This time Serah decided to choose the mission they would take, perhaps because the description had caught her attention since it required them to help with the annual northern flying fish catch.

Kai looked at Serah, who seemed genuinely excited about what they were going to do. Even for a moment, her impassive face that she showed to people who weren’t Kai seemed to be smiling for a microsecond.

"Why are you so excited about this?"

Serah turned toward him with a smile.

"Because northern flying fish are delicious." She continued with her explanation as if it were a very important fact about herself. "Before I met you, when I lived in the forest, I used to hunt them, and at the restaurant where I went to eat, the owner would prepare very tasty dishes with them. Maybe we can go after finishing the mission."

"Do you only think about eating?"

Serah looked at Lira with her usual serious expression.

"Ah, right. I had forgotten you existed."

"Hey! So now it turns out you ignore my presence?!"

"Besides, you changed your expression in a second with me."

They had forgotten that the quest said swimsuit.

None of the three read that part before heading out.

They read it when they arrived at the meeting point in the northern sector of Valdris — where forty fishermen, merchants from three different kingdoms, and the coordinator of the annual Northern Flying Fish migration were waiting in swimsuits with the ease of people who do this every year.

The three stopped.

They looked at the forty.

The forty looked at them.

"The quest specifies," the coordinator said, with the tone of someone who has had this conversation before, "swimsuits. The fish detect body heat better on bare skin."

Kai looked at the quest.

He searched for the swimsuit part.

It was on the second line.

"Give me five minutes," he said.

The chat from other active Streamers was already generating gifts before the three returned.

[DraconicLegacy: the quest said swimsuit on the second line. SECOND LINE.]

[Warwolf: I arrived just in time for this. what’s happening.]

[Per_Sudin: @Warwolf flying fish migration. everyone in swimsuits. Kai, the SSS wolf, and the SS vampire too. welcome.]

[Udo_Ehmen: (°ロ°) (°ロ°) (°ロ°)]

[John_Bentley: viewers: 4,200,000 in two minutes. the stream grew just from the framing.]

[Jack_Moore: Serah and Lira in swimsuits. the stream is going to break records today.]

[Drakeking12: this is content.]

Serah came out first.

E-cup. The silver markings visible on her shoulders and forearms and the line of her hips. The usual posture — straight, unaffected, the kind that comes from something that doesn’t need to do anything special to occupy the space it occupies.

She positioned herself beside Kai with the ease of someone going to work.

Her markings pulsed when she noticed Kai looking at her.

She didn’t say anything.

Lira came out twenty seconds later.

She stopped at the threshold.

She assessed Serah.

She assessed Kai assessing Serah.

And she made a decision.

What Lira did was not dramatic.

It was not an elaborate gesture or a calculated pose.

She simply walked toward the coordinator with the stride she had when crossing a room she considered hers — every movement with eight hundred years of existence behind it and the vampiric temperature that made the air around her one degree warmer than normal.

She stopped beside Kai on the other side of Serah.

She asked the coordinator something about the migration direction.

While listening to the answer, she moved her hair to the opposite shoulder with a movement that was neither slow nor fast — exactly the tempo of something that isn’t thinking about what it’s doing.

Kai answered something to the coordinator.

Lira looked at him from the angle that being beside him gave her.

Serah’s markings rose.

[DraconicLegacy: Lira decided to play Serah’s game. (ಠ_ಠ)]

[Warwolf: I’m processing what’s happening. someone confirm that what I think is happening is happening.]

[Per_Sudin: @Warwolf yes.]

[Udo_Ehmen: (╬ Ò﹏Ó) (╬ Ò﹏Ó) (╬ Ò﹏Ó)]

[John_Bentley: viewers: 6,100,000. SIX MILLION in ten minutes.]

[Jack_Moore: Kai in the middle of a war no one declared but that he’s losing anyway]

[Drakeking12: the coordinator explaining the mission without knowing he’s in the middle of something completely different]

Kai looked at the stream camera.

"While we wait for the migration to start," he said, with the tone of someone who needs to do something with the situation he has to his left and his right, "questions."

[DraconicLegacy: QUESTIONS? NOW? KAI.]

[Warwolf: question: how does your life feel currently?]

[Per_Sudin: yeah that one. that question first.]

Kai considered it.

"Different than expected." Pause. "In my world, I expected to keep fighting in underground rings for enough money for the next month. Here..." He looked at the northern sector of Valdris, the fish that still hadn’t appeared, the coordinator organizing the fishermen’s nets. "Here I fight things that make the rings seem easy. But the money only comes when the chat sends gifts."

[Drakeking12: and we send gifts because it’s worth it.]

[Jack_Moore: next question: what do you hope to punch that you haven’t punched yet?]

"Something that makes me really sweat." Brief pause. "The administrator was close. But it ended before reaching the limit."

[Warwolf: what’s your favorite martial art?]

Kai genuinely thought about it.

"I don’t have one." He looked at his hands. "I used Muay Thai more in Aethon because Aethon’s space favors mid-range strikes. But judo got me out of more impossible situations." Pause. "The headbutt against the administrator was Muay Thai but the mechanics were boxing. In this world, I mix everything."

[Per_Sudin: do you miss your world?]

Short silence.

"Sometimes." He said it without drama, the way you say something that’s true and has nothing more to add. "The food, mainly."

[Udo_Ehmen: 😂😂😂 "the food, mainly" 😂😂😂]

[John_Bentley: viewers: 7,800,000. still climbing.]

The coordinator raised his hand.

"They’re coming."

The Northern Flying Fish appeared as a silver flash on the horizon — not a school, a cloud. Thousands of fish the size of a hand, with scales that caught the light just like the Crystal Oxen’s plates but in motion, forming an airborne bank that moved with the logic of fluids.

And with Lira’s vampiric temperature as the most intense warm point in the visible area.

The school adjusted its direction.

Toward Lira.

"What—" Lira started.

The first fish landed on her shoulder.

The second in her hair.

The third, fourth, and fifth simultaneously on her arms.

And those following behind kept coming.

Lira ran.

The fish followed her.

The entire school — thousands of silver points shining in the northern sector sun — followed Lira through the streets of Valdris with the specific fidelity of something that has found the most perfect heat source available and has no reason to look for another.

The sound the Northern Flying Fish made in collective flight was what Aldric, from the guild door with coffee in hand, described as:

"The worst sound in existence."

A screech-whistle-vibration at the exact frequency where the human ear can neither ignore it nor process it comfortably and therefore simply experiences it as continuous discomfort.

The residents of Valdris who were on the streets went inside the buildings.

Those already in buildings closed the windows.

Lira kept running.

[DraconicLegacy: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA]

[Warwolf: LIRA COVERED IN SILVER FLYING FISH RUNNING THROUGH VALDRIS]

[Per_Sudin: THE SOUND. THE WORST SOUND IN EXISTENCE. I HEARD IT FROM HERE.]

[Udo_Ehmen: 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂]

[John_Bentley: viewers: 14,000,000. FOURTEEN MILLION. the clip is going to go viral.]

[Jack_Moore: Lira, eight-hundred-year-old SS vampire, running from seven-ounce fish. the character arc.]

[Drakeking12: the coordinator is writing something down. I don’t think this has happened before.]

Kai and Serah ran after her.

Kai activated Qi in his hands to create a pressure barrier to redirect the school.

The school flowed around the barrier.

The physics of fluids won over external Qi.

Serah launched primordial ice in an arc — not toward the fish, ahead of them, to create a cold point to attract them.

The school assessed the competition between the static cold and Lira’s dynamic heat.

It chose Lira.

"Serah," Kai said.

"I know." Serah was already calculating. "I need a bigger field. Not a point."

"How big?"

"The size of the fishermen’s area."

"Can you?"

Serah looked at him.

"Yes. But Lira has to lead the school there."

Both looked at Lira — still running, the fish on her like a living layer of silver screeching the worst sound in existence.

"Lira," Kai called.

"WHAT?" came from half a street ahead.

"Run north. To the fishermen’s area."

"THAT’S EIGHT HUNDRED METERS AWAY!"

"I know."

Brief pause from someone running and calculating simultaneously.

"This is the northern sector’s fault! Everything weird comes from the north!"

She kept running north.

Serah generated the field.

Not the combat temperature field she used for structural ice — something broader. The temperature in the fishermen’s area dropped sixteen degrees in forty seconds.

The school felt it.

The competition between Lira’s heat and the cold of the fishermen’s area lasted exactly as long as it took the field to stabilize.

The cold won.

The school abandoned Lira — one by one, then in groups, then en masse — and veered north where the low temperature told them the north they migrated to was there.

The fishermen’s nets — enormous, the kind deployed in water but this time suspended in arches between posts the coordinator had placed — caught the entire school in ninety seconds.

The fishermen began to work.

The merchants from the three kingdoms began to negotiate.

The annual Northern Flying Fish migration of Valdris had been the most successful in the event’s history according to the coordinator, who said this with the expression of someone still processing how it had happened.

[DraconicLegacy: ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ MISSION COMPLETE ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ]

[Warwolf: Serah’s temperature field. Lira as live bait. the fishermen with the nets. perfect coordination.]

[Per_Sudin: Serah and Kai solved the situation. Lira was the involuntary instrument. the system worked.]

[Udo_Ehmen: 🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟 FISH CAUGHT 🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟]

[John_Bentley: viewers: 31,000,000. THE CLIP OF LIRA RUNNING REACHED THIRTY-ONE MILLION.]

[Jack_Moore: Lira as bait. the most viewed clip on the stream. Lira doesn’t know yet.]

[Drakeking12: the coordinator is going to talk about this for the rest of his life.]

Lira was standing in the fishermen’s area when the school abandoned her.

She watched the fish leave toward the nets.

She looked at her own arms — no fish. Without the weight of thousands of seven ounces each.

She looked at Kai and Serah arriving.

"It’s over," Kai said.

"I noticed."

"Are you okay?"

"Perfectly." She adjusted her hair with her better-working shoulder. "I just need someone to explain to me what the northern sector has that all ridiculous creatures come from there."

Kai looked north.

"The Crystal Oxen are from the southern sector."

"The Crystal Oxen are the exception." Lira looked north with the expression of someone establishing a position she’s going to hold. "The weird stuff comes from the north."

Serah looked north.

"The Flying Fish are from the north," she conceded.

"Exactly."

"But the demon you went to kill last week was from—"

"The north," Lira said.

Serah considered it.

"It was from the western sector."

"That’s also north from a certain angle."

The three began the path back to Valdris.

Kai in the center.

Serah on the left.

Lira on the right, with her hair slightly different than usual — something in the volume, in the way it fell, that neither of the two mentioned because Lira hadn’t mentioned it and mentioning things Lira hasn’t mentioned has a track record of not ending well.

They entered the guild.

Aldric looked up.

He looked at the three of them.

He looked at Lira’s hair.

He drank his coffee.

"Congratulations on completing the quest."

Lira sat in her chair.

She ran her hand through her hair to arrange it.

Her fingers found something.

Something that moved slightly at the contact.

Lira looked at her fingers.

Between her index and thumb, a seven-ounce Northern Flying Fish looked at her with the small, bright eyes of something that had found the warmest place available and had slept very well.

Two more in her hair behind it.

Lira looked at Kai.

Kai looked away.

Serah stared at the wall with the concentration of someone studying the texture of the stone.

Aldric drank.

"What the hell is up with the north?" Lira said, with a completely flat voice, "and why does all the weird stuff come from there."

[DraconicLegacy: SHE FOUND THE FISH HAHAHAHAHAHA]

[Warwolf: THREE FISH. IN HER HAIR. TWENTY MINUTES LATER.]

[Per_Sudin: "what the hell is up with the north?" — valid question, Lira. very valid.]

[Udo_Ehmen: 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂]

[John_Bentley: Kai looking away. Serah studying the wall. Aldric drinking. PERFECT COORDINATION.]

[Jack_Moore: no one said anything to her for twenty minutes. TWENTY. MINUTES.]

[Drakeking12: "what the hell is up with the north?" is going to be the phrase of the arc.]

[System — notification]

[Quest completed: Northern Flying Fish Migration]

[Result: successful — historic capture record for Valdris fishermen]

[Method: Serah’s temperature field + Lira as involuntary thermal bait]

[The system notes that the clip of Lira running reached 31,000,000 views]

[The system notes that Lira carried three fish in her hair for twenty minutes]

[Current viewers: 31,000,000]

[Exxs’s Note: I apologize for the error in the Chapter; I hadn’t even realized it was so badly edited when I copied it to Webnovel.]