Kenan wore a hide skirt, his upper body bare, revealing a wall of dense, gleaming muscle beneath a coat of thick, oily fur.
As the chieftain's son, he ate four full meals a day, and it showed — he stood a head taller than the average tribesman, his skin carrying a healthy sheen that set him apart. His eyes blazed with fierce light as he beat his chest with a thunderous fist, threw back his head, and loosed a savage roar at the thirteen half-orcs blocking his path, goading them into combat as the tribe erupted in cheers around him.
The wedding customs of a primitive tribe were, fittingly, primitive and savage. Any male who desired the bride could choose to stage a "bride-stealing" on the wedding night — intercepting the groom and challenging him to battle. If the groom lost… the winner would truss up the bloodied loser and claim the right to the bride for that night.
Cruder than the crudest wedding-night hazing, but it did tend to produce stronger offspring for the race.
Of course, wherever there is intelligence, there is hierarchy — and over time, this ritual had evolved into something closer to theater. A bride with no challengers looked undesirable; too many challengers, and the question became: you're both Sequence 9, so what gives you the right to fight ten of them at once?
So the families of grooms had taken to inviting a few trusted friends and relatives to serve as "challengers" — partly for face, to prove the bride's popularity, and partly to chase off anyone who might actually mean it.
Only the truly isolated, the genuinely bullied half-orc would fight for real on his wedding night — and eight or nine times out of ten, the groom still lost. The remaining one or two times? The groom simply got beaten to death.
Kenan, evidently, had no such worries.
Challenge the chieftain's son for his bride? That's your funeral.
After a thoroughly satisfying bout of theatrics, the hired "challengers" lay scattered across the ground like fallen dominos — their collective combat power somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.3 half-orc Ip Mans.
"He's hitting them a bit hard, isn't he…"
Li Fei watched as one of the performers had already gone down — yet Kenan, riding high on adrenaline, planted his foot squarely on the man's arm. A bone-crunching snap rang out, sending chills down the spine.
The performer's scream was considerably more genuine than anything before it.
"AWOO!"
Moments later, Kenan swept his bride off her feet, thrust his arms skyward, and bellowed in triumph, answering the roar of the tribe.
Some half-orcs had already broken out bone flutes and wooden drums, the instruments weaving together to push the atmosphere of the feast to its peak.
"Pass the meat around," said Yusura, settling cheerfully beside Li Fei. He turned to his attendants and instructed, "Be fair about it — not even the children are to be left out."
"Yes, my lord. Congratulations, my lord."
The subordinates accepted the order with grins and wasted no time barking at the other soldiers to start distributing the meat.
As members of the guard, they stood to receive a larger share — provided they completed the tasks their chieftain had assigned them.
The tribe had fewer than thirty sheep in total, large and small alike, though all had been fattened to a satisfying roundness. Li Fei estimated an average of forty to fifty catties of meat per animal after slaughter.
Even once roasted, each tribesman stood to receive around half a catty — not nearly enough to fill the belly of a perpetually famished half-orc, but more than sufficient for everyone to settle in and genuinely savor the taste of roast lamb.
Li Fei and Grace, as outsiders, were invited to share a whole young lamb with Yusura's household — the only animal whose meat had not been poisoned.
Li Fei drew her dagger without ceremony, sliced off a generous portion of lamb, and slid the plate across to Grace. She smiled — warm, sweet, the picture of a girl in the first flush of young love:
"You lent me your shoulder; I'll cut the meat for you. We're even."
Naturally, she also cast a discreet glance at the System Panel's description, just to be safe — she'd hate to mix something up and accidentally poison an ally.
[Roast Lamb]
[Description: Authentic~]
"Mm."
Grace didn't eat right away. Instead, she produced a slender Transcendent implement — no bigger than a sewing needle — and pressed it into the roasted meat.
A "poison-testing" tool was practically a standard-issue item for any Transcendent. Grace's silver needle, for instance, would turn yellow rapidly upon contact with anything significantly dangerous.
Of course, there were exceptions — a certain Ms. Li, for instance, relied entirely on seasoned experience, extensive knowledge, sharp intuition, and the faintest of hints from a certain Miss System to detect poisons. No external tools required.
After a few seconds, Grace confirmed the item hadn't changed color, and slowly brought the roasted meat to her lips.
"Hmph. Timid, cowardly humans — what, did you think we'd poison you?"
A cold snort cut into their exchange. Kenan had returned at some point, bride in tow. Catching Grace's poison-testing gesture, he let out a derisive laugh, strode to the table, and wrenched off a whole leg of lamb with one hand, grease dripping in sheets.
Half-orc tribes had no use for such things as gentlemanly conduct. Kenan tore into the lamb leg with his teeth, not sparing a single glance for the bride beside him. It was Yusura who wore the warm, grandfatherly smile, gently encouraging the new bride to help herself to the lamb.
Grease ran down the corner of his mouth as Kenan declared with swaggering arrogance, "Our tribe takes what it wants with axes and spears. We have no need for lowly, filthy tricks like poison."
"Right, right, absolutely."
Li Fei took no offense, nodding along with a pleasant smile.
While humoring Kenan, she slid a glance toward Yusura — regrettably, the old half-orc's smile hadn't budged an inch, the very picture of a kindly elder. No entertainment to be had there.
She sighed quietly, then looked back at the lamb — now sporting a series of grimy claw-marks where Kenan had been pawing at it. She promptly abandoned any thought of cutting herself another piece, and turned instead to the poker-faced Miss Grace, tilting her head with a question:
"How does it taste?"
Grace didn't answer. Instead, she carefully pinched a piece of roasted meat between freshly-washed fingertips and held it up to Li Fei's lips, her expression composed — except for the anxiety simmering just behind her eyes, straining visibly to hold itself in check.
— You want to hand-feed a married woman? Is that entirely appropriate?
— My dear little junior, never would've guessed — you've got quite the doting streak in you.
Li Fei cheerfully and fluently recited a silent apology to Zhihua in her heart, then let her eyes curve into crescent moons, making no attempt to hide her delight. She leaned forward slightly, opened her mouth, and let out a drawn-out "Aaah—"
When that soft, rosy mouth opened before her, a fresh, clean fragrance drifted into Grace's nose — along with a trace of something faintly sweet and metallic, so faint it was almost imperceptible. It was like inhaling the scent of a British-style leather shoe, the kind worn by a pretty girl in a JK uniform, the leather kissed by the soft sole of a deep-navy over-the-knee sock. Intoxicating.
This was the aura born of the witch bloodline and Venomous Kiss — and as Li Fei's rank climbed and the Kiss's modifications deepened, the scent would shift, but it would only ever grow more addictive.
Grace's hand froze. The image of a gleaming thread of saliva stretching between a tongue and the roof of a mouth — then snapping — played on a loop behind her eyes, and her gaze began to waver.
Some people loved a beautiful face. Some, a collarbone. Some, feet. All perfectly understandable.
But Grace had never once realized, until this moment, that the soft, moving pink of a human woman's mouth and throat could be quite so devastatingly alluring.
And yet — the thought that this same mouth had perhaps once been intimately acquainted with Qin Zhihua sent a pang through her chest. A strange, nameless surge of excitement made her heart race even faster.
A soft tongue-tip broke the spell. Grace came back to herself as if waking from a dream and withdrew her hand.
"Half-orc handiwork is actually quite good."
Li Fei chewed the roasted meat and gave it her sincere approval.
Despite the resource-starved tribe having used only a handful of seasonings when marinating the lamb, and nothing but salt when roasting it, the meat itself was fresh, sweet, and firm, full of rich fat fragrance, with just the right hint of gaminess — all of it combining on the palate into something bold and deeply satisfying.
As for why a resource-starved half-orc tribe could produce such accomplished roast meat?
Best not to think too hard about it. All one could say was: thank the cavemen!
While the married-woman-in-question Li Fei and the poker-faced Miss Grace were making eyes at each other, Yusura had been scanning the crowd. Once he was satisfied that the tribespeople were all gnawing at their lamb with single-minded ferocity, he rose to his feet and called out:
"Is the lamb good?"
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried — aided by some Transcendent implement, it reached every half-orc ear in the gathering.
"Yes!"
"More! We want more!"
The tribe hollered back in unison.
They'd all gnawed on caveman flesh before — sour, stringy, almost no fat, with a faint bitter aftertaste. It didn't hold a candle to a whole roasted lamb.
"But our tribe only has twenty-seven sheep. We've slaughtered every last one tonight. What do we do when there are no more?"
Yusura continued with his affable smile.
The half-orcs fell silent, exchanging uneasy glances.
"There is only one answer — we leave this place!"
"I have made a deal with the outsider. She will lead a group of our kin to a new world."
Yusura paused. Then, like a nun reciting scripture in a cathedral, he closed his eyes and intoned in a voice of fervent devotion:
"In the new world, all you must do is look up to see a blazing, glowing hearth in the sky. The rivers run clear — even the young ones can drink without falling sick and dying. There is lamb everywhere, and females whose skin is as smooth and soft as leaves…"
He snapped his eyes open, spread his arms wide, clenched both fists, and declared with passionate intensity:
"Every soul here is my family — my own kin!"
"And I will never abandon my family. I cannot sit by while my family endures hunger, thirst, and sickness, day after day after day!"
"I swear — before long, I will see to it that every living member of this family eats roast lamb every single day!"
"We will die for Lord Yusura!"
"HRAAGH!"
"AWOO AWOO AWOO!"
Under the force of that electrifying speech, half-orcs leapt to their feet one after another. The roar that followed shook the air like an avalanche. Some of the elder orcs wept openly, sinking to their knees to press their lips to the earth beneath them.
Grace furrowed her brow and leaned close to Li Fei's ear.
"I thought you said you were only taking some of them."
"I am."
Li Fei shrugged, then made a show of thinking it over. "I'd guess… he plans to take a portion out first, then find some way to convince the administrators — borrow the funds to bring the rest out, or take them first and work off the debt later?"
Grace shook her head. She clearly found the plan far too optimistic — borderline impossible.
Li Fei glanced back at the lamb, now thoroughly mauled by Kenan's claws from multiple angles. There was obviously no going back to that. She simply took Grace by the hand and rose early from the feast, ignoring the stares of the half-orcs around them, and walked straight out past the edge of the village.
"The sky here changes so strangely — dark all at once, just like that."
Li Fei strolled along with Grace's hand in hers, tilting her head back to look up as she spoke.
Folded Space D-07 had no sun or moon, but every twelve hours, the light shifted abruptly, creating a cycle of day and night. During the day, a warm glow poured down from above; at night, the canopy dimmed — not to complete darkness, but to a dim, diffuse luminescence, like a light bulb swathed in black gauze.
Barring any surprises, before the next dawn, every half-orc in the tribe save Yusura's own household would be dead.
Worth noting: the System stocked a wide range of poisons, and those designed to kill Sequence 9 targets varied considerably in price depending on their properties.
The most expensive were colorless, odorless, and lethal on contact with blood.
The poison she'd used on the Moonlight Wolf back then was a step below that in price — pungent, deeply colored, but still quite costly, a small vial running ten gold coins. What you were really paying for was the instant-kill-on-contact quality, which made it irreplaceable in combat.
Strip away that instant-kill property, however, and the price plummeted.
The toxin used tonight, for instance, required time to take effect — it needed to be metabolized slowly by the body before it worked, somewhat like a more efficient paraquat. A poison like that was almost useless in direct combat; the battle would be long over before it kicked in, and enemies could simply use antidote potions to purge it. Administering it outside of combat, on the other hand, meant it could easily be detected by any Transcendent item with a poison-testing function.
The net result: at the same price, an instant-kill poison gave you a single small vial, while a slow-acting one got you a whole large jar — and even with the added perks of "heat-resistant" and "colorless and odorless," it was still dirt cheap.
The two jars Li Fei had exchanged for had already dissolved into the marinade when the lamb was being prepared.
Grace looked at the sky, then looked at Li Fei, and decided the latter was considerably more beautiful.
"Oh, right — those potions I gave you, you've put them away somewhere safe?"
Li Fei brought it up casually. "We don't really have to worry about enemies anymore. Just the environment. Apparently toward the end, it's not just the miasma everywhere — it can actually be carried by the wind, with nowhere to run. You'd have to just drink the antidote and tough it out."
"Mm."
Grace touched the bracelet on her wrist, her gaze dimming.
The storage accessory had been Kenneth's means of buying her cooperation. It wasn't large in capacity, but it was expensive — very.
Now, every time she looked at it, guilt and remorse welled up in her chest. She felt that she had wronged Li Fei — that she had betrayed her warmth and trust.
"Miss Grace, you look pale."
Li Fei suddenly bent forward, her face filling Grace's field of vision, perfectly earnest. "If something's troubling you, you can tell me."
Grace stared into Li Fei's bright, glittering eyes. After a long inner struggle, she suddenly tightened her grip on Li Fei's hand and said, in a low, resolute voice:
"I'm sorry."
"Hm? What's wrong?"
Li Fei blinked.
"I am… Yarman Belikeli's sister."
Grace gripped Li Fei's hand as though afraid she might vanish. Those high, distant eyes — clear and cool as an open sky — held something they had never held before: pleading, and fear.
?
I killed your brother, and you're the one apologizing to me?
In that moment, Li Fei almost thought she could hear Yarman hammering furiously on the lid of his coffin.
She held Grace's gaze, and something in her softened. For just a moment, she almost wanted to let go — to abandon the resolve she had formed with Lady Hathaway's help, the resolve to make this girl her loyal dog after learning she had approached her with ulterior motives.
But in the end, Li Fei made the choice that befitted her Morality score.
So — her eyes shifting with quiet calculation — she set aside the plan to feign overwhelming shock and anger in order to maximize Grace's guilt, and instead, drawing on longer-term considerations, let a sweet smile bloom across her face. She covered her mouth, her voice soft with warmth and surprise:
"I already knew, Grace."
"...Eh?"
Grace, who had braced herself for the full force of Li Fei's fury, stared with wide eyes and made a small, lost sound.
"Someone told me who you were."
Li Fei reached up and pinched her cheek, just lightly, her tone carrying a hint of aggrieved reproach. "I've been wondering this whole time how long you planned to keep it from me."
"Then why did you…"
Grace murmured.
"Because I trust you."
Li Fei curved an arm around her neck and lowered her head, touching the tip of her nose to Grace's. "You might not believe this… but from the moment I saw your eyes, I knew — a bad person's little sister can still be a good person."
"But — but…"
Grace's brow creased, her thoughts in disarray.
"Besides — back in Viranean, you must have figured out I was a witch, right?"
Li Fei pressed the full warmth of her Southern Hemisphere firmly against Grace's modest-but-not-nonexistent Northern Hemisphere, letting her feel the heat of a genuine, sincere heartbeat — while her lips found the delicate curve of Grace's pale, elegant ear and breathed out warm, damp air:
"If you had told Nicole, I would probably already be…"
"But you didn't betray my trust, did you?"
Grace bit down hard on her lower lip, then threw her arms around Li Fei and held on. After a long silence, she drew a slow, steady breath and made her vow in a voice that was quiet and absolute:
"You can always trust me."
In an embrace that left both of them breathless, Li Fei curved the corner of her mouth upward. She turned her head and let her lips brush lightly against Grace's right cheek.
"That's your reward — for keeping my secret."
She turned the other way and let her lips brush Grace's left cheek.
"And this… is your reward for being honest."
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