“Oh my,” Adelaide pressed a theatrical hand to her lips like a painted fan flicking open, “so the Hero already knows my diligent adviser. That makes it easy—no need to pitch our strongest safety net, Her Majesty Queen Dreamlan.”

She finished her act with a porcelain smile, and Varie’s face flushed like a tomato about to burst from boiling oil, her pointing finger trembling like a taut bowstring. “You, you—!”

Maybe her brain shorted from heat; Varie pointed and pointed, words stuck like mud after rain, then swung that finger at Queen Dreamlan, who was smiling and murmuring “long time no see.”

“Get out of my sight!”

Hearing her voice tear like cloth, Adelaide almost couldn’t keep the corner of her mouth from curling, laughter tapping behind her teeth like a drumstick.

The grudge over “finger games” finally got its payback; her mood rose like a kite on a spring wind, but the lift lasted half a heartbeat before her arm was suddenly hugged.

“The Hero is so fierce to me, Adelaide,” Queen Dreamlan’s body was soft as warm silk, her coy whine sweet as tea steam, “she’s bullying me.”

Crack—the crisp shatter of porcelain didn’t come from red-hot Varie, but from behind her like a dropped moon.

Adelaide didn’t get to savor that warmth pinning to her side, nor to conjure a proper reply to Queen Dreamlan’s tea-sweet tactic; her smile froze like ice glazing a pond when she saw Mira staring, dazed, the jar slipping from her fingers and exploding into powder on the stone.

Of course, Mira didn’t go hysterical like Varie; she said nothing, her red lips parted like a petal then closed again, her gaze drifting away like mist—worse by ten thousand than anger, because she bent as if nothing had happened, gathered the shards like rain-wet leaves, then turned to leave.

Seeing that, Adelaide panicked like a bird flushed from bamboo, and she wriggled free of the queen’s arm.

Bringing Her Majesty was just one more safety rope in a cliff climb, no personal agenda tangled in it; they were marching to face a chaos dragon, strongest even among legends, a storm with no mercy.

She tossed that hasty excuse like a paper umbrella in a squall, left Varie and Queen Dreamlan locked in their glare, and ran after Mira as the distance stretched like a cold lane.

“W-wait…!”

Adelaide caught Mira’s hand, but Mira eased back on contact like a tide slipping from the shore, a half-step of instinctive resistance.

“It’s not what you think, Mira!” Adelaide didn’t let go, her fingers clinging like ivy to brick.

“It’s fine.”

Mira’s steps halted like a drawn carriage coming to rest.

“I know… so it’s fine.”

Her voice was soft as dusk, and the repeated “it’s fine” sounded less like comfort to Adelaide and more like crossing a gate in her own heart, leaving Adelaide wordless for a breath.

Varie’s noise rattled from behind like sparrows in a banyan, but compared to their lively skirmish, this edge of the road fell into a silence heavy as rain.

At last, Adelaide began regretting bringing Queen Dreamlan, a sour fruit ripening in the chest.

And yet, just like she’d said, Queen Dreamlan was without question one of the strongest blades they could draw, a mountain-sure presence on a bleak field. Even if Adelaide could foresee being made into scented spice between the queen and Varie, and all the add-on troubles that would follow, she could only accept like swallowing bitter medicine.

She sighed in her heart like wind through pines, then squeezed Mira’s hand a shade tighter, her tone soft as cotton.

“Mira, how’s Anta?”

As always, she plucked the best thread to change the loom’s pattern. Thankfully, Mira seemed to want out of the earlier mood too, and she opened up without resistance like a window unlatched.

“She’s fine, and the new practice assignments are halfway done,” her voice still low as a candle flame, but her gaze no longer sliding away, “Varie arranged two warriors who couldn’t come to stay with her, and I told them what to enforce.”

“Any complaints? Like it’s too hard?”

Mira shook her head slightly, a willow-tip ripple. “No. She’s a good student. After two demonstrations, she got the method. She can already condense a stable dagger with mana.”

Adelaide’s brows rose in mild surprise like a small bird lifting. “Then I underestimated her talent. I thought it’d take at least half a year to reach that level. Looks like next assignments can be tougher.”

She spoke, a faint smile like dawn along her lips, and she walked slow as drifting clouds, hand in hand with Mira.

“Well, since I don’t need to worry about her, I can join this journey with a quiet heart,” she glanced at Mira, eyes warm as amber, “so… introduce the ‘newbie’ to the team, my dear sister.”

Mira let herself be led, her steps matching Adelaide’s lazy pace like ripples traveling together, and finally she sighed, soft as a reed.

“You basically know everyone…”

Of course; the squad was mainly Nacha Tribe infiltrators, ten or so counting Adelaide and Mira. Adelaide had spent months with them, faces familiar as lanterns on a street—maybe not intimate, but names easy on the tongue.

Adelaide’s ask was just a pretext to stroll and chat, a willow-shade excuse.

Which is why, seeing a few unexpected faces in the group, it was she, the one who asked, who lifted her brows in surprise like a snapping fan.

The biggest surprise was the two new faces.

“This lady is ‘Inventor’ Tela; and this one is… hm, ‘the Jinx’ Mr. Hos.”

Mira tried for a solemn tone like temple chimes, but Tela couldn’t hold in her laugh; she thumped Hos’s shoulder twice, loud as drumbeats. He shrugged off her teasing with a ruffled frown, straightened his collar like a groom on a windy porch, and came up to shake Adelaide’s hand.

“Uh… well…?”

“Don’t mind her—bookworm can’t read a room,” Hos said, ignoring Tela’s protest flapping behind him like a banner, “pleased to meet you, Miss Adelaide, and thanks for enduring that damn Varie all this time.”

Adelaide had heard their names from Varie, but seeing them in the flesh tugged the story off the page; they felt more natural, like shoes finally fitting the road. Maybe it was them slipping free of the Radicals’ shadow, which pricked Adelaide’s curiosity, so she asked why they’d joined this dangerous trek.

Their answers fit their “titles” like seals on wax.

“Danger? That place is packed with Nacha tech lost for thousands of years!” Tela’s excitement leapt like sparks, mismatched with those scholarly gold frames yet perfectly tuned to “Inventor.” “You humans really don’t get it. If we bring back even a sliver, our newborns won’t worship those busted ‘long-ear’ comm-slates like idols.”

Hos looked more middle-road, palms up like a man surrendering to weather. “What can I do? Varie and this knucklehead are going. I can’t leave two loose cannons alone in a thunderstorm.”

Tela let out a sharp laugh like a whistling kettle. “Ha! You staying might help. You going means that bird mouth will jinx something.”

“Like hell!”

“You won’t admit it. When Varie came back and you said ‘the Radicals might show,’ the ‘Politician’ appeared at the door.”

“T-that was a coincidence!”

“Sure, coincidence~”

The two suddenly locked beaks like crows on a wire, and Adelaide blinked, a beat behind the weather. Later, Mira explained—no matter how Hos denied it, his title was useful.

A crow’s mouth’s curse is half a prophecy; speak it on purpose and it fails, but overall, having him in the team is good, like carrying a barometer into storm season.

With that, Adelaide understood why those two joined. But there was another member who surprised her—Kabos.

Honestly, she’d almost forgotten his name over these weeks, until she caught that familiar face by the fire—besides Adelaide and Mira, the only human among them—and remembered he was the sole runner who survived Firefly’s ambush to warn them.

“This trip might be deadly. You know that, right?” Adelaide asked, head tilted like a curious sparrow. Kabos scratched his red hair, embarrassed, fingers raking like comb teeth.

“Uh… yeah, I know. The Hero told me not to come…” He looked at Varie, still locked in a staring duel with the queen, and sighed like smoke. “She said human bodies aren’t suited for this journey, and there’s no reward she can give me…”

“Then why insist on coming?” Adelaide’s curiosity tipped like a cup, and he flushed deeper, awkward as a boy in new boots.

“Well… alright, straight out—I’m the second son of House Berlik…” He grimaced like biting green plum. “Yep, that idiot who argued with Miss Mira at the gala is my brother.”

He rushed on, hand raised like swearing before a shrine, promising he wouldn’t betray a life-saving favor, that he’d never leak Adelaide’s Blood Magic, nor that two wanted people were here, to the Empire or Rockridge. Then he continued, words tumbling like pebbles down a slope.

“But my family only cares about my brother; he holds the inheritance. Shameful, but I’m not reconciled. I wanted my own name, so I snuck to the border, spent years in the frontier army, finally made General Slandor’s guard. When I heard about this deployment, I thought luck had come. I was ready to do something big and go home bragging.”

“As you know, we saved no one and got ambushed; if not for Miss Mira, we’d be a field of graves.” He drooped like a wilted stalk, then suddenly brightened like sun breaking cloud. “But heaven doesn’t slam all doors. If I make it back alive, and snag some ancient Nacha relic as a souvenir, I can brag a lifetime.”

Adelaide listened, smiling like a lantern’s steady flame, and cheered his ambitions with gentle words. After she left him, though, she raised it again with Varie, questioning why a human was allowed into such a critical mission.

Already furious, Varie rolled her eyes like river stones. “What, you and your sister aren’t human now? Honestly, you—who can barely walk—are probably less useful than him.”

She finished with a jab, then flopped onto her pet Barni like a cat into fur, speaking with prickly heat. “Beanpole gave me his word, said he’d stake his honor. I trust that guy. Don’t ask me why.”

It sounded like a non-answer wrapped around an answer. Still suspicious, Adelaide looked back, and saw Kabos and Beanpole sitting shoulder to shoulder by the fire, brothers by flame.

By size, Kabos the human and Beanpole at over two meters were worlds apart, but Beanpole hunched like a bending pine so Kabos could throw an arm around him. Kabos lifted his cup and laughed, the sound mixing with Nacha voices like water finding one stream, nothing forced in the scene.

In that moment, Adelaide felt something strange stir, a firefly in her chest.

Hearts differ: some want to stop war, some to reclaim ancient Nacha craft, some worry for a childhood friend, some chase vanity, while she herself sought to win the second trial, goals a scatter of stars. Yet watching this, she felt something she hadn’t in the caravan—a quiet, rare warmth.

For years, Adelaide moved along the edges of groups like a moon skirting clouds, never staying, always alone, only the twin roads of using and being used. But in that heartbeat…

She felt, astonishingly, like she had joined a team for real, a thread woven into a shared cloth.

Why? Had she grown more reliant on others? Adelaide turned the thought like a smooth stone, and her hand around Mira’s tightened without her noticing, like a promise.

So the journey began, under a feeling Adelaide couldn’t fully name, like a wind rising out of a valley—soft, persistent, and setting the road in motion.