“Ah! Sorry! I got carried away for a moment by Archangel’s gentleness and kindness...”

Before the girl could react, Kroso had already pulled his hands back like lightning and started apologizing at once. He moved so fast that Sylvia even felt a gust of wind rise in front of her for no reason.

Damn it, he copped a feel and now he wants to run?

Watching Kroso go through that whole smooth, flowing apology routine, and feeling the scorching warmth left on the skin of her right hand by that light touch, Sylvia’s little face turned red, both embarrassed and angry.

She really wanted to say something, but when the words reached her lips, she still swallowed them back hard.

As expected of the only heroine in the original story who could make the Hero fall completely, huh? Did she just naturally come with some kind of Hero-catching aura?

Or had the change in the worldline affected the real-world Hero too, turning him into a different kind of person?

Either way, if this kept going, it seemed to point toward something the original story never had at all: a CG scene of the Hero and Sylvia. And in this real world, she might very well have to experience it herself.

For some reason, after imagining some strange scene, Sylvia suddenly felt her whole body growing a little hot.

That kind of thing... there was no way she wanted to experience it in person!

She had to reject it hard!

After quickly retreating back to a “safe distance,” Kroso didn’t even dare look at Sylvia at first. But Archangel wasn’t saying anything at all, which made him feel a little strange, so he couldn’t help slightly raising his head to look forward.

What was Archangel thinking? She looked kind of angry...

He really hadn’t meant it just now...

Even though he’d already developed a pretty strong fondness for Archangel, he absolutely wasn’t that kind of impatient pervert, especially not at a dangerous time like this.

And yet, when he recalled how it had felt to get close to the girl just now, Kroso suddenly realized that Archangel seemed to be faintly giving off a very strange, seductive aura.

From far away, he hadn’t felt much. But once he got close, his mind had suddenly filled with Archangel’s affectionate, tempting gaze. In reality, though, the girl’s expression had been perfectly normal. At most, it had only softened a little because of his words. There was no way it should’ve created that kind of ambiguous effect.

What the hell was going on?

Could it be that Archangel still had a chance of turning back into that succubus-like form from before?

At that thought, Kroso’s heart suddenly jumped. But feeling the holy aura naturally radiating from the girl right now, which seemed no different from when they first met, he gradually rejected that possibility.

It had to be his imagination, right?

After all, with Archangel’s Body of Holy Spirit, once she recovered, how could there be any reason for it to relapse?

So in the end, the problem was still him?

But by the gods, he really wasn’t that kind of person!

“——————”

“Kroso is my good brother. I believe he’s not that kind of person!”

Outside a granary, atop densely packed haystacks, a young man with a trace of boyishness still on his face held a jug of wine. After saying that, he immediately threw his head back and gulped down several big swigs.

He wore a standard Imperial military uniform, though his rank was clearly not high, so he didn’t have that heavy kind of armor on him. Still, his flowing short hair, a watery blue, carried an extremely noble air, and he was very handsome too. He had the obvious bearing of a rich young master, nothing like someone who should’ve been sent to a place like this to do hard labor.

His alcohol tolerance wasn’t great. As he drank wildly with his head tilted back, a lot of wine spilled from the corners of his mouth, nearly soaking his whole upper shirt.

“I’m just saying, Young Master Toma, how many days have you even known him? And you trust him this much?”

Beside the young Imperial soldier called Young Master Toma sat a middle-aged man. He wore plain cloth clothes, though his figure was somewhat plump.

Watching Toma drink like that, the middle-aged man looked full of worry. He clearly didn’t agree with his young master’s words.

“Uncle Luke, just trust me. Kroso is someone meant for great things. There’s no way he’d betray his country over a tiny bit of petty profit. Just wait and see. In a few more days, Chernost City is definitely going to be thrown into chaos.”

He directly tossed aside the empty wine jug in his hand. Then the young Toma raised a hand to smooth out his naturally noble-looking watery blue hair, looked at Uncle Luke beside him, and wore a face full of confidence.

“Sigh, Young Master Toma, I’ve heard these words from you so many times these past few days that my ears are about to grow calluses. How about... you just admit your mistake to the City Lord first? With our family’s prestige and strength in Chernost City, the City Lord would definitely bring you back at once. Why suffer in a hellhole like this?”

Letting out a light sigh, Luke had already gone numb to these words from his young master and no longer argued back. He only kept trying to persuade him to admit fault early and return to the city to enjoy life again.

As for that young Imperial general named Kroso, who also seemed to carry the identity of the new generation’s Hero, Luke truly didn’t care about him at all.

His wife and children were still in the city. He had only ended up here because Young Master Toma had been extremely stubborn in his stance regarding Kroso, so the City Lord had labeled him a diehard and directly stripped him of his general’s post, then exiled him to this remote granary.

Although with their family’s prestige and strength in Chernost City, the City Lord absolutely wouldn’t dare do anything to Young Master Toma, if they really stayed here forever, not only would Young Master Toma’s quality of life be hard to guarantee, but if this matter reached the Imperial royal family, some forces that had always been secretly competing against them would probably seize the chance to fabricate baseless charges and suppress them.

“Tch! That old bastard who only climbed into the City Lord’s seat through connections wants me to submit? Kroso’s just missing right now. Otherwise, let’s see if he’d still dare act so arrogant.”

The moment he heard the words “City Lord,” Toma immediately got angry.

As the heir of the strongest family in Chernost City for nearly a thousand years, the authority he originally held wasn’t actually much different from the City Lord’s.

But as the Abyss demons launched their massive invasion, the Empire’s upper ranks began, under the excuse of supervising the war, to send direct-line members one after another to every major city near the border for unified control. Along with them came the Empire’s own powerful air and land legions.

Relying on the deterrent force of the Imperial legions, these parachuted-in City Lords quickly began suppressing the city’s original nobility.

Under those circumstances, resistance naturally existed, and it had been fierce from the very start. But under the double threat of the Abyss demons and the Imperial legions, families without a solid enough foundation were soon completely replaced.

If his family hadn’t originated from the Mercenary Guild, and if they didn’t already possess many powerful fighters and a large city defense force, then when he had tried to protect Kroso before, he wouldn’t have gotten off with something as mild as being sent here to guard a granary for show.

Kroso, my good brother, if you don’t come back soon, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop myself from making a move first.

Staring blankly at the vast blue sky, an extremely cold light gradually surfaced in Toma’s eyes.