Chapter 52: I don’t need you....

Neither of them noticed Cathal behind them, looking confused.

Wasn’t the Third Prince supposed to be proud and hard to deal with?

Wasn’t he supposed to be stingy with his pheromones after the first marking?

Wasn’t he supposed to be here to pick a fight with the Third Army?

Half the visit was over, and where was the fight? Where was the trouble?

He had thrown away the rose and taken the iris. He said the blood was disgusting but praised how amazing Oisín looked. But wasn’t Oisín on the screen covered in blood? The Third Prince had stared at it for so long. Was he disgusted or impressed?

Meanwhile, the System in Lorcan’s head was in chaos too.

"Ahhhhhh! Host, what are you doing?!"

"That line isn’t in the script, ahhhhhh!"

Lorcan shrugged it off. "The novel doesn’t write down every line of dialogue, right? People say so many things every day, and only the ones that matter to the plot get written. So I’m just filling in the gaps in a sensible way."

System 016: "...True."

Lorcan: "And I didn’t skip any of the required lines. My score should be pretty high, right?"

System 016: "..."

It made sense, but something still felt wrong.

Lorcan added, "And you know I’m a streamer. Sometimes I talk fast. It’s a work habit."

As a streamer, he had to talk with fans, avoid awkward silences, thank people who sent gifts while playing, and explain what was happening in the game. Lorcan was considered quiet, but he still often talked a lot.

While they talked, they had already reached the army canteen.

Next, Lorcan had to taste the canteen food and have friendly talks with the Third Army’s senior officers.

Dinner was always tricky when a prince visited. The army canteen couldn’t match the royal family’s kitchen, and the food was far worse in both taste and looks. At times like this, the First and Second Princes always showed how unhappy they were.

Everyone sat around a round table, and Oisín introduced each person to Lorcan.

"This is Major Brogan, and this is Major Keogh..."

Even for a prince’s visit, the Third Army couldn’t bring everyone out to welcome him. Many senior officers hadn’t shown up earlier, but they were all here for dinner. Besides Oisín, there were several other majors. Some were close to Oisín and some weren’t, like the first two, Brogan and Keogh, who belonged to other factions.

Everyone’s eyes moved between Oisín’s and Lorcan’s faces, trying to guess the Third Prince’s mood.

If the Third Prince showed favour, it would prove that Oisín had a chance at a pardon, and they would still treat him as their superior. But if the Third Prince’s attitude was poor, a fierce fight for power would follow.

The first half had gone far too well, and Lorcan hadn’t made any trouble. But Oisín stayed tense and didn’t dare relax. If something went wrong at this meal, all his earlier effort would be wasted.

He stood beside Lorcan and tested him gently. "I hope I may have the honour of serving you."

Lorcan nodded. "Of course."

The novel didn’t say much about the meal. It only mentioned one moment when Oisín misjudged Fionn’s taste while serving food, and Fionn knocked the fork out of his hand.

In truth, Lorcan didn’t know which dish had upset the character, since the novel didn’t say. He was easy to please. He could live on instant noodles for days if there was nothing else. He ate whatever Oisín put on his plate. When he was almost finished, Lorcan raised his fork and knocked Oisín’s hand away with a sharp clatter.

Lorcan’s eyes were cold. "Don’t serve me. I won’t eat."

The fork bounced off the plate and fell to the floor. Brogan and Keogh looked up at the same moment, and the whole table held its breath.

Here it comes!

Oisín paused, but it was far better than he had feared. He hesitated only a moment, then smiled and stood up to apologise. But he saw Lorcan calmly take out a napkin and gently wipe his hands.

Lorcan looked up at him and spoke lightly, without any anger. "I’m full. Serve yourself. You don’t need to serve me."

He leaned back in his chair, pointed at the plate, and ordered, "You eat."

Oisín paused slightly, then said, "Then I will do as you command."

He glanced quietly at Brogan and Keogh across the table, and he did see a hint of disappointment on their faces.

The visit had reached its end. Lorcan was a bit shy around people, and he had forced himself to be outgoing all day, so he was worn out. The other senior officers also said their goodbyes one by one. Oisín stood up and pulled out Lorcan’s chair. "Your Highness, I will walk you out."

The prince’s starship was still parked at the Third Army’s gate.

Lorcan yawned and went back to the starship with his old butler. The starship, hundreds of metres long, fired its engines and took off, leaving a trail of blue flame in space. After a few turns, it vanished into the sky.

Cathal stood behind Oisín with his arms crossed. "Are we still going to make the pheromone copy? You held hands for so long. There should be enough, right?"

Oisín lowered his eyes, took off his leather gloves, and tossed them into Cathal’s arms. "Do it. Test these too."

The gloves had touched the male’s skin directly and were soaked in pheromones.

He looked into the distance where the starship had disappeared. "Even now, the Third Prince hasn’t promised to marry me."

The execution date was getting close, and if he couldn’t get a pardon, everything would be for nothing.

Cathal sighed and put the gloves into the machine. He adjusted the settings with practised hands, and the machine hummed to life. A misty vapour began to rise from the container.

He pulled up a chair and sat down in front of Oisín. "Don’t expect too much from the results. The structure of high-level males’ pheromones has always been hard to crack, and we’re short on time."

It was only the first marking, but Oisín’s need for the pheromones was already showing. Once he was marked more deeply, none of the injections on the market would work for him.

Oisín’s face stayed blank. "You still have that method from the black market, don’t you?"

Cathal’s hand paused. Then he looked down and kept working. "I do, but you need to think hard about what that stuff does."

The black-market injections were badly flawed. They gave a short relief that lasted only a few years, and after that the backlash was hundreds or thousands of times worse. It was a cure worse than the disease. When they first spread, many females in the Third Army had bought them by mistake and died in agony.

But Oisín said, "A few years will be enough."

The room went quiet for a while.

Cathal rubbed his temples and changed the subject. "When I passed the display room earlier, I saw the date. The third anniversary of the Clearing of the 23rd District is coming up."

Oisín sighed softly. "Time flies."

He didn’t like the display room. The mood in there was too heavy. If Lorcan hadn’t visited, those doors wouldn’t have been opened.

"It really does." Cathal opened the calendar, where a small red dot marked "Memorial."

He pulled up a stool and sat in front of Oisín. "By the way, sir, I’m planning to take my yearly leave and go to the border in time for the memorial. I want to visit what people call the planetary graveyard."

The planetary graveyard was a ring around a giant planet on the edge of the 23rd District. When ships were shot down in space and lost power, their twisted, dented metal looked like coffins wrapped around the pilots’ remains, drifting aimlessly. When they floated near the planet, its gravity caught them, and together with rock fragments and cosmic dust they formed a glittering ring.

The ring was complicated, with countless sharp fragments moving in every direction. No one could go deep inside to bring back their comrades’ remains, so the dead stayed in the ring forever. There is no air or moisture in space, so the bodies barely decayed. They stayed frozen with the look of fear or peace they had when they died, turning slowly with the planet’s tides, the loneliest graves in the universe.

Every year on the memorial day, Cathal and Oisín would fly a ship to the graveyard, load a small cruiser with flowers and bottles of whiskey, and fly it by remote control into the ring as a tribute.

Oisín said, "This year is different, so I won’t go. You can send my whiskey along with yours."

Cathal nodded with a bitter smile and patted Oisín’s shoulder. "I hope that when I get back, I’ll hear the good news that you’re marrying the Third Prince."

Whether marrying a prince with such an unclear nature and tastes was a good thing, no one could say. But for Oisín it was already the best outcome.

*

Lorcan came back from the Third Army and threw himself onto the bed.

After playing a noble prince all morning, his energy for people was completely gone, and all he wanted was sleep. 016 poked its lying host and asked anxiously, "Are you okay?"

"I’m fine." Lorcan rolled over, and something hard poked his back. He pulled it out. It was Oisín’s badge.

The badge had an intricate design of thorns and irises, and the silver-white metal gave off a cold, sharp gleam that told you its owner was a highly honoured major general.

Lorcan turned it over and over in his hand. He had wanted to use it as a model for his virtual wife’s decoration, but then he remembered that his game save was gone now that he was in a new world. He sighed. "Speaking of which, is there no game like that in this world?"

He had few hobbies, and in his free time he liked gaming most.

The System said, "Do you mean something like Star Warfare, a gunfight game? Wait, I’ll check."

It connected to the interstellar network, sent a crawler to search with keywords, and after a while answered, "Hello, there isn’t one, but I found something similar. It’s a military training system. It links to the sleep pod you saw today and to the brain, so you can fight other soldiers and officers. It has gun modules and ship-flying modules, and to protect soldiers’ privacy and stop revenge, you can customise your character during matching. It’s about 70% similar to Star Warfare."