Ifatia Wanted to Eat the Melon

At one side of the long table in the Silver Palace, Talia gave Lanchi a thorough introduction to demon race traditional culture, much as she used to teach him card-making one-on-one.

"We demons don't need to distinguish seniority so clearly, nor do we look at age. Otherwise, think about it—given that we Long-lived Species can easily live for thousands of years, wouldn't age and seniority become a complete mess if we counted everything?"

"Understood, Master."

Lanchi still refused to change how he addressed her, as if it were the last bit of stubbornness he had left.

"Call me Tata."

Talia felt that Lanchi was doing it on purpose.

She truly didn't want Lanchi using a form of address implying a difference in seniority at a time like this, but neither did she want to deny the fact that she and Lanchi had a master-disciple relationship.

"Tata, teach—"

Lanchi stopped halfway through his words because he sensed that Tata didn't want him calling her "Teacher Tata," either.

"Why don't you finish what you were saying?"

After hearing Lanchi's meaningful pause, Talia no longer wanted to say anything.

Can you really do a quest in the middle of this?

Is not doing my Daily Task more painful to you than being killed?

Sometimes, she was genuinely too exhausted to bother settling accounts with Lanchi.

She was tired to her very core.

In any case, she and Lanchi were peers. That much was definitely true.

Lanchi's family all thought so, too.

She merely happened to possess more extensive knowledge and had become Lanchi's teacher. In essence, that couldn't change the fact that when they first met in the South Wantina Territory, a boy had encountered a girl. It was practically straight out of a novel.

"Seriously? Would an author really write about a