King Ghidorah lay beside the lake, his three heads resting in a row on his overlapping foreclaws, like an enormous, three-headed golden lion basking in the sun.
Sunlight struck his scales, reflecting a dazzling glare that dyed the water for several kilometers around him gold.
His eyes were half closed. His middle head had shut its eyelids completely, his left head still kept a slit open, and his right head's eyes were wide open, watching the shrinking black dot in the distant sky.
Voraksa had flown far away, so far that King Ghidorah had to squint slightly to make out his outline.
That ancient black dragon, missing a wing and relying on magic to keep himself aloft, now looked like a fly struggling in the wind, bobbing up and down, veering left and right, staggering through the air as though he might fall out of the sky at any moment.
But King Ghidorah was not worried about him falling-he would not die from the fall anyway, and even if he did, it would be no great loss.
"Hmm... That guy will need some time to search."
King Ghidorah's middle head muttered, the sound squeezing out from deep in his throat, low and indistinct, like the disgruntled grumble of someone woken halfway through a snore.
He shifted position, lifting his left head off his claws and resting it on top of his right head, then moving his right head off his left claw and draping it over his middle head's neck.
The three heads rearranged themselves until they finally found a relatively comfortable position, then all went still.
The sunlight on his scales felt warm. The breeze blowing off the lake carried the scent of moisture and earth, cool against him.
King Ghidorah's eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Just as he was about to fall completely asleep, he suddenly remembered something.
Black Owl.
The avatar he had left in Luoweida City on autopilot.
The autopilot agent was not as flexible as his personal control, but it was more than capable of handling simple following and observation tasks.
He had been gone for a day and a half. Black Owl should have been following Nuoyaji the whole time, recording every noteworthy development.
"I might as well log into the side quest while I have time."
King Ghidorah closed his eyes, withdrawing his consciousness from his main body and extending it into the distance along the invisible psionic thread connecting him to Black Owl.
Luoweida City, an abandoned stone house.
Black Owl abruptly stood up.
The movement was too fast, too sudden, as though someone had slapped him on the back. His body sprang out of its curled sitting position in an instant. His black construct armor gave a faint mechanical scrape as he moved, and the dark gold patterns at his joints flashed before dimming again.
Then he stepped on something soft.
Thump.
He had not fallen. The thing he had stepped on had.
Black Owl lowered his head, his sealed faceplate facing the floor. A little girl sat on the ground, her long white hair scattered across it, covered in dust and bits of dried grass.
She looked up, her red eyes full of bewilderment, her mouth slightly open, still clutching a loaf of bread with two bites taken out of it. Her posture was anything but graceful-bottom on the floor, legs straight out, one hand braced against the ground and the other holding up the bread, as though offering a sacrifice to some invisible god.
"What the heck?"
Looking at the little girl through Black Owl's eyes, King Ghidorah froze for a moment. Then he quickly retrieved the avatar's cached memories from autopilot mode and skimmed through a day and a half of records in a fraction of a second.
Fuyila. That little girl. He had not arranged anywhere for her to stay before he left, because arranging somewhere for her to stay had never even crossed his mind.
To him, she was just a passing encounter by the roadside, an optional "side quest within a side quest." He had assumed she would leave on her own.
But she had not.
Not only had she stayed, she had followed him to this stone house. Not only had she followed him to this stone house, she had stayed beside him the entire time he was "asleep."
According to the cached memories, she had gone out during the day yesterday and obtained a loaf of bread from somewhere. After returning, she had broken off a small piece and tried to stuff it into Black Owl's mouth.
She had searched for ages without finding a mouth, then finally placed the bread on Black Owl's knee. Black Owl had not eaten it-more precisely, Black Owl had no "eating" function-so she had taken it back and eaten it herself.
This morning, she had gone out again and obtained another loaf. This time, she had been smarter. Rather than looking for a mouth, she had placed the bread directly beside Black Owl's hand, then crouched nearby to wait. After waiting a while with no response, she had gone ahead and eaten it herself.
For a moment, King Ghidorah did not know what to say.
"Uh... You're awake?" Fuyila got up from the floor, dusted off her skirt, and tilted her head as she looked at Black Owl, her red eyes full of curiosity. She kept her grip on the bread, as though afraid it would fly away if she let go.
King Ghidorah made Black Owl lower his head and glance at his knee. There were no crumbs there. It was perfectly clean. Then he glanced at Fuyila's hand.
Two bites had been taken out of the bread, leaving uneven edges as though a small animal had gnawed on it.
"Do you really not need to eat?" Fuyila asked, her voice carrying that particular childish determination to get to the bottom of things.
"No," Black Owl replied.
"Okay." Fuyila did not press further. She lowered her head and went back to gnawing on her bread. She was very good at accepting things-no, it was not that she was good at accepting things. She had simply seen far too many strange things.
A black tin man who did not need to eat did not even rank among the ten strangest things she had seen.
Black Owl raised his head and surveyed his surroundings.
The stone house was still the same stone house. The walls were mottled, the windows boarded shut, and the wind had stripped away most of the roof's thatch, exposing the blackened rafters beneath.
A layer of dry grass and rags covered the floor where Fuyila had slept last night-judging by the cached memories, she had left him the corner Black Owl was leaning against and huddled on the other side of the room, wrapped in that cloak, curled into a ball like a rabbit that had stuffed itself into a hole.
Then he looked at the bread in Fuyila's hand.
"Where did you get that bread?"
Fuyila stopped chewing and looked up, blinking her red eyes. She swallowed the bread in her mouth and wiped the corner of her lips with her sleeve, her tone as casual as if she were commenting on the nice weather.
"An uncle gave it to me."
King Ghidorah did not respond immediately. He was analyzing that sentence.
An uncle. In this small border city, where food prices rose every day and ordinary citizens could barely afford to eat, some "uncle" would casually give bread to a little girl by the roadside?
It was not impossible, but the odds were lower than those of King Ghidorah suddenly turning into a kitten. Unless that "uncle" knew Fuyila, or-
Never mind. It did not matter. King Ghidorah did not dwell on the question. He simply pulled up more detailed memory records from Black Owl's autopilot mode to see what had happened in Luoweida City over the past day and a half.
Then he fell silent.
Not the "I don't know what to say" sort of silence, but the "I need to make sure I didn't misread that" sort.
Nuoyaji.
That regressor.
During the day and a half he had been gone-more precisely, the roughly thirty hours between yesterday morning and noon today-Nuoyaji had done a series of things that made King Ghidorah think this world might truly have something called a "protagonist halo."
First, he had met Viscount Heluos through Yimulei. According to the fragmentary information in the cached memories, Nuoyaji had spent less than an hour in the viscount's study. When he came out, Heross had personally escorted him to the study door.
And in front of Yimulei, he had said something that stunned everyone present-"Whatever you need, go straight to Yimulei. There's no need to come to me again."
King Ghidorah did not know what Nuoyaji had said in the study, but he could guess the gist.
He was a regressor, after all. He possessed information no one else had. He knew which mine tunnels were still usable, which merchant associations had survived the storm, when the empire's tax demands would arrive, and when the grand duke's army would come.
By selecting some of that information and showing it to Heross, he had given the viscount-caught between the empire and the consortiums, overwhelmed and on the verge of collapse-a lifeline he had no reason not to grab.
Second, Nuoyaji had secured the viscount's backing. Not a large sum of money, but a handwritten letter of authorization and a heavy chest of imperial gold coins.
The letter read, "Magic apprentice Nuoyaji is hereby authorized to assist Yimulei in disaster relief matters," and bore the viscount's official seal. How many imperial gold coins were there?
Black Owl had not counted, but judging by the images in the cached memories, the chest of gold was heavy enough to require at least two guards to lift it.
Then Nuoyaji had taken Fuke and several miners to find that abandoned old mine tunnel.
Not "found the entrance," but "opened up the entire route." The tunnel wound through the mountain's interior. Some sections had collapsed, some were flooded, and some were occupied by unidentified monsters.
Nuoyaji and his men had spent most of the day clearing rubble, draining water, and driving out monsters, forcing that mine tunnel, forgotten for who knew how many years, open again.
The tunnel's exit was near a small town called Stone Watchtower Town, which had luckily escaped the storm's central area. Its farmland was intact and its granaries full.
What came next was the part King Ghidorah found most absurd.
In Stone Watchtower Town, Nuoyaji had met an important figure. Not a viscount, not an earl, not any local official he could have reached through normal channels.
Instead, it was someone who had never visited this town before, but happened to be there "on business"-an important figure renowned throughout the empire's entire south.
That important figure had seen the letter of authorization in Nuoyaji's hand and heard him explain Luoweida's predicament. Then she had done something that left everyone in Stone Watchtower Town's merchant association dumbfounded-she had offered a personal guarantee so that the town's merchant association would sell grain to Luoweida at pre-storm prices.
No, offering a personal guarantee was not just empty talk.
That "guarantee" was backed by real money. If Luoweida could not pay for the grain, that important figure would cover the shortfall out of her own pocket.
King Ghidorah did not know how Nuoyaji had persuaded her, because he did not even know which important figure she was.
But from the fragmented images and snippets of conversation in Black Owl's cached memories, King Ghidorah could sense that the woman had not been won over by Nuoyaji's words. She had already wanted to help Luoweida herself.
Nuoyaji had simply happened to appear just when she needed someone, and happened to be holding a letter of authorization bearing the viscount's official seal.
Protagonist halo.
King Ghidorah silently bolded and underlined those words in his mind.
There was something even more absurd to come.
After the grain arrived in Luoweida, Nuoyaji had not handed all of it over to the viscount's household for distribution.
Together with Dezi-the young leader among the miners-he had established a "Disaster Relief Committee" composed of miners' representatives and clerks from the viscount's household.
The committee was responsible for registering each household's population, recording ration distributions, and recording back pay. All accounts were open and transparent. Every transaction was written on paper and posted on the square's noticeboard, where anyone could look at it and anyone could check it.
King Ghidorah did not know how Nuoyaji had come up with the idea, but its effects had been immediate.
The miners no longer felt that the viscount's household was withholding their grain, because the accounts were perfectly clear. The commoners no longer felt that the nobles were profiteering from the disaster, because they could check for themselves.
There had even been a few petty nobles with terrible reputations, always looking to skim something off the top, who had slunk away with their tails between their legs after the committee's miners' representatives exposed them on the spot, not daring to utter a single word in rebuttal.
The food problem had been solved. There was also a glimmer of hope for the unemployed miners.
Nuoyaji had persuaded Heross to use the viscount's gold to pay the miners next month's wages in advance-not the full amount, but a third, enough to buy grain to feed their families.
The condition was that they had to clear the mines destroyed by the storm, move away the rubble, reinforce the tunnels, and retrieve whatever equipment was still usable from the mud and water.
The miners had agreed. Not because they trusted the viscount so much, but because they trusted Dezi, and Dezi trusted Nuoyaji. Why did they trust Nuoyaji?
Because before Nuoyaji came, they had been eating grass roots, and now they had bread. Sometimes, trust was that simple.
King Ghidorah finished reviewing all the cached memories.
He remained silent for a long time.
Then he silently called out in his mind-Hey, Apekus, I'd like to report someone cheating over here...
Of course, Apekus could not hear him. That administrator of the world, whom he had electrocuted half to death and who had sunk into the deep sea to recover, was probably curled up in some cave at the bottom of the abyss right now, hugging his own tentacles and trembling as he prayed that King Ghidorah would not come looking for him again.
Fine. King Ghidorah pulled his thoughts back. This was a "protagonist," fate's chosen darling. He had accomplished in a day and a half what others could not manage in months.
Not because he was smarter than everyone else, but because he held information no one else had, knew whom to seek out, what to say, and where to appear at what time.
That was the advantage of a regressor.
It was also why King Ghidorah thought this world was "kind of interesting."