilously close to Jera, yet did not harm her in the slightest.

“I’m fine,” Jera said once she’d regained her balance. “My vision just blurred again for a moment.”

She took off her glasses, adjusted the lenses as Bill had taught her, put them on, tried them out, tweaked them once more, and finally declared, “There. Perfectly clear now!”

“Nearsighted? You’re so young—how did you become nearsighted?” Andy asked with concern.

When Jera confirmed it, Andy promised to teach her some “eye exercises” later. He completely ignored Bill, who was fuming beside him.

“That flame magic! Tell me—on the Festival of Crowns, in the plaza, was that you? Was it?” Bill demanded.

Having his hand scorched by the ignition spell reminded Bill of a familiar scene. At last, he realized who had been the culprit for his embarrassment that day.

At this moment, Bill wasn’t channeling his spirit energy into the necklace, so he didn’t hear Diga, who was also raging within the trinket.

“How can this be? This makes no sense! The Blind Prophet’s bloodline is supposed to feed on fate—only great turns of destiny should deepen the awakening. She’s only just awakened, and yet today she advances further? Since when can a few words trigger such a rare bloodline’s progression? Has the world changed so much, has this bloodline become common in the tens of thousands of years since…?”

Relying on his potent spiritual power, Diga could eavesdrop on everyone present and amuse himself with silent commentary, confident he would not be discovered.

At least, until his mind swept across Catherine, nestled in Andy’s arms.

“What on earth is that thing? Why would such a terrifying creature be here, in this remote plane? Is this not the family’s Azure Realm, but that academy world teeming with monsters and prodigies?”

Diga quickly retracted every trace of his spiritual presence, not daring to let even the faintest wisp escape.

Still feeling unsafe, he huddled deeper within the necklace, suppressing his aura to the utmost.

“Meow!” Catherine poked her head out from Andy’s arms, her gaze fixed on Bill’s chest, puzzled.

“How odd. Why do I smell something delicious? Is Bill hiding dried fish in his shirt?” Catherine wondered, licking her lips.