I leaned down and carefully hoisted Elicia back onto my shoulders, securing her weight against my petite 5'5" frame. Before moving out, I carefully manipulated the musculature of my Phase 5 wings, smoothing the dark, leathery membranes flat against my spine and fastening the hidden buckles of my dress tightly over them. Covered by the thick, stolen vanguard cloak, my demonic traits were entirely concealed.
Elicia shifted, hunching her 5'8" stature forward to rest comfortably over my back. Because of the close quarters, her soft, voluptuous G-cup frame pressed deeply against the junction where my wings were tightly folded. The dense, compacted muscle of my hidden appendages acted almost like an organic cushion against her chest, absorbing her weight as she buried her face into the hood of my cloak to shield herself from the stray morning light.
I scanned the layout of the forest through the shadows of the canopy, my jade and crimson eyes focusing on a familiar dirt path cut through the treeline.
"Big sister, there is a nearby town just ahead, It's Town Tata. Let's get some rest over there before we make the final push to Caria." I said softly, my voice muffled by the deep hood.
A heavy silence settled over Elicia at the mention of the name. Town Tata… the very place where the Bronze Coin Guild had held me captive. The place where the cellar stood, where the salt had been poured, and where my nightmare had reached its absolute boiling point. She tightened her arms around my neck, her breathing turning shallow with a wave of protective anxiety. She knew what this place represented to my PTSD.
"Ren… Are you sure you want to go back there? If the memories… " she whispered, her voice laced with concern.
"I'm fine, Elicia, The people who hurt me are all dead. I entirely destroyed their leadership and consumed their strength. Right now, your legs are paralyzed, your mana is bottomed out, and I cannot walk under the open sun. We need a roof, even if it's in a town built on old blood." I interrupted gently, taking a firm step forward onto the dirt path.
With my enhanced sixth-evolution stats, carrying her weight was effortless. I maintained a brisk, steady pace, keeping us strictly within the long shadows cast by the dense pines. Within an hour, the thick forest began to clear, revealing the wooden palisades and distant, smoking chimneys of Town Tata rising through the morning mist. Holding my stolen cloak tightly around my face to block the expanding dawn, I walked calmly through the outer dirt roads, carrying my sister toward the nearest secluded inn.
As we neared the outer checkpoint of Town Tata, the morning sun was climbing higher, casting sharp, golden spears of light across the dirt road. I kept my head low beneath the deep hood of the stolen vanguard cloak, ensuring not a single ray of sunlight could touch my sensitive skin.
With a fluid flick of my right hand, I activated my spatial inventory ring. A heavy, leather purse materialized out of thin air, dropping right into my palm with a metallic clink. I reached back, passing the coin pouch over my shoulder to Elicia, along with the old notepad and pencil I used to carry back when my tongue was missing.
"Hey, Elicia, check the coins in there to pay our entry fee, And do me a favor… throw the notepad and pencil into the ditch. I can speak perfectly fine now. Anyways, the entire toll and atmosphere of Tata has completely changed since I dismantled the Bronze Coin Guild and executed their corrupt ruler, Bernard Callus. The guards aren't as bold as they used to be."
Elicia took the purse, her fingers brushing against mine. She tossed the useless writing materials into the tall grass by the roadside, but as she listened to the cold, calculating edge in my tone, a look of quiet realization crossed her face. She looked at my hooded profile, sensing the lethal, unyielding aura radiating from my petite 5'5" frame.
"Sure, little Ren… By the way... you've really changed. The way you talk, the way you carry yourself so ruthlessly... you act just like your brother, Elias." Elicia murmured softly, her voice carrying a mix of awe and a slight tinge of sadness. She tightened her arms around my neck, resting her chin near my shoulder.
I groaned, shifting my grip on her thighs as we navigated the uneven dirt path leading up to the town's secondary gates. Even with my high-tier, post-evolution physical stats, Elicia's voluptuous 5'8" stature… combined with the weight of her thick, layered academy uniform… was an unbelievably heavy load to haul. Worse, because she was completely hunched over my back to shield herself, her massive G-cup breasts were spilling directly over the top of my head and draping over my face like a pair of soft, suffocating blindfolds.
"Hey, big sister, get your giant breasts out of my face! I'm literally walking blind here! Move up a bit!" I snapped, my muffled voice laced with pure irritation as I stumbled slightly over a loose rock.
"Ah! I-I'm sorry, Ren, the saddle position is just difficult without my legs!" she squeaked, shifting her weight backward with a flustered flush.
But while I was grumbling about my restricted field of vision, I entirely failed to notice what Elicia's hands were doing. Instead of throwing my old notepad and pencil into the roadside ditch like I asked, she had quietly slipped them back into my open leather purse out of a lingering, protective sentimentality. But as her fingers pushed past the heavy iron and gold coins inside the pouch, they brushed against a rigid, magically laminated piece of parchment.
Curiosity overtaking her, Elicia slid the card out from the folds of the leather and took a quick, analytical peek under the morning light. Her eyes widened, her prestigious principal mind instantly decoding the official metrics stamped across the surface:
Status Card
Name: Bounty Hunter
Rank: Gold
Magic Power: S-rank
Magic Mastery: S-rank
Swordsmanship: A-rank
Marksmanship: A-rank
Battle IQ: D-rank
Job Occupation: Bounty Hunter (S-rank) / Luminous Knight (S-rank: 7th place)
Affiliation: LKBA (Branch 1)
The silence that followed was so heavy I could hear the wind rustling the pine needles above us. Elicia stared at the double-registered occupations, her breath completely catching in her throat as she realized the sheer, contradictory absurdity of my double life.
"Eirene… You... you're both a rogue S-rank Bounty Hunter and an official Luminous Knight holding 7th place in Branch 1?! You're working for the very Bureau that hunted you?!" Elicia whispered, her voice trembling with an overwhelming mixture of shock, confusion, and sudden realization. She clutched the edge of the card, her eyes darting from the text to the back of my hooded head.
"Is something the matter?" I asked, completely oblivious to her snooping as I kept my head down, matching my pace to the long shadows cast by the town's outer palisade.
Elicia didn't answer right away. Her eyes were completely glued to the S-rank Magic Power and S-rank Magic Mastery glowing on the parchment. As the Principal of Sisiphon, she knew the global magical database front to back. In the eyes of the world, a "Blood Manipulation" human skill was considered a complete evolutionary dead end… one of the worst, most suicidal traits a person could be born with. Standard users had to draw from their own circulatory system; fabricating a simple dagger meant triggering severe, life-threatening blood loss.
But my curse completely inverted that math. Because my Phase 5 demonic biology let me drink liters of blood without the risk of hemochromatosis, I didn't use my own life force… I weaponized the massive, harvested reserves stored inside my parasitic system. Paired with my high-tier mana-to-blood conversion, I could freely manipulate blood constructs at will, like my Death Chant Shotgun, a devastating spell that actively leached and drained the magic affinity of anyone caught in the blast radius.
What surprised her even more were the A-rank ratings in Swordsmanship and Marksmanship. She didn't know that half of my blade proficiency came from the rigorous Kendo training I had mastered back on Earth in my past life… a secret I had absolutely zero intention of telling her… while the other half was purely adapted from the brutal, kill-or-be-killed rhythm of the slimes and bandits I had slaughtered. My marksmanship was entirely self-taught, born from constructing makeshift blood bows, summoning a fully automatic Death Chant Tommy Gun, throwing custom tear gas canisters, and cycling through my heavy blood-shotgun blasts.
Then her eyes hit the final anomaly: Battle IQ: D-rank. My raw stats, S-rank destructive power, and combat versatility were off the charts, but my actual tactical patience was non-existent. I didn't do strategy; I just overwhelmed people with brute force, unlimited blood reserves, and pure, unadulterated violence.
"Little Ren... seriously? 'Bounty Hunter' is your actual registered name on this card?" Elicia finally asked, her academic brain short-circuiting as she stared at the blank identity field.
"Ah. Two months ago, I struck a direct, iron-clad confidentiality contract with King Aulus Caria and Queen Aqua Caria. Part of the agreement was that the LKBA Bureau would completely scrub my true name from the public databases to hide my identity from both you and Elias. I didn't want the family tracking a ghost." I blinked under my hood, realizing she had found the card. I shrugged, keeping a firm grip on her thighs.
Elicia's breath hitched so violently she practically choked on the cool morning air.
"King Aulus... the sovereign ruler of Caria?! You... you met the King and Queen face-to-face?! Ren, he is one of the most unyielding, high-tier political figures in the entire southern continent! How on earth did a rogue hunter from the lower districts get a private audience with the crown?!" she stammered, her voice echoing with profound disbelief as she clutched my shoulders.
"I'll explain the royals later, big sister. We're here," I muttered, my voice dropping into a low whisper as we stepped out of the treeline and approached the wooden palisades of the gate.
I kept my head pulled deep within the shadows of the stolen vanguard cloak, my jade and crimson eyes scanning the perimeter. Returning to Town Tata felt like stepping back into a bad dream, my pulse spiking instinctively as the old paranoia and PTSD flared up in my chest.
I locked my gaze on the gatekeeper sitting at the entrance booth. I braced myself, half-expecting to see one of Dominik's old bandit thugs, remembering how they used to extort travelers. The last time I had crawled through these gates, they had maliciously charged me an astronomical 50 silver pieces just to pass.
But as we pulled up to the threshold, the guard barely even looked up from his ledger. He was a regular, tired-looking town conscript… the lawless, arrogant edge of the Bronze Coin Guild had completely vanished from the atmosphere since I had executed Bernard Callus and slaughtered his inner circle.
"Toll is one silver," the guard said in a flat, routine drone, completely oblivious to the fact that the cloaked girl carrying a paralyzed woman on her back was the very phantom who had decapitated his former lord.
Elicia didn't miss a beat. Reaching over my shoulder with a calm, practiced elegance, she fished into my open leather purse and pulled out two bright silver coins.
"Here you go. Keep the change, And thank you." Elicia said smoothly, dropping the silver onto his desk.
The guard blinked at the extra tip, nodding gratefully as he waved us through the heavy wooden gates. I took a deep breath, adjusting my grip on my sister's thighs as I walked us directly into the quiet, winding streets of Town Tata, searching for the nearest secluded inn where we could finally hide from the rising sun.