The next morning, earlier than usual, the sound of piano music began to echo from the villa.

  Unlike before, the piano sound that came out this time seemed to be more intermittent and even clumsy in terms of playing skills. To put it simply, it was like a novice magic apprentice who had just started learning how to cast spells stuttering while reciting incantations.

  The reason for this situation is simple. At the moment, standing in front of the piano and playing a tentative tune was not Miss Bao Man herself, but the mechanical butler wrapped in his eternal black cloak.

  Dais?Mond did not sit on the chair for Miss Boman's performance, and it was easy to understand why. His massive body, almost entirely composed of crystal, was absolutely not something that an ordinary chair could bear. The mechanical butler stood there with his head bowed, his upper body slightly leaning forward, so that his left hand fingers could just touch the piano keys.

  The crystalline fingers of the mechanical pianist moved slowly on the piano, playing a few notes before pausing for a moment to think, then striking out a few more. In the noble schools of the Aeolian continent, young humans who first came into contact with the piano were also stiff and awkward in their initial attempts, and probably wouldn't get a good evaluation. But at this moment, it was a mechanical warrior who did such a thing, which was really strange.

  "Don't touch my piano again!" A stern rebuke, full of indignation, rang out from behind the organ's owner. Miss Bao Man, dressed in simple home attire as usual, stood at the door of the music room. "I should have warned you seriously last time? Don't let you use that hand to move my piano casually again!"

  "So I used my left hand this time." The housekeeper, who had been standing aside since the mistress appeared at the door, replied respectfully.

  The witch's anger didn't show any signs of dissipating: "Stop playing word games with me, I don't care if you're really stupid or just pretending to be, this kind of thing is not allowed to happen again!"

  "It's really, I'm very sorry." The head of the agency manager hung even lower.

  Perhaps it was the recent contact that made Bao Man's attitude slightly softened. Seeing his butler's consistently respectful expression, Bao Man did not intend to continue scolding and instead used a tone as if speaking to himself, "I've said before, even if you can read sheet music and play each melody, each section correctly according to the score, it's just your mechanical body operating normally under the control of magic."

  "That kind of music is fake, I don't want to hear a single note!"

  The pale-faced witch began to walk slowly towards the piano after finishing her speech. As usual, the mechanical butler should have already left the piano and was ready to leave. Bao Man didn't know why he had just explained so much to a hateful warrior, probably because he had gotten used to someone talking to him recently. Although the one who could converse with him was just a slightly more sophisticated hateful machine.

  But unexpectedly, the voice of the organ's caretaker suddenly came from near the piano, as if he hadn't moved at all. "Miss Bao Man..."

  "Last night, your bedroom door wasn't closed properly. When I was doing the household chores in order, I heard your voice coming from inside the room. According to my analysis, it should be you unconsciously making a sound while sleeping."

  Miss Bao Man didn't say a word, she just quietly stopped in her tracks. She was puzzled as to why the housekeeper had said all that and wondered what he wanted to do next.

  "If the data I collected at that time was not wrong, the sound you made while sleeping should be a melody. To be precise, it is the part that you are currently creating, which is interrupted in the bottleneck section..."

  The mistress of the villa did not show any obvious change in expression, nor did she move half a step with her feet, as if she had not heard anything.

  As the declarer, Dais?Mond's tone remained unchanged, as if he were making a normal routine report. “...If I can continue with the song you hummed in your sleep, it seems that I can correctly continue from there.”

  Bao Man still didn't say anything, the black crystal glasses perched on her slender nose bridge remained motionless, even as sunlight streaming in from the window didn't flicker for a moment.

  "If I exclude the errors caused by my collection process, the tune you hummed last night should feel like this......" The mechanical butler continued to state without receiving a stop command and even turned around again to face the piano, striking the first note he had sorted out.

  "Get out." Miss Bao's voice finally sounded in the room, not a high-pitched tone of anger, but a calm and indifferent tone as if nothing had happened.

  The stewardess turned her head around in some astonishment, but couldn't see any intense expression on her mistress's face.

  "I don't need a crystal mechanism-hating warrior like you, get out of this creation room immediately." The witch's voice was still as cold as the thousand-year-old ice at the top of Taimuraya.

  "But I haven't recited the whole poem for you yet..."

  Bao Man's suppressed anger finally erupted, she took a big step forward, raised her hand and pointed to the door. "This is the master's order! Get out immediately!"

  A brief silence.

  What happened next shocked Bo again. Because the mechanical butler directly disobeyed her orders and stubbornly stood in place. "Piano..."

  I don't know what the hateful person opposite wanted to say, but Bao Man didn't plan on stopping his words. Probably, it was the first time he had been infuriated by this organization's housekeeper like this.

  Then Dais said the next sentence, which clearly entered her ears. "I want... to learn how to play the piano."

  "What did you say?" As if she had heard the most ridiculous joke in the world, a smile actually appeared on Bo Man's originally tense face. Not a benevolent smile, but a cold sneer full of ridicule and disdain.

  The organ's caretaker maintained a humble, bowing posture. "As you've said, perhaps no matter how hard I try, the music I can play on this piano is all false, every last note of it. But I hope... at least to be able to approach true music."

  The witch's cold smile became even more pronounced: "Really, how amusing. A mechanical warrior like you, created from the very beginning for the purpose of slaughter, how could you possibly want to learn something as unrelated as piano?"

  As expected, the organ's caretaker didn't respond with any rebuttal. Instead, he turned around and stretched out his crystal arm once more, slowly and firmly tapping on the keyboard, and the melody that Bohman hummed in his sleep gradually emerged.

  "Stop it!!! You killing machine doesn't even deserve to touch my piano!!!"

  In the witch's angry scolding voice, the notes continued to dance on.

  "You're not even worthy of studying art! Just obediently accept orders and go to the battlefield to reap the lives of your peers, that's enough!" The repeatedly ignored Bao Man was cursing at the guy in front of her with all her might. However, she had never been good at this kind of behavior, so no matter how hard she tried to appear aggressive, the triteness of her language was constantly weakening the effect of her expression. It sounded more like a helpless compromise.

  However, the other party finally gave a response, although the piano playing never stopped. "So... I wanted to learn how to play the piano..." The voice of Kokoro's father was no different from usual, but anyone could hear the unwavering determination contained in these simple words. "Because I already... don't want to return to that kind of battlefield again."

  Miss Bao Man stood there in stunned silence, no longer having any thoughts of stopping her strange housekeeper.

  She didn't know if every hateful warrior would behave so strangely, perhaps the higher-level hateful warriors were more affected by the manufacturing of magic and closer to normal demons. The witch comforted herself like this.

  At this moment, any orders given by her as the host are completely ineffective. She can't possibly stop the battle expert in front of the piano with force, nor does she want to.

  Bao Man herself was also extremely disgusted with what was called war. Whether it was the invasion of Ai Qian, or the internal strife between the three major continents of the Demon Clan for years. Her eyes weren't...

  Forget it, let this official family manager do whatever he wants.

  Even if it were herself, she couldn't sit in front of the piano for twenty-four hours a day. In her spare time from rest and creation, she liked to indulge in this clumsy imitation, and it was okay to consider it as indirect payment. Miss Bao Man thus deceived herself into saying so, slowly turning around and leaving her own studio.

  Daisuke Mondo stood upright behind him, feeling his way and softly tapping the black and white keys.

  *******

  On the vast and flat plain covered with lush green grass, there are several ancient trees with luxuriant foliage like umbrellas or canopies. In the sky, a few faint white clouds are floating, and on the distant horizon, where the sky meets the earth, the rising sun is elegantly emerging, bringing boundless warmth and golden light that touches people's hearts.

  "Henfrey! Henfrey!" The sky, the grassland, under the trees, whether near or far, there was no sign of that detestable silver-eyed figure. "Henfrey!"

  The witch girl, who had been searching around ceaselessly, wept helplessly on the grassland. Although her eyes were already blurry from countless tears, she still obstinately shouted out, searching for: "Wait for me... Henfurei..."