Death-Defying

"Go." Polina gave him a shove, and the boy stumbled back two steps.

Just then, a dark-skinned girl a few years older than the boy finally came to her senses. She hurried to her feet and caught the staggering boy, then glared at Polina and roared, "You witch! What did you do to my brother?"

"Ahaha!" Polina tilted her head and smiled. "How touching, that sibling bond. Fine, you can come too!"

As she spoke, she reached out with a Dragon's Claw and yanked the dark-skinned girl in front of her. The girl immediately tried to fight back, but even though Polina was a year or two younger, she was a trained agent. With one move, she twisted the girl's arm behind her back.

Then she pressed a small wooden carving into the dark-skinned girl's forehead.

"You..." After inserting the carving, Polina let go. The girl stumbled back a step or two. "What did you do to me, you wicked witch? What is that carving? Get it out of my head!"

At that, Polina shrugged. "What did I do? You should already know by now, shouldn't you?"

The dark-skinned girl's expression froze. She did know what Polina had done. The moment the puppet had been shoved into her head, she had felt that she had to do something—she had to find someone at least six feet three inches tall!

It was more important than anything else, whether her brother or the witch in front of her!

It wasn't just a thought. Her body was obeying, too. Her feet had already begun turning of their own accord, and her eyes were sweeping over everyone nearby. Even the thoughts in her mind were being forcibly twisted—

Meanwhile, her brother had turned around and was stumbling toward the carriage behind them!

"I, I..."

Before she could even finish her last sentence, all the light had vanished from the dark-skinned girl's eyes.

The passengers around them shrank back even farther. They had no idea what had caused what they'd just witnessed, and they couldn't even understand the Iberian the two were speaking. But they knew one thing: the neatly dressed pair before them were people they couldn't afford to provoke.

So they huddled closer to the edges of the carriage, praying that the same thing wouldn't happen to them.

Watching the two walk away with increasingly steady steps, Brandon shook his head and sighed. "No matter how many times I see it, your Secret Art is terrifying. Honestly, I'm curious what kind of desire awakened an ability like that."

"Don't worry, don't worry." Polina gave a smug little chuckle. "My Death-Defying only works on ordinary people. It has no effect on spellcasters."

"You know that's not what I meant." Brandon sighed and said in a helpless murmur, "But without your Secret Art, we'd probably be heading back to Vienna to report in by now instead of coming here to grapple with the Vessel."

"The bonus for capturing the Vessel is pretty substantial, but only if we live long enough to spend it."

"Exactly!"

Polina folded her arms and nodded emphatically, clearly agreeing with Brandon.

They had both seen the Vessel's file. It was a Lion Dragon that couldn't fly or breathe fire, but it was much cleverer than one. The Lion Dragon they had taken apart before had been captured by Professor Beshe, with Aleppo assisting!

"So, Brandon, hurry up and use your Secret Art. I don't want someone grabbing me by the collar and beating me to death next!"

Polina's blunt words left Brandon looking even more helpless. The girl was showing him less and less respect. But he knew they were short on time, so he simply raised his hand and swiped at the air, activating his Secret Art.

[Sky Coating]!

"Sausage stew and black bread, butter and cheese, oatmeal porridge! Coming through—mind your legs!"

A conductor pushed a trolley loaded with steaming stainless-steel pots down the center aisle toward the front of the train. Every so often, he stirred the stew with a large ladle, sending its aroma drifting into even more passengers' noses.

In this world, where trains were the main mode of transportation, cheap meals for ordinary people were naturally served onboard.

The average temperature here was about ten degrees Celsius lower than on Earth, so most leafy vegetables were quite precious. The enormous pot of soup contained only cold-resistant crops like cabbage, carrots, onions, and potatoes.

There was also some lard added when the vegetables were fried, along with less than a hundred grams of meat scraps in the entire pot.

Even so, with lunchtime approaching and everyone growing hungry, the scent of animal fat still had plenty of children staring in a daze. Even the adults secretly swallowed their saliva.

Most of them probably couldn't afford the food on the train. They could only dig black bread and Scorched Leaf Potatoes out of their bags to stave off hunger.

As it happened, much of this world's population depended on Scorched Leaf Potatoes.

This was a crop unique to this world. It could grow in temperatures as low as minus twenty degrees Celsius without depleting the soil.

Scorched Leaf Potatoes yielded about five thousand kilograms per acre, and in a good year the harvest could be half again as large. The leaves could also be eaten as vegetables. The drawbacks were their rough, bland taste and a texture like charred dregs; their scorched-black leaves had a sharp, pungent flavor.

But they were still food—something that could grow from a handful of seeds scattered over wasteland, and a staple that could save lives in years of famine.

Still, some of the refugees had a little money. They took black bread, rather than Scorched Leaf Potatoes, from their packs. A callused hand reached into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled roll of banknotes. The passenger selected a blue ten-Pfennig note and handed it to the conductor.

"Com-ing right up," Lude drawled. He ladled a generous helping of stew into the customer's metal lunch tin.

He had been wearing the conductor's uniform for half an hour. Conductors were the only people who could walk from the dining car at the rear of the train all the way to the front without arousing suspicion, and he was glad to use the role to learn about the local customs and conditions.

Still, while conducting his undercover study, Lude hadn't forgotten to search for traces of the enemy.

Most people on the train were refugees fleeing the coming civil war, and most had bought the cheapest standing-room tickets. To make a small profit from as many passengers as possible, the train had removed the seats from twelve of its twenty-four carriages.

The Black Tide Society's agents, backed by the Society, naturally wouldn't lack food or clothing. They would never be as gaunt and sallow as these people.

But just as Lude's hunger was starting to bother him and he was considering whether to grab a sausage to tide himself over, a short figure suddenly came through from the carriage ahead. The boy's gaze seemed vacant as he looked around in confusion.

When his eyes fell on Lude, his body abruptly hunched over like a leopard ready to pounce.

"Target... located."