In the dining room of the professor's residence at Saint Creti Monastery, Lanqi leaned back in his chair, resting.
He might truly have fallen asleep.
In the preceding Tier 8 shadow world, he had gone a long time without rest, and immediately afterward he had returned to the mortal realm and then home to Brierda. Exhaustion had merely piled up in his chest; now, given even the chance to pretend to sleep, he would slip into genuine slumber without meaning to.
"At least we fed him full," Talia muttered, glancing at the soundly sleeping Lanqi.
A moment ago, while competing with Side, neither woman had eaten much herself, each taking turns spooning food into Lanqi.
"Let's move him to his room to rest in a bit," Sigrid whispered to Tata between bites, taking care not to wake him.
"All right," Talia nodded. "By the way, I'll tidy up a room on the ground floor for you later. You can just settle in. I'll make the daily meals, and it would be great if you could help with the shopping now and then."
Talia looked at Sigrid as she spoke.
According to Side, her luggage was still checked on the second floor of the Brierda Opera House with the Dimension Branch and would be delivered later.
The Dimension Branch had sent the person first anyway; the luggage was secondary.
"No problem."
Sigrid could not help recalling their journey through the beastfolk city-states in the shadow world, where Caliera had looked after her daily needs the entire way, assigning her token chores like buying groceries.
To think she was reliving those days of living together with Caliera.
Sharing a roof with her truly felt like living with Caliera.
"Wait, where does Lanqi sleep?" Sigrid suddenly realized something.
"The master bedroom, at the far end of the second floor," Talia pouted, answering reluctantly.
"And where do you sleep?" Sigrid pressed.
"The secondary bedroom right next to it, also on the second floor," Talia had no choice but to answer honestly.
The rest were just spare rooms.
"No way, that isn't fair. We should put him in the middle, and the two of us take the rooms on either side—that would be fair," Sigrid argued.
She had almost fallen into Tata's trap.
"Then all three of us would have to move rooms."
Talia sank into thought.
In theory, that arrangement worked.
Yet every single day going forward, she would have to worry about two doors down, Sigrid sneaking into Lanqi's room.
Every room in this house had been furnished by her and Lanqi, and the soundproofing was exceptionally good.
She might not get a single night of good sleep.
"Or how about this: the two of us share a room. That's fair," Sigrid suggested.
She clearly had the exact same worry and knew what Tata was fretting about.
As long as they went with her idea, everyone's demands would be met.
"Are you willing to share a bed with me?"
Talia didn't have much objection herself, but normally she had only ever shared a bed with Hubao. The woman before her was not the real Xigelei, after all, but a stranger she had only met today; Talia had never thought about becoming roommates.
Still, this truly was a solution. By keeping an eye on Sigrid herself, she wouldn't have to worry about her sneaking into Lanqi's room.
"How are your sleeping habits?" Sigrid hesitated a moment and asked warily.
Her most vivid impression was that Hyperion had terrible sleeping habits, often waking up sprawled on top of her, which had left no small psychological shadow on young Xigelei's heart. If possible, she did not want to sleep with a girl like Hyperion, who rolled around, kicked, and hogged the blankets in her sleep.
"Decent. What about you?"
Hearing the words "sleeping habits," Talia's eyes flickered.
She was certain she slept quietly, and considered herself someone with a high tolerance for others' sleep habits.
The only thing she couldn't tolerate was Hyperion occasionally suckling on her in the middle of the night, which had once frightened her so badly she had clutched her chest and jumped right out of bed.
So she couldn't help asking.
"Fairly quiet. At most, I'll turn over and hug a bolster or blanket," Sigrid said, resting an index finger on her chin in thought.
She hadn't brought her black-and-green bolster from the Northern Continent, and she often woke up clutching it.
"All right then. Let's move our things upstairs to the second floor later and share a room."
Talia finally agreed to Sigrid's suggestion.
Being roommates meant neither had to worry about the other sneaking off, and both were an equal distance from Lanqi's room—a rather good solution.
"To be honest, I don't dislike you. In fact, I think you're quite nice. Everything I said when we first met came straight from the heart," Sigrid said, feeling relieved.
Even now, she felt that being around the other woman was remarkably natural, as if they had lived together long ago.
Talia froze at her words.
She hadn't expected praise from her.
Such frankness was identical to that child in her memories.
"If we had met under different circumstances, I imagine we'd have gotten along splendidly. I won't deny that," Talia murmured with downcast eyes, not understanding why the woman's thoughts always aligned so closely with her own.
A pity that, no matter how familiar they grew hereafter, they were strangers after all.
Their sole point of intersection was Lanqi.
And Lanqi was the prize they had to compete for.
The dining table returned to its earlier peace, broken only by the soft clinks of forks against porcelain plates echoing now and then through the dining room.
They ate quietly, barely speaking.
When meeting someone unfamiliar, Talia needed time to slowly open her heart before growing close. At first, she would mostly listen passively, judging whether the other person was suitable to be a friend.
As for Sigrid, while she was naturally outgoing and had no trouble being herself upon a first meeting, she realized that if she didn't eat fast, the food on the table would quickly vanish, so she could only focus entirely on her lunch.
From time to time, she cast surprised glances at Talia.
Sigrid could not fathom how Talia could eat with such elegance while making the food disappear so swiftly.
Was this really not the later Caliera?
Even the way she ate was identical.
A bottomless stomach, barely needing to swallow.
"Why are you looking at me?" Talia tilted her head, catching Sigrid's gaze.
"You're using disguise magic right now, aren't you?" Caught looking, Sigrid didn't panic, keeping her gaze steady.
Looking at a beauty was meant to be done openly and proudly.
"Of course. You're using it too, aren't you?" Talia popped a cut piece of charcoal-roasted potato ball into her mouth with her fork and chewed.
After making an open appearance in the imperial capital of Brierda, she would assume the identity provided by her contact in the Kingdom of Posen, Nigel, and alter her appearance.
She could sense that Side was very strong, a genius of the same caliber as her Xigelei, yet remarkably young.
"I'm a little curious what you really look like."
Sigrid always felt this grey-haired woman's appearance didn't quite match her superb temperament, as if she had intentionally dialed down her beauty in disguise.
"Heh heh, I can look like the woman you'd most love to see," Talia chuckled softly.
Setting aside her own looks, which Lanqi was always praising, possessing Caliera's spells meant she could take on that illusory appearance of Caliera as well.
"You sure are confident. But no one can compare to the woman I most want to see."
From Tata's attitude, Sigrid was basically certain that Tata's true appearance had to be gorgeous.
"Who is she?"
Talia sensed no disdain in Side's tone, but rather trust and acknowledgment; it was simply that the woman Side spoke of held an irreplaceable place in Side's heart.
"My mother. She is the most beautiful woman, the finest woman in the world," Sigrid declared with conviction.
"...I see. You're a good child."
Hearing Side's words, Talia seemed to understand, nodding in approval.
Though competitive as a demon princess, she knew how much weight a mother carried in the heart of a human child like this.
"Aren't you going to argue back? You seemed so confident just now."
Sigrid hadn't expected Tata to react this way.
She had thought she would provoke her into refusing to back down and showing her true face.
"No matter how confident I am, I could never compare to the mother in your heart," Talia said with a gentle shake of her head, completely at ease.
She had approved of Side as a filial daughter, and a filial daughter could never be a bad person.
"Mmh... how old are you actually? I need to know whether to call you big sister or little sister."
Sigrid thought of another question, gripping the corner of Lanqi's chair as she leaned a little closer to Tata.
Seeing such a mature, dignified response, she couldn't help closing the distance.
If they really had to pretend to be Lanqi's fake fiancées, then whenever they put on an act for him outside, they might well have to address each other as sisters.
"..."
Talia fell silent.
She could hardly say eight hundred.
"In the Hutton Kingdom, I'm twenty-five," Talia finally stated the age on her Hutton Kingdom identification papers.
She had added a qualifier, so it wasn't a lie, nor did it violate her conscience.
Or so she told herself repeatedly.
"What? You're younger than me?"
Sigrid stared at Talia in astonishment.
That settled charm and brimming maternal aura had made her instinctively treat the woman as someone of a mother's generation, assuming she had to be at least slightly older than herself. To think she was only twenty-five!
"Ah? You're older than twenty-five?"
Talia was shocked as well.
In her mind, with that youthful girlish energy, Side ought to be around Hubao's age, or in her early twenties like Xigelei at most.
"This..."
Sigrid felt rather awkward.
She had essentially planned to call her "elder sister."
Yet after coming full circle, she turned out to be the elder sister herself.
"Tata, are you sure you're twenty-five?" Sigrid probed once more, hinting that if Tata had lied, she could still take it back.
"I—I'm not lying! If you don't believe me, I'll show you my ID papers later!" Talia retorted stubbornly, growing a bit flustered.
"All right, all right, I believe you," Sigrid assented readily. "Then in public, I'll call you Little Sister Tata, and you call me Big Sister Side. Any problem with that?"
The more Sigrid thought about it, the weirder it felt: deep down, she instinctively pictured the woman as a mother figure like Caliera, yet in practice, she had to call her "little sister."
Their current official Creti Empire identities were a bit of a mouthful anyway, and calling each other by nicknames as sisters wouldn't arouse suspicion, so going with what rolled off the tongue was much better.
"N-No problem!"
Talia had no choice but to bite the bullet, blushing faintly as she owned up to it to the bitter end.
The grandfather clock in the dining room ticked leisurely as time drifted by. Boss Cat shuttled back and forth between the kitchen and dining room, continuously delivering prepared dishes and clearing empty plates.
The steam rising from the coffee on the table slowed, and in the heart of winter, time itself seemed to crawl.
As Boss Cat served up a Demon Realm dessert—a dark chocolate custard soufflé, fluffy and warm with icy crystal custard sauce, alternating hot and cold, rich yet light—lunch drew near its end.
Lanqi caught the familiar sweet scent. His nose twitched, and his eyes slowly opened.
For a moment, he thought he was back in his Purgatory Corridor Academy.
"Lanqi, are you feeling better?"
"Lanqi, are you hungry?"
Both women turned to look at him simultaneously, their voices markedly gentler than before.
Lanqi didn't even need to rely on pitch to tell who had asked which question.
"Not great," Lanqi shook his head, staring silently at the plate of Demon Realm dark chocolate custard soufflé on the table as he began to clear his head from the brief nap.
"Let us feed you."
Both Talia and Sigrid noticed that Lanqi seemed to want something sweet to supply sugar to his overworked brain.
This time, Talia and Sigrid exchanged a glance beforehand.
There was no need to fight or scramble; simply caring for Lanqi together would save each of them effort and achieve twice the result with half the work.
"I'm completely fine!"
Lanqi snapped to attention immediately.
As if having a stress response, he sat bolt upright, his eyes clearing in an instant, and answered them.
"..."
The two slowly set down their utensils.
They hadn't expected Lanqi to hate being fed so much.
"What was I about to say just now..."
Lanqi pinched the bridge of his nose.
Whenever one woke up, not only dreams, but even the thoughts from just before sleeping were easily forgotten.
He remembered that the moment he saw Sigrid, an extremely important matter had crossed his mind, but turning the corner into such an ambush of love had been so terrifying that he'd had to deal with the immediate emergency first.
"Right! Sigrid, could you give me some of your blood?"
Remembering, Lanqi excitedly turned and gripped Sigrid's shoulders, asking her.
"What do you need my blood for?"
Sigrid remembered that when parting in the shadow world, Lanqi had also asked for some of her blood, and she had given it to him without pressing for details.
She didn't even know what Lanqi had used her blood for.
Watching Lanqi intimately grab Side's shoulders from the side, Talia sulked resentfully and crossed her arms.
Her pact with Side was not to compete; since Lanqi had initiated touching Side, she had no reason to intervene.
"It's like this: I have a friend. Earlier, she ventured into Blood Moon City beneath the Creti Empire in the mortal realm. Although she escaped with her life, she was afflicted by the Blood King Palace's fire poison. Every day, she suffers burning from the Blood King Divine Fire, and the moment she leaves an isolation barrier, there's a very high probability the Blood Clan will lock onto her coordinates through the flame. Only your wolf blood, with its berserk vitality, can cure her. Could you help me save her? She will become a dependable companion for us."
Lanqi explained to Sigrid.
Since he was worried Iphatia might call him "big brother" the moment they met, he temporarily withheld telling Sigrid that this friend was actually Hyperion's mother.
"Of course, no problem," Sigrid agreed readily.
Behind Lanqi came a clatter.
"Wait, she... Side is of the Wolf Clan?"
Talia asked Lanqi, pale with shock as emotions surged within her, standing up.
"Yeah," Lanqi turned back and nodded to Talia. "She's that dependable companion from the Northern Continent I told you and Boss Cat about. We didn't expect her to come straight to Brierda and find us so quickly."
He added an explanation.
Toliado might seem unreliable, but in truth, he had been trying to find a way to cure their fellow demon Iphatia all along.
"..."
Talia clenched her fists, pressing her lips tight. She gazed at Sigrid with an intricate expression for a long time, her golden eyes brimming with relief, gratitude, and newfound closeness.
She had thought the plan to obtain high-tier wolf blood to save her sister was fraught with uncertainty and danger—after all, the Sixth War God, Violet of the Aquamarine, was by no means someone to be trifled with. Yet a seemingly distant dream had come true in a manner even swifter than in the Fallen Land of Gentle Slumber.
"Thank you, Miss Side," Talia bowed in gratitude.
"Wh-what's this? Why thank me all of a sudden?" Sigrid looked utterly baffled.
"The person you're saving is actually Tata's younger sister. Lately, she's been longing every day to cure her sister, who is suffering the torment of that burning," Lanqi answered on Talia's behalf.
"I see!"
Understanding the situation, Sigrid's expression brightened.
She stood up and walked over to the bowed Tata with a broad grin.
"Your sister is my sister! We're good sisters now, so don't be so polite. Please take good care of me from now on," Sigrid said, draping an arm around Talia's shoulders.
"Wait, hold on, she's not a younger sister..."
Lanqi suddenly realized something was wrong.
Why was Sigrid treating Iphatia as a younger sister too?
"Wah, Big Sister Side!"
Yet Talia and Sigrid paid no heed to his words, weeping as they hugged each other.
Leaving behind only Lanqi, who felt that all was utterly lost.
Tata calling her "Big Sister Side" was about to fry his brain. What in the world was going on here?!
Chapter 811