Luxinna watched Rem gradually woke up.

“How long have I been out?” Rem rubbed his eyes and stretched with exhaustion.

“Four hours,” Cytortia closed her copy of Alchemist Today and glanced at him with concern. “Seriously Rem, your sleeping issue is getting worse.”

“I will manage,” Rem massaged his neck, before catching sight of the magazine his friend was holding. “So Alchemists have a magazine?”

“Heh,” Cytortia distastefully tossed the magazine to the side.

Luxinna whistled.

“It’s that bad?”

“What do you expect?” Cytortia replied with disdain. “This crap publisher is licking the boot of the Isle of Knowledge and Enma Enterprise for a hundred pages straight — bunch of sellout.”

“The Isle of Knowledge?” Luxinna asked.

“Of course, you two don’t know them,” Cytortia rolled her eyes.

Cytortia then entered a thirty-minutes crash course on the Isle of Knowledge. To sum it short, Isle of Knowledge was supposedly at the forefront of all research on Phantasia. With almost unlimited wealth and armies of researcher under their wings, Isle of Knowledge, or IK, successfully got a near monopoly of technological advance in Phantasia. A feat Rem couldn’t help but dread. Having one organization, and a ruthless one for that, holding this kind of death grip on technological progress only spelled disaster.

However, what the goddess’ opinion on Enma Enterprise was more intriguing. Luxinna knew nothing about them. Rem only recognized how many chunks of Earth they carved over and not much else.

But Cytortia fixed that.

“Emma Clan found Enma Enterprises several generations ago,” Cytortia said. “They are the clan of beast-men whose ancestor interbreed with gods. This heritage gives the clan’s offspring massive magical and physical abilities. Abilities they used to carve out a trade and military empire that spans continents.”

“What do they want?” Luxinna said.

“I don’t know,” Cy answered, glancing longingly out into the windows. “My friend... She never tell me. I don’t think she even tries to understand.”

Rem nodded.

The boy was neither nobility, nor elf, nor god or beast-men with a divine bloodline. He was a simple boy with too much time to question the surrounding insanity. That was why he noticed the reason. Or the closest Enma had to one.

The reason was peace of mind. A state free from all worries; namely happiness. Every living being chase after happiness but the meaning of that so-call happiness rarely got questioned. Most believed status and wealth filled that hole, but that mindset was suicidal. The only things such system led was a cannibalistic march of greed for wealth and power to satiate an infinite void. Not to mention the wrath and savagery that born to protect that veneer of peace. It was akin to a drug — a high forever chased with blood from themselves and others.

But the most tragic fact about the story was the peace of mind they chased wasn’t even real.

“Your friend, is she a member of Enma Clan?” Rem asked.

Cytortia nodded.

“Is she happy?” Rem said. “Is she ever at peace or satisfy?”

Silence.

“No,” Cytortia said sadly. “I don’t think those two words can describe Shyme.”

The gloomy mood of the room reminded the elf girl of the insurmountable task she must face.

She desired to be the greatest knight the world had ever seen. However, in that jade-color court, the ten-year-old girl was branded a monster. People like Rem cared not for labels but not Luxinna. She set her collision course in stone the moment she picked Satholia — nothing she can alter that. The battle between a family wanting an empire in their image and the daughter wanting to protect the powerless was inevitable.

If the elves were chain by fate, fate seemed to decide she must be the beast who destroyed everything she wanted to protect.

“Hey Rem,” Luxinna said. “Why do we destroy to protect?”

“Why do you ask me that out of the blue?”

Luxinna refused to meet Rem’s eyes.

“I don’t want to fight them,” the elf replied. “I see my father is a dick and my sister is an idiot. But I never want to hurt them. I never want to be a monster.”

Rem looked at her. Then his body shook as he tried to stifle his laughter. Cytortia’s annoyance swelled as she witnessed this unexpected, tasteless behavior.

“Rem!” She yelled. Meanwhile, Za Wa the golden Octopus emerged from her handbag and leaped at Luxinna for comfort.

“Sorry!” Rem guffawed, trying to control his laughter. “That is impossible. They will call us monster no matter what.”

Luxinna shrunk with depression as Rem gradually calmed down.

“Lux, this is something you will eventually realize yourself, but before you look at your enemies, look at the people you saved.”

And then it happened.

...

The takeover began with smokescreen.

Sleeping gas filled all twenty Hyper-channel’s carriages. Half the guards went down within the first minute. Another half prepared themselves and their weapons, only to fall to the surprise attack from the assailant disguised as the passenger.

Simultaneously, any passengers that remain conscious despite the initial assault were taken prisoner and herded into the middle of the carriage. The assailants took half of the train in less than a mere minute,.

Nobody noticed three particular passengers and the golden octopus that had escaped up their carriage’s roof.

...

In one carriage, the guard Captain’s back was against the wall, facing his last stand.

In front of him stood a bald man mountain with a sword as big as he was. The guard gulped. He had seen that muscle snapping a steel sword to pieces with his own eyes. However, what scared him were the battle scars. Many from blades, some caused by acid, and some burns. How did anyone receive these much injuries in his lifetime and remain standing?

The guard recognized this man as the terrorist’s leaders. He didn’t even need to wear the gear. The presence he brought already negated the need for distinction.

Sadly, the guard was only half-correct.

The tan mass of muscle moved toward him in a split second — an attempt to finish a battle that had delayed too far. The guard grunted, returning fire with a wind-blast that got easily deflected in a single boom.

Before he could do anything, the massive man lifted him by the neck and slammed him into the ceiling with enough force to crack steel.

The young man dropped from the roof, barely conscious. The giant grunted with impatient satisfaction and threw the man out through the carriage window.

The glass broke thunderously as the Captain’s battered torso sailed out of the window. He glanced at the pristine ocean speeding below him and grasped a locket he held since the attack begun with his willpower.

The welcoming arm of ocean below was not his final memory.

A hand snatched guard’s leg from the embrace of death. Behind that arm, a sandy-hair man pulled an unconscious man back to safety with all the strength he mustered. On his shoulder, a tiny magpie joyfully chirped, cheering for the save made in the nick of time.

The sandy-hair man nested the guard on the seat and opened the locker in his grasp. It contained the image of a family — a man he saved standing with a beast-men wife and a daughter holding a teddy bear.

Marley was not happy.

“One second,” Marley jabbed his finger at the two meters tall giant. “A second too late and this man will become fish-food. I will give you two seconds to give me an excuse, Bruno.”

“He is an enemy!” The giant yelled back.

“He got paid by the enemy!” Marley reproached. “You are not killing a soldier on the battlefield. You are killing a father with a wife and a daughter to support for doing his job. Fighting them is inevitable, but at least put yourself in their shoes.”

“But he is an enemy,” Bruno repeated, actively avoiding Marley’s eyes.

Marley rolled his eyes. That was the problem. Too much energy in obnoxious direction. Oh, they agreed the nobility had to go, but the how and why remained a big issue.

“We will talk over this later,” Marley said, calming himself down. “First, we must secure the train. Remember what we came here for.”

“I don’t understand this,” the Bruno replied. “What is Chalivier thinking? We already have a transporter. You!”

“Contrary to what you expect, I can’t be everywhere at once,” Marley replied.

“Yeah, but why do we have to get the core,” Bruno scratched his non-existent hair. “I mean we already have several teleporters in our group. You trained them yourself!”

“It’s politic Bruno,” Marley face-palmed. “You know how the alliance worked.”

“Oh right,” Bruno’s face scrunched with sympathy. “Sorry I ask?”

...

Commonly known fact stated most organizations were lumbering beasts perpetually half a step away from collapsing. Such was a reason nine in ten company imploded after the first year, while another ninety percent of the survivor kicked the bucket by the second.

The organization known as the Liberator was one such case. A machine of many pieces from all over Phantasia fitted together in ways that shouldn’t possibly work, but did so miraculously. It was a zombie alliance of personal and paramilitary forces held together by a single glue.

To destroy the noble of Aurorin and restored freedom to the world!

Despite not even knowing what that freedom would look like, despite teeming with enough agenda to satisfied the world’s salt demand, despite having enough internal animosity to turned the Liberator HQ into the syrup of negativity, the organization continued to limp on toward that romance called liberation.

Until they hit a snag; the snag called logistic.

Technically, several S-rank allied with the Liberator. You could even say that the skill level in the Liberator camp tripled those in the noble’s faction. However, strength breed ego and those egos breed friction. This result in internal conflict within the Liberator about who got to control what. A dispute that substantially crippled the organization for decades.

That was until the recent activity of Tai Hua Tianshang and her charisma.

As the previously fragmented charters of Liberator coalesced, questions such as ‘How do we transport our troop around the area the size of several planets?’ and ‘Can we fight a prolonged war against an upper class that had been hoarding wealth for millennia?’ suddenly got asked openly.

That was how the Chevalier charter of Liberator got its new mission.

Secure a transport method for the organization.

...

“And that is likely what is happening,” the badger explained as winds blew over the group. “Marley aims to take this train to help the Liberator’s cause.”

“It is not the train,” Rem slipped on his mask. “Taking this train is unfeasible — a total waste of time and effort. If it’s me, I will take what makes this train work. Then again, estimating from what your story, the Liberator rarely run on logic.”

“For simplicity's sake, let assume he is after the thingy warping the space around the train,” Luxinna buttoned up her cloak. “What is it again, Cy?”

“The time stabilization core,” Cytortia explained, a golden octopus sat on her head. “They already know how the train’s mechanism work. Its inventor, Arden Christy, published the papers years ago. But Enma Enterprise and Isle of Knowledge have a death grip on the stabilization core secret. Liberator only chance of getting it is stealing the core and studying its schematic.”

The young goddess bit her laps.

“Marley the Magpie — this will be painful”

Luxinna frowned. Did she hear the name correctly? Who the hell called themselves the Magpie.

“Who is he?” Rem said. “And what should I be expecting?”

“He is the best Space specialist in the world,” Scathach explained.

Rem groaned. The opening alone was bad enough.

Alas, as expected, it got worse.

“Marley’s aptitude in teleportation spells and Space-Alteration spells is second to none,” Scathach’s words amped up the difficulty-level to insanity. “He is a master of scouting and wet work. These skills allowed him to stop an invasion by Demonic Continent single handedly.”

Not satisfied with the difficulty setting, the goddess pushed the mode further into the divine.

“That campaign got so bad the Demonic Continent had ordered the army to fall back on the very sight of Marley,” Cytortia said. “Not that its matter. Marley is infamous for remaining undetected when he is sabotaging you to death. It said that by the time you notice him, you already lost the battle.”

Luxinna looked like she was about to roll over and emptied her lunch from stress. Rem could sympathize.

First the Paracis, and now Marley. What type of shit luck was this? Why was the world so obsess with making them suffer?

Rem gritted his teeth.

Every battle was by itself a puzzle that needed solving. Here, said puzzle was frankly sadistic.

They had to rescue hostages from both ends of the train, secured the objective and outwitted an opponent who could mobilize instantly.

Take into account they didn’t know the opponent’s resource and training, and what they got was a tightrope of disaster. Not counting being outnumbered twenty-four to four.

Being detected in this condition meant instant defeat; the stake of failing meant that their journey would get delay infinitely.

But despite the hellish difficulty, Rem had a plan.

The Horizon Dawn stood, dressed in black. Their robes and capes fluttered behind them. It was a bizarre scene for anyone in Phantasia. The elf with a gold highlight slung the sword behind her back, wishing for any cover to lay an ambush. The golden octopus wearing a shade flexed on top of the goddess who was shaking in her legs. Meanwhile, the badger glared accusingly at heaven.

Finally, the boy with near chronic insomnia put on a fedora and listed the mission statement.

“Marley is the biggest problem,” Rem said. “We have to delay him while cutting out his manpower at lightning speed. Here, a simultaneous attack is the best option to divert his concentration.”

“Er, Rem, I have an idea,” a certain cheeky elf raised her hand.