“Uh...”

“Shut up. And pour me your strongest gin.”

The bartender clamped his mouth, skimmed the silver off the bar, slid another glass over, then went back to polishing, slow and unsure.

After a moment, the itch returned. He glanced at that dead-faced youth and tried again.

“I mean—”

“Don’t stick your nose in.”

“No, it’s not—”

“Not your business.”

“But sir, you—”

“I said shut up. No one ruins my one vacation in a hundred years. Not even the Demon King. Hic. And another.”

The stone-faced youth hiccupped, set down two more silvers, and raised a three-liter wooden tankard; he drank like a waterfall swallowing stones, throat pumping like a bellows, the mug tilting higher and higher.

“Hoo—ha—another!”

The bartender watched with a tight chest, afraid he’d drink himself dead right there, face marble-cold, breath hot as kiln air.

He had recognized the man, after all—the one ranked with the Hero. The master of the Mephy Consortium. Slandered by the Heretic Inquisition, later proven clean. Andor Mephy.

Heroes are still human; the liver is still meat. A man can drown in a cup as easily as in a river.

But, he thought, a hero’s body should be built like ironwood. If you can kill a Demon King, a few mugs shouldn’t kill you. So he muttered twice and kept the gin flowing, glass sweating like dawn grass.

Anyway, a great hero isn’t the same as a commoner. Not even the same species, some say; every part of them is a notch above.

…If he’d seen the Hero Academy’s Combat Festival and the free after-feast, watched Augustus wrestle his own daughter for meat and wine, then pass out face-first, he might not keep that bias.

Just then, the “scarf” slung over the youth’s shoulder twitched and came alive.

Raven, cheeks flushed like sunset, lifted her head and looped both arms around Andor’s neck, shaking him hard, voice wobbling with drink and tears.

“Why—why—why— I worked so hard— why didn’t I pass the Arcane Engineer exam—hic—sob—”

“Mhm, mhm. Be good. Ah, another gin.”

Vega’s right hand smoothed the girl’s hair like wiping rain off a blade; his left hand steadied the big tankard and found his mouth without spill or slosh.

Each movement was crisp as a cut. Even with Raven shaking him with all she had, he didn’t budge—an unmoving mountain.

To keep the gin from wasting a drop.

“Let me pass—my ‘Crystal Flame’ is the best— are the examiners blind—”

“Mhm. Yup. Everyone else’s Constructs together couldn’t beat yours.”

“Not ‘yours,’ ‘ours’—”

“Right, right. We built it together. Don’t cry.”

“Sob—waaah—”

The bartender saw the neighboring patrons frown like creased paper. He sighed, walked up to Vega, and said,

“Sir, your lady’s voice is too loud…”

“My friend, tonight’s drinks are on me. Please indulge us a little. She burned all her savings and months of work for the Arcane Engineer exam, and then—well. At least today, let her shout.”

A small pouch of gold landed on the bar, steady as a paperweight.

Colonna gold has a crisp ring like icicles striking; that sound put a pleased color on the neighbor’s face and the bartender’s too. With gold on the table, troubles look smaller.

Money is so convenient.

“And the gin, please.”

Just as Andor arranged it, Raven carried her heart’s work to the high-tier Arcane Engineer exam—her Construct “Crystal Flame,” honed for months to the sharpest edge, performance pushed to the limit—only to get cursed out by the chief examiner and thrown out like rain-soaked baggage.

At first, the examiners were stunned by the performance, eyes wide as lanterns. They tried more than once to buy the schematics. But—

After three nights of no sleep and a mad dash to beat the deadline, she finally finished and collapsed into a beautiful, dead-heavy sleep.

And woke up without the design in her head.

That’s Raven: when inspiration strikes, she flips the table, overturns every previous plan, and rebuilds from ash. Very little survives from the old version.

“Crystal Flame” was born from a cycle of tear-down, rebuild, tear-down again—like a smith hammering hot iron, over and over, until the shape makes sense.

Some scraps of the old work remain, sure. Genius creativity doesn’t mean perfect memory.

She could still recall the circuits for the occipital armor, the ring-finger plate, the kneecap—runes and channels sketched in the mind like faint chalk. Give her time, she’d remember more.

But the moment they heard there was no blueprint, the examiners’ faces went cold as stone.

“Which ruin did you dig this thing out of?”

Her craft and arcane-circuit logic leap an era, maybe several. Some methods are pure Alchemist work—traits of a profession now extinct. No wonder modern Arcane Engineers can’t follow the ladder she climbed.

Raven isn’t good at talking, either; you can tell by the soot on her cheeks and the way she lives buried in work.

They argued and didn’t budge. Silver Era style: talk fails, hands move.

Raven’s fighting skill is weak; she never planned to brawl. She got beat, face mottled blue and purple like bruised fruit. She staggered to her Construct, climbed in, turned around, and delivered a satisfying, righteous thrashing.

Vega, disguised as Andor, was waiting to comfort her, waiting on the crestfallen. Instead he saw smoke rising from the exam grounds, a slow gray blossom.

…Besides lending a hand and pounding the security team flat, Vega had no better option.

The city watch arrived like late rain. They paid the fine, dusted themselves off, and walked away light as drifting ash.

They ducked into a small tavern. Raven drank and cried into Vega’s arms, tears running like warm rain.

By now, Vega’s shirt was soaked half-through—tears and snot, spilled liquor, and the sweat of two bodies knotted together.

“Wine—wine—wine—I have money!”

Raven howled like a stray cat and then went slack again, hanging from Vega’s neck, asleep in a heartbeat.

Truth is, when his master told him to pick up Raven, Vega was doing “dirty work” with Berenz—busy as a nest of ants.

Andor said it was time to test something: if Vega was suddenly hit and the Demon King Army couldn’t link up, what would happen? So he gave her a five-hour vacation.

From the day she was made, Vega has acted as Andor’s assistant. She’s never had the “right to a holiday,” never had benefits, never had no overtime. She runs twenty-four hours without a pause, a spindle that never cools.

She’s the Demon King Army’s skeleton. If she falls, everything stalls. Members can’t connect or harmonize; orders turn to silent ink.

She canceled all her avatars in a breath. A mind that’s always calculating went still, a lake without ripples. Emptiness pressed in; her fingers itched; she wanted to grab a pen and write something.

But the order was “stop working, go rest.” She obeyed, like frost obeys sunrise.

She dug around for her own interests. Berenz likes killing; it’s meaningless, a wolf’s instinct. Vega despises that emptiness.

Dulan likes sleeping—more accurately “mourning-pleasure,” treating sorrow as beauty and basking in it. That decadent creature, Vega respects her strength alone; power bought with brainless abandon is a sword she’d rather not carry.

What does she like?

Ah, gin.

Robust bite, thick aroma, and a bracing pour—rest in a glass, leisure that tastes like pine and wind.

Raven can drink, but she couldn’t match Vega, who isn’t a thing of flesh and blood. After knocking back what looked like three stomachs of sweet wine, the Arcane Engineer murmured, “When did Andor get so good at drinking,” and dropped off.

Good thing the earlier scuffle drained her. Even her drunken antics had no strength behind them, like a kite with a cut string.

With no need to fake comfort or soothe the barkeep, Vega finally tasted gin in peace. Cup after cup. Her eyes shone like lacquered black, bright and gentle.

It was the first time in her life she felt the loosened thread of a vacation, and found joy in it.

She kept drinking until her master started yelling that the Demon King Army was collapsing. Vega drifted back to full wakefulness, realized the gin had piled too high, saw the table stacked with three-liter mugs like a timber wall, and the barkeep pouring with trembling hands, already numb.

“Send Raven home first…”

Her mind snapped back; avatars spun out; computation flooded her soul like a tide.

She lifted the drunk girl in a princess-carry, quiet and sure, and took her back to the arcane workshop that smelled of metal and dreams.

And then?

Back to work.