“Any problem?” Lance lifted his brow like a drawn bow.

“No, none,” the gendarmes traded looks like tossed pebbles. “Captain, is ‘Flame of Chaos’ even a surname?”

“No, it’s not.”

It sounded like Maple City folks didn’t know the Blazing Fire Knight. To dodge awkwardness, Lance spoke clean and sharp as a blade. “Lance Morrison. Remember it.”

The gendarme nodded, doubt flickering like frost in his eyes. “So you’re a knight?”

“What the hell are you—”

“Wait.” Lance stopped Jeremy before his temper flared like a dry field. He brought out his knight’s medal, a cold coin of honor gleaming like winter sun. “This should do it.”

The gendarmes examined it, eyes circling like hawks, then thawed with relief. “Mm… real. No problem.”

“Next,” the gendarme looked at the last man, the Feng Wolf Marquis. Duty’s chill cracked into a smile. “Our Mr. Fulton, right?”

“Hahaha!” Their jeers rose and fell like crows startled from a tree.

The Feng Wolf Marquis stared past them to the long street, silent as a winter pond. The knight and the mage said nothing either, treating the gendarmes like mist on the river.

“Alright, you can pass.”

As they were leaving, a gendarme called to Lance, voice bright as tin. “Little knight, if your master goes broke, try your luck with the gendarmerie!”

“Hahaha!” Their laughter clattered like loose shutters in the wind.

When they’d gone far enough that the uniforms were smoke in the distance, Jeremy grumbled, anger hot as coals. “Boss, why’d you stop me?”

“Why couldn’t I stop you?”

“’Cause they didn’t know you, and they mocked you!”

He wasn’t wrong, and the words pricked like thorns.

Lance shook his head, calm as a stone under rain. “If they truly needed a lesson, I wouldn’t let them leave breathing. They didn’t cross that line.”

“They just don’t know me.” He shrugged as if brushing snow off his shoulders.

Jeremy wasn’t so generous. Without a vent, his fire smoldered. He cursed weakly toward the gendarmerie’s path, a spark lost in the wind.

“Master,” Yuna spoke up for once, eyes closed like a quiet shrine. “The title Blazing Fire Knight spread through the kingdom after that war. Why doesn’t Maple City know?”

All eyes fell on the Feng Wolf Marquis, guilt heavy as wet cloth. He stammered, words snagging like old vines. “B-because Maple City is… in some ways… still… old-fashioned.”

His meaning was clear as a shadow on snow.

“News and public opinion?” Lance guessed, voice cool as dusk.

The Marquis shook his head, a leaf refusing to settle.

“Then… let me think.” In his memory, Maple City, being the royal seat, moved information like a river under ice—slow, but never still. If something clogged the flow—

“Because the royal family’s here, so they—” Lance cut straight through, like a blade through silk. He was about to say a powerful marquis house strangles discourse.

Terrified he’d name trouble, the Marquis clapped a hand over Lance’s mouth, eyes flicking like sparrows to see if anyone heard. He nodded with frantic vigor. “Yes, yes—Sir Lance, exactly.”

“Fine.” Lance pushed his hand away and sighed, breath thin as winter smoke.

“In short,” the Marquis coughed with ceremony, like a drumbeat before a tale. “I heard from the Mountain Wind Knight that I could ask you, so I came to find you.”

“So the one you wanted first wasn’t me. It was the Mountain Wind Knight, who happened to be escorted back to Maple City then, right?”

“Correct.” He admitted it, frank as a bare branch.

“Then I heard about your skill from him.” The Marquis cleared his throat and mimicked the man, voice rough as gravel. “‘Blazing Fire is the only man who can break my blade. If he enters, he’ll win the Knight Festival.’”

Inside, Fulin broke into a cold sweat, beads sliding like dew.

On the surface, Lance struggled to keep calm; his heart skipped like a startled hare. “So… he rated me that highly?”

“I thought he’d call me shameless.” He remembered the blast that knocked his foe out—a victory blackened like soot.

Yuna was unmoved, lenses of her rimless glasses catching light like still water. “Knights divide into knights of victory and knights of guardianship.”

“For the former, victory is justice.” Her tone fell like a gavel.

“Is it?” Lance’s doubt fluttered like a moth.

“Winners and losers. It’s ancient truth.” The Marquis nodded, a bell tolling in fog.

“So to chase victory, a knight can do anything?” Lance spoke lightly, but the edge glinted like ice.

Yuna shook her head, soft as falling ash. “That’s wrong.”

The mage added, voice steady as oak. “Underhanded is petty. Courage and craft make a knight.”

Jeremy scratched his head, frustration buzzed like a fly. “So it’s just wordplay old folks love?”

“Maybe,” Lance said, boredom a thin cloud.

They walked and talked, drifting down Flower Street, near three kilometers of winding petals and poor planning. They finally reached the nobles’ residential district.

Here, the air was heavy with bloom, sweet as honey in winter.

They stepped in, and a winter gust arrived sharp as needles. It carried both knives of cold and coils of fragrance.

There was a hint of blood in the perfume—only “hint,” because to a Chaos Vampire, flower-scent and blood-scent were neighbors in the nose. Fulin still couldn’t split the two cleanly.

In Maple City, blood-scent had become useless, like a compass in a storm.

Flowers dressed the street in riotous color. Tulips that wouldn’t fit in the courtyards spilled to the gates, turning the avenue into a river of petals.

Yuna looked around, a soft sigh like mist escaping. “So many flowers.”

“Yeah,” Lance echoed, voice lazy as drifting snow. “So many flowers.”

Every noble’s manor flaunted blooms like coin. Rare breeds flashed color, and dedicated gardeners and mages coaxed them to open, day by day, like lanterns at dusk.

“I used to be a gardener,” the mage said, a memory sprouting like a seed.

A fresh wind breathed petals past. Lance laced his hands behind his head, half-lidded like a cat in sun. “You remind me of another mage. He said his dream was to be a gardener.”

“In recent years in Maple City, most mages did gardener work,” the mage said, catching a petal like a drifting butterfly. “But flowers, here today gone tomorrow… it’s just color. Why do so many love them?”

He let the petal fall, a tiny boat returned to the stream.

“Because they’re fleeting, that’s why we love them, isn’t it?” Lance’s voice was a quiet brook.

“Maybe.” The mage’s doubt faded like twilight.

The dropped petal rose again in the wind and sailed away to a farther shore.

The royal residential district sprawled vast and tangled, a forest of walls. They walked a long while before reaching the Feng Wolf Marquis’s manor.

“Here we are.” The Marquis pointed at the standalone estate, a lone island of stone.

Jeremy’s half-lidded eyes climbed a notch, surprise flickering like a match. “So your place is pretty big.”

By footprint, the mansion took up space like two basketball courts. Among the district’s independent estates, few were bigger.

Yet compared to its neighbors, it looked bare, a plain cloak among silks.

“No flower beds?” Lance asked, voice cool as shade.

“No.” The bleak wind slipped by, and the Marquis opened the door, his figure thin as a reed. “Come in.”

Inside, the grounds were spare and cold. Only one thick maple stood, winter-stripped, a skeleton of branches against the sky. Under her, a handful of stubborn weeds gnawed at the frost.

Among the weeds, some wild tulips huddled. “You planted flowers here once, right?”

“Yes.” The Marquis walked on as the wind kept whispering, a gray thread.

Wild tulips won’t bloom in winter. They endure in the cold, waiting for spring’s first breath to unfurl bright crowns, hoping to rise above the weeds.

They hope to win the master’s favor, to be brought into a warm greenhouse, their beauty guarded like embers.

But… their master didn’t love them. His heart leaned toward the maple princess, maybe far away, maybe only a dream.

“She flowers in summer,” the Marquis said at the tree, palm thumping the bark, a drum on old wood.

“Summer? Maples flower?” Lance asked. In his past life’s Summer Country, maples were rare as moons in daylight.

“Yes,” the Marquis traced the rugged grain, fingers slow as moss. “Maples flower, but their blossoms don’t fit the common eye.”

“Don’t fit… common taste?”

“Her flowers are like dandelions—tufts on a tree.” He looked up at the bare branches, eyes seeing a vanished scene. “In summer they open at dawn and fall at dusk, or drift on the wind, or tremble down.”

“In short, they’re fragile—far more fragile than tulips. Like the leaves she bares in autumn—”

“They’re born to fall. For maples, falling is beauty.”

The winter wind hummed bleakly, a low flute.

“I see,” Lance murmured, thoughts snowing in silence. “No wonder Maple City folk don’t like maples.”

“Perhaps.” The Marquis’s answer was a reed bowing.

The wind kept combing the place with cold fingers.

…

They had barely stepped inside when a crowd swarmed outside, boots and voices like a flood.

Asset evaluators of Maple City had come, eyes sharp as knives. The Feng Wolf family coffers were down to dust, and these people were ready to snatch a prime estate the moment it fell.

“What are you doing?!” They ignored Jeremy and the others like gnats in summer. They burst into the grand hall and pinned the Marquis, hard as a trap.

“Feng Wolf Marquis, sell me Maple Manor!”

“Sell to us. We’ll put down six thousand gold!”

“Seven thousand! Sell to me!!”

The Marquis flushed hot, shame and anger wrestling like storm and sea. “No sale! This manor isn’t for sale!”

The hall roared, voices buzzing like hornets. Lance stepped out, bored eyes skimming them like rain over slate. His tone came lazy, like a cat’s yawn. “Marquis, what now?”

Lance’s outfit threw them off, a knight’s lines on a young face, like steel in spring. “A knight… and a boy?”

An old hand pushed forward, dressed with the polish of a mirror. His smile was sour as unripe fruit. “Feng Woooolf Marquis, if you don’t sell, with your assets, can you even afford a new knight?”

The Marquis felt anger and disgrace bite like frost. “Knights are enfeoffed,” he said, each word a nail. “Don’t call it hiring.”

They burst into laughter, the hall and the doorway filling with cheap sunlight.

The Marquis kept his face tight, chin lowered like a soldier in rain, swallowing every barb.

He couldn’t sell Maple Manor. It was the Feng Wolf family’s last movable asset—if he sold, the kingdom’s constitution would strip his marquis title.

Lose the title, and the Feng Wolf name dissolves like salt in water. The ancestors’ legacy turns to paper ash.

He could not, would not, sell Maple Manor.

But even a firm stance didn’t move them back. They pressed tighter, like wolves at a fence, exhausting tricks to force a fallen marquis to hawk his last home.

“I—I—” Walls pushing on his back, the Marquis felt life hard as winter stone. His heart chilled like the wind outdoors.

Their rudeness gnawed at Lance’s patience. He raised his voice, a blade ringing. “By a knight’s sword, I order you to back off!”

Some sharp ones clamped their mouths and fled, shadows melting like frost. A few stubborn hearts stayed.

One man smirked, mouth loud as a drum. “I’m employed by the Silkworm Clan. You’re a small knight. What can you do to me?”

Lance drew, the hot edge flashing like sunrise.

Whoosh!

When the scorched ember trail faded, the man’s shorts dropped like a cut rope. He howled, panic flaring. “My—my bird’s on fire! Ahhh!”

He sprinted out, hopefully to meet a cooling wind. Inside, the rest stared, faces paling like paper.

“That was Battle Aura, right?”

“A knight boy—using Battle Aura?!”

“Don’t tell me he’s—”

Lance didn’t wait for their minds to catch up. He fanned the flames coiling around the Sirius Sword, the blaze licking like hungry foxes.

“Still not leaving?”

Under the heat’s biting teeth, the evaluators scattered, leaving a hall of trampled air and tipped chairs.

The Marquis called a servant. “Chris, close the door.”

Chris pulled it halfway, then rushed back, anxiety beating like wings on his face. Something was wrong; it dripped from him like rain.

Another evaluator strode in, but he wasn’t human. He was a Celestial, light cold as moonstone.

Two human knights flanked him. He kicked aside the blocking servant, stomping through like a boar. He came right to the Marquis and spoke down his nose, voice a winter rule. “By imperial common law, humans can’t refuse the Celestial Spirit’s lawful asset acquisitions… which means, penniless marquis, your manor’s mine.”