“You guys are throwing a secret party and didn’t even invite me…”
Liya stood midair with her arms crossed, looking down at Lin Yue and the others with a look of pure dissatisfaction.
The few guys who hadn’t seen this side of her before were stunned, their eyes filled with shock.
‘Whoa, impressive!’
Allen, like the girls who were already familiar with Lin Yue, didn’t react much.
The exam had been enough to completely shatter and rebuild his worldview already.
Looking at her puffed-up cheeks and the aggrieved expression that practically screamed, “So I wasn’t invited?” like she was the victim of some American-style bullying, Lin Yue couldn’t help but feel he had indeed been a bit negligent.
He really had forgotten to invite her.
Liya had been flying around the student dormitory area because she couldn’t find Lin Yue at the camp yesterday.
She held the authority to move freely within the academy, unaffected by any restrictions.
Though, truthfully, no restriction could really stop her anyway.
“Since when did you move into a new house?”
She scanned the surroundings with a look of disdain.
“When did you get so rich?”
She remembered a long time ago when Lin Yue was just a super small-fry who had to ask her for money.
She hadn’t expected him to be living in one of Avelina’s top-tier residences.
“I won this in a bet. I’m still broke.”
Although he had made quite a bit of hush-money in the back mountains, he would need massive amounts of capital if he wanted to do more in the future.
He suddenly thought of Mapeal, that rich woman.
She happened to be looking for him, talking about being a ‘community of shared destiny’…
He had thought she was joking that day in the back mountains, but after last night’s little episode, he understood something.
Simply relying on the main storyline and Allen wasn’t going to work.
To create more safeguards and to ensure this house full of rowdy people could reach a good ending, he had to do more.
People need some kind of spiritual pursuit, after all.
Sacrificing everything to achieve a goal wasn’t a method he liked.
Even if he did return to the real world, he probably wouldn’t be able to find peace for the rest of his life.
He would only put pressure on himself, constantly wondering if he hadn’t done well enough.
Charles hadn’t been wrong: he really was an ‘arrogant’ person.
He watched Airella, who was currently in a drunken stupor, and Isabena, who was messing around with her.
Besides going home, it seemed he had other things he wanted to do.
“I want a drink too…”
Liya suddenly spoke up, interrupting his thoughts.
“Drink what?”
“Barley juice…”
Minors were prohibited from drinking.
However, in this world, adulthood seemed to be at sixteen, so was Liya actually allowed to drink?
Looking at Airella, who had started acting like a drunkard after only a few drops, Lin Yue didn’t dare test Liya’s alcohol tolerance.
If she started acting out, this house might actually explode.
“Hehe… Lin Yue… hehe…”
Airella softly hugged Lin Yue’s waist and began wandering her hands all over him, squeezing hard.
“Your muscles are so firm… who did you train them for?”
“You—uff!”
Isabena hadn’t expected her to be so bold under the influence of alcohol.
She looked toward the wooden keg at the bar, a plan forming in her mind.
“Airella, Lin Yue is feeling very uncomfortable…”
Liya used her magic to lift the limp Airella into the air, then very naturally straddled Lin Yue’s shoulders herself, using him as a horse.
‘Please get off my head before you say that…’
When it came to the ability to cause trouble, Liya was a king of destruction in her own right.
Among these people, Isabena was probably the most considerate one.
After all, she was a girl raised with noble etiquette and knew how to maintain a proper distance…
“Lin Yue!”
‘Huh?’
Suddenly, Isabena, who had been standing at a distance just a moment ago, lunged into Lin Yue’s arms, tackling the top-heavy young man to the ground.
Seeing things turning sour, Liya immediately used the Laws of Space to slip away.
Lin Yue was stunned, unable to believe that Isabena would be this strange under normal circumstances… until he smelled the scent of alcohol on her as well.
He pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed.
He had almost forgotten how she acted during the incident with the Taboo Beast…
She had seemed quite ladylike and melancholy lately, but it appeared the wildness deep in her heart was truly hard to suppress.
“Why are you all just watching? Can someone please pull these two drunks and this leach off me?”
Lin Yue looked toward the protagonist’s group with a helpless face, hoping they would help him.
‘We have some history together, right? And you guys were the ones who wanted a victory party. Help a poor cook out, will you?’
“…”
Gus looked away with an air of indifference, whistling to himself.
Ewan, on the other hand, was very seriously recording something in a notebook.
In the end, it was Allen and Lillian who stepped in.
One helped Lin Yue up, while the other pulled the two girls off him and moved them to the sofa to let them sober up.
Lin Yue shook his head and habitually went to grab the barbecue tongs, forgetting the fact that they had been heating up for a while.
“Sss…” He had been burned.
Just as he was about to stick his finger in his mouth—a common sterilization method from his original world—a cold, icy sensation came from his fingertip, and the pain diminished significantly.
Lin Yue turned his head and found Isabella, who had arrived a little late.
“Miss Isabella, how have you been?”
Lillian looked at this young lady, who usually showed little emotion, with some surprise.
Since Isabella was the only other sober girl, Lillian took the opportunity to go up and exchange greetings.
“Yes…”
Isabella nodded politely, then naturally walked to Lin Yue’s side.
“Is Professor Liya here too?”
She had thought it was just a simple student gathering.
“You can just treat her like a mascot. All she knows how to do is eat.”
Isabella seemed curious about something else.
She looked at his burned finger and asked, “Why were you going to put your finger in your mouth?”
In the common logic of this world, mages and nobles rarely did such things.
Usually, the moment one was injured, recovery magic would follow a second later.
“Oh, it’s just a folk remedy from back home. They say putting a burn in your mouth immediately can disinfect it…” Lin Yue hadn’t expected this casual habit to catch her attention.
Just as he was about to turn around and get back to work, Isabella suddenly grabbed his hand.
“Is that so?”
With a look of curiosity, Isabella put Lin Yue’s finger—which still had some saliva on it—into her mouth.
Her dainty, flexible tongue wrapped around his fingertip, and she sucked on it twice with an innocent expression…
“You…”
It had to be said—sincerity was the ultimate weapon.
The two on the sofa had struggled for half the day without giving Lin Yue a single stray thought.
But Isabella’s single move had completely broken Lin Yue’s defenses, even though his skin was usually thicker than a city wall.
‘What do I do? I feel a sense of guilt, like I’ve defiled something…’
Seeing Lin Yue show an expression she had never seen before—one that could actually be called shy—she suddenly remembered what he had said during the marriage meeting.
“I see… So this is your taste?”
The words Lin Yue had once spoken and the things he had done came back like a boomerang, hitting him squarely in the head and making him feel a bit dizzy.
He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but he clearly saw a flash of a mischievous smirk on Isabella’s face, though it vanished in an instant.
[What would you like to play? I can accept anyone other than the person serving you.]
Perhaps this Isabella was actually the wildest one of them all?
“I want to try too…”
Liya, who had been observing from the side, was also curious.
After swallowing her food, she leaned in from midair and caught Lin Yue’s finger in her mouth…
…
You ask how the protagonist’s group reacted?
They were gradually starting to get used to it.
It felt similar to getting used to public nudity in Grand Blue.
…
After the bout of nonsense, night gradually fell over Avelina.
Lin Yue was actually someone who quite liked the night.
It had been the same in the real world.
For some reason, the darkness gave him an ample sense of security.
Even though his strength was now decent, he still didn’t choose to do things in a flashy manner.
Currently, the only ones who knew he was a Second-circle Mage were those few women and Charles.
Not a single person in the protagonist’s group knew.
He swirled the wine in his glass, unable to help but feel that everyone messing around together was actually quite heartwarming.
It wouldn’t be bad if this kind of daily life could continue.
This was a feeling he had never experienced in the real world.
Compared to being in the real world, he had become more like a living, breathing person.
He had a fair bit of confidence now, unlike the forced cheerfulness he had initially generated just to encourage himself.
His heart had grown quite a bit after this major incident.
This time, he had accidentally solved the Taboo Beast problem that had plagued Avelina for a long time and had led Airella toward a completely different future.
The merging of events suggested that although the original timeline had changed, it already carried a hint of being corrected.
‘If only there were some kind of divination power that would let me see the path of destiny directly.’
He wasn’t omniscient.
Analyzing things based on the current trends of the world line was definitely better than pure empiricism.
Moreover, there was still one very fatal problem that needed to be solved… his talent bottleneck.
He gripped his wine glass again, only to find it was empty.
Just as he was about to go downstairs to refill it, he felt the glass become a few ounces heavier.
He turned his head and saw that Isabella had helped him pour fresh wine.
She seemed to still have something she wanted to say to him.