After leaving the ship, the gang went to their favorite street stall, which was opened by an old man named "Cheng." He was not from the village but had come from somewhere else many years ago.
Then the gang went to the alchemist's store where Lily's mother worked. After spending some time there, Milo was returning to his home. On the way, he saw the mixed-blood boy who was getting scolded by the aunt of a nearby house.
"Stay away! Don't touch the shadow of my house, you cursed one!" shouted the aunty and the boy was apologizing repeatedly. It seemed he had been trying to get some shade where he could sleep, but it was without success.
It was already evening when he reached his house. When he reached, he saw Grandpa preparing for a journey.
"Grandpa, what are you preparing for?" he asked.
"Tomorrow morning, I will be going to Brinewall. It will take me 10 to 15 days to return, so take care of Grandma before I return, okay?" He tugged Milo's head.
Brinewall was the closest port city to their village. Unlike Driftmoor village, it was very well developed and bustling. It was the hub city of the county, Cinderfall. As per Grandpa, unlike Driftmoor village, there were many houses and buildings, large alchemy shops, artifact stores, and an auction house. One could get anything they wanted.
This time, Grandpa was going to help his friend there, who had a blacksmith shop in the city. His friend used to call him whenever there was any bulk order in his store. This time was also such an occasion.
Actually, his friend had repeatedly invited him and Grandma to come and settle in the city many times, but Grandpa rejected him, as he didn't like bustling cities. In the city, there were many deep waters that he wanted to stay away from, and most importantly, Grandma loved the village of Driftmoor. After staying for so many years, all her friends were here, and for an old couple, the most important thing required was peace. And of course, Driftmoor itself was a very beautiful place to live.
But in recent years, after Milo joined them, they were planning to go, as the city would broaden Milo's horizons. They were just waiting for him to grow up to six years old.
After practicing some blacksmithing in the forge, he ate dinner and went to sleep. Lying on the bed, he was thinking, "Tomorrow I should go to my hideout first. Marco and the others will not be free, so it is the best day to experiment." Thinking about it, he was very happy.
His hideout was inside the forest, a bit deeper than where local people visited and hunted, but not so deep that he couldn't react to any unforeseen situation.
Why the forest? Well, as a matter of fact, he had found an even better hideout near the port. At a certain distance from the port, during low tide, he had seen a "sea cave." During normal times, the passage or way to the cave is filled with seawater. He could use bladder plants, which grow near the area, as a source of underwater ventilation. These are special plants that float in shallow seawater. They have spherical-shaped outgrowths that store air to keep them afloat. He had experimented with them before. At certain times, he had even used them to remain underwater for more than 20 minutes. He named the spherical outgrowths "air bladders." Each air bladder could store enough air to take 50 breaths underwater. Hence, it was totally feasible to go to the sea cave.
The sea cave was also large, with enough natural ventilation, but the problem was that a closed compound was not good for his experiments. Hence, the forest—though a bit risky—suited his needs.
The next morning, after waking up early, he and Grandma went to bid goodbye to Grandpa. When they reached the port, the Sherphim ship had already departed.
Grandpa went to another ship—a small one, but small only compared to the Duskveil ship. In reality, it was also a large ship, with many crew and passengers on board. After Grandpa boarded the ship, they returned home.
He ate a sumptuous meal, bid farewell to Grandma, and went to his hideout. Of course, Grandpa or Grandma had no idea about it.
He had marked the trees with the English alphabet from A to Z, A being the outermost and Z being the tree where his hideout was. First, nobody would understand it, hence it was safe. Secondly, the distance between each adjacent alphabet was always the same. For example, if the distance from A to B is 100 meters, then B to C is also 100, and so on. In this way, he would always know how much distance he had to cover to reach outside in case of an emergency.
Also, he had marked unique trees with numbers 1 to 10 at different places, each indicating a different zone where different types of plants were found and noted on the skin.
Overall, he had a large skin cloth that had a detailed map of the outer region. He made it over one year of hard work. It contained details about different plants available in different zones, any useful rocks, small monsters, or any poisonous animals. If others saw it, they would be surprised.
While entering the forest, he saw the cursed boy with the clawed hand lying down. His face was bloody, and he had injuries all over. He also saw a rat tail and the heads of some rats. He knew what had happened.
The rats were called boom rats because they had kidneys that exploded when pressed. He knew this because once, while dissecting such a rat, he had almost lost his hand. The boy seemed to have tried to eat the rat raw and, in the process, bit into its kidney—hence, probably the current situation.
He was no saint. But when everybody called the boy cursed, it triggered some deep memory. He could understand his pain. And of course, being a man of science, he did not believe in superstition.
He went near him and said, "Don't eat those rats. They explode." Then he thought, the boy probably knew that now the hard way.
He pulled out a small potion bottle containing some medicine. It was his own work, after one year of experimenting. It acted as a painkiller as well as an antibiotic of his old world.
"Drink this. It will reduce the pain."
The boy was hesitating, but he just pushed the bottle into his hand.
Then he pulled out some herbs and looked at the boy.
"Crush it and apply it to the burned area and wounds. It will feel good."
Then he thought of something and pulled out one more plant and showed it to the boy.
"You can eat it. It may not taste good, but it contains many nutrients," he added. "You can find it nearby."
After that, he went back on his way. He had tried to help the boy, but whether the boy believed him or not was none of his business.
He went deep into the forest. After some time, he was standing in front of his hideout and smiling. It was almost a miracle to see such a nature-made structure. Of course, he had made many modifications over the years.
Tucked deep within the ancient forest, Milo's secret haven was unlike anything in the village. It wasn't visible from the forest floor—not because of some elaborate enchantment, but because nature itself cloaked it.
His treehouse was cradled in the massive arms of a towering, ancient tree whose thick branches rose like the fingers of an outstretched hand. And right in the center—like a palm cupping something precious—Milo had claimed a space, long forgotten by man, beast, or god.
If you looked from afar, the tree looked like a giant hand raised toward the sky, trying to form a fist by bending its fingers. And Milo's treehouse was at the center of the palm. The trunk of the tree was as thick as 20 meters, whereas the finger-like branches were as thick as 10 meters. Of course, there were also other branches.
Using salvaged planks, broken talons, vine ropes, and scraps of old cart wood, he patched together crude walls between the thick fingers of the tree. Dense foliage formed a natural roof above, filtering the sunlight into golden mist and hiding the whole structure under a veil of green.
From below, it looked like nothing more than a mass of leaves and bark—just another part of the forest.
But the true heart of the hideout was what lay inside one of the branches.
One of the "fingers"—a monstrous branch nearly ten meters thick—had been hollowed out from within, painstakingly carved by Milo over many moons using crude tools and quiet patience. This hidden chamber was his workshop. Gutted into the wood's core, it stretched just enough for a child to move through, and here he stored his makeshift alchemical instruments, disassembled components, powders, metals, and secret blueprints etched into the bark.
Tiny air holes, bored out and camouflaged beneath leafy clusters, served to vent smoke from his early chemical experiments. Yet no villager would have noticed—not from the ground, and certainly not through the thick canopy. It was a sacred, solitary space, balanced at the forest's edge, close to an old stony rise—just enough elevation to lend a sense of isolation.
Only Milo knew how to climb the winding, crude staircase of nailed planks and vine-wrapped notches. Only he knew how to step carefully where the wood didn't groan. And only he understood the fire that glowed inside that wooden sanctuary at twilight, flickering through the cracks of a secret no four-year-old should have held.
After entering the hideout, he felt relaxed. After sitting down, he opened his pouch and poured out all the disassembled parts, and started assembling them.
After what seemed to be five to ten minutes, one could see two handguns. If some military man of his old world saw them, he could identify them as revolver-model handguns with silencers attached to them. And if any gamer from his other world came, he would be surprised how similar these guns looked to the famous guns of Dante from the Devil May Cry video games, just with a revolver version.
He picked up both the guns and held one in each hand, starting to mumble.
"Ohh my dear Ivory and Ebony," he whispered, "I missed you. In this chaotic world, you are the only thing I can rely on."
Saying it, he started drooling and smiling silly.
Then he looked at the bullets and sighed. Making the gun was easy, but the most tremendous task was making these modern bullets. Touching the bullets, his thoughts drifted back—back to the fumes, the burns, the near explosions.
The first time, the boom rat powder detonated too early, blowing the cap off the test rig and sending shrapnel into his arm. The nights spent boiling Flameleaf sap until it crystallized, only for half of it to turn inert when exposed to moonlight.
The metal casings—those were another nightmare. Soft enough to mold by hand, yes, but consistent? Sealed? Pressure-tested?
"Twelve exploded in the chamber. Five misfired. Two went off in my hand. One… finally worked."
He exhaled.
There were still scars on his palm from that misfire, hidden under clean skin, but every time he held one of these cartridges, he remembered.
"No forge-master could've helped. No alchemist would even try. Not with this. Not when they still think powder's just dust from cursed bones."
He smiled faintly, thumbing the bullet once more before dropping it back into its slot.
The revolver clicked softly as he rotated the chamber.
"You won't just pierce armor," he whispered, "you'll shatter an age."
He stood up, climbed higher, looked at the birds flying, aimed, and pulled the trigger. There was no sound, but a bird fell down.
"The silencer worked wonders," he said, satisfied.
His shooting had become highly accurate after repeated practice. He could hit a bird even while running, or even hit accurately when both he and the object were in motion.
"Perhaps it's the world of cultivation and the presence of strong vitality that makes it easy to develop physical skill," he thought.
He then checked the failsafes. Normal guns had one, but his had five, as he was very cautious.
He had decided that when alone, he would release all failsafes, ready to fire at any moment. But in a crowd, he would still have two failsafes engaged, and when home, all five would be engaged. Well, the matter of fact was, it took a second to release all five failsafes and could even be done with one hand.
Then he went inside a small chamber, which was inside one of the thick, finger-shaped branches, and looked around. He was satisfied.
One could see a few bottles—some looked like healing liquids, others like poison—but everything was made from plant extracts. There were also some odd-shaped structures.
In his world, this was common—some flasks, distillatories, and other lab equipment required for chemical experiments. Of course, all were of crude structure and barely workable.
He was very well-versed in poison now. He could definitely make poison that could kill humans and monsters all the same. Further, he had identified many plants that seemed harmless, but when combined, they formed deadly poisons.
Especially the most famous and common plant in the village: Drownshade Ivy.
He had found at least three other plants that, when combined with Drownshade Ivy, formed poison, one of which was very deadly. He experimented on a boom rat, and the boom rat died within seconds.
But Milo didn't prefer to use Drownshade Ivy as an ingredient for poison, because he had noticed it always left traces.
He observed that any poison made with Drownshade Ivy left behind very tiny yellow-gold crystalline deposits on the bones. They didn't decompose. He'd seen this in many boom rats he had fed poison to.
Also, most of the rats died by bursting their hearts, as if Drownshade tried to pull and store the entire body's vitality into the heart, and the heart, incapable of storing it, burst open.
"Poison should be invisible, odorless, shapeless, tasteless, and traceless," he said to himself as he looked at a bottle kept on a side table.
From a distance, the bottle seemed empty, but upon closer inspection, it contained a clear, transparent liquid.
After spending some time experimenting, he came out of his hideout and decided to head home. After traveling a short distance, he suddenly heard crying in pain.
"Hm, the sound is coming from Zone Two," he thought. "That's where the Poison Rose blooms."
He paused, considering.
"Who's fool enough to go there?" he murmured to himself. Then, with a shrug, he added, "Might as well take a look."
When he approached the source of the sound, he hid behind a tree and took a peek at what was going on.
As soon as he looked at the situation, he pulled out Ivory and Ebony—his guns—and released all failsafes, but he did not shoot.
He saw the cursed boy being hounded by a monster. The monster was around 8 feet long and 6 feet tall. Its head looked similar to a tiger's but had pointy ears. It was completely black, with emerald eyes.
The local people called it "Raikhar." Not only was it bulky, its fangs were also poisonous.
He only had to pull the trigger. There was a high chance he could kill the beast, as it didn't seem to have thick skin. But if he did that, his secret would be exposed. No four-year-old should be capable of killing a Raikhar. And moreover, his weapon would be revealed.
It was too early to expose his invention—its potential could arm a commoner to fight against cultivators. He knew cultivators would never accept that, and as the inventor of the weapon, he would be dead for sure.
"If the whole world is against you," he thought grimly, "then you're already dead. After all, this isn't some novel where the protagonist can stand against the world for justice."
Then he questioned himself: what guarantee was there that the boy would keep this secret after he was saved?
The boy was just a child hated by everyone. His mind was already fragile from daily torment; there was a high chance he would sell the secret—perhaps for food or clothes or maybe shelter.
He pondered this, and if the cursed child died now, all his misery would end.
But then, a thought touched something deep inside his heart.
Wasn't there someone foolish enough to sacrifice everything for a cursed child once before?
The face of Anne surfaced in his memory. If he let the cursed boy die, wasn't that the same as agreeing that Anne's act was an act of foolishness? A foolish act of mercy.
His heart wouldn't allow it.
"God dammit!!" he screamed in his mind.
All this takes time to describe, but inside the mind, it passed in a second.
Now, he stood at a crossroads—an eternal dilemma that has existed for ages, regardless of the world:
Should he heed the cold wisdom of logic, or yield to the fervent call of the heart's desire?
In that silent moment, the weight of destiny pressed upon him—an endless conflict between mind and heart.