When Yekase and Ivaris returned to the Ambition Divine Ship, the sky-island buzzed like a festival square in spring.

Gargoyles hefted crates like boulders rolling down a mountainside. Ghosts tabulated projects with frost-cold precision. Vampires chanted, turning drab raw materials into pillars, porches, statues, paths, and railings, like fog becoming marble.

Prosperity bloomed like a field after rain.

“What’s going on? What happened?” Yekase spotted the Silver Princess standing atop a high earthen mound and called out.

“Happy newlyweds! This is a gift from me.”

She clasped her hands over her chest, squeezing those milky twin peaks into scandalous curves. A devilish charm pulsed like a heat haze. Yekase wondered if her race was really gargoyle and not succubus—then Ivaris tugged his ear like a stern breeze snapping a banner.

“The gift is…?”

“A little garden!”

“???”

On closer look, the delivered pieces matched what they’d seen in the workshops of the Silver City. They were the bones and sinew needed to raise a new sky-island.

“That’s… too generous!”

“Eh, it’s not huge. At least it’s smaller than your main island.”

Yekase and Ivaris were struck dumb, like birds hit by sudden thunder.

This—this was a true rich lady. Not like that one who does odd jobs anywhere, or that one who sells a scroll to her apprentice for 450 bucks, or that one who lives in a village with no internet.

Yekase bitterly regretted not working harder to build ties with the Silver Princess while in Europe. Just one equal exchange had stacked enough renown to earn a whole sub-island as a wedding present. If they’d helped pound the Church then, would Alchemy materials have poured in without end?

She disliked chemistry, so modern Alchemy never charmed her. But if a mountain of free materials sat in front of her, plus a textbook, she’d happily flip pages when boredom blew in.

Trying to make up for lost time, Yekase took the Silver Princess’s porcelain-carved hand—quite possibly not just a flourish—and said warmly, “We run an ‘agent’ service here. If the Silver City hits trouble, you can always come to me.”

Ivaris knew what Yekase was plotting with a twitch of a toe. She chimed in from the side.

“Dual Kings Arsenal doesn’t just sell tools! Our slogan is—”

Her half-finished high school brain blanked where the jingle should’ve snapped, like a drumbeat dropping.

“We only take trash, never lives,” Yekase said.

“Right, right, that one.”

…Why though?

“We don’t harm innocents. But for the human scum, we take them out like garbage—clean and swift.”

“Interesting! May I commission you?”

“Of course.”

Good. A line was hooked and humming—like reopening an old circuit. Ivaris worried whether Yekase could juggle it all, but for now she could only trust and trust again.

“Here’s the issue. After the World Tree in France was destroyed—no blame for you two, it was that Alchemy crone—the sorcery network lost the Golden Apple that held it tight. Earth’s sorcery currents snapped back to their ancient pattern from a thousand years ago.”

The Silver Princess spoke, anxiety flickering like candlelight in a draft.

“I chose the Vatican as the Silver City’s base. Not only to suppress the Church’s faith, but also to draw on the nearby sorcery network. Most of our citizens are magical beings.”

“So when the network suddenly shifted, the people of Labyrinth City began to weaken.”

“Exactly.”

This…

If Yekase had to crush a villain who’d done countless evils, or invent synthetic meat so magical beings wouldn’t need to eat humans, she could try. But a whole city-state’s general decline? The cause was clear, yet the path lay fog-bound.

What to do? Kill the Church outright? The difficulty was like punching through the Huaxia Branch. Even if they won, the weakening wouldn’t reverse. The hatred gulf between them and humanity would widen, and the storm would only grow knottier.

In this world, too many things refused to bow to brute force. A big fist could settle plenty, but not everything. Follow that road, and the day your fist isn’t the biggest, everything built on it crumbles like a cliff under rain.

“Ah, I didn’t come to spoil your mood today! Let’s talk about the wedding.”

Seeing Yekase frown and sink into thought, the Silver Princess lifted her voice like bells batting the dusk.

She pointed to the newborn sky-island. On its leveled ground, marble railings already ringed an annular gallery. The center held space for the ceremony. Outside the gallery, several small flower beds bubbled like beads.

“Our most professional succubus wedding team will guard you two every step of the way. Do you need vampire stewards?”

“No, no…” Yekase waved fast, like sparrow wings. “Vampire maids, sure.”

Then her ear got tugged again, steady as a fisherman’s grip.

“Alright, then traditional mode. After the ceremony, the island can stay as a scenic retreat. If upkeep’s a pain, our feather-sprite housekeeping service can handle it. Fees are paid yearly.”

Wedding teams and hourly maids? The business spread like ivy across a wall.

A Longlifer isn’t necessarily rich. But a Longlifer with a team is often richer than guessed. Even Aurora, back in that village without internet, held impressive assets. They say she sleeps on a floor heaped with gold coins.

Yekase saw it clearly. This broad-chested, broad-hearted Silver Princess had thought hard about her people’s future. To free them from instincts of raw meat and fire-and-blood, she’d racked her brain to craft jobs where racial talents shine. All so the “magical beings” wouldn’t have those two words cut off in insult.

Then the last barrier to joining human society was… the stubborn Holy See.

“What kind of ceremony flow do you want? Classic, or your own spin?”

“I’ve got an idea. Make my beloved into a human-shaped wedding chocolate. Send it over the venue with a drone. She uses Flash Energy to blast the shell into even shards. She floats down like a fairy. Then you cast the Levitation Spell around us, keep the shards hovering. Every guest can just pluck one and eat.”

“Sounds truly romantic!”

But the Silver Princess and Ivaris stayed focused on what they could build right now.

“After the ceremony, hold a barbecue right there as the evening feast.”

“Very fun…”

“She’ll wear long chiffon gloves. Flip skewers. Dust chili powder. Do the hostess duties—hey!”

This time Yekase pinched Ivaris’s ear. “Hm? What did I say two days ago? Don’t do that outside. At least don’t let people know it’s me. Did you forget?”

“Sorry… I won’t promote your kink for immobilizing restraint and denial anymore…”

“Still talking! Still talking!”

Yekase twisted Ivaris’s ear in little circles, and the woman rotated in the air like a maple seed.

With a face that said “sorry my wife made you laugh,” she told the Silver Princess, “Keep the flow traditional. There aren’t many guests anyway.”

“Alright…”

The Silver Princess looked like she’d lost a rare gem. What exactly are you regretting!

Dusk settled like ink. XiaoLei and Liu RuoYuan came out to invite the work crews to dinner.

XiaoLei said feeding visiting workers was a Huaxia tradition you never abandon. Even with so many from the Silver City’s crew, she still ran through the City of Ivalice and bought meat enough to feed a legion.

Prodded by her, Lu Yao used precious Omega Ray to make a huge iron griddle like a black lake. After mechanical arms laid the steaks in tidy ranks, Ling Yi donned the Blade Armor and blasted the underside with Blazing Rekindle like a wildfire under steel.

Ten minutes later, the scent of protein wrapped the Ambition Divine Ship like a warm shawl.

“Keep the ceremony simple. But the barbecue finale can stay, right?” Ivaris rubbed her reddened ear and pleaded. “We’ll copy this layout.”

“Alright, alright.”

Yekase loved barbecue too—or rather, if it’s meat, she loves it.

That exaggerated dinner, powered by Infinite Power, made the magical beings of the work crew cheer like thunder. Those within the Silver City who did the heavy lifting were mostly strong races. Aside from the ghost accountants every department inexplicably has, most adored meat—though a century or two ago, that meat sometimes included human flesh.

Yekase took a bone-in cut and gnawed slowly, like a wolf at leisure on a snowy ledge.

Ivaris heard how the maid-sisters had been turning intruders to stone as wall décor. She went off to probe the details with a bright grin. Yekase flew alone back to the main island. She sat on the platform edge, legs swinging over thirty thousand meters of empty air, like reeds bending over a bottomless lake.

Lu Yao and Ling Yi studied how to sear the second batch better and faster, sparks dancing like fireflies. Liu RuoYuan and XiaoLei took their portions and went inside. The four pets—except the one who couldn’t fly—saw this many creatures in one place for the first time. They dashed through the crowd, tails like banners. Mumu even bit a cyclops’s finger with a puppy’s bravado.

Jiang Bailu had Coffee Moon carry a slab of meat in one hand. They crossed the bustling crowd, passed the nearly finished garden, and reached the high platform at the far end of the little island.

The floor here held spell-array lines like veins of gold leaf. In the center sat a hole girded by a golden ring. It was designed to gather the island’s sorcery currents. Sit beside it, and you subtly raise your daily sorcery throughput cap. You can also look down on the whole garden like a hawk. Just don’t fall asleep and drop in.

“—Aren’t you eating?”

“I’m a robot. I don’t need food.”

Lorameia shook her head, declining Jiang Bailu’s kindness. She shifted, let her sailor-skirted legs relax, and dangled them into the golden ring’s circle like twin pale branches.

“You’re Jiang Bailu, Yekase’s research assistant.”

“You know me?”

“I stayed on the Horizon for a while. I’ve been watching what happens around her.”

“Ah…”

Jiang Bailu thought of the many times she’d made trouble and tormented Yekase. The many times she’d toyed with Yekase at the worst moments. The habits of going dark and running away. Her heart plunged into frost like a stone into winter water.

“Um… there were deep reasons…”

“You’re into her, aren’t you?”

“…Mm.”

“Then why give up?”

Jiang Bailu folded her legs and sat by Lorameia, like moon and cloud sharing a ledge.

“Eh—because I lost. When she looks at Ivaris with that gaze, I know dragging it on is just refusing to admit it. I also know that if I asked to join their indoor sports, they wouldn’t refuse. But I can’t accept that version of me. Not until I truly become a Longlifer and shed human thinking.”

Coffee Moon used a slanted force to shred the gristly steak and fed it to her master like a loyal raven.

“Though maybe love just makes people humble.”

Kids these days play wild, Lorameia thought, chin in one palm, like an old pine watching a new storm.

She and XiaoLei had been matched by a matchmaker from the next village. They chatted a month. Then biked to the county town twice. And that was that, solid as a stone gate.

Now she’d finally come back from the Horizon. Yet she couldn’t reunite with her wife of ten years because of “male pride.” Was that truly right? Her heart began to sear like iron on coals.

“You’re a robot. Why ask these things? Can you understand love?”

“Haha. I can’t.”