Aden walked steadily down the newly laid cobblestone path, his eyes searching while a storm of thoughts swirled within. To him, the weight of this task was equal to the dilemma of his dual-cultivation or the slow erosion of his humanity.

This mission surpassed the danger of defying Saintesses or evading the gaze of unseen entities.

It required him to travel to the very depths of the market, navigate the treacherous currents of fluctuating prices, and return with the spoils of war to prepare a home-cooked meal.

Reiner and Armin had finally stirred, roused by Lorelei’s lingering influence, while Eren had regained consciousness naturally. By Aden’s count, they had been adrift in sleep for nearly a week. As a result, their metabolisms were operating at a frenzied pace, Eren, predictably, was the hungriest of them all.

Aden had already emptied the silver sacks he’d once given the boy, scouring the newly constructed shops for the most efficient calories, but it had proven insufficient. The children claimed they were satisfied, but the low, traitorous growls of their stomachs told a different story the moment the words left their lips.

He had asked Zero for a solution. His trusty encyclopedia had suggested that removing their stomachs would solve the issue of hunger permanently.

Needless to say, it was a terrible idea.

Lorelei, however, had suggested a home-cooked meal after observing them. Aden didn’t fully understand the craving, they were orphans, after all, but he decided to follow her lead. Failure here wouldn’t result in death, only a lingering sense of inadequacy.

With a heavy cloak, two gold coins, and forty-five pieces of silver, Aden ventured out. It was a fortune, more than enough to buy the purest ingredients in Grey-Rock.

‘Hey, Entity,’ Aden called out as he approached a sprawling stall overflowing with vibrant vegetables and aromatic spices.

A low, resonant hum vibrated in his skull, the Entity’s way of acknowledging him.

‘Aren’t the kids roughly the same age as me?’ Aden asked.

‘Why would I care?’ the Entity replied, its tone naturally cold. ‘The oldest creature here is barely a fully grown child in my eyes.’

Expecting nothing less, Aden sighed and stepped toward the woman running the stall. “Good day, Madam,” he said.

The woman had been bent over her wares, but at his voice, she straightened abruptly. She was a woman of modest features; her ash-black hair might have been lustrous in her youth, and her face, though now a roadmap of wrinkles, hinted at a past beauty.

She stared into his eyes for a long moment, her breath hitching. Aden let out a light cough, and the woman suddenly exhaled as if a physical weight had been lifted from her chest.

“Are you alright, Madam?” he asked, feigning ignorance of the suffocating pressure his presence exerted on those around him.

“Y—yes, I’m fine. What do you need?” she stammered, her eyes darting back to her wares with renewed, nervous intensity.

‘Are my eyes not normal anymore?’ Aden asked the Entity. ‘They should still be blue, right?’ His hands moved idly over the fresh vegetables and the vials of colorful, professional-grade spices.

‘Now is not the time for your mindless monologues,’ the Entity jabbed. ‘Focus on the task at hand and try not to fail at something as simple as feeding runts.’

Aden clicked his tongue in annoyance, a sound that escaped his lips before he could stop it. The woman’s eyebrows furrowed subtly.

“Do you… find the products not to your liking, sir?” she asked tentatively.

Aden let out a low hum of surprise. “Of course not. They’re quite fresh. And new… I suppose,” he added under his breath, thinking of Elara’s gold.

Before the woman could say anything else, he interrupted with comparably pleasant words.

“Okay. I’ve made my decision,” Aden said, his voice steady even as his mind juggled the bizarrely complex task of domesticity. “I want the crimson-root tubers, the bunch of sun-dried wild leeks, and a jar of that powdered bone-marrow.”

The woman blinked, her hands trembling slightly as she gathered the items. “A—a fine choice, sir. The tubers are fresh from the southern terraces.”

‘Crimson-roots?’ the Entity droned, its voice dripping with a new level of boredom. ‘You’ve reached the Harmonic Realm, and you are spending your focus on root vegetables. The irony is almost physically painful.’

‘I’m trying to ensure their metabolisms don’t collapse,’ Aden thought back sharply. ‘Unless you want to explain to Lorelei why the children are eating Void-infused air for dinner?’

‘Zero’s suggestion was more efficient,’ the Entity countered. ‘No stomach, no hunger. Logic is flawless.’

‘Your brain is heavily flawed, you know that right?’ Aden replied as he watched the woman place the goods in a sack bag with the Griffon-blade emblem embroidered on its surface.

‘The sooner you join us, the easier things become for you,’ the Entity replied cooly.

Aden ignored the inner chatter and watched the woman weigh the tubers. He reached into his pouch, pulling out three pieces of silver. The metal clinked softly on the wooden counter, a mundane sound that felt strangely loud in the wake of the construction workers.

“Keep the change, Madam,” Aden said, though he noticed the woman wouldn’t meet his eyes again.

As he turned to leave, his cloak swirling around his ankles, he caught his reflection in a small, polished copper basin at the edge of the stall, and his feet froze in their half-motion.

His eyes were blue, yes—but they weren’t the sky-blue of his youth. They were a piercing, crystalline sapphire that seemed to hold a faint, swirling mist behind the iris.

‘Normal?’ the Entity whispered, sensing his realization. ‘You haven’t been normal since the first drop of Resonance touched your soul, Aden. You’re just the only one who hasn’t realized the predator in the mirror yet.’

Aden pulled his hood lower, his boots clicking in a rapid, impatient rhythm against the cobblestones.

‘Quit it,’ he snapped internally. ‘I’m more human than you give me credit for. And stop making me defend my humanity every five minutes, it makes me sound edgy.’

He could almost feel the Entity’s cold breath rattling against his marrow as it let out a slow, hollow sigh.

‘Time has always been the best tutor for delusional brats like you,’ the Entity replied, its voice devoid of heat but heavy with a terrifying certainty. ‘By all means, Aden. Buy your vegetables. Cook your soup. But remember: a gilded cage is still a cage, and a predator wearing a sheep’s skin eventually gets hungry.’

Aden didn’t answer. He quickened his pace, the weight of the groceries in his arms a physical anchor against the cold, hollow emptiness the Entity tried to lure him into. He wasn’t a predator. Not today. Today, he was just a man with a grocery list and three hungry kids waiting for him.

As he made his way back, the newly paved road led him past the local Adventurers’ Guild. The building was a sprawling, sturdy bastion of timber and jagged stone, its architecture a testament to both utility and ego. Intricate carvings of slain beasts wound around the heavy oak pillars, and the iron-wrought lanterns hanging from the eaves flickered with a faint, low-grade Resonance.

A massive crowd had swamped the entrance, a sea of leather armor, clanking steel, and raised voices. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and the electric hum of agitated cultivators. Curious despite himself, Aden slowed his pace. Whatever was pinned to the central board had the entire district in a frenzy.

The press of bodies was too thick to navigate without crushing his groceries, and his patience was already wearing thin.

‘Haven’t used that skill for some time now,’ he thought, as his eyes narrowed slightly

Without a sound, the shadows beneath his boots stretched and recoiled. In a flicker of displaced air, Aden utilized Void-step. To the crowd outside, he simply ceased to exist; a heartbeat later, he materialized inside the Guild’s grand hall.

He stood near the shadow of a pillar, his cloak settling around his ankles and his bags of fresh tubers still clutched firmly in hand. The interior was cooler, smelling of old parchment and whetstones, but the atmosphere was no less tense.

He adjusted his hood, blending into the gloom of the hall, and turned his gaze toward the massive announcement board to see what had turned the city’s mercenaries into a hornet’s nest.

At the center of the room, pinned to a massive board of dark ironwood, was a parchment stamped with the Guild Master’s wax seal. It was a high-priority escort mission: The Silver-Crest Shipment.

“Ten gold pieces just for the vanguard?” a scarred man whispered, his hand trembling slightly as he reached for the notice. “The King must be desperate to get those supplies through the pass.”

“It’s not the King,” his companion hissed back. “It’s the Elcrid House. But look at the warning at the bottom. The scouts reported a heavy migration of Gloom-Creepers along the Black-Stripe gorge.”

Aden’s eyes narrowed under his hood.

Gloom-Creepers. According to what Zero had told him when he’d asked of Caspian’s origins, they were the lowest rung of filth from the Abyssal Plains, eyeless, multi-limbed scavengers that drank the Resonance straight out of a man’s meridians until he was nothing but a hollow husk.

To a Harmonic Realm cultivator like himself, they were pests, but to these adventurers, it was a clear path to death

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep