"Who are you?"
"I don't think we know you, do we?"
March stared at the elegant, mature woman standing before her. For a moment, she was caught completely off guard by the stranger's sudden appearance, then quickly asked about her identity, her tone laced with suspicion.
Inside the sparse hall, Himeko and Jingliu instantly turned their gazes toward the open doorway, intensely sizing the woman up.
From the way this purple-haired woman dressed, she clearly didn't look like a ragged local at all—nor did she bear any resemblance to the fanatical followers of the Abundance.
"You don't know me, but I know you, little March."
The woman smiled brightly. She casually reached out, her gloved fingers lightly tracing the empty air just beneath March's chin.
The phantom gesture made March's skin crawl, as if she had actually been physically touched.
"Ugh... you..."
"Who are you? How do you know my name?!" March shuddered, stepping back, her gradient eyes growing highly wary.
"Heh~"
"Not bad. Staying alert is definitely a good habit to have out here!"
The woman completely ignored March's guarded look and casually stepped past her, strolling right into the center of the hall as if she owned the place.
"Hey! You can't just barge in like that!"
"And seriously, who are you?!" March hurried after her, indignantly demanding an answer again.
"No need to ask, March."
"This woman... is a Stellaron Hunter. Kafka."
Himeko had already risen to her feet. Her expression was incredibly grim as she stared down the intruder, her hand moving discreetly toward her high-tech suitcase, ready for an immediate fight.
Beside her, Jingliu was equally, lethally tense.
Her pale hand rested lightly on her icy sword hilt, fully prepared to draw and strike at a moment's notice.
Just like Himeko, the former Sword Champion had recognized the uninvited "guest" right away. She was one of the infamous Stellaron Hunters, a wanted fugitive known across the entire galaxy.
"Wait... she's a Stellaron Hunter?!"
"Oh my god—she's one of those super-wanted criminals hunted by the whole universe?!" March's eyes went wide, intense curiosity now mixing heavily with her surprise as she studied the striking woman before her.
Even March, who rarely kept up with boring galactic news or IPC broadcasts, had definitely heard of the Stellaron Hunters.
The universal rumors were that wherever they went, their ultimate goal was always exactly the same—to seize catastrophic cosmic anomalies known as "Stellarons." No one actually knew which Aeon they faithfully followed, or exactly why they were hoarding the Cancer of All Worlds in the first place.
But one thing was absolutely certain: if a Stellaron was involved, they would stop at absolutely nothing to take it.
Very little concrete information was known about the Stellaron Hunters, only that they were incredibly few in number—but each and every one was terrifyingly formidable, a cosmic force to be reckoned with.
Every single member was actively wanted by the Interastral Peace Corporation with a massive, astronomical bounty on their heads. Aside from their mysterious leader, "Destiny's Slave" Elio, Kafka alone possessed a staggering bounty exceeding ten billion credits.
"What brings an infamous Stellaron Hunter all the way out here to the frontier?"
"As fugitives actively hunted by the entire universe, I imagine you wouldn't show your face so casually unless it was for something incredibly important." Himeko watched Kafka warily, her voice steady and authoritative as she questioned her.
Kafka simply responded with a faint, elegant smile. Her leather boots clicked softly against the stone floor as she slowly, deliberately stepped closer to the Navigator.
Himeko moved to raise her heavy suitcase—but then, Kafka's voice sounded softly, almost intimately, right beside her ear.
"Listen to me, Navigator of the Astral Express, Himeko."
"That is your name, isn't it?"
Kafka's expression was perfectly calm. Her pink gaze remained fixed on Himeko without a single trace of tension or caution—as if she were merely chatting over coffee with an old friend.
But Himeko, on the other hand, felt a cold, paralyzing sweat abruptly break out on her forehead. A sharp flicker of utter disbelief crossed her golden eyes.
Just a fraction of a second ago, she had fully intended to swing her weaponized suitcase at Kafka's head. Yet now, her body completely refused to move. It was as if her limbs had stopped obeying her brain's commands entirely. No matter how hard she struggled internally, she couldn't get a single muscle to respond.
That was when she remembered the terrifying ability specifically mentioned in the IPC threat files on Kafka—a form of absolute psychological dominance and mind control known as Spirit Whisper.
It was widely said that once someone fell victim to the hypnotic resonance of her voice, Kafka could control their actions completely, turning even the strongest warriors into helpless puppets at her mercy.
Himeko fought with all her formidable willpower to resist Kafka's invasive power, desperately trying to break the invisible strings. But she was ultimately just a normal human—aside from her vast scientific knowledge and her arsenal of high-tech inventions, she possessed no supernatural combat abilities or mental defenses of her own.
No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn't regain control of her own body.
Jingliu, instantly sensing the unnatural shift in the room's atmosphere, drew her crystalline sword in a blinding flash and pointed the tip directly at Kafka's throat.
Shing—!
"Release her right now, or you will die very painfully, Stellaron Hunter." Jingliu's voice was glacial, laced with a suffocating, centuries-old murderous intent.
"What did you do?!"
"What did you just do to Himeko, you crazy woman?!"
Noticing that Himeko was frozen stiff, March quickly rushed to her side, manifesting her black-and-white bow and taking aim point-blank at Kafka, fully ready to loose an arrow at a moment's notice.
Faced with two incredibly dangerous women fully prepared to kill her, Kafka didn't seem panicked in the slightest. She merely shrugged helplessly and slowly raised her hands in a theatrical gesture of surrender.
"Everyone, relax. I'm really not here to cause any trouble, so please, there is no need for violence." There was a hint of genuine resignation in Kafka's pink eyes.
Her Spirit Whisper was an undeniably powerful, reality-bending ability, but it did have its strict limits. Not everyone in the universe was susceptible to it.
Take March and Jingliu, for example—when she had spoken her command a moment ago, she had subtly tried to cast the psychological net over everyone in the room. But in the end, only the baseline human, Himeko, had actually been affected.
That failure forced her to immediately abandon whatever her original, playful plan had been.
As Kafka's placating words faded, the invisible strings snapped. Himeko gasped, feeling the absolute control of her body finally return to her.
"You resort to your insidious mind tricks the exact moment you walk through the door, and you genuinely expect us to believe a notorious Stellaron Hunter means us no harm?" Himeko rolled her shoulders, stretching her stiff limbs. Her expression was razor-sharp as she fixed her furious gaze on Kafka.
"That's right!"
"And you literally just took control of Himeko!" March nodded firmly, fiercely backing up the Navigator.
Just then, Yuki, who had been sitting perfectly quietly off to the side watching the entire drama unfold, finally spoke up.
"She really doesn't mean any harm. Honestly, she only came here looking for me."
The three women whipped their heads around, turning to Yuki with identical looks of profound surprise.
Kafka, on the other hand, smiled softly.
She slowly turned to face him, her pink eyes studying him up close with a quiet, analytical intensity.
To be completely honest, Yuki was the most ridiculously handsome man she had ever laid eyes on—bar none. And now, seeing him this close in the dim light of the room, she could tell without a shadow of a doubt: there wasn't a single microscopic flaw in his physical appearance.
If there was such a concept as absolute perfection in this chaotic universe, then this man sitting casually before her was it—flawless in every conceivable way.
"You noticed me back there in the treeline, didn't you?" Kafka lowered her hands completely and spoke softly, confirming her earlier suspicion.
"What do you mean? Noticed her when?"
"I don't get what's going on at all!" March looked completely lost, her head tilted in adorable confusion, her bow still half-drawn.
Jingliu and Himeko were just as puzzled by the sudden shift in the conversation's dynamic.
Yuki, meanwhile, met Kafka's calculating gaze and gave her a long, incredibly measured look.
"Mm."
"And I know exactly why you're here, too." A hint of deep amusement tugged at the corner of Yuki's lips as he held her gaze and spoke with absolute, terrifying calm.
"Wait—you actually know that too?"
"I suppose I severely underestimated you." Kafka's lips parted slightly in genuine, unmasked surprise.
Yuki just smiled enigmatically and said nothing more.
After all, everything in this universe was already completely within his grasp.