Humans are in chaos, despicable outsiders.

"Shut up, ahh ...

【Yes! Miss Snow wins big! Kiana, you're still too green!】 Looking at the dazed white fluffy ball, the blonde girl revealed a devilish smile.

----------

Chapter Ten: The Rich Woman is Hungry

On St. Freya's training ground, Himeko's eyebrows twitched as she looked at Snow, who had a mischievous grin on his face, Kiana, who was looking utterly lost, and the growing number of students around them.

"Ahem! Kiana Kaslana, the Valkyrie in training!"

"Here!" the dazed white fluffy ball answered instinctively.

"Now go back to your team and continue your training!"

"Well....."

"Ok?"

"Yes! Himeko-sensei!" The white-furred ball glared at the blonde girl, waved her fist defiantly, and quickly darted back to the group to find her best friend.

The Valkyrie patrol and students who had gathered to watch the spectacle scattered like birds as Himeko's gaze swept over them.

Having dispersed the Valkyries and reserve students who had gathered to watch the spectacle, Himeko Murata turned her gaze back to the blonde girl beside her.

"I mean... is it really that interesting...?" Himeko Murata asked, looking somewhat helplessly at the still smiling blonde girl beside her.

"Hmm... If I were you, and that white-haired idiot were your lovely headmistress... do you get it?" Snow paused, thinking for a moment before speaking to the red-haired Valkyrie.

"Uh... Pfft... I think I get it." Himeko Murata nodded with a smile, seemingly having made a connection to something from Snow's words.

“It’s quite fun to tease an idiot once in a while…” Snow said, looking at Himeko’s suppressed smile. The usually serious Valkyrie teacher nodded in agreement.

"I'll take you to Theresa. She shouldn't be in her office right now. Come with me, Snow... let's catch that slacker off guard." Himeko glanced at the time, then whispered in the blonde girl's ear, as if remembering something.

"Caught off guard? Hmm... How about we change our clothes first? Our current attire is rather conspicuous, isn't it?" Snow, intrigued by Himeko's presence, looked at his and Himeko's outfits.

One person was dressed in a pure white hospital gown, while the other was dressed in a formal military uniform, looking extremely grim—clearly not the kind of attire suitable for a surprise attack.

"Yes, that's true. Come with me, there's a shopping street in the academy, we can go there to buy some new clothes."

"Don't worry about the money, I just got paid yesterday," Himeko said, waving her hand dismissively.

"Uh... the academy's currency should be usable with the outside world, right?"

“Of course, establishing an independent monetary system for this would be an excessive burden even for Destiny. What’s wrong?” Himeko looked at the girl beside her with some curiosity.

Until she pulled out a black card with gold patterns, laser-engraved with a single golden eye, from her person.

"...Is it too late for me to kidnap you now? Whose Miss Snow is this?" The red-haired Valkyrie stared at the unassuming card in the blonde girl's hand. It was a black card from Schicksal United Savings Bank, the largest financial institution in secular Europe, with the laser-engraved image of the one-eyed sigil of the Apocalypse family, one of Schicksal's three founding families.

"Can I yell for help?" In response to Himeko's words, Snow made a gesture as if calling for help.

"Forget it... If someone holding this kind of card is confirmed to have been kidnapped, the Schicksal Headquarters' Oversight Council will indeed dispatch an elite Valkyrie squad to rescue them."

"Your adoptive father does indeed have some connection to Destiny, but I don't know exactly who it is. Speaking of which, Theresa also has a card similar to yours, but that guy always manages to max out his card to the Union Savings Bank's risk control limit before the end of the month..."

"What on earth does that little dwarf keep buying all day...?"

"Use this card to the risk control limit???" Snow looked at Himeko Murata with disbelief.

"Who knows... I know the value of that card without you telling me, so Theresa keeps buying things every day..." Himeko scratched her head in annoyance.

[It's probably related to Houmu comics, fan merchandise, and custom collectibles, especially the kind that's globally limited edition... But isn't the Houmu Adventure IP drawn by Mr. Welt, the leader of Anti-Entropy?]

"Is this considered aiding the enemy...?" Snow thought with a strange expression.

"Let's not talk about that anymore. Since this young lady is treating, then I won't be polite!" The mature red-haired woman scooped Snow up from the ground, carried him in her arms, and began a 100-meter sprint towards the commercial district.

"Hey—!" Snow's startled cry was drowned out by the wind and disappeared from the spot.

--

"So... this is the commercial street you were talking about?" Snow's eyebrows twitched as he looked at the seemingly endless street in front of him. Various shops lined both sides of the street, and its scale was so large that it was more like a commercial district than a commercial street.

However, since it wasn't break time yet, there were relatively few people on the pedestrian street, with only a few non-combat logistics personnel and researchers shopping among the various shops.

"It's huge, isn't it? Let's go change our clothes first. Theresa's probably hiding somewhere in a cafe on the corner, slacking off. Let's scare her when we get back." Himeko pulled Snow into a nice-looking upscale clothing store.

............

“Picking out clothes… Eileen… help me take a look, uh…” Snow was overwhelmed by the variety of clothes in front of her. She subconsciously called out to her former maid, then suddenly remembered that the perfect maid was not by her side.

"Sigh... I guess I'll just put together a set like before... I need to figure out a way to lure Eileen over from Europe," Snow muttered to himself, reaching for the clothes rack.

"Achoo—"

"What's wrong, Rita?" The beautiful woman with long, wavy blonde hair looked at her companion with concern.

"Excuse me, Lady Durandal... Perhaps someone is missing Rita."

.....

--

"That's all..." The girl took the clothes she had chosen to the counter and handed over the black card to the shop assistant, who looked at her as if she had seen a ghost.

“Okay...that's 30 euros in total…” The clerk trembled as she handed the card back to the blonde young lady, but Snow didn't reach out to take it.

"Keep it here for now. Also, put Ms. Murata Himeko's expenses on this card. I'm going to change my clothes first." The girl nodded to the shop assistant and turned to walk into the dressing room.

The shop assistant stared thoughtfully at the uniform "3" series of numbers on the black cards. She had only ever seen such consecutive numbers on Dean Theresa's cards before.

"Hey, Lyle, what's up?" A mature woman's voice brought the shop assistant back to reality. A red-haired woman stood in front of her holding a set of clothes.

"Himeko-san! That blonde girl from just now...."

"Snow? What happened to her...?"

"That card in her hand... card..." The clerk, named Lyle, stammered.

"The highest-tier black card from Tianming United Savings Bank, she showed it to me. You must have seen this kind of card quite a few times with Theresa... She secretly ordered a dress from you last time... She wouldn't even let me see it." Himeko looked at the waiter in front of her with a strange expression.

"No... Major Himeko, that card has the same number as Lady Theresa's card... both are single-digit numbers... Manager William told me that only the Cardinals of Schicksal possess such card numbers..."

"......ha????"

"Forget it... forget about it, Lyle... that girl was dangerous in a way..."

"Uh, okay!"

"Whose illegitimate daughter is this little girl...? Surely she's not that Theresa's short, stout grandfather, is she? If so, how would their family lineage be calculated..." Himeko Murata thought maliciously.

--

Chapter Eleven: This coffee shop of yours looks a bit like a fortress.jpg

On the pedestrianized shopping street, two women, dressed in casual clothes, strolled along. Himeko

"Speaking of which, your outfit when you were sent to St. Freya was quite nice," Himeko said, seemingly remembering something as she looked at the blonde girl's new clothes.

"That outfit? It's clothing designed for ease of movement, what we'd call 'fitting clothes' in China. It's different from the everyday clothes we wear now, if you really want to make a comparison..."

"It's more like your Valkyrie armor, isn't it?" Snow explained to Himeko after a moment's thought.

"As for you... although your armor helped cover up a lot... your makeup and headdress at the time..."

"You didn't just run all the way to Changkong City in some kind of evening gown or something, did you?" Snow gave the woman beside him a strange look.

Seemingly having a sore spot touched, Himeko's face flushed red, and veins bulged on her cheeks.

"It's all because of you brats! My holiday and date in Kowloon!"

"I actually quite liked that pretty boy!"

"And what happened? They ended up leading a bunch of rookies who'd barely seen anything like it, trembling with fear, preparing to fight the Herrscher for seven days and seven nights."

"You bastard, you rushed in and instantly killed the Herrscher! And that was when I was about to be beaten to death! If you had been a little earlier or a little later, I would have been free!"

"My holiday is over, and someone else snatched the monster I was supposed to fight halfway through. Did I offend someone these past few days? Why am I so unlucky?!"

"Uh... I'm sorry?" Her azure eyes looked at Himeko, filled with apology.

"I'd rather not apologize; I was just venting. If it weren't for you, I and the Hyperion might be doomed."

"Hmm, so where is the coffee shop we're going to? A coffee shop that would make the Dean sneak out of his office to slack off is certainly intriguing."

"It's just ahead. The shop manager there is an old acquaintance of mine, the former A-rank Valkyrie Aria from the Schicksal headquarters."

"When Theresa founded St. Freya Academy, she happened to be applying for retirement, so I pulled her over. Only those idiots would stay in that godforsaken place like headquarters."

"So what's the name of that shop?"

"Hmm, the coffee cup..."

"?"

"Let's just call it a coffee cup," Himeko explained, seeing the girl's confused expression.

"What a simple and straightforward name..." Snow's lips curled into a smirk.

"Oh? We've arrived." Himeko, who had been chatting with Snow the whole way, glanced up at the sign beside her. They had unknowingly reached their destination.

"I'll go see where Theresa is hiding. Snow, you find a seat," Himeko said to the girl, and then crept into the cafe.

The exterior of the shop is simply decorated, with a dark-colored signboard on the roof. The signboard has no words on it, only a simple white painting of a coffee cup and three kittens in different poses.

"Looks like a cat cafe?" the girl thought, looking at the three cats on the sign. Then, she felt something grabbing her ankle.

It was a cat with soft, gray fur, its strange emerald green eyes staring curiously at the stranger who had never appeared before.

"Vin—it's impolite to grab a customer's clothes," a gentle female voice came from inside the café. Just as the girl was looking at the café's signboard, a woman with long, light blue hair stood behind the counter.

Bikiana and Snow, their blue eyes slightly lighter, looked at the blonde girl standing outside the door and the cat at her feet with warm smiles.

"Won't you come in and have a seat, stranger?" The blue-haired woman invited Snow, who was standing outside the door.

"An invitation from a beautiful lady—I can't seem to find a reason to refuse—" The blonde girl smiled and nodded back at the blue-haired woman, picked up the gray cat at her feet, and pushed open the door of the café.

"It seems Vivien really likes you," the woman said, tilting her head cutely as she looked at the cat in the blonde girl's arms.

"Wei Yin? Is that the cat's name?"

Yes, that's right~