’I wonder if this will get the Shepherdess to cut me some slack in the future. I should thank Olivia for this—if she hadn’t sent me so many flowers, I probably wouldn’t have been able to use this method to win her over.’

Baron thought to himself as he fought to open his heavy eyelids, just like every other time he’d returned.

He caught the faint scent of smoke. ’Who’s smoking near me? Don’t tell me it’s Jack again.’

With that thought, he finally managed to open his eyes, squinting against the slightly hazy glare of the sun.

The first thing that greeted his eyes was a pair of rounded shoulders and a smooth back. Deep purple hair was fanned out across the pillow, and the graceful lines of the figure beneath the blanket were plain to see.

It was clearly a woman.

A beautiful one, at that.

A jolt went through him, and the discomfort from his sudden "crossover" instantly vanished.

Baron’s eyes widened. ’What the hell! What is going on? I could accept waking up on a bus that was being robbed last time, but isn’t waking up in a woman’s bed going a little too far?!’

He stiffly turned his head, using his peripheral vision to take in the room’s layout. From the marble floors, the gold-leafed walls, and the incredibly opulent four-poster bed he was lying in, he could tell the owner was of high status.

And a classical European oil painting hanging directly opposite the foot of the bed suggested that the owner was definitely not a prostitute.

Instead, it depicted a woman with exquisitely beautiful, seemingly multi-ethnic features. She wore a helmet and armor and held a sword in one hand, looking just like a noble lady from one of the period dramas of his past life.

In the bottom-right corner of the painting was a strange emblem, which appeared to be some kind of family crest: a sword piercing a Dragon’s head.

He glanced to the side. The woman was still sound asleep. With each breath, her body rose and fell beneath the silk quilt. Her long hair was spread wantonly across the pillow, and he was lying on some of it.

Baron swallowed hard. He still hadn’t figured out what was going on, but he knew what he had to do next: get out of there, fast.

He slowly turned over, suppressing his breathing and heartbeat. He used his Spiritual Power to lift his head and the covers off the strands of hair he was lying on, and while he was at it, smoothed out the wrinkles he’d made... ’Shit! I’m fucking naked!’

Baron instinctively glanced toward the woman. A voluptuous figure and two long legs were on full display.

’Fuck!’

’This woman sleeps naked too!’

’What the hell happened?! Don’t tell me I just changed out of the Mage profession I’ve maintained for so many years!’

’With a woman I don’t even know?’

’Or, following the usual plot developments and my current status as an "unlucky bastard" after using the Lucky Goddess Necklace, am I about to be hunted down by this woman’s family because of this?’

’Definitely!’

Baron was utterly convinced of it and moved even faster.

His target was the walk-in closet on the other side of the room, which a bedside mirror had revealed to him.

For a wealthy family like this, a walk-in closet the size of a normal person’s bedroom was standard.

Baron carefully slipped out of bed, but the woman chose that exact moment to roll over, startling him so badly that he stubbed his big toe on the corner of the nightstand.

Luckily, he was a Dragon Knight with a tough hide. Although it hurt, it wasn’t enough to even break his defense—a normal person, of course, would probably have been rendered speechless by the pain.

’So this is the bad luck...’ Baron thought. ’Seems like it’s still within the realm of what I can power through.’

The moment he thought that, the slight tremor of the nightstand caused a Roman Broadsword hanging on the wall to fall and pin his foot.

The Roman Broadsword seemed to be forged from some special Alchemy Metal, as it pierced straight through the Dragon Scale that Baron had hastily raised upon sensing danger. After reaching the Bronze rank, he had gradually been able to cover his whole body with Dragon Scale, and according to Gawain, once he could cover his entire body at will, he wouldn’t be far from the Silver rank.

Blood quickly began to flow from the wound, but Baron used his Blood Faction abilities to control it. He quickly pulled out the Roman Broadsword and placed it back on its wall mount, but perhaps due to his bad luck, the screws on the mount came loose, and the mount fell along with the sword.

Even though Baron reacted quickly and caught both, the sound of the mount falling apart still woke the purple-haired woman in the bed.

The woman threw back the covers, heedless of her nakedness, and with a calm and agility beyond that of a normal person, she pulled a dagger from under her pillow. Baron had felt something hard behind his head earlier and just figured he wasn’t used to rich people’s beds; now he realized it was because of the dagger hidden there.

Gripping the dagger, she rolled over in bed to check the source of the noise. Her long, arched eyebrows furrowed over her sharp eyes as she scanned the area, then she let out a breath of relief. It was just the wall mount that had fallen.

If she remembered correctly, her grandfather had installed that mount. He’d been dead for over a decade now.

The woman immediately got back into bed and pulled up the covers, but instead of going back to sleep, she rang a Copper Bell by the bed to summon an Attendant. She ordered breakfast and the morning paper, then proceeded to eat and read in bed.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Baron was hiding behind the curtains. His stomach was GROWLING with hunger, and the scent of buttered bread made him swallow his saliva. But the cold sweat that broke out on his brow from the pain made him want to spit up blood.

His palm had been pierced by yet another Alchemy Weapon.

This time, it was a Gothic Halberd, which had both a sharp axe blade and a pointed Anchor Claw.

This type of halberd could be traced back several centuries to a poleaxe known as a "Vogue." The people of the Alps used this weapon for hunting, cleaving through the skulls of bulls. Later, to counter attacks from kingdom cavalry, they added an Anchor Claw to the other side to pull Knights from their saddles.