“Hm… hm, hahahaha! Brilliant—truly brilliant!”

Mad laughter rang through a castle woven from flesh and veins. A blood-red man stared into a crystal orb at Mira, grinning wide. He drummed the table of human skin like a front-row patron, cheering with greedy delight. It was hard to believe that he’d been the one to lose in the last exchange.

“Not only did she catch the trigger on that suicide array inside the guy,” he purred, eyes bright as fresh cuts, “she chose not to dodge. She used her lightning to conduct at high speed, took the hit head-on, then shoved mana back through the link that fed the black serpent, and traced the spell’s origin in reverse. No wonder my fiancée favors her. That kind of battle instinct—at her age? Back then I didn’t even dare dream of it. Shame on me, shame on me.”

Through the orb, he watched Mira’s team split in two. After a quick huddle, Kabos and the lanky teammate hauled the Medicine Peddler’s corpse toward the Elven capital. Mira and Varie spun and sprinted the other way, a clean break toward a new plan. He clicked his tongue twice, pleased.

“How many deeds so great heaven itself took notice did the ancestors of the Douglas Family stack up, to earn blessings like this? One born daughter, one adopted, both peerless, both destined. Enviable.”

Sighing, he finally tore his gaze from the orb. His eyes settled on the beauty kneeling nearby. She pressed her forehead to the floor, bare skin quivering, prostrated and shaking.

“Ah, Firefly, what are you doing this time?”

He tugged a corner of his mouth, helpless, almost genuinely puzzled why she would do that. Firefly didn’t dare lift her face to meet her master’s eyes. She stayed flattened, fear and panic braided on her features.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry! It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been so shamelessly clingy, maybe you would’ve noticed that slut’s trick earlier and stopped all this…”

Jealousy had burned in her like a line of ants under the skin when Mira chased the Medicine Peddler and her master laughed. She’d done as before, acting on her own. Naked and needy, she coiled around him, trying to drag his focus away from another woman.

She did succeed, for a heartbeat. The crimson man’s attention slid to her. That delay meant they missed Mira opening her Time Domain, seizing the Medicine Peddler in an instant, and sealing his mouth. No chance for a clean kill.

Yes. What looked to Mira and Varie like an attack with zero slack had, in truth, been the crimson man slowed by Firefly’s demand.

With his power, if Firefly hadn’t begged, even knowing the suicide array’s trigger, Mira still wouldn’t have squeezed out this much intel.

But it was useless now. Mira had taken what she shouldn’t know yet. She’d even pinned down the exact location of the potion factory, and was already on the road.

Everything… stepped closer to that dreadful prophecy. All because of her stupid, choking jealousy. Regret and panic tangled in Firefly’s gut. Her body had no heartbeat, yet cold sweat slid like rain as if she were human. The crimson man looked at her without a trace of anger. He seemed amused, as if she was fussing over nothing.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said softly. “According to the ‘script,’ true, they should’ve gotten only a corpse, not this. But…”

He paused, walked to her, and gently lifted her forehead from the floor. He raised her face to him.

“If everything followed the ‘script’ exactly, wouldn’t that be boring?”

“...?”

Firefly was lost. The crimson man cupped her chin and went on.

“Firefly, tell me—what separates a good playwright from a bad one?”

The question struck like a bird in a storm. Firefly couldn’t think. He didn’t wait for her answer. He spoke to himself, voice a smooth blade.

“It’s the characters’ own decisions. A hack arranges every beat, trying to control each character with irresistible external force. That makes a puppet show without breath. A true genius sees what hacks never see. He knows the author must sometimes drop that godlike scepter, lean back in the audience, and watch them move by their own will. Only then does a script live.”

A living script is a good script. He ended high and bright, his tone full of joy Firefly couldn’t understand.

Why was he still this happy? Mira and that Lionheart Hero were already storming the factory…

Was any trouble bound to make him smile, so long as it involved those two women?

She couldn’t grasp his self-satisfied glow. That confusion fed a new spark of jealousy. After a brief struggle, she bowed again.

“Master! This is my fault. Please grant me a chance to atone. Let me go meet them.”

“Ah.”

He shook his head a moment later and sighed.

“If your resolve’s set, I won’t stop you. If you want to go, then go.”

He flicked his hand. The air tore open with a wet whoosh, revealing a corridor of meat behind it. Mucus-slick walls pulsed and wriggled, as if hauling something from deep within.

He waited a few seconds, face drawn with impatience. He snapped his fingers. The passage convulsed hard. In less than a blink, it spat out a thing wrapped in white, viscous slime.

Firefly’s eyes lit. She leapt up and caught it midair. She peeled away the milky sheath, revealing the core—an embryo, deep crimson.

It hadn’t finished forming, so its species wasn’t clear. Firefly knew it wasn’t any common creature, nor a human embryo. It was something higher. Nobler.

With it, she could… crush that damned human whelp.

“Thank you, Master, for your grace! I won’t disappoint you again.”

She gulped the crimson embryo down in one bite. She tore space with a sweep of her hand, and plunged into the fleshy tunnel.

Watching her urgency, the man pressed his fingers to his brow and sighed once more.

“Firefly… oh, Firefly. You’ve been with me so long, yet you still don’t grasp the meaning of ‘delight.’”

He had expected as much. Still, when he settled back on the throne before the crystal orb, a thin shade of regret crossed his face, as if he truly pitied her.

Right. Whether coaxing out ugliness through crafted theater, or inflicting plain body-pain—those are low pleasures for souls who haven’t seen through reality.

True delight is this: let go completely. Let the roles you love taste freedom. Guide them, even, to feel the thrill of cutting bonds…

He leaned in, eyes sinking into the orb again, watching the white-haired girl speak with the Elven Queen.

His mouth curved in a cheerful smile.

Yes. He was, after all, a generous fiancé.

A generous fiancé does as he does. Before the wedding, he half-closes his eyes to his fiancée’s little moves. He lets her try. He lets her struggle…

Because only then—when the veil of reality lifts, and they discover that no effort can escape absolute fate—only then blooms the most exquisite despair.