I'm fighting Kal'tsit? Really?

He continued, "Since Randolph didn't stop you, it means you didn't come in to cause trouble for Anthony. He wouldn't risk his reputation for someone else's bounty and betray the person he's supposed to protect. So whether you want to take Anthony out to judge his unknown past or help him escape and start a new life, you have to get him out of here."

In conclusion, Gerald snapped his fingers: "In other words, you're either a hothead who did some research beforehand and dared to barge in—or you're a big shot with so much influence that even Randolph would have to give you a wide berth."

"And in either case, you can't take Anthony away in full view of everyone—unless you fully unleash your Originium Arts and expose your identity in the process."

“But I’m different.” Gerald smiled. “If they release me, they’ll just think I used some special method to get out of the shackles, and they won’t find it on any ordinary prison guard.”

Saria was silent for a moment, then nodded: "You want to get out of prison."

“That was the original plan, but it’s safer to go through you.” The young man’s ears swayed gently, and the sideburns on his head shone with a faint silver light. “If you help me unlock the shackles, I’ll save time running through the wilderness, and I can also take Anthony out with me. It’s better for everyone if you can get away from this.”

Seria did not speak.

The silence in the air gradually thickened, becoming somewhat oppressive, especially unpleasant in this enclosed space. However, both were patient individuals, maintaining their own composure even when facing each other.

……

"I've seen your file."

She finally spoke up.

“I know why you were arrested, and I am aware of the reasons and process behind some of the events, although deeper information has probably been deliberately concealed.”

“You are the biggest uncertainty in this prison, especially after becoming Anthony’s friend—but even though I understand your motives and injustice perfectly, as an outsider, I cannot unilaterally set you free for something I don’t fully understand.”

Gerald nodded. "I understand. When you remove my shackles, it means taking responsibility for a problem that isn't yours to begin with. It's perfectly reasonable for you to refuse."

“However,” Saria’s attitude seemed to have changed slightly, “I’d like to know, if you’re going to escape this prison, what’s the latest you’ll do so?”

"Four months."

Gerald stated decisively, "It can't be later than this point in time. If it's later, I'll just choose to return to Colombia from the wilderness."

After hearing this answer, Seria pondered for a moment, and finally nodded as if she were certain: "Five days later, Mansfield Prison will arrive in Tremont City, and some prison guards will be able to leave the prison and go into the city on that day."

"What?" Gerald was completely bewildered by this. "You want to put me down in Tremont?"

Saria shook her head, but her eyes held an unwavering determination: "I have said I have no right to judge your past."

“But your notes tell me that a person who is full of spirituality and who, even in such circumstances, still thinks of saving lives, should have the opportunity to choose their future.”

"I will bring all the books on the reading list in five days. They have my annotations, so they shouldn't be too difficult to understand."

“You can choose to ignore me and leave the wilderness during these four months, and there is no need for any deal between us.”

"Or, you can spend these four months learning all of this. I will stay in this prison and explain the parts you can't understand. Use these four months to convince me who you are. In that case, I will share the responsibility of releasing you."

"If you make the same mistake again in the future—the blame will be entirely on me."

Saria's tone was very calm, without any fluctuation in her voice or intonation.

As if she had never seen the horrific images of the crime scenes in the files, she never hesitated to speak her mind.

“…You’re going to trust a prisoner you’ve only known for less than two hours? Are you out of your mind?” Gerald couldn’t help but say.

"This was a deal you proposed. I simply added my own conditions to it. I can't understand how you came to that conclusion that you're 'out of your mind'," Saria replied calmly.

“No, even so.” Gerald seemed to laugh in anger, his breathing momentarily unsteady. “In other words, if I were to start a massacre in Colombia, would you go to jail for me?”

“I will kill you and restore order to where it belongs.”

Seria nodded, answering Gerald's question: "And then, yes, I will take responsibility for the crimes you have committed. Even if you manage to escape from this prison no matter what."

……

After a long silence, Gerald lost the eye contact for the first time, his gaze drifting to the rough, uneven floor.

This Mansfield prison is really old; it looks like it's from the last century.

But no matter how conflicted he is, he should respond.

So the tangled thoughts finally turned into a long sigh. Gerald looked up at the woman in front of him and said slowly, "You look like a law-abiding old man, but in essence you are a gambler who is just as crazy as a madman."

Upon hearing this, Saria frowned slightly, a hint of sternness appearing between her delicate brows. "This is merely a choice made based on rational judgment, don't—"

"Yes, yes, I know, one thing at a time, right?"

What he didn't say was that there is never a shortage of people in this world who choose to ignore the rules in order to achieve their own goals.

But to forge principles into an unbreakable shield, like the woman before me, requires a will far stronger than imagined, and an extraordinary level of madness.

The gambler gambled away his entire fortune and ended up bankrupt.

The strong bet their strength and beliefs to win the stakes of the weak.

Then it varied from person to person, either ruling them or providing them with shelter.

The former is a ruthless person, the latter is a madman.

The woman in front of me is the most insane of all.

"Sigh, that's why big shots are big shots. Every action they take is upright and beyond reproach, and they have such a convincing power that others are willing to agree to their conditions."

Gerald extended her right hand, which had just scabbed over: "Pleasure doing business with you. Now, you should tell me your name, Ms. Prison Guard?"

“Seria, Head of the Defense Department of Rhine Labs.”

The woman, as unwavering as a diamond, extended her unexpectedly soft hands and clasped Gerald's right hand tightly.

"It's a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Gerald."

Chapter Six: Kal'tsit, you still have enough resurrection coins in reserve... Hmm??

After lunch, Anthony didn't see Gerald again all day.

It wasn't until evening, after the day's exercise period ended, that he returned to his own room in Zone C and caught a glimpse of Pegasus leaning against the wall, his hair a mess.

Its ears drooped down at a 180-degree angle, and even its tail was weak and listless, as if all its energy had been drained, and it looked haggard.

When Anthony blinked again, he saw Gerald writing rapidly in his notebook, stopping and starting, while muttering unknown incantations.

Inside the room, Gerald felt his brother's gaze. He looked up and saw only endless emptiness in his eyes. That single glance was enough to frighten Anthony, who still held onto hope for life, into hastily returning to his own lair, muttering a few unintentionally offensive words.

He was diagnosed as having gone mad from studying medicine.

Meanwhile, Gerald numbly turned his gaze back to the book, continuing his painful journey.

If Saria had already reached a level of mastery and interoperability between different subjects during her university years and even her entrepreneurial period, then he is now simply using his enhanced memory after transmigrating to memorize things by rote. Only after accumulating a large amount of knowledge will he be able to naturally connect the knowledge points together.

The key is the quantity; it's truly the purest, simplest knowledge that needs to be memorized. Medical students' exams cover entire books, and Saria gave him over twenty, meaning he needed to finish one book per week on average.

It's too naive to expect a pony (?) who has spent almost the entire first half of his life in battle, not counting his negative twenty-five years, to catch up with ten years of knowledge accumulated by a Terra medical student.

But seriously, the opportunity to have a researcher at the forefront of the times provide him with personal guidance is something he will likely never have again in his lifetime.

Even if it meant forcibly stuffing knowledge into his head, Gerald didn't want to let this opportunity slip by—having experienced life once, he knew especially well that even if his hands were worn to pieces by the rope, he had to hold on tightly to this possibility that might change his life.

If all you do is kill, you can't beat the world's strongest rule-makers, and you're also bound by human nature and morality, then you'll end up like him now.

Having lost the anchor called family, they wasted their youth and accomplished nothing.

Stopping thinking about anything else, Gerald shook his hand and continued to grapple with the knowledge in the book.

When the prison bell, which symbolized sleep, rang, his notebook had more than ten more pages filled with dense writing.

Pegasus's speed was a huge help.

Following tradition, he quietly gazed at the group photo that symbolized the past for a while, then placed his books and notebooks next to his pillow, covered himself with the thin blanket, and let his thoughts gradually take over his consciousness.

After last night's bizarre dream, everything seems different today.

Patton sent him his long-awaited intelligence: the new prison guard was none other than the famous head of the defense department at Rhine Labs. Not only had he made a deal with him, but he had also agreed to bring him a new book in five days.

It was as if his time had started turning again.

Gerald's body slowly relaxed, his shoulders slumped, and his muscles relaxed from his chest to his toes, immersing himself in the darkness.

I hope I can have that good dream again today.

------

So the sand and blood soaked his entire body once again.

The scene was almost exactly the same as last time, with light so realistic it was indistinguishable from reality, the heat emanating from the sun, and the rustling of the wind in my ears—no, this was reality itself.

Because the wind beside him had never deceived him in the past twenty years, and so had the wind here.

Gerald even had the leisure to stroke the sword in his hand, waiting for the hooded figure to leap off the cliff and stroll towards him along with the monster.

"Why help Kazdel resist the unknown Pegasus?"

The exact same conversation, like a beautiful melody playing in his ears, made him feel elated, and even his gaze towards the other person changed from indifference to fervor.

Repeated dreams.

This means that he spent countless nights fighting to the death against opponents far stronger than himself, pushing his life to the brink of death countless times.

His life will become a breeding ground for experience and skill, allowing him to continuously improve.

Studying medicine during the day and martial arts at night—where else can you find a more perfect arrangement?

As for asking what era this is—let's wait until he's finished fighting!

boom! !

Using wind to create boots that encase the soles of his feet, Gerald pushed his Originium Arts to their limits from the very beginning.

Since he doesn't need to focus solely on killing his opponent, for him, simply being able to prolong the battle a little longer and observe the opponent's skills is a victory in itself.

The sword seemed to vanish into thin air for a second, and when the light reappeared before the hooded lady—or rather, Kal'tsit—the Pegasus in front of her was only a step away.

The sword force that burst forth instantly collided with her sword like light, and the enormous recoil traveled along the hilt into her arm, causing her movements to become slightly sluggish.

Seeing this, Gerald pursued without hesitation, his sword suddenly pressing down, the sound of it cutting through the air exploding in his ears.

The opponent's sword could only barely deflect the downward slash in the midst of the stagnation, and the blade swung back, aiming once again at his throat.

He caught a glimpse of that flash of light out of the corner of his eye, and immediately withdrew the sword in his hand. At the same time, he used the rotation of his body to raise the blade at an extremely tricky angle.

clang! !

For the first time on the battlefield, this General Felin felt suppressed.

The sword in her hand almost slipped from her grasp, but in the next moment it was gripped again. Instead, she slid to the side using the force, raising the blade from the side and slashing down cleanly and swiftly.

Then it fell into the embrace of the wind.

Kal'tsit's sword tip pierced through the colorless and invisible breeze. The force was greatly reduced the moment it penetrated the surface, and it merely grazed Gerald's chest, leaving a shallow bloodstain.

“…Wind Shield?” she murmured, her voice filled with even more doubt, and she stopped moving abruptly, standing still in place.

Gerald did not answer, but instead used the force of the wind to leap backward and create distance.

The wind is formless in nature; it is the sand on the ground that shapes it.

The crimson blood was swept up by the wind, surrounding him and protecting his body like a flowing suit of armor.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Kal’tsit raised her head slightly, revealing her cold face. “Hogel’s sword, and his Originium Arts… but he doesn’t have any offspring as old as you. His eldest child is only fifteen years old, which doesn’t match the physical characteristics you exhibit.”

Upon hearing the name, Gerald froze on the spot.

The Originium Arts beside him showed no signs of stopping, but at this moment, even though he considered it all a dream, he could not ignore the name that had just been spoken by the hooded woman.

"What if I... what if I said I was his brother?"

Even Gerald himself didn't know how to respond to the question in front of him. He regretted the casual excuse as soon as it left his mouth.

On the one hand, his face doesn't look like that of a fifteen-year-old child.

On the other hand, if you were to turn back the pages of his family tree, you would know that his ancestor was Hoger Wind Chaser, who made great contributions in battle and reclaimed the family's honor.

There are no brothers at all.

To say why-

“When I found Hogel as an infant, his family had already perished.” The person hidden in the hood uttered these earth-shattering words in a calm voice. “And I have no memory of instructing you in swordsmanship.”

"A traveler from the future."

Chapter Seven: How to Defeat a Lynx of Ancestor Level

Alright alright.

Let's get our thoughts straight. This woman in front of us not only adopted her grandfather, but she was also a ruthless leader who commanded a coalition of three nations.