They walked through the dimly lit streets of Astelvern Town with the heavy scent of roasted meat and spilled ale fading the further they moved from the tavern district.

The cobblestone paths here were uneven, bathed in the pale silvery glow of the moon overhead.

Ren walked casually with both hands loosely clasped behind his back. He looked entirely at ease, like a man taking a midnight stroll through his own private gardens.

Beside him, Eternia was the exact opposite.

Her golden, slit-pupil eyes darted relentlessly from the dark mouth of one alleyway to the next. Her body was coiled tight and her footwork deliberately silent.

Every time a stray cat knocked over a bucket or the wind rattled a loose wooden shutter, her hand twitched instinctively toward her hip where a weapon should have been.

Ren glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Why the hell are you so vigilant?"

Eternia didn’t break her visual sweep of the rooftops.

"I am making sure no bad people approach us, Master. The shadows in this part of town are dense. It is a prime environment for an ambush."

Ren let out a low chuckle.

’Since when did this woman get so protective?’

It was an amusing shift in dynamic. Just a few days ago, she had been a slave looking for an excuse to bite his hand off. Now, she was acting like his personal secret service.

"Relax," Ren said. "It’s not like anyone in these slums would actually be able to harm me."

It was a simple fact. Sure, there were the usual groups of desperate bandits and low-level cutthroats roaming the darkness.. Astelvern was an adventurer town, which meant there was always a surplus of armed thugs looking for an easy score.

But honestly, Ren couldn’t be bothered to care. With his mana capacity and his perfected techniques, any common street thug trying to mug him was basically committing assisted suicide.

All he wanted to do right now was fulfill her request, get her geared up, and get back to the inn to study his new spell scrolls.

"So," Ren asked, not breaking his leisurely stride. "Where do you want to go first? A clothing shop, or the blacksmith?"

Eternia paused with her steps slowing for a fraction of a second as she considered the options. "I want to go to the clothing shop first, Master. To get some proper clothes that I can wear."

Ren nodded.

It made sense.

The only pair of clothes she currently owned were the simple, durable linens he had bought her the day they had arrived in Astelvern.

After she did a thousand slashes for the first time, Ren had simply handed her a towel, bought her a clean set of clothes and fed her a luxurious meal.

That was probably the exact moment her psychology had fractured and rebuilt itself around him. He rewarded absolute obedience and hard work with tangible high-value rewards.

It was a conditioning loop that was currently forging her into a fanatically loyal blade and now, Eternia specifically wanted her Master to handpick the rest of her wardrobe.

They soon arrived at the commercial district.

Even at this hour, a few high-end shops catering to flush adventurers remained open. Ren pushed open the heavy glass door of a boutique with a small silver bell chiming overhead.

The interior was warm, smelling of lavender and expensive dyes. Racks of fine silk, durable monster-hide leather, and enchanted cotton lined the polished wooden walls.

A middle-aged receptionist sitting behind a glass counter looked up.

Her eyes immediately scanned Ren’s commoner look then flicked over to the demi-human Snakekin trailing behind him.

"Welcome," the receptionist said, her tone perfectly polite but lacking any actual warmth. "May I help you?"

"She needs clothes..." Ren stated plainly, gesturing to Eternia. "Field wear, and a few casual sets."

Eternia stepped forward, her golden eyes widening slightly at the sheer volume of pristine fabrics. She had spent most of her life in dirty rags inside a slaver’s cage... To be told she could just pick things off the rack was completely alien to her.

She carefully pulled a few items from the hangers.

A dark dress that wouldn’t restrict her movement, a pair of reinforced casual shirts, and some thick, high-mobility trousers designed for demi-humans who needed to accommodate transmutations.

The receptionist watched her gather the bundle.

"If you intend to purchase those, the fitting rooms are in the back. You may try them out to ensure the tailoring is correct."

Eternia looked to Ren for permission and he gave a slight nod.

She hurried into the small, curtained room in the back. Inside, surrounded by full-length mirrors, Eternia stripped off her old, sweat-stained linens.

She looked at her reflection. Her skin was still pale, and faint scars from the slaver’s whip still crisscrossed her back, but her muscles were visibly filling out thanks to the high-quality food Ren provided.

She pulled on the new dark trousers and one of the crisp black casual shirts. She adjusted the collar, trying to make herself look as presentable... as good as possible.

As she stared at her reflection, confusion surfaced in her mind.

’Why hasn’t he... touched me?’ Eternia thought with her brow furrowing.

Most of the masters she had observed while locked in the slave pens, the fat nobles and the cruel merchants, had bought demi-human girls for one specific reason.

They wanted to do the deed... They wanted to use them until they broke, discard them, and buy another.

When Ren had purchased her, she had resigned herself to that repeating fate, even if you couldn’t force a slave to do sexual stuff, you could traumatize them but he didn’t seem interested in her body at all.

He didn’t look at her with that disgusting lust she was so used to seeing in human men. He looked at her like a piece of sharpened steel.

He demanded competence... He demanded strength... and when she provided it, he gave her gold and praise.

It was terrifyingly cold, yet undeniably pure. She didn’t have to sell her dignity; she only had to sell her violence and for that, she would gladly bleed for him.

Eternia stepped out of the fitting room. She stood before Ren, nervously pulling at the hem of the black shirt.

"Master?" she asked quietly. "Is this acceptable?"

Ren leaned against a wooden pillar with his eyes dragging up and down her frame.

He wasn’t assessing her curves; he was assessing how it fit her.

It works," Ren said with a yawn. "The dark colors won’t show blood stains easily, and the cut doesn’t restrict your hips. Take the other sets in the same size."

Eternia beamed with a rare genuine smile breaking across her face. "Yes, Master!"

They walked up to the counter. The receptionist began tallying the cost with a smug look in her eye as the price climbed. "That will be three silver and fifty copper coins."

Ren didn’t move.

Instead, Eternia reached into her pocket.

She pulled out the pure gold coin Ren had flicked to her in the backyard earlier that night. She slapped the solid gold onto the glass counter with a heavy clack.

The receptionist’s eyes nearly bulged out of her skull. A single gold coin was worth one hundred silver. It was a staggering amount of money for a pair of commoners to be throwing around.

Her entire condescending demeanor shattered instantly, replaced by wide-eyed panic as she frantically scrambled to the lockbox to find enough silver to provide change.

Eternia pocketed the massive pile of silver coins, carrying the wrapped bundle of clothes with a deep swelling sense of pride. She had paid for her own clothes with the money she had earned through her own skill.

They stepped back out into the cool night air.

"The Smithy is just up ahead..." Ren noted, pointing down the street where the rhythmic ringing of a hammer striking an anvil echoed through the alleyways.

They walked into the open-air forge.

The heat hit them instantly, radiating from a massive brick kiln. A burly, soot-stained dwarf with a thick braided beard was hammering away at a glowing slab of steel. He paused as they entered, wiping his brow with a dirty rag.

"The weapons are on the left and the armor on the right," the blacksmith grunted with his voice sounding like grinding stones. "Don’t touch the blades unless you’re buying. Oil ruins the finish."

Eternia walked over to the racks.

She was completely overwhelmed. There were hundreds of weapons. Heavy broadswords, rapiers, axes, maces... She picked up a standard longsword, testing the weight, then looked back at Ren with a pleading expression.

"Master, your input?" she asked.

Ren walked over, shaking his head. He reached out and snatched the longsword from her grip, tossing it back onto the rack.

"This weapon is too heavy," Ren said. "Your strength is in burst momentum and angular strikes, not raw clashing. You need high-carbon steel, slightly curved, single-edged... Something that cuts fast and deep."

He walked down the rack, his eyes scanning the metal. The original Ren had been crazy about sword types so there was no issue here.

He stopped, pulling two identical sleek slightly curved blades from the back of the rack. The metal was dark, folded multiple times to increase durability.

"These... They hold an edge better and won’t shatter when you hit a Floor 60 monster’s carapace."

Ren then moved to the armor section.

He completely bypassed the heavy steel plates and chainmail, picking out two sets of high-grade, reinforced leather armor embedded with minor mana-conduction runes.

"This is light armor. You rely on your snake half for heavy defense and impact so this will keep your human torso agile."

Eternia eagerly nodded to everything he said. She grabbed the two sets of armor and the two swords and now she stood there in the middle of the forge with her arms completely wrapped around the massive pile of leather and steel, struggling to keep it from toppling over.

The hilts of the swords were awkwardly jutting out near her chin, and she looked like an over-encumbered pack mule.

Ren stared at her with a long sigh as pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You look dumb," Ren said bluntly.

Eternia flinched with her ears drooping. "I-I can carry it, Master! I promise!"

"I’m not having my Vanguard waddle around looking like an unprepared traveling merchant," Ren muttered.

He walked over to the blacksmith’s main counter. He simply pulled a small velvet pouch from his coat, dumped several silver coins onto the anvil, and pointed to a glass display case embedded in the wall.

"Give me the low-tier spatial ring..." Ren demanded.

The blacksmith’s eyes widened at the silver. He immediately unlocked the case, pulling out a simple, unadorned silver band holding a small dull gemstone.

It only had about four cubic meters of internal storage which was a mid-tier artifact by Ren’s noble standards, but an absolute treasure for a common adventurer.

Ren walked back over to Eternia.

He picked up one of her hands, the one precariously balancing the swords, and slid the silver ring onto her index finger.

"Channel your mana into the stone and think about the items," Ren instructed.

Eternia blinked.

She pushed a fraction of her aura into the ring and instantly, the massive pile of armor and weapons in her arms vanished, sucked into the pocket dimension of the ring as her arms were suddenly empty.

She stared at the ring on her finger, her breath catching in her throat. This was a spatial ring.

She dropped to one knee right there in the soot-covered forge. "Master... I will cherish this with my life. I swear it."

"Just don’t lose it," Ren said, turning back to the table. "Come pay for your stuff and let’s go. I want to read my scrolls before dawn."

They left the forge soon, heading back toward the inn. The streets had grown completely desolate with the moon dipping lower behind the towering spires of the Astelvern Guild Hall.

They took a shortcut through a narrow winding alleyway flanked by towering brick walls as the only sound was the clicking of Ren’s boots on the stone.

Suddenly, a shadow detached itself from the wall directly in front of them then another behind them and two more dropping down from the low rooftops.

They were boxed in.

Five men, all wearing mismatched, grimy leather armor and holding jagged, poorly maintained weapons. The stench of cheap alcohol and unwashed bodies immediately flooded the narrow space.

The man blocking their path forward, a burly, scarred thug holding a rusted cleaver stepped into the moonlight and he sneered, revealing a row of rotting teeth.

"Well, well," the burly leader rasped, his eyes dragging hungrily over Eternia’s clothes and the spatial ring gleaming on her finger. "Look what the dungeon spat out... A fancy little boy playing dress-up, and a very pretty pet."

He leveled the cleaver at Ren’s chest.

"Here’s how this goes, boy. Surrender the woman. We want to have a fun time with her tonight. Then, drop all your wealth, the ring, everything in your pockets. Do that, and if you’re a good boy, we might just return her to you in the morning. A little bruised, maybe, but breathing."

Ren didn’t reach for a weapon and he didn’t tense his muscles. He didn’t even drop his hands from behind his back.

He just tilted his head up toward the starry sky and let out a long, exhausted sigh. He slowly ran a hand down his face as the annoyance radiated off him in waves.

"Fucking bandits..." Ren muttered, thoroughly bored.

"Oi!" one of the thugs leaning against the wall chimed in. He had a thick, heavily exaggerated gutter-accent, completely butchering the local dialect. "We ain’t bandits, mate! We are opportunists, yeah? Just collectin’ the late-night toll from the local wankers."

Ren didn’t even look at the man as beside him, the air temperature plummeted.

Eternia hadn’t moved, but her golden eyes had dilated until the slit-pupils were practically invisible. A suffocating, predatory aura began to leak from her pores.

The casual, eager-to-please girl from the boutique was completely gone.

"Master," Eternia whispered. "Do I have the permission to kill?"

Ren finally lowered his hand. He looked at the burly leader and sighed.

"Sure," Ren said casually.

The burly bandit leader barked a harsh laugh, raising his cleaver.

"That’s cu—"

BOOM!

The cobblestones beneath Eternia’s boots exploded into dust and shrapnel.

She blurred directly into the space right in front of the leader’s face before the man’s brain could even process that she had moved.

With a flash of silver light, one of the newly purchased curved swords materialized from her spatial ring directly into her grip but she didn’t swing it.

Eternia drove the point of the high-carbon steel straight down into the exact dead center of the bandit leader’s skull.

The blade pierced the bone with a sickening crunch.

Using her terrifying downward momentum, she ripped the blade violently through his head, down his neck, and straight through his sternum.

Blood erupted in a geyser of crimson pressure.

The bandit leader’s body, perfectly bisected from the crown of his head down to his navel, peeled apart. His internal organs spilled out onto the cobblestones in a wet, steaming pile of viscera as the two halves of his body collapsed heavily to the sides.

It was a perfectly mirrored execution... The exact same horrific injury the Hero Jace had suffered hours ago.

The remaining four ’opportunists’ froze.

The arrogant grins melted off their faces, replaced by paralyzing terror. They stared at the bisected remains of their leader with the blood rapidly pooling around their boots.

Eternia stood slowly from her crouched position amidst the gore. She didn’t bother wiping the blood splattered across her cheek.

She turned around to face the remaining four men as her golden eyes narrowed into thin lethal slits.

"You..." Eternia promised. "All will die today."