"Oh, how come you're so considerate tonight?"
"Miss Lilith has always been considerate~"
She said earnestly, "Miss Lilith remembers everything Edward has done for me. I'll never, ever forget."
Edward turned his head and gently touched his forehead to hers. "Then thank you so much, Lilith~"
"That's right!"
She gently bumped her head against Edward's too. "Edward always protected me before. From now on, Miss Lilith will protect Edward~"
"Get to Sequence 7 first."
Lilith said smugly, "Hehe, soon~"
"All right, I'll look forward to it~"
After coaxing the little one a while longer, Edward sat on the bed fully clothed and took stock of tonight's gains:
First, he had avenged Lilith. Whatever that Marauder Half-God had intended when she parasitized Lilith, as long as she intended to hurt Lilith, she had given him a reason to kill her!
Second, although he had gained no actual Beyonder Characteristics or Sealed Artifacts tonight, his greatest gain was experiencing once again how difficult the Marauder Pathway was to deal with.
The Jacob Family's Marauder had been intent on escaping from start to finish, apart from when she went mad at the end and tried to take them down with her. Even so, she had left Edward feeling powerless-and she had been seriously injured.
If it had been Amon, who could work wonders with theft, the three of them would probably have been finished long ago.
And the reality was that he would face Amon someday. Just because Klein had dealt with Amon in the original story, Edward could not simply wait in good conscience for Klein to handle him.
What if something went wrong?
Not "what if"! With the way events were developing now, less and less of the original story could serve as a reference. Who knew whether Amon might show