Chapter 154: At This Moment, a Certain Unknown Girl Is Still Trying to Understand...

“Manager, are we really going to let that group of Sarkaz take the stage?”

Behind the heavy velvet curtains of the backstage area, two Perro stage coordinators whispered frantically. The thumping bass from the ongoing acts rattled the floorboards, but it did nothing to drown out their anxiety. “The band name on their application was ‘AVE Sarkaz.’ Do you know what that stands for?”

The manager wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, his expression equally grim. “Enlighten me.”

“Accursed Vengeance Enforcer! I spent all last night flipping through the dictionary; it has to be that!” The coordinator’s voice pitched up, thick with mounting dread. “Think about it. They’re wrapped up so tightly you can’t even see an inch of skin. Could they be severely Infected? What if they’re just waiting to blow themselves up on stage and carry out a terrorist attack?”

“And now they’ve changed their name to ‘Search, Strike, Withdraw.’ Search, Strike, Withdraw… what else could it be but a mercenary hit squad!” The second coordinator chimed in, tail tucked firmly between his legs. “Are they going to break into ownerless houses to crack safes for scrap, and then end up getting into bloody turf wars with local scavengers?”

The manager let out a long, heavy sigh, the weight of Siesta’s fragile peace resting on his shoulders. “Do you think I don’t know all this?”

But Siesta had no formal armed forces capable of handling a veteran Sarkaz mercenary squad. If they let them on stage, the audience might die. But if they exposed their clumsy civilian acting and tried to stop them, the backstage staff would undoubtedly be the first to have their throats slit.

Realizing this cruel, obvious fact, a suffocating silence fell over the trio.

“I… I’ll go check the stage equipment functions…”

The coordinator, who had been filled with righteous indignation just a moment ago, suddenly wilted. Looking every bit like a beaten dog with a broken spirit, he fled down the corridor in what could only be described as a blind panic.

Outside, the powerful drumbeats of the music festival echoed through the coastal air. ‘Willdragon,’ currently wrapped tightly from head to toe and sporting a pair of opaque red goggles, suddenly glanced back toward the tent. “Is everything okay over there?”

Beside him, the Shapeshifter Cluster squirmed like viscous liquid for a fleeting second, molding a face that looked entirely unremarkable. “Don’t worry. They’re all smart people, especially that manager. Descendants of the divine are all like that—too smart for their own good. They value their lives.”

“But was that really what AVE meant… Is that guy also an enforcer burdened with hatred?”

The inspiration for the ‘AVE’ moniker had actually come during the old Babel era, back when they were campaigning far and wide across the barren wastelands with the Doctor. They had accidentally breached an ancient, crumbling castle, and a beautiful little vampire girl had suggested it.

She was also one of the few who had flatly refused the Doctor’s invitation to join them.

I’m not going out now, no matter what happens outside! The little girl had seemed a bit irritable, but she hadn’t fallen into the typical blood-madness of her kin. She possessed a terrifyingly clear plan for her future. I am observing a fate from another world named Ave Mujica. I’ve watched it thirty-nine times now. If I just watch it a few more times, I’ll definitely understand it!

The mercenary group had been deeply shocked by her sheer, unadulterated perseverance back then. The Doctor had even taken the initiative to sit down and lead them in watching it together.

, the Shapeshifter Cluster had benefited greatly from observing this ‘fate’; it could easily be called its most important channel for understanding the complexities of human emotion. Even Theresis had gained some tactical insight from it, though that was all buried in the past now.

“…You’re not Andorn. You’re the Doctor.”

A cool, deadpan voice broke through the noise. At this moment, a certain dark-skinned sea urchin with a distinctively eccentric aura stood nearby. After five solid minutes of difficult, squinting identification, he had finally become the first person in all of Siesta to pass the sanity check and recognize you with his own eyes.

Unexpected, but not entirely surprising.

You reached up, pulled down your mask, and offered a faint, calculated smile, confirming his judgment before snapping the fabric back into place. “Don’t tell Kal’tsit. I snuck out here.”

Thorns stared at you for a moment, his mind working through the social protocols required to build rapport. “Elysium just told me that although he couldn’t come out for a vacation, he became your life assistant while I was away. He specifically told me I shouldn’t be jealous.”

Aside from the dry Iberian cold jokes that all his colleagues universally evaluated as ‘unfunny,’ he only knew how to parrot these Elysium anecdotes. Fortunately, the Doctor was kind enough to offer a soft chuckle.

“Is the Doctor also interested in the music festival? I didn’t expect it to be such a coincidence that the first person I ran into would be you.”

Greatly encouraged by your lack of immediate dismissal, Thorns opened up slightly, using his good friend as a conversational crutch. “Elysium asked me to buy records of the band he likes. I’ve never seen him obsess over a band this much…”

It actually wasn’t a coincidence at all. I followed the GPS tracker I planted on you, you apologized silently in your heart. Anyway, people on Terra probably don’t care much about privacy laws, right?

“This ‘Alive Until Sunset’ band?” You glanced at the glossy program in his hand, your gamer intuition recalling a specific fragment of the plot.

A band composed entirely of Feranmuts. Even more bizarre than a standard idol group.

“Hold onto these.” You reached into your deep trench coat pocket, retrieved a few heavy, black-gold crystals, and pressed them firmly into Thorns’s calloused hand. Fortunately, you still kept a stash of Originium Prime on your person. Feranmuts varied wildly in strength; for four ancient beings who had only come ashore to seek refuge after being spooked by the Seaborn, you didn’t need to pull out the Burning Heaven Divine Weapon. Your crude, brute-force application of Originium permissions would be more than enough to keep the situation under control. “Be careful. We might have some minor disputes in a moment.”

Thorns had never truly been part of the core Rhodes Island inner circle; compared to Amiya and Kal’tsit, he was actually much closer to you on a practical level. He was also the only alchemist capable of restoring the compass in the future. Since you were destined to deal with the abyssal ocean plotline anyway, there was no harm in showing him a fraction of your trump cards early.

Thorns looked down at the priceless, highly volatile crystals, nodded once, and tucked them into his left chest shirt pocket without a single moment of hesitation. “Understood.”

This was the distinct advantage of his eccentric personality: he never pried into things that didn’t concern him.

Your conversation came to a temporary halt. Just a few minutes later, the announcer’s booming voice rang out from the massive outdoor stage, cutting through the salty sea breeze: “Next, please welcome our headliners—Alive Until Sunset!”

Four girls stepped out onto the neon-lit platform with impossibly light feet, gripping their microphones as the crowd erupted.

“When memories surface, the disguise falls away; the scar you left me is the pain you’ve forgotten. ♪”

“I cannot grasp your past silhouette. ♪ They rise and shout your name; they smell your scent and demand to hear your confession. ♪”

Compared to the ‘Search, Strike, Withdraw’ band that had been slotted into the thirties like cheap filler, this was clearly the kind of soul-connecting music that people truly loved. It was a genuine performance. The audience cheered, quickly catching the heavy, rhythmic beat. They sang and swayed, and the entire venue instantly transformed into a surging ocean of music.

“I cannot grasp your past silhouette. ♪ They rise and shout your name; they smell your scent and demand to hear your confession. ♪”

Beside you, Thorns subconsciously frowned. The song was undeniably beautiful, and the haunting melody made his throat itch with the urge to sing along. But why? Why did his sharp Iberian intuition feel so violently wrong? The air felt too thick. The bass vibrated in his chest like a heartbeat that wasn’t his own.

Fortunately, he never felt that seeking tactical assistance was shameful. He subconsciously glanced at the Doctor beside him, seeking guidance—only to find that you were waving your arms in the air, singing along enthusiastically with the crowd.

Noticing his pleading, confused gaze, you leaned in close, your voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm whisper right next to his ear.

“How many Iberians do you see?”

A spike of pure, glacial ice drove itself straight down Thorns’s spine.

He looked back at the surging crowd. His proud compatriots, who were usually so reclusive and almost never seen gathering in such numbers, were swaying. As the music swelled, they were freely stretching out soft, translucent membranes. Smooth, iridescent fins breached the collars of their shirts. Scaled tails whipped in the strobe lights.

It was as if they were returning to the deep sea—a churning, primitive shoal of scales, writhing together in the dark.

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent!