Chapter 715: Intruder
After Juan excused himself, only he and Anna remained in the office.
Roland opened a half-finished textbook, intending to complete it. He picked up a quill pen, but hesitated to put it down.
He found himself involuntarily gazing at Anna, as if his gaze was drawn to her figure.
"What's wrong?" she noticed his gaze, put down the parts in her hand, and looked up with a smile.
"No, it's nothing." Roland gently shook his head. "If you find it boring here, we can go to the backyard of North Slope Mountain."
She pursed her lips and said, "It's not boring at all. I can complete my work here as well. Most importantly, as long as you're with me, it's the same wherever we are."
Only she could say such slightly embarrassing words so matter-of-factly.
"Yeah." Roland responded with a smile, without insisting further.
He knew that Anna would never say something against her will.
As the first witch he met in this world, Roland deeply understood her temperament—apart from discussing academic issues and pillow talk, Anna was mostly quiet and composed, especially when she was focused on business. But he didn't find it dull at all. Silence, for the two of them, was also a form of communication.
Especially the occasional eye contact, which had revealed each other's intentions without a word.
Roland simply put down his quill pen, content to admire her serious appearance.
Her profile was a beautiful sight at any time—her flaxen hair had grown quite a bit, almost covering her fair neck, and her blue eyes were still as clear as a lake. A fluffy light yellow sweater was paired with comfortable black corduroy straight-leg pants, making her look youthful and lively. This modern outfit was naturally his creation.
In order to work in the office, Anna had already precisely adjusted the component ratio of the metal ingots and cut them into palm-sized cubes, which only needed to be transported to the castle and processed with Blackfire. Seeing the metal ingots quickly turn into entire sheets of parts under the Blackfire, Roland couldn't help but admire her—in a sense, the skill and processing level she demonstrated was no different from art.
And these seemingly inconspicuous small parts would eventually be sent to the factory and become a crucial part of many machines or weapons.
It wasn't easy to do this. He knew that the length and width of Blackfire were controlled by magic, and it was even more difficult to summon multiple Blackfires to cut from different angles while writing different content with both hands, requiring extremely high mental concentration. Only someone with Anna's serious personality could devote herself to this work day after day.
Compared to the girl who was initially struggling to control flames in the castle garden, everything had undoubtedly changed a lot, yet it seemed as if nothing had changed.
Thus, a day passed quickly.
As night fell, after Roland fell into a deep sleep with Anna in his arms, another world had just awakened.
...
He yawned and turned his head to look at the calendar on the bedside cabinet.
The time pointed to October 14th, Saturday.
Although the passage of time in the dream world was much faster than in the real world, he didn't enter this world every night. As long as he didn't dream, time here would stand still.
Walking into the living room, breakfast was already set on the table.
"Why did you get up so late today?" Jie Luo asked while chewing on a fried dough stick.
"It's a holiday, adults have a lot of nightlife, it's normal to sleep in," he walked into the bathroom, picked up a cup and toothbrush, "Are you going out later?"
"I'm not going out, I have homework to do!" the little girl replied, then mumbled to herself as if talking to herself, "What nightlife, clearly came back earlier than me, it's obvious he's the kind of frustrated uncle who has neither friends nor career..." The voice wasn't loud, but it was just enough for him to hear, obviously intentional.
Roland almost choked on his mouthwash. Before she called him
Uncle, which was already too much, and now he's an uncle? He looked in the mirror, his appearance wasn't much different from the real world, he looked twenty-three or twenty-four at most, even if his tank top and shorts were a bit shabby, it wasn't that bad, right?
It could only be attributed to the child's poor taste.
He decided not to argue with a little brat. "Then help me open the door later, I'm going out, I won't take the keys."
"Got it!"
By the time he finished washing up, Jie Luo had already finished breakfast and returned to her room.
Roland slowly sat down at the table and picked up the remote control to turn on the TV.
Today was the day he had arranged to meet Garcia.
After several months of tossing and turning, he had basically collected all the professional textbooks and materials he could buy, and they were piled up in his bedroom. He only needed to copy them over, but the plan to explore memory fragments had hit a wall.
None of the residents in the Soul Building were willing to easily rent out their houses. So far, he had only succeeded twice, and the fragments in the memory doors were not valuable content. Considering that there were more than two thousand residents in this building, selling armor alone would probably not be enough to provide such a large amount of funds—after all, he couldn't sell the armor as real antiques, as that would attract the police's attention with a probability not much lower than him directly breaking into other people's houses to forcibly search.
After thinking about it, there were only two reliable avenues: either increase income sources or expand his reputation.
If he could be as famous as Garcia in the Tongzi District, it would be much easier to rent or persuade people to move out; or earn enough money to buy the entire Tongzi Building, which would also be a good method.
And regardless of which one, the most likely means to achieve it at present was to join the Martial Artist Association.
According to Garcia's introduction, there would be generous rewards for participating in missions to hunt down Fallen Ones, and the association would fully support powerful martial artists who were willing to appear on stage. However, when mentioning the reward, her expression was quite disdainful, as if everything they did was to protect humans from the Fallen Ones, rather than for money.
Roland expressed his admiration for this righteousness and inquired about the specific reward rules in detail.
He himself was not very willing to work for this strange organization that emphasized responsibility and dedication, but whose actions were somewhat similar to behind-the-scenes schemers, let alone work for free. If he hadn't tried several months of exploration with little progress, he wouldn't have decided to join the Martial Artist Association.
At ten o'clock sharp, he put on a suit and went out—although the agreed location was Room 0827, he was submitting a formal application to the association, so he naturally couldn't be too casual.
However, before he could take two steps, a childish scream suddenly came from behind him.
It was from Jie Luo.
Roland was stunned. As soon as he turned his head, he saw the little girl running out of the apartment in a panic.
"What's wrong, is there a rat?"
"Th-there's suddenly another person in the house!" Jie Luo stuttered, pointing at the door.
"Person?" Roland frowned, returned to the entrance of 0825, and peeked inside. He was immediately stunned.
He saw that in the center of the living room, which had clearly been empty a minute ago, an unfamiliar woman had appeared at some point.