The marquis’ composure shattered like cracked porcelain; he almost dropped to his knees. “Mr. Lloyd, I beg you, please—”

Lloyd kicked him aside like a stray dog; a guard knight rushed in to wipe dust from the Celestial’s shoe, like brushing dead leaves off marble.

The Celestial snarled, voice like a whip. “You mangy, penniless stray—squatting here like a tick and still not satisfied?”

After standing too long, he wanted a seat; another guard sprawled on the floor, his back offered like a bench of flesh.

He waited for the pins and needles to ebb like tide; peering down at the kneeling marquis, his mood lifted like mist in the sun.

He went on, words like cold iron. “Everything in the Doran Kingdom was granted by the Empire. I didn’t seize your manor while you were out; that’s me saving your face.”

The marquis knocked his brow to the floor with a dull thud, like a drumbeat in a funeral march. “Maple Manor is the Fenglang family’s last collateral. Neither I nor my fathers ever owed a debt. This is five centuries of iron and blood—please spare us.”

Warm pleas met a cold backside; the Celestial snorted, breath like frost. “Five hundred years of iron and blood? Sure, the Fenglang Knights were something—but that was five hundred years ago.”

“Look at you now,” he said, rising from the human chair like a lord from a throne; he pointed at the echoing hall, hollow as a dry well.

“Have the Fenglang heirs raised even one Earth Knight?” His finger hung in the air like a spear.

“No, right?” The answer hung like an empty sky.

“Since the knightly blood failed, has your clan contributed to the economy like Golden Flower or Silver Silkworm?” His tone was a blade on stone.

“No, right?” The echo came back like wind over wasteland.

Under the Celestial’s wanton scolding, the marquis dared not speak; his face pressed to the floor like wet paper clinging to wood.

“So what is the Fenglang family worth, exactly?” His words buzzed like flies.

“Five hundred years of iron and blood? Don’t make me laugh.” He punctuated it with a hard kick, boot like a hammer.

The blow bruised his ribs; he clutched his side, pain whitening his face like chalk, and swallowed every groan like a stone down a well.

“Humans are trash. You’re special—you’re trash among trash.” His sneer was a rusted hook.

“So useless even the Light Deity wouldn’t pick you up.” Another kick—he rolled twice like a broken wheel, vomited blood, and lay prone like a discarded doll.

“Please... please—” His voice thinned like smoke in rain.

“Filthy human!” The curse cracked like thunder.

Lance watched in silence, eyes still as winter ponds; Layne’s words rang in his skull like a bell: To most Imperials, humans are just intelligent livestock.

Fulin was Chaos Vampire; she had believed that once, like frost hardening on a blade. But now, a hairline thaw crept through ice.

“One moment, Mr. Lloyd,” Lance said, voice calm as a shaded stream.

The Celestial glanced over, annoyed, like a cat flicking its tail. “What is it, little knight?”

“There is,” Lance said, while Fulin smothered the kill-urge like a blade under cloth; outwardly, he was all polish. “My learning is shallow. Would you explain the Imperial Common Law?”

Irritation flared; he eyed Lance sideways like a hawk. “A little knight wants me to interpret law for him?”

Jeremy and the others trembled, leaves in a squall, armor whispering like reeds.

The Celestial stared at Lance for long minutes, gaze like a nail. “Fine. Seeing how your master’s about to be stripped of title, I’ll enlighten you.”

By his account, the Imperial Common Law was enacted by the Heavenly Spirit Empire, and it blanketed all of Nordland like winter snow.

So it applied within vassal states as well; if a local constitution clashed, the Common Law took precedence, like iron over clay.

“In other words, it’s an extraterritorial code,” Lance said, words like pebbles in a clear stream.

“Heh, exactly,” the Celestial said, owning it without shame like a lord with keys. “Done picking my brain?”

“A moment—like a held breath.” Lance tilted his head. “Yuna.”

“My master,” Yuna said, arriving like a quiet breeze through paper screens.

“Yuna, with your learning—was he truthful?” His eyes were steady as a lantern flame.

“True,” Yuna said with her eyes closed, like a priestess at a mirror lake. “He can ignore the marquis and force-buy. The clause sits in that code.”

“I see...” Lance cupped his chin, thoughts drifting like smoke from incense.

Yuna’s presence lit the Celestial’s eyes like torches; he brightened, hunger like a wolf on snow. “This lovely lady, perhaps—”

He hadn’t finished before Yuna stepped back. A single step, yet she seemed a thousand miles away; he was left alone beneath an iceberg’s shadow.

Her cold grace and clean light hooked him like a fish on silver line. He turned to Lance. “Knight, lend me that woman for a few days.”

“Depending on her performance, I could even sponsor this stray dog’s assets.” He named his price like tossing a bone to a kennel.

“Why?” Lance asked, tone smooth as lacquer.

“Maple City has no women this clear anymore,” he said, staring into Yuna’s eyes, feigning depth like moonlight on water. “She’s as lovely as a still lake that mirrors a glacier.”

“Then I can’t give her to you all the more,” Lance said, voice like a door closing.

The blow landed, yet he didn’t rage; he sat back on his guard’s spine like a lazy king. He enunciated each word like tapping nails. “You humans—don’t you tend to offer women for favors?”

“Doran folk are conservative,” Lance matched his cadence, syllables like stepping-stones. “Why do you see Doran’s humans like that, Mr. Lloyd?”

The Celestial sprang up, stabbing a finger at the window like a lance. “Look at the tulips outside! Flowers everywhere along the streets!”

“If Lady Waltz hadn’t, eight years ago, with Young Master Silver Silkworm...” He spat toward the light like a snake. “Would this city have changed so much?”

Lance held his tongue, lips sealed like wax on a scroll.

A guard, fearing his master would overstep, interceded like a hand over flame. “She is a noble knight.”

“Noble?” The Celestial’s eyes bulged like drums. “You call her noble?”

His voice rolled across Maple Manor like thunder over cliffs. “She’s a high-class courtesan, used by the mighty to grease their deals!”

He drew breath, then fixed Lance again, a blade of a smile glinting like ice. “Well, little knight!”

“Your masters are shameless anyway. Why not be honest yourself?” He raised his voice again, a hammer on stone, sparks in spit.

“Use your maid to honor me—a great Celestial! Not those filthy swine...” His words smeared like oil on water.

His soaring voice swelled his shadow; everyone shrank, ants under a boot, hearts like seeds in a storm.

“Trade her to me for favors. How about it?” The question coiled like smoke.

His last line drifted like grace from the sky, yet lured like a whisper from the abyss. Ears dimmed. Lids fell. Darkness welled like tide over crown and eyes. It drowned even light, a sea swallowing stars.

But then—

“Tell me, is making jokes your special art?” Lance asked, voice like a pin of light.

At the refusal, he clenched his teeth like grinding gravel. Then he met those eyes and faltered, confusion like a moth in glass. “Interesting... human.”

“Smarter than I thought.” He toed the marquis, casual as nudging a pebble down a hill. “Abandoning a useless master for your maid—that’s a fine choice too.”

The marquis lifted a hopeless face, eyes like rain-soaked ash. Lance spread his hands and shook his head, a quiet no like falling leaves. “That was never my plan.”

The Celestial’s voice cooled, a blade on ice, breath like sleet. “Then what do you plan?”

Lance didn’t answer him; he asked Yuna instead, words like a seal’s command. “I command you. Has the Imperial Common Law ever been amended?”

“No.” Yuna opened her eyes, clear as a sky mirror with cirrus. “It’s ancient extraterritorial law. It has never been revised.”

“Good...” Lance touched his chin again, thought coiling like incense. “I command you. Is there a clause that lets me block his acquisition?”

Lloyd, so at ease before, felt tension tighten like a noose around breath.

“No,” Yuna answered with her eyes closed, calm as falling snow on stone.

Lloyd chuckled; his confidence flowed back like warm wine, cheeks loosening like thaw.

“But my master requires the other party to stop on his own...” Her tone rang like a bell.

Lloyd even laughed. “Looks like your maid isn’t as sharp as you—” His smugness glittered like cheap glass.

Yuna cut him off. Her eyes were clear, her voice bell-bright, her will a drawn bow. “Because there’s a transaction protection period.”

Simply put, if multiple parties vie and a dispute arises, the deal can’t be forced—like a locked gate that won’t turn.

“Under the Common Law, protection outranks compulsory purchase,” Yuna said, lifting her rimless glasses, a star-flash on the lens. “As of now, sir, you lack the right to buy Maple Manor.”

The Celestial assessor clutched his chest as if pierced by a hundred arrows; his voice rasped like torn silk. “I—I can make other bidders withdraw, because—”

“Because I’m a Celestial, a great Celestial Spirit.” He straightened, breath gathered like wind in sails. “Then there will be no disputing parties.”

But that was a mirage; Lloyd tasted his own words, and his towering posture shattered like glass on stone.

“Im-impossible!” His strength fled; he stumbled back, shrinking like a shadow at noon under a pitiless sun.

Too late, he grasped it. A deal without contest can’t exist under those terms; it’s a bridge cut in midair.

“Well done, Yuna,” Lance said, praise like warm tea in winter.

“Thank you for the praise, my master.” She bowed, a willow in night wind, grace like silk.

The foe wouldn’t fold so easily; propped up, the assessor struggled up like a bent reed. “To register as a party requires a sixty Gold Law coin deposit. Can you pay, little knight?!”

“Jeremy,” Lance said, name crisp as flint.

“On it,” Jeremy answered, like a spring snapping to life.

Lance took a pouch of Gold Law coins and tilted it so the shine spilled like grain from a sack.

Sweat beaded on Lloyd’s brow like dew. “Impossible! How could a little knight have that many?”

He pushed on, voice pumped with air like a bellows. “Buying Maple Manor and all attached assets takes at least five thousand Gold Law. Can you afford it?”

Five thousand Gold Law—equivalent to three hundred and fifty million, a mountain of coin shimmering like a golden dune.

A bead of cold sweat traced Lance’s temple like a winter drop. “Of course I can. I’ll win the Knight Festival.”

The other laughed coldly, sound like ice cracking. “The prize is only two hundred.” Then his smile shattered like pottery dropped on stone. “Don’t tell me—”

He remembered; the Fenglang family had a wildly successful investment—sprawling, powerful enough to shake half of Nordland like an earthquake.

Lance folded his arms, mockery sharp as a blade’s edge. “You’ll be working for me soon.”

He looked down from a height like a cliff. “Enjoy your tailored dignity while it lasts.”

The assessor crouched and gnashed his teeth, a dog chewing chains in a shadowed yard.

When Lance turned his back, a dark thought rose like swamp gas; the future taste of bowing to a human—unbearable as bile. He acted at once, swift as a snake.

“Get him,” the assessor pointed, voice low and oily like lamp smoke. “Maim him. Keep him from the Knight Festival.”

His two guard-knights obeyed. They dipped, palms on hilts; the blades slid free with a cold gleam, like their murky eyes in stagnant water.

“Go!” he barked, like a whipcrack in a stable.

At the shout, both lunged; fast sword—two streaks of steel, straight for Lance like lightning forks.

But he was faster; Lance sidestepped and snatched steel, motion like a swallow under eaves.

By the time they realized, each Adam’s apple pressed against the other’s point, pinned like moths on pins.

The Celestial staggered back, face bleaching like chalk. “No! Impossible!”

“Nothing’s impossible.” Lance raised his head, his vermilion eyes burning with ember light like coals under wind. “Because I’m the Blazing Fire Knight.”

Thud! Both knights collapsed; flame took them after they fell, swallowing them like dry straw in a field.

Staring at two vermilion grave-markers, the lofty Celestial finally panicked; his courage splintered like ice under a heel.

His soul scattered like ash; he dropped to his knees, trembling before the wavering crimson behind Lance like twin banners. Lance intoned, voice like ritual fire, “Let the flame redeem your sin...”

The hot wind flayed him; eyes nearly seared dry, he shouted, panic like a cracked bell. “Are you the Blazing Fire Knight?!”

“Yeah. I am,” Lance said. He didn’t kill Lloyd; he only turned, slow as a turning blade catching light. “Tell them—the Fenglang’s Blazing Fire Knight will win the Knight Festival.”