The duke’s sudden proposal hit Lance like a rogue wave, knocking his balance out from under him.

“Let me ask Alice first,” Lance said, voice drifting like sea-mist to buy time.

The duke nodded, face set like stone in rain. “Fair. It’s your young folks’ business, after all.”

“I’ll get back to work,” he said, and his footsteps faded like oars slipping into fog.

The moment he left, Alice, who’d been a shadow in the corridor, slipped onto the balcony. She came to Lance’s side like a bird alighting on a rail.

She dipped her head, cheeks tinged rose. “Father said those things to you, didn’t he?”

“Mm.” Lance gave a perfunctory sound, eyes still on the open sea that the balcony faced, gaze drifting like a gull in wind.

Alice didn’t mind. She lifted her face, pink as dawn, and asked, “So, Lance, what do you think?”

“Me…” His tone was half a sigh, half a knot. “This is your life’s great matter. Why ask me?”

Alice lowered her head and murmured like a whisper through reeds. “It’s your great matter too…”

Lance drew his eyes back from the water’s blue edge. He put weight in his voice like a stone in a palm. “Alice, let me ask you something first.”

“Mm… go on.” She straightened, earnest as a lantern set upright.

“If…” Lance’s words stalled, then steadied. “If Doran’s fall is inevitable… what would you do?”

A calm sea-breeze combed through the balcony. Alice’s brow knit like ripples. “Why ask that out of nowhere?”

The one playing Lance—Fulin—almost blurted what yesterday’s crystal had shown.

The Wasteland Deity.

A grand, majestic stone effigy, brimming with a power that pressed like mountains.

In her Shelika guise, Fulin had tasted it: divinity, a force mortals can’t resist, like a storm that snaps masts as if they were reeds.

If such a brute strength came to Doran, what fate would Doran meet?

Fulin knew too well. If she didn’t intervene, Doran would be torn like rag, then chewed like raw meat, then swallowed into silence.

Without doubt, if Fulin did nothing, Doran would die like a candle under rain.

But even if she showed her true form and struck down the Wasteland Deity, what would she gain?

No longed-for quiet. No life she’s dreamed of living. Only the cold balm of duty, like a thin blanket in winter.

Worse, the reveal would bare her identity. Disasters would dog her steps like hungry wolves.

So, for a quiet life, Fulin could only leave Doran.

And abandon those she’d met wearing the face of the Blazing Fire Knight.

Alice was one of them.

Fulin wasn’t heartless. Working alongside them for so long had woven threads of feeling, like ivy on stone.

But even deep ties weren’t enough to make her drop the dream of peace, a lake she’d chased for years.

When she thought of it, her world dimmed like dusk behind smoke.

To keep that dusk from turning bitter, she planned one thing.

Before she left, she’d at least say a proper goodbye.

So Lance said, steady as an oar blade, “Alice, I mean it. If Doran’s fall can’t be stopped, and I have to leave Doran because of it, what would you do?”

“If even you say that…” Alice’s eyes went foggy, lost like a boat in mist.

Then her gaze firmed, though her tone curved like a joke. “If it really comes to that, I’ll wander the world with you~”

That made Lance bristle, like a spark kissing dry straw. “Didn’t you say you wanted everyone in Mubay to wear a smile?”

“Right.” Alice nodded, simple as a bell-tone. “But I think that way for you.”

“For me?” Lance frowned, tugging on that old vow. “Isn’t it for yourself? It’s your ideal.”

“You’re wrong, Lance…” Alice said softly, calm as moonlight over water.

“How am I wrong?” He was both irked and puzzled, like thunder caught in a jar.

“I’m doing it for you,” she whispered, words shy as drifting petals.

“For me?”

“Yeah… Mubay is your hometown,” Alice said, like a wish sent to stars. “I figured, one day, the townsfolk shouldn’t wear sour faces. They should smile and tell you, ‘Welcome home.’ That’s how it should be.”

“Just for that?” From Fulin’s mind and from Lance’s mask, the thought was too pure to parse, like clear water that hides its depth.

“Is that wrong?” Alice held her ground, stubborn as a sprout pushing stone.

Lance looked at that stubborn, guileless light in her eyes. He looked for a few heartbeats, until a wave struck the reef with a white crash.

He exhaled, and a small smile loosened his face. “It’s not wrong.”

Alice puffed her cheeks, serious as a little general. “Then why’d you smile? Are you laughing at me for being childish?”

“I wasn’t laughing at you.” Lance shook his head, then let honest light fill his gaze. “Your idea’s great. Keep at it.”

“Is it now~~” Alice set hands on hips, a touch of proud sunshine in her pose.

“But if Doran is falling, even if I keep at it, I won’t live to see that day…” A little cloud crossed her voice.

“You will,” Lance said, heat blooming in his tone. He pointed at himself with a thumb, proud as a banner in wind. “I’m the Blazing Fire Knight, a knight who births hope from disaster. With me here, even if the sky falls, hope won’t.”

Alice blinked, then let out a soft laugh like wind chimes. “You just love showing off.”

“Showing off’s an important tactic,” Lance shot back, chin up like a spear-tip.

“Sure, sure~~” Alice’s smile turned knowing. “The famed Blazing Fire Knight~~”

They traded laughter. A cheerful breeze raced the waves. Above, the heavy clouds thinned like smoke at dawn.

Then the duke popped up as if he’d sprouted from the soil, face tight as a bowstring. “W-well!? How is it!?”

He was, of course, asking Lance. Lance blinked, lost in the fog. “How is what?”

Turns out, the Iron Duke hadn’t truly left. He’d been hiding in the corridor, eavesdropping like a cat behind a screen. The wind muddled the words, but the mood kept rising like a warm tide, so he burst out to ask about Lance’s thoughts on the betrothal.

“I’ll wait a little longer,” Lance said, answer landing like a pebble on still water.

“Father is so annoying!” Alice’s disgust showed, sharp as a pin.

The Iron Duke failed to net his golden son-in-law and drew his precious daughter’s ire. The double blow cracked his spirit like frost on glass. All the piled-up troubles rushed him like a wave. The iron mask shattered. He threw himself to the floor, flailing like a child.

“Why? Why!? Why won’t anyone spare a thought for me, the duke!?”

“Mubay’s in such bad shape, yet everyone’s being willful. Why must I, the duke, bend to them? Why? Why!?”

Tears gushed from his eyes like twin waterfalls, absurd and sparkling.

Alice covered her mouth, laughing like bells. “Looks like the gardener can skip watering today~~”

Lance crouched beside him, a steady hand on a shaking shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m a knight born of Mubay. Even if it’s only for Alice’s sake, I’ll protect Mubay.”

“Really!?” The duke snapped upright, vigor slamming back like a dropped anvil. The Iron Duke’s aura returned in a flash. He laughed, big and bright, as if he’d never rolled on the ground. “Hahaha! That puts me at ease.”

He strode off, cloak swinging like a banner.

Watching him go, Alice smiled. “He’s such a handful.”

“Yeah…” Lance wiped cold sweat like dew from his brow.

A distant rumble rolled in just then. They turned to the other side of the balcony, eyes cutting toward the sound like gulls to a splash.

A building, gutted by last night’s firefight, had come down. The falling brick and stone toppled like a stack of children’s blocks, dumping across the street. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

The duke’s men rushed in to clear it, a thin line against a big mess. Manpower was short. Work was busy yet slow, and this was a main artery, so crowds dammed up on both sides like backed-up streams.

Another knot tied by the lack of hands.

Lance didn’t waste breath. He climbed into the Eternal War Armor, the great frame rising like a steel giant.

With that mountain of muscle at work, he cleared the street in no time, neat as three strokes with a sharp blade.

And it wasn’t the only choke point. All over, reconstruction had stalled, bitten by the same shortage.

“Before I head back to the Royal Capital, let me help,” Lance told Alice, voice steady as a beam.

So he waded into the rebuild. With the duke’s force thinned to threads, trouble sprouted in the cracks. Street punks, back-alley crews, bandits—the usual riffraff fishing in Mubay City’s post-disaster emptiness.

Lance stepped in and cut through it, swift as a knife through knotwood. The messes ended fast.

One task followed another like waves on a shore, and three days slipped by quick as a gull’s shadow.

On the third day, as Lance drowned in work, the Royal Army finally arrived.

Not just the Royal Army. Reinforcements from other ducal lands marched in too.

For Mubay, which had already edged past the cliff, it didn’t change much. But with fresh hands, fraying law and order stopped sliding. Urgent projects found momentum like wind in sails.

“I should head back to Maple City.”

But just as Lance made ready to leave, the army of the Heavenly Spirit Empire appeared on the horizon like a new storm front.