There is a saying— Those who committed murder wished to be discovered. That is why they often leave clues — or in their perspective— some kind of prowess display.

“Scathach,” I called my friend, “if you are a Demi-Immortal, you must lived as long as Souyo did, right?”

“I might have the luxury to have a few more years of life experience than Mr. Normandy here,” she nodded. It felt a bit weird looking at that pink track on her neck, along with the slight skin colour difference between her newly grown head and the old body.

Souyo busted into short laughter. Back then I didn’t know Scathach was the most ancient Demi-Immortal, so I only thought he sneezed.

“Souyo said he was seeking Jack the Ripper in England when he was active, and saw that letter written by him. Were you doing the same?”

“Aye, half of the Demi-Immortal community were there, we were suspecting a magician did it.”

“You see, this letter they wrote us— is equally artistic.” I stared at the piece of paper with a dozen blood fingerprints on it, “It would feel even better if they are not just threatening us. Brian, are you certain that these come from your squad members?”

“Yes, sir,” Brian held the paper, scrutinizing the bloody imprints. “a CIA officer is required to remember all his team members’ fingerprints during training.”

“Odd team-building exercise,” Souyo leaned himself on the wall.

“Shouldn’t all CIA officers and Marine soldiers just be very smart in order to survive?”

“Oh, I am actually certain that neither of these jobs requires the applicant to even have a brain,” the engineer snorted, “Nor being Ignorant, to be specific.”

Brian opened his mouth like he was about to argue, but eventually said nothing. “It is still a bureaucratic agency, Ninety-nine.” Souyo replied sagely, using his way to get Brian out, “Remember, for every ten people in a bureaucracy, there are usually six idiots, one genuinely intelligent but quiet person, and the remaining three are either clever folks pretending to be dumb or idiots masquerading as smart.”

“Glad to know I’m not adding that six of NC5 into 7, isn’t that so, Brian?” I chuckled, “What are my parents?”

“I can tell you, but then I’ll have to kill you.” He playfully threatened and reached to tickle me.

“Gentlemen, I understand you two might not be too concerned, thanks to that peculiar magic you refer to as 'plot armour,' but the rest of us are dealing with genuine life emergencies here,” The engineer, twirling his moustache into an awkward smile, interjected, “Mr Hao, I’m quite certain you wouldn't wish for any harm to befall your newfound friend and potential future professor.”

“Don’t let our friendship fool you, I consider each and every one of you Imperials as valuable assets, Mr Bennett, that is why I am calling you here.” I looked at the newest member of my mini council, “If you wouldn’t mind, miss—”

“Josephine.” She smiled at me, I remembered that scene of her hazel eyes for a lifetime.

What I found interesting about the Imperials was that, when a homunculus pushed a piece of paper smeared with bloody fingerprints under the door, none of them dared to pick it up. Instead, they collectively voted on a representative to call Souyo — democracy, at its finest. The chosen representative was a well-rounded woman with brown, curly hair. Her smile reminded me of the painting of Venus in our dining room. However, when she stood next to Scathach, I couldn't help but feel a cultural difference larger than the gap between aliens and humans for some reason.

“So,” I began, “they just stuffed this piece of newspaper in? No cut-off fingers? No ears?”

“Why do we have to have fingers and ears?” Souyo asked me gently, “Even mafias don’t do that anymore —and no cruel sayings in front of ladies, please.”

“Sorry for that, ladies. I’m just confused.”

"Maybe it's a message indicating they've captured these CIA officers?" Scathach offered possibly the best circumstances.

"I honestly don't know, I’m the only dumb guy here.” My confusion seeped into my response, "But we have a professional here—Brian, you were a Marine, you are a detective, you are smart. What do you think?”

“Blimey. How can this be an extortion attempt?” The engineer's words rushed out before Brian could react, “This is clearly a threat — don’t send anymore down, or your finger also will be on a piece of paper —”

“Or perhaps they want us to struggle and panic.” Ms. Josephine, in the whirl of a thousand chaotic thoughts, casually tossed the life ring of wisdom towards me.

“What do you mean?” I looked at her, not knowing I was staring at the solution.

"Diplomatically speaking, we need to consider their primary objective," Josephine explained, gracefully unfurling an exquisite hand fan as she spoke. "You and Mr. Normandy, the two of you are their focus. The rest of this building is, politely put, expendable. But sparing two lives amidst an entire crowd is akin to picking out two round pearls from an ocean of clams. In fact, they missed their mark with Mr. Normandy the last time."

“If I knew that, I would have to take the hoody off.” Souyo joked, “So you prefer to think of this as a deterrence?”

“I’m glad we reached a mutual understanding.” Ms. Josephine nodded, “We are the absolute weak side in this negotiation. When you are facing a stronger opponent on the diplomatic table, you bluff it. When you are facing a weaker opponent, you confuse it. Whether they are alive or dead — honestly, not the point here.”

“So we are facing choices, huh?” I grabbed onto that life ring firmly, “If we send some messengers down — they either kill the messengers if they are Imperials, or detain them if Souyo and I go down. Either way will make their job easier.”

“Or we get scared and decide to stay in our shell — we have 500 people up here. Three days of starvation and thirst will force some of us to give up and lose the will to escape.” Scathach added.

“Doesn’t sound like a glorious end either way, is it?” The engineer mocked, “They caught a good timing, even if we call for military support, by the time they arrive, all Enclaves here will have starved to death.”

“What is the difference between calling you an Enclave and an Imperial?” I leaned in closer to Scathach and asked quietly, “Am I calling you guys wrong the whole time?”

“Enclave is like ‘American’ while Imperials is like ‘U.S Citizens,’” Scathach whispered back.

“Ah, got it, I thought it was more like 'American' versus 'Yankee,’” I turned to Brian, “Hey, Bri, I guess you’ll have to go downstairs with me. Ms. Josephine, can you please pass the information of this meeting to all the Imperials?”

Everyone behind the door reacted to Ms. Josephine’s words differently. Some cried, some frustrated, some just stupefied there and quietly said “Valhalla.” Mad Max movie came out two years after this moment, so it wasn’t an easy thing for a Chinese teenager to understand the culture of Valhalla.

“Aren’t you guys magical Brits that believe some weird version of Christianity?” I asked Scathach, “Why Valhalla as part of your culture?”

“In many ways, the Empire is an immigration country.” Scathach explained, "In its early days, the Empire relied heavily on marriages to absorb neighbouring regions, gradually expanding across the entire North Sea.”

“Are you also married to some kind of lord?” I gasped in horror.

“No, I left Ireland at a young age, befriended some royals, and they granted me a small island they considered worthless. Then the Romans arrived, trained and married some magicians known as 'Gauls,' and the Imperials began fighting the Gauls until both sides ran out of manpower. They eventually signed peace agreements through marriages, waited a few generations for offspring, and then resumed fighting, repeating the cycle. The Gauls eventually split into Normandy—” She patted Souyo’s arm, “— and Francia. Then Francia was divided into France and the Holy Roman Empire — Holy Roman Empire is later divided into Germany, Austria and Switzerland—”

“I know the Holy Roman Empire, Habsburgs. My dad likes them, they send an ambassador to my birthday party every year.” I found myself gratified smugly, “Uncle Kelvin doesn’t like them, though. He said a Habsburg couldn’t even have two pennies to rub together, so I guess they are broke now.”

“Habsburgs are doing quite well, Ninety-nine, Kelvin is just upset because we couldn’t reach an agreement on some businesses.” Souyo noted gently, “There is — many people from the House of Habsburg are very kind, aren’t they, professor?”

“Aye, well, Ninety-nine, the Empire just has a little bit of Welsh, a little bit of Irish, a little bit of Francia — a little bit of every world, I assume.” Scathach opened the door for me, “And cultures merged. Northern Europeans believed Void was Valhalla—”

She stopped abruptly when we all noticed the crowd gathered on the other side of the door, they tried to shut the door when we opened it, yet Brian quickly stuffed his foot in between and bumped the door open. For a brief moment, it felt like I had stepped into Valhalla. People filled the hall, but instead of bearing gifts of flowers and liquor, they brandished sharpened broom handles, chair legs, and even a silver tea tray. As a Hao, I had encountered many unusual weapons, but this was the first and only time I'd seen someone who dared to threaten a Hao with a silver tea tray. The only genuinely threatening figure among them was a noble lady clutching a trembling revolver in her delicate hands as if they'd never held anything heavier than two pounds. Brian immediately raised his rifle in her direction, she met the barrel's gaze, her body quivering but her revolver steady.

“Stop. Turn around and return to that room.” her voice quavered, “That Ignorant planted some wrong idea in your mind, dear. You cannot leave.”

“Boyles?” Souyo whispered after a sigh.

“Aye.” Scathach replied softly, “Tricky.”

I remained unfazed. In a situation where a beautiful lady pointed a gun at me and obviously lacked the strength to pull the trigger, I couldn't be bothered. "I mean no offence, my lady," I waved at Ms. Josephine, who was similarly surrounded by Boyles. She gave a rather bitter smile from behind the makeshift barriers, gently fanning herself. "Please release Ms. Josephine. She did nothing but pass along some messages."

“That Ignorant gives you the idea of running away, like how he evaded battle and let his teammates die, right?” Her voice didn't quite match the European nobility I had imagined, I would never imagine a noble lady so desperately grasping the floating plank even before the ship sank, “I don’t want to harm you, boy, not even after what you did to us. But you must return to that room immediately.”

“How about you try making us?” Souyo pulled out the blade. He looked like a failing dam with a huge crack of a smile on his face at that moment, “I’m honestly surprised that you still have energy to spare, when we ordered you to drain your Dynamics in these whale oils.”

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

That made them look even more panicked— I didn’t give them a proper reason to take their whale oils and energy, since we didn’t know if someone would sell intelligence for their own lives. later I got to know that the Empire of Enclaves stopped using whale oil as a main source of energy storage a long time ago, and the oil we gathered came from people’s souvenirs, arts, and even family heirlooms before they drained every bit of their energy into them instead of using that energy as a straw to clutch at when homunculi potentially breaks in.

Or— use their Void to restrain me. At least I was lucky enough that they would prefer to trust my decision than save some energy and capture me.

“Escalating is not helping, Mr. Normandy.” Scathach pushed the rapier back to the scabbard, “Ninety-nine?”

“Look, we need the stuffed whale oil for a big plan, and by the way, your pistol is as beautiful as your eyes.” I continued my attempts to calm and persuade her, even though I started to feel the irritable cat’s claws scratching my lungs, “I especially love how you use gold and emeralds to decorate the handle and cylinder, but let’s be honest, putting melted gold onto these patterns on your revolver’s cylinder can easily cause it to jam.”

“Do you want to test that theory?” She pulled down the hammer like any dumb guy from a Hollywood script would do to threaten others.

“Actually, Good enough, look, I’m pretty sure this is just a misunderstanding.” the engineer tried to push Brian’s gun down, “Actually, the oils will be used to save us all. We just need to lower all the guns—”

“No, I don’t,” I said, grabbed the barrel of that revolver and effortlessly robbed it away from her, “you don’t have any chance, anyway. You didn’t open the fucking safety.”

And she fell to the ground like I robbed not only the gun but also her spine. “Didn’t the guy who gave you this gun teach you never to point a gun at people?” I asked, opening the safety and firing a shot towards the ground 1 inch away from her feet just to prove her wrong. Sad, I thought, no gun deserved to lose her virginity at something that her shooter meant to miss — it felt like carefully keeping a hymen complete just to penetrate it with a cucumber. But they couldn’t understand my philosophical thinking, the Boyle lady was busy bouncing her white instep off from the ground and crying in fear, and the rest cleared me a circle of fear at the fastest speed possible without starting a trampling accident. I directly went to the young adult who fearlessly put her between me and her terrified mother, flicking on the trigger guard with my finger and looking at her face turning darker and darker with each click.

“I’m assuming you are also from the House of Boyle, my lady,” I said.

She nodded. as frequently as my pet falcon pecking beef bits.

“My pleasure, I grew up watching that cartoon you made— We do business with Boyles too — not as often as your emperors since your level isn’t that high yet, but I am sure we know each other’s House well.” I peeked at her crotch, “So, this gun is yours.”

“Oh, lord, mercy—” The noble mother wailed, “Cornelia—”

“I am grand, ma.” She said in a weird accent, “I take all the responsibilities, my lord.”

“Don’t ‘my lord’ me, not even ‘sir’ — god. Is it just you two or do all white people like to call people that?” I used the spare hand to appease my hair from the impetuous seeping through my head, “Yeah, look at your daughter’s crotch, ma, either she has male genitalia longer than a bottle of Dr Pepper or you guys took zero effort trying to hide that concealed holster. It’s called concealed for a reason. I’m just going to double-check, both of you have no idea of how actually to use this thing, right?”

To think about it now, if it was me nowadays, or Cornelia showed any sign of stubbornness and reluctance, I would just shoot her in the head, and we don’t have to continue the story here. But Scathach was there, I don’t want to admit it, but it is hard for an Asian teenager to understand the difference between Irish-Scottish and Irish-Irish, and my finger became soggy to pull the trigger when my subconscious whispered to me not to make my new friend frustrated when I kill her fellow people.

“No, Your Excellency,” She responded quickly, which honestly bought her a future to live.

“Ninety-nine,” I heard Scathach saying gently, “Maybe we can focus on the bigger problem here.”

“Well,” I lowered the gun, slowly opened the chamber and picked the fired shell, “First things first, never load 6 rounds into a revolver until you fully understand the mechanism and shoot the same gun at least two thousand times. Do you have ammo with you?”

“Ammo, Your Excellency?”

“Ammunition? Bullet? This round thing that looks like a mini pillar?” I looked at her flustering to find the thing in that holster played with emeralds, “Look, if you don’t even know how ammo and gun work, it’s best not to carry it around.”

“This is from my grandfather, Your Excellency, he used it to survive the Second Ignorants’ War.” She hurried to pass me the rounds but dropped more than passed, “Now we use it as our family amulet.”

“he survived a war with a never-fired Webley revolver? He was definitely not even near the front line. But again, if you don’t know guns, don’t load all cylinders. One day you may have a Semi-automatic pistol, that looks like some kind of metal box, don’t pull the upper slide when you insert the bullet-box when you are carrying it because that will make it ready to fire too.” I pointed at the cylinders towards her before I loaded the gun again, “Because gun sometimes fires on accident. The less you know about a gun, the bigger the chance. Especially where you hid your gun, if a bullet hit your womb or thighs, it will tear your arteries and you will die before they can send you to a hospital. Do you follow me so far?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Secondly, these decorations look cool, but you see these patterns here— they help the gun to function. Putting Jewellery and gild gold on a gun doesn’t help anything, they will jam it, or cause it to blow up, so don’t do that.” I tried my best to be a good instructor and pointed out everything to her while teaching, “Lastly, you see this hammer-looking thing here? When it strikes the body of this gun, it fires. The safety here only stops you from pulling the trigger, so if the hammer strikes due to other reasons like you smashed it or you bend front with your current holster and your belly push it forward, the gun is still going to fire. That is why you need to be careful with holsters, a good holster will fit your body while protecting the gun from firing accidentally. Go ask your family designer to talk with a gun expert and make you a better holster.” I stuffed the gun into my boots, “And, Cornelia, I’ll be borrowing your amulet for a while. Don’t worry about your personal defence, while I am downstairs, Souyo here will ensure your safety.”

“But—” Someone in the crowd said quietly, “—he is a Normandy. He doesn’t even have the last name of Hao—”

“See, Souyo, I told you that you should change your last name to Hao when you married me, yet you are into these feminism, not-changing-your-family-name things.” I joked to Souyo, “Now they don’t even trust you’re a Hao.”

“First of all, our house didn’t even require your mother or Aunt Carmen to change their last name to Hao. Secondly, Stop making that joke, Ninety-nine, last time you made that joke, these Huas thought I was a paedophile for two weeks.” Souyo joked back and turned to the people, “Look, although I want to accompany him downstairs, Hao here decided that it is best if me, being a Demi-immortal, stay upstairs and protect you, that way the homunculi will not attack us while he is gone. Professor Scathach and — what’s your name again? — this guy, will accompany Ninety-nine downstairs.”

Voices of dissent rose from the crowd. “Why not both Demi-immortals to guard us?”

“Which selfish prick said that?” The engineer’s shout silenced them, not knowing he tossed the biggest rock into a frozen lake, “This young lord here was just woken a few hours ago — bloody hell, everyone actually witnessed that. How are we going to bring them back once they installed the whale oil to blow up the building?”

“Whale oil?” The mention of dynamite sparked a wave of whispers. “Blow up the building?”

“What do you mean blowing up the building?” The Boyle lady reacted the sharpest again.

“Well, it means we are going to make the building collapse, hide everyone in the Void, wait for the smoke to build, and run towards the plane like hell.” Souyo leaned on the wall with a smug face, “Just a reminder, once we are on the flat surface, I can only buy us time less than we expected.”

“But I have years of collections here—” Lady Boyle’s face looked like a Texan a few months back, after gay marriage became legal, “— I have vases, oil paintings —”

“You need to think about how many people we can save instead of how many paintings we can save, ma.” Cornelia turned to me. Somehow she looked more mature than her ma in a panicked situation, “What do you want us to do, Your Excellency?”

“Thank you, you are excellent too.” I replied, “While we are gone, I need you to take charge of organising the people here. I heard from my friends that Boyles are masterful Void magicians.”

She put her thumbs up and I put up mine, and such a settlement was somehow arranged. “Why did you tell them, Mr. Bennett?” I sighed when I walked towards the staircase, “It’s no fun and surprising when you tell them the plan before it even starts.”

“Well, I made a slip of the tongue,” he made a funny face towards me, mimicking these sad clowns, “Look, it isn’t fun either to be kept in secret and stripped off, Your Excellency. For an Enclave, getting your Dynamics collected and having homunculi downstairs is actually like being tossed to a polar bear naked.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it is actually a blessing that even though you are a teenager, people are still willing to trust you and give you what little they have left to struggle their last stand, instead of chopping your head off.” His moustache danced joyfully, “I have this mad theory. Do you want to hear that?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t tell teenagers about adulthood theories,” Scathach said.

“Then I’ll proceed to say it anyway.” The engineer said, “Look, kid, I’m from a decent family, too — can’t grip the entire Void in a hand like your family, but quite decent. So I made the same mistake before. Just because you made friends with or fell in love with some lower class people, doesn’t mean you actually understand their mindsets.”

“My family helps villagers to harvest—”

“Please allow me to finish, kid. Look, most people in this world are peasants. Their ancestors are peasants, their grandfathers are peasants, and even though most of them sit in a room and play with fancy charts and computers now, they are still peasants. Peasants’ ideas are actually short-sighted due to their thousands of years of lasting traits, they plant seeds and apply work, and the result may come in a short time, usually a month if you are planting potatoes or doing office work. They tend to not care about long-term investments, because their mindset and lifespan forbid them from doing so, that is why most of these people want to get rich fast, and that is why most people will never get rich, and the few who are extremely lucky will waste their money during the revelry after they got rich. The House of Haos have a history of more than two thousand years, eh?”

“That’s what Uncle Kelvin told me, my dad said 1700.”

“And upper-class people like us — by that, I have no disrespect of comparing my family with your house — We only focus on the long run, that is the root of why your house lasted two thousand years. In the stock market or on the gambling table, resources come and go in a matter of seconds, but I guarantee you, in the mind of your elderly excellencies, their time scale of gaining resources is based on centuries— I can tell that because my family’s time scale is based on decades. That is why that number after the currency sign, seconds passing through, even people’s lives, lost its meaning to us. Compared to such a large time scale, these are insignificant, as common as sands and air.”

“Aye, that is enough. Inappropriate for a teenager.” Scathach pulled me to her side, “Please don’t put your bias into his brain.”

“By that, you are saying, all of us have our limitations?” I asked out of curiosity.

He shrugged and made a funny face. “I mean, you are experiencing one of these limitations, aren’t you?” He opened the door for me and made one of these noble bows, “You are making friends with one brilliant example, whose social class wasn’t high enough to understand what I just said, therefore treated it more like a bias than advice — Which is what happens to people, when high-classes think all low-classes are dumb git that don’t know about investments and only beg us for short-term comforts, meanwhile low-classes constantly turn a blind eye on our advice and deluding of us trying to suppress them. This is the actual logic of a running society, yet the reason why our society is dividing.”

I honestly started to fear that Scathach’s emotions were going to erupt. Her frowning eyebrows could press a fly flat if it even dared to breach the serious atmosphere and take a landing. “Well, it is nice talking to you,” I said, opening the door for my friends, “I’ll talk to you later—”

And he squeezed himself in before I could close the door, and gestured Souyo on the other side to reset the barricades. “Later what?” He asked, “Do you have any construction experience?”

“I’m thirteen, Mr. Bennett.”

“Exactly. The professor there probably forgot whatever was in her civil engineering studies, not to mention the actual dumbbell here.” His moustache bulged like a shameless rooster, “So who else knows which pillar to blow up to make the building fall?”

“Maybe you should be kind enough to accompany these officers down earlier, then.” Scathach said in a sarcastic tone, “That way our job probably is already done.”

“We are on the same boat now, Professor, no need for sour grapes just because I'm Ninety-nine's current confidant.” he trotted for a few steps to get some distance, “Well, guess I’d stay away from further troubles.”

I raised my head to look at Scathach’s reaction and quickly learned that she was really bad at arguing. If I were the one taunting, I would definitely not just keep walking silently with clenched teeth and red cheeks.

“You know you are still my best magical friend, right?” I poked her with my elbow and whispered, “Are you mad at me now?”

“I am not mad because of that, darling.” she replied softly, “If all Insiders are willing to work with Outsiders, many problems will just solve themselves.”

To think about that, they were the ones of the first who planted these ideas in my head yet I was too young to understand. The lights in the staircase have sound sensors, so three floors down we started walking in darkness until we saw the engineer standing on a floor with a light constantly on and pointed towards the other side of the wall when he saw us. But before I could pull out the revolver and for Brian to find cover on the wall, a voice came through the air from the other side of the door and rushed to us.

“Hello.”