The warm feelings, the love, the joy, the pain of leaving—all of it had been carefully extracted by the System's contract protocols the moment she returned to the Transmigration Bureau between worlds.
So when she looked at Samuel—who had an identical face to someone named Larus from a previous mission—she felt nothing beyond mild surprise at the physical coincidence.
No heartache.
No longing.
No emotional connection whatsoever.
Just a cold, strategic assessment: 'This person looks like someone from a previous world. Interesting. But ultimately irrelevant to my current mission.'
It was exactly what she had wanted when she signed that contract.
Emotional freedom. Professional distance. The ability to move from world to world without being weighed down by accumulated grief and loss.
Some might call it cold. Inhuman, even.
But Heena called it practical.
