Chapter 55

Chapter 55

"Good morning."

Eve pushed open the basement door with her left hand, her right steadily carrying an alloy case. As she stepped inside, she greeted Lorca with an air of easy familiarity.

Her gaze swept over the bedside table, noting the unchanged number of potent sleeping pills. A wave of relief washed over her, pleased that Lorca had actually heeded her words from yesterday and hadn’t secretly taken more after she left.

…Though, it was also possible he had simply slept enough and no longer needed them.

Lorca was leaning against the headboard, reading, when she entered. Eve feigned a casual glance at the book’s cover—plain black, no title, impossible to discern—before nonchalantly looking away.

This subtle movement didn’t escape the notice of the person being observed. Lorca found it somewhat amusing. He closed the book and asked, "What brings you here so early?"

"Just checking on the young master’s well-being, and delivering something."

She placed the alloy case by the bedside, simultaneously snapping open both clasps. The lid sprang open, revealing a slender ion gun nestled within. Its high-grade alloy gleamed subtly, resting quietly on the black velvet lining.

This was one of the high-damage weapons Eugene had brought, passed to Eve via Alice, though Eve herself found little use for such firearms. Given the unique abilities of the Luna Butterfly, she was far more adept with cold weapons than hot ones. A portable lightsaber, ready to be drawn from her waist at any moment, was more than sufficient.

Lorca had seen an ion gun before. He straightened slightly, glanced at the case’s contents, then leaned back indifferently without reaching for it. "Why are you giving this to me?"

Ion guns were restricted weapons, though discussing regulations in a place like Black Star was a touch of dark humor.

"For self-defense, what else? And to prove I’m diligently serving the young master. Getting this wasn’t easy."

Eve thought, *I hope I don’t have to force this on him—that would be quite improper.* She reluctantly pushed the case toward him. "Keep it. You should at least have some means of protection."

What would he need an ion gun for in a perfectly safe basement?

As mentioned, though Lorca’s body was frail, his mind was sharp. After a pause, under the black-robed figure’s intense gaze, he reached out, took the gun, and examined it with both hands for a moment before suddenly asking, "Is something about to happen? Why the sudden gift of a gun?"

"Not really," Eve replied. "It’s just that we’re preparing to leave tomorrow."

Lorca was surprised. "So soon?"

Any later, and they’d all be blown to bits.

Eve cleared her throat lightly. "Because all the necessary preparations are complete."

Lorca wore a complex expression, one that felt familiar—it was the same look Eve had displayed not long ago when similarly astonished by the Upside Down Wonderland’s efficiency.

"Tomorrow, at this same time. You sleep during the day and are awake at night, right? Perfect," she continued. "I’ll come for you first thing in the morning, and we’ll leave as quickly as possible. My partners have prepared a ship in advance. As soon as we’re clear of Venom Fang, this starship will be detonated."

Seeing Lorca still about to speak, Eve, concerned he might have reservations about destroying the starship, cut him off decisively. "Venom Fang cannot be left standing."

"I wasn’t going to plead for them."

Right, she’d almost forgotten he was suspected of orchestrating the clash between Venom Fang and the Upside Down Wonderland.

Lorca fell silent for a moment before asking, "Agnes won’t be easy to fool. How do you plan to avoid her notice?"

"She’s busy with other matters during the day lately. Not long ago, the Young Master not only returned but also went mad."

As she spoke, Eve observed Lorca’s expression, curious to see how he would react to the outcome he had largely brought about.

But his handsome, gentle face remained aloof and mild, showing no trace of remorse.

Eve had no choice but to continue. "She’s going to treat someone."

"Was it your doing?"

"No, it was another mercenary team called the Upside Down Wonderland," she said, effortlessly shifting the blame. "We merely took advantage of the situation."

Lorca nodded, indicating he understood. As he was about to return the gun to the case and stash it under the bed, a dark, cold snake tail suddenly emerged from beneath the bed and rested on the case. The tip of the tail, by sheer coincidence, affectionately nudged Eve’s hand, which was still holding the case.

Eve raised an eyebrow and let out a meaningful "Hmm?"

Lorca: "..."

*This stupid spiritual state.*

He brushed the snake tail aside as if accustomed to it, firmly closed the case, and said gently, "Sorry, my spiritual state has mutated. Some of its actions are beyond my control."

Meaning, whatever the spiritual state did had nothing to do with him.

Eve chuckled softly. "It’s fine, no problem. But there’s something else I want to ask you."

"What is it?" Lorca asked.

"Why did you leave the Oliver Family? Of course, I’m not asking out of gossip. I just want to know what kind of promises the person who took you away made."

She spoke candidly, a hint of laughter in her tone. "I occasionally need to learn from my colleagues’ tactics. After all, I’d love to get in good with the Oliver Family too."

This was essentially prying into her employer’s private affairs. Eve was prepared for Lorca to either not answer or brush it off with a half-truth.

She had already largely guessed the underlying reason and asked purely to test his honesty. She needed indirect ways to gauge Lorca’s current level of trust in her.

But to her surprise, after a moment of silence, Lorca responded with equal candor: "She said she could cure my poison condition."

"...!?"

*Why the sudden straightforwardness?*

Eve was caught off guard, speechless for a moment, before finally managing a dry reply, "Is that something you can just tell me?"

"If I didn’t, wouldn’t you have guessed anyway? It’s been listed on the black market’s S-tier mission board for so long. It’s not exactly a secret."

Lorca glanced sideways at her, even offering a faint, amiable smile. "Equal opportunity, right? Aren’t you an alchemist too? Just because Agnes hasn’t found a solution doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily fail. If you’re confident, you can give it a try. Succeed, and you’ll be able to dominate the industry."

He spoke of his illness as if it were a game anyone could try to solve. Perhaps years of hope and disappointment had tempered his mindset—in a way, he was quite optimistic.

Seeing him in a good mood, Eve’s curiosity slowly resurfaced, itching at her like a cat’s paw. Since there was nothing else to do at the moment, she pulled over a nearby chair and sat down, suddenly asking, "So, just because someone said they could cure your poison condition, you trusted them enough to leave? Your guard isn’t that low, is it?"

"That’s because you don’t know who she is," Lorca coughed lightly.

This was exactly what Eve wanted to ask. She steadied her restless curiosity and probed cautiously, "Oh? So who is she? Someone who could make the young master of the alchemy-focused Oliver Family willingly buy into it."

Lorca looked up, giving her a side-eye with a faint smile. "You’re a Three-Star alchemist, aren’t you?"

"How did you guess?!" Eve instantly grew alert.

"Simple. A Four-Star alchemist would never take on dangerous work like being a mercenary. But since you’re skilled enough to be Agnes’s assistant, you can’t be at the Two-Star level either. So you must be Three-Star, and likely one of the more talented ones with potential to break through to Four-Star. Otherwise, Agnes would have tossed you out as far away as possible—she only prefers the clever."

Praising her so highly, Eve asked, "So who is she, really?"

Lorca replied offhandedly, "You’ll find out when you reach Four-Star."

"..." That told her nothing.

Evasion might be delayed, but never absent.

Eve stared at him wide-eyed, but Lorca remained unmoved, even reaching again for the black book he had set aside earlier: "Are we doing the hypnosis today or not? If not, I’m going back to reading."

"You really do treat me like a human tranquilizer."

Eve sighed. With no choice but to play along with the oppressed-worker role she’d invented for herself, she stood up and reached out toward the entitled young master.

Her slender fingers briefly touched his pale forehead.

In the next second, Lorca’s muscles relaxed, and he fell unconscious once again, his breathing steady but faint.

Eve stared pensively at her own fingers, wondering how she had ended up like this.

It’s true that you see people’s true colors when they’re down and out. Back when she was a young lady in the Medici Family, if she helped Lorca with his wheelchair, he would stand up to reduce the weight. Now that she was a mercenary, he even conscripted her for his sleep.

So how had she ever thought this man was kind?

She sighed, speechless at how the tables had turned.

Besides briefing Lorca on the next morning’s arrangements, she also needed to discuss the specifics with Alice today. The alchemy lab was located at the edge of the starship, on the opposite end from the docking bay. She needed to learn the explosives' placement in advance to avoid getting caught in the crossfire during tomorrow’s extraction.

There was a lot to do.

Little did Eve know that her trip to see Alice today—and her absence from the lab—would serendipitously spare her from disaster.

On the other side of the starship, Agnes had spent the past several days in Leng Feng’s room, treating his intractable madness, only returning to rest at night.

What aroused her suspicion was that the more medicine she administered, the worse Leng Feng’s condition seemed to become.

Even Leng Tian was looking at her with dissatisfaction, convinced she wasn’t taking the treatment seriously.

She had only agreed to see Leng Feng in the first place because of Leng Tian’s request—they were, after all, collaborators. To avoid complications during their remaining days aboard Venom Fang, Agnes reluctantly agreed. But after several busy and frustrating days, she could only attend to her own work at night.

Agnes was seething.

Her golden slit pupils narrowed suspiciously as she watched Leng Feng trembling on the bed. Suddenly, she stood and strode forward.

Leng Feng let out a hoarse, pitiful cry. With Alice absent, Leng Tian had to step in himself, blocking Agnes’s path toward his son. "My Lady, he really—"

Before he could finish, Agnes snapped impatiently, "Silence!"

With those words, an invisible wave of mental control radiated from her like a stone dropped into water, rippling outward.

In an instant, everyone in the room—Leng Tian, the thrashing Leng Feng, the attendants, even the Venom Fang guards at the door—froze, their eyes glazed over, standing rigidly in place.

Her beautiful face dark and grim, Agnes approached the bed, formed her hand into a claw, and pressed it firmly against Leng Feng’s head. A torrent of immense golden mental energy surged into his brain, ruthlessly scouring his cortex and gray matter before finally flowing back into her palm.

The room fell into dead silence. After a long moment, Agnes withdrew her hand and let out an eerie, cold laugh.

Leng Feng lay limp on the bed, his brain temporarily disabled from the violent mental assault, saliva dripping uncontrollably from his mouth.

So this was his "savior"... just a human skilled in mental control.

Agnes hated being deceived more than anything. Her mental probe had not only uncovered the psychological implants Alice had planted but also dredged up everything that had happened at the nightclub.

Apoplectic with rage, she now felt genuinely curious about what this person was really up to.

Agnes had never suspected Eve might be connected to Lorca—after all, even if Eve sensed something was off, she didn’t have access to the basement.

But now she was almost certain Eve had found a way to contact Lorca. If she could sneak an accomplice into Venom Fang, gaining access wouldn’t be difficult. And as for herself, being deliberately tied up here served no other purpose than to give Eve uninterrupted time alone in the alchemy lab.

"Clever and troublesome girl," Agnes thought coldly.

She snapped her fingers twice. At the first snap, everyone in and outside the room regained their normal mobility. Before they could process what had happened, the second snap shattered all the mental modifications Alice had previously implanted. The clash of two high-level mental control abilities threw everyone into renewed confusion.

Amid the agonized cries, Agnes stormed out, her dark cloak swirling like a storm cloud as she headed straight for the alchemy lab.

It was late, and Eve had long since left the lab, but Agnes showed no reaction. She unlocked the entrance to the basement hallway and descended silently, then roughly shoved open the door to Lorca’s room.

Lorca had just woken up and was sipping water slowly. When Agnes burst in like an angry tornado, his heart skipped a beat, but he maintained his characteristically polite smile. "What brings you here in such a hurry—"

Before he could finish his greeting, Agnes reached for his head with her hand formed into a claw.

At that moment, a necklace around Lorca’s slender neck lifted on its own, and the pendant at its end erupted into a dazzling golden light, blinding as the sun, deflecting her slender fingers.

The Oliver Family had a legendary Five-Star Grand Alchemist, and this was a protective alchemy pendant that Grand Alchemist had made for Lorca. It provided robust protection against various types of harm: it flashed gold against mental attacks, silver against physical attacks, and purple against poison.

He calmly watched the golden light flare from the pendant, then raised his eyes to meet Agnes’s gaze, his smile cold. "Do you intend to break our agreement, Your Excellency?"

"I believe it was you who broke it first," Agnes retorted with a furious laugh. "How have your clandestine operations with my apprentice in this little room been going? What have you been plotting behind my back? Why not share it with me? Perhaps I can even help."

Lorca: "."

*So that’s who got caught.*

Though, "clandestine operations" was a weird way to put it.

"I haven’t broken our agreement."

Lorca decided not to debate semantics with this being for now. Appeasing her wrath was clearly more important.

After a moment’s thought, he decided to let the one who caused the problem handle it—he wouldn’t hesitate to deflect responsibility. "There was no plotting. She’s been coming to see me frequently on her own because she’s besotted with my appearance."

Agnes: "You expect me to believe that?"

"You don’t understand humans," Lorca said calmly, without batting an eye. "The more absurd something sounds, the more likely it is to be true."