North Bank, District 4.
The Baptiste Family Manor.
The warm winter morning sunlight blanketed the stone-paved streets. Even in the depths of winter, Flower Capital was not especially cold. With Little Black Cat perched on his head, Lanchi walked to a spot some distance from the manor.
This was the ancestral manor of the Baptiste Family. It had once been the most magnificent and eye-catching building on the street, but the wrought-iron gate decorated with morning glories had been painted with a faint layer of rust by the years, and the tall Poplar Trees standing like guards on either side of the entrance had also been broken.
"What a fine manor. Just like my Wilford Family's old home, it was destroyed too."
Lanchi looked at the grand Earl's residence, nearly half-collapsed, and sighed inwardly.
On the night Beelzebub, the Azureflame Demon, attacked, the broken walls had resembled the fangs of a giant beast. In the pouring darkness, the manor's main gate had been blasted open, rubble had covered the front hall and garden, and even the barriers around the Earl's residence had been dismantled.
Now, with its peeling walls, shattered windows, and vines crawling all over it, the manor looked as though it might collapse beneath the weight of time at any moment.
Lanchi looked into the garden.
It was morning, and a construction crew in work clothes had already begun working in the manor's courtyard. The foreman held a blueprint while discussing the renovation plans with the idle craftsmen.
The workers had erected scaffolding. The bricklayers carefully climbed onto the roof to replace the damaged tiles, while the carpenters skillfully repaired and smoothed the broken doors and windows, and the plasterers deftly filled the cracks in the walls before repainting them.
"Actually, the Wilford Family's manor in South Wantina