The former last-in-line scurried quietly through the alley.

This was beneath her.

But many things had been once, yet she had found herself with no choice but to do them.

Bernadette did not knock before entering the restaurant, disguised with scarves around her neck and hair. She was nonetheless graceful as she sat down, facing the old man who had been waiting for her.

Jericho looked her up and down before shaking his head. "That is… conspicuous."

She did not address that, instead squashing all feelings of annoyance at having to deal with him instead of their late mutual acquaintance. The fact that she had named her youngest after the woman was something she would take to the grave.

"Have you figured out what it might be?"

"No," the mortal doctor exhaled. He had admitted he only cared out of curiosity. "I'd never encountered this, and I don't exactly have colleagues with which to swap notes. All I can do is run [Diagnosis], and no comparison so far has yielded results."

Bernadette nodded, frustrated but unsurprised. While she knew not just how such Skills functioned, she understood they required the person to have the necessary knowledge to make sense of their feedback.

A doctor who knew about the common cold could use a Skill to check if their patient was suffering from it—and knowing was the key factor there.

Perhaps, it would be wiser for her to give up on this, given how her old friend and nominal stepson had outright refused her help.

Was it truly her responsibility? He was ill, certainly, but it clearly did not bother him anymore.

But this family was her responsibility now.

It was the only family the former last-in-line had, now.

"Thank you for your time," she told the mortal doctor with a nod. They would meet again eventually, and lingering now would be unnecessary.

As she stood to leave, he reached for her hand, stopping her. Bernadette froze.

"My lady…" Jericho whispered, barely audible even to her specialized Vigilance. "There is something else you need to hear about."

Bernadette resettled, slowly meeting his gaze.

She need not have any theories about what he might wish to speak of, to know she would not like what she was about to hear.

The problem with using harvestables as a solution for anything and everything was how quickly such a strategy fell apart when one was short on time.

Even Kristian Rīsan could see the irony there—he had never been one to cultivate patience, and with the abundance of harvestables in the lands that had once been Katrina's, he had never truly wanted for anything.

Elsewhere, people would be lucky to be able to afford more than a handful. Certainly, a dozen chances each month to get something meant to be of use to him in one way or another was a luxury.

But it was a luxury he'd had decades to get used too.

A tonic to improve the recovery rate of his [Integrity] had been relatively acceptable… seven of the same were very much not.

"Useless!"

Glass cracked as he swung a fist against his table, sending countless objects tumbling to the side. With their dwindling numbers—retirement must have been too alluring an option—his men were losing their efficiency. They had always been warriors, not particularly skilled at gathering information, but they had gotten the job done.

Nowadays, Kristian would be lucky to receive a couple useful reports a month. No new summoned Champions had shown up in years—as expected—and the only doctor in Beuzaheim that at least practiced openly was a man his wife had hired repeatedly—not as expected.

As much as his thoughts wanted to immediately begin making the necessary plans to shake this doctor down for all the information he might have, the details of said man were currently in one of the many papers that had been scattered.

Alongside many shards of glass.

Kristian groaned. Perhaps the case itself had not been harmed… No, it very much had been. "Oh, sky father."

While there was no evidence to back the idea that keeping harvestables out in the open instead of sending them into inventory improved the chances of them yielding better reveals, he had been willing to try anything. If a miracle could take shape, a harvestable would be just the necessary spark.

They were meant to be tailored to the one who revealed them in one way or another, after all.

Still, keeping such an unwieldly amount of harvestables in his office would have been inconvenient—that had been precisely why he had asked his oldest son if he had anything he could put them on.

The case in question would be about as easy to put together as figuring out which harvestable had been in which position would be. He would not even be able to tell which were the freshest, or the ones he had assigned for the next month…

Before he could give in to his desire to just stomp on the mess in frustration, Kristian expertly leapt over it, heading for the door. He made sure to both turn the key and activate the wards—the staff would not seek to clean without his permission, not his private office, but he could do without anyone finding out just what he had done.

He had purposefully avoided checking the state of the room itself for a reason.

For now, simply walked, slowly picking up the pace. He might need to check in several places before he found Anselm. Lately, his oldest boy had been more… active.

Unfortunately, this manifested as an inexplicable new interest in herbalism, and he had all but commandeered one of the outer areas for his own use. Was alchemy not enough? At times, he still regretted not fighting Katrina on this.

Was having at least one child that cared to follow in his footsteps too much to ask?

The older he got, the more Kristian found himself bemoaning that fact.

Sixty-five, his own age popped into his head unprompted and he shuddered, quickly dismissing the thought as he barreled through the halls. Staffers knew better than to not duck out of his way when they saw him—not to mention, Kristian wasn't even going that fast.

He needed Zayden. Even if there were no new Champions around, he needed Zayden. At which point would he have to start looking beyond the local area for young Champions?

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

At which point would he be capable of looking beyond the local area for young Champions?

He still recalled how close to losing to the {Lightning} Champion he had come. Losing to someone who hadn't even been in the triple digits! His [Integrity] had been nearly drained as he resisted the forcibly accrued [Toll] that mage's Affinity brought.

And I was younger back then.

His current [Integrity] would not have been able to handle that.

Not at all.

But that was not the issue.

For the first time in his life, Kristian felt as though he might not succeed—at least not in time. If he remained here, if he waited… in the time it took for enough Champions to come, would he even be capable of continuing his work?

If I can get Zayden back, he has to know of a way to fix this.

There had to be a way. As much as he desired to dismiss the foreign woman's words, all the answers he had received since appeared to back her claims. His youngest boy—though no longer his absolute youngest—was almost certainly going to die if he did not put a stop to this.

He needed Zayden.

No, he needed his Benedikt to live.

Somehow, the resurrection of his friend had become a means to an end. How would Zayden feel if he knew that? Kristian resolved to never let him know.

At some point, it had stopped being about the Champion Saint's return for its own sake. He cared for his friend, he always would.

But at some point, it had started being about the Champion Saint's return for the sake of somehow finding a way to save his son. And who better for that than the Saint of {Pis-Aller}?

In true life, there were many risks Anselm Rīsan would never have taken. Many questions he would have never asked, even.

Now that he was… in whichever state he was, inhibitions would have been counterproductive, at least when it came to alchemy. It had been that newfound freedom—and certainly not his reticence to face dreams again—that led him down this path.

Few things had known reactions to seawater, such as those he had used when he had run tests on his blood, but that type of research was not lacking due to any factor intrinsic to them.

It all came down to the fact that no one in their right mind would experiment with seawater.

Who knew, then, just what discoveries could be made if one threw caution to the wind? Anselm had no need to worry, after all. Not anymore.

It was admittedly something he had taken an embarrassingly long time to realize, perhaps due to how dulled his interest in his chosen profession had been while he had been practically bedridden. But with that passion now appropriately rekindled, two years had all but flown by.

Anselm spread the diced pieces of sunsetblade across the palm of his hand as evenly as he could before slowly dipping it into the largest bowl he could risk for this. Progress was slow, partly given the need for secrecy and partly because of just how careful he needed to be about procuring seawater and disposing of it.

He might have been beyond risk—something he continued to refuse to look into—but he was not deluded enough to pretend his curiosity was worth endangering others.

He had all but stopped interacting with anyone beyond the bare minimum, just as he had stopped sleeping. Considering how the last meaningful conversation he had held with anyone in the family had ended with him feeling chastised by his then five-year-old niece, Anselm reasoned this was all likely for the best.

He watched the diced leaf intently. All pieces remained as they were, stuck to him without floating away. Anselm was no chemist, nor would he have preferred to be one in this situation. Understand seawater itself was beyond him—all he could do was try and see how each herb was affected.

Most of those he had tried so far appeared unaffected, neither reacting nor having any new effects when he consumed them. A handful decayed swiftly after being submerged, with one wilting within seconds. Another dozen seemed to lose their effectiveness entirely.

Granted, Anselm's peculiar circumstances might have limited potential adverse effects—he had to acknowledge that. He simply refused to consider trying this on anyone else.

After testing many herbs both in isolation and when combined with each other, he had yet to identify any actual changes, other than the two included in the tonic he and Hanne had crafted for that fateful day. The fact that those two—combined—fizzled when placed on seawater had to stand for something, but the exact details of what this may mean eluded him.

Venaroot grew slightly bloated from exposure to it, and—as this current test was showing—sunsetblade alone appeared unaffected.

For their tonic, they had come up with the combination for the sake of attaining two desired effects. Hanne had not even been the one to first propose it, and as resentful as he had grown towards her, Anselm believed her confusion had been genuine in the end.

So why? What about the combination of venaroot and sunsetblade could make seawater itself bubble as if boiling?

As he withdrew his hand from the water, Anselm heard a knock on the door leading to his chambers. His intent to immediately ignore it was swiftly crushed as his father's voice boomed.

"Boy! I need another one!"

Scrambling to close all doors leading to his workshop, Anselm left the sunsetblade to unceremoniously sink to the bottom of the bowl before all but leaping into the his bathing chamber. He was always thorough after running tests with seawater, using several cleaning solutions to stay on the safe side, and while he did make haste, he still delayed enough that the knocking simply intensified.

"Boy!"

"I am on my way!"

Redressing but not bothering to make his soaked hair presentable, Anselm opened the door with as impassive an expression as he could manage. "Father. I was taking a bath."

His explanation was ignored as his father simply entered the room. The man in question clearly meant to ask for something, but he paused, looking around. After a moment, he scowled.

"Why are all your doors locked?" Kristian eyed the walls of his private lounging area with what might have been suspicion, but could just have easily been confusion.

"Fumes from my latest test," Anselm said, shrugging. "It is likely nothing of note, but I did not wish for them to spread."

Through narrowed eyes, his father shook his head. "This 'vocation' of yours is a waste of time already—I would have rathered you pursued something fruitful, but as you have insisted, I would request you at least refrain from doing anything to needlessly endanger yourself."

The implication that his father apparently cared about his wellbeing was news to him, but Anselm chose to ignore the statement, jabs and all.

Speaking of wastes of time… "What do you need another one of?"

"The container, boy—what else have I asked for recently?"

That concern must have been a fluke—this was closer to the Kristian that Anselm remembered. Ever since he had made the choice to insist on studying with Old Martin, his father had only been slightly more polite to him than he was to the staff.

"You have chosen to start storing even more harvestables like that?"

Anselm only had a vague idea of what his father was doing, but he could put two and two together. For some reason, the man wanted to start leaving harvestables outside of his inventory for long periods of time, and he wanted them to be organized as he did so.

Sighing, he shook his head. "Wait here. I shall see if I have another."

Treating his own quarters like a maze, Anselm grabbed another display case like the one he had given his father before. It was meant to be used to display and protect vials, but it clearly worked well enough for whatever Kristian wanted, if he wanted another one.

Now that he had made a show of retrieving it, he delivered it to his father, who left without a word. Not even a 'thank you' was sent his way, only a nod. Anselm rolled his eyes.

This interruption had been bothersome, but he did not immediately seek to remove the leaves he had left in the bowl. Sooner or later, he would have had to start testing if leaving materials submerged over time made any difference.

It simply seemed as though he would be starting that now.

The men of Baldur Maryem were even less subtle than her, Bernadette had to concede. She had worried, certainly, but not once had she believed the doctor would exaggerate about something like this.

She could only stare in astonishment as two Beuzaheim guards, of the mayor's own retinue, walked down the street with a priceless enchanted chair.

Verifying this had only been a matter of sitting down on the bench across the street.

They weren't even hiding it.

The home of Johanna fon Hūdijanin was being dismantled, and Bernadette could not keep herself from gritting her teeth.

She had never been particularly fond of her older sister, but a lack of closeness did not necessarily mean the two did not get along.

This is a disgrace.

The windows were missing. Who—save the lowest of looters—would even fathom taking that?

For hours, Bernadette sat unmoving—watching.

Once there appeared to be no witnesses in sight, with her Vigilance to tell her as much, decades of education faltered.

Between the troubles with her littlest boy, her former mentor turning against her, and the general helplessness she had found herself feeling, she had no reason to hold back now.

They had done her a favor in taking those windows.

A vial materialized in each of her hands, coming straight from her inventory. She uncapped both and adeptly mixed them, pressed against each other without the air being allowed to touch the contents.

Not a drop slipped past her makeshift seal.

Through a window it went.

Bernadette did not stick around to watch the flames consume whatever remained of her sister's home.

If the woman herself did not get to Exist anymore, why should her worldly possessions?

Especially if they were only going to benefit scum.

Speeding to her private carriage that awaited her, Bernadette pursed her lips. A sinking feeling overcame her.

Oh, dear.

She had just done what the likes of her husband would have done, hadn't she?

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