Every arc of a fresh new story introduces new characters.

Because there are so many new people, let me give you a summary of who does what here in this shared house.

With Eun-chan and I now added to the mix, this makes a total of six residents living here.

Tendou Akane. Her characteristic features were dark red hair and amethyst-coloured eyes—a biologist specialising in bioprana.

She wasn’t an orphan of my foundation per se, but she did lose both her parents to a demonica invasion. The first time I met her was when she tried to haggle me for the prana crystals I obtained from the Zeroth Stratum.

And from the close ‘kinship’ we’ve formed, she now pays rent at a discount.

Now you know why she’s always trying to get on my good side.

Next up! DaHong, no sir name. A bulky guy with curly dark brown hair, and somewhat darkish skin. He was once an orphan under my care. Now grown up, he operates his own restaurant.

I provided him with the essentials in education and capital to start up his business… and voila! The amazing chef DaHong was born!

Real estate-wise, I own basically all of the stakes of his restaurant. So, until he earns enough to buy it from me, the building and equipment will remain under my name.

Then we have TaeHyun and Kazuo Nana. These two are often away from home because they’re currently cadets in training. They’re often times posted to patrol the yellow zones of the Second Stratum.

Then we have our lovely waitress, Ms. Ng YiChen, the young lady who works in DaHong’s restaurant. Born and raised in New Hangul, she’s a semi-freeloader who still lives with her parents. She isn’t part of the residence but I thought I’d add her here because she’ll be appearing frequently throughout.

There were also a few other people around, but I’ll get to them when I get to them. For now…

“So, how do you feel as of late?”

I asked.

It was dawn, Eun-chan and I were taking a light walk down the suburban district.

The morning air was fresh and crisp. In the skies, the sun’s glowing rays bouncing off clouds made for a holy sight.

“I don’t know.”

She said, wonderingly.

“Mn, then until you think it’s getting worse, I’ll assume you’re getting better.”

I don’t think I need to find a doctor to prescribe her antidepressants. Or maybe she forgot she used to eat them. Either way… a good sign.

“You know, I met XiaoLe-tan yesterday.”

“You met XiaoLe…?”

“Yup.”

She went silent for a little bit, but we didn’t stop walking.

“…Did she say anything?”

“She tried to recruit me as her adjutant, or something like that.”

“…So what was your… response…uh.”

“I said no of course.”

Eun-chan nodded slightly.

“On that note, talking to her did make me wonder. What kind of person was I in that future? What do you think?”

“…I don’t know. She never once mentioned you in her oracles.”

“Is that so? Odd. XiaoLe-tan said that I became the empress of the First Stratum, you know?”

“…Which means humanity probably perished then…”

“Yeah, perhaps… huh? WHAT?!”

So you’re saying because I became the empress humanity perished? What kind of logic was that! I’m not a psycho… I mean, I did have an era like that but it was a long time ago!

“What if humanity didn’t perish and I won the war instead?!”

“…”

Is faith so hard to earn these days? Sheesh.

“Well, since she came to change the world, let’s do our best to prevent the future disaster.”

I coughed.

“…”

Seriously lame…

I decided to change the topic.

“Eun-chan, what dreams do you have?”

“Dreams…?”

She seemed to contemplate those words for a long time.

Out in the streets, I noticed a group of kids playing at the playground. They were assuming guns and swords using dry sticks, pretty generic superhero stuff.

“What about you, Rize-chan? What are your dreams?”

“I told you about it before, didn’t I? Becoming your mother.”

“…”

“Second is to experience being a mother and explore the world while we’re at it. Third, find a cure to your curse and whatnot. Fourth… I don’t know, anything goes I guess.”

I’m happy enough knowing I have a family I need to take care of.

“…”

“How about it? Did it inspire you?”

“…I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you try to die because you wanted to save humanity? Wasn’t that a dream?”

“But… just look where that got me. I can’t even do anything myself anymore.”

There was a crunching sound, a dry leaf shattered into pieces. The step she took just now was quite heavy.

I wasn’t a hero, never wanted to be one. But, I knew the feeling of someone who did. So I understood her sentiments to a degree.

“Don’t worry. This is just one of the many encounters you’ll have in life. Just because you fell from grace, doesn’t mean you can’t save humanity in some other way.”

I patted her shoulder.

“…Like how?”

“Like that.”

I pointed to the group of kids. There was now an adult accompanying them.

She lowered her head sullenly.

“I failed at that too.”

“What?”

“I can’t conceive a child now…”

Uh, what, no?! That wasn’t what I was talking about!

“No, no, no. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then?”

“Being human.”

“???”

“Humanity can mean the whole human race. Or, it could also mean the essence of what makes us human. I’m talking about the latter.”

The emotions we experience, the love we give to others, the compassion for ourselves…

“What’s the whole point of fighting and surviving if we have nothing to look forward to?”

“I’ve failed even in that…”

Geh. She’s gotten completely stuck in a mud hole inside her head.

“We’ll keep working at it.”

I said resolutely.

“What if more people die because of it?”

“You already know I don’t care if people die.”

“…But Staff Sergeant…”

I pressed a finger to her lips.

“Eun-chan.”

I stared into her eyes.

“Have faith in yourself.”

She blinked at me blankly. I moved my finger away from her before we continued walking.

“Alright. Until I know what you want, we’ll rest and recuperate here in New Hangul. You’ll help me open a cafe, and then we’ll start selling good coffee.”

“…Coffee? When did we start talking about selling coffee?”

“Saving humanity one cup at a time. 30 percent of profits go straight to the military!”

That’ll be the perfect tagline!

◃⊰⊱ϑ⊹ ⨞⋅⫝⫘⌖ ⊹⊹⊰⊱▹

“Yo.”

“Yo. Morning.”

DaHong. A brusque, medium-build guy who had a tall figure and chocolate brown hair.

He was already busy priming the restaurant by the time Eun-chan and I got back. His other two cooking staff were busy preparing ingredients, the waiters and waitress’ were cleaning the cutlery and prepping out front of the shop.

There’s a lot that goes on behind an F&B. Restaurant preparations have to be done even before the shop itself opens.

“Have you eaten breakfast?”

I asked DaHong-san.

“Planning to in a little bit. You joining?”

“Yeah. Should I cook?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

Another chef volunteered. I think his name is Mr. Chow-something. He’s peculiar because of his brown skin.

DaHong-san looked at Eun-chan who tagged behind me.

“Yo, EiYun-san. Morning.”

“…Morning.”

Eun-chan greeted, awkwardly.

“Next time say good morning.”

He reminded her, she nodded.

Then afterwards we went around and greeted the staff before heading to the residence.

There Akane-san was doing laundry. The soggy clothes in the bucket were being hung on clothes liners.

From this, you could tell she had an independent upbringing. It’s not every day you see a biologist get their hands wet and dirty to perform tasks like this.

“Akane-san, have you eaten breakfast?”

“No.”

“Then breakfast at the restaurant later once you’re done. I’ll go help out in the kitchen.”

“Alright.”

“EunHa, you help Akane-san. See you.”

Leaving my daughter in the biologist’s care, I assisted the cooks with prepping the ingredients. A lot of onions, chives, yam and cabbage had to be chopped up. All the fish had to be pre-filleted. The day’s soup also had to be prepared, and seaweed miso it was.

“You’re really good at this.”

The guy from earlier, Mr. Chow-something said.

“Well, of course. I’m that guy’s master after all.”

I think he was recently hired. I didn’t see him the last time I came to visit.

“Really now…”

He wasn’t skilled with the knife. But he wasn’t completely bad either. I gave him a few pointers on the proper way to grip and position the fingers.

After cutting everything, we proceeded to make breakfast for everyone. I made a big bowl of seafood salad with sashimi. Mr. Chow made stir-fried squid gongbao style, and egg-tofu with fish roe… despite his lack of knife skills, his wok techniques were quite the show.

I prepared a black tea cocktail with sour plums; bluebell vine flowers and chives were used to decorate the top like a lily. It wasn’t anything special in terms of taste, only adding to the aesthetics.

“““Itadakimasu.”””

“““Thank you for the food.”””

“…”

We all gathered around the tables to eat before the busy day.

“Where were you yesterday Akane-san? You didn’t come back until late at night yesterday, right?”

“Me? I went to the department lab to check on the results of some of the tests we did. And also to catch up on my colleagues, students and class stuff.”

“I was too busy in the kitchen to check. I didn’t know EiYun-san was left alone.”

“EiYun-san didn’t do anything bad though?”

“Oh, she did. She picked up my journal and read it top to bottom.”

“Rize-chan has a journal?”

“What’s written inside?”

“Um…”

“Don’t say! If you do, I’ll get angry!”

“A journal or diary?”

“Dairy.”

“Journal.”

“Anyone else want the squid?”

“Wow, it’s gone fast.”

“When do you plan to visit the fish market?”

“Me? Maybe tomorrow. You free then?”

“I actually plan to go visit Nana-chan and TaeHyun-kun at the barracks.”

“Then maybe we’ll go the day after when you’re free. I need your opinion on something there.”

“Sure thing.”

“Hey, when is the next special dish competition going to begin?”

“YiChen said she has a secret dish in mind to blow everyone’s tastebuds.”

“W-What? I never said that!”

A lively breakfast with a lot of chattering and talk. Even Eun-chan who was silent had no choice but to join in the conversation.

The only problem was that she kept being pestered about the contents of my private journal.

“Eh?! Rize-chan is a God’s Emissary?”

“Ah, you didn’t know?”

“I didn’t. Then why the hell…”

“She’s a retired soldier now.”

“Now that’s just weird for someone her age.”

“I think it’s weirder you never realised.”

“What kind of place is Earth?”

Amid the flurry of questions and comments, Eun-chan asked me a question of curiosity.

“Earth? It’s pretty similar to what we have now if we took out the fact that there are no floating islands.”

“No way! So that means you’ve used those super-intelligent handheld computers where you can search for anything?”

“Can you really search for anything?”

“Yup.”

“Then do you think we’ll be able to get back to using those eye-phone things?”

Ms. YiChen said pointing to her eye.

Oh. I thought they meant LIVE AI. It’s the small pin you put on your clothes or smart glasses and all you need is to talk to them to find an answer you need. Less intrusive, and much more convenient than a smartphone.

“I don’t know. I’ve recovered a lot of artefacts and manuals from the Zeroth Stratum. Now it really just depends on how fast the tech geeks can get the engineering part right.”

The Earthen tech of this world… as a citizen of the AI and AR era, it feels like I’m going back in time. Nostalgic.

“How soon?”

“They say you can even call see everywhere in the world using that thing. Is it true?”

“No, no. Not just that. They say there’s this social media thing where they take videos of people doing a lot of lewd things.”

“Hey, someone sound the pervert alarm!”

“Based on current world technology, I feel like maybe in a decade or two? I mean, they’ve already developed this thing so…”

I showed them the clamshell phone device XiaoLe gave me.

“No… it looks like that? I thought it was supposed to be flat and small.”

“This is the original phone before the slim phone thing. It actually goes through different stages of evolution.”

From the hardware to the firmware, a lot is missing in current civilization to make smartphones work. Trying to create a worldwide internet here was already proving to be a difficult task.

“So what even is this?”

“It’s a phone.”

“Military use?”

“Probably.”

It was quick for them to develop the technology for this. I only brought back the reference artefact two years ago.

Anyhow. The conversation of Earth went on forever until DaHong-san had to chide in to say the restaurant was about to open.

“What kind of fish are chicken, turkey and cows?”

“They’re not fish.”

Ah… I miss eating Korean fried chicken.

◃⊰⊱ϑ⊹ ⨞⋅⫝⫘⌖ ⊹⊹⊰⊱▹

Tendou Akane had always been suspicious of Rize.

She knew Rize was abnormal. But, logic couldn’t explain how the person she was came to be.

So when Akane learnt of Rize’s identity as an unidentified God’s Emissary, she was compelled to form some kind of connection with her. And for her own benefit, she wanted to hide the fact that Rize was from Earth.

But the damn gal’s unreserved attitude about sharing her past made this selfish wish anything but impossible. Akane was worried that someone might take advantage of her if they knew her not-so-secret secret.

Two years had passed since then, none of her worries had come to fruition thus far. In fact, it was Akane who found the absence of it disturbing. Nevertheless, being with her so long, she got to learn all sorts of things from this genius.

Coming back to the present, she was currently stuck on forming a thesis on how prana can hinder the function of ‘infected cells’. The change from normal marine life to demonica doesn’t happen overnight. There’s usually an incubation period before external features present on the organism’s body.

Prana shockwaves have been shown to disrupt the mutation process, proving the concept that prana plays a major part in certain cell mutations.

If she could somehow find some way to halt the transformation, or better yet, a solution to reverse the transformation before the creature turns completely, it could revolutionise the way people view and handle the ‘infection’.

One big problem with the ‘infection’ isn’t only that it creates all these marine zombies, it also destroys entire ecosystems.

The natural ecosystem of marine life in the First Stratum had mostly died thanks to it, and should things continue as is, the Second Stratum’s natural ecosystem would soon follow.

As a foodist, she couldn’t let fellow fish (food) go extinct.

When Rize brought EiYun to her home, Akane’s suspicion alarm had once again been triggered.

There was something absolutely fishy about the girl Rize calls her daughter.

Teal-coloured eyes hidden behind round glasses, beautiful brunette-coloured hair, and an innocent figure full of a womanly charm.

“Who is Rize-chan to you?”

So when the two were alone, Akane took the chance to strike.

“She… she’s my mother.”

Rize went out to find places that rented rare brewing machines, she wouldn’t be back until late evening. Akane had been told to take care of EiYun while she was away.

“Your mother?”

“A-Adopted.”

“Hm…”

Call it bullshit. How could any sane person accept that an adult accepted a child to become her mother?

EiYun’s vigilance was high. To break through to the truth would be hard. Akane nodded to herself.

“Where did you two first meet?”

“…”

She avoided the question. So it must’ve been an important clue.

“I’m sorry for asking.”

“It’s alright…”

“Are you curious about what I do for a living?”

“For a living?”

“I’m a biologist, and lecturer. On the side, I’m working on my own research.”

“Oh… what kind of research?”

“Prana and its effects on infection. Do you want to see the work I’ve done so far?”

Since she had nothing better to do, why not build a relationship with the girl with whom Rize made family? It would benefit both parties.

There was a miniature lab in Akane’s very own room. It was large, the walls between two rooms had been torn down for expansion. Few of the artefact lab items found inside were supplied by Rize, but most other consumables and common technology she bought herself.

The prana crystal which she took from Rize was displayed neatly on glass stands within a locked cabinet.

Then there was a giant fish tank.

Inside were koi. Both normal, and demonised ones.

EiYun observed them curiously.

“Why do they follow a queen? What does it mean to be a queen of a hive?”

Akane asked solemnly.

“Queen?”

EiYun turned to her.

Prana, by scientific definition, is a transitional form of energy between kinetic, and heat energy. A form of energy that touched the fourth dimension in its purest form. The only substance in the world able to store energy in the immaterial world.

It wasn’t an absolute truth, but demonica are naturally drawn to dense concentrations of prana. It’s from this principle that the Fortress’ prana cores were built.

“Yes. Why do they gather around a queen? Is it because they have a high concentration of prana or… something else?”

If prana concentration alone was the defining factor that created priority in what the demonica follow, why was it that creatures containing greater bioprana do not necessarily attract those of lower ones?

And how was the bioprana different from a Hive Queen? No one had ever brought back a sample of a queen alive. So scientists could only hypothesise.

The demonised koi were seen desperately trying to break towards the side of the regular koi.

EiYun touched the glass.

The demonised koi suddenly shifted its attention over to her finger.

It was… a positive reaction. Demonised koi had no reason to attack humans, aware that they were unlikely to do anything to harm them.

“How curious.”

Rize had brought back yet another interesting find.

Akane mused to herself.

Certainly, EiYun was… different.