The System stared at the small girl, her sweet smile still glazed with tear tracks, and felt its worldview crack like thin ice underfoot.

Wait. What did she just say? The thought smashed like a bird into glass.

Nana? Was that the Nana it knew? Doubt fluttered like a moth to a candle.

It couldn’t believe it; disbelief rose like a tide against a seawall. Its host, that arrogant, untouchable lunatic, had once worn a smile this pure and cute? Was it broken, or was this world skewed? The whiplash of contrast cut like a sudden north wind.

“Hm? Yi-chan, what’s wrong?” The girl hugged a little wooden board like a raft, tilted her head like a sparrow, and landed the perfect amount of cute.

Ahhh, my host just called me Yi-chan. Before, she only called me trash System. The System wanted to bash its head against a wall like a ram. For one heartbeat, it even found its host cute. Hell, was it glitching like a spark-spitting wire?

That host who killed without blinking, who schemed all day to off the leads—cute? God, this had to be a fog-dream.

“Ah... it’s late already. I have to head back.” She waved like a willow frond. “Bye-bye, Yi-chan. See you tomorrow.”

The rest blurred like rain on glass. The System’s mind echoed with one line, Nana’s soft “Yi-chan.” It even regretted not recording it; the regret bit like a swarm of gnats.

“Hey, hey, Little One, can you hear me?” A voice slid into its mind like a silver thread. “I’ve sent background perspectives on Nana’s mental world as data. Pick it up later.”

“Oh... oh, got it.” The answer fell like a pebble into a well.

Stunned, the System stood like a post in the wind, until its Master’s voice rang again like a bell. The slum street lay empty as a shed husk, bleak as late autumn. It picked a secluded corner like a fox choosing a burrow, hid, and began receiving the data stream.

This is Chronos City... Hmm? Wait...

Chronos City?! The name struck like thunder over a flat plain. Wasn’t Chronos City the capital on its Master’s planet? Why was its Master’s capital stamped into its host’s mental world?

It remembered the tech there standing like a mountain at the universe’s peak. Slums like this, packed with ragged refugees, never showed. Questions bubbled up like boiling water, one after another. A reckless thought surfaced like a whale breaching.

So... could its host and its Master have once come from the same planet? Ningyi’s heart pounded like a storm drum, but she pressed it calm like snow on a flame, and kept receiving the plot.

Legend said that long ago, in Chronos City, there lived a queen who could sway the time of all things. The Queen was kind, a warm lamp in winter. To spare her people some parting grief, she split her law like starlight and gifted it to ministers and citizens, granting them long years.

They hid here, peace-loving as deer in a grove, far from the dust of the world. But peace is a soap bubble. The secret of a Queen who commanded time leaked like a cracked jar. A greedy army lusting for immortality swept in like locusts.

Blood dyed the white city walls like spilled cinnabar. The Queen’s people rose like sparks, yet against wolves in steel they were helpless as reeds. Because she had scattered her law, the Queen’s power waned like a sinking moon. She could not even shield her own, and she was chained here.

The invaders defiled her with the cruelty of drought. Then they stabbed her, and her naked body hung from the city’s white cross like a torn banner. The blood that embodied her law streamed down the pale cross like a red river. The army, crazed for immortality, scrambled beneath like jackals at a kill.

In one night, the far-from-dust peach grove burned like paper. Wails blew over the land like winter geese. The occupiers piled every jewel of wealth deep inside Chronos City, and they caroused every night like drunk gods.

From then on, Chronos, the capital that once whispered of immortality, fell into rule like a night with no dawn.

Ding! Prologue Quest: Meeting and Parting, complete.

Ding! Side Quest triggered: Eve of the Omen.

Quest: In Chronos City, obtain the prophecy left by the ancient Queen of Time. Time remaining: twenty days.

Failure within the limit will trigger irreversible operations. Prepare accordingly.

The chain of prompts rang in its head like hammer blows. The System snapped its eyes open like shutters in a gust.

I didn’t expect my Master’s planet and my host’s world to share a history like this. That never showed in any feed. The slum around her sat broken and dirty like a rusted cage, and the System sighed like wind through wires. Then a thought clicked like a gear.

Chronos City later rose to the universe’s tech pinnacle thanks to one brilliant ruler, a lighthouse on black water. Which means this present enslavement was overthrown in later history.

Walking the slum’s main street, Ningyi chewed that thought like tough bread. This Side Quest from her Master clearly foreshadowed the Main Quest’s curtain rise. The prophecy left by the Queen of Time would, under certain conditions, hint at the name of the hero who would topple the tyrants.

It felt like a war-plane of a world, iron on the tongue. One more detail tugged her like a hook. In this plane, the host wasn’t Nana Toki. She was simply Nana.

Was it because she was born in the slums, soil without a family root? The background data listed a branch note. The Queen’s ministers and people bore the surname Shi, like a seal. Yet the host had only a given name, no surname, like a leaf without a stem. Did that mean, in days to come, the host would become one of the Queen’s people?

She also remembered Trollop once calling her host Nana Shi. She had brushed it off then like dust on a sleeve. Now, inside the host’s mental world, the loose threads showed like cracks in ice.

The System felt it had lost a key piece, a star just out of sight. No matter how it searched, the thought slid away like a fish into deep water.

Fine. First, walk the city and let the wind show the paths. There was time before the Side Quest’s hourglass ran dry. She could still comb Chronos City, street by street, like a net.

From the Master’s packet, Chronos City was split into three zones like rings on a tree. Lowest was the slum. Most there were descendants of old ministers and citizens stripped of the Queen’s grace. They were pressed for labor like oxen. Each month, they handed in taxes on schedule like tides. If they fell short, the guards collecting had the right to throw them into prison like stones.

Next sat the residential district for common folk, immigrants from elsewhere, steady as clay. The lord didn’t squeeze them, but life still bit like a cold wind.

Last came the noble quarter, the high roost of Chronos City. Most inside were direct kin of the current rulers, scales of a coiled dragon. They held extreme privileges like blades, and they were the local warlords of this city.

The hierarchy here was iron. Slum residents were forbidden to leave the slum in their lifetime, chains drawn as lines on a map. If patrols caught them crossing, they faced death by example like a thunderbolt. In severe cases, execution on the spot fell like a guillotine.

The excuse was simple as ash. In Chronos City, slum-dwellers no longer counted as human in the eyes of the others. To commoners and nobles, they were livestock and trash, born to be yoked like mules.

Even so, a slum-dweller had one thorny path to bend fate. Pay ransom to a noble in charge, like buying back your own name. Depending on the amount, you could leave the slum for the residential ring. Or you could leave the capital to seek life elsewhere like a migrating bird. All of it was allowed, as long as you paid enough to please a noble’s appetite.

The price was sky-high, a mountain higher than hope. Even after dozens of slum generations scraping like ants, they might not gather enough for one child to step into the residential zone.

Maybe the host’s so-called lack of money meant she wanted to shed the slum’s first street like an old skin, and walk into an ordinary life.

“Name.” The guard’s voice fell like a stamp.

“Ningyi.” The answer struck like a match-flare.

“Your name isn’t on the residential register.” His gaze pinned like a nail. “Can you show proof for this district?”

“Here.” She handed over a paper like a folded wing.

“Alright, go on.” The barrier lifted like a bead curtain.

Past the checkpoint from slum to residential, Ningyi hunched into her thick coat like a turtle in winter, trying to draw no eyes.

By rights, the System’s body didn’t belong to this world, a shadow cast from another moon. As the intervenor, she had no rightful papers for Nana Toki’s mental world. Thankfully, her Master had sent a heads-up, a spark in the dark. With it, she used her authority to forge a residential pass like a clean stamp.

That pass covered only the System itself, a cloak sized for one. Both slum and residential folk kept detailed registries like ledgers. If someone, like the System just now, got checked and had no name on file, and could not show papers, they were branded slum on the spot like cattle.

Then, for fraud, they would be hauled into Chronos City’s prison and punished, iron and stone closing like a mouth.