The Two Sharing a Tent

At the same time, somewhere in the galaxy.

The Stellaron Hunters' ship was silent, except for one place—

"Clang."

The gray-haired girl slammed the metal baseball bat in her hands into the training dummy's chest, the deafening crash echoing through the spacious chamber. The protective plate on the dummy's chest shattered on impact, scattering fragments across the floor.

Stelle panted, wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, then rolled her shoulders.

She turned and walked to the edge of the training room, where a kitten as black as ink lay curled up on a cushion. He stretched his front paws, then slowly opened a pair of golden eyes.

"A fancy place like Epsilon must have lots of fun things to do," Stelle said, leaning against the wall and looking down at the black cat. "Why did Silver Wolf and Kafka get to go?"

The black cat—Elio—rose gracefully to his feet and stretched. "I told you a long time ago, Stelle. Your stage hasn't been set yet."

Stelle's brows knitted even tighter, and her fingers rubbed red against the bat's handle. "I haven't been on a mission in ages. My body's rusting, it's crying out, and it needs a proper workout, Elio."

"That's why I had Kafka buy you these dummies, so you could work off your excess energy." Elio rolled his eyes at her. "You should still remember the rules of the Stellaron Hunters."

"More importantly," Elio paused, "it isn't time to introduce you to the galaxy yet."

Stelle lowered her eyes. "You're getting harder and harder to understand, Elio."

"When the star rails intersect, when the curtain rises on the script." The black cat stuck out his tongue and licked his paw, the deathly silence of a sky full of stars reflected in his golden eyes. "Wait a little longer. This wait is necessary to cross 'Finality.'"

Stelle opened her mouth, wanting to ask what "Finality" really meant, but the black cat had already turned away and leaped along the shadows out of the training room, leaving her with only the sight of his silent retreat.

The control room fell deathly silent again. Stelle raised a hand and pressed her aching temples, feeling her pulse pound beneath her fingertips.

"I'd better go keep Firefly company and chat with her."

Though the Glamoth Iron Cavalry lady spent far more time unconscious than awake.

Beside a river more than ten kilometers from the refugee camp, the air was filled with the damp, earthy smell of mud and the chill of riverbed pebbles soaked in night dew.

Jingxing stepped on a loose river pebble, and his foot slipped, making him stagger. He regained his balance before he fell, bracing a hand against the ground to keep from taking a hard tumble. But the coarse sand and gravel still scraped his palm, and the sting instantly made him feel much more awake.

"We're here. Let's rest here." Robin stopped on a flat stretch of the riverbank and let out a long breath as she looked around. Her breath quickly condensed into mist in the cold air.

Jingxing brushed the dirt and sand off his hand and looked around. A broad, dry riverbed lay ahead, and the woods they had just come through were behind them. The view was open, and they were sheltered from the valley's biting wind. It really was a good place to camp.

Robin then took the antique-looking sachet from her waist. A faint flicker of Imaginary Energy flashed, and space unfolded like origami.

"Click." A windproof tent with camouflage coloring landed on the ground. Its metal frame locked into place under the pull of elastic cords, producing a crisp snapping sound.

Jingxing took a closer look, his lips moving. "Miss Robin... is there only one tent?"

"Mm." Robin bent down and used the tip of her foot to press the pegs at the tent's four corners firmly into the ground. "There's limited space in the sachet, so I only brought one tent."

Jingxing looked at the narrow tent, which could hold one person at most no matter how he looked at it. Without any hesitation, he said, "Then you go in and sleep, Miss Robin. I'll keep watch outside. I study painting, and I often stay up all night finishing exhibition pieces, so staying up late is nothing unusual for me."

As he spoke, he walked over to a dead tree nearby, preparing to clear a clean patch of ground to sit on.

"No." Robin's voice was soft, but the resolve in her tone left no room for doubt.

Jingxing paused and looked back at her.

Robin fixed her emerald-green eyes on him. "You're an ordinary person who hasn't set foot on a Path. The nighttime temperature here has already dropped close to freezing, and it's very damp. Even with a campfire, your immune system could very well collapse if you spent the night out here. In a place like this, with no medical care available, a fever could kill you."

"I'm not as delicate as you think—"

"Listen to me." Robin cut him off and pointed at the tent. "I put two sleeping bags inside, one for each of us. It'll be fine if we squeeze in a little."

Jingxing looked at her slightly pursed lips and knew that this gentle-looking Halovian girl was almost stubbornly insistent on certain matters of principle.

"All right, I'll listen to you." Jingxing stopped insisting. "You go first, Robin. I'll come in later."

Robin nodded slightly, bent down, unzipped the tent, and crawled inside. The sound of the zipper closing was especially clear on the quiet riverbank.

The inside of the tent was pitch-dark, with the dry smell of preservative coating and plastic.

Robin did not lie down. She sat cross-legged on the groundsheet and reached up to loosen the bow tied snugly at her neck, making it a little easier to breathe.

She raised her right hand and looked at her palm by the faint moonlight filtering through the canvas.

A faint glow flowed around her fingertips. It was the energy of the Path of Harmony. Though weak, it constantly nourished her body, sustaining a metabolism and endurance far beyond those of an ordinary person.

Sleep? As long as she needed to, she could do without sleep entirely. As a follower of Harmony, she could restore her energy with a short nap. Outside the tent, Jingxing's face had long since turned pale from the long trek and the strain on his nerves. If he wasn't allowed to rest properly, something was bound to go wrong.

But Robin also knew that Jingxing would never accept a proposal for him to rest while she kept watch outside, so they might as well make do and squeeze in together.

"I'm ready in here," Robin called out from inside her sleeping bag, opening the tent's zipper.

Immediately afterward, Robin closed her eyes and settled into a sleeping position.

Outside the tent, Jingxing couldn't help feeling uneasy when he heard Robin.

Am I really going to sleep in the same tent as a big star like Robin? If word gets out, can my safety still be guaranteed in the future? Her die-hard fans aren't going to pay someone to take me out, are they?

But when Jingxing reached out with fingers stiff from the cold and held open the tent, the stinging pain in his hands made him too tired to think about all that.

He had just put on a brave front and said he could keep watch outside, but if he really stayed out all night, he would probably be frozen stiff by sunrise. This was no time to worry about being a gentleman.

The river rushed in the distance. The long, cold night had only just begun.

"The thirteenth one's buried." Silver Wolf watched the ore she had teleported to the target coordinates land safely and curled her lip. "Why did Elio spend money on so much Sounding Ore, and make me bury it according to his instructions?"