"Violence is never the answer, violence is the question, and at that moment, the answer was yes."

"That doesn't explain why you made a trainee almost lose his voice." Lilian crossed his arms.

Ciel stubbornly turned away, crossing his arms as well. Telling him the reason would be like admitting he had started to care about the people at Fatalite. Although his heart had already admitted it, he didn't want it to be known to others.

Call it his last bit of pride, if he had any in the first place.

Besides, at that time, his state had definitely been weird. Even before his rebirth, he had only gotten angry a few times. Normally, he was very rational.

Really. ( ^v^;)

Seeing that he wasn't willing to respond, Lilian turned to Erin.

"What were you doing? Didn't you say you wanted to be his older brother? Where were you when Ciel was causing trouble?"

Erin was also silent. With his perpetually blank face, Lilian could find even less clues about what had happened. He sighed.

"I'm not blaming the two of you. Vermont's friend, Siloc, is insisting that Ciel assaulted Vermont with no reason in the middle of their conversation. I know that Ciel wouldn't do this without a reason, so—"

"It's not their fault." The temperature dropped as Azar suddenly entered the room. Ciel secretly scanned his face, his expression had returned to normal.

Lilian was surprised to see Azar, "Elder? What do you mean?"

Ciel sensed a smirk in Azar's tone, "The child was simply defending us." The latter still wore his usual cold expression, but Ciel's mana senses could just barely see the corners of Azar's lips twitch from time to time.

'I almost forgot he was also there.' Ciel turned away.

Behind Azar, another figure came into view. Seeing Ciel, Verdalite smiled.

"After witnessing what had transpired in person, I realized that you're actually quite terrifying."

Ciel gave him a warning glare that went unseen under his blindfold, but his facial expression which showed a smile that wasn't really a smile gave Verdalite all the things he needed to know.

Lilian looked at the interaction between the two and sighed again.

"Even if it was defending us, you can't go unpunished for harming a teammate. After we go back, you're grounded for a month—you'll also have to write a reflection to the captain plus an explanation to the crown prince and Vermont's family."

Ciel sullenly nodded, knowing that he had gone overboard this time.

Anyway, no one would notice if he went out secretly, which he did half the time. So in general, the grounding punishment did nothing to him.

"Now that this matter is settled.." Verdalite clapped his hands together, "I want to mention that my clan's here. Azar and I will be leaving now."

Ciel perked up his ears, he had just remembered the information of one of the protagonist's harem members.

"Can I follow them?" He looked at Lilian.

Lilian narrowed his eyes, Azar and Verdalite were reliable associates of Fatalite even when they were a mercenary group, but Ciel's intentions to go were definitely not pure.

"Are you trying to escape punishment?"

Hearing this, Ciel immediately plastered an innocent expression on his face.

"I would never do such a thing. Just look at my sincere eyes."

Lilian expressionless glanced at his blindfold. Taking account of the tent's light exposure, Ciel took it off, blinking his cat-like eyes.

Widening them, he repeated, "I would never even think of escaping punishment!"

Erin, who knew him pretty well, looked off to the side.

'Right, you don't want to escape punishment. You just want to leave long enough for them to forget about it.'

Ciel, still smiling, ignored Erin's inner thoughts and jabbed him.

-Help me-

Erin ignored him.

Ciel jabbed him again.

-You're following me, aren't you?-

Seeing Ciel's meaningful smile, Erin raised his head as well.

"I can watch him if we go."

Verdalite also chimed in.

"My clan won't mind extra people coming along."

Lilian glanced at him, tsk tsk, this guy also had no good intentions.

But under both parties' pressure, the doctor eventually succumbed.

Ruffling Ciel and Erin's heads, he sighed for the third time.

"Don't cause trouble in someone else's home. Got it?"

Two heads nodded obediently, and Ciel smiled. He felt bad because Erin was had become too obedient once he knew that he could follow him, but he squashed those feelings deep inside his heart.

Erin was responsible for his own actions. After his nonsensical obsession with Ciel disappeared, they could part ways or stay as friends depending on how Erin felt later on.

But before they left the tent, Ciel remembered something and turned around.

"Oh, by the way,"

Lilian looked back.

"Hmm?"

"Take care of the rest of the trainees. We can't be losing men on one of our first expeditions." Especially Cedric. Normally, Ciel would have liked to take Cedric with him to personally keep an eye on him, but taking the crown prince's precious friend to a potentially dangerous place with unreliable guardians seemed like a bad idea—especially after he had almost muted one of the prince's men.

Lilian frowned, "I don't think you have the right to say that."

Ciel merely smiled as he quickly took his leave.

*

Contrary to what Verdalite had said, the trio of dragon eves had collective bad expressions when they saw Azar, Ciel, and Erin standing next to Verdalite.

"The clan can tolerate that fox, but who are these children?"

Verdalite wore a smile that wasn't a smile.

"You have two children with you, so I thought, why not? If you don't welcome them, we can always leave." As a group.

Hearing those unspoken words, the teenager lowered his head in assent as he transformed into a scaly pale yellow western dragon the size of a small carriage. But Ciel didn't miss his glare as he turned his back to them. He spoke as the two children besides him climbed on his back, the feathered wings growing from their backs reminding Ciel of Erin's wings.

"Then I ask the elder to bring them over yourself."

With that, he took flight, but he didn't immediately leave. Instead, he hovered above in the sky, as if waiting for the group of four to follow him.

Verdalite gave a rare sneer, and in an instant, he had become a pitch black dragon two times the size of the teenager. His reptilian eyes gave off a green glow as he lowered his head. Ciel couldn't see the actual color, but he felt that the light eye color contrasted well with the pitch black shade the dragon was.

"Get on, and don't fall off~"

Even in his majestic dragon form, Verdalite's personality hadn't changed. In fact, after the teenage dragon and the two kids had put some distance between them in the sky, Verdalite's mood seemed to rise.

Condemning his short height, Ciel had to spend a few minutes trying to climb up onto the reptile. But Verdalite's scales were too smooth, and finally, he could only let Azar and Erin boost him up.

Damn, he really was half fairy right? Why didn't he also have wings? QAQ

Erin himself manifested his feathered wings and easily landed beside Ciel, while Azar seemed to float seamlessly onto Verdalite's back.

Looking closer, Ciel could see small particles of ice underneath his feet.

'Why didn't he just lift me up like that?'

As he wondered that, he caught sight of a bit of schadenfreude that was just starting to fade from Azar's eyes.

He quietly tched, neither dragon nor fox had a good personality.

As they took off, Ciel leisurely leaned on a horn on Verdalite's back as Erin and Azar did the same. Verdalite flew at a moderately fast pace as he chased the teenage dragon from behind, but the horns in front of Ciel proved themselves as good wind blockers, and the horns behind him were a decent seat.

As the air temperature started to drop, Ciel knew that they were reaching the top of the mountains he had seen down in the plains.

The top of the mountain wasn't just a small piece of land like Ciel had expected. Instead, there was a large, deep pit in the middle, like a volcano. However, as the two dragons started to descend into the hole, Ciel realized that the sides were full of holes, but not messy, random holes, but a systematic design that was like honeycombs, but more sophisticated. Some holes even had stone doors and decorations.

It reminded him of a large apartment system.

As Ciel was distracted with the variety of reptiles he could see occasionally in the cave apartment system, Erin tapped him.

"Ciel, we've arrived."

The bottom of the hole was surprisingly large. Looking around, Ciel surmised that the area could even fit the capital of Anatol.

As he jumped down from Verdalite's large back, he could feel many eyes staring at him and his group. Feeling the vague and unclear emotions in their eyes, he took a step back.

'Why am I suddenly remembering the return of a prodigal son returning home?'

(Verdalite: You're just imagining that. (◠▽◠;) )