Hymn of Heroes—
Day One, you’ll meet—a Knight.
(to be continued)
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“We’re here.” The words fell like a pebble in still water, ripples spreading under the noon glare.
“Master Bai, what are we doing?” Aerin’s voice trembled like a plucked string, nerves bright as glass.
“Hm? You’ll get it when you see it. We’re just browsing.” He smiled like a shuttered lantern, light leaking in slivers.
“But… this is a slave market.” Her breath hitched like a bird caught mid-flight.
After a cryptic talk about [Game Rules], Ye Weibai led Aerin onward, his stride a straight line drawn through dust and light.
He wasn’t strolling; his purpose cut neat as a blade through silk.
They reached the largest slave market in the Imperial Capital, a bazaar sprawling like a copper-colored sea under banners and smoke.
Slavery was legal on the continent, and here it swelled like a tide of coin and iron.
The gate loomed like an academy arch, monumental and cold, while the road churned like a river of hooves and wheels.
From royals to barons, from lone rangers to merchant hawks, anyone with coin drifted here like moths to a brazier.
The crowd buzzed like bees in clover, yet a lane split the mass like a knife, reserved for carriages groaning under iron cages.
The cages rolled past like moving coffins, some tiny as a palm, some huge as a house, most shrouded in thick black cloth like blindfolds.
When a carriage drew near, breath rumbled from the cages like bellows, and a coppery reek of blood curled through the heat like smoke.
People stepped aside as if a cold wind parted wheat, whispering of slumbering beasts or bloodthirsty tribes packed behind iron.
Some cages weren’t covered; their contents stared back like mirrors of impulse.
There were hulking foreign warriors, their muscles knotted like old roots.
There were round, plush pet beasts, fur soft as snowfall.
And there were women, bodies curved like river bends, skin pale as milk, clothed in nothing but suggestion and chains.
Some were human; more were from other races—demure catgirls, aloof elves—each a lure set like a pearl on a velvet tray.
Spectators stared without blinking, pupils bright as coins; the sellers smiled like fishermen.
Ye Weibai stared too, but his gaze moved like a trained falcon, never settling on the bait.
“Master Bai?” Aerin watched his eyes chase a passing wagon like a tide tugging at a shore, and a sharp taste rose in her chest like citrus.
She tugged his sleeve, small hand cool as a leaf. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I saw something that tugged a thread.” His smile tilted like a question.
“The women?” The words stumbled out like marbles on stone.
“Yes—and no—” He drew out the syllables like a bow over a string, then flicked her forehead with a practiced snap, a pebble skimming a pond.
“What’s it to you? Disciples don’t police their teacher’s vices.”
Aerin clutched her brow and feigned pain, eyes glossy as dew. “I’m your disciple! I have a duty to look after you.”
“Heh.” His chuckle was a coin tossed and caught.
“Wh-why are you laughing?” His smile looked sly, like a fox slipping behind bamboo.
“Nothing.” Ye Weibai shook his head, warmth thrumming like wine. “I’m here for you.”
“For me?” Aerin pointed to her nose, dazed as a calf in snow.
“I’m teaching you the next principle of the Hero King—the Heart of Companions.”
“I know that!” Her hand shot up like a sapling reaching sun. “In history, the Hero King always had many companions. You rally allies, build trust, fight as one!”
“Half right.”
“Half?”
“Recruit companions, yes. But not you building the rhythm. You let them build the rhythm.”
“What about me?”
“You?” His voice thinned to a wire. “The Hero King hides behind them. Wait till the enemy shows a seam, then strike the fatal blow.”
He looked to the horizon like a hunter reading wind. “The Demon King is sly. He won’t wait for you to form up. He’ll strike first. He’ll kill the most vital piece—the Hero King.”
“But…” The word shivered in Aerin like a candle in draft. The thought of letting friends bleed while she stood back curdled like old milk.
“But nothing.” His hand landed atop her head and shook lightly, and her thoughts tumbled like dice across a table.
He let go, and her world steadied like a boat easing into a slip. “Because, in this entire World, you’re the most important.”
“Only you can kill the Demon King. If you die—if the Demon King kills you—”
He paused, gaze locked on Aerin yet floating past her like a kite cut free, drifting toward some nameless point.
“Then the World collapses.” His voice was barely a thread of smoke.
Aerin held her breath like a pearl diver and nodded, eyes dark as rainwater.
“Don’t worry.” Ye Weibai smiled, dawn breaking through mist. “I won’t let the Demon King kill you—and besides, this World won’t allow it.”
Aerin blinked, stunned, the last words catching in her throat like a fishbone. Master Bai had already moved, his robe a black wave licking his heels.
“Come on.”
His robe flared like a raven’s wing. Aerin stared at his back, a weight settling in her chest like a stone in a bowl.
Words rose like bubbles, then stuck beneath her tongue.
“Hey. Don’t drift. Keep up.”
“O-okay!”
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Inside, the slave market opened like a fortress square, vast and grim, its order crisp as chalk lines.
The zones were neat as a ledger—rest, sales, and beast-fighting pits; Ye Weibai cut straight for the largest sales hall.
That hall split into districts by goods—pet beasts, women, barbarian stock, elves—the signage bright as pennants.
Thick pillars divided the zones like trunks in an old grove, and broad walkways flowed between them like stone rivers.
With Aerin in tow, Ye Weibai walked without a stutter step into the busiest district—the women.
Aerin flushed the instant she crossed the line, color blooming like peach on snow.
Here, the women stood outside the cages, shackled by seals that clinked like frost to keep them from running.
Catgirls, foxfolk, elves—every flavor like jars on a spice rack, each designed to fit a taste.
Their clothes were as scant as mist, skin gleaming like porcelain under lantern light, left for hungry eyes like fruit in summer.
The foxfolk, bred flirtatious, swayed like flame and threw glances like hooks.
The elves, cool by nature, wore the same revealing dress, but kept their eyes shut, shame washing their snow-white skin with a rose flush.
They drew nobles the way moonlight draws moths, and their prices rose like tides under a full moon.
Ye Weibai’s gaze slid over the spectacle like rain over oil. He wasn’t here for them.
Aerin noticed his eyes hunting for something, aim straight as a spear. “Master Bai, what are you looking for?”
“It should be here.” A faint line touched his brow like a crease in paper.
He’d circled this stall more than once, but his quarry stayed ghosted, like a scent lost in wind.
It shouldn’t be… Did his sense fail?
Would the Demon King’s sense fail?
“Or maybe…” He recalled the strange tug at the gate, and the carriage owner chatting with his men, naming this very stall.
He stopped guessing and moved, steps quick as chess moves.
They arrived, and Aerin’s face darkened like a clouded mirror. She muttered, “Knew it… You walked a whole circle just to come back to her.”
This seller’s stock was a cut above, sharp as a fresh blade—rare elves, and even two hard-to-find lines: Silverlings and Unicornkin.
Those tribes hid in deep forests like shy deer, hard to catch. Their faces didn’t always match the elves’ famed perfection.
But Silverlings were born with hair pale as stardust and eyes of gray rain, and the Unicornkin bore a single crystalline horn that shifted with mood like a rainbow under ice.
In a World ruled by humans, other races, however strong, ended up vassals at best.
And those like the Silverlings—weak in war, beautiful to behold—were pressed straight into “slave-tribes,” labeled property like cattle.
Ye Weibai’s gaze fell on the Silverling section like a pin on a map, but, if you watched closely, he wasn’t looking at the long-haired girl on the block.
His eyes slid past the auction darling, and fixed on the cage behind her.
An empty iron cage, dark as a dry well.
“Found you.” The words tasted of iron and rain.
He breathed in the scent of Misfortune particles, a metal tang like storm on stone, and lit the gray motes in his pupils like embers kindling.
Boom—!
His vision tipped and poured into gray, like ink spilled across a page.
He filtered out the gray fireworks blooming overhead and streaming into Aerin like ash-snow, and narrowed his sight to the empty cage.
Inside the cage, there was a cat.
A folded-ear gray cat, upright, as tall as a grown woman, shadow-sleek.
Its limbs, fur, pads, even the round pupils were gray—every inch forged from Misfortune particles, like the faceless hound that clung to Yin.
Compared to that five-story, nightmare-faced hound, this cat looked small, and almost tame, like a hearth ember.
It seemed harmless, a whisper on velvet.
But Ye Weibai felt it—the cat’s Misfortune was denser than the hound’s by several degrees… by dozens.
When he looked in, the cat kept its head bowed, both paws busy at its belly like a craftsman at work.
Claws slid into its stomach and scooped out fistfuls of gray motes; it shoveled them into its mouth with greedy, happy bites, cheeks rounded like dumplings.
The hollowed belly filled again like rising dough. Then its paw dug in again.
Round and round, chew and chew; the cat’s jaw never stopped, its face blissful as a child with candy.
A normal person would break into a cold sweat at that sight, heart stamping like a startled horse.
Ye Weibai only said, “Oh.” Interest flickered like a moth’s wing.
As if hearing that faint sound, the gray cat raised its head.
Its huge pupils blinked like moons, flicked left and right, then fixed on the black-haired boy, certain the gaze was aimed right at it.
It opened its mouth, and words rolled out like a bell that didn’t belong to any chapel.
“You can see this cat, meow?”
“Of course.” His answer fell like a blade in a sheath.
“Interesting, meow.” Its whiskers quivered like grass in wind.
“Won’t you come out?” Ye Weibai tapped the bars with a knuckle, a soft ping like raindrops on tin.
“No fun, meow. No one can see meow. Coming out’s boring, meow.” It bent its head, still eating itself like a snake swallowing its tail.
“I can see you,” Ye Weibai said, voice even as shade.
“For now, meow. I met one before who could, some fancy title, meow—called the Hero King, meow—”
Its tone slid like a bead down a string. “But he forgot me, meow. Everyone forgets meow. Even if they see meow, the memory fades like ink in rain, meow. It hurts, meow.”
“I won’t.” Ye Weibai smiled, steel under silk. “I’m stronger than the Hero King. I won’t forget you.”
“You sure, meow?” The cat’s pupils swelled like storm clouds, gray motes turning in slow galaxies as it stared.
“Sure.”
“If you forget this cat, meow—”
“If I forget you,” Ye Weibai said softly, like snow on a sleeve, “then come kill me. How’s that?”
“Meow…” The cat thought for a breath, then its eyes curved like a crescent moon. A smile unfolded on its face like dawn.
“Good, meow~ What’s your name, meow?”
“Bai.”
“This cat’s called Stardust.” The name chimed like silver sand.
“Then the contract’s set, meow. If you forget—”
Its outline blurred like smoke in a wind. The gray particles inside it boiled up like a pot at full roar and rose into the air.
The cat’s belly opened like a curtain, revealing the person inside: a Silverling girl with short silver-gray hair, eyes packed with starlight like a night river.
She looked eight or nine, small and solemn as a shrine doll.
The gray cat floated above, lower body spiraling into a drill of motes that threaded into the girl’s crown like a needle through silk.
They spoke together, voices echoing like paired bells.
“Then—this cat—”
“Then—I will—”
Face blank and calm as winter water, the Silverling girl—Stardust—looked at Ye Weibai and finished with a child-soft, stone-steady tone.
“Kill you.”
“Kill you.” The cat’s echo rippled like a second moon.
Ye Weibai watched them, a smile blooming like a cut flower in a glass of clear water. “Of course.”
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Hymn of Heroes—
Day Two, you’ll meet—an Assassin.
(to be continued)
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