I'm fighting Kal'tsit? Really?

"..."

The new female prison guard didn't say anything. After placing the plate on the table, she stepped to the side and stood there, seemingly to watch Gerald finish his meal.

"Hey, don't you feel awkward during this time? You watch me eat, and you have to endure the aroma while standing quietly."

Gerald's talkative nature was especially active when he was with strangers. With a quick thought, he moved a chair to the place where the books were: "If you don't want to talk to me, how about reading a book? That one is pretty basic, you can use it to improve yourself during work hours."

He didn't know what the other person was thinking, but judging from their hesitation before sitting down—

It's not like we can't communicate at all, right?

After seeing the other person open his notes and read them, Gerald shrugged and lowered his head to enjoy the high-calorie food.

However, he had only taken a few bites of noodles when he heard a cold voice from the seat opposite him: "Your annotations are very detailed. Did you learn them on your own?"

"Hmm? Yes."

Gerald skewered a meatball from the noodles with a fork, coated it with broth, and stuffed it into his mouth. He answered the guard's question indistinctly: "I've only had a little systematic learning, and I only have a superficial understanding of most of the content. Whether I can be cured or not depends entirely on fate."

"It's excellent, but it places too much emphasis on efficiency and timely treatment, which can leave patients with long-term effects."

After saying that, the prison guard was silent for a while. "However, there isn't much room for the future on the battlefield. I'm sorry, I was just assuming things."

"Pfft—cough, cough cough cough..."

Gerald, who was eating, couldn't help but laugh when he heard this, and choked on his food, which went down his trachea. It took him a while to recover.

Facing the prison guard's questioning gaze, he smiled and said, "Phew... no, I didn't mean to mock you. I just never thought I'd meet someone who would reflect on their own actions in this godforsaken place. It's like all the good things in the world have come my way."

"This is not unusual, and medical staff especially need to be meticulous. In addition, although the above methods are feasible, I still think you can learn some academic knowledge and approaches. After all, in most cases, patients will not be in such a terrible environment."

Gerald found it quite interesting. This prison guard, who appeared to be an aloof and cold beauty, actually offered mostly advice and guidance during their conversation, and her tone was quite gentle.

It felt like being back in my childhood classroom.

“I know.” He was a little unaccustomed to the other person’s attitude, but his hands kept moving, carefully wrapping the edges of the pizza with a napkin to prevent the oil from splattering onto his hands. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t need to read this kind of book.”

"I will give you a personal recommended reading list. Studying it in order will be a good supplement to your current learning progress."

Those slender, graceful fingers deftly turned the notebook to the last page, picked up the pen, and placed it on top of the paper.

She looked up and asked, "Do you mind if I take up a page of your notebook?"

“Go ahead and write it, but most professional books are quite expensive. I’ve never seen one for less than fifty Columbia Gold Certificates—no, no, no, how am I supposed to read all of this?!”

“If you take some time to study, you should be able to finish it in less than a year.” The prison guard tilted his head, seemingly unable to understand what Gerald was wailing about.

"...Fine, I guess I've finally experienced what cognitive bias is." Looking at the string of technical terms and the pen that seemed to never stop moving, the young man couldn't bear to look at his miserable future. "Please, could you be a little gentler?"

"The patients you are facing will not be saved because of my current leniency."

After writing down the last book title, the prison guard checked it again to make sure it was correct, nodded in satisfaction, and carefully closed the notebook.

"Okay, okay, I understand. I'm really sorry, I will read all the excellent works you recommended."

Gerald clasped his hands together, but in the next instant, he steered the conversation in a completely different direction: "So, may I ask, why would such a genius lady, who can finish reading all these books in her spare time, condescend to come to such a despicable and remote corner?"

The prison guard was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, he did not answer the question directly: "You and Mr. Anthony seem to have a good relationship."

“Your colleagues are all familiar with him. I suggest you try to improve your relationship with your colleagues. They should be very willing to tell you this kind of information about such a beautiful lady, down to when he likes to shower and use the toilet.”

Gerald's plate was completely empty at some point, with even the sauce scraped clean. "If you ask me, I can only say that I won't stop you from doing what you want to do. Whether he has the ability to solve it is his problem. I can't be that young master's babysitter forever."

"Even if he dies because of it?" The prison guard nodded slightly, his face showing no emotion.

"I don't think he'll die that easily, I guess."

"It seems that the relationship between you two is not as harmonious as it appears on the surface."

"How could that be? Anthony is my brother and friend. If you want him dead, you'd better meet with me at least once before I'll even consider it."

Gerald smiled and looked around the library. "But it's not a good place. I'd be heartbroken if the books got damaged. The things in the prison are pretty sturdy. It's a good place to start the fight."

"beat?"

"Huh? Did I just say the truth?" Gerald said nonchalantly, "Sorry, there aren't many interesting opponents in prison. Compared to you, Anthony—well, it would probably take ten of them combined to barely reach the same level of strength, right?"

The prison guard was silent for a moment before continuing.

"...Didn't you ever consider that I might have come here specifically for you?"

The room suddenly fell silent.

Gerald toyed with the plastic knife between his fingers, pointing the serrated side toward himself, and then said with a smile.

"do not think so."

"No one would be foolish enough to use a warrior and guardian as an assassin... even someone like you is the one I can't handle the most."

"Besides, even if I misjudged."

He put down the knife and gave the other person a bright smile.

"You alone could not kill me."

------

Meanwhile, in the restaurants of sections A and B, a girl with a pointed head secretly counted her morning's haul from a corner of the cafeteria before joining the long queue to wait for her meal.

Pickled cucumbers, a sandwich filled with cheese, dried vegetables and ham, served with a bowl of soup that you don’t know if a few flies have fallen into it.

Even the most optimistic young girl couldn't bring herself to smile at this kind of food, and Kafka was no exception.

She listlessly sat down next to the man she knew, carrying her meal, and greeted him: "Brother~ do we have to eat this kind of thing every day?"

"Heh, you should be content." Kafka's older brother took a bite out of a quarter of the sandwich, then chewed slowly, wanting the flavor to linger in his mouth longer: "If it weren't for Barton's recent outburst, acting like he's ice skating all the time, we wouldn't be able to eat this kind of thing."

Kafka could only sigh at this. She had eaten far worse things, but people never like to relive suffering.

So she imitated her older brother, took a bite of her sandwich, and tried to ease her depressed mood by chatting: "Hey, brother, didn't you say this morning that you should be careful when cleaning in Zone C? You still haven't said what that 'careful' means."

"Huh?! Cough...cough cough, why are you talking about this while we're eating?"

The older brother was just enjoying his delicious meal when Kafka's interruption made him lose his appetite instantly. He could only glare at the outspoken girl with hostility.

Seeing this, Kafka could only laugh awkwardly: "Heh heh, I just didn't know. Ignorance is no excuse, ignorance is no excuse."

“…That’s true.” The older brother licked his slightly bitter lips, the nausea from his memory surging up again. He had no choice but to take out a plastic bag, put the sandwich in it, and stuff it into his pocket. “There’s someone in Section C who lives next door to Anthony. You probably won’t run into him, but it’s better to be careful.”

“Yes.” Kafka nodded in agreement: “It’s some vicious and heinous criminal, right?”

The older brother shook his head: "If we're talking about serious criminals, he only killed one person, and that person deserved to die. But after all, it happened on Colombian soil, and the way he killed him wasn't good either."

He cautiously looked up and surveyed the area, making sure the person he was talking about hadn't come to eat in the cafeterias of sections A and B today, before leaning close to Kafka and whispering, "Don't tell anyone, but I used to be a bodyguard for the guy he killed, one of the outermost guards."

"I only found out later that this former boss was a scoundrel of capitalists from Casimir. I heard that he gave away his wife and daughter as gifts before fleeing to Colombia."

“That day he came in with a sword, threw all the people who blocked his way into the air, and didn’t put them down for us. He just made us face the direction of the villa.”

Kafka's pupils dilated in shock: "Wow! This person can use magic!"

"What bullshit magic, that's Originium Arts, the scariest kind at that." The older brother had sweat on his forehead, and even his fingertips were trembling slightly. "And he didn't kill a single person. It's even more terrifying than killing someone and going in. They just knocked people unconscious with the hilt of their swords and then threw them into the sky."

"He simply tore open the wall outside the villa, punched all the guards inside until they were unconscious, and dragged out the foreigner who was at the very back."

Kafka was engrossed in listening, but then she noticed her brother had stopped talking, so she quickly urged, "And then? He must have 'whoosh'ed off that person's head with his sword, right?"

The older brother shook his head.

"They've stripped them naked."

Upon hearing this, Kafka was taken aback at first, then blushed slightly: "Pah, pah, pah, aren't you ashamed? This has nothing to do with me, a girl!"

"Not clothes."

The older brother slowly continued what he hadn't finished saying.

"It's skin, flesh, and bone."

Chapter Five: Calcification, Kid

However, the protagonist of this terrifying rumor is unaware that he is being talked about behind his back.

He just finds it a bit troublesome right now.

After finally confronting the prison guard, Gerald realized that he had probably overdone it, which had left him in an awkward position.

That was a terrible mistake.

After seeing his previous behavior, the woman immediately took him to a corner without surveillance cameras and demonstrated her extremely exaggerated Originium Arts to him.

Who knew this thing would be so bad for him?

The enamel, as pure and bright as the moon, clung to her arms, and a mere raised fist could scrape the exposed skin.

Although traces of brutality can be vaguely seen in the tactics and techniques, the opponent's overall strategy is mainly conservative, like a heavy artillery piece slowly and steadily gaining every advantage.

If he has a gun, a sword, and a spellcasting medium, it might not take too long to deal with him.

However, if Pegasus were to be limited to using only his original physical abilities to fight a female warrior who can use Originium Arts, the outcome wouldn't be overwhelmingly different; it would simply be that there's no way he could win.

A gust of wind howled past, and then a fist arrived with a heavy, piercing force, compressing Gerald's reaction time to the extreme in an instant.

Even without Originium Arts, the rhythm of the wind still sang in his ears—Gerald only took a half step back, then spun on his toes, shifted his center of gravity rapidly, and his body, like a flexible whip, suddenly broke free from the trajectory of the attack.

Even though he dodged the frontal attack, the shockwave that instantly ripped through his arm still grazed it, and his skin immediately stung as if it had been scraped by a sharp blade.

"call……!"

Gerald calmed his breathing and distanced himself from the other person again.

He didn't need to ponder the source of this power. Whether it was the enhancement from Originium Arts or the unbelievably strong physique of this female Vayvan, all he could do now was rely on his innate speed to pull himself together, adjusting his breathing and pace time and time again, searching for gaps to dodge the mountain-like attacks.

He shifted his feet again to dodge the opponent's punch, and his heart, which had been beating slowly, was now pumping blood at an ever-increasing rate, trying to make this "long deliberation" last a little longer.

Pegasus's stamina and speed might be the only weapons he could rely on at this moment. He had even considered using the shackles in his hand to directly collide with the opponent's enamel—but please, Mansfield is currently in the farthest place from Columbia, and he doesn't have any Originium crystals in his blood to forcibly activate those techniques.

If they really smashed it, he and the woman in front of him would either have trouble escaping or explaining themselves.

Just as Gerald dodged his opponent's punch once again, waiting for his next opportunity to attack.

Saria, disguised as a prison guard, is currently suppressing the surging fighting spirit within her heart, a spirit that is like magma erupting from the very center of her soul.

She knew this was a stress response to malice. Since the start of the battle, her neck, heart, eyes, and all the vulnerable parts of her body had sent strong alarm signals to her brain at least once.

Even though the other party had no intention of attacking those areas, the only collision so far was when she used her calcification to block the opponent's oncoming elbow strike—but this purest form of malice, existing solely for the purpose of taking lives, caused the indignation in her heart to grow wildly.

How many people must have been killed to cultivate this kind of malice that can chill you to the bone just by looking at someone?

But she simply couldn't use that to criticize a soldier who had been on the battlefield, just as she had nothing to say about the annotations written in his notebook. The killing and being killed couldn't be decided by the man before her; it could only be blamed on the group of politicians clinking glasses at the banquet.

Born in Colombia, she could not empathize with such suffering, and any attempt to understand its causes only evoked feelings of sorrow.

"enough."

Saria stopped moving, and the enamel covering her arm slowly faded away, revealing pale skin slightly eroded by calcification.

"Ha...see, I told you you couldn't kill me, didn't I?"

The moment the battle ended, Gerald's cold expression melted away like snow, instantly returning to his usual carefree demeanor: "Sigh, what can I do? Someone cheated. This level of Originium Arts is probably one of a kind in the entire Columbia, and yet I happened to run into it. I'm incredibly lucky."

It's also a pity.

The enamel seemed to adhere to her will at the speed of her application, as if it were her own arm, extending purely by her will to every corner of her body and even her environment.

In other words, as long as his attack is faster than her conscious thought, paving the way for that fatal blow, and concealing his intentions—

Well, anyone can say "what if," but it's true that he was suppressed by the opponent in the previous battle, and he really did stumble at this hurdle.

"Alright, now you should have a good understanding of what's going on inside the prison."

Gerald didn't seem annoyed at all. "With this kind of Originium Arts, I can't stop you even though I'm in shackles. But the way you fight so openly and honestly from beginning to end..."

"If you want to avoid exposing your identity and extricate yourself from this matter, you probably need something else."

Saria picked up her hat, which had been blown away by the wind during the battle, from the ground, dusted it off, and put it back on her head: "For example?"

“A complete prison break plan, and the structural blueprints of this building. If you can produce them, that would be great. If not, then I'll have to trouble you to unlock my shackles the next time we dock at Tremont.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever said what my purpose was in coming here,” Seria said.

"Come on, we're all adults." Gerald rolled his eyes at him. "If you were in a group of idiots who can't even fight, you'd be as conspicuous as a star in the night. Anyone with a bit of sense could see that. That guy named Barton might be a moron, but the warden of this prison isn't."