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"I don\'t really feel like one, though," I admitted, looking down at my open hands as opposed to raising my head and staring at my reflection in the huge, door-sized mirror.

This wasn\'t just a random remark or an excuse for something. This was the legitimate state of my head on the topic.

I\'ve already felt like nothing more than a wannabe when it came to crafting, even with all the finished products I had to my name to back my reputation and ability up.

On the other hand, however, when it came to cultivation…

Wasn\'t I just riding the "marry rich and abuse the endless resources the marriage provides" plan to skip all the trouble associated with cultivation?

\'I thought I could kill this feeling once I backed my cultivation not with the clan\'s resources but my own devices… only to have them all seized by the clan so that the government can properly inspect them before approving the whole project.\'

"You will have to work to get rid of this feeling, then," Claire stated while crossing her arms over her chest. "In here, you are one of the relatively strongest cultivators by your rank alone. And with how your ideas allowed me… no, how they allowed us to perfect the cultivation path thus far, you are even stronger than your peers of the same rank!"

That I already knew about. Still, hearing words of such high praise from the mouth of the girl I adored was still something I wouldn\'t want to miss.

"But once we enter the spiritual world, things will change drastically. Over there," Claire suddenly looked away, as if unable to bear direct eye contact at the moment, "we are going to be literally weaker than any random child we meet on the street. As it turns out," she sighed before dropping her shoulders a bit, "over in that part of the world, people tend to reach the peak of the mortal realm before hitting their middle teens, only to break beyond that level before reaching adulthood."

I squinted my eyes but opted to hold myself back from just grabbing Claire in a bear hug now that she appeared so defenseless, so vulnerable and unsure.

I didn\'t pull her into a hug, not because I didn\'t want to. In fact, I could hardly resist the desire to do so.

I didn\'t do it because this feeling of inferiority she was dealing with right now… she had to find a way to handle it on her own because, between the two of us, she was the one who never had to experience it.

\'If I comfort her now, then how will she be able to deal with pressure over in the spiritual world?\' I thought, gritting my teeth before turning my eyes down, unable to look at Claire in her mentally miserable state anymore, not when I barred myself from intervening. .net

"Why are you making such a pained face?"

Before I could even notice, rather than waiting for me to grab her into a hug, Claire approached me herself, only to gently curl her right hand into a loose, open fist before using the edge of her forefinger to gently lift my head by probing my chin up.

"Let me guess," the corners of Claire\'s lips perked up into a small, strangely happy smile. "You can\'t stand to see me bothered by the idea of how we are likely to be treated over in the spiritual world, am I right?"

"Actually…" I tried to say something, only to end up sighing, lowering my head again, and then powerlessly nodding. "You\'ve got a point here. You see, I don\'t think you\'ve ever been in a situation where everyone around you feels like they are better than you. And while for me it would be old news, I\'m not really sure if you can handle it all that easily."

There was no pride or arrogance in this statement, with how I made it seem as if I was easily capable of something Claire was not.

It was all a matter of perspective.

I was at the bottom of the social ladder for an extended period of time… but I didn\'t get there by taking a jump from the social ladder\'s very top steps.

No, me being at the bottom was a result of a long time, a lot of effort, and a lack of results. A situation that gradually came to be over the years as people around me came to realize that no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn\'t cultivate.

With that said, however, as time went on and my situation started to appear worse and worse than before… all the efforts I put in desperate hope to somehow break through my inability to meditate served as a springboard for my social status a tiny little bit, giving back respect for my extended effort in places where the complete lack of results took it away.

With Claire, however, the case would be entirely different.

She was someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Someone who reached the peak of what others her age achieved long before she even first met me.

She was used to being at the top, be it financially, socially, politically, or in terms of power. She\'s never had to get the taste of humiliation, defeat, or powerlessness, making it an extremely foreign taste to her, especially with how we both happened to take the lives of our enemies in pursuit of our own safety and goals, starting with the failed kidnappers for me and, quite likely, quite a lot earlier blood initiation for Claire.

Normally, this lack of defeats, lack of experience of the bottom half wouldn\'t be all that bad, saving Claire the trouble of thinking about all kinds of worries that were common to the… well, the common folk.

But right now? With the date for our journey into the spiritual world set for tomorrow?

"To be honest, I might be overreaching here, but I believe it would be best if I were the second to speak after Chihiro. As in, if we ever happened to be left somewhere without him to save us, I should be the one doing the talking."

This, again, had to be quite weird for Claire, given how ever since we met, I was the one lacking the adequate sense of formality and rich-level respect both for myself and for the people I interacted with.

Claire, on the other hand, lacked the know-how on how to deal with people who were so significantly stronger and more important than her, her life could be over within a single swath of their hand. And while I wouldn\'t say she lacked humility in and of itself… she certainly lacked in the bootlicking department, one infinitely close to the area of praise that she was great at, yet still so distinctively different, her skills simply couldn\'t be applied.

\'The fact that she knows just what to say to tickle my ego and ambition doesn\'t mean she knows how to spew bullshit just to get some powerful idiot off your back,\' I thought, sighing again as I realized that once again, rather than confiding in the girl over the problems that we shared, I just kept trying to think about them all in my own head.

"Sure thing!"

Contrary to all the mental dilemmas I\'ve faced over the coming issues, Claire didn\'t seem to mind them in the slightest.

Seeing the intuitive confusion rising in my eyes, Claire only widened her smile before reaching out and wrapping her hands around my arm as she pushed her chest against my side.

"I mean, I don\'t really mind acting all submissive… but I do believe a bit of practice wouldn\'t hurt before the real run," she stated with a grin.

I, however, couldn\'t really smile.

Not because her words and the idea behind them failed to make my shivers tremble.

It was because, as far as I could see, in a moment of doubt, she defaulted to seduction. She defaulted to floating her charms before my eyes and outright pressing them against my arm so that my mind would get preoccupied with something else…

\'Wait, what if…\' I squinted my eyes as a sudden idea appeared in my mind. \'What if it\'s not her changing the topic for her own sake, but she\'s doing so hoping I will stop worrying about the future so much?\'

Curious, I looked down and off to the side, right into Claire\'s face.

Her eyes, however… the very moment she noticed my curious stare, her eyes skirted away as she quickly averted them only for her cheeks to cover with a faint hue of a blush.

"Well, I\'m more than happy to give this… practice run a go later on," I admitted, opting to just stay honest with myself, "but when I asked for you to let me do the talking… I really meant it. And I hope you won\'t interfere even if I say some words about myself that you would instinctively want to slap me for."

Even though I still couldn\'t get over how it was nothing but freak circumstance that brought the two of us together, with how our cultivation, our emotions, even our minds were intertwined within this mangled web of thoughts, dual cultivation, shared Qi flow, and all the other tiny and hard-to-understand crap, I would have to be obnoxiously looking away from the truth not to realize just how deep her affection for me was.

Whether it was warranted, justified… earned? That was an entirely different topic I had no desire to crack open anytime soon, not with how much stuff we had going on at the moment.

Nevertheless, the depth of her affection was something I was fully aware of. Fully aware of how her affection was on a level that only my affection for her could even match. And with that in mind…

I could easily picture her going ballistic upon hearing me disregard and disrespect the entirety of my own being just to smother some young master\'s ass with spit of false praise.

"That\'s settled, then," Claire, unaware of my latent thoughts, smiled as she wrapped herself all over my arm even harder. "And right in the nick of time, at that," she then added as she angled her head to take a quick look at the display of the small, elegant clock wrapped around my wrist.

Following the path of her eyes, I took a look at the screen, only for my face to twist in an ugly grimace.

After two weeks of rest with only an occasional duty forcing us to stop resting and generally lazing around, it was finally the time to get the show on the road. And while our departure for the spiritual world was still only due for tomorrow…

The briefing with the officers of the special bureau, established the very moment the chief of staff confirmed the possibilities behind my devices, was neither something we could afford to miss nor something we were going to enjoy.

It was simply a duty that our situation warranted, with how we were going right into the lion\'s den right as its emissaries went out of their way to investigate the disaster we were secretly involved in… Not to say, the root cause behind most of what happened and what both the special bureau and the local police desperately tried to cover up!