Link Lucifer!

Finally, another two hours passed.

"Hey, hey! You're still sleeping in! Wake up already!! If you don't, the housekeeper and the others will come upstairs!! We'll jump straight out the window in a bit!"

Beside the huge bed, Hana Ye stared wide-eyed, clutching a pile of clothes she had stolen from her father's room and poking Lin En's face hard with her little hand.

Lin En finally stirred awake, bleary-eyed.

"Huh? You're up early. Finished sleeping already?"

He let out an enormous yawn, smacked his lips, and glanced at her.

"But I really didn't expect you to actually come running back. Your mouth said no, but your body was honest. You horny little brat!"

He remembered the soft body he seemed to have held last night.

And she had actually dared to crawl in naked. She certainly had guts.

Smack-

Hana Ye tossed the trousers straight into his hands and said, (〃＞皿＜),

"You're the horny brat! And what do you mean, came running back?! This is Hana Ye's bed to begin with! Because of you, Hana Ye was scared stiff all night! Otherwise, Hana Ye could've slept another hour!"

She hadn't slept comfortably next door at all!

Lin En glanced at her.

Oh? Scared stiff?

I don't think so.

She clearly kept burrowing into my arms, yet now she's putting on a completely different face. What an unbelievable contrast.

"All right! I'll let it slide today."

Eyes closed, Lin En stretched hard and promptly forgave her.

"But remember, don't go crawling into other people's beds without my permission again! I know you're desperate to make things a done deal with me, but it's too soon. At least let us develop some feelings first! Besides, I'm not into little girls!"

"o(≧口≦)o Who wants to make anything a done deal with you?!"

Half an hour later.

[Clockwork Street]

A boy in a black tailcoat and top hat walked awkwardly down the street, holding a cane in one hand and leading a little girl in a pleated, flared skirt with the other.

Steam-powered cars kept passing on either side of the road, while pedestrians bustled back and forth. It was a thoroughly steampunk scene.

"This is really strange."

Hana Ye looked up, her eyes wide as she gazed curiously at the blazing sun overhead.

"Have you noticed? Isn't the sun much smaller today than it used to be? It doesn't even feel warm on my skin..."

Lin En glanced at the sun and chuckled.

"Of course it is!"

Your Valkyrie is still locked up in my little dark room. Without her regularly maintaining it, of course the sun would shrink.

When I go back in a couple of days...

I can use that to threaten her. I'll make sure to get a firm grip on her tongue and make her behave.

But...

Lin En tugged irritably at his ill-fitting clothes.

"What kind of crappy clothes are these?!"

"Where did you find them? They're so loose I feel like I could crawl out through the collar. They don't fit at all! Forget it! I'll just take them off!"

He preferred tight things to loose ones.

Hana Ye threw her arms around him with an o(≧口≦)o expression and shouted,

"You can't take them off!"

Taking your clothes off in public...

That would be even stranger! Don't bring your freakish urge to expose yourself out onto the street!

Lin En gave her a dead-eyed look.

"Forget it. Help me look around first. This should be where I regained consciousness yesterday. We can't go to Gear Street now anyway. If we look carefully, we might find something that proves my identity."

He walked to roughly where he had first arrived, studied the surroundings carefully, and fixed his gaze on a deep, secluded alley beside the street.

Mm.

This should be near where I met that blind little girl yesterday.

Then he looked toward Gear Street in the distance. Seeing that the enormous magic array was still there, he exclaimed,

"Looks like Gear Street's still sealed off! Do you think they can find that Great Demon? This looks exhausting!"

Hana Ye said with an o(╥﹏╥)o expression,

"What do you think? Waaah."

You're obviously not even in there, yet you're acting like a fine, upstanding citizen who knows nothing.

If they knew the naked man they let go yesterday was the Great Demon they were looking for...

Wouldn't they bash their heads against a wall and die?

And you even scrounged an [Exorcist Credential] off them. You're not really going to join the Exorcist Squad and hunt yourself down someday, are you?

Waaah.

Lin En kept searching.

Soon, he spotted a faint trace of dried blood beside a wall not far away.

He reached out, scraped off a small flake, then tossed it into his mouth like a milk tablet and chewed thoughtfully.

"Mm. Yep, that's my blood."

Hana Ye asked in disbelief, "You can tell just by eating it?!"

Lin En glanced at her and sneered.

"Obviously. That's an essential skill. Back when I was so hungry I had no other choice, I could only chop myself up and make a pot of soup. I ate it one mouthful at a time..."

Hana Ye clamped her hands over her ears and shouted, "Stop talking! Stop talking!!"

Don't tell me about your bizarre past that has nothing in common with human life!

On the ground a short distance away...

He could faintly make out a long trail, as though something had been dragged there.

Lin En spat and nudged the brim of his hat with a finger.

"Looks like I was right. My corpse really must have been dumped here."

The trail stretched all the way here from the far end of the alley.

Hana Ye gulped and instinctively gripped his hand in fear.

"Y-you're going in?"

Public safety in the lower city had always been poor, especially in those gloomy alleys. It was hard to know whether one housed a den of thieves, and there had even been many cases of Evil Spirits appearing in places the sun couldn't reach.

Lin En ignored her.

He followed the drag marks deeper into the alley. The moment he rounded a corner, a foul stench hit him head-on. Compared with the bright, polished streets, these dark corners were a completely different world.

Garbage and vomit lay everywhere. Even the walls were covered in all kinds of strange graffiti and drawings.

Lin En paused.

"A dead end?"

A high wall stood ahead. Judging by its damp, decaying bricks, there clearly couldn't be a hidden door here, yet the drag marks plainly led out from this spot.

"A [Spirit Realm Overlay]?"

Lin En grinned.

"Interesting. Just what attacked my host? Now I don't even have an identity. How am I supposed to get by in the human world?"

Hana Ye had already explained to him that at night, many places in this city were replaced by the Spirit Realm, giving the entire city a layout completely different from its daytime one.

Just then...

"Lin En, look at that! Is there something over there?"

Being so short, Hana Ye, who was following beside him, spotted something protruding from a crack at the base of the wall and pointed at it, wide-eyed.

He crouched down, reached out, and pulled the card straight out of the wall.

He wiped the dust off it.

Lin En immediately saw the photograph on the card. It looked exactly like him.

[Name]: Link Lucifer

[Age]: 17

[Academy]: Secret Canon Academy District, affiliated with the Clockwork City Noble Academy.

[Year]: Third year (Origin Substance class)

[Notes]: This identification was issued in year 1027 of the Eternal Night Calendar. Please keep it safe. If lost, contact the academy immediately to report the loss and apply for a replacement.

At the information printed on it, Hana Ye immediately cried out in surprise,

"I-isn't this a student ID from our school?! Link? Y-you... you're a student at our academy too?"

The photograph on it looked almost exactly like him.

Compared with his current self, however, the eyes held a little more gloom.

Lin En rubbed his chin and said,

"Well, at least we haven't come away completely empty-handed."

It seemed his host really had encountered something extraordinary.

But just then, he seemed to sense something. He suddenly glanced toward a spot on the high wall, where the faint outline of a six-pointed star appeared to linger.

"Looks like someone left something here, too. Heh."

Meanwhile, in a certain deep, secluded realm...

Within a distorted, blood-red image, Lin En's suddenly turned gaze was reflected at that same instant.

The pupils of the person watching the image abruptly contracted.

"H-how... how could this be... wasn't he already dead..."