"Still not getting it… Is it because I'm too stupid?"
Li Fei tugged at the sleeve of Mrs. Annie's dress, looking a little dejected.
"No, Fei."
Mrs. Annie forced a smile and tried to encourage her. "You just need to focus a little more…"
"But… I'm not very comfortable in this environment. It's hard to settle my mind."
Li Fei blinked. "Why don't we go back to your bedroom instead?"
The moment the words left her mouth, the System Panel flickered with change:
Morality: -4 → -5
Charisma: 142 → 152
Mrs. Annie went still. She looked at Li Fei for a long, searching moment.
"…What is it? Teacher."
Li Fei tilted her head to one side, puzzled.
"Nothing."
Mrs. Annie closed her eyes, then opened them again. She let out a small, resigned sigh — the sigh of someone who has made peace with their fate. "Come to my room, then."
She pushed open the door and stepped inside, yanking the curtains apart in one swift motion before briskly tidying the writing desk.
Then she paused — just for a moment — and made a small, almost imperceptible adjustment to the back of a chair, sliding the two seats already pushed close together at the desk until they were flush against each other, side by side.
"Come, sit."
Mrs. Annie turned toward Li Fei and gestured to the chair. Soundlessly, her left hand — the one wearing her wedding ring — slipped behind her back.
The curtains she had pulled open swayed back inward, dimming a portion of the sunlight. Crisscrossed shadows fell across Mrs. Annie's figure, tracing a boundary down the center of her body and plunging her left half into shade.
Whether it was her imagination or not, Li Fei thought Mrs. Annie's smile looked heavier than usual.
...
"Tch. Sequence 9, and that's all you've got? What a pushover."
In the fading dusk, Li Fei looked down at the wolf's corpse at her feet, her expression one of pure disdain.
Since her first level-up two days ago, Li Fei had been harvesting experience from the Moonlight Wolf Den at the steady, reliable rate of one level per day — breakfast, kill wolves, lunch, study the Common Tongue, kill more wolves, dinner, work the evening shift, sleep.
Aside from the occasional meal out with her best friend Bai Mengtian, she had spent nearly every spare moment in the Den.
Three days of effort had yielded an exceptionally generous return.
"System — level up."
As she murmured the words, freshly born mana stirred and bloomed within her. Every single cell in her body seemed to leap with joy, sending a tingling, effervescent sensation rippling through her from head to toe. Li Fei understood: this was the system's mysterious power at work, remaking her body from within, elevating her to the next rung of existence.
"Haaah…"
Li Fei closed her eyes and quietly savored the transformation spreading through her body — and her very soul. She had been doing this since her first level-up, approaching each advancement as an opportunity to explore the depths of both herself and the system. Instinct told her it was worth it — that this practice would pay dividends in the future.
After a moment, she opened her eyes and glanced around, confirming no Moonlight Wolf had crept up on her before pulling up the System Panel.
[CHARACTER PANEL]
Name: Li Fei
Level: 3
Sequence Level: None
EXP: 2/500
Class: None
Legacy: None
Mana: 26/50
Strength: 6 → 7
Agility: 8 → 9
Constitution: 6 → 7
Intelligence: 9 → 10
Charisma: 149
Morality: -5
Luck: 1
Command: 0
Aptitude: 0
Achievements: None
Innate Talents:
1. Depravity
— When Morality decreases, Charisma increases. (Irreversible)
2. ???
Knowledge Tree:
1. Nature Affinity:
Introductory Natural Magic (Unlocks "Basic Natural Magic" upon advancing to Sequence 9):
You may learn and use Tier-1 Natural Spells.
Potential Points: 2
Spells: Stone Skin Lv1
Combat Skills: None
Evaluation: Her talent for selling wine far surpasses her talent for combat.
[MESSAGE PANEL]
[You have killed a Moonlight Wolf. +11 EXP]
...
[SHOP PANEL]
Wealth: 288
[GACHA PANEL]
Remaining Draws: 2
The stat changes were exactly what Li Fei had expected. She glanced around with a faint note of regret and let out a quiet sigh. "It seems the system can't help me cross the Sequence threshold on its own… I'll have to gather the materials myself, complete the ritual, and take the elixir if I want to advance to Sequence 9."
There was more to consider as well. The number of Moonlight Wolves within the Den's territory was finite, and after putting down eighty-two of them across the past few days, the efficiency of hunting near the Den's outer edges had dropped noticeably — forcing her to push deeper and deeper inside to keep the EXP flowing. By her own estimate, she had maybe three to five more levels to squeeze out of this particular beginner's zone before it ran completely dry.
The dream of becoming the undisputed archmage of the Moonlight Wolf Den: shattered.
She checked the sky. It was getting late, and Li Fei had no intention of pressing her luck. She turned and made ready to head home.
Even the weakest Sequence 9 entity still wielded a measure of supernatural power — Moonlight Wolves were no exception. She had absolutely zero desire to find out what a wolf pack looked like when bathed in moonlight.
Besides, tonight's guest was none other than Lady Nicole, and being late was absolutely not an option. After all, once she had expressed her intention to enroll in the Magic Academy, Nicole had made a very confident promise to personally arrange her admission…
With the Magic Academy's enrollment deadline rapidly approaching, if nothing went wrong, her admission should already be settled. Tonight, she'd get the good news straight from Nicole, and then naturally they'd crack open a few nice bottles to celebrate — all of which Nicole would be paying for, naturally. She had helped the star courtesan immensely, but business was still business during working hours~
Hmm… and if she put on a particularly good performance tonight and managed to keep Nicole in an especially delightful mood, maybe — just maybe — she could even talk her way out of the two thousand gold coins per year in tuition fees. Surely that was sweeter than Lady Gneia's interest-free, thirty-year student loan?
Suddenly, Li Fei's footsteps faltered.
Not far ahead, five men were walking together in the direction of the Den's interior. By their path, they were on course to pass directly by Li Fei.
The Moonlight Wolf Den was rarely visited, but Transcendents did come through from time to time — mostly new students from the War Academy or the Magic Academy. After all, actual combat was the only true test of one's abilities, and for low-Sequence Transcendents, Moonlight Wolves made decent training dummies for testing out newly learned spells or techniques. Li Fei had done the same herself.
Stone Skin (Lv1)
Spell Effect: Increases the target's Defense by 25%, while reducing Agility by 10%.
Duration: 30 minutes
Cooldown: 1 minute
Mana Cost: 8
EXP to next level: 9/100
Experience had confirmed it: casting Stone Skin before slitting a Moonlight Wolf's throat did, in fact, make the whole thing marginally more effortful than usual.
She had also made a pleasant discovery along the way: every time she cast the spell, the progress bar toward its next level crept a little further along. That meant that beyond spending EXP or using upgrade items to force a spell's level upward, she could also raise it through sheer repetition — through accumulated proficiency. The limiting factors, naturally, were the cooldown timer and her mana pool.
The first few times Li Fei had encountered strangers in the wolf den, she had simply and silently slipped away. But this time was different.
The man leading the group of five — brown-haired — was one of Kenneth's men. Li Fei recognized his face.
A month ago, it had been this same man who had delivered the Mettis family seal to Li Fei — raking his eyes over her the whole time with a look that made her skin crawl. For Li Fei, it had been a humiliation unlike any she had suffered before.
"Well, well. Fancy meeting you here."
A meaningful smile spread slowly across Li Fei's face.
...
"Eddy, you absolute legend — you've already got 'Magic Arrow' down?"
A dark-skinned, massively built man bellowed in a voice like a foghorn. "Young Master Kenneth is definitely going to put you to good use after this. Hell, he might even send you off to the Magic Academy — when that happens, you'd better introduce us to a few of the girls there, yeah? Ha ha ha…"
"Guess we're all riding Eddy's coattails from now on."
The group chatted and laughed, utterly indifferent to any Moonlight Wolves that might come charging out of the shadows at any moment.
"It's just a Tier-1 spell. Nothing to get worked up about."
Eddy smiled with studied nonchalance. "We'll find a couple of Moonlight Wolves to warm up on, then I'll take you boys out for a proper night tonight — everything's already arranged! Once I reach Sequence 8, all of Loxibrook is yours — food, fun, whatever you like, you name it!"
"For real? I heard the girls at the Golden Kumquat Tavern are pretty high-class…"
"You'd need to get a certain something chopped off first."
"Come off it — as long as you've got enough coin, there's always a way. I'm telling you, all that 'ladies only' business is just for show. Those noble lords have definitely been going there plenty of times — hey, there's someone over there."
Eddy, mid-laugh with his friends, turned his head and cast a brief, dismissive glance in the direction they indicated.
Then his footsteps and his smile both stopped cold.
Eddy still remembered the look on Young Master Kenneth's face when he had learned that Li Fei was working at the Golden Kumquat Tavern — that cold, dangerous expression that had settled over his features like frost. A quarry that should have been his for the taking, a mere commoner, had dared to defy the will of House Mettis. For Kenneth, it was the rare kind of slight that actually warranted his anger.
What made it worse was that Kenneth didn't dare lay a finger on anyone inside the Golden Kumquat Tavern. The idle boast about "noble lords going plenty of times" was fine as private banter, but anyone brazen enough to repeat it standing outside the Tavern's front door — even if the enigmatic "Lady Gneia" didn't personally deal with them — would find themselves buried under the collective fury of every offended patron. More than enough to ensure House Mettis would never know another peaceful day.
Eddy stared hard at Li Fei — transformed, almost unrecognizably, from the woman he had met a month ago — and felt a complicated knot of emotions tighten in his chest.
Damn it all. A month ago she had just been an exceptionally pretty face — one in a thousand, sure, but still ordinary enough. How had a single month turned her into something this dangerous? Had some kind of succubus bloodline awakened in her?
Thank the gods Young Master Kenneth hadn't laid eyes on Li Fei as she was now — and had since stopped paying attention to her altogether. Because if he had… a shattered teacup wouldn't be nearly enough to contain his reaction.
"Whoa, that girl…"
The big, loud muscle-man — Blackstone Tasha — looked genuinely stunned.
"She's from the Golden Kumquat Tavern."
Eddy said it in a flat, cold voice, cutting off his companion before he could say something stupid.
"That classy? Quick, go ask how much she—"
Another one of them ran with the idea.
"Shut your mouth!"
Eddy's expression darkened. He had assumed everyone understood that this was the kind of thing you muttered among yourselves for a cheap laugh — not something you actually acted on. But apparently there was a genuine idiot in the group, brazen enough to talk like this in front of one of the Tavern's own staff.
Did this moron actually think the Golden Kumquat Tavern's girls were in the same league as a two-silver-coin back-alley arrangement?
Ask about the price? Seriously?
He hoped these bottom-rung Sequence 9 Transcendents didn't genuinely believe their combined annual income could cover the cost of a single nice bottle of wine from that place. If this loudmouth ran back and gave an exaggerated report to someone's high-Sequence admirer, the idiot would be lucky to know what killed him.
Eddy resolved on the spot to cut ties with this brainless "brother" permanently, and waved a hand, his expression stony. "Leave her alone. We're moving."
Li Fei kept her gaze straight ahead, ignoring the undisguised hunger in one or two of the men's eyes, and walked past without so much as acknowledging them. The group and Li Fei crossed paths at a distance of roughly ten meters. Having long since made herself familiar with Loxibrook's social codes, Li Fei knew perfectly well that the Mettis family's men wouldn't dare touch her — and they didn't.
She walked another hundred meters or so before looking back. Once she was certain the group had disappeared from view, she reached into her pocket without a word and pulled out her phone.
Last month, the celebrated genius and city lord's adopted daughter Bai Mengtian had come to the Tavern to indulge herself. Li Fei, on a whim, had quoted a classical Eastern verse — "a smile that could launch a thousand ships, eyes that could conquer kingdoms" — and Bai Mengtian had instantly fired back with the math student's mantra: "odd functions stay odd, even functions go even." It was the spark of instant recognition between two souls from the same place — they had sworn sisterhood before the night was over. Bai Mengtian had even modified Li Fei's phone using magic, turning it into a Transcendent artifact: the battery would last ten years without charging, and as long as they were within a hundred miles of each other, they could call anytime they liked.
She dialed Bai Mengtian's number. Invisible waves of mana rippled outward in concentric rings, fanning out in every direction.
The ringtone was the ending theme from Revue Starlight.
A dozen seconds later, the phone came alive with a voice that was languid, crystal-clear, and devastatingly lush — like a dewdrop trembling on the petal of a rose:
"Fei-babe~ Missed Mama already?"
"Get bent."
Li Fei had absolutely no interest in trading quips with her kindred spirit right now, and went straight to the point. "I ran into some enemies in the wolf den. If I kill them, will there be trouble?"
Loxibrook had law and order, after all. Even the wolf den outside the city walls technically fell within its jurisdiction — and without clearing this first, Li Fei wasn't about to go around killing people on a whim.
"Tch, the law's got to have a human touch — got to have some flexibility."
A ghost of a smile drifted through Bai Mengtian's voice. "As long as nobody sees you, it's fine."
"Perfect."
Li Fei let out a small breath of relief.
Bai Mengtian was different from everyone else in Li Fei's life. Even with Nicole's promise to arrange her enrollment at the Magic Academy, Li Fei still held on to a degree of cautious skepticism until it was confirmed. But when Bai Mengtian said something, Li Fei trusted it — fully and without reservation.
Not only because they were from the same place. Not only because of Bai Mengtian's ability and standing, or the fact that their personalities clicked so naturally — or rather, their shared particular brand of chaos. There was something else underneath all of that: a gut-level, irrational, deeply personal certainty.
"By the way — can you actually handle them yourself? Do you need me to come help?"
Noticing that Li Fei hadn't hung up, Bai Mengtian asked after a brief pause.
"I was just waiting for you to say that."
Li Fei smiled. "Ideally, you rough them up badly enough that I get to finish them off."
"Huh? I'm kind of busy right now…"
"You absolute fair-weather friend!"
Li Fei extended a middle finger at the empty air.
From the moment the call connected, there had been a continuous, barely suppressed stream of very strange sounds coming from Bai Mengtian's end of the line. Li Fei didn't need to think twice about what she was busy with.
"Bad signal on my end. Gotta go."
The line went dead. Li Fei put the phone away and let the smile drop from her face.
Kenneth had once driven her into this wolf den and left her for dead. That debt of nearly dying — Li Fei had never intended to outsource the repayment. House Mettis, small and weak as it was, wasn't worth calling in outside help.
Because…
Li Fei opened the photos saved on her phone. What filled the screen were hundreds of pages of documents — dense, detailed, comprehensive.
This was the intelligence dossier on House Mettis that she had commissioned from Hathaway, Vice-President of the Thieves' Guild, a few nights ago. (See Chapter 4, Li Fei's Journal, August 29th.)
It had taken a single day. Every piece of information relating to the Mettis family — personnel, ranks, spell lists, equipment — regardless of whether it was meant to be private, had been packaged up and delivered to Li Fei's doorstep.
Kenneth — half of Loxibrook's elite are my loyal patrons. What exactly are you going to fight me with?!
House Mettis? I could wipe them out with a flick of my fingers.
Li Fei quickly located the profiles of the five men, flipped through their meager spell lists and equipment inventories, and tightened her grip on the crossbow in her hand. Her voice, when she spoke, was cold as iron:
"We'll settle our accounts starting with your dogs, Kenneth…"
____
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