Chapter 59: "You're From Earth Too, Aren't You?"

The observation deck at the top of the Astronomy Tower sat windswept and empty at midnight.

Moonlight streamed through the marble archways, falling across the massive bronze clockwork gears turning slowly overhead, letting out low metallic clicks — tack... tack... — into the still night air.

Lucian leaned against a gear axle, hands in his coat pockets. Three steps away, Evelyn Wright stood with her arms crossed, her dark eyes fixed on the ten-year-old boy through her silver-framed glasses.

No fanfare. No burst of mana. Just the sound of night wind whistling through the stonework.

Evelyn took a deep breath and spoke in English.

"What year?"

Lucian was silent for two seconds before answering.

"Twenty-twenty-three. Q4 financial report. Heart failure."

Evelyn's eye twitched. She swore under her breath.

"Twenty-twenty-four. Software update release. Stroke, three a.m."

The two of them stared at each other under the moonlight.

Then, almost in unison, they both let out a long sigh and said, in Vietnamese, at exactly the same time.

"Truly a shitty way to work yourself to death."

Every trace of caution, suspicion, and tension between the two great houses evaporated instantly.

Lucian pulled a small paper packet of salted roasted sunflower seeds out of his coat and dropped straight onto the cold marble floor, cross-legged.

Evelyn didn't bother preserving her image as a Ducal heiress either. She pushed her uniform skirt aside and sat down across from him, reaching over to grab a handful of seeds and cracking one open with her teeth.

"You got a System panel?"

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"Got a cheap-looking green window that mostly makes me study languages and write novels," Lucian said, spitting a shell aside. "You?"

"Not a single damn thing," Evelyn said, cracking another seed, voice thick with resentment. "Being reborn into a Ducal house sounds impressive, but every single day I'm redrawing engineering blueprints and trying to remember chemistry formulas from my past life. You get born into the Sword Emperor's house with the former Knight of the Demon Lord as your other parent — you were born with a golden spoon in your mouth."

Lucian let out a dry laugh.

"Lucky, my ass. My parents are great at fighting and terrible at math. When I was a newborn, the two of them sat around planning to assassinate the Tax Bureau just to dodge income tax."

Evelyn, mid-bite on a seed, choked and started coughing.

"For real?"

"I had to write that pile of garbage novels so the old man could launder money through a publishing house. If it weren't for those books, I'd be out begging on the border right now."

Two former corporate slaves sat on the observation deck, hundreds of meters up, cracking sunflower seeds and complaining about their new lives.

By Evelyn's theory, the transmigration phenomenon in this world wasn't a random miracle. Every few decades or centuries, some kind of spiritual rift swept across Earth, dragging people who'd just died from work exhaustion into this world — like a server pulling in new staff whenever it was short-handed.

At the base of the tower, two night-patrol knights walked by, glancing up at the towering spire.

They spotted the silhouettes of the generation's two great geniuses, heads bent together under the moonlight, occasionally making strange sounds that sounded almost like a divine cipher — tack... tack...

One knight whispered, his voice trembling.

"Do you see that... First Scholar Evelyn and the young master of House Vance, secretly negotiating over control of the academy in the dead of night!"

Up on the tower, Evelyn brushed the seed shells off her knees and pushed her glasses back up.

"There's a sealed titanium-alloy gate on Floor 15 of the Jungle Dungeon. It's got some crude semiconductor control panels from the pre-war civilization. Next week's field trip — you and I team up to crack it open."

Lucian tucked the rest of the seed packet into his spatial ring and stood, dusting off his pants.

"Anything valuable inside?"

"High-energy mineral deposits and blueprints for an arcane engine."

"Deal. Fifty-fifty, after taxes."

Evelyn stood and gave Lucian a firm slap on the shoulder.

"Pleasure doing business, former finance guy."

She turned and headed for the spiral staircase, then, after a few steps, glanced back over her shoulder with a mischievous grin.

"Oh, and — tell your dad's publisher to hurry up on Volume 3. I know it's garbage cheap-thrills wuxia trash, but it's actually pretty good for winding down before bed."