Chapter 837: Time To Move Out Of Silverleaf [Bonus - ]

Chapter 837: Time To Move Out Of Silverleaf [Bonus Chapter]

[A Day Before Aki’s Novice Trial Ends]

VWOOM!

Silas popped into existence in the middle of his bedroom in Silverleaf.

The air shifted around him with a soft rush, stirring the curtains and the loose pages on his desk, and then everything went still.

The room smelled faintly of laundry soap and the lemon polish Martha used on the furniture… Outside, a car rolled lazily down the street, and somewhere a neighbor’s dog was barking at nothing.

He turned toward the window and stared up at the sky.

It was a flat ordinary blue, with a few thin clouds drifting across it and the sun sitting high and bright.

There were no Spirit trees glittering with silver leaves and no wolves howling at the edge of the forest.

’I’m here…’

He could feel the difference immediately.

The air on Earth was thinner and somehow heavier at the same time, with a constant pressure pressing in from every direction like the weight of deep water.

Somewhere far beneath the city, the Suppression Engines hummed away the way they always had, keeping anything that didn’t belong in this world from setting foot in it.

After days of breathing the rich, living air of Blessed Land, it felt like stepping out of a warm bath into a cold room.

He rolled his neck until it cracked and dropped down onto the edge of his bed with a long breath.

…The past few days in Blessed Land had been a lot.

Lilianel, for one, was quite cute, but she was reserved.

She was polite whenever he spoke to her, and she answered every question with careful thoughtful words, but she kept her distance.

Whenever he walked into a room, she’d find a reason to drift toward the opposite wall, and whenever he looked away, he could feel those calm eyes on the back of his head, watching him like she was quietly writing notes in a book only she could read.

’It’s like she’s studying me…’ Silas thought, scratching his cheek. ’I’m not sure if I should be flattered or nervous…’

Two nights ago, he’d caught her standing in the doorway of the dining hall, watching him laugh with the girls over dinner.

The moment their eyes met, she’d given him a small polite nod and walked away without a word.

He’d spent the rest of the evening wondering what exactly she’d been looking for, and whether she’d found it and then there was Rèn.

Silas sighed, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward despite himself.

’Rèn on the other hand… well, she’s going to take a lot to get settled.’

She was cranky… Extremely cranky… She glared at everyone, she grunted instead of answering, and she sat cross-legged by the pond or on the roof of the Keep for hours with her eyes shut, dragging the essence of the world into her body one painful drop at a time.

…If anyone interrupted her, she’d crack one crimson eye open and stare at them until they backed away slowly.

’I guess it’s because she’s a Heavenly Demon…’ Silas thought. ’Heavenly Demons are probably just born grumpy.’

Yesterday he’d made the mistake of sitting down next to her on the roof to ask how her cultivation was going.

She’d opened one eye, looked at him for a full ten seconds without blinking, and then shuffled exactly three feet to the left without saying a single word then, about an hour later, he’d found her sitting two feet closer than before.

…He still wasn’t sure if that counted as a win but she was also stealing treats from everywhere and everyone.

Kaelia had already filed three complaints about missing sweet buns from the cooling racks.

Lupina swore on her tail that a whole plate of honey-glazed jerky had vanished from right under her nose while she was napping… Even Aurelia had come to him with a troubled little frown, asking if he’d perhaps borrowed the almond cookies she’d been saving for afternoon tea.

He hadn’t.

And this very morning at breakfast, Silas had watched Rèn walk past the long table with her usual scowl, reach over Morwenna’s shoulder without even slowing down, and snag the fried fish right off her plate.

Morwenna had stared at her empty plate, then she’d stared at Rèn’s back and then she’d thrown a spoon at her horns.

CLANG!

Rèn hadn’t even turned around.

She’d just kept chewing, walked out the door with the fish tail sticking out of her mouth, and left Morwenna standing there with her mouth hanging open while the whole table burst into laughter.

“That little horned thief…!” Morwenna had shouted after her. “I cooked that for myself, you brat!”

Silas could have sworn he’d seen the corner of Morwenna’s mouth twitching the whole time she was yelling.

’Well,’ Silas thought, smiling fondly at the memory, ’that’s good progress…’

A woman who had arrived trying to cut his throat was now stealing breakfast from his crew like a stray cat… As far as he was concerned, that was practically a love letter.

Then there were the new girls, who were currently getting drilled into the ground by the veterans. Silas had to admit he loved the variety of people the gateway had brought him.

’We even have dwarves and bunny girls now…’

He pictured the short, stout dwarven smiths with their braided beards and soot-stained aprons arguing over a forge, and the bunny girls hopping across the training grounds with their long ears bouncing, and he had to cover his mouth to stop himself from grinning like an idiot in an empty room.

The veterans weren’t going easy on them, either.

The last time he’d walked past the training grounds, the new recruits had been running laps around the outer wall in full gear while Lupina chased the stragglers, howling at them to move faster.

The dwarves had been complaining loudly the entire time that their legs were built for anvils and not for sprinting, and the bunny girls had lapped them twice while giggling…

It had been one of the best things he’d seen all week.

He still wanted to summon more Heroes.

The itch to step back up to the Dawnspire Gateway and see who else was waiting on the other side never really went away but he wanted the ones he already had to feel at home first.

’I really do need to focus a lot more on the territory…’

He’d already promised as much. Once he’d handled all the issues piling up here on Earth, he’d spend real time in Blessed Land… No more running back and forth between worlds every other day.

’This is why I came back a day early…’

Aki was returning from her Novice Trial tomorrow.

Silas would put on his disguise and go meet her as Kara White, and then the two of them would visit the World Council before heading out to Amazonia.

It was going to be a long few days.

The World Council would be full of the same stiff suspicious faces as last time, every one of them trying to read Kara White’s intentions from the way she sat in her chair, and Amazonia was a whole other headache he hadn’t even started thinking about…

’Mm… one issue after another.’

He pushed himself off the bed, stretched his arms over his head until his shoulders popped, and wandered out of his room and down the stairs.

The apartment was quiet.

Sunlight spilled through the windows in long, warm stripes across the floor, and the kitchen counters were spotless as Martha’s apron was hanging neatly on its hook by the door.

He pulled open the fridge and leaned into the cold air.

It was about twelve in the afternoon.

’The Academy isn’t closing for another few hours…’ he thought, frowning slightly. ’Was it three or four…?’

He genuinely couldn’t remember.

It had only been a few months since he graduated, not even three, and he’d already forgotten.

All those mornings dragging himself out of bed before sunrise, all the lectures, the exams, the practical evaluations and the late nights cramming theory he’d never use, and his brain had tossed the school schedule out the second he stopped needing it.

’All that studying for what…?’

Still, he supposed the Academy had been a decent way to keep yourself busy.

Back then, it was the only thing standing between him and an empty afternoon in the slums with nothing to do but count how little money he had left.

He grabbed the carton of juice, kicked the fridge door shut with his heel, and poured himself a tall glass.

GLUG! GLUG!

He leaned back against the counter and sipped it slowly, looking around the empty kitchen.

’I’m guessing Martha’s at the market right now…’

She always went around this time, when the vendors started marking down the morning’s produce.

…She’d come home with too many bags, scold him for not eating enough, and then disappear into the kitchen for an hour while the whole apartment filled with the smell of something wonderful.

Silas swirled the juice in his glass.

He really needed to reward Martha more.

She kept this whole household running without ever being asked… She remembered which shirts he liked, which foods he skipped when he was stressed, and which nights he came home too tired to talk, and she never once made a fuss about any of it.

She’d never asked him for anything in return though he paid her salary.

’Maybe an outing?’ he thought. ’Just the two of us?’

He could take her anywhere she wanted to go.

A nice restaurant, a shopping street, the botanical gardens, the seaside… wherever she liked.

He could buy her that fancy tea set she always stopped to look at in the shop window according to Lia and then walked away from because it was too expensive.

He pictured her face lighting up, the soft surprised smile she got whenever someone did something nice for her that she hadn’t expected, and he found himself smiling back at the empty kitchen.

’She’s older than me, but she’s pretty cute…’

He’d give a lot to see that smile more often.

He could already imagine it.

Her walking beside him through some fancy shopping district, clutching her handbag and insisting she didn’t need anything while staring at every single window display they passed.

…Her scolding him for spending too much, and then quietly holding the bag he bought her against her chest all the way home like it might fly away.

Yeah… He was definitely doing that…

Silas drained the rest of his juice and set the glass in the sink.

’Well… the first issue is that we need to move.’

He looked around the apartment again, more critically this time.

It was clean and warm and comfortable, and Martha had worked hard to make it feel like a home but it was small, and it was a long way from the Academy, and the neighborhood had been sliding downhill for a while now.

’We need a place close to the Academy, in a much better neighborhood…’ Silas thought. ’At least one that won’t make Harper and the rest call my apartment cheap…’

He could already picture the face Harper would make, that little wrinkle of her nose she did whenever something didn’t meet her standards, and he snorted.

When he was a kid in the Sector 5 slums, Silverleaf had been the dream.

He used to stand at the edge of the Lower Ward and stare across the river at the clean streets and the neat rows of houses with their little gardens, and promise himself that one day he’d live there.

He’d get out of the leaky cramped rooms with mold creeping up the walls, and he’d never have to listen to people fighting in the street at three in the morning ever again and he’d done it.

…He’d made it to Silverleaf.

The funny thing was, now that he was here, Silverleaf really wasn’t that great of a place.

’I’ve got about seventy million plus sitting in my regular account…’ Silas thought, tapping his fingers against the counter. ’I can afford to move to a much richer neighborhood.’

Hell, at this point he could probably buy a richer neighborhood but there was one person he knew who could do that even better than him.

Silas pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts until he found the name.

His thumb hovered over it for a second, and a small lopsided smile crept onto his face.

Harper would lose her mind over this.

She’d probably start listing mansions before he even finished his sentence, and then she’d try to pay for all of them, and then he’d have to spend twenty minutes talking her out of buying half the district just to prove a point.

Honestly, he was kind of looking forward to it… He pressed call and lifted the phone to his ear.

RING!

RING!

’Well, Harper…’ Silas thought, leaning back against the counter as the line kept ringing. ’Pick up… We’ve got to do this together…’

After all, Silas couldn’t go house hunting when a billionaire was literally in his contacts list.