CHAPTER 35: WHAT A WEIRD NAME TO HAVE

Another day had passed since I woke up, and my body already felt completely healed.

I had noticed this earlier too, during the Battle of the Dominion—my recovery seemed a bit too fast.

’Wait... is it because of that?’

A strange idea popped into my head. I took out the dagger I kept hidden in my underpocket. I always carried it in case something happened. Placing it against my palm, I drew it across in one swift motion.

"Ugh."

Pain shot through me as blood began to trickle, drop by drop.

Drip! Drip!

Nyx watched the whole scene with curious eyes before speaking. "What psychopathic thing are you trying to do now?"

I shot him a look for calling me a psychopath. I wasn’t that bad, was I?

"Shush," I muttered.

Then I lowered my hand to his eye level. "Watch this. You’ll be surprised."

The wound behaved differently. It was healing—too fast.

Nyx and I watched in silence as the cut completely closed within minutes.

What should have taken even an arcane hours to heal, disappeared in no time.

"How... how is this possible? Aren’t humans supposed to heal a lot slower?" Nyx questioned, gently placing his paw across where the wound had been.

There wasn’t even a scar left.

I nodded, thinking aloud. "Maybe my five-times faster aging has boosted my healing factor too."

That was the only theory I could come up with at the moment.

I didn’t have this ability when I first arrived in this world. I still remembered the blisters I got searching through the temple.

’Oh god, that fucking pain.’

The memory of walking for days with legs turned to paste was still vivid—and inhumanly painful.

"Well, at least something good finally happened to you," Nyx chimed in.

"I guess I’d say that... if it didn’t suck the life out of me five times faster," I muttered under my breath. "Anyway, shall we go for the Welcoming Ceremony?"

"Oh, hell yeah!" The little cat practically bounced with excitement. Honestly, he looked more thrilled about it than I did.

While I’d been passed out, a letter had arrived. It bore the Imperial Academy’s crest—a single eye staring into your soul. The sight of it creeped me out, as if it could see through every bit of me.

The letter itself was full of fancy words nobles loved to use. It read more like a college thesis than an acceptance letter. But in simpler terms, it said this:

I, Loki Moe Lester, had passed the entrance exams and was now eligible to attend the academy.

As for the ranks, I would come to know about them during the award ceremony.

When they asked about my last name during the entrance exam registration, I told them the truth, that I was an orphan.

The examiner, a thin man with more rings under his eyes than on his fingers, didn’t even blink when I said it. He just sighed and told me to pick a surname for the records.

"Anything?" I asked him.

He nodded, clearly wanting to get through the line faster.

At that moment, I was tired, half-starved, and slightly annoyed by the entire noble circus around me. And so, purely out of spite and a bit of childish humor, I blurted out the first ridiculous name that came to mind.

"Loki Moe Lester."

The examiner’s quill froze mid-scratch. His eyes flickered up to meet mine, searching for a hint of a joke.

I kept my face perfectly straight.

A few tense seconds passed. Then, either deciding he didn’t get paid enough to argue or realizing nobles gave their brats stupid names all the time, he just wrote it down.

And so, Loki Moe Lester was officially entered into the academy records.

Nyx still teases me about it every now and then.

But honestly? In a world crawling with monsters, cults, and ancient curses, a dumb last name feels like the least of my worries.

And so, with Nyx draped lazily around my shoulders, I finally left the inn.

After leaving the infirmary, we’d been staying at a modest little inn on the lowest floor of the Imperial Capital—the Seventh Floor.

Though it lacked the marble facades and gilded gates of the upper rings, it was still very much part of the Nest: crowded, alive, and stubbornly proud in its own way.

The streets bustled with early risers: traders unloading goods from distant provinces, street cooks fanning the morning’s first skewers over open coals, and apprentices in plain uniforms hurrying to workshops.

Stalls spilled onto the cobbled roads, selling everything from steamed buns to cheap paper talismans. The smell of roasted spices mixed with the faint tang of wet stone carried on the breeze.

Buildings here were simpler—carved from black stone rather than polished marble—but their banners still bore the crest of the Empire, even if the colors were faded. Lanterns hung over doorways, swaying gently as shopkeepers swept their thresholds.

It wasn’t the cleanest corner of the capital, but it wasn’t lawless either. Watchmen in plain iron armor made their rounds, and most people knew better than to cause trouble so close to the seat of imperial power.

Above us, the higher floors of the Nest rose in layered terraces, each level grander than the last.

As we made our way through the floors, we suddenly heard a loud commotion on the fifth floor.

My eyes quickly followed the disturbance, and as soon as I saw the cause, I deadpanned.

"HAHAHA! Tasty! So tasty!

A youth with wild crimson hair was demolishing skewer after skewer, barely pausing to breathe. Sauce dripped down his chin as empty sticks fell around him like spent arrows.

But he didn’t stop there. With a grin, he slammed a few coins onto the food stall’s counter. "Another round! And keep them coming!"

The stall owner hesitated, clearly intimidated by the raw, almost savage enthusiasm blazing in the youth’s eyes.

Then, as if suddenly remembering the crowd staring at him, the red-haired glutton turned, flashing them a roguish grin. "What? Never seen a man eat breakfast before?"

A few nervous laughs rippled through the onlookers as Nyx said, "He’s... lively."