The moment I walked into the room, I threw my phone onto my bed with a flick of my wrist, followed by placing Cal next to it a touch more carefully. Side note: they still didn't have a scabbard, because as it turned out, while the mini-shoggoths could easily assume the shape of one, the transformation got easily undone if they were, say, poked by the tip of a sword while being disguised as a sheath. Big surprise, I know.

But putting that aside, I placed both hands on my waist and carefully stretched my back. It was rather sore, but Angie was currently on a date with Josh, so I couldn't exactly bother her with requesting a quick healing session.

"I'm back!" Penny called out as she entered the room and held out her hands. "I've brought an ice pack! Freshly cooled by Snowy!"

"Thanks."

I accepted the pack without any reservations and placed it against my bruised back. Penny winced in surprise when I let out a pained hiss, and she looked genuinely remorseful for a second.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to…"

"I told you it's fine," I said and waved at her with my free hand before she could start apologizing again. It took half an hour to stop her the last time, and I certainly didn't want to start all over again. "Ease up, kiddo. It wasn't your fault. Injuries like this are expected when you're doing full contact sparring."

"Yes, but… I didn't think you'd fly that far…"

Rolling my eyes, I shooed her through the door, and while she still looked conflicted, she soon left the room, finally allowing me to grimace all I wanted. Even with the cooler, the spot where I collided with the railing hurt a lot, and the worst part was that I had nobody to blame for it other than myself.

Long story short, after taking Elly out for a date in the morning and working with Fred in the afternoon, I decided to do something new, and in retrospect, foolish: to find out the limits of my sixth sense and physical capabilities, I convinced the knightly quartet to have a serious, four-on-one sparring session with me.

Needless to say, while they were only using their Uniformers and training weapons, I wasn't fully geared up either. It was an inherently disadvantageous situation for me, and while that was kind of the point, I was woefully unprepared for just how hard I would be suppressed by four strong attackers focusing on me at the same time. Of course, Roland and Arnwald kept telling me how strong I was and how they had to run their Uniformers to the redline to fight me and so on, but I was pretty sure they were just trying to spare my feelings.

In any case, it was only a matter of time before my dodging instincts could no longer keep up with the simultaneous attacks, and it happened just when both Duncan and Penny were attacking me at the same time. I thought I picked the lesser of two evils by defending against the big guy, but it left me open to my sister, and she ended up sending me flying with an impractical roundhouse-kick, just to add insult to injury. The result must've looked pretty scary, considering how hard Penny had been apologizing about it, and while I certainly received a couple of nasty bruises, on the brighter side, I now had a firmer grasp on the limits of my abilities. That was a slim silver lining, but I was never picky about these things, so I took it anyway.

"Brother? You're still wearing your clothes, right?" Penny suddenly called out to me from behind the door.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Just checking," came the answer from the other side, followed by the sound of the doorknob being turned. Yet, contrary to my expectations, the one stepping through wasn't Penny, but my other sister, holding a tray with a steaming plate on it.

"I brought some porridge and tea." Snowy briskly walked in and put the platter down next to the keyboard on the desk before she turned to face me. "I think you should rest up tonight."

"That's the plan," I responded with a smile, but her expression remained serious.

"Don't do anything to make your injury worse, or I'll have to call Judy and tell her everything."

"… Am I being threatened right now?"

"N-No…" Her stern expression soon wavered, revealing the concern underneath. "Unless it works and you take better care of yourself, in which case… maybe?"

"That's right! You need to take better care of yourself!" my other sister backed her up, but it only caused Snowy to pause and send her a sideways glance.

"Weren't you the one who injured him in the first place?"

"A-Awawa! I-It was an accident! And brother said it wasn't my fault! Right? Right?"

She was looking at me with eyes that were practically begging, so a shallow sigh later I obliged.

"I just bit off more than I could chew. It wasn't her fault."

"I understand," Snowy whispered, but the critical look in her eyes didn't thaw one bit as she addressed Penny again. "Even so, you should've been more careful. Leo is reckless, so as his sister, you have to look after him."

"I-I'm reflecting on it…"/"I'm not reckless…" we spoke at once, and this time my Abyssal sister faced me with an odd expression.

"Then why does Judy keep telling you to be more careful?"

"Because she's my girlfriend and that's her job," I joked, but she didn't get it, so I added, "Well, fine, maybe I'm a tiny bit more careless than the national average, but it hardly matters at this point. It's only a few bruises, so you shouldn't worry about me and go play your video games or do whatever Penny came over to do this time."

"Are… you sure you don't need assistance?" Snowy asked for the last time, and when I shook my head and shooed them away, my sisters finally left my room, leaving me along with my porridge.

Normally I would've taken a shower first, especially after getting drenched in sweat during the sparring session, but since it was already here, I figured I might as well eat first. Thinking so, I picked up Cal, turned on my PC, and sat down in front of it with the sword in my lap.

"{Young knight, you must take better care of yourself.}"

"Oh, don't you get started too," I grumbled and pulled the plate over while the computer booted up. The porridge was just the right temperature, so I dug in right away, all the while listening to the chatty blade's complaints.

"{I must insist! You might possess a hardy constitution, but challenging four of your knights in armed combat at once was nothing short of folly! You must not only consider your health, but also the impact your defeat had on the morale of—}"

And so on and so forth. I wasn't really in the mood to listen to Cal's lectures about kingly bearing and leadership qualities, but since I couldn't bother Angie at the moment, having them around was the next best thing. Previous experiments had already proven that being in close proximity to Cal sped up my body's natural regenerative abilities by an order of magnitude, and I was pretty sure that so long as I kept him on my lap overnight, most of the bruising would be gone by the morning.

It was unfortunate that 'being in close proximity' meant I could hear them rambling in my head, but there was no such thing as a free lunch, so I bore with it with a stiff upper lip. For the first couple of minutes, at least, at which point I decided to do a Far Sight roll call. Just out of curiosity. I wasn't running away or anything, I swear.

So, since I already thought of her a couple of times, I started with Angie, and I found her chilling with Josh on the latter's sofa, watching a movie together in their pajamas and cuddling. Cute. That said, it felt a little too early for sleepwear, so I exited from Far Sight and checked the time on the desktop.

"Huh. It's already half-past eight…"

"{What was that, young knight?}"

"Nothing, don't mind me."

"{In that case, where was I? Oh, right! I implore that you fix your habit of—}"

Whatever the end of that sentence was, I had no idea, as I was already somewhere else. To be precise, I was looking down at the princess, sitting in front of a mirror cabinet while Melinda was brushing her hair for her. They were discussing our date in town, which in practical terms mostly meant Elly gushed about everything we did while her chambermaid listened to her with a stoic demeanor. She was definitely a professional.

I only lingered for a minute at most before moving on to my other girlfriend, and I found her in her room, with various articles of clothing scattered around the bed and chairs. Ichiko was also there, happily hopping around in her fox form while Judy mixed and matched her outfits, and I quickly realized they were trying to decide what she would wear on our date tomorrow.

We decided to have solo dates every once in a while like that, and now it was her turn. While I really enjoyed spending time with the three of us all together, I quickly recognized that trying to do everything collectively and going on group dates all the time would only tire us out in the long run, so we came up with this scheduling solution. This principle also applied to our sexy-times as well, and it was decided that I would have separate activities with the girls most of the time, reserving threesomes only for specific occasions. Like holidays. Or birthdays. Or Sundays. Or after successful group-dates. Or any occasion where we were all in the mood at the same time, really.

…

Now that I thought about it, there wasn't much of a schedule after all, was there? Oh well. I figured that, since we were still in the honeymoon period, things were just extra-amorous, and once the novelty wore off, we'd get into a more regular groove.

Anyhow, since Judy wanted to surprise me with her outfit, I decided to skip her and move on. In rapid succession, I checked Ammy, who was busy texting someone, Mike, who was busy receiving texts from someone, Sahi, who was weight-lifting with her floaty magical hands, Lord Grandpa, who was reading a book in a rocking chair, and the various Draconians, who were busy with various martial arts things, finally closing it out with Crowey.

I only spent a significant time on the last one, as I caught him in the middle of an intriguing discussion.

"… this person? Did he really refer to himself as 'Bel'?" he growled with his elbows on his desk, his gloved fingers entwined in front of his mouth.

There was a long moment of silence in the crowded office, currently housing most of the important vassals and subjects of House Inanna. I was more or less familiar with all of them, though the names often escaped me. At last, the person in the middle realized the question was addressed to her, and she hastily cleared her throat.

"Yes, my lord! That's what our Celestial spies reported!"

The well-endowed young lady, along with her black-and-pink hair and the thick-rimmed glasses sitting on her nose, was an especially familiar sight to me. I've seen her many times while I was spying on Crowey, and while she was a genuine ditz, she also happened to be House Inanna's spymaster. I had no idea how someone like her could reach such an important position, but then again, Crowey's staffing decisions were none of my business.

"What else do we know about this man?" haggard man behind the desk pressed her with a dissatisfied frown, and she shrunk back at once.

"That's… all, my lord. It was information only the higher echelons of the Celestial government had access to, and our agent only found out about it by chance. I'm afraid the only things we know about him is that the Celestials are wary of him and that he called himself 'Bel of the Abyss'."

"The audacity!" the elderly woman in the back scoffed with undisguised outrage. "How dare he use the name of the venerable Emperor of Tenebrous Flames!"

"Calm down, matron," a middle-aged man in a navy officer's uniform spoke up, and the grey-haired woman directed a thundering glare at him.

However, before she could respond, the irritating Abyssal Lord uttered an impatient "Silence."

In a blink of an eye, everyone stood straight and faced the desk again. The silence in the room was heavy, and after a few long seconds, Crowey let his hands down with a severe expression.

"I want every single one of our agents topside to search for this man. Find him, no matter the cost, but be cordial. Do not antagonize him."

"My lord!" the elderly woman blurted out in mild horror. "You can't possibly think—"

"We cannot rule out the possibility," Crowey cut her off with a face that said he'll tolerate no further objections. "The Herald of the Emperor is still on that island, and just a few months after we discovered the boy, someone using the name of the Emperor also appeared there. That can't be a coincidence. We must secure the Herald without the knowledge of the other Houses and ascertain the nature of this 'Bel of the Abyss' as soon as possible. Tajana."

"Y-Yes, my lord!" the dual-haired woman in the middle stood at attention, and I was half expecting her to follow it up with a salute.

"Tell our people topside to arrange a transit portal to Critias."

"I… With all due respect, my lord, that might take some time." Crowey raised an irritated brow, so she hastily sputtered, "The dragonbloods are currently holding a meeting on the island, and the magi are on high alert. It makes operations on the island difficult, and—"

"Tell me, was I asking for excuses, or was I giving an order?"

"It was… the latter, my lord," she answered, crestfallen. "I'll try."

"No. You do. There's no such thing as 'try'," Crowey responded in a low voice, and that seemed to be the end of the meeting. Except…

"I know where that quote's from!" the man with the bushy beard in the back exclaimed, prompting the old woman to roll her eyes.

"Of course you do. Everyone does."

"Maybe, but I—!"

"Get out of my office," Crowey positively growled, and in short order, all the subjects streamed out of the room in various degrees of rush. I waited for a minute or so to see if anything else would happen, but the resident Abyssal Lord was only silently cursing under his breath, so I left as well.

I'm not going to lie; it felt refreshing to catch an actually important discussion for once, even if the contents were more than a little troubling.

For a start, just after Josh's hidden 'chosen one' status got threatened by the Grimoire Keys, the Abyssals also started to move with the express intent to get their hands on him. That said, considering the way the sorting algorithm of evil worked, I doubted Crowey himself would show up on our doorstep any time soon, but I decided to tell the recon teams to tighten up the security net in the city anyway, just to be safe.

More alarmingly, the name 'Bel' was apparently already taken, and by the freaking emperor of the Abyssals of all people. Just what were the chances of me accidentally picking that specific name in the heat of the moment? Not high, I reckoned, which meant two possibilities: either I was narratively influenced on the spot, or the dreaded Narrative decided to use my alter ego and build a plot around him. This would imply retconning Bel into the history of the world, but considering I've not only seen strong evidence of past retcons, but I was also personally responsible for one as well, I could hardly dismiss the idea.

If I had to point out one strong indicator for the latter hypothesis, it was that I'd never run into the name in any of the records, either in the Dracis library or the Celestial Hub. Speaking of the latter, I figured I might as well double-check the Hub, considering I was sitting in front of my PC already. Originally I wanted to see if there were any mentions of homunculi on the forums, hoping that one of them might shed some light on why being one was considered such a huge issue, but this had a higher priority.

I put Cal aside, much to their chagrin, and opened the site. To my surprise, searching the intelligence database didn't give me a single hit, which was odd, considering there should've been at least a couple of files mentioning my Bel persona. This bothered me enough to manually leaf through a couple of high-priority folders, but to my further confusion, the closest thing to a mention I found was in the one about me, and even there he was only referred to as 'Abyssal of unknown affiliation'.

That was more than a little odd, so I turned to my next best bet, the forums. My search there was definitely more fruitful, yet it only deepened my confusion. For context, I found nearly three hundred mentions of 'Bel' in the comments. That sounded promising, but then it quickly turned out that ninety-nine percent of them were using the word as an insult roughly on the same level as calling someone Hitler.

As for the remaining one percent, I found only a few sporadic mentions in an old thread, where a couple of history-buffs were arguing about how, during the Great War (no, not that one), Bel of the Tenebrous Flames shouldn't have opened up a new front by attacking the neutral Magi, and how if the forces of the Abyss weren't trapped in a deadlock with them, the Celestials wouldn't have been able to land their armies at some place or another and liberate something and… yeah, this was pretty much just magical World War Two by another name, which meant that Bel was still Hitler even in this context.

"Goddamit."

"{What is it, young knight?}"

"Nothing, don't worry about it. I'm just exasperated over magical Hitler."

"{I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with this fellow.}"

"What? Ah, right. You were stuck in that stone for a while. Next time, ask Ichiko to turn on the Historic Channel and watch a documentary or something."

Cal didn't respond, but maybe for the better, as I was already lost in my thoughts again. In short, this settled it. 'Bel' was kind of a taboo word for the Celestials, and that's why I haven't encountered it before. That was a good starting point for a Watsonian explanation of what the hell was going on, but it shed little light on why I chose that name back during my first encounter with Duncan. Heck, I think I even had the 'Tenebrous Flames' part right, which pretty much ruled out any chance for it being a coincidence. I couldn't have seen it before either, which meant this whole situation definitely had the Narrative's fingerprints all over it.

On a less meta-level though, this revelation also created a lot of problems for me. Chiefly, my crazy alter-ego went from 'dangerous individual of unknown origins' to 'potentially the second coming of not-demon-Hitler', which just made my skin crawl. That said, this could either serve as an incredible card up my sleeve, or a spark ready to ignite a powder-keg that could blow up the whole island. Maybe… it was best to retire the persona after all, at least until I figured out more about the hubbub around this Abyssal Emperor fellow.

Just as I was thinking that, there was a chat notification, and since my brain was busy, my hand clicked on it on autopilot.

MoroseMoose: Hello, Admin.

Since I already opened the chat window, I figured I might as well respond.

Admin: Hi Moose. Do you need me for anything?

MoroseMoose: Actually, I do.

MoroseMoose: Can you tell me how I could mute Ninja?

Admin: …

Admin: What did he do this time?

MoroseMoose: He got a girlfriend, and can't shut up about it.

As if on schedule, the chat window lit up again.

MoroseMoose: And now he's here. :/

W1NG3DN1NJ4: HELLO ADMIN!!! GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!!!!! (* ^ ω ^)

W1NG3DN1NJ4: NO, REALLY!!! GUESS!!!

Admin: …

Admin: You are dating the Critias arch-mage's granddaughter?

W1NG3DN1NJ4: NO, I'M DA

W1NG3DN1NJ4: WAIT, HOW DID YOU KNOW?!?!?!!!!?? (＠_＠)

W1NG3DN1NJ4: MOOSE! DID YOU TELL HIM!????!

MoroseMoose: No, I didn't.

MoroseMoose: You're talking to Admin, remember?

MoroseMoose: It's his job to know these kinds of things.

W1NG3DN1NJ4: AH!!! YOU'RE RIGHT!!!!1  Σ(O_O)

W1NG3DN1NJ4: I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT IT BECAUSE I'M SOOO HAPPY!!!!!1!1 (❤ω❤)

W1NG3DN1NJ4: IT'S ALL THANKS TO YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT, ADMIN!!! THANKS A BUNCH!!!!

Admin: I don't remember ever doing that, but you're welcome, and congratulations.

W1NG3DN1NJ4: TEEHEE!!! THANKS!!!!!!!  (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)

Admin: So, since you're online, how's the report on Leonard Dunning coming along?

W1NG3DN1NJ4: I… WAS A LITTLE DISTRACTED, BUT I'M ON IT!!!! ( ￣ー￣)φ__

W1NG3DN1NJ4: I'VE GOT AAAAALLLLL KINDS OF JUICY INFO ON THE DRACONIAN CONFERENCE!!!

In reality, he only knew what he'd seen on the banquet and a few minor, insignificant details I shared with him, but Admin didn't know that, so I pretended to be appreciative of his hard work.

Admin: Keep up the good work.

I wanted to keep writing, and slowly steer the conversation towards Bel, either the 'of the Abyss' or 'of the Tenebrous Flames' variety, but before I could finish my comment, I was startled out of my skin by a loud, beeping alarm. I glanced over at the phone on my bed, and once things clicked together, I roughly grabbed Cal and jumped to my feet in a panicked hurry.

That was the emergency 'stranger danger' app I installed on everyone's phones way back when, and seeing the big red exclamation mark on the screen made me feel like there was a knot in my stomach. Ignoring Cal's confused questions in the background, I tapped on the phone, and it displayed the ID of the sender. The knot wound even tighter, but after the first moment of shock subsided, I let go of the device, and before it could even hit the bed again, I was already out of the room.

A split second later, I reappeared in Judy's room, and I was assaulted by a number of sensations. The window facing the street was completely broken, letting the cold winter air in. Speaking of air, there was a strange, kind of chemical odor in it; ammonia, with something of a sharp, metallic zing in it. More importantly, while my body registered all this, my eyes scanned around the room, and the knot in my stomach instantly undid itself the moment I laid my eyes on the deadpan, yet visibly rattled girl in the doorway. She was in her panda-print pajamas and had her phone in her hand.

"Hi, Chief," she greeted me like we just met on the street and put away said phone, but before I could ask what happened, Ichiko in her miko form wormed her way past Judy and came to a screeching halt in front of me.

"Ue-sama! A vile evildoer tried to kidnap Judy-sama, but I stopped him!"

"Great job," I answered on autopilot as my free hand patted the head of the little girl in front of me.

"That's the gist of it," Judy said as she closed the door behind herself.

"Are you all right?"

"I was mostly just startled," she admitted. Seeing that I was expecting a more detailed account of the events, she shortly told me, "I went to sleep early tonight. A few minutes later, there was a noise coming from the window, and by the time I sat up, a man was in my room pointing a dagger at me."

"The Raven knight?"

"He wore armor, so I presume it was him." While she didn't look too frightened, I took her hand into mine anyway. It must've reassured her, as she continued in a less strained tone. "He told me not to make a noise and come with him, but then Ichiko woke up and she attacked him from behind."

"So it was a kidnapping attempt." I glanced to my left, at the collapsed wardrobe, and added, "It also explains the collateral damage."

She nodded and said, "They fought for a few seconds and made a ruckus, so dad came upstairs to see what was going on. He brought his shotgun too."

"Ah, so that's why the room smells weird. Did he miss?"

"No, he hit him, but I don't think it did a lot of damage. At the very least, he could still jump out the window before father could reload the gun. He went chasing after him, but he should be back any time now."

As soon as he said that, I could already hear footsteps in the hallway.

"Sunshine? Are you all—?" Judy's dad tensed up the moment he opened the door, but it only lasted until he recognized me. "Leonard? What are you doing here?"

"Hello, Clarke. I've heard there was an attack and came over right away. Is everyone all right?"

"Yes, for the most part," the moustachioed man answered and put his gun aside. "How did you get in here? And why do you have a sword? And… who exactly are you?"

That last question was aimed at Ichiko, but this was neither the time nor the place to get bogged down in long-winded explanations, so I turned to Judy instead.

"Dormouse? Can I leave things to you?"

"Sure. I'll explain everything," my girlfriend answered, followed by a sulky, "If it takes too long and I get circles under my eyes tomorrow, you're not allowed to comment on them."

"Never planned to." Saying so, I planted a quick kiss on her forehead and turned to the open window, then, in front of Clarke's confused eyes, I jumped out. I didn't land on the ground though, as the moment I was outside, I Phased over to a nearby rooftop.

"Report."

The Kage ninja stationed nearby, one of the semi-unique group Rinne brought over, twitched in surprise, but quickly regained her wits and fell to one knee.

"I greet the clan head." I gestured for her to get up, and once she did, she continued with, "The unknown interloper escaped on foot. Tsubasa and Sakura left their posts to pursue him. I remained on standby."

"How come you didn't notice him breaking in?"

"He was using some sort of camouflage technique," she explained in a hurry, sounding a touch ashamed. "We only became aware of his presence by the time he already entered the house, and before we could intervene, Honored Ancestor already engaged him in single combat." She paused here and gave me a deep bow. "Please forgive our incompetence!"

"Stop that. You made the right call." I waited for her to stop bowing, then added, "Can you follow their trail?"

"Yes, clan head!"

"Then do that. This place is safe for the time being, so having you stay here is a waste. Go after the others, and tell them to continue tailing the intruder from a distance. If he leads you to their base, set up an observation post, and wait for my arrival."

"As you command!"

Without any further ado, the ninja woman leaped off the roof and disappeared into the night. As for me, I tightened my grip on Cal, and disappeared as well.

"General." The moment I arrived, I called out to the elderly Faun sitting in a circle of his subordinates and playing poker of all things. That was good news for me. It meant everyone I needed was right here.

"[Blackcloak?]"

Brang put his cards down and stood up. The rest followed suit a beat later, at which point I told them, "Prepare the first raid team, and bring my armor."

As expected from a professional, he didn't ask a single question. He gave me a salute, wordlessly turned on his heel, and headed out. Most of the Fauns followed his example in a hurry and left the barracks, save for the big guy with the green dealer's visor on his head.

"[What's going on boss?]" Karukk inquired while collecting the tokens and cards in a hurry. "[Are we going to war?]"

"War? Not quite." There was a long pause hanging in the air while I tried to formulate an answer that wasn't just a long string of profanities, and once I reigned in the flame burning in my chest, I coldly stated, "I'm simply going to teach some idiots what happens if they cross a certain line…"