I Fought Kal'tsit? Seriously?

Among them, the most famous was a fountain pen capable of automatically correcting typos through Wordcraft, one that never bled ink while writing.

Thus, Banshees had once served as inspiration for many authors from other countries. They often fantasized about a Banshee falling madly in love with them and gifting them such a pen—until those fantasy-filled writings, along with their authors, were burned to ashes by the Wordcraft of Banshees who had left the flock.

After that, works about this race disappeared entirely.

At this moment, however, Gerald's attention was not on the room's furnishings.

First, the cloth around his arm had come with him into the dream.

Second, there was more than one breathing presence around this room.

There was no need to pick up the ring on the table. With a casual wave of his hand, the room's front door responded. The lock gave a crisp click, and the handle slowly turned with the wind.

The door had been about to open slowly, but a sudden impact blasted it wide open. After a dull crash, it slammed into the wall, and a string of shadowy figures stumbled into the room.

The Banshees tumbled into the room in a fluster, each clutching strange objects: some resembled Bone Pens set with glittering crystal shards, while others were long-handled staffs. Their movements were hasty and furtive, as though terrified of being caught red-handed.

"Hey, don't push—!" One Banshee was shoved by her companion and fell straight to the floor.

Her sharp cry of pain immediately echoed through the room, especially piercing.

The object in her hand fell to the ground with several crisp clatters—then fired an Incantation directly at Gerald, nearly reaching his face.

However, Gerald's sword was faster. The fragile Incantation rushing at him was nothing like the ones he had seen on the battlefield. He did not even need to understand its structure to cleave it in two instantly.

And the wind in the room would not let his sword finish first.

Before the Banshees could react, wind that appeared from nowhere yanked their bodies into the air, tangling their veils and skirts into a knot.

"Impressive. Is this how Banshees welcome their guests?"

The silver-white blade flicked lightly. The windows and doors of the room opened together, allowing countless gusts of wind to rush inside and activate every prepared Incantation at once.

The patterns on the walls turned into spreading vines that emerged from the wood, instantly taking on the shape of living things as they lashed toward Gerald with enough force to tear the air apart. The rough ceramic jars atop the cabinet cracked under the influence of Incantation, their glaze splitting as the herbs and spices stored within were activated, turning into poisonous mist that filled the room.

Flames sprang up around the candlesticks. These words instantly broke free of their restraints and transformed into fiery serpents that lunged at him. At the same time, fragments from the jars floated up as if controlled, every shard bearing a razor-sharp edge as they shot toward Gerald at tremendous speed.

A left stroke, a right stroke.

The vines could not compare to the Feline general's longsword. With a slight shift of his blade, they collided with the fire serpents rushing toward Gerald.

Their entanglement was a clash of Incantations. The Banshee who had made the fire-serpent trap was clearly less skilled than the one who had laid the vine trap. The serpents slithered through the air, only to be annihilated again and again by the drawn-in vines, eventually breaking apart into a few weak sparks.

As for the poisonous gas and flying fragments, he could not even be bothered to deal with them.

A child of the wind would not fear incoming arrows, nor would he ever fear poison meant for ambushes.

The fragments were easily deflected in midair by invisible currents, while the poisonous gas was compressed together before it could approach him, shrinking into the shape of a ball.

Once the fragments lost the force supporting them, the merciful wind reassembled them, returning the condensed poison to the bottle.

In less than half a minute, every offensive Incantation in this room had been destroyed.

"Should I take all this as hostility from every Banshee?"

Gerald looked around the room, his gaze calm amid the gradually settling chaos.

He looked up at the Banshees suspended in midair by the wind. "Or should I regard this as everyone's... personal hobby?"

The neat room should have been scattered and blown apart by the wind, yet the Incantation representing [Fixation] seemed to be giving off its final remnants of light.

Even after being thoroughly swept by the gale, most of the objects in the room had barely shifted. Only the parts containing offensive Incantations had been completely destroyed.

He sighed.

Perhaps he could no longer fight that Feline general from beginning to end as he had in the first dream.

He needed to find an opportunity to investigate the dream's mechanics, then see whether he could use them to fix the moment of awakening to just before a battle with a powerful opponent.

But before that—

"Or should I consider these tricks a test from the Banshee Court?"

"Lamalien Ducanfalis, mistress of the Banshee Court."

Facing the light beyond the doorway, he spoke without hesitation the name she had personally given him on the walls of Kazdel during that battlefield dream.

"The mischief of these young children naturally cannot count as a test for someone as strong as you."

"Only."

A graceful figure slowly stepped into the room from outside. Her veil partially covered her face, while her smiling eyes glimmered behind it like a tranquil crescent moon.

"For children who have never left the flock, how to make the scene they witnessed today—and the admiration in their hearts—fade with time... will likely be a problem that troubles the Greater Banshees for quite some time."

As though determined to teach these Banshees a proper lesson, Lamaline lightly tapped the Bone Pen in her hand. Incantation spilled from its tip, instantly dispersing the gale above the room before condensing into an immensely long shackle. It tightly bound them and hung them above the room, like a string of bells swaying in the wind.

"So it becomes my responsibility." Gerald truly had no answer for such a powerful figure with so little pretension. "Surely a Royal Court mistress like you would not impose some unreasonable condition?"

"Lamaline."

"What do you mean?" Gerald sheathed his sword and calmly met the gaze the Banshee Queen cast toward him.

"Just as I wish to call you Gerald, you may call me Lamaline."

"Unrecorded hero, friend of the Sarkaz."

Lamaline answered with a smile.

Horses Can Be Carnivores Too

"I understand, Lamaline."

Gerald paused in his movements, unable for the moment to tell whether this was merely part of her cultivated manner or sincere friendliness from the heart.

"Then, may I first change clothes and clean myself up?"

He did not dwell on the matter. Unlike the initial battlefield, it was best to have some time to adjust now. "As you can see, it would be far too rude to continue speaking with you in this disheveled state."

"Hehe." The Banshee seemed to have seen through his wariness and covered her mouth as she laughed. "The war in Kazdel is over. The suffering outside will not reach River Valley. You need not worry about hostility here, Gerald. The Banshees cherish the hero who saved the Sarkaz in their hour of need."

She walked softly to Gerald's side and gathered the loose silver strands beside his ear. "Look at those children beating their chests and stamping their feet, wishing they could kill me with Incantation. You will understand just how shameful it is for them to embarrass themselves before you. I believe that if you wished it, not a single Banshee would refuse to bathe with you... naturally, myself included."

Tch.

That feeling of having the conversational upper hand taken from him again.

Gerald had not lost interest in desire. If there were mutual trust between them, he would act without hesitation... but this was only their second meeting. She was the Banshee Queen, who knew how many years old, and an opponent he could not even defeat?

He had not forgotten whose dream this was, nor who could start over.

Thus, amid Lamaline's undisguised shock, Gerald directly grabbed the soft hand resting beside his shoulder.

Incantation instantly covered the Banshee Queen's body, only to be forcibly suppressed the instant it lit up, like a supernova that had failed to erupt.

The Incantation annihilated itself according to her will, but Gerald's hand did not stop.

Only when that body fell into his arms did he realize that she was actually about the same size as him.

Lamaline's veil naturally fell before her face, hanging before his eyes. Less than an inch separated them. Their gazes slowly rose, meeting unexpectedly, as though time throughout the entire room had stopped at this moment.

The breath through the veil carried an almost cloying sweetness. He deliberately avoided her somewhat disordered gaze, slowly lowered his head, and whispered by her ear:

"I am honored, my lady."

Every Banshee in the room fell silent.

The Banshees hanging from the ceiling in thoroughly embarrassing poses all entered a dazed state as well.

Fuck! Kazdel-style profanity!

Punishing the sisters would have been one thing; after all, they really had been spying first. But you, the mistress of the Royal Court, you old woman who had lived for decades—what gave you the nerve to cut in line?! And you just fell over the moment he pulled you... Sure, that man was indeed impressive, but you were one of the Six Heroes of the Sarkaz! You were far stronger than him!

Shameless! What a truly shameless old woman!

Leaving aside how completely the young Banshees' minds had collapsed, Lamaline only felt as though boiling water had been splashed across her face.

She had experienced leaving the flock and entering the world, but who could blame her when her first time out had been a three-nation siege?!

Simply wiping the blood off her body had already been agonizing enough. Not to mention bearing the responsibility of her people, taking on the entire Banshee race as the most gifted representative of her generation. She had needed to cooperate with races on terrible terms with them, joining forces to resist the invasion beyond Kazdel.

She had endured difficulty on the level of a Catastrophe. The Banshees were proud of her, and everyone in the clan treated her with the highest respect.

She had watched Carrion Eater armies shatter enemy formations. She had watched Liches and Theresa jointly construct death traps that slaughtered countless soldiers from the three-nation coalition, turning them into the Bloodfiends' favorite food. She had watched the excellent Theresis race across the battlefield, while Goliath's warriors swung their greatswords wildly.

Her experience far surpassed that of most Banshees in her race. She had witnessed life and death, singing Elegies of farewell for the departed.

But records related to love in all her experience?

There were none.

All she could do now was slowly familiarize herself with this unfamiliar emotion, trying to turn it into experience and language, to incorporate it into a part of her life.

Yet before her thoughts could circle long enough to reach a conclusion—before her body had even fully grown accustomed to that unfamiliar embrace—the fresh presence suddenly broke free from before her.

All that warmth seemed to have been only a momentary illusion. Gerald had merely loosely wrapped an arm around her and given her a light embrace before immediately pulling away, returning to his former cold demeanor. "Kazimierz etiquette. An embrace in greeting to a friend. I hope you can forgive my momentary impropriety."

"Your time must be precious, so I shall not disturb you further. After I finish bathing, we will have much to discuss."

"O-of course, why not?" Lamaline took a few steps back, brushing away the heat rising around her ears. "Once I send these disobedient children back to their quarters, we can continue. For now, I will not, disturb you..."

Perhaps sensing the silent curses from above her, she viciously brought down the Bone Pen in her hand. The long chain shot straight toward the doorway, dragging a group of Banshees with it as it flew into the distance, nearly out of sight, accompanied by the young Banshees' wails.

She herself vanished from the room as Incantation rapidly flickered over her body.

Even in the dream, the sensation of flowing water falling onto his skin was no different from reality.

Gerald washed the sweat from his body with water, quietly considering the situation before him.

Let's sort out the train of thought.

First, the dream's mechanics were currently unknown, but there had clearly been a leap in time between the previous dream and this one.

The main subject in the dream—himself—would undergo independent temporal changes according to a certain pattern of action. From the fact that this was not the first meeting between the Banshee Queen and himself, as well as the contents of her words, it could be inferred that the current situation had directly developed from the event of [Killing the Feline General].

Question one: Why Banshees?

The key might lie in [River Valley]—a place not directly connected to Kazdel, inhabited only by the Banshee race.

If he put himself in the position of the people leading the Sarkaz, this was a very correct choice.

First, the Sarkaz becoming xenophobic after the war was foreseeable. Most people had not witnessed his own performance, and remaining in Kazdel would instead cause unnecessary conflict.

Second, assuming—and he was almost certain—that the leaders capable of guiding the Sarkaz were not fools, they could not wholly trust an outsider whose reasons were still far from complete, someone who had only helped the Sarkaz in fact through his own wishes.

Therefore, during the process of rebuilding their homeland, [observing] this unfamiliar friend and building a connection with him was extremely necessary.

Just as he had felt before, in terms of strength, he basically could not defeat sword-wielding Theresis or seemingly harmless Theresa. The reason he favored Theresis was merely because he coveted his swordsmanship. If he insisted on challenging him, it would probably take at least three or four years to settle.

But correspondingly, as leaders on the battlefield, they could not keep an uncertain factor like him by their side for constant surveillance.

Then, taking environment and strength together, the Banshees were undoubtedly the best choice.

Question two: Based on this fact, how should he study the dream's mechanics so he could temper his skills as quickly as possible?

There were two methods.

First, after experiencing a battle like the one just now, directly attack Lamaline—the other party would presumably hold back out of consideration, allowing him to gradually become familiar with using and countering Incantation.

But this was actually the inferior option, because he was far too unfamiliar with the use of Incantation. Dealing with a few immature young Banshees was naturally easy, but the Banshee Queen was another matter.

Thus came the second method.

That was, personally seek Lamaline's instruction.

If he had been able to retain the relic after the earlier battle with the Feline general because he had successfully defeated her, then this idea clearly had many other possibilities. For instance, what if he fled midway through? What if he killed himself after defeating the Feline general?

He vaguely felt that rather than simply being a place for him to fight powerful opponents, this dream was more like a simulation of himself.

If it were him, he would choose to do this... in a sense, it was as though he were walking the path he had already traveled once more.

Then the next step was to test whether this idea was feasible.

With that thought, Gerald brushed away the words controlling the water, and the endlessly flowing stream immediately stopped.

On his right shoulder, the black-red cloth quietly rippled, calmly revealing a desire to its owner.

—A desire for the Sarkaz.

Lamalien Ducanfalis