"If you think that this is wise, Lone, then so be it," Sophie said as she tied her hair up into a ponytail and then began performing some basic warm-up exercises.

He smiled and nodded his head as he watched the tall human woman on the other side of the private training field mimic Sophie with some simple movements to get her blood flowing.

The person Lone had hired to help train Sophie said, "It’s always wise to fight other people when possible. While adventurers tend to fight monsters, people can be pretty monstrous too when they try.”

“As if we need to know how to fight people more than we already do,” Sophie scoffed faintly.

Lone smiled wryly. “You don't really know a good and solid sword technique that you can experiment with, let alone one that works well with your dual-wielding style. It was tough getting a trainer for you, so take advantage of this opportunity while you can. Less complaining."

“We can do as required and complain at the same time,” Sophie shrugged. "We do not have an issue with expanding our knowledge of swordsmanship, we are more worried about if you will be okay on your own without our... special abilities to rely on. Speaking of this, where shall you go while we train?"

‘She thinks I’ll get myself in trouble that requires Teleportation?’ Lone didn’t know if he should be pleased by her concern or insulted by her lack of faith in him. "You're worried about me? That's cute. I'll just be at the library."

"Very well. We suppose we shall see you in a couple of hours then?" Sophie asked with a hint of loneliness in her voice.

Lone grimaced internally. 'I’m not going off to war or something. Don’t look so pitiful, especially when I’m lying to you for your benefit.'

He suppressed the urge to tease her a bit since that would be inappropriate with another person present, instead, Lone smiled charmingly and then replied, "Sure, seeya in a couple hours."

Now wearing a trench coat to his hide tails as best as he could by wrapping them around his body, making him look exceedingly overweight, Lone entered an official government-run building that he knew was a real estate agency.

'This feels so uncomfortable,' he thought. He was even wearing a scarf to hide his thin and handsome face.

Why was he doing this? Well, he figured it'd be easier to pass off as a suspicious human rather than a stupidly rare race of foxkin that was acting independently of his ‘master’.

If a bit of discomfort and sweating was all he needed to do to avoid being discriminated against, so be it.

Thankfully, there wasn't a line, and though the staff looked at him oddly initially, when he explained that he had a skin condition and began flashing his money around, he was very quickly treated like a king.

At the cost of a large portion of his saved-up gold, Lone was able to purchase a secluded wooden house that bordered the residential district and the river that ran through the city separating the slums from the rest of the districts.

As it turned out, owning land was an incredibly difficult thing to do. The crown owned over 70% of the buildings in the capital while the nobles owned another 25%. Only a rough 5% was privately owned, making each purchase of property an exchange of several gold coins or more.

Without any hesitation, Lone went to his new property and immediately discarded his disguise once he was inside. "Fuck me, that was uncomfortable... I'm literally drenched in sweat..."

His clothes stuck to his body and he felt as gross as he did whenever he used to sit at his computer for 12 hours at a time or longer.

He sighed heavily and then spent the next couple of minutes locating the basement. It only took so long because the hatch leading down was covered by a rug which had some wooden boxes stacked atop it.

One down in the cellar, Lone set up some lamps and two wooden autopsy tables. He would have made steel ones if doing so wouldn't risk knocking himself unconscious and depriving him of his MP for several hours or perhaps even longer.

"I guess I need to fill the room with ice, right? It'll suck if the bodies up and rot before I know what I need to know. Well, here goes nothing..." With that, Lone took out his self-created book on eyes and then his first experimental subject.

He then created several massive slabs of ice and immediately got to work experimenting with the eyeballs of the corpse that lay before him while he referenced his book.

The host has developed the passive skill: Cold Resistance. Passive Skill: Cold Resistance

A skill that helps protect the host from the cold.

Reduces the negative effects of cold temperatures that the host experiences by 5%.

Cost: N/A Mastery: Beginner Level 1 The host has developed the passive skill: Nausea Resistance. Passive Skill: Nausea Resistance

A skill that helps protect the host from nausea.

Reduces the chances that the host will experience nausea in a nauseous situation by 5%.

Cost: N/A Mastery: Beginner Level 1

Lone sighed deeply in disappointment at himself. It had only been 30 minutes before he felt forced to stop.

Luckily, he'd gained two skills that would make it easier in the future, but for now, just cutting the eyeballs without damaging them and without wanting to throw up all over the place was a difficult enough task as it was, let alone actually trying to learn anything.

The fear in the eyes of the men that he had killed... it chilled Lone to his very core and made him think things that were perhaps left unthought.

He quickly stored the ice and what of it that had melted along with the corpse that he had been working with, though he left the now-burnt-out lamps as well as the slightly bloodied autopsy table.

Following that, Lone went back upstairs and then threw his suspicious disguise back on before leaving the house.

Every few steps that he took on his way back to where Sophie was training left Lone reflecting unintentionally.

Lone had never been a religious man, but he had no doubts in his mind that what he had just done was incomprehensibly sinful. 'I thought I was stronger than this... It's for her sake so I just need to move past this... regret. The ends justify the means, right?'

To help distract himself, he thought about his two newly acquired skills; Cold Resistance and Nausea Resistance.

'You'd think that I'd have gotten that nausea skill from hearing my body repair itself or from smelling my own burning body or from being covered in my own blood and goblin blood, right? Maybe mindset matters more than I first assumed when it comes to skill acquisition and levelling,' he wondered, all the while with a frown hidden under his scarf.

Lone then silently walked through the streets of Ranton with a gloomy aura surrounding him.

Sophie panted as she felt the steel pressing against her throat.

"You're too stiff. With such a petite frame, I'd have assumed you'd be faster than that. Or nimbler, at least. How do you ever expect to hit your opponent with even one of your swords when you move like that?" Sophie's instructor asked before she removed the blade that was pressed up against the girl's neck.

Sophie stared at the woman's two strangely designed swords that resembled the wings of a butterfly before she got up and dusted herself off. "We apologise. We have never been formally trained before and have simply had to learn as we fought."

"I can tell," her instructor replied. "My school of swordsmanship also doubles as a martial arts school that's centred around self-defence, I told you that, didn't I? Yet I'm still able to easily overpower you on an offensive front. Most if not all people you fight will beat you in pure strength, both physically and stat-wise. You need to overcome that with skill."

The woman picked up a towel that was on a bench in the courtyard and then tossed it to Sophie. "Wipe yourself down. We're done here for today. You need far stronger leg strength and a lot more flexibility in your arms if you wish to learn from me. Starting tomorrow, I will exclusively be helping you build up those things. We'll discuss swordsmanship when you've got a basic understanding of the martial arts front first."

Sophie nodded. "We understand."

She was a snappy and strong-willing person, but she knew that her instructor was absolutely correct.

Sophie had already learned a great deal and even gained a single level-up in her Dual-wielding Mastery just from the two hours that they'd been sparring, so arguing now would only be counterintuitive since she had all of the evidence she needed to know that her instructor knew exactly what she was talking about.

‘We suppose that fool did not waste his money. Centuries of experience mean little in the face of actual training,’ Sophie reflected.

"Pardon our rudeness for asking, but what is the name of this martial arts style of yours?" Sophie asked as she began wiping her sweat away.

"Hmm?" Surprised by this, the instructor replied, "Most students only want to get stronger. It's rare to find someone actually interested in the art's name. Not that we get many students anyway since dual-wielding is rare. It's called 'Wing Chun'. It actually originated from a summoned hero who hailed from a place known as 'China'."

Sophie was shocked by this. She’d heard of this ‘China’ place from Lone before in passing when he spoke of their shared home world.

She kept her face stoic as she replied, "From a hero? That's incredible. Why do more people not learn this martial art then? We are incredibly surprised that you accepted so little money to teach it to us."

The woman shrugged. "It's less than 200-years-old. People don't have much faith in such a young school of fighting. Anyway, it looks like your slave has returned. Be here tomorrow at the same time. If you feel up for it, tonight, find a set of stairs and try to run up and down them at least 20 times without stopping. That'll be a good start to building up your leg muscles."

Sophie nodded politely as she watched her instructor leave. Once the woman was gone, she turned to Lone and asked, "Have fun at the library, did you?"

Lone didn't answer. Instead, he wrapped his arms around the girl and hugged her tightly. He pressed his face against her neck and closed his eyes.

Sophie was, needless to say, both embarrassed and confused. "Are you okay, Lone?"

"I'm fine," he muttered in response. Pulling away briefly to kiss her and then return to smothering his face with her shoulder, he added, "I just missed you."

‘And here we were thinking we were the clingy one...’ Sophie's face turned bright red. "Is that so...? We missed you as well."

"Let's go home," Lone said flatly. "I'm exhausted."

"From reading books?" Sophie questioned teasingly as she finally responded to Lone's hug by wrapped her arms around his back in kind.

She suspected that his claims of reading were perhaps not entirely true, but she couldn’t smell another woman on him nor were there any suspicious magical traces lingering upon his golden sheen.

That being the case, she didn’t really care what it was he was really doing. If he wanted to keep his activities secret, however, then pry she would not.

"Haha... Yeah, something like that," Lone replied with a weak laugh.

"George, I'm telling you, I have contacts here. Even if I rarely get to leave Ros thanks to my father, I still get to meet some very interesting people. After this whole demi nonsense is behind me, please, come with me to experience the... finer aspects of Ranton, free from the eyes of the church or the crown," Bastion requested of the lanky boy that was walking alongside him.

George Leston the Third, son of Duke George Leston the Second, smiled wryly. "Um, you know I'm not comfortable doing... shady things."

"Please, we're nobility, George, nobility. You? You're even the son of a duke! Only His Royal Majesty or the crown prince are above you in authority. What's a little bit of fun every now and then? I even hear that Duke Malik's daughter is interested in a less... standard nightlife experience. You wouldn't want to see her being taken advantage of if she explored such a thing on her own, now would you? With your power, you could easily invite her out to show her how to properly enjoy herself without risk of unwanted dangers," Bastion temptingly offered.

"E-Emma is interested in such things? In that case... I... I'll consider it," George tentatively replied.

At that moment, Bastion's guard, the C-ranked steel-plate adventurer Ceela opened her mouth. "Young lord, we have arrived."

"This place?" Bastion asked in disgust as he glanced at the wooden structure in front of him that only had three floors and a simple sign hanging above its door that read 'Amberbark Inn'. "What on Altros is a fellow noble doing staying in a place like this?"

"I think it's kind of quaint," George said as he scratched his cheek with his index finger.

Bastion scoffed. "I suppose it could be viewed like that. Anyway, let's get this over with. The sooner, the better."

He shoved open the door and confidently strode right through the reception, only stopping in front of the desk that had a commoner girl sitting behind it.

"Hi! Can I help you?" she excitedly asked.

Bastion scowled in displeasure. "We seek the girl who owns the Golden Foxkin. We have come to talk to her. Bring us to them or have them presented to us."

He usually didn't like using the formal speech of the nobility, but he could hardly allow himself to speak casually towards a peasant that he didn't directly own, now could he? He could at least do this much to uphold the dignity of the Griffset family name.

"Ah, Lone and Sophie?" Grella asked. "I'll go tell them you’re looking for them now. They sure are popular, huh?" With that casual remark, she quickly got to her feet and then clambered up the stairs at the side of the room.

"What a rude commoner. I should have her tongue cut out for not speaking to me like the nobleman that I am," Bastion complained.

George laughed awkwardly. "That's a bit archaic, isn't it?"

Bastion tilted his head. "No? Father does it all the time. The only exception being fellow noblemen or adventurers since the guild protects them."

"I-I see..." George scratched his head and smiled as best as he could.

The boy was too soft for Bastion’s liking but his power was nothing to be scoffed at so put up with his naivety he would.