Ling held out her small hand like a sprouting leaf. If Mars clasped it now, a new dawn would reserve a slice for the Beastfolk.

Mars watched that small hand, starlight pooling on the skin, its pull as steady as the tide.

Soft visions fluttered there like fireflies: him sharing dinner by candlelight, him napping with a loosened breath.

Scenes once trapped in dream-mist felt ready to fall like rain, if he simply took that hand.

Yare yare…

Heat swelled, then cracked; a crooked smile touched his mouth, and tears beaded like dawn-dew. His cheek-fur drank them at once, so no one saw the strongest village chief crumble.

“Sounds so beautiful—I’d be a fool to refuse.” He breathed like wind through pines. “But the terms stay. Find their families… no, most of them.” He steadied himself like a stone. “Bring back the Beastfolk who’re unharmed; if some suffered or worse, bring them too if you can.”

The demand felt heavy as a mountain, yet Ling didn’t mind; with Mars agreeing, her heart lay calm like a lake.

“Oh! Leave it to me!”

Their hands met—one large, one small.

One furry as winter pelt, one pure white as new snow.

Two races touched, bridging a river with a single step of stone.

Unseen by anyone, the world’s ideal haven—the Mystic Realm—swelled a little with that grip, a seed quickening in dark soil.

After taking on the main quest, Ling and Alicia rode out with Edmund, skimming the land like wind over grass.

The Beastfolk didn’t keep them; Mars had said the other kin hadn’t accepted them, a chill like frost along old bark.

Ling, ever gentle, didn’t pile pressure on him; she let it drift like a cloud and chose to leave.

They didn’t go far—just past Beastfolk sight—before Edmund halted like a horse at a fork, because he himself didn’t know where to go.

Alicia voiced Edmund’s doubt, her brows like twin wings; she also wanted Ling to draw a clear path. “So, Ling, what’s your plan next?”

Ling tipped her chin to the sky and touched a finger to her lips, like a child tasting rain. “No idea~”

“Ha… figures.”

Ling had no answer; blankness spread like fog, and Alicia’s skull throbbed like a drum.

Worrying for Ling wasn’t new, but this time the puzzle was a stone with no crack.

She’d thought the Beastfolk leg would be easy as a straight road; it turned out harder than the Elvenfolk’s tangled forest.

From first meeting to sealing the deal took less than half a day, yet they’d picked up a task fit to end worlds, a storm rolling dark. Whose luck could be worse than mine, a coin sinking in mud?

“Maybe we should find Nina! She’s a special Beastfolk; maybe she’s a chosen one, waiting for us to wake the savior trait inside.”

“Nina? Who’s that?”

“Oh… right, you weren’t with me then—so not knowing Nina isn’t strange.” Ling retold their meeting in lively strokes, words fluttering like sparrows and gestures painting the air.

She didn’t scrub out Rafi’s part either; after three seconds of quick sorting, Alicia reached one verdict: Nina’s a catgirl—adorable, the kind that makes wallets open.

But Edmund, also Beastfolk, knew Nina’s situation better than most; he’d seen her once in the tribe, a small shadow at a distance.

“Yet in my view, that little one called Nina isn’t the ‘child of destiny’ you speak of,” Edmund said, voice low as cave wind. “She’s the child of a human woman and a human‑modified male Beastfolk. Her Beastfolk blood is thin as watered wine; it’s unlikely she holds great power.”

“Oh my—seems we heard something outrageous; Nina never said a word.” Ling’s eyes gleamed like knives. “And this setup smells like a perfect revenge‑protagonist template, metal and smoke.”

“What else do you know? Tell me; I need more data.”

“No, Lady Ling, most of it came as whispers from other mouths, leaves rubbing in the dark,” Edmund said. “If the rumors hold, humans crossed hundreds of cat Beastfolk for curiosity, and Nina’s father was born from that churn. His blood tangled like roots, and his mind bent wrong. When he came of age, he ran—a fox slipping through thorn. No one knows the rest. In the end, a human maiden carried a child to our old tribe, found the village chief, and shoved Nina into his arms. She said, ‘This child belongs to you Beastfolk—stop pushing her back to me!’ Then she fled like rain off a roof. They say she was the mother; as for the father, he likely died long ago.”

To others, Nina would wear the trash label, a stone kicked aside; through Ling’s lens, the picture sharpened like a blade.

Think it through: the tale’s too detailed, too many inner threads laid out like exposed roots—nothing about it feels normal.

Doesn’t that say it all? Nina isn’t simple—at least half a protagonist in the making.

Interesting! Deliciously interesting!

A human mother, a modified Beastfolk father, a bloodline not pure—Nina sits at the center like a lit fuse.

This smells like conspiracy, smoke before wildfire.

“Um… Ling‑chan, why does your smile look… dangerously sharp?”

To outsiders, her grin had twisted like a mask; Ling didn’t care, her mood soaring like a hawk.

“Hahaha! Edmund—move out. With me. Let’s go to the Underworld.”