"Damn it, I must have bought a fake Moon Pillow…"
Her lips drained of color, Li Fei hunched over and shouldered open the bedroom door with what little strength she had left.
Even with someone supporting her, her legs refused to stop trembling, wobbling with every step.
Last night's hide-and-seek game had ended with three losers: chestnut-haired, dark-eyed "pastry chef" Honey, and two golden-haired fairies. To avoid showing favoritism, the Mother of Fairies had given her all — so thoroughly that even the Moon Pillow had been unable to put her back together.
"Morning."
In the living room, the red-brown-haired fairy turned her head aside and offered a greeting laced with something faintly sulky.
Of all her daughters, only Eve dared to throw Li Fei the occasional petulant look.
"I'm doing this for your own good."
Li Fei rubbed her temples, exasperated that her daughter in her rebellious phase couldn't appreciate her hard-won maternal wisdom.
Eve had been banned from competing — and banned from any physical affection until the next generation was born. For her, that was worse than asking an alcoholic to quit drinking, a smoker to quit cigarettes, or telling humans to put down their phones.
The little fairy puffed out her cheeks — but her wings betrayed her, fluttering involuntarily as she floated over to Li Fei's side and began kneading her temples.
Breakfast was the usual: the life-preserving medicine and a bowl of noodle soup made with serpentine scales. Li Fei had long since made her peace with both.
She had once assumed that slaying the Red Dragon meant certain safety concerns were a thing of the past — until her coming-of-age ceremony, when Lady Zhihua gently informed her that physical intimacy producing daughters was, in fact, a mystical ritual. Skip the "precautions," and even with the Red Dragon slain, there was a very real probability of "waistline expansion over the next ten months."
Fortunately, thanks to Margaret's many improvements, the relevant potion was now extremely cheap, completely side-effect-free, and even nutritionally fortifying — something an ordinary person could drink as a health supplement without any particular reason. The taste was passable, too: a bit like herbal lozenge tea sweetened with brown sugar.
Li Fei sipped her noodle broth in small, dignified spoonfuls, then declared with considerable magnanimity:
"Going forward, there's no need to add serpentine scales to my breakfast. Pointless for me. Just add a little extra to theirs."
The three little fairies exchanged glances, all of them hesitating. Honey, the most guileless of the three, opened her mouth to say something — and was immediately smothered by Eve's quick hand.
Ram, apron tied neatly around her waist, planted both hands on her hips and spoke with fond, unshakeable authority:
"Making two separate meals is such a bother, you know. The ma— the mistress really ought to consider my workload."
— Ram, the eldest and the one who kept the household running, had gradually taken on all the bearing of a proper lady of the house. Especially since the coming-of-age ceremony, where her usual gentleness had revealed a more mature, quietly formidable edge.
— Perhaps witnessing a certain someone's oblivious helplessness had shattered a particular idealized image beyond repair. Heh.
"The nerve of them… getting too big for their wings…"
Sensing her domestic standing slipping, Li Fei muttered darkly under her breath — and then, like a good girl, drained every last drop of her broth and cleaned her bowl, serpentine-scale tempura included. The texture was wonderfully crispy, and once soaked through with noodle broth, actually tasted quite good.
After a short rest, vampire Public Order officer Miss Sofia arrived as usual to pay her respects to her mother-in-law, and to provide the usual services: help dressing and a ride to school.
"Free tonight?" Li Fei raised her right leg, toes pointed, allowing Sofia to grip her ankle and carefully pull on her full-length stockings. "I'm moving after school. I'd like to hold a small private gathering in the evening."
— Her mother-in-law was celebrating a new home. Surely you, princess of the illustrious Torredor clan, wouldn't show up empty-handed?
Sofia instinctively looked up — and her blood-red eyes went wide at the devastating sight before her. She hurriedly looked back down and accepted the invitation:
"It would be my honor."
"Mm-hm."
Li Fei hummed, thoroughly satisfied.
"Strange… you rested a whole night, and somehow you look even worse than before?"
Long silvery-grey hair swaying gently in the breeze, Irena pressed down her oversized hat brim with one hand and turned, a puzzled look crossing her face.
After being dropped off at the school gates by Sofia, Li Fei had happened to run into Irena, and promptly claimed a seat on her personal in-campus "private jet." She now sat sidesaddle on the flying broomstick, arms looped around the grey-haired beauty's waist, legs dangling idly:
"Got a little too absorbed in spellwork."
— The Sensitivity Aura had leveled up again.
"Work-life balance matters too, you know," Irena said, in absolute earnest.
Clearly, sharing a red-tea hot spring had brought the two sisters considerably closer.
"At our age, how is one even supposed to sleep?" Li Fei said with a smile, twisting the knife cheerfully at a certain Miss Nicole. "If we don't put in the effort meditating, where does the Dean get her performance metrics? And without performance metrics, where does she get the budget to sponsor the female students?"
"The Dean, honestly. I could cry."
Irena let out a theatrically mournful sob at that, filling the air around them with an almost festive atmosphere.
As the saying goes — sisterhood is forged through Nicole. Complaining about the Dean was by far the greatest common language between Li Fei and Irena, and they never tired of it.
"You two — stop right there!"
Suddenly, an indignant voice rang out.
The broomstick drifted down to land. A girl with short black hair strode up to them, visibly agitated. Her clear blue eyes landed on Li Fei and faltered for just a moment — then she shook her head vigorously, breaking free of the charm's pull, and fixed Li Fei with a suspicious, wary stare:
"You are not allowed to stand that close to my Irena."
The girl's voice was clear and bright, carrying a faintly boyish lilt that gave her an air of vibrant, brimming energy.
She was also quite pretty — a clean, delicate oval face with large, dewy eyes, her slightly voluminous bob cut adding a fresh, guileless charm to her appearance.
Her figure beneath the mage's robe was the standard slender-and-petite type. Black over-the-knee socks made the exposed stretch between the hem of her shorts and the tops of the stockings look almost blindingly pale, more than compensating for the slight drag on her overall appeal from a rather plain grey blouse.
— Li Fei had heard plenty of gossip about the Twin Stars. The elusive "North Star" Selene and the faculty-room-whispered sweet teacher-student romance between Selene and Class Teacher Miss Ye Shu; the near-obsessive ardor Miss Saya directed at "Morning Star" Irena — all of it had reached her ears.
Clearly, the girl standing before her was Miss Saya.
"Hm?"
Li Fei hooked her arm through Irena's, feigning wounded indignation. "Irena-jie, who is this woman?"
"Don't stir up trouble." Irena laughed awkwardly, making a placating gesture at Li Fei before turning to introduce her. "Saya, you must know her — this is my little sister, Li Fei."
"Just a little sister?"
Li Fei bit her lower lip, voice dripping with aggrieved, mournful feeling. "Hmph. Heartless."
The fire practically shooting from Saya's eyes gave Li Fei a deep sense of satisfaction. She wanted to leap forward and drink in every furious, jealous detail of that expression up close.
Saya yanked hard at Irena's arm, hostility radiating from every pore. "Don't you dare have any designs on Irena."
"Hm?"
Li Fei blinked innocently and tucked herself under Irena's other arm. "When two people are perfectly in tune with each other, how can you call that 'having designs'?"
The queen of courtesans had no interest in throwing herself into a love triangle.
But stirring the fire and watching someone else get trapped in one? Now that was fun.
"That's quite enough, my dear little sister."
After a thorough round of teasing, Irena deployed Nicole's trademark warm smile — eyes curved into gentle crescents, tone soft as silk, yet somehow deeply unsettling.
A slightly guilty certain someone took her leave with great reluctance.
The spike-covered, seaweed-draped turtle shell rocked back and forth as a seal let out a piercing wail.
No matter how it struggled, an ordinary animal could not defy the will of a Transcendent creature.
The seal's cries grew fainter. Its front flippers lost their strength. The Thornshell Turtle's eyes remained utterly cold. Only a full half-hour after the seal finally went still did it lower its head with quiet satisfaction to begin eating.
Whoosh.
A sharp spear cut through the air and buried itself in the Thornshell Turtle's neck. Blood sprayed.
"Frrr!"
Transcendent turtle creatures were renowned for their tenacity. Through the searing pain, it managed a deep, rumbling roar, wrenching its head around to clamp its jaws on the spear shaft, thrashing all four limbs outside its shell in a frantic bid to tear the weapon free from the wound.
In its wild, desperate thrashing, the Thornshell Turtle looked exactly like the seal it had just tormented to death.
A small fairy, body translucent as glass, hovering in the air without needing to beat her wings, raised a second iron spear in silence and drove it through a gap in the turtle's shell.
Moments later, the turtle stilled, its limbs twitching only occasionally. The richly nourishing turtle blood oozed steadily out, mingling with the still-fresh blood of the slaughtered seal, soaking into the earth beneath the corpses.
Li Yue floated forward, retrieved her spear, and moved on in search of the next prey.
Meanwhile, throughout every corner of Viranean, entire swarms of fairies were operating by the principles of "safety first" and "strike silently, no unnecessary noise" — harvesting the lives of the Sea Tribe one by one.
The fairies' individual combat strength was weak.
But the patrol guards — ever so enthusiastic about serving the residents — had, under commission from an unnamed island angel who preferred to remain anonymous, quietly ferried a batch of weapons and equipment to the Secret Garden during their patrol rounds.
These standard-issue weapons were not Transcendent items, but they were forged entirely from steel, expertly crafted — equipment phased out from the regular military. As for why decommissioned weapons looked brand new, the guards had this to say: "We didn't dare ask, we didn't dare say. We were just following orders."
Armed with quality weapons, and with the advantage of ambush and overwhelming numbers, the fairies slaughtered fellow Sequence 9 Transcendent creatures with ease.
Worth noting: the demoness had once wiped the Sea Tribe clean off Viranean, and to prevent ecological collapse, the city hall had been forced to reintroduce Sea Tribe creatures to the island — Thornshell Turtles in particular, since they were Sequence 9. So the fairies never lacked for targets. The bureaucrats at city hall, having already burned through the budget meant for maintaining the Wolf Den ecosystem, had also managed to let the turtles on Turtle Island die off. Perfectly logical, really.
Thwuck. Thwuck. Thwuck.
A ring of fairies surrounded the turtle shell, jabbing their spears through the gaps in an unrelenting rhythm, blood spattering freely.
Half a minute later, the purple-haired fairy raised her palm, signaling the others to stop.
"Why did you give that order?"
One fairy wiped the sweat from her brow, grumbling. "All that effort for nothing… mmff—"
Her words cut off. A strangled, pained sound escaped her, her translucent butterfly wings flaring open as she choked.
"Not even a Fairy Fruit can keep your mouth shut?"
Sasha grabbed her by the throat with one hand, eyes cold as ice, and only released her grip when the fairy's face had turned faintly blue.
Then, the former queen of the Secret Garden — thoroughly Stockholm-syndromed into devotion — turned to survey the gathered fairies and spread her arms wide:
"The great Mother of Fairies has given us the opportunity to live, to learn, and to grow. I believe we should learn gratitude, my sisters."
The Mother of Fairies desires slaughter — and so we shall please her with ever more blood.
[You have slain a Thornshell Turtle. +12 EXP]
[You have slain a Thornshell Turtle. +12 EXP]
In the classroom, Li Fei watched the experience points ticking steadily upward and covered her mouth with practiced calm, suppressing the twitch at the corner of her lips before anyone could notice.
As expected… killing Transcendent creatures under my orders or at my request also yields experience… Good.
I had a perfectly good RTS game and somehow forced it into RPG mode this whole time. What a waste… though better to figure it out now than never.
A satisfied gleam flickered in Li Fei's eyes — until the voice of golden-haired big-sister teacher Melodia drifted forward from the lectern:
"By the way, some of you may not have heard — two days ago, Li Fei and Grace from Class Three collaborated in Folded Space D-07 and secured nearly three thousand credits' worth of spoils in a single run…"
Hm?
Only three thousand credits?
Li Fei instinctively widened her eyes, already half-rising from her seat, ready to slam her palm on the desk and demand an accounting of her missing fortune.
Fortunately, the memory arrived just in time.
Right — Yusura and I conspired to redirect a portion of the spoils elsewhere. Never mind, then.
"Furthermore, they discovered a Chaos Altar and submitted it to the Academy for the benefit of all students… This spirit of bold exploration, collaborative teamwork, and willingness to contribute — I believe it is something we can all learn from."
"And so, to reward Li Fei for the honor she has brought to our class… Li Fei, fifty points."
Melodia announced it with a warm smile to the entire classroom.
The moment the words landed, the room erupted.
Fifty points!
Since the start of term, not a single person had received that many points at once!
Teacher's playing favorites… Wait, Li Fei? Oh, never mind then — she earned it.
Li Fei's ever-growing fan club led the applause, sending the most enthusiastic clapping the academy had heard straight to their most distinguished special-admission student.
"Thank you, Teacher."
Under the eyes of the entire class, Li Fei rose with easy, unaffected grace and offered Melodia her thanks.
Gold shines wherever it goes, doesn't it.
Li Fei thought this without a trace of embarrassment, while simultaneously arranging her features into an expression of becoming modesty and nodding warmly in acknowledgment of her classmates' enthusiasm.
After class, her fan club swarmed in with their fawning greetings. Li Fei, with flawless professional efficiency, talked them all into going home within five minutes, then tilted her head and turned to Klein, who had been waiting quietly to one side:
"What can I do for you, Klein?"
"Brother Cowell is buying drinks tonight. You free?"
Klein extended the invitation.
"Well, well. I was starting to think I'd never see that dinner," Li Fei said, her tone lightly teasing.
"The trip to Viranean was harrowing. Brother Cowell needed time to settle things with Simon's and Zoller's families, and to be with his wife. So… things were delayed a little."
When he mentioned the departed, Klein's voice grew heavier.
Li Fei's first reaction was a startled "wait, so you two really are just regular straight-guy friends?" — then she reined herself in, lowered her eyes in a brief three-second silence, and spoke with genuine regret:
"Speaking of which, those two… fought alongside me as well. I should go and look in on their families."
"Strictly speaking, every Loxibrook resident who was in danger that day fought alongside everyone else — but no survivor can realistically visit every bereaved family in person."
Klein gave a relaxed smile. "So don't carry that weight."
— You may not be aware, but I personally delivered the finishing blow to one of them…
Li Fei thought for a moment, then offered a promissory gesture: "In any case — if their families ever run into difficulty, please, make sure to tell me."
"As for tonight…"
Li Fei considered, then smiled. "Actually, I'm moving today. I was planning a small private dinner this evening."
"Congratulations," Klein offered, then deliberately pulled a long face. "If Brother Cowell hadn't invited you today, I could have saved myself one housewarming gift, couldn't I?"
"I was already planning to invite you both after school anyway."
The originally ladies-only Li Fei spoke with complete sincerity. "After all, who would turn down two housewarming gifts?"
After writing down the address and time, Li Fei hesitated briefly, then offered a word of caution:
"I have some friends. They are… quite captivating. Some women who were originally drawn to men have found, after meeting them, that their feelings began to… shift."
"So I would advise that Mr. Cowell probably not bring his wife."
"Heh heh heh. Generally speaking, 'I have a friend' is a phrase that can be read directly as 'I myself'…"
An aged, peculiar laugh echoed through his mind. Klein replied via thought:
Li Fei is an upright, courageous, and dependable young woman. We should not harbor such uncharitable suspicions about her.
After a brief internal silence, Klein nodded:
"Understood. I'll let Brother Cowell know."
"See you tonight then."
Li Fei waved goodbye, stepped out of the classroom — and immediately spotted Grace, lingering just outside the door, looking rather haggard.
The special-admission student who had just been praised for her "collaborative spirit" and rewarded for it felt her expression shift in an instant — sunshine to overcast — as a look of undisguised distaste and aversion settled over her face.
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