[Please choose carefully. Use with caution.]
Zuojian and Loughshinny walked through the city streets as evening settled in. The great sun had already sunk halfway below the horizon, leaving only half its body above the distant line of the earth, scattering its last lingering light across the land.
Everything before them seemed veiled in a hazy layer of warm gold, interwoven with scattered neon lights like amber liquor swirling in a crystal glass.
Loughshinny seemed unaccustomed to being out at a time like this—when children were leaving school, adults were getting off work, and the streets were at their busiest. Her young jade-green eyes widened involuntarily as she stared at the bustling scene before her.
It was prosperity, made visible.
Her heart began to pound. She could not tell whether it was from fear or excitement, but whatever the feeling was, it drove her to do the first thing that came to mind—
She reached out with both hands and clutched tightly at the hem of Zuojian's clothes, as though afraid she might be swept away by the crowd.
Noticing the small gesture, Zuojian smiled softly and patted her head. If he could, he would have liked to take her little hands in his right away, but...
At the moment, something else demanded his attention more urgently.
[Please choose your item or strategy for this stage.]
[Please choose carefully. Use with caution.]
The cold mechanical voice rang in his ears again, clearly urging him to make his choice quickly. Left with no alternative, Zuojian had to focus on the three panels floating before him—visible to him alone.
As before, the setup was familiar.
Two items, and one choice labeled Strategy.
Item Name: Roy Smey's Medical Hormone Gun (Lv. 3)
Appearance: A compact white pneumatic device with green accents.
Effect: Uses compressed gas to fire special nanomachines stored within the device. Once injected into the human body, they rapidly repair damaged tissue structures while suppressing negative conditions, temporarily restoring the patient's ability to act as though they were uninjured.
Remaining Uses in Current Magazine: 2/3
Additional Note: Due to the effects of an unknown incident, available uses -1.
"Unknown incident?"
At that, Zuojian glanced down at his own chest and suddenly seemed to understand.
Staring at the description of the hormone gun, he could tell at once that it was an extremely powerful healing item. But its total remaining uses had already dropped to two. If he picked it, it would greatly reduce the chances of dying from severe injury, but...
What he cared about now were the two children at his side.
No one knew when danger and conflict might find them. A healing device with only two uses left might well save his life—but so what? At the moment, the only weapon in his possession was the Rose Revolver, with just six bullets in the cylinder. If someone came after Loughshinny and Eblana...
How was he supposed to save them?
With a hormone gun meant to treat the wounded?
...No.
What he needed was force.
Direct force. Overwhelming force. Enough force to stop unknown threats before they could ever reach those two girls.
With that thought, Zuojian passed over the hormone gun without choosing it and turned his gaze to the second item.
Item Name: Coin That Twists Fate (Lv. ???)
Appearance: An unremarkable ancient silver coin. One side is engraved with a king, the other with a jester.
Effect: This coin may trigger its effect only four times per day. The count refreshes each day at 4:44:44 a.m.
Toss the coin. It must rotate more than four times in the air before landing in the palm. Depending on whether the face showing is the King or the Jester, the user will gain a Luck or Misfortune fortune buff for the next forty-four minutes.
Hidden Special Effect: If the user flips four consecutive King faces—each representing good fortune—within four minutes, they will gain the hidden effect Extreme Fortune. This effect is guaranteed to trigger, and will ignore the surrounding environment, ignore all human interference, and ignore... any causality whatsoever.
However, conversely, if the user flips four consecutive Jester faces representing misfortune... &＃￥!@@）**
Zuojian frowned.
The description of what happened after four consecutive misfortune flips had been distorted into an indecipherable mess, impossible to read with the naked eye.
This coin... if nothing else, it was probably the strongest item he had seen so far.
Not only was its level unknown, it even possessed a hidden effect, something no other item had shown.
The problem was that such immense power was paired with what was clearly an equally immense risk.
True, the system shop had sold plenty of items with side effects before, but none of them could compare to this coin.
Just looking at that twisted block of corrupted text sent a chill down his spine. As for the horrific consequence hidden behind that distortion...
He didn't want to think about it, and there was no need to.
The effect was undeniably powerful, but one thing must not be forgotten: Zuojian himself had never had particularly good luck. More importantly... he could not possibly stake the safety of the two girls on something so dependent on randomness.
Without question, this item ranked even lower in his mind than the hormone gun.
So—pass.
He discarded the dangerously unstable coin without hesitation and shifted his attention to the final panel.
The last choice was not an item, but a Strategy.
Strategy Name: Collector of Sets
Effect: Upon obtaining this strategy, item set effects are unlocked. When the user possesses three or more items or strategies that meet the conditions of a set, different set titles will be activated, granting enhancement skills corresponding to those titles.
Effect: Upon obtaining this strategy, future selections will be more likely to offer items or strategies that complete sets.
Effect: Upon obtaining this strategy, you will immediately gain one additional random item selection.
"Set... skills..."
Zuojian murmured to himself, as though turning over the idea in his mind.
At that moment, the little hand clutching his clothes suddenly tugged harder.
He turned his head and only then realized that while he had been absorbed in the item selection, the two of them had unconsciously wandered up to the bookshop they had already passed once before.
Seeing Loughshinny's swaying tail and those clear, jewel-like green eyes fixed on the beautifully bound books displayed behind the glass, Zuojian said nothing, but the corners of his mouth curved upward.
Without a word, he simply stretched out his hand, took Loughshinny's little hand in his, turned, and led her toward the bookstore.
At the same time, he made his decision in silence.
System. I choose the strategy.
Loughshinny, walking hand in hand with Zuojian, seemed happy that the book-lined shelves were drawing closer and closer—but gradually, she noticed that something felt off.
The hand holding hers...
Something about it was wrong.
It felt rough, layered, as if wrapped in cloth upon cloth.
She turned her head and finally noticed that the hand hidden within Zuojian's coat sleeve was bound in layer after layer of white bandages. Beneath those wrappings, the traces of burns were faintly visible.
The shopping did not take long.
After all, Zuojian was still worried about Eblana, who was downstairs in the infirmary on an IV, periodically letting little bursts of violet fire leak from her body.
The moment they got home, Zuojian put down the shopping bags and hurried straight to the medicine room.
Pushing open the door and seeing Eblana breathing more steadily, with no more violet fire rising around her, he let out a long sigh of relief.
The infusion was working.
Her condition was improving.
Realizing this, Zuojian walked over, lifted the still-sleeping Eblana into his arms, and took the IV stand with him. After changing out the medicine bag for a fresh one, he carried her back upstairs and placed her once more in the room she shared with Loughshinny.
When he came back out, Zuojian let out another long breath. At the same time, his stomach rumbled in protest, reminding him that his own work was far from done.
He went downstairs to the manor kitchen.
If memory served, the kitchen should have been a complete disaster—dirty, dusty, and unused for ages. But when he pushed the door open, what greeted him was a clean and tidy room.
And as for why it was so clean...
Loughshinny, already standing there waiting, explained the answer better than anything else could.
Ah, of course.
Because a few days earlier she had used the kitchen to boil those medicinal concoctions for him, and while doing so, had apparently cleaned the whole place as well.
The thought stirred an unexpected sense of warmth in him, and he couldn't help but step forward and rub her head again.
Only this time, she lowered her head once more and said nothing.
Zuojian looked at the little red dragon who always shrank in on herself like a timid mushroom and felt puzzled. If he remembered correctly, ever since they'd come out of the bookstore, Loughshinny had grown unusually quiet again.
Still... it was all right.
Loughshinny often seemed to fall into these strange moods, but she was truly sensible, and very sweet besides. As a proper father, Zuojian was of course more than willing to take the time to ease whatever knot was in her heart.
"What's wrong, Loughshinny? Do you have something on your mind again?"
"Um... y-you said... dinner was going to be... Yanese ramen... right?"
"That's right. Don't let appearances fool you—when it comes to this kind of food, I'm actually very skilled."
Zuojian smiled, took out the flour they had bought outside, and poured it into a basin. As he added water, he continued,
"If Loughshinny wants to watch, you can stand right over here. You see, with ramen, the noodles are the heart of everything. So the dough has to be mixed and kneaded by the cook's own hands. That's what gives the noodles their proper texture..."
Before he could finish enthusiastically describing the art of his craft, Loughshinny suddenly interrupted him.
"But... but your hands are hurt!"
She stepped forward and pulled back his sleeve, exposing the hands wrapped in bandages from the burns.
Yet Zuojian only smiled as if it were no big deal.
"Oh, this? Don't worry. I prepared for that."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a brand-new, unopened packet of plastic gloves—the kind he had casually taken from the medicine room.
"Since it really is hard to knead dough with bandages on, as long as I put another layer of plastic gloves over them, then—"
"That's not what I mean!"
Loughshinny sounded so anxious she nearly stamped her foot.
She stepped forward, both hands clutching his wrist tightly, and raised her head to look at him.
"Y-your hands are already hurt... so why are you still insisting on making that... that ramen? We could just eat something outside, or... or..."
Before she could finish, Zuojian crouched down in front of her and gently shook his head.
"No, Loughshinny. It's not the same."
"How... how is it not the same...?"
"Because of the ceremony of it."
"The... ceremony?"
The little girl's eyes were full of enormous confusion.
At that, Zuojian only chuckled softly and rubbed her head again. This time, even through the bandages, he could feel the smoothness of her freshly washed hair.
"This is the first meal the three of us will be eating together under this roof after you and your sister came here, right?"
"Y-yes?"
"But what does that have to do with anything...?"
"Because where I come from, there's a saying: dumplings for seeing someone off, noodles for welcoming them in."
"Wel... coming?"
Hearing the unfamiliar phrase from Zuojian's mouth, Loughshinny could only repeat it blankly, still unable to understand what it meant.
In response, the smile on his face deepened. He stepped forward, ruffled her hair once more, then paused to think of the simplest possible explanation.
"'Welcoming'... if I had to put it in a way that's easier to understand, then it would mean..."
After a brief moment of thought, Zuojian spoke with quiet sincerity.
"Welcome home, Loughshinny."
....
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