With a groan, Harry stood up from the ground… Lifting himself up with his only arm that was left on him… Harry’s eyes wandered the room… Floating over the bed, stopping on the walls… Focusing on the window… It was already morning…? How long had he been asleep and talking to this higher-dimensional being for…? Whatever… Perhaps it was truly just a figment of his imagination… His eyes hovered toward the door of the bedroom… There stood Diana. She was eating some meat. Probably some cow meat, by the smell of it. Where the hell did she even find a cow anyway? This house was located in the middle of a forest… Perhaps she had gone hunting during the night? Whatever… This did not matter at all.

Diana had clearly calmed down since their little incident from last night… Her dagger was sheathed inside of a small sheath that was attached to her belt. Just close enough to reach it before anyone else could reach her. Harry’s eyes glanced toward the smoke coming from the living room… She had been cooking directly on the flame, huh? Well, that’s one way to make the whole house stink of cow meat… He thought with a chuckle as he walked past Diana, his feet echoing against the hardwood of the floor as he ventured closer and closer to the cooking meat. Diana glanced at him, knowing damn well he couldn’t really stay upright to grab the meat if he had to use his sword as a cane just to stay standing. With a small sigh, she walked over to the fire and picked up a piece of meat, which she gently cut into small pieces before bringing one of the pieces over to Harry’s mouth. Harry froze. What was she doing? Why was she… being nice to him. That concept felt almost… new to him. But it wasn’t a new concept at all… He had experienced it before… But it had been so long ago.

His mouth closed around the meat that had been offered to him… The flavor hit his taste buds like a bombshell hitting the ground after being shot out of a cannon… The flavor was perfect… it hit all of the right spot of his taste buds… That was a weird thought… Whatever… His throat tightened as the piece of meat slid down his throat pipe right into his stomach acid. Eating was such a waste of time… Savoring the food for such small time just to destroy this beauty within your own body… Waste.

Diana let out a small chuckle as she saw the look on his face. Before asking him a small question that Harry found quite useless to answer… But why not? How did it taste? Did it even matter?… The reaction of taste is a mere reaction to a stimuli that the human body experiences… So why should it matter how it tasted if it’s a mere reaction… Whatever…

“It tasted nice.” He nodded gently as he answered Diana’s question about the food she had cooked. He let out a small sigh as he turned his gaze away from her… They had better things to do right now… Using the sheath of his sword as a cane, he walked over to the main door of the house… Diana understood immediately what was happening. They were going over to the nearby forgeron village. Diana quickly gathered her things, making sure her knife was in place before following Harry outside of the house… The giant trees that surrounded the house made it so that no one could see it from outside the forest…

Harry stumbled forward in each of his steps but always caught himself at the last moment using his makeshift cane. He was clearly having a hard time adapting to the loss of his arm… But he was getting better at it… Diana clearly wondered why he was stumbling so much… Only his arm was missing… It’s not like his whole balance was off; now he still has two legs. Perhaps the way Harry experienced balance was on a whole different level… More precise. The way each of his muscles moved as he walked… It wasn’t mechanic like any human who simply let their body walk… It was as if he was in control of everything… He controlled each part of his body as he wished… Did he even realize it…? His tender muscle coiled against each other in a soft, rhythmic dance of flesh as he operated his body with such grace… If he weren’t limping so much, Diana would have thought his body was capable of divine feats.

His steps limped together in short breaths… Just like one would do as they try to calm themselves down to not drown in the middle of the sea. His steps became more and more precise… His body clearly adapting to the missing arm faster than any regular human would be able to… For any other injured human, this small walk to the nearest forgeron village would had taken a good whole day… But for these two… It took them a mere hour.

The blacksmiths of the village, all but one, turned their head in unison as they heard the wounded man enter their home… The man before them had clearly been through a layer of hell itself… The leader of the village finally turned his head toward the couple of newcomers… His gaze observed them from afar… That boy’s arm… It was all he could think about. He didn’t need to experience the pain that Harry had felt to know just how painful it was…

Harry limped forward—Stopping right in front of the leader of the forgerons… His gaze slowly lifting before they both locked eyes with each other…

“I’m going to need a new arm,” Harry gently whispered out of his mouth… Just like a low note trying to hide beneath a louder one.

“That part was obvious… But I feel like the real question is…What do you have to offer in exchange, boy?” One of the forgeons exclaimed behind the leader.

“I wish to revolt against the Elarian Dominion… Is that enough of an exchange?”

“…I suppose…” The leader said with a soft smirk plastered across his face… This was a win-win for everyone. The leader glanced toward one of the forgerons who was still nearby one of their armory depot and nodded to him… If the boy before them needed an arm to revolt… Then he should have it.

A metallic arm was brought forward… It wasn’t the best-looking… But it looked durable which was exactly what Harry needed… The arm could be attached via multiple straps and suction pads that were directly attached to Harry’s nerves to make sure that his movements would be as accurate as a real arm… The fingers were pointy…sharp… This wasn’t just a prosthetic. Harry glanced down at his new arm and made a small, intriguing discovery… The fist was adorned with the same painting of Elisabetta Sirani that he had seen in Elaria’s castle. For a village that was so proud to hate on her highness… How did they come to figure out about such a painting… Harry gazed toward the nearby forgeons… Analysing their gazes to try and decipher who exactly had placed this image on the arm… Who had made the choice to do such a thing.

One blacksmith locked his gaze with Harry and smiled gently… He probably thought that Harry wanted to compliment his craftsmanship… But the more that their gaze were locked with each other, the more that the blacksmith could understand that the man’s gaze wasn’t one of praise… But one of question. His grip on his hammer faltered as he suddenly bolted away from his personal forge; the hammer dropped onto a ceramic pot meant to hold molten metals with a loud bang, which turned everyone’s head to the commotion… Before they could even twist their necks completely to look upon the scene, Harry had already flashed forward to run after the man with one plan in his grip. To make him answer.

Diana glanced at the scene confused as she was chatting with a nearby blacksmith who was just interrupted as he was crafting a experimental weapon… A sword so light it felt like you were swinging paper around but durable enough to swing through wood effortlessly. It was definitely Diana’s kind of weapon. But to her sadness, the sword wasn’t being forged for her… But for someone else.

Harry chased the man through the nearby forest… His balance still a bit unstable due to the weight of the prosthetic he had now acquired… But if it were Harry Gage, it would most likely only take him a few minutes to adapt to it completely—the chase was completely one-sided. The running blacksmith could only run forward, dodging into the forwards trees in the mere… pathetic hopes of making some distance with the ruthless right hand of Elaria… His feet tangled into a grounded tree root, sending him flying forward face-first.

Harry stopped a few feet behind the crumbled man, whose face was decimated by the tree he was leaning into… hard, sharp pieces of wood directly into his skin… Blood was gently welling from his sudden wounds. The man slowly turned around to lean his back against the bloody wood.

“Not the brightest rabbit, are you…?”

The man’s gaze lifted upward to the man before him… It was clear he was going to question him on the reason he ran… He had every reason to… With a muttered groan of pain, he finally spoke back.

“What the hell do you wa—”

The man wasn’t even given the chance to finish his sentence as Harry lunged forward with his new arm… The prosthetic hand wrapping itself around the man’s neck and squeezing hard enough to crush a bone if the man even dared to struggle in his grip.

“You already know what I want… Don’t make this more difficult than it is already, hm? Harry’s words echoed in the man’s head over and over… That boy… He knew that he himself knew…or was he just playing mind games to make him reveal something?

“F-fine… I’ll tell you alright… I just recognized you; that’s why I ran…I thought that her highness had sent you to kill me because I was a traitor.” Those words made Harry freeze… A traitor?… There had been a lot of talks about a traitor before the war that changed everything for him… Was this blacksmith before him? The leak? Harry let out a small chuckle as he heard a familiar set of footsteps coming near of the both of them… Diana. The woman whose suffering was caused by the blacksmith’s lying was before him. Should he tell her? He wondered. Harry’s eyes roamed against her face… Simply thinking until he came up with a decision.

" This man over here " He said glaring back at the bleeding blacksmith " Is the sole reason Luke died. " Diana froze in her steps her face getting as cold as a sharp piece of ice…But before she could strike, Harry had one other thing to say… “ Instead of killing him, How about…We force him to join our party. We share the common hate of Elaria’s dominion afterall…”

A soft scoff escaped Diana’s mouth as she glanced past Harry to lock eyes with the man who was responsible for all her trouble…Her mind had been set already… With a soft groan she turned away and begun to walk away from the scene Harry had caused. " Sure…Whatever. If he tries anything, im gutting him. Let’s go home. "