The Mercenary Guild — a name known to every household, a transcendent power of the highest order. Li Fei had heard of it, naturally.
They said at least half of all Transcendents on the Continent of Enlos had done business with the Mercenary Guild at one point or another. This colossus had extended its reach into virtually every corner of the continent — its members had been spotted even in the barren Death Desert, the frozen Arendelle Fortress, and places like the Bone-Burial Forest and the Devil's Gate, regions so lethal that most living creatures dared not set foot inside.
Loxibrook, as a strategic stronghold of the Nature alignment, naturally housed a branch of considerable size.
From what Li Fei understood, the Mercenary Guild was essentially a massive, authoritative intermediary platform — clients paid to post contracts, and the Guild relayed those jobs to mercenaries of every shape and stripe, taking a cut in the process, while handling everything from pricing and qualification assessments to credit guarantees.
"First, register a mercenary identity under Inori's alias. Then register a second one under your real name."
Bai Mengtian suggested, "Having multiple identities makes everything easier."
"The Deception Gem can fool even the Mercenary Guild?" Li Fei tilted her head curiously.
"In some backwater branch out in the middle of nowhere, maybe. But here in Loxibrook, the Deception Gem alone won't cut it."
Bai Mengtian gave her own impressively full chest a confident pat. "But with me here, nothing is a problem."
"Mm... alright."
Li Fei tilted her head, thought it over for a moment, and adopted her best friend's suggestion.
"Oh, right — hold on."
By some instinct she couldn't quite explain, Li Fei fished out a bronze brooch.
[Type-V Magic Apprentice Brooch]
Equipment Rating: Firefly
Attributes: +1 Intelligence.
During that long night, the star courtesan had spent the better part of it soaking in an airtight oral hot spring until she was thoroughly light-headed — but by the time dawn broke, she'd still managed to slip the second brooch, the one representing an ordinary student enrollment slot at the Magic Academy, into her neckline and bring it home with her.
If mercenary identities could be registered in twos, then the Magic Academy enrollment slot might also be able to...
She wasn't entirely sure it would be useful, but Li Fei figured it was worth a try.
On the surface: a pink-haired mercenary currently enrolled at the Magic Academy.
In reality: a specially admitted Magic Academy student who moonlights as both a star courtesan and a mercenary!
"There's potential here... ow."
She'd meant to pin the brooch over her heart, but the fabric of the dress was far too thin — she jabbed herself in the skin before she'd even realized what she was doing.
"Oh no, are you okay? Here, let me rub it better."
Bai Mengtian snapped awake in an instant, hand already reaching out with entirely too much enthusiasm.
Smack.
Li Fei swatted away her best friend's hand — the one that had been attempting to take their friendship somewhere it had no business going — and pinned the brooch directly to the collar of her dress instead, where it sat at the throat like a necklace clasp.
A brooch that ought to have been solemn and dignified, a symbol of knowledge and wisdom, immediately looked considerably less respectable.
"Let's go."
With everything in order, Li Fei hooked her arm through Bai Mengtian's and headed up the steps.
The main entrance of the Mercenary Guild was fronted by several dozen stone steps. To the left stood an enormous sculpture of a bird — feathers sharp as drawn swords, every one standing on end, beak thrown open toward the sky in a silent, consuming shriek. The whole thing radiated a domineering, heaven-swallowing ferocity.
"What's that thing supposed to be? Looks pretty cool."
Li Fei tilted her chin toward the statue.
"A Thunderbird. Mythical creature of the 'Power' alignment," Bai Mengtian explained. "In terms of looks, it's probably top-tier even among Sequence 3 creatures — puts a certain legendary electric bird from a certain other franchise thoroughly to shame. Combat ability, though..." She gave a diplomatic pause. "About as disappointing as the three legendary birds combined."
"Legend has it that near the end of the Age of Myths — when the gods were about to withdraw and the old order had already shattered, but the rules of the new era had yet to be written — the Continent of Enlos fell into chaos. Powerful and predatory races like the Blood Clan and the Hydra Brood ran rampant, devouring everything in their path, swallowing mountains and draining seas..."
"In that dark and blood-soaked age, a Thunderbird carried a legendary hero through the sky like a bolt of lightning tearing the night apart. He wielded a frost war-hammer and wore dragonscale armor, and he swept away the evil and the violence, restoring clear skies to the Continent of Enlos."
"Afterward, he founded the Mercenary Guild with his own hands — gathering Transcendents from across the world, accepting contracts from all races, so that even the weakest of creatures could find protection."
"And then?"
"And then?" Bai Mengtian smiled, a little mischievous. "The legendary heroes disappeared along with the gods into the great mists of four thousand years ago. Only a handful of ancient factions survived to the present — the Mercenary Guild, the Thieves' Guild, and a few others..."
"Sadly, the Power alignment crowd have muscles where their brains ought to be. Management has never exactly been their strong suit. They accepted the nobles' 'generous assistance,' and the outcome was exactly what you'd expect — the Mercenary Guild their ancestor bled to build from nothing has more or less taken on the shape of the Order alignment by now."
"Huh..."
Li Fei's expression took on a note of genuine admiration. "Nobles really do have a gift for making money off other people's legacies."
By the time the two of them had finished talking, they had already climbed the steps and were standing at the Guild's front doors.
Loxibrook had long since been swallowed by nightfall, but the Mercenary Guild blazed with light. As the unchallenged monopoly on mercenary work, the Guild carried itself accordingly — the interior was immaculate, the foot traffic a constant parade of different races. Li Fei, taking it all in for the first time, felt an unfamiliar flutter of nerves settle in her chest. She quietly closed her fingers around Bai Mengtian's hand. Bai Mengtian, practiced as ever, turned her palm over and laced their fingers together.
"Is there something I can help you with, miss?"
After a brief wait, a man in a neat uniform with a clean-cut hairstyle stepped forward and greeted Li Fei with warm attentiveness.
"I'd like to join the Mercenary Guild."
"Right this way."
The man's gaze made one quick, discreet pass over the brooch pinned to Li Fei's collar, and he exercised considerable self-control in not letting it travel any further south. He gestured for her to follow him toward a service counter.
The staff here were clearly of exceptional professional caliber. Even transformed into a pink-haired beauty, Li Fei's Charisma on the System Panel still sat at 190 — and yet faced with a face that could stop traffic, the man remained perfectly composed. That, genuinely, impressed her.
What impressed her even more was something else entirely.
"Why is he completely ignoring you?" Li Fei pressed her lips close to Bai Mengtian's ear and murmured.
"Order-type spell: Presence Erasure," Bai Mengtian replied without particular concern. "Unless there's a high-Sequence Transcendent in the building, I could stand right in front of these people and scream my lungs out — they'd instinctively tune me out completely."
Li Fei immediately recalled Nicole-mama's teachings: Order-type magic excelled at manipulating 'space' and 'mind.'
"Order magic is so incredibly useful..."
Li Fei — who had spent considerable time browsing certain corners of the internet in her previous life — immediately conjured one hundred and eight distinct applications for this spell, and the envy in her voice was palpable.
"Oh, that's nothing," Bai Mengtian said with a meaningful little smile. "Even if I were to have a romantic encounter with some beautiful lady I'd only just met — under Presence Erasure, she'd simply wake up thinking she'd had a very vivid dream."
"..."
Li Fei puffed out her cheeks, dropped Bai Mengtian's hand, and walked ahead without her.
That is infuriating!
Why can't I do things like that!
Once my Potential Points aren't so scarce, I am absolutely maxing out every Order-type spell on the tree!
"Please fill in your details here."
The staff member led Li Fei to the counter, pulled out a chair for her, and sat down across from her. He slid a form and pen across the surface. "Please fill everything in accurately — to verify the information, we'll need to use certain methods to scan what you've written. Your details will, of course, be kept strictly confidential."
"Just fill in whatever," Bai Mengtian murmured behind Li Fei, tracing idle circles in the air with one finger — a quiet little warning.
Li Fei nodded and picked up the pen — then promptly froze.
Two months of study and she could hold her own in spoken conversation well enough — but writing...
Bai Mengtian said nothing, quietly enjoying herself and looking elsewhere with a suppressed grin.
The man across the desk kept his gaze warm and attentive — maintaining professional composure while still doing his very best to leave a favorable impression on what was, in his estimation, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life.
Li Fei held the form up and turned it over and over, an awkward-but-composed smile fixed on her face. She could just barely make out a few characters...
"Is there something you're unsure about?" The man, noticing she hadn't put pen to paper, asked helpfully.
Am I, the star courtesan in all her glory, really about to suffer a social death right here at this desk? Bai Mengtian — I treated you like a true sister, and you're going to leave me to drown! Unfriend, unfriend, unfriend—
The more Li Fei thought about it, the more flustered she got; the more flustered she got, the more aggrieved she felt. A faint mist gathered in her eyes.
The effect of a plummeting Morality score was complicated and far-reaching — it couldn't simply be reduced to 'shamelessness.' The truth was, reckless abandon in private but immaculate appearances in public was the proper aspiration of any person of thoroughly deteriorated Morality.
"Alright, no more sulking. Be good."
A warm whisper brushed against her ear, and a hand settled softly against her forehead.
Without a sound, Language Comprehension settled over Li Fei like a second skin.
The incomprehensible scrawl on the form clarified in an instant, becoming simple and perfectly legible.
"Hmph."
Li Fei gave Bai Mengtian's foot a light step, shot her a look that said don't think this gets you off the hook, then swept a strand of dark hair — well, pink hair, for now — over one shoulder and bent her head to fill in the form.
Name: Kaname Madoka
Age: 18
...
When she reached the field for specializations, Bai Mengtian spoke up again:
"Most Transcendents keep their Class confidential. Just give a rough description of what you can do in combat — mage, offensive magic, that kind of thing."
Li Fei wrote down 'Chaos-type Magic' without any change in expression.
Sequence Level:
She paused. Then she slid one hand under the table, reaching beneath the hem of her skirt, and used a fingertip — pressing through the black stocking — to trace several characters against the inside of Bai Mengtian's thigh:
Really just put anything?
"As long as it's not completely absurd."
Bai Mengtian's eyes went half-lidded — the look of a cat being petted into drowsy contentment. She even, quite without meaning to, pressed her thigh lightly around Li Fei's hand for just a moment.
Li Fei's breath caught. She withdrew her hand with no outward sign of anything amiss, made a show of pressing a finger to her lips in thoughtful contemplation — and quietly inhaled the faint, barely-there scent that lingered on her fingertips.
A flush crept from her collarbone all the way up to her earlobes, and all she could hear was the loud, steady hammering of her own heartbeat.
"Are you alright?" The professionally perceptive staff member noticed the shift in Li Fei's manner immediately. "Are you feeling unwell?"
"Ah — no, nothing like that."
Li Fei shook her head rapidly. "Your countertop is very... springy. Actually no, I meant your chairs are very silky. No wait, your black stockings — I mean, your office supplies are really something, I'll have to get a set of my own someday."
To Bai Mengtian's poorly stifled laughter, the ordinarily silver-tongued star courtesan tripped over her own words for several helpless seconds before she finally recovered herself and set pen to paper.
Sequence Level: 4
The man, who had been trying to work out how to communicate with the aggressively charming and somewhat unhinged pink-haired girl, straightened up sharply in his seat. An expression of poorly controlled alarm spread across his face.
A short while later, Li Fei finished the form and slid it across to him. The man stood — instinctively — and accepted it with both hands, voice trembling slightly. "Please — please wait just one moment."
He produced a pen inscribed with a Detect Lies enchantment and passed it slowly over the form.
Under Bai Mengtian's watchful eye, the mana crystal in the pen continued to glow a steady, uninterrupted blue. Not a single flicker of red.
The man broke into a cold sweat on the spot.
Sequence 4 — that's one step below the high-Sequence elite!
And a Chaos-type mage, no less!
A Transcendent of that caliber could tip the scales of a low-intensity war, and had the reach to cut down legendary-tier creatures like Djinn and vampires!
God — and she's only eighteen.
Could it be that the esteemed Lady Nicole, or perhaps Lady Elizabeth, had quietly taken in yet another daughter?
"My apologies — my authorization level isn't sufficient to process your enrollment. Please come with me."
The man bowed and escorted Li Fei into a tastefully appointed reception room.
Sinking into the plush carpet, Li Fei murmured, "This isn't going to blow up in our faces, is it?"
"Look at where you are." Bai Mengtian smiled, unbothered. "Loxibrook. And the family name here is Bai."
Insufferable. She's done it again...
Li Fei was just puffing out her cheeks, about to say something, when the heavy rosewood doors swung open.
She glanced sideways — and caught a flash of vivid red moving toward her.
Fire-red curls cascaded like layers of autumn maple leaves, rippling with every brisk, confident stride. Each step those long legs in black stockings took sent the scarlet hemline swaying in their wake; red heels pressed into the carpet with each footfall like roses blooming beneath her feet, as though she were stepping directly on Li Fei's heart.
The woman's makeup was mature and brilliantly striking — sharp as a coiling serpent. Her crimson lips were a poison blossom in full flower, and for a moment Li Fei felt the world tilt slightly.
"She's... completely my type..."
Li Fei murmured under her breath.
"You said the same thing the first time you saw me," Bai Mengtian said, poking her in the ribs with mild indignation. "Though I have to admit — black stockings and red heels really are the definitive combination."
"Sisters are off-limits," Li Fei muttered to herself, and stood up, extending a hand. "Hello."
The woman — more dazzling than any rose — caught a glimpse of Li Fei in turn, and a flicker of genuine, undisguised surprise crossed those green eyes.
Her red lips curved upward. She walked to Li Fei, took those slender, fair fingers in a light grasp, and pressed a full-lipped kiss to the back of her hand. "A pleasure to meet you. Your beauty is breathtaking, Miss Kaname Madoka."
Li Fei had been about to respond with the practiced, half-resistant expression she used when receiving guests — but then it occurred to her: she was wearing a new identity now. Might as well adjust the persona to match.
Playing the reluctant ingenue every single day was exhausting. New alias, new attitude — bold, relaxed, unapologetic.
So instead, she turned her grip around and held the red-haired woman's warm, soft hand in return, a smile at the corner of her mouth. "And what should I call you?"
On a whim she couldn't quite account for, Li Fei let her fingertip trace a small, idle circle against the woman's palm.
The red-haired woman went still.
She hadn't expected this — that a girl who looked so sweet and deceptively innocent could be so thoroughly... succubus-like in manner.
"Leona."
The red-haired woman poured Li Fei a cup of tea. "Please, sit."
"Right."
Li Fei spread herself back in her seat, wrapped an arm around where Bai Mengtian stood — invisible to Leona — and adopted the posture of a crime boss sitting down to negotiate. She got straight to the point. "So — is there some issue with my application?"
"It's somewhat unusual for someone to apply for Mercenary Guild membership at Sequence 4 from the very start," Leona said, lifting her teacup. She made no comment on 'Kaname Madoka''s slightly awkward posture of apparently hugging empty air. "So a certain level of review is required."
"Understood."
"One moment, please."
Leona produced a flawlessly clear crystal ball and set it on top of Li Fei's completed form.
"That thing's enchantment is Detect Lies, level ten," Bai Mengtian remarked with a shrug. "Won't do them any good."
The crystal ball glowed with the same steady blue as before.
"It appears we were being overly cautious," Leona said. She retrieved the transcendent artifact — carved from a mana crystal — and fixed her gaze on Li Fei's eyes. "What puzzles me, however, is this: though you claim to be Sequence 4 — why can I sense no transcendent presence from you whatsoever?"
"Miss Kaname Madoka is a mage, not a thief. Concealing a transcendent aura would normally be quite difficult, I'd think."
"I'm curious."
Li Fei crossed her legs and answered without missing a beat:
"I have a Blazing Sun-grade transcendent item that suppresses my presence."
Bai Mengtian's small hand pressed quietly against the small of Li Fei's back.
The next second, Leona's expression cracked open in shock.
Chaotic, disordered mana erupted outward like a collapsing mountain and a surging sea — forming a twisting, savage vortex that was so dense it became nearly tangible, so real it began to interfere with the physical world around it. The warm orange lamplight in the room flickered and strobed; the teacups on the table let out a sharp, strained ringing, as though they might shatter at any moment.
And in the eye of the vortex, the girl — outwardly delicate and sweet — sat perfectly composed, long legs crossed, her full head of pink hair dancing in the churning mana, a secretive smile on her lips:
"Any further questions?"
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