Following the trail of black smoke, Noah sprinted straight into the courtyard inside the guild grounds.

Luckily, by the time he arrived, the fire hadn't spread to the other areas yet.

The black smoke was only coming from the courtyard. He couldn't tell what exactly was burning, but since that was Shirley's place, his first thought was for the bird girl's safety.

It turned out his worry was completely unnecessary.

He might as well have fed that concern to the dogs.

At this very moment—

A pile of stacked firewood was blazing fiercely.

Anna and Aelia—the two Undying Ones—were crouched on either side of it, staring at a pitch-black staff suspended above the woodpile, discussing whether they should add more fire.

Shirley stood nearby with her wings spread, fanning the flames and trying to make the fire burn even harder.

The most damn bizarre part was that a certain church nun was actually standing on top of the staff. She looked like some Holy Maiden about to be burned at the stake, her face calm, her expression glowing with sacred innocence.

God knew what Noah was feeling when he saw that scene.

For a second, he almost thought this was some new form of guild bullying—Roast Pascal.

"Ah! Guildmaster, you're back!"

Shirley was the first to spot Noah. She immediately stopped fanning the fire and dashed over.

She caught the scent of pre-fry potato strips on him and couldn't resist trying to throw herself into his arms.

Noah pressed a hand against Shirley's head and stopped her from going feral. Then he pointed irritably at the "Nun Being Burned" scene ahead of him.

"What kind of nonsense are you all pulling this time?"

Shirley might be a dumb bird, but she could tell Noah was a little angry.

She instantly brought out the blame-shifting skills she'd honed for years.

"It has nothing to do with Shirley. Shirley doesn't know anything. Anna told me to do it."

"Hey, hey, hey, don't make stuff up!"

The moment Anna heard the blame was about to land on her again, she immediately objected and pointed at Aelia instead.

"It was obviously Aelia's idea. Guildmaster, if you're gonna blame someone, blame her!"

Aelia froze. "What? Wait, that's not what we agreed on before..."

This naturally airheaded Undying One had clearly never expected that people nine hundred years later could be this shameless.

"Forget whose artistic vision this was for now—" Noah pointed at Pascal, who was being roasted on the staff. "Get her down first. At this rate, she's gonna be cooked!"

"It's fine, Guildmaster."

Pascal slowly opened her eyes, a faint smile on her face.

She seemed completely unaffected by the flames. Standing steadily atop the black staff, she even deliberately spread her arms and showed Noah her perfectly unharmed body and clothes.

"See? These flames can't hurt me."

And that was indeed the case.

The raging fire hadn't touched Pascal's body at all. It hadn't even singed her nun's habit.

That scene, which completely defied physical law, made Noah think of certain things that also ran counter to physics.

He stared at the flames and caught a few familiar strands of gold within them.

"This is... Sacred Flame?"

Everyone nodded in unison.

The essence of Sacred Flame was holy light, and holy light would hardly harm Pascal.

That was why being roasted over the fire didn't injure her.

Noah let out a sigh and rubbed his forehead helplessly. Once again, he gained a whole new understanding of this group's talent for chaos.

"Anyway—" Noah motioned for Pascal to come down from the fire first. "Explain properly. What exactly is going on here?"

...

...

The fire wasn't extinguished.

The Sacred Flame was still burning.

Strangely, it only burned the firewood and paid no attention at all to the grass around it.

Anna took down the scorching black staff and tossed it onto the ground to cool for now. Then Pascal explained the whole sequence of events to Noah, while Aelia filled in some of the missing details.

After hearing their summary, Noah finally understood.

At the end of the day, this had all been a spur-of-the-moment experiment.

And the core of that experiment was the black staff that had just been hung up and roasted.

"A heirloom item from the Ritual Magic Academy..."

Noah bent down and touched the staff, which still held some residual warmth.

"The Academy's graduation gift to you was this thing?"

The staff was entirely black. Its surface was uneven and jagged, rough to the touch, like the bark of an ancient thousand-year-old tree. At the front, it split into three sharp prongs, each wrapped with a strip of white cloth made from some unknown material. Other than that, there was nothing especially remarkable about it.

But the longer Noah looked at it, the more a sense of mystery pressed toward him.

As if beneath its ordinary appearance, some unknown strangeness was lurking.

And when Noah touched it, he felt an unusual coldness.

It wasn't the cold of temperature. It was closer to loneliness as an emotion. The moment he touched it, countless negative feelings followed one after another, piercing deep into his soul.

Noah quickly withdrew his hand and frowned.

"This thing is pretty sinister."

"Well, of course it should be sinister."

Anna said it like it was only natural.

"I'm a believer of the Cult of the Death Goddess. If it wasn't sinister, I wouldn't want it."

Aelia added from the side, "The problem is that right now, it's not just sinister. It's also completely baffling."

The baffling part was that it couldn't be used.

The whole point of a staff was for someone to use it.

And yet the staff Anna had received couldn't be used by Anna, nor could any other magic scholars do anything with it.

Aelia knew a bit of magic herself, but when she poured her magic power into the staff, nothing changed.

"It was like a stone sinking into the sea."

Aelia recalled the feeling.

"At first I thought my magic power wasn't enough. But even if I kept pouring magic into it until I died from exhaustion, it still didn't react at all."

Noah paused at once. "You actually died doing that?"

"Three times," Aelia corrected seriously.

After hearing that, Noah slowly turned to look at Anna.

"Don't look at me. I died three times too."

Anna put her hands on her hips and spoke with complete seriousness.

"I'm not so black-hearted that I'd make someone else die while I just watched. I do have at least a little conscience!"

Without a word, Noah stepped forward and flicked Anna on the forehead with merciless precision.

"If you really had a conscience, you wouldn't have come up with the idea of putting Pascal on the staff and roasting her."

"What else was I supposed to do?"

Anna covered her forehead and took two steps back, muttering under her breath.

"This staff has been sitting in a corner collecting dust for four or five years. I still haven't found the right way to use it. Pascal happened to have some Sacred Flame stored in her necklace, so I figured maybe if we took it out and roasted the staff a little, we might wake it up."

Noah stood there thinking for a long while, but he still couldn't understand what kind of godforsaken idea "roasting a staff awake" was supposed to be.

Anna had probably already transcended carbon-based lifeform logic and stepped into a higher-dimensional mode of thought.

And with a method this absurd, the others had actually agreed to it too.

At that thought, Noah couldn't help admiring their acceptance and execution skills.

"I'm honestly impressed you even found that much firewood, and went to all the trouble of building a wooden platform..."

"Shirley did the heavy labor, and the materials were easy enough."

Anna smiled.

"Bird instinct, you know. She likes picking up branches anyway."

Noah: "..."

He rubbed his forehead, trying not to comment on these rigorous yet ridiculous settings.

Then he said softly, "Has it ever occurred to you that this thing might not be a staff at all, but something else?"

Anna blinked. "Like a club?"

Pascal tilted her head. "Like a longsword?"

Aelia suddenly understood. "Like a scythe?"

Shirley threw up her arms and shouted, "Like fries!"

The first three were still at least within the category of weapons. What was that last one supposed to be?

Noah automatically ignored the bird girl's nonsense. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly remembered something.

"If you can't figure out how to use it, have you ever thought about selling it for money?"

The guild's internal construction obviously couldn't be auctioned off for cash, but this staff clearly counted as a personal belonging.

And since it came from the Ritual Magic Academy, it should, in theory, fetch a pretty good price.

"Heh heh."

Anna gave two dry laughs.

Noah thought she was about to say something like, This is a precious treasure from the Academy, a valuable graduation keepsake, and reject his idea of selling the staff to pay off debt.

Instead, the first thing out of Anna's mouth was:

"If I could've sold it, I would've done it ages ago. None of the buyers liked it. They all said a staff that can't cast magic is junk. Then some scrap collector showed up and insulted me with an offer of three Ayn Coins!"

Aelia looked a little sympathetic. "Three really is insulting!"

Anna nodded solemnly. "Exactly. At least make it ten, so I could buy two loaves of bread."

Aelia suddenly felt like her sympathy should've been fed to Shirley instead.

As for Noah, he'd long since known that nothing good ever came out of Anna's mouth. By now, he had already crouched down, picked up the staff, and gripped it in his palm.

Negative emotions surged in like a tide and crashed into Noah's soul.

That indescribable coldness spread through his whole body, weighing down his mind as if some invisible force were pressing on his nerves.

But very soon, every negative sensation vanished completely.

Noah tightened his grip on the staff again and found that the chill had faded. The staff had lost its original sense of mystery, and in Noah's eyes, it no longer seemed so frightening.

"I'll take it back and study it."

He was free anyway.

Aelia still needed some time to adjust, and Noah also needed time to process the information.

At the very least, he wouldn't be arranging another expedition to The Spire within the next three days. The debt was urgent, but it wasn't the kind of problem that could be solved in a day or two. Giving everyone a little time to rest would help future climbs go more smoothly.

Besides, if this staff stayed in Anna's hands, sooner or later she'd mess it up somehow.

What if it really was a treasure? Wouldn't it be a huge loss if Anna ruined it?

Anna had no objection, but she added with a cheerful smile, "Sounds great. Ah, but if you really figure something out, remember to give it back to me, okay? This is our Academy's graduation gift. It means a lot."

"That wasn't what you were saying when you wanted to sell it for ten Ayn Coins."

"Was it? I don't remember that."

Anna blinked and smiled sweetly, shamelessly trying to brush it off.

Noah ignored the shameless Ritual Mage. He looked up at the sun hanging high overhead, then turned to a certain nun.

"Pascal, come help me prep the ingredients. It's time to make lunch."

"Okay."

Pascal agreed at once, then immediately realized something. Her eyes suddenly lit up.

"Did you collect the reward money?"

Noah nodded. "We're eating as much as we want today. Consider it a celebration."

"Yay!"

Anna and Shirley exchanged a look, and the girl and bird both started hopping excitedly.

At that moment, Aelia rolled up her sleeves, quietly tied back her smooth silver hair, and put on a capable expression.

"I'll help too. I want to see whether ingredients nine hundred years later are any different."

"Don't worry. They're mostly the same, but the seasonings have evolved quite a bit."

Noah smiled. Looking at the curiosity on the silver-haired human girl's face, he could tell she was adapting fairly well. At the very least, life nine hundred years later hadn't shattered her worldview beyond repair.

Though it was also possible Aelia was only pretending to be calm, deliberately putting on a composed front.

No matter what, Noah hoped Aelia could adapt to life now.

And what she chose to do afterward... whether she would search for the real other self, or choose to begin a brand-new life, that would depend on Aelia herself.

Of course, Noah really hoped she would stay.

One more reliable fighter could solve a lot of problems.

"What's wrong, Lord Noah?"

Maybe Noah had been looking at her for too long.

Aelia's pretty face flushed slightly, and she looked at Noah with a bit of embarrassment.

"Or should I call you Guildmaster instead?"

"Up to you."

Noah snapped out of his thoughts and smiled. “I was just wondering where Monica went.”

“That elf maid?”

Aelia thought for a moment, then said, “She said she had some other work to do, so she left early this morning. She said she’d be back by evening.”

Monica’s other work.

He had heard her mention it before, but back then, Monica hadn’t explained what that other job actually was.

Memories of the ancient battlefield suddenly surged through his mind. Noah turned his head and looked at the pitch-black staff in his hand, silently making up his mind.

Perfect.

Tonight, he was going to have a proper talk with Monica.