By Zephyria 
“It should be around here….”
Holding the Coordinate System, Leonardo looked around, strolling through an old brick plaza. He had entered a small city on a hillside where a derelict harbor was visible between rows of closely packed houses. It was too large to be called a village, yet too quiet to be considered a prosperous town. It was one of the representative old ports in the northeastern region of Laina Rogia.
In the past, this place had drawn attention as a region where fish species from all five major seas scattered across the world were caught. It had even gained fame in academic circles for the appearance of rare species found nowhere else. Thanks to this, the fishing and aquaculture industries grew explosively, and its reputation became so great that it rivaled the first port of the Agrigento Territory, located to the south.
However, that brilliant glory was now a thing of the past. The environment surrounding Leonardo was quite different from the rumors of a few years ago.
While symbolic monuments of the old city and densely packed shopping streets could still be found, the vitality usually associated with crowded areas was missing. Broken windows, dust-covered stalls, and abandoned fishing nets signaled a faded era of prosperity.
This was due to the unusually rapid tectonic shifts in the region, which caused the ecosystem of the waters in front of the port to change abruptly at some point. Marine life abandoned their habitats, and naturally, the fishing industry declined. Ships that were once always full now barely filled half their holds, like nets riddled with holes.
Furthermore, the constantly shifting positions of reefs and the magnetite rising from the gaps in the twisted tectonic plates neutralized the compasses of ships returning from voyages. Unpredictable underwater threats and disrupted magnetic fields sank ships silently, and the port gradually lost its function. It was the rise and fall of a city in less than thirty years.
“I heard the main event starts soon?”
“I heard the next stadium isn’t far from here; I kind of want to check it out.”
“They say you’re a fool if you don’t bet these days.”
Only the decent appearance of the main street, where some people still walked, offered a glimpse of past glory. While it might be a pitiful situation for some, for Leonardo, who had come here, it was a land of opportunity.
Leaving behind the people chatting while reading newspapers, he crossed the plaza and suddenly stopped in his tracks.
“Oh—”
Pushing up the brim of his hat slightly, Leonardo looked alternately at both his hands. On the hand opposite the one holding the Coordinate System, a silver chain with a thick ring attached was looped around his finger. It was the token of a comrade, received previously in Celestia as a promise to reunite.
The ring, which had been swaying with Leonardo’s steps, suddenly exhibited a strange phenomenon.
To be precise, it floated tautly in the air as if being pulled by an unknown force. Gold Eyes watched the scene quietly.
With every minute movement that shifted its position, the ring repeatedly drifted back and forth, like the needle of a lost compass.
Delicate engravings stood out on the surface of the ring, and the owner’s name was carved inside.
‘NERO’
As he looked closely at the letters, a faint light leaked along their outlines.
It was a signal that the owner of the ring was nearby. Immediately snatching the floating ring from the air, Leonardo hung the chain around his neck and busily scanned the surroundings. Before long, as if a passing cloud had blocked the sun, a dark shadow momentarily fell over him.
Leonardo instinctively looked up.
His pupils contracted slightly as he captured something.
“Ugh, so boring…. There are no handsome people here, and no babies that catch my eye….”
“You say nothing catches your eye, then what are all those things piled up behind you?”
“Since there was no best option, I just filled up with second-best alternatives. And how is that ‘a pile’? It’s not even a quarter of what I usually get.”
Taylor, dangling the tip of her pointed pumps, leaned one arm over the rim of the hot air balloon’s basket. She rested her chin on it, holding a coffee cup stained with lipstick in one hand. At her feet, shopping items—swept up like a rite of passage every time she visited a city—were neatly stacked.
Lowering her glamorous eyelashes, Taylor complained to her errand boy with a bored expression.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen them, so I wanted to look pretty, but don’t I look too plain?”
She asked in an uncharacteristically insecure tone, scanning her own outfit. Despite that, her attire was anything but plain: from a belt that commanded attention like a champion’s belt to blue jeans—tailored tight to the body, far ahead of the era—worn by miners. A small piece of cloth that barely covered her chest in an indecent manner each asserted its own presence.
At the very least, the wide-fitting brown leather jacket she wore over her upper body protected the eyesight of the two men who were awkwardly averting their gaze.
“Huh, did I get the word wrong… the concept of ‘plain’ is dead in this world.”
A man lying on the floor with his feet resting on a chair mumbled in a husky voice. It was Finder, the owner of the leather jacket Taylor was wearing. With his hands clasped behind his head and eyes closed, he looked perfectly relaxed, basking in the sunlight pouring down from above.
At the sudden interruption, Taylor’s transparent, water-blue eyes shifted.
Along with them, the lapis lazuli earrings shaped like triangles decorating her ears trembled.
“Just go back to sleep.”
The sharp tip of her shoe, like a blade, poked and threatened the nape of Finder’s neck. Pushing her away casually with two fingers, Finder replied without even looking.
“I was sleeping, but I woke up because you guys were chatting. Hey, kid, don’t drop the scope this time, okay? That thing is more expensive than your life.”
“Ah, senior. How many times are you going to bring that up? And do you even know how much my life is worth?”
Nero, who had been scanning the area below the balloon with a telescope, suddenly protested as if it were unfair that the turn had passed to him. He had already paid back for the scope he accidentally broke last time. Regardless, Finder, perhaps needing someone to shift the topic to, responded with a long yawn.
“Haaam… I’m just warning you in advance. And one thing’s for sure: it’s more expensive than your salary.”
“Tch.”
Nero’s stubborn eyebrows twitched. Today, he wasn’t wearing another’s Guise as he did when visiting league stadiums, but was revealing his original face, highlighting the vigor and freshness of his age. He had told Taylor, who intended to go with stage makeup, not to overdo it, but he too couldn’t help but be excited for the meeting, waking up at dawn to scrub thoroughly behind his ears.
He had even applied hair gel to sweep back his red hair and wore the casual clothes he had purchased recently for the first time. He pretended to be mature, telling the two seniors who came with him that he needed to look ordinary, but in reality, Nero was more excited than anyone.
As he placed the sniper scope to his eye again to scan the nearby Gate, Taylor asked impatiently.
“But when is the Captain coming? Did he say he was coming today? Are you sure?”
She was bored from floating in the sky for several hours. Nero took out a note he had kept in his pocket, handed it to her, and replied.
“I told you, he’s coming. He left this for me before we parted in Celestia. He said let’s meet in Beneportu on the second full moon of the coming new year. He said we should meet for a mid-term check.”
“Hmm….”
“If he’s not seen during the day, he’ll come at night. Today is the full moon.”
“You want us to wait here until night? Are you crazy? Can’t you hear my skin screaming right now? And that was months ago; what if something happened and he can’t come? Have you contacted him recently?”
“The Captain said he’d contact us separately through a Divine Beast if that happened, but none of us have received anything like that here.”
“Of course not. He’s usually unreachable anyway.”
Taylor looked at the handwriting on the note and curled her purple-painted lips sneeringly.
“Anyway, just wait until he shows up. I’m going to tie his arms and legs to the bed so he can’t move and kiss him all over his— huh?”
As she was about to utter a terrifying statement, her eyelids lifted. Her gaze was directed somewhere toward the panoramic view of Beneportu spread out outside the balloon. The coffee cup, now empty, slowly lowered.
When the talkative woman suddenly focused on something, Nero, who was adjusting the telescope, and Finder, who was about to fall into a deep sleep, slowly opened one eye.
“What is it?”
Nero craned his neck, leaning closer to Taylor, and asked tentatively.
“Is there something?”
“Over there.”
Taylor’s fingertip pointed somewhere. However, because they had flown the balloon so high to avoid being noticed, it was impossible to identify with Nero’s naked eye. While he hurriedly looked through the telescope, Finder, noticing the vibe, raised his upper body from between the crumpled paper bags.
Rubbing his messy hair at the back, he snatched the scope from Nero’s hand.
“Give it here. Where?”
Just as Nero naturally handed over the scope and turned to ask Taylor—
“I don’t know, I think it’s that way. Is it the Captain?”
His red eyes widened. This was because Taylor, who had boldly placed her foot on the railing of the balloon, leaned her body outward as if she were about to leap.
“Senior!”
He didn’t even have time to grab her. With her wide leather jacket fluttering, she gave a bright smile and jumped down toward the small dot.
“Captaaaain—!”