Zane looked around and realized he was inside an unfamiliar cave. Turning to look behind him, he saw seawater pouring through the cave entrance, waves crashing nonstop against the stone walls with loud splashing echoes.
If nothing unexpected had happened, then the ocean current must have carried him into this cave.
"Good lord, where the hell did this dump send me? Is this still Rinascita?"
After sorting out the situation, Zane rubbed his brow with a troubled expression. Throwing someone with absolutely no sense of direction into a completely unfamiliar place alone was honestly a bit...
Unfair to the owner of this place, wasn't it?
His eyes swept around and landed on a campfire nearby, along with a cake sitting on a wooden table. He immediately rubbed his paws together excitedly.
"Hehehe. This drifter has embarked on the journey to defeat the Demon King. Since I passed through here, shouldn't the owner offer up their finest sword?... Well, if there's no sword, contributing some food isn't too much to ask, right?"
As a hero, raiding villagers' homes was a basic skill, wasn't it?
With that thought, the so-called "hero of justice" hurried over to the wooden table in a few quick steps and grabbed the cake sitting there.
"Kekeke, delicious little child... uh, sorry. Force of habit."
Zane didn't suspect the cake at all. After all, the ocean current had brought him here. Unless the owner of this place could predict the movement of ocean currents and prepare in advance.
The moment the cake entered his mouth, an unbearable sourness detonated like an underwater depth charge.
That damned cake.
The instant it touched his tongue, Zane felt as though he'd been transported straight into the crime-ridden streets of Gotham.
Dark alleyways. Numb expressions. Twisted multi-legged creatures crawling through unseen corners in miserable silence.
And beyond that, he could vaguely see a little boy crying beside him...
Then, while the boy cried, he suddenly flew into the sky and came crashing down toward him shoulder to shoulder with a fat guy.
Zane, who had already one foot into the afterlife, jolted violently and scrambled upright from the floor in an instant. He hurriedly placed the cake back where it had been, then bowed toward it three times.
Good grief. One bite and his mental damage meter nearly exploded.
What kind of lunatic created this biological weapon...
"Do you not even know to say thank you after stealing someone else's food?"
A cold voice drifted through the cave's chilly air, startling Zane so badly he jumped.
He turned toward the source of the voice and saw a girl leaning against the wall. She wore a dress woven from crimson flower petals, her gray hair tied into twin braids. In her hand, a vivid red spider lily glimmered faintly with a cold light.
"Bu... Buddha?"
"Tch." The girl clicked her tongue impatiently and pointed the spider lily forward. In an instant, chains covered in barbs burst from the ground and shot straight toward Zane.
"Holy crap! Help! The Fractsidus are murdering people!"
Phrolova's attack was fast, but Zane reacted just as quickly. Facing the whistling chains, he stomped the ground and lightly leaped out of their range.
"Heh. In the eyes of people like you who claim to be righteous and kind, aren't the Fractsidus all murderers anyway?"
Phrolova sneered softly. The spider lily in her hand moved like a conductor's baton, and crimson musical notes appeared alongside a humanoid phantom at her side.
"Wail. Sing."
Her voice echoed through the dark cave with a trace of madness. Her skirt fluttered like drifting flower petals as she spun gracefully.
The next second, the crimson humanoid Tacet Discord swung its bladed whip. The sharp edge swept across the ground, instantly carving a deep groove into the rock wall and sending shattered stone flying everywhere.
Zane's expression sharpened as he leaped high to avoid the strike.
But immediately afterward, something entered his field of vision...
Seeing her first attack miss, Phrolova lightly flicked the spider lily in her hand. The humanoid phantom whipped its blade again. The flexible whip suddenly snapped taut with a metallic ringing sound.
The whip became a sword, aimed directly at Zane's throat.
Yet Zane seemed not to notice it at all. Instead, he ran several steps toward the incoming weapon before abruptly stopping in front of it, allowing the killing strike to rush straight at him.
The next second, blood sprayed through the air. Scarlet droplets scattered across the ground, standing out starkly against the crimson color of the phantom itself.
Phrolova frowned slightly when she saw Zane take the attack head-on without dodging.
But when she saw what he was holding, the cold indifference on her face instantly turned into uncontrollable shock.
"You..."
Her gaze moved past Hecate's body and landed on Zane's hand.
There, resting quietly in his palm, was half a cake.
The other half had been sliced away, yet thanks to his deliberate protection, not even a drop of blood had stained the remaining piece.
"Heh..." Zane coughed up a mouthful of blood. Ignoring the shock on Phrolova's face, he tossed the cake toward her.
"It should be lunchtime by now. Sorry for eating your lunch. But I still managed to save half of it from your hands. So..." He raised his head, emerald-green eyes blazing with fighting spirit.
"We're even now!"
As he spoke, he grabbed the bladed whip embedded in his body and yanked it out. The barbs tore out a spray of blood, but he still stood there without retreating even half a step.
Phrolova stared at the cake she had caught and suddenly felt something sink inside her chest.
Now she finally understood how Scar had lost to him.
Making an enemy out of someone like this was truly terrifying.
'Maybe...'
A strange light flickered through Phrolova's eyes. She lightly waved the spider lily in her hand, and a high-grade energy pouch wrapped in flower vines floated toward Zane.
Zane frowned slightly but did not take what she offered.
If he wasn't mistaken, the pouch Phrolova handed him was a top-grade healing energy pack.
"What? Want to make peace now?"
"That's right." Phrolova nodded. With a casual wave of her hand, Hecate vanished instantly.
Then she began walking toward Zane without the slightest guard up. "At the very least, you count as my first customer."
Hearing her bring that up, Zane unconsciously took a step back.
Even after Phrolova's Tacet Discord had pierced straight through his body earlier, he hadn't retreated a single step.
Zane wasn't the sentimental type. Since the other party was giving him a chance to heal, there was no way he'd refuse it.
Of course, he definitely wasn't going to use the special-grade energy pouch Phrolova gave him.
Then, right in front of Phrolova's utterly baffled stare, Zane pulled out a bag of... "Pretty Trash."
Then he ate it.
As a consumable fished out from the Star Pool, unlike ordinary "Trash," "Pretty Trash" could immediately restore Zane's injuries.
Now he finally understood why Xing liked trash cans so much.
"You'd rather eat garbage than eat my cake!?" Clearly, Zane's decision to eat trash instead of her cake shattered Phrolova emotionally on the spot.
Zane knew she had misunderstood something, but he had no intention of explaining. Even though the two of them had temporarily stopped fighting, they were still enemies at the end of the day.
Seeing the inexplicable pride on Zane's face, Phrolova suddenly felt her stomach hurt. For a moment, she genuinely wondered whether leaving this guy by Rover's side was actually a form of revenge against Rover.
"Well, your cake was way too sour."
"I think it's fine. Maybe I'm just used to it..."
The two who had been trying to kill each other moments ago were now sitting together. Seeing the loneliness that flashed briefly across Phrolova's face, Zane let out a long sigh.
Noticing the change in his expression, Phrolova raised her head and glanced at him sideways with amusement.
"What? Someone like you actually feels sympathy for my past?"
"No." Zane shook his head, glanced at the eye she kept covered, then sighed again. "I was just thinking, you're still so young, and yet one of your eyes is already bli... hey hey hey, didn't we agree on a truce?! Sis, big sis, let's talk this out properly, put the cake down first..."
And just like that, they started fighting again.