"You're in pretty good spirits."
After waiting and not getting the reaction he'd braced for, Leon gave a faint compliment.
But it's also possible they were red-faced with anger, held back only by some restriction from acting.
Oh well.
Leon returned the repaired mechanical bird to its place, walking openly under surveillance.
Whether his whereabouts were exposed didn't matter.
If the Stellaron Hunters could track the Express crew through their script or other means, hiding made no difference.
As for getting Aha to help conceal him?
Forget it.
Aside from the Pity power that could never be easily revealed, only a fool would rely on Aha for other tasks.
Besides, he was here to help the Luofu—why skulk like a rat?
After walking a bit, Leon entered one of Cloudford's cargo lanes.
"Hundreds of goods flow, rare treasures weave clouds. Welcome to Cloudford Transport Port. Wishing you pleasant work."
Huh?
No identity verification?
"Detected: you lack a pass and are unaccompanied by authorized personnel."
"Please leave within ten seconds, or you will face an imaginary pulse…"
Bang!
Leon kicked the circuit detection system, short-circuiting it.
Must be Aha's doing.
An imaginary pulse? Who's that supposed to scare?
The noise was loud, stirring other disturbances.
Seeing seven or eight figures dart out from the cargo's nooks and crannies, charging at him, Leon fell into thought.
"Mara-struck…"
"So many Mara-struck here—there must be more elsewhere. The chaos the Stellaron brought to the Luofu is worse than imagined."
"No one from the Ten-Lords Commission to handle it, no Cloud Knights either. Short on manpower…?"
A packet of white powder suddenly burst in the air, carried by a gust, evenly sprinkling over the Mara-struck.
The Mara-struck touched by the powder stiffened instantly, collapsing to the ground, unable to rise.
Leon knelt, searching their bodies briefly.
Soon, he found identical identification items.
"…Cloud Knight badges."
"It's unlikely the Cloud Knights all turned Mara-struck en masse. They must've been triggered by some unknown means."
"Though the energy within a Stellaron is terrifying, it doesn't directly induce Mara. Strange…"
Returning the badges to their owners, Leon shook his head slightly and moved on.
He didn't take them to make it easier for locals to handle the Mara-struck later.
The Mara-struck that attacked him weren't fully dead, just incapacitated for at least three days.
If no one came to clean up in three days, whatever the recovered Mara-struck did was none of his concern.
Along the way, he saw many damaged cargo crates and scattered books.
Leon casually picked one up with a gesture.
One glance, and he nearly lost it.
[I Have Ten Uncles, So I Eat Dumplings Every Day.]
If he understood correctly, it had a bit of a fortune-teller vibe.
Author: Umekawa Uchiku.
Publisher: Edo Star.
Oh, that's fine then.
Tossing the physical book back, he picked up another.
[Reborn as a Foreign Princess, My Former Brother Falls for Me.]
Not bad either.
Next one.
[Accidentally Eating My Senpai's Love-Juice Donut, She Awakens Her Yandere Side.]
Love-juice… donut?
Wow.
[The Strongest Paladin's Restarted Life: I Seek Revenge on Bad Men!]
[My Wife Was Taken, So I Cut Off Three Ounces Below and Ascended to Godhood!]
"…"
"Can Xianzhou people actually read these novels…?"
Having roamed the galaxy for years, Leon wasn't fazed by such sights.
At most, he'd sigh that the Luofu was truly free.
He understood that long-lived species, after centuries, lost interest in most things.
The more abnormal something was, the more it brought novelty.
The longer they lived, the more some developed eccentric tastes.
Green-hair fetishes, spouse-swapping, or same-sex preferences were relatively normal.
The abnormal was human with non-human…
And not even humanoid subspecies. Though rare, in a big forest, there'd always be a few odd birds.
This was especially common among the Vidyadhara-dominated Fanghu.
Dragons are lustful by nature.
Vidyadhara couldn't reproduce but still had desires and sought partners.
The above novels weren't rare on Fanghu, openly sold.
Didn't expect the Luofu to have them too.
So this batch of books was mostly eccentric literature?
Leon picked up one last book, his playful mindset finally reining in.
Finally, a normal one.
[Told to Be a Popular Game Character, Yet You Make Players Cry in Pain?]
Leon rubbed his chin, sinking into thought.
He'd experienced it firsthand.
Flipping open the book, he used the most mood-killing quantum reading method, finishing it instantly.
Why not…
Learn from it?
When a character dies tragically in the plot, unless they're a random NPC, it triggers varying degrees of emotional breakdowns in players.
But if he died on the Luofu, this life would end.
Dying so soon after starting was obviously too early.
"System."
[Your kid's here.]
Unless something special happened, the system didn't pop up for attention, unlike Aha.
But call it, and it'd respond instantly.
"Never asked you—how many worlds see me as a game character?"
[By incomplete count, over 79.88 million, mostly planetary civilizations, and the number's still growing.]
Planetary civilizations were backward, not yet venturing beyond their star systems.
Beyond that was interstellar civilization.
"More than I expected."
[What's Host… er, Daddy planning?]
Leon glanced at the string of numbers he'd collected this life.
Should be about enough.
"If I'm near death on the Luofu, use faith to restore my power early and activate my clan's Nirvana Secret Art."
[No!]
[Sky Haven Nirvana requires endless Path energy to catalyze, but you're the last of the Sky Haven Clan!]
[Though the Elation Aeon favors you, they can't be trusted or relied on!]
"There's still Trailblaze."
[…Trailblaze? With just the Astral Express, it'd take a thousand years…]
[You can't forget, though you're a game character to parallel-world players,]
[everything you experience in this world is absolutely real!]
[A thousand years is worse than embracing death and entering a new cycle.]
[If you sleep for a millennium, the Sky Haven Clan's causal sequence in the sequence space might vanish entirely.]
[Unless the universe restarts, there'd be no chance of return.]
"No rush, System."
Leon was quite calm.
"Just a hypothetical. I'm not guaranteed to be near death. You know who I am."
"Without some certainty, I wouldn't jump into a near-death trap."
[…Your kid understands!]
Leon smiled.
"To the mastermind stirring chaos on the Luofu, I hope you're playing big enough…"
Otherwise, this knife won't cut.