Muddy yellow rainwater filled the uneven ground, reflecting the gray light of the sky.
A downpour had just passed, leaving this abandoned alley in the Dock District looking even more dilapidated than usual. Moss and nameless weeds ran rampant among the ruined walls, while several rotting boards leaned against their bases, giving off a mingled smell of brine and mildew.
At the end of the alley, the long-abandoned courtyard lay half hidden behind overgrown weeds. Murky puddles covered the ground, swallowing broken stone steps whose original shape could no longer be made out.
The visitor's identity caught Renato completely off guard.
That gem-studded magical armor, that uniquely elegant bearing, and those dark red eyes that had once left such a deep impression on Renato, now filled with their usual confidence and scrutiny...
Rain had soaked the ends of her hair, and several gray-white strands clung to her cheeks, making her youthful face look all the more striking and valiant. The Cat's Eye Gemstones on her armor still gleamed with an eerie black light beneath the gloomy sky, revealing the powerful magic imbued within them.
The rapier still hung at her waist, its pommel's runes flickering in the shadows, much like the faint, ambiguous smile on her lips...
Clearly, the female swordsman before him, with her slightly curled gray-white hair, was none other than Amicali, the Turin Trading Company director Renato had happened to meet at the Governor's Mansion banquet a few days earlier.
The expertise she had shared had answered many of Renato's questions, giving him a rough idea and some theories about the origins of the underwater army secretly preparing to besiege White Harbor island...
Yet seeing this elegant female swordsman in an abandoned courtyard in the Dock District did not put him at ease in the slightest. Instead,