“You are not going to injure him, right?” Souyo asked pitifully.

“I, Scathach of Connaught, take an oath to devote my life and ability in defence of Ninety-nine until my last breath, and may my enemies, including gravity, step over my corpse first before harming him.” Scathach checked my parachute again, “Is that enough for you?”

“Do you need me to recharge you again?”

“Maybe not on the plane,” She smiled, “I think I have enough Dynamics to make a landing.”

“Stop nagging, Souyo, I’m about to fly!” I yelled excitedly, “How hard can it be, right?”

“Remember to pull the cord if you fall, okay?”

“We will be falling all the time, come on,” I climbed onto the side door, “Scathach, do you need to call 123, or I’m free to jump now?”

“One second, dear,” she gathered all her hair together, using a bowtie to lock them around her neck, “landing pad three, right?”

“If you can aim for that,” Souyo was just anxiety-ridden, “if not, just land anywhere on the airfield, or even in water, as long as he’s safe.”

She took off all her earrings and necklace, stored them in the void and grabbed my shoulders. “Ready?” she asked, “I will count to three.”

I pulled her out of the plane when she said one, and for a short while it was only the wind we could hear. A series of voids expanded beneath us, and every time Scathach’s feet stepped across one of the dishes of the void, we slowed down a little, until we stopped in the middle of the air and started bouncing. It was like hopscotch in the sky, but the world was separated into two, with sea and waves lapping and glinting under us and stars dancing and twinkling above.

“YOLO! YOLO!” I screamed excitedly, “Is this the Hero’s Salmon Leap in the cartoon? Can you teach me how to do it?”

“If you are willing to learn, I’ll build a Dynamic Linkage between us,” she put her hands on mine, and quickly I felt a warm current running through my body, “imagine void as part of your body and gather them on your feet, like how you gathered void on your hand— brilliant. Now imagine your left foot stepping on your right foot, but don’t actually step on it, then right foot stepping on your left foot—”

I stepped onto a dish of the void just like she did, and flew out of her arms uncontrollably, feeling the gravity pulling me down and screaming with pure happiness. She gently dragged me back into her bosom, carefully followed my tottering pace to release her void, and when she felt I was ready, let me only step on my void and flew us in arcs.

“This is amazing! This is even more amazing than that fake flying on Titanic!” Step after step, I saw the indicator lights on the island closer and closer, “This is the most exciting thing ever! Thank you— I love you, Scathach!”

“I love you too,” She tried her best to restrain me from flying too far, “can we have five more minutes and head down to meet your aunty?”

Oh, right, I almost forgot, there was a plane circling in the air and would run out of fuel shortly. “Can we down there and do this again?” I pulled on her sleeve, “Please? You can bring me up when we evacuate the plane, also if we need to abandon the plane, we need your help to unload the Jump Drive.”

My aunty, Suer, was standing on the landing pad looking at the sky with her neck almost snapped backwards, anxiously awaiting for a parachute to open, only to find us swaying lightly in the landing like feathers. She screamed with joy, and tried to grab me midair, but I was deft enough to do a sharp brake in the air and hugged her from the back.

“Aww, how is this little god of mine flying down from heaven?” She turned around and scratched my armpits, making squelching sounds and singing cartoon theme, “Who is him? It is him! Our little hero!”

“It’s your nephew, me,” I giggled, “I brought a huge present. And I made a new friend! I want her to be part of the family.”

Did she feel guilty looking at Scathach again? I would never know, all Haos are good at hiding their feelings when they need to. “I apologise, professor,” Aunt Suer said, “look, Ninety-nine may look like a grown person, but inside he is just a kid.”

“You two know each other?” I asked a question, pretending I didn’t know the answer.

“Of course, Bao, all prominent feminists know each other,” I smelt her lying to me but didn’t mind, “isn’t that right, professor? Thank you so much for protecting Ninety-nine.”

“If there is one being protected, it would be me, ma’am,” Scathach replied, “along with many others currently on the plane.”

“Of course, I heard the briefing from Souyo. Look, Fatty was purchased on Ninety-nine’s sixth birthday as a present, and I don’t know the whole thing of it, so I am going to give this decision to him.” Aunty Suer squatted down to look me in my eyes flat, “What do you think, Ninety-nine?”

“If I decide to discard Fatty, would you buy me an AC-130?” I asked, “AC-130 being the thing in Call of Duty, with three weapons that you can switch.”

“Ah, I’m not sure if that is a safe toy for you, Baobao,” she rubbed my shoulders and called me with the name of endearment like always, “I’m sure Professor Scathach won’t agree that you need a gunship when we need to focus on humanitarian missions.”

“So we don’t have a deal?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, Baobao.”

“Okay, then,” I lay myself on the ground and spread my limbs, “I’ll protest.”

Scathach probably waited for me to wail, scream and roll on the ground, knowing that was when most kids rebelled against their families. “Pardon me,” she eventually asked, “does he do this a lot?”

“Oh, not really, only when he thinks we treated him unjust.” Aunty Suer replied, “He will get up when we give alternate conditions or agree on him, or if he gets too hungry or thirsty, he admits his failure and gets up. I’m sorry you have to see this.”

“Oh, no, actually this is a rather mild puberty rebellion,” Scathach said, sitting beside me and lying on the ground too, “but we don’t have enough time to wait, so I’m just going to protest with you.”

“Sometimes rather than yelling and intimidating the kid, it is more effective to just talk to them equally, right?”

“Aye, plus there’s the benefit that I can look him in his eyes,” Scathach leaned her head to my side, “is there anything alternative deal we can make together?”

“Right now, the things I love the most are my family being the first, and AC-130 being the second,” I said, “your chest shrinks when you lie down.”

“Baobao!” Aunty Suer called me, pretending to be angry, “That is not appropriate to say!”

“It is alright, it’s normal that people in puberty are interested in the body structure of the opposite sex,” Scathach smiled tolerantly, “it is because females have a higher percentage of body fat, and most females’ chests are fat. Fat are relatively soft, meaning they will strew around when we lie down.”

“Don’t you think I have a higher percentage of body fat too? All my friends call me Winnie the Pooh,” I patted my belly, “I have body fat because I am too lazy to move, why do women need body fat?”

“To store energy for pregnancy. Do you know what pregnancy is?”

“Yeah, when two persons fall in love with each other, they make love to each other, and if their sex is opposite, sperm merges with ovum to start pregnancy.”

“You are quite knowledgeable on that part,” she faked a cough, “I like how your family members are being transparent and honest with you.”

“It’s not me, professor,” Aunty Suer said awkwardly, “his father is very honest, I think he is missing the important sense of shame, unlike other Chinese.”

“I would assume it is worse to live in a society with overly oppressive sex education,” Scathach sighed, “if you have any other questions, dear, I’ll be happy to answer them until you are happy.”

“I will not be happy until I get what I want, but I’m more afraid of the plane falling,” I said, “I’ll cut to the point, there is something that I want, and it is not related to mass destruction, and it doesn’t cost a lot of time and money.”

“What is that?”

“You, Scathach. Can you become my family?”

Checkmate. I heard all the schemes inside me boiling at that point and swarmed out.

“If you wish, you already can consider me as a family,” she replied with a peaceful smile.

“But I want my family to stay with me forever, can you do that?” I advanced and consolidated at every step, pushing her closer and closer to a mental cliff, “Or are you just going to be like Souyo, saying you are part of the family, then abandon the family for years, hiding in Canada playing city management game with you, not even writing a letter back?”

The truth is, considering I lost part of my memory and my family lies about why I lost it, I was leaning more toward the side that Souyo was forcefully sent away from me by my family. But if I said that, I wouldn’t be able to strike her with guilty tactics, right?

“I—I’m sorry, dear, I never meant to take Souyo away from you,” She was thrown into flurried and confusion, “it is just—never mind. If I stay with you until you grow up, would you forgive us?”

“Forever!”

“Aye, aye, forever,” she reached her hand to pat on hair, with wavelets in her eyes rippling, “but you may just start puberty, soon you may find me annoying, and quickly escalate to these scenarios of ‘get away from me and my girlfriend, you old hag!’” She mocked these funny teenager’s voice.

“That would never happen,” I rolled out of the ground, “Piggy promise?”

“Piggy promise.”

To evacuate the plane above an island with abundant Ling-Chi was relatively easy, just keeping the plane at a low, almost landing altitude when everyone teleports onto the island with their Void nature. There were two that didn’t catch the timing and landed themselves in the seawater, and a few that landed on roofs, but that was why we also had the best fireman team in China on that island. The hardest part of the evacuation was Hua, he stood by the bulkhead and kissed the window time after time, his tears and snot all over it.

“It’s grand, man, fair play with this plane,” Ichabod held his shoulders with sympathy, speaking unclearly with air forcing themselves into his mouth through the missing teeth, “Look, we’ll build this bronze statue of your young lord holding this plane, in the square of Old Boyles Distillery, so you see it every time you go there to get langered—”

He cried even louder. “I think it is a terrible idea to have a children’s statue in a distillery,” Scathach raised her head from work and said, “If you are not busy, would you mind helping us unload the jump drive?”

Ichabod raised the cables when Scathach reached a hand into the gap with a spanner, “Bloody hell, this is heavy,” Ichabod complained, “in the honour of my House and ancestors, which idiot designed this thing?”

“Scathach,” Souyo answered, he was holding a stand that bore half of the weight and didn’t have the guts to complain.

“This is only a prototype, gents, I didn’t even know where it went after the contract with the government was completed,” Scathach made an uneasy cough, probably due to the dust in the machine, “still, I don’t know what would happen if this thing fall into the ocean, so we better scavenge it for later research.”

“What is going to happen to the plane?” I asked, holding the plastic bag and ready to tie it to the tube transferring fuel to the machine once the part was exposed, feeling like I forgot something important.

“Autopilot— until— fuel runs out— and sink—into the ocean,” Hua answered with hiccups.

“He seems devastating,” Scathach whispered to me, “is this plane important to him too?”

“No, he just lost an excuse to hook up girls with ‘Have you ever seen the biggest plane you will ever see,’” I deeply hoped that Scathach wouldn’t get tricked by him, therefore immediately cut the possibilities of her consoling him, “now when he says the line, girls would just slap him instead of getting fished and get aboard for sexual intercourse.”

She chuckled, her void opened up like a tiger’s large fierce-looking mouth, swallowing the machine once it was unloaded from the stands. “Do you still care to fly again, dear?” She asked, “I can build a link between all of us and go down together.”

“I’ll pass,” Souyo said, jumping down from the plane. Somehow I got used to the fact that people use void for everything, I forgot Souyo’s nature isn’t even Void.

“He doesn’t have Void as his nature,” I said.

“Ah, he’s a Demi-immortal, a hard landing won’t kill him,” Ichabod said.

I checked the amount of parachutes, I was carrying one, and five backups were still on the wall, then finally realised Souyo just jumped down a plane with no protection at all. “SOUYO!” I rushed to the door and screamed towards the sea, “PARASHUTE! You forgot the parachute!”

“By now he is probably the shape of a shepherd’s pie already,” Ichabod said, “but anyway, do you still want to fly?”

We went back to the island through the coordinate we set on Lady Boyle, because my commander’s pride in air supremacy didn’t allow me to share my and Scathach’s sky with these two clowns. Souyo covered himself in a blanket while distributing wristbands, his hair still had sea water drooping down.

“What is this for, Your Grace?” Scathach pinched her wristbands with the tips of her fingers, “Seems expensive.”

Lady Boyle took her handkerchief to wipe the moist from the wristbands before we all put them on. “Unless you purchased estates here, the cost of staying on this island is counted by minutes, dear,” Lady Boyle answered, “the band tracks your time on this island while unlocking most facilities on the island to you.”

Right, fun fact, back in 2013, credit cards were unknown to most magicians, and Aunty Suer was pretty proud of her ideas of putting credit card chips into wristbands and using them to pay with a tab. She later tried to sue Apple for copying her ideas, but that case was dropped before it could enter court.

“Of course, to thank all of you for saving my dear nephew, all the cost you spend on this island is on me,” Aunty Suer stood on the helipad above the crowd and extended her arms like a god, but that height didn’t save her from being drowned by hailings, “take whatever you want!”

“I know we call her the Penglai Tyrant,” I heard Souyo asking from behind, “but when did she evolve into a chairman?”

“Yeah, after you left, many Haos’ moral compasses just vanished—”

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I turned around to look at Souyo, only to notice that he wasn’t asking me, strangely. There was someone I never met before, a Chinese lady with a black dress stood beside him, with her hands hiding in her spacious sleeves. She didn’t seem very happy when I stared at her, just nodded, and dismissed herself in the crowd.

“Ah, don’t mind her,” Souyo said, “That is Zhuge Jing. Her relationship with your aunty is exactly like your relationship with me.”

“Don’t you remember her?” Aunty Suer frolicked around before she followed us and boarded the bus, “She used to carry you when you were an infant, and changed your diapers.”

“No, but I surely don’t remember something important,” I said, “did I leave something on the plane?”

“Does every Hao get raised by at least one Demi-immortal?” Scathach asked.

“Not everyone, I raised three when Jing raised two,” Souyo said with pride, holding himself up with the armrests like he was going to spin on a pommel horse, “I have this theory—when a Demi-immortal sees a Hao, the happiness part of the brain will be triggered, just like when a person see puppies or kittens.”

“How many Demi-immortals are there?” I asked, “Was that lady a Demi-immortal too? Why does it suddenly feel like being an immortal isn’t a privilege now? Why are there Demi-immortals everywhere?”

“Should be twenty-ish, right?” Souyo asked Scathach with caution, and she counted with her fingers, “Aye, twenty-ish on earth,” she replied, “definitely not more than 30.”

“There are only twenty Demi-immortals on earth?”

“There were more, but many Demi-immortals felt bored staying on earth and decided to explore the universe,” Souyo grabbed my hand and we swung out our arms for fun when we walked to the hall, “most probably died outside— ah, sorry, professor, I don’t mean it that way.”

“She didn’t die, I can feel it,” She gently tied the safety belt for me, although I felt like it was too tight on my intestines and unbuckled it, “her resentment is like electromagnetic radiations, no matter how far she is, it still comes to earth.”

“Scathach has a sister who’s a universe explorer,” Souyo whispered to me when she wasn’t noticing, “The last time she came back falling from the sky, she started all these Roswell incidents you read from books, and single-handedly made the United States start the entire CIA.”

“Roswell—CIA— Oh, damn!” I finally realised what I missed, “Did any of you guys see Brian?”

The CIA and Haos are not strangers. When I was a kid, CIA leadership visited me at my birthday parties, routinely sent me gifts, I even did a “one-day secret agent experience” with one retired CIA officer that the CIA assigned to me. One thing I learned from these seniors of the profession was that good spies can always immediately merge themselves into the crowd without being distinguished, Brian, obviously, was a very successful spy at that moment, I wondered how such a handsome guy with curly brown hair and shiny brown eyes can just vanish.

“Brian!” after we thoroughly checked all the buses carrying people to the visitor’s centre, and asked everyone with straight “no” answers, I sat on the ground with sore muscles, screamed with the last breath in my lungs, “Come out if you are stuck somewhere!”

“That sounds desperate,” Souyo sat next to me, “did we leave him on the plane?”

“Unless he is a rat, or had the honour to be a Void nature magician,” Ichabod said, “we made sure the plane is so empty that we didn’t even leave a bag of Tato’s on it.”

“You guys keeping snacks without telling me?” I said, reached into his jacket’s pocket and unsurprisingly found a bag of Irish chips.

“If he stayed on the plane somehow, can he fly it back to the United States territory?” Scathach asked. I had a faint suspicion that she helped him escape, but I couldn’t find any motivation.

“Not enough fuel, and the self-destruct sequence cannot be reversed once it starts,” Hua used his finger to measure distances on the map, calculating with his phone, “assume fuel efficiency 85%— the plane is going to follow its schedule of flying until it hits the mesosphere before all fuels are consumed, and start a stall that would result in disintegrate and drop into the largest dumpster of humanity called the Pacific Ocean. It was set to protect the prototype although we already unloaded it.”

“So all we can do is wait for Aunty Suer to get the radar report?”

“By the time she reached the radar office, the plane would probably already have fallen into the ocean,” Hua summarised, “I am leaning on some other sides—someone or something is capable of making him disappear without making any noises.”

“Give me a break,” Souyo inhaled dramatically, “homunculi? Again?”

“They did show off by murdering all CIA officers quietly and sent us a bloody paper with everyone’s fingerprints,” I thought back to the paper and the corpse in the dumpster, “it is either them or Mr Bennett is back, haunted to take his revenge on Brian.”

The atmosphere froze to the level even the moisture of the sea in the air turned into ice dregs. “Ah, yeah, Mr Bennett,” Ichabod clicked his tongue, “Professor? Does the ban cancel itself when he said it first?”

“What ban? Is there a scheme behind my back?”

“It is my fault, dear, I told everyone to avoid talking about Mr Bennett in front of you, because I don’t want you to be traumatised for it,” Scathach squatted down next to me to look me in my eyes, “Would you forgive me?”

Truth be told, Mr Bennett was already in the drawer of “useless for now, but may come in handy” in my brain. Why would someone in my “love” drawer care so much about whether someone in my “useless” drawer would harm my feelings?”

“I was just joking, don’t be sad,” I patted the top of her head, “since we live in a magical world, can people die and their souls come back as some kind of demon?”

“There were no previous examples of souls becoming demons, dear. Souls are just a form of energy that sails into the Void to rejoin it when the containers exceed the limitation of holding the energy.”

Well, there goes my dream of becoming a demon hunter, I thought. “Then there really aren’t many options left,” I said, “we putting everyone in Building 6.”

“Including the Boyles, Your Excellency?” Ichabod asked.

“I am terribly sorry, Lord Finnegan, this is also not my wish as the host, and I would give every Boyle time to take things from their estate suites, but we need to make sure no homunculi managed to spy onto the plane and currently hiding within the people. It is moments like this that we need to combine our forces and fulfil our noble obligations.”

“I understand— but it is Building 6,” Ichabod was surprisingly reasonable, “I will have to ask you to turn off all monitor devices in every Boyle’s room, since many of us are registered residents here. And we request the best security possible for my aunt, Grand Duchess Boyle.”

“Of course, and I will live in it with our two trustworthy Demi-Immortals. If anyone wants to hurt Grand Duchess Boyle, it will have to come across us first,” I raised my thumb towards him after he raised his, “Thank you for your understanding.”

If you tell any Haos, that Boyles is going to live in Building 6 when they go to Penglai, they’d think you are mad. Stuffing two dozen Boyles into Building 6 is exactly as difficult as stuffing an equal amount of elephants into the trunk of a Volkswagen Beetle— politically instead of physically, though, gladly we don’t need to fight titans in this world. On the surface, Building 6 is as luxurious and extravagant as any other residential building on Penglai, but literally everything in Building 6 is a tapping device of some sort. It is specially made to monitor the heavyweights and gather intelligence from them, as long as Haos want to, we can know the vagina shapes of the residents in it. I particularly loved Building 6, not because of its ability, but the fancy things in it— automated sentry tasers, tear gas sprinklers, shower heads with high-definition cameras in them, I loved these when I was a kid.

But most people didn’t know. Boyles knew what Building 6 was, because all registered property owners of Penglai were told and were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, making sure they wouldn’t obstruct the works in Building 6, getting close to it or telling other people what it was for. I thought about stuffing Ms Josephine into Building 6, but it would be too obvious when everyone else was living in a different building, so this decision just got my plan back on the original track.

“I like how magicians put up their thumbs towards people,” I said to Scathach on the way to Building 6, “Remember when Cornelia did it to me first? I was confused about how to reply, so I just put up my thumb and she surprisingly accepted that.”

“Would you care to hear the history about it?” She smiled.

“Of course!”

“When you extend your arm and put up your thumb, opening that side of your eyes and closing another, you see an image of the thumb,” She patiently waited until I gestured a gun, aimed by thumb at Souyo’s face and he played dead, “now， don’t move your head, close your right eye and open another, do you see your thumb moving?”

“Yes!”

“The distance your thumb moved times 10, is the distance between you and the object you are aiming,” Scathach stroked my hair, “in the old times, magicians with Void nature needed to constantly measure distances to effectively use magic within their range, and this was the easiest method and didn’t require any tools, therefore put up a thumb and close one eye quickly became a universal praise for all magicians even after we don’t need to use the Void.”

“Do you need some hair clips?” Souyo passed a handful of them, mumbling with the corners of his mouth holding his clips and his hand gathering all his hair, “The crystal and sapphire dome entrance there was held up by air pressure.”

“Why do you think there is a need to tell her that?” Hua complained. He had a history of asking flight attendants to dress in light skirts and use the airlock to create the Marilyn Monroe scene.

I kicked his butt when we get off the cart, and prised the door open with Souyo until everyone except Hua was in and Souyo was fully dried. The dome wasn’t only there for pretty, the pressure and oxygen in it also served as a hyperbaric treatment to maximise blood flow and naturally increase LC production. Boyles seemed like they got used to this kind of treatment, but others were stretching and laughing in the hall, talking about how good they felt.

“Hey,” Scathach leaned on the marble pillar with half an apple in her hand, “want an apple?”

Hua glanced at the fruit basket on the top of that pillar and tittered— she didn’t know that these pillars hold fruits so the room could be fumigated with fruit fragrance, instead of food purposes.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” I kicked in his legs, and stood on my tiptoes but couldn’t reach the basket on top, “Scathach, I can’t reach it.”

“Not asking me for help now?” Souyo teased me, “Is this the paid day off I have been waiting for in 13 years?”

“Because you can’t reach it too,” I corrected him. Ichabod witnessed the three of us eating fruits that weren’t meant to be eaten, but he was noble enough to not judge. “If you fancy fruit, Your Excellency,” he kindly reminded us, “we actually produce the finest strawberries and raspberries in the entire empire at Emerald Isle. I’ll remind the steward to deliver a box to your room.”

“Oh, can I get some strawberries, too?” Hua raised his hand, “My wife loves strawberries.”

Ichabod squinted at him, his eyes asking “Lecher like you can have a wife?” for him quietly. “Oh, he doesn’t need any strawberries,” I said, tossing the remaining of my pear into Hua’s mouth, “I just decided to reward him with all these fruits in the room for his brave act of saving us.”

“Aw, boss—” he switched onto a pitiful face.

“Too late now, Captain.”

The strawberries Ichabod sent weren’t filled in a box, it was a full crate of them on a luggage trolley, stacked in neat piles like lobster-backs full of grenades on them. I stepped one foot on the trolly and slid myself into the living room like I was on a scooter, leaving my family at the entrance.

“Care for a cup, professor?” Aunty Suer invited, walking to her minibar excitingly barefoot, “D’Yquem, 1921, a gift from ex-ambassador de Vimeur. Told me it was the sweetest year of all time, but I never had a friend that would open the bottle with me.”

“With all due respect, my lady,” Scathach’s smile seemed a bit awkward, “we may still face a threat of homunculi at this moment.”

“Did my baby-darling tell you about the intelligence of Haos?” Aunty Suer leaned on the bar, “Unlike rocket scientists like you, we are a pretty dumb house.”

“No one is dumb,” Scathach replied, “not even the person who chooses to walk the academia road is dumb. And I was scheming of digging Ninety-nine to my research group.”

“Takes one to know one. Of course, Haos never make decisions this late at night, because we know they would be wrong,” Aunty Suer’s pinky finger smoothed the imaginary goatsbeard she doesn’t have, “word of advice— relax, let our Secret Service handle it for a night. Nothing would happen.”

“Scathach is a whiskey guy,” I added, swinging my legs, sitting on the trolly.

“We have whiskeys too, although I have to admit, I don’t know much about any European beverages,” Aunty Suer held the bottles with both hands to exhibit them to Scathach, “or we can have both. Choices are for youngsters like Ninety-nine during Christmas, we are adults that can have beverages anytime, anywhere, whenever we want.”

“Hey!” I protested.

“Thank you very much, but I’m afraid it would be a waste of such good wine for people like me.” Scathach seemed a bit nervous standing in the hall.

“Nonsense. Have a glass, you are family now, I don’t take no for answers.” Aunty Suer poured equally into three glasses, “Look, these are old wines, it would be even more of a waste if we did not finish them before time does.”

“Good news, we are not nobility-based like the empire," Souyo raised his glass and toasted, knowing what horrible thing would happen once Aunty Suer touched Alcohol, “Bad news, the woman inviting you is called Penglai Tyrant for a reason. For the ladies’ health!”

“For the ladies’ health,” I echoed, looking at them sipping the thing I didn’t find attractive at all.

“And that wine washed down all my sense of shame just now,” Aunty Suer smiled, looking at Scathach, “I do have a favour to ask. We would arrange a personal room for you, but since there are potential threats, I would be more confident if you stayed here in the suite — this suite’s bedrooms are even more dressed than the common rooms.”

“I am at your disposal, my lady,” Scathach smiled back, “I will protect both Haos until my last breath.”

I was a bit hesitant about asking my aunty to give her Souyo and keep Scathach as my guard, since I was afraid that would hurt Souyo’s feelings, but my aunty dismissed my misgivings with a laugh. “No, darling, you two can focus on protecting my baby boy here,” she stole some strawberries from the crate and swallowed them, “Me, on the other hand, beg for homunculi to come at me so I would have a good fight.”

“Before we call her the Penglai Tyrant, her nickname was Invincible,” Souyo explained, “because she usually beat all of us with a single hand.”

“Speaking of which, didn’t they call you a Warrior Queen in that cartoon?” Aunty Suer clicked her lips like she was kissing the air, “So, after this insider thing, let’s see who jumps higher?”

“We should focus on this insider thing first,” I wasn’t ready to see one of my family chopping another’s arm down, “let’s go visit Lady Boyle, she’s easy to convince into things.”

“Why, good idea,” Aunty Suer jammed the cork back, “it’ll be a perfect girl’s night.”

But before that, we traded 4 pounds of strawberries for a leg of prosciutto, some smoked salmon and a bunch of colourful cheeses with a replete government clerk who just raided the dining hall— if you call a half-drunk Hao threatening that she would smash his head with a wine bottle as trading. Lady Boyle was happy that we went to her suite for girl’s night, as for the news we brought, however, not so much.

“How is that possible?” She even sounded tearful at that moment.

“Calm down, Your Grace,” I jammed a strawberry into her mouth before she could burst into crying, “we have the home advantage here, everyone can be recharged, under 24/7 surveillance, war robots hiding in the wall, three Demi-Immortals and one Hao Suer, it is impossible to lose.”

“Your Grace, we are merely inviting you to draw on another great deed we are going to achieve together,” Scathach was assigned to play the better cop of mine, “The last time we saw the officer, he was reviewing your last painting, aye?”

“Yes, speaking of that, I believe that was the last time I saw him,” Lady Boyle frowned, trying her best to remember, “I’m sorry— I’m not good at remembering people.”

“We are making a possible hypothesis, dear, that your painting on the plane saved many people,” Aunty Suer passed a glass to the trembling hands, “it was a boost to all the magicians on the plane, forcing the invader to pick on the easiest target— there are examples of great artists like you, who’s creations can waver even the most venomous attacks.”

“Like Picasso’s Guernica, Your Grace,” Scathach added.

Like hell it was, I thought, looking at Cornelia when she looked back, her eyes clearly shouted silently to agree with me.

“Oh, please, not addressing me like that,” Lady Boyle seemed overwhelmed by their flattery, “I don’t even know if I can keep the title in the next decade.”

“Because of reason like that, we should work twice as hard to keep every Amelian alive and away from harm, right?” Aunty Suer raised her glass towards her, “To your health and many other Amelians’ health, dear. We would really appreciate it if you accompany us, observe closely for your next art and help us clean the obstructions to the future we all seek.”

These words brought tears to Lady Boyle’s eyes. Back then I didn’t know what using benevolence and kindness to rule was, I just wondered how a little girl’s soul like hers could rule the 8 Void Cities in Ireland. “Maybe she is very eager to have a friend,” Souyo said when he brought me and Cornelia to the ice cream bar, “it must be lonely to be the Grand Duchess of Ireland.”

“Tamade,” Cornelia echoed.

“That word does not mean yes, my lady, and I would suggest you not say it again because it is kind of dirty,” Souyo said mildly, “so, I guess Suer is officially an Amelian.”

“What is Amelian?”

“The people who support young Princess Amelia as the next empress,” Souyo squeezed extra chocolate syrup on my share before passing it to me, “I think most people here are Amelians, and most female Imperials are, too.”

“Ah, right,” I suddenly remembered the possibly second most cunning guy on the island, “we have a potential ally.”

I found a chance that Cornelia wasn’t sticking to me like a chewed toffee on teeth, and sneaked off to Ms Josephine’s room. My grudge didn’t allow me to bring ice cream to her, but out of politeness, I still brought some strawberries when visiting, leaving Souyo and Cornelia in the ice cream bar. I stood outside her washroom and listened to the rhythmic cascade of the shower for 15 minutes, wondering why girls take such a long time for a shower, and eventually couldn’t wait any longer.

“Ms Josephine?” I knocked on the washroom door, “Is there a loud shower because someone else already killed you and is using the noise to cover?”

And the sound of showering stopped, followed by a sound of gentle rippling. “Come in,” she said.

I doubted and thought I heard that wrong, so I waited until she said it twice. She soaked in the bathtub with a tiring face, trying her best to keep her head only above the water.

“I’m surprised you would get your hands dirty by yourself,” she blew colour bubbles towards me.

“How can you even not dirty your hands by yourself?” I asked back, “Using your feet to pick up things?”

“Yeah, whatever,” She sighed, “just do it quick.”

I ain’t the smart kind of person, and her words are truly puzzling, so I improvised my magic nature by filling my void with cold tap water, dumped onto her head, and spent the next best moment of my life laughing at her jumping out of the bathtub and giving bursts of screaming.

“What was that for?” She snatched the towel I passed to her, “You just ruined the most perfect rose bath!”

“Ah, it’s just some petals.”

“Just some pedals? Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to hybrid them?” She was so angry at me that she chuckled, “No, seriously. If I am going to die, at least let me die in a comfortable bath with my favourite roses.”

“That is pathetic, if I am going to die, it was either under the circumstances of me killing as many of the enemies I could before my last breath, or being surrounded by loved ones and sinking my consciousness into the void,” I looked at her mind losing concentration for a short moment there, like my words brought her mind down a stream of memories, “Josephine?”

“Oui, Mon chat en bottes?” She subconsciously answered.

“What?” It took me a second to process her speaking a different language, “Monsha on baos?”

That vacant face only stayed there for a blink of an eye, before she could reorganise herself into another person. “Nothing,” Ms Josephine answered, casually wearing a bathrobe, “I suppose you are not here to kill me.”

“Quite the opposite,” I said, “what about you help me find something with your skill, and I give you back your freedom?”