“What the hell is going on?!”

Camila was tearing up.

What she saw right before her eyes simply made no fucking sense. It went against everything she thought she knew about the Edgehounds and how things worked at the forest’s edge.

Camila’s face tensed up when she realized how she had just spoken out.

The man…

‘No, no man could ever act around Edgehounds like that! This really is an anomaly!’

Freaking out on the inside, Camila could do nothing but watch how all the hounds and the anomaly turned to look at her.

And while the hounds quickly moved their attention back to some sort of food the anomaly offered…

‘Haaa…’

A sudden wave of exhaustion took over the girl’s mind.

‘Who is this guy?’

Looking up, Camila stole a quick glance at Leo’s face.

“Oh!”

The expression itself Camila didn’t know, but the intent behind it was fairly obvious.

Leo then reached down to his strangely convenient back and pulled out yet another stick of food of some sort…

Before tossing it over to the girl.

‘Huh?’

Camila’s eyes opened wide, but she managed to catch the piece with a late and desperate throw of her hands. And then moment her fingers wrapped around the strange stick, she realized what she had just done.

‘Shit, I screwed up.’

Camila, in her bid not to draw any more attention than absolutely necessary, broke the silent covenant that bode both sides to move slowly and deliberately.

Her rushed attempt to grab the stick of some strange food was the exact type of rapid and sudden move that Leo was trying to avoid!

Panicked, Camila raised her eyes…

Only to see, just at the corner of her vision, how both Urk and Zion started to wake up and raise their heads.

‘How do I even…’

Moving swiftly for just a single instant was enough to make the duchess fear the hounds' retaliation. The momentary peace the anomaly somehow brokered was clearly fragile.

“Haaa…” breathing out, Camila took her time to take a long breath in, filling her lungs with just enough fresh air to execute the move of desperation.

A move that was bound to alert all parties… but the only move she had to stop her subordinates from reacting to the situation like any sane person would.

*“Don’t Move A Muscle!”*

She already used her authority once before… but in an entirely different situation.

Right now, rather than rushed, she should be as careful and steady as possible. Regretfully, the developments called for acting with great haste, leaving the duchess with no other choice.

The words of authority filled the air, ringing in the ears of those conditioned to the wavelength of Camila’s voice.

Her two desired targets, Urk and Zion, lost the ability to make any conscious move.

But so, seemingly, did Leo.

The anomaly… Or the strange man suddenly keeled over, as if weighed down by a massive weight.

And in a single instant, all the amiable aura he had around himself while watching the Gray Edgehounds vanished.

‘H-how…?’

Frozen, Camila could do nothing but watch how Leo’s face reverted to how it was when he suddenly appeared out of nowhere, heavily wounded, desperately clinging to life and ready to do whatever it took to raise his odds.

“I’m sorry…” Camila sobbed out, *“release!”*

No matter what Zion or Urk would try to do in the heat of the moment… It could hardly be any worse than suddenly restraining the man who went to great lengths to show his good will.

Especially, doing so right after he offered her what appeared to be food…!

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‘I screwed up really bad,’ gulping her saliva down, Camila fearfully looked up at Leo’s face.

It was the same as the day before. Cold and focused. Mindlessly efficient state of mind a veteran would adopt to numb his humanity.

“I’m really sorry…” Camila whimpered, unable to harness her normal voice.

Leo slowly blinked his coldly focused eyes. The side of his jacket opened up, revealing the same weapon from yesterday strapped to his side with a set of leather belts.

But then, everything and everyone froze again, with the exception of one of the three Gray Edgehounds.

It wasn’t the leader of the pack. This hound was slightly smaller, but with a much thicker and lusher layer of gray fur spotted with various patterns of slight discoloration that broke the hound’s shape and made it blend nearly perfectly with the slight shadows around them.

And it… Went up and brushed against Leo’s shin before moving half of its length in front of the young man and looking up at his face.

‘He’s stunned… or is he…’

The young man made a weird face.

He was certainly shocked, yet in the way, he looked down into the hound’s black eyes… It didn’t fit the picture. And there was some sort of… longing in that man’s face?

Before Camila could figure out what was actually going on, the Gray Edgehound lowered its head and looked down to where she stood. Leo followed suit, raising his eyes to look right at the startled, sobbing, and terrified girl.

‘What do I…’

Panicking all over again, Camila’s eyes darted around, looking for something, anything that she could use to show how sorry and sincere she was.

In the face of this death-wielding man and mythical Gray Edgehounds, she was no more than a fly either of them could swat away the moment she made a wrong move!

Looking around, Camila finally realized she still had the food baton in her hand. So, desperate to show her sincerity, she brought it up while leaning forth and opening her mouth, only to bring her teeth down on…

‘What the hell is this?!’

Camila really struggled not to just break down and cry at this point, because she couldn’t bite the food off!

It lacked any sort of taste as if someone spent years in seclusion to develop food that lacked any taste whatsoever. But that was just a curiosity. The worst part was if she couldn’t bite a chunk of the food off… how was she to swallow it?

‘I need to bite harder!’

Desperate and perfectly aware of how long she was taking to do something so simple, Camila brought her teeth down at the baton again, clenching her jaws with all the might she could harness…

But no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t bite through!

“Wait, stop!”

Raising her tearful eyes while still trying to bite through… Camila failed to see the young man as he turned into a blur through the layer of tears that lingered in her eyes.

Shaking her head and then raising her hand to clear her eyes, Camila blinked a few times before looking again… While still gnashing down at this devilish baton.

By now, though, Leo was already making his way towards her in a hurried manner.

‘That’s it…’ Camila froze.

Her legs jerked, desiring nothing more but to escape. Her servants jumped up, freed from her authority the moment she released it, ready to intervene at any time even if at the cost of their own lives…

“Just how silly can you be?”

Once again, Camila lost to the absurdity of this young man.

‘He clearly came from somewhere else. He didn’t know how to speak in low Lana. He didn’t react to my authority before,’ Camila's brain produced a string of circumstances. ‘So how can he speak high Lana so easily right now?’

Camila gulped down her saliva as she grew weaker in her knees, looking up the the approaching man.

He was close, dangerously close. Close enough for the duchess to recognize beautiful patterns of the material his clothes were made with, patterns, not even the greatest craftsman back at the capital could produce. He had broad shoulders and a relatively lean figure while still keeping to a more natural, average silhouette over the perfected forms of those who dedicated their entire lives to mastering their bodies.

And stopping only a step away from the girl, the man reached out…

Unable to bear the pressure, Camila closed her eyes shut and lowered her face, failing to bravely face her fate.

But instead of a heavenly smite bearing down her head… nothing really happened.

Nothing beyond a short, snapping sound of something popping as it tore apart.

‘Huh?’

Camila was too scared to open her eyes and look.

“Here, try it now.”

‘JUST HOW IS HE SO FLUENT IN HIGH LANA ALREADY?!’ Camila’s inner rationale screamed out in her soul in endless frustration.

Still, prompted by the direct order and too scared to even consider disobeying it, Camila slowly, hesitatingly raised her eyelids up…

Only to realize that what she was so desperately trying to bite at was the packaging that she saw the young man remove before throwing all the other food sticks over to the hounds!

Camila’s entire idea of what was actually going on collapsed in a single instant when she brought her eyes a bit further, only to see a look on Leo’s face that she never expected to be possible in the first place.

A face containing a mixture of feeling troubled, bothered, baffled, and… second-hand embarrassed?

“To be able to nearly chew through hard (plastic),” Leo shook his head, looking at the upper part of the packaging he tore off the food stick and was now inspecting with a troubled and slightly awkward expression. “Girl, you have quite a lot of bite in this tiny mouth of yours.”

Camila stared at the young man in silence, feeling as if her world was suddenly starting to contract, her vision collapsing to just a single point at the very center of her sight. And as her brain processed all the new information and the new perspective on things, she started to understand what made the anomaly act so weirdly…

A hot, red blush grew on Camila’s cheeks when she realized just what made this young man so embarrassed.

But this realization was also like a missing puzzle piece that allowed her to finally answer a different question.

‘If he’s not an anomaly but an actual human who somehow ended up in this world,’ Camila gulped her saliva down before bringing her eyes down and remembering for the third time that she was still holding a food stick in her hands.

Prompted by the sudden bout of curiosity and eagerness to prove her sincerity, Camila opened up her mouth and brought it down at the dark-brown cylinder of uniform color and ever-so-slightly porous texture.

‘If he’s a human, then my authority working on him is no wonder. And with how quickly he learned Lana, it only worked now because yesterday he simply didn’t understand my words.’

With Camila’s mind going into overdrive, her teeth finally sank into the surprisingly soft and mellow texture of the food…

Only for an extremely sweet, slightly nutty, and creamy taste to explode in her mouth as the dense sponge cake expanded when soaking in her saliva. Camila's taste receptors clogged up with the inherent sweet and soothing taste it carried.

Camila’s eyes went wide as her entire mind went into a stall with the invasion of the utter bliss hidden within this inconspicuous food baton.

In the end, though, Camila’s brain still brought her logical sequence to a shocking yet reasonable conclusion.

‘He has no authority above him.’