Sylver, Faust, and Ria were all sitting in a small square-shaped room. The shield heir girl’s bed was attached to the wall, and Sylver and Faust had a small circular table between them, as they sat with their backs to the door.

A small wisp of dim light floated near the ceiling and illuminated the somewhat cramped room.

“So… we’re just waiting?” Faust asked.

Sylver continued to play around with the small dark red sphere and watched the tiny ship inside slowly move back and forth, always pointing towards the girl’s body. Sylver had rinsed off the majority of the slimy liquid, and right now had what remained of the box sitting in a large jug in his office.

“She’s immune to magic. And smelling salts, as it turns out. So, for the time being, yes, we’re just going to wait,” Sylver explained, as Faust reluctantly nodded at him.

They sat in silence for a few seconds.

“How old do you think she is?” Faust asked.

Sylver looked up at the cultivator and then turned his head to look at the sleeping girl’s face.

“Assuming she’s fully human… early 20s? She’s under 40 for certain, going by her teeth. But look at how thin her thumbs are, one of her ancestors was an elf, possibly a high elf,” Sylver explained, as he gestured with his free hand towards the girl’s face.

“I see…” Faust said.

Sylver went back to staring at the small sphere Nameless/Aurick and company had most likely used to track this woman down.

He wasn’t sure how to proceed from here.

Faust’s people were in the process of buying all the dark leather they could find, so Sylver could make a copy of the box the girl had been trapped in. 

He planned to act dumb when Owl asked him to bring the box to wherever it is they wanted him to bring it. “This is the box you gave me, what are you talking about?” Sylver would say.

Because if they considered him incompetent enough to be incapable of opening a mere 4th tier seal, they would probably believe that someone could have stolen the real box without him noticing.

And if that didn’t work, he-

Faust grabbed the bed the girl was sleeping in, to stop it from falling over, as Sylver stood up from his seat and steadied himself as he opened the door and made his way down the stairs. The building was shaking so hard Sylver could hear the wood strain under the pressure, as it swayed back and forth, and flung the furniture all over the place.

Sylver used [Fog Form] to get to the ground floor, but when he saw that the ground itself was shaking, he jumped into the air, and kept jumping, until he came out of the sect’s barrier.

It was a strange sight to Sylver’s [Lesser Perception], he couldn’t see the waves of Ki, but he could feel the mana being disturbed because of it.

Off in the distance, there was an enormous cloud of dust, so big that it covered half of the Schlagen mountains. Sylver just stared at the cloud, and as the dust dispersed, he saw that the 12 mountain peaks, had been reduced to 11.

He used [Fog Form] to get back inside the building once the shaking had stopped.

“The White Boar sect has fallen,” Sylver said with an odd smile on his face, as Faust stopped crouching near the bed, and sat down on his chair.

“I take it you mean it has literally fallen?” Faust asked as Sylver nodded.

“Either it’s a coincidence, or her being out of the box is somehow speeding up the decay,” Sylver said.

“Decay of what?” a sleepy woman’s voice asked, as both Sylver and Faust turned their heads towards her.

She was yawning into her hand, while she used her other hand to stop the sheet from falling.

Sylver and Faust wordlessly took a step away from her, and the near festive mood Sylver had created was replaced by tense caution. 

As a general rule of thumb, anyone who woke up in an unknown location and wasn’t panicking was either stupid or powerful enough that they had no reason to panic.

“Where am I? And who are you?” the woman asked.

Sylver had been a bit off with his age estimates, this “girl” was in her late 50s. Her tone was polite, and just a bit “regal.”

When neither Sylver nor Faust said a word, the woman continued.

“My name is Anastasia-”

“Da’Munio. You’re Anastasia Da’Munio, first in line for the Varsun Duchy,” Faust said, with an astonished tone.

“Have we met before?” the woman, Anastasia, asked.

Faust opened his mouth to speak, and then seemed to realize something that upset him immensely.

“I uh… I knew your brother,” Faust said.

Both Sylver and Anastasia noticed his use of the word “knew.”

“Where am I?” Anastasia repeated. There still wasn’t any fear in her voice, but there was now a note of urgency.

“You’re in the area around the Schlagen mountains. My name is Faust, and this is Sylver,” Faust explained, with a gesture towards himself, and then at Sylver.

Anastasia gave Sylver a very odd look.

“Do you have a family name?” she asked.

“Sezari. Sylver Sezari,” Sylver answered. 

Even if Faust hadn’t said that she was a noble, the calm and collected way with which she spoke would have given it away.

“I’ve heard of you. You’re the one who brought my uncle back. You’re Lola Aeyri’s boy, right?” Anastasia said.

“I’m a bit too old to be called anyone’s “boy.” But yes, to both. Forgive me for being direct, but why are you so relaxed?” Sylver asked the nude woman.

A tired smile appeared on her face before she waved the question away.

“How much do you want to escort me home?” Anastasia asked.

Sylver didn’t react to her question, but Faust did.

“Can I at least let my family know I’m alive?” Anastasia asked. 

Sylver was impressed with the subtle way she changed her voice. Now she sounded the age she looked. She sounded as if she was a defenseless little girl.

But it didn’t work on him. As a man who fell for this specific trick too many times, he was immune to it.

Faust on the other hand wasn’t as lucky to have suffered the way Sylver had.

“It uh…” Faust mumbled out.

“I’d like you to leave the room, Faust,” Sylver said calmly. He phrased it in the form of a request, but both of them understood that it was anything but.

Faust gave Anastasia an almost apologetic look, as his body became blurry, and disappeared. Sylver waited until the door swung shut.

“The way my uncle described you, I imagined you to be smaller,” Anastasia said. Her “little girl” persona vanished along with Faust.

“I had a very eventful 5 years,” Sylver said, as Anastasia cocked her head to the side.

“5 years?” she asked.

“When exactly did your uncle return?” Sylver asked. 

They might have kept her suspended in time, until the moment they needed her. Slowing down time wasn’t above a 4th-tier mage’s capability; it was just extremely expensive.

“Not 5 years ago… Can you call the other boy back, I want to talk to him,” Anastasia said. Sylver shook his head.

“If you will allow me, I’d like to explain the present situation,” Sylver said, with as polite of a smile as he could muster.

Anastasia just stared at him and didn’t say a word. She didn’t nod, she didn’t shake her head, she just looked at him.

“You and the current emperor share an ancestor. The ancestor’s bloodline has thinned over the generations, and as it stands the current emperor doesn’t possess enough blood to do whatever it is his father had been capable of doing,” Sylver said, as he relaxed his shoulders, and maintained eye contact with the woman as he continued talking. 

“I’ve been told that you and the emperor possess two halves of a very powerful bloodline. If you two were to have a child, it would have the same abilities as your shared ancestor. The emperor hopes to use this child to continue ruling over this place,” Sylver explained.

He waited for Anastasia to say something, but she just stared at him.

“If that child is born, it would be a catastrophic loss for me. Initially, I planned to give you a potion that would sterilize you. But since you’re immune to magic, it won’t work,” Sylver said.

He expected Anastasia’s eyes to widen in horror, but instead, they remained the same, and she looked as if she was about to laugh at him.

“There’s a slight issue with your plan,” Anastasia said.

Her calmness was almost eerie. It was certainly better than hysterical screaming and crying, but this wasn’t just bravery, it was a complete lack of fear. Sylver would have been insulted if it wasn’t so genuine.

“I’m aware of that,” Sylver said, as Anastasia rolled her eyes.

“You won’t be able to sterilize me,” Anastasia said, matter of factly.

“It isn’t as difficult of a surgery as you imagine it to be. You won’t even see a scar,” Sylver said, as Anastasia shook her head.

“I meant to say, you can’t sterilize me. No one can,” Anastasia said, as Sylver tried to understand what she was trying to say.

“It’s reversible. It will just take a couple of years after I put everything back in place,” Sylver offered, but Anastasia just shook her head again.

Did I actually expect her to agree to it? 

Maybe I should have waited before saying it… Then again, Owl could decide to check up on me any minute.

Actually, since the White Boar sect just fell, aren’t they already on their way here?

“I’m invulnerable. No knife can cut me, no weapon can hurt me, no magic, spells, poison, technique, or whatever else, can affect me,” Anastasia said.

Sylver stood up from his seat and walked over to her.

“Would you mind if I made sure?” Sylver asked, as Anastasia slapped her hand down onto the table near her bed and pressed it flat against it.

“Be careful not to cut yourself,” Anastasia said, as Sylver’s robe placed a dart into his hand.

He was very gentle as he placed the dart over the fleshy part between her thumb and forefinger and slowly started pressing down on it.

For the first few seconds, Sylver waited for the dart to pierce her skin, as he gradually increased the force. The skin turned slightly white from the pressure, and just when Sylver was sure the dart was going to go through, he stopped feeling a reaction. 

It was as if he was trying to make a hole in a bar of steel.

Sylver pushed harder, and harder, but even when he was applying so much force to the dart that his skin was starting to smoke, he couldn’t pierce the woman’s skin.

Sylver took the dart away, and there wasn’t so much as a mark from the dart’s tip on her skin.

Sylver summoned a dagger into his hand, but this time didn’t bother being slow about it and stabbed the back of the woman’s hand with as much force as he could muster. The dagger cracked under the pressure, but the woman’s hand was completely unharmed.

It was like trying to stab a statue with a toothpick. Sylver pinched her pinkie between his thumb and forefinger and ended up dislocating his forefinger from his attempt to crush her pinkie.

“Ria?” Sylver asked.

It will be difficult to convince Ria to do the surgery, but-

“It’s like she’s made of stone,” Ria said. 

Sylver looked down and saw a drill-shaped tendril fruitlessly spinning against the woman’s completely non-reactive skin.

Sylver tried to look at her primal energy using [Mutating Override] but she didn’t have any primal energy. It was as if she wasn’t there.

Sylver had met “invulnerable” people before. But even the ones immune to magic had a primal energy field.

If Sylver ignored what his eyes and ears were telling him, this woman didn’t exist.

Sylver got the feeling Ria wanted to say something, but he also got the feeling she couldn’t say it.

System shenanigans… Of course…

“How do you cut your hair?” Sylver asked as Anastasia pulled her hand back.

“I have a perk that keeps it at a set length. Same for my nails,” Anastasia answered.

Sylver massaged his hand as he stared at her.

“Do you need to breathe? Eat? Sleep?” Sylver asked.

Her complete non-reaction to the question disturbed him.

“I feel tired if I don’t, but it won’t kill me,” Anastasia said.

“Why did you pass out?” Sylver asked with a raised eyebrow. 

Even without his soul sense, he was fairly certain he would be able to tell if someone was pretending to be asleep.

“Side effect of not eating or breathing for a while,” Anastasia answered.

The worst part of it was that Sylver had no idea if she was telling the truth or not. Sylver might have been able to read her if he could feel her body with his mana, but his eyesight alone wasn’t enough.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Sylver asked as he sent Spring out to search for Faust.

“Going to bed. Then I heard a knocking and knocked back. And now I’m here,” Anastasia answered.

“Tell me if I’m right… You can’t be hurt, but you can’t hurt other people…” Sylver said.

She was the “shield” heir after all. Anastasia shrugged her shoulders.

“My strength, dexterity, intelligence, and wisdom are capped at 0. I can hurt people, but I’m not good at it,” Anastasia explained.

That sounded about right for someone who was “invulnerable.” Bloodline-related magic usually came with matching limitations.

The emperor probably has the exact opposite… Extremely high strength, dexterity, intelligence, and wisdom, in exchange for being made out of glass…

And if they had a kid, the two would combine and create a person with a perfect defense, and a perfect attack.

“Can I speak to the other one now?” Anastasia asked as Sylver tried to come up with a path forward.

I can’t sterilize her, and she’s simultaneously unkillable and vulnerable. Bury her underground, and hope for the best? Throw her into space? Send her to Lola so she can seal her away?

“If someone tried to rape you, could you stop them?” Sylver asked.

He realized a half-second after the words had left his mouth, that there were about a million better ways of asking that. The woman had thrown him off, with her lack of fear, and the fact that Sylver struggled to see her as a “living” creature.

“According to my mother, there’s a size limitation. But aside from that, no,” Anastasia explained, as Sylver nodded his head.

So, provided the emperor’s tool is big enough, I win? He won’t be able to impregnate her because he won’t be able to get his thing inside?

Her skin moved a little when I touched her, it only started to get hard once I applied enough pressure for it to start hurting…

Is that what her bloodline does? Stops everything before it has a chance to hurt her?

Wait, the size doesn’t matter… He could just get a long syringe, and…

On the bright side, since magic doesn’t work on her, even if she does get pregnant, I’ll have at least 5 months… Wait, fuck, if the emperor only needs the child to possess the bloodline, I’ll have less than 6 weeks…

“I want to know if my family is alright,” Anastasia said.

Sylver stopped staring into space and focused on her.

“Only the women in your family are invulnerable,” Sylver stated.

“Not all of them. Only the first child is invulnerable, and so far, they’ve always been girls,” Anastasia said, as Sylver nodded.

Always been girls, until the two separated bloodlines return to being one…

On the bright side, at least I don’t need to worry about her running away, Sylver thought, as the door opened, and Faust walked in.

Sylver sat down in the corner, and barely heard a word Faust said to her, as he tried to figure out what they should do from this point onwards.