The disguise of Dual Incarnation was flawless; that tin‑can knight could never pierce Fulin’s mask as Lance, not through iron visor nor pride.

Even so, sitting with a witness felt like sand in her boot; unease crawled up her spine like a cold wind through pines.

Every other soldier’s gaze was a sour tide, disgust shading into hate; they wouldn’t strike, but their eyes stung like nettles. Fulin only wanted out.

Lance coughed up an easy excuse, like smoke after a bad dream. “After that nightmare, Brooke and I are beat. Brave soldiers, may your blades find victory. We’ll see you another day.”

He—she—tugged the old butler’s sleeve and turned to leave, like a pair slipping down a dusk road.

Two soldiers slid in, spears the bars of a gate, blocking their way within three steps.

From behind, the tin‑can knight’s voice clanged like metal on stone. “You’re Captain Malte’s kid, right? That makes this simple.”

A chill pricked Fulin’s heart, like a storm cloud rolling in.

Lance kept his voice low. “Sergeant‑Major Lawrence?”

Lawrence cleared his throat, gravel in the sound, then barked like a drumbeat across a field. “Lance Morrison, I order you. You will assist my Lionheart Legion in this matter.”

It sounded carved in iron. Fulin still clung to a sliver of luck, a paper boat on rough water.

Lance tried a sheepish smile, thin as rice paper. “Sergeant‑Major, I’m really worn out today, and the butler—”

Before he finished, two soldiers hauled the old man into a nearby shed, shadows swallowing him like a barn’s mouth.

“Master… Master!”

“What are you doing to Brooke?!”

Lance lunged, but the tin‑can knight’s hand fell on his shoulder like half a suit of iron. The weight pressed through plate, a boulder planted in meat.

Fulin didn’t know the exact weight; she only felt Lance’s borrowed strength strain uselessly. With just Warrior’s Bloodline Lv.1, without rousing Battle Aura, that grip was a yoke she couldn’t break.

It wasn’t a question of strength. Lawrence meant to keep him anchored, a stake in hard earth.

The sergeant’s eyes were a hawk’s cutting glide. “Kid, you two were the only ones who made it out, right?”

The words rang like frost. Fulin’s unease deepened, a dark river under ice. She saw his plan, and she wanted no more knots in this net.

Lance pasted on a smile, brittle as glass. “Not sure. It was chaos. I think others got out too?”

A gray‑robed man stepped from the shadow like mist coiling from a tree. “No. You lie. My animal‑tracking spell has shadowed Lady Alice for half a day. Only you and that elder came out.”

Fulin, wearing Lance’s face, noticed an owl perched unnaturally on the shed roof’s right ridge, a pebble of night against wood.

Its stare had thorns; it made her skin crawl. Cold sweat slid like rain under mail.

Oh hell—these mages have drone eyes. Good thing I never showed up in camp, or I’d be cooked.

Lawrence’s smile flashed, a knife’s glint. “You look nervous, pup. Did you dirty your hands for the butler?”

No bluff would cover it. Fulin, as Lance, chose to paint the tale, thick brush, no blood. She told what happened, leaving out what couldn’t be told—turning the Demon Realm Forest’s midday slaughter into a training ordeal, calling it Layne’s demand that a knight endure a mountain vigil in danger for half a day.

In short, she sketched a bumbling fool, tripping through thorns yet somehow coming home.

The kid crawled out of the Demon Realm Forest on raw luck. Luck ran dry. He returned to find bandits in the camp. Luck surged again. He bled and clawed and finally hauled the old butler out.

Faces tightened—soldiers and the gray‑robed mage alike—confusion like fog across a field.

It mostly tracked, a wagon with wobbly wheels—except one thing.

“Good boy,” the tin‑can knight snorted, temper flaring then cooling like quenched steel. “As I know it, Layne never took an apprentice. Not because he wouldn’t, but because his bar is sky‑high—weapon theory this, muscle training that, real‑fight response—” Lawrence clearly had bones to pick with Layne; then his voice leveled, iron again. “Fine. It’s sound, I admit. But anyone who gets Layne as a mentor is already a full knight. And you?”

Fulin blinked, stunned, like struck by a sudden bell. Were Layne’s requirements that high?

Impossible. Layne never lied. It was his teachings that let Fulin, in Lance’s skin, make the right calls—without him, she might’ve rushed in, declared rescue impossible without showing herself, and ruined everything.

Seeing Lance stall, the other soldiers pressed in, voices like crows.

“Captain, he’s lying!”

The gray‑robed mage sneered, words sharp as flint. “Lawrence, I don’t buy a word. It sounds tidy, but it reeks of rehearsal.”

Lawrence cut them off with a clap of steel. He fixed Lance in his sights. “Morrison boy. No disrespect to your father, but if you can’t prove what you just claimed—like Layne being your mentor—I have the right under military law to deal with you. Because of concealment, we might not save Alice.”

It was true in iron logic. Fulin, as Lance, had hidden nothing about the camp; the bind chafed like rope.

Proof was possible.

“Give me a longsword. A short sword works too.”

The tone was an adult out of patience with a child; it sparked irritation like dry tinder. The soldiers’ hackles went up, old resentments rising like dust.

They weren’t knights, but they had trainee strength. Commoners in uniform, counted as warriors. They hated nobles who wore silk and rot. Lance Morrison was the poster boy: idle, foul, honorless—always sitting on their backs like a gilded parasite. Yes, they admitted there were good men like Baron Morrison, like the Iron Duke.

But this Lance? He stank in their eyes.

“Captain, he’ll grab a weapon and bolt!”

“Captain, our legion gear is top‑grade. It fetches a pile on the black market!”

“Captain, word says Lance haunts the Westside casino. Bet he’s neck‑deep in debt and foul‑mouthed too!”

The more Fulin listened, the more wronged she felt, a bruise blooming. She dipped into memory—then winced. Bad news. The real Lance did do things like that.

Lawrence didn’t live by rumor. He barely knew Lance Morrison, nor the famous former chief knight.

He chose sight over talk. “Pike, give him a sword.”

“But—”

“That’s an order.”

“…Fine.”

The soldier who’d spat earlier handed it over like giving away luck, face twisted. He believed this disgraced brat touching his hilt even a second was bad omen, the God of Victory stepping away like a shadow.

“Here,” said Pike, glare a dagger, before yielding the blade.

“Thanks,” Lance said, unbothered, simple as water.

No one believed the infamous boy would pull off anything but smoke. Even the villagers, watching like a roadside crowd, expected a stumble and a jeer.

Some soldiers tasted schadenfreude like bitter tea. It wasn’t joy; it was a wish to see Lawrence—who hated injustice like fire—cut down one more noble who mocked the Lionheart Legion.

Their disappointment came quick.

“Thrust Form.”

Lance set his stance with surgical precision, the dark swordsman’s Thrust Form. It did nothing for Lance’s current shape—but it looked sharp as a drawn line.

Blade and gaze fell into a single road, tip leveled at the foe. It was a vagrant swordsman’s frame, taken in another life from island samurai films.

The weapon was a western longsword, so the Form sat a bit crooked—but the aura rose like heat. Clean. Dashing.

If this weren’t Lance but someone else, claiming Layne as mentor would’ve sold half the room.

At least to Lawrence’s eye, it wasn’t theater. The Form was useful. The stance was steady, eyes like flint, grip iron. If the sword thrust now, straight for a seam in armor, it could draw blood.

“Good kid. Layne wouldn’t teach just pretty moves. Trade me a couple of touches. Royd, ward us both—”

Curiosity sparked in Lawrence, iron waking to flame. Lance had no mind to spar. Fulin judged that one display was enough.

“No need. Watch this.”

He moved. Battle art flowed from Thrust Form like wind through reeds—into Secret Sword Blazing Fire.

Red hair, red heat. Lance swung, and a huge tongue of fire roared from the blade, a forge’s heart turned into a slash. When the arc ended, the sword glowed like red‑hot iron.

Men imagined the impact—thick blade and savage flame ripping bodies like cloth—and shook, fear clamping spines like winter hands.

“Good boy…” Lawrence stared at Lance, wonder racing like a stampede across open plain.

A thousand impossibilities galloped in, then bowed to what his eyes saw. He knew this art: the signature of Blazing Sun Layne—Secret Sword Blazing Fire.

To wield such a fierce technique meant the youth had awakened Battle Aura and knew its reins. Not every knight awakens; among ten hardened knights, only one.

A prodigy like Lance Morrison, awakening so young, could be counted on fingers in the Doran Kingdom.

Lawrence was aflame, reverent as a chapel bell. “By the God of Victory… Unbelievable. In five years, since Maple City’s Golden Rose—Lance Morrison, you’re the second.”

The soldiers echoed him, awe like dawn light. The villagers had already fled at the first fireburst, thinking it some devilish trick, feet scattering like sparrows.

Lifted high by unseen hands, Fulin felt only a deepening knot of trouble, a storm coil under silk.

Lance met the sudden warmth with quiet water. “Sergeant‑Major, now you believe me?”

Lawrence’s voice turned solemn, respectful steel. “Of course, child of Mr. Malte.”

His troops had never heard him speak that way to anyone; sometimes he was procedural even with the Iron Duke. That alone marked the boy’s strength. Rumor crumbled like old plaster.

They almost shared a thought: someone’s been smearing Lance Morrison on purpose.

Lance waved, weary as dusk. “All right, Sergeant‑Major. Can I leave? I dragged the butler all the way back. I’m truly spent.”

Seeing him angle away, Lawrence chuckled, a low rasp. “Easy, kid. Don’t tell me you forgot my order?”

To be honest, Fulin had. Her mind had been a furnace, burning hard, weighing pros and cons to show Secret Sword Blazing Fire. The order had slipped like smoke.

What assistance again… eheh?

Lawrence restated, words a banner in wind. “I order you to assist this Lionheart Legion detachment. We’re rescuing Lady Alice from her captors.”

Fulin’s heart sank like a stone into a river. This didn’t sound like what she’d hoped to hear. In Lance’s skin, she didn’t want a frontline gamble. Could “Lance” stand in back and yell “you got this”?

Before Lance could raise an objection, a soldier jogged up, breath sharp. “Captain, the wagon’s ready. We can roll anytime!”

Lawrence burst into laughter, bright as flint striking steel.

"Listen up, brothers!" His voice rolled like a drumbeat across the yard.

"With Mr. Layne’s apprentice at our side, we can pull Alice out while keeping every hostage alive, like lifting the moon from still water."

A roar went up—"Oh!!!"—like surf pounding a cliff.

Helplessness tightened in Lance, a knot pulled wet and cold.

The men’s roar drowned his thin protest, like thunder burying a reed flute.

Or rather, "he" couldn’t object at all, like a leaf pinned under a stone.

Lawrence saw gloom cloud Lance’s face, like dusk pooling beneath his eyes.

"Do well," he said, "and maybe Alice will be your fiancée—the red thread of fate might tie you two."