New Century Warriors

Chapter 11. Seemingly Familiar Old Friends

There wasn't much more content in the notebook.

This is strange. Lei Ye felt that he shouldn't easily give up this good habit of recording things at any time.

"Boss Lei, you're acting a little different today."

Loya suddenly whispered, interrupting Lei Ye's thoughts.

If that voice were a little more forceful, it could be played by a bassist; the more Lei Ye listened, the more irritated he became.

However, in any case, Loya just happens to be Lei Ye's best source of information. With that in mind, Lei Ye put down his notebook, waved, and ordered two glasses of fine wine and two top-of-the-line single meals.

"Huh? Huh?" Luo Ya panicked when she realized what Raino was doing. "No, no, no! You've already taken such good care of me, how can I let you buy me drinks? At least let me pay..."

Compared to her squeaky voice, Luo Ya's sweet and cuddly appearance was even more unbearable for Lei Ye, giving him goosebumps.

This is a completely different species from when she asked for five large gold coins.

Lei Ye held Luo Ya's hand down, then paid for the meal for the waiter. With his other hand, he pushed the expensive sweet wine towards Luo Ya. Lei Ye didn't like this kind of wine, but it was Luo Ya's favorite. He remembered that Luo Ya always ordered it.

"How did you know...? Thank you."

Loya gave up resisting and thanked her in a voice as soft as a mosquito's buzz.

However, she still discussed with the waiter and changed the dishes, replacing one of the dinners with a lush green mixed salad.

"I'll just eat this."

"...Are you worried about it being too expensive? You actually worry about that? You?"

Lei Ye's eyes widened in surprise.

There's no need to worry about spending. When checking his storage bag, Lei Ye found coins of various units—a large quantity. Although he hadn't calculated it precisely, this amount of money was enough to support him in doing all sorts of things.

With Ye Lei around, it's inevitable that Lei Ye will make money, whether he writes books or works as an engineer; Lei Ye wouldn't be surprised.

What truly surprised him was Loya's attitude. In the past, whenever they had a meal together, this guy would display his terrifying eating habits, like a hungry wild dog tearing at its prey and devouring all the meat on the table in a whirlwind.

Who is this lady?

"Well... I am an elf after all, eating too much meat can affect my physical development."

Loya answered, a slightly embarrassed smile on her face.

Meat...

By the way, in the early stages of starting the business, a large portion of the money the two of them earned from commissions was used for their own food and drink.

Not only Loya, but Raino is also the type who can't live without meat; both of them have quite a big appetite.

But if Loya hadn't teamed up with him and had become a lone wolf explorer, the early stages of their business would have been extremely difficult, and naturally, they wouldn't have been able to have good food and drink every day.

This major shock was actually caused by a long-term vegetarian diet.

I'm so sorry for poking you just now, it wasn't intentional, meow.

Is this why Loya's voice sounds so high-pitched? That can't be...

"What's different?" Raiye asked, a little embarrassed, and changed the subject.

"Cough..." Loya choked as she took a small sip of fruit wine. "What?"

"You just said I looked different today, how so?"

"Well... you're usually so gentle and kind, a really good person. I'm not saying you're bad like this, it's just that today you look... I don't know why, but you seem a bit like one of us explorers who fight every day."

Nonsense, I may not be the best fighter, but I'm a genuine A-level explorer who's fought my way up.

But judging from Loya's words—

"You mean I've been working for the past five years? Just working?"

"Not entirely... You get several months of vacation every year, right? Every time there's a holiday, everyone complains about how hard it is to wait for you. Speaking of which, why are you suddenly talking to me about this? Is it because you want to retire?!"

Loya tapped her head with her fingers in distress. "That would be terrible... How should I put it? I understand how tired you've been lately, but the recent filth is extraordinary. Please hang in there."

Keyword capture: filth.

The unfamiliar words that had just appeared in Lei Ye's skill list were spoken by Luo Ya again.

Lei Ye opened the notebook again, turned to the latest page, wrote down the word "filthy," and circled it.

Raino definitely wanted to know what filth was, but he would do it in order. He had already figured out what had happened to him, but he still needed to verify it with Loya.

"Ye Lei," Lei Ye took a deep breath and uttered the name that hurt his ears, "Do you know her?"

"Cough," Loya choked again, lowering her head slightly, "Of course, the landlady... she's quite kind to me, she's a good person."

"Is he a good person, or a good octopus?"

"Octopus? Sorry, I don't understand..."

It's that giant octopus that swatted you like a fly, and now it's become a good person because it saved you a life, right?

No, subconsciously I still thought Loya was a teammate, so I relaxed. Intelligence gathering is not like that. You can't expect to get any direct information from other people. You have to get them to talk more and analyze it yourself.

First of all, Ye Lei's rebirth is a done deal.

Titles like "I'm Reborn as XXX" are something that author Lei Ye often sees on various online novel platforms, so he certainly understands the concept of rebirth.

But he never imagined that he would be reborn as an ancient god who could kill his way through the world and was invincible.

This is equivalent to adding another Star Platinum to DIO and designing another Shining Form based on willpower for Gatanothor. The villains who were already overpowered are given another overpowered mechanism. This is simply unreasonable.

Lei Ye, in particular, had no clue about her. He didn't know why Ye Lei suddenly approached him and went on a killing spree in Hillius, nor did he know why Ye Lei, after her second chance, became a well-behaved ordinary citizen of Hillius. He couldn't understand it.

It was all too sudden. Raino's peaceful life in the other world was suddenly thrown into turmoil, and only now has he had the time to react.

So why was he reborn...?

After thinking about it, it was most likely because of that dump truck. In countless time-travel stories, it is the dump truck that sends the protagonist flying to another world. Lei Ye also got there in the same way. However, Lei Ye's dump truck was a little different from others. Others only had one-way tickets, but Lei Ye's included pick-up and drop-off. However, when Ye Lei was sending Lei Ye off, he was pushed aside by Ye Lei... who intercepted his return ticket.

That doesn't make sense either. Shouldn't Ye Lei have been sent to Earth? And why was she reborn five years ago, when Lei Ye had just arrived?

A flash of inspiration.

He remembered what the blonde goddess had told him back then: she would arrange for another dump truck to send Lei Ye back intact.

Before saying that, he was complaining to the goddess.

"What if I can't get home? My mom will go crazy with worry."

So the goddess gave the exact same answer.

So that's what it means to be exactly as it was. Exactly, exactly as it was.

It's just a guess: the dump truck was originally meant to send Lei Ye back to the moment five years ago when he was thrown to the fourteenth floor by the dump truck, and when he suddenly opened his eyes, he would find that everything seemed to be just a momentary illusion. He would return to his peaceful and joyful life and say goodbye to the other world he had just saved.

However, the car hit Ye Lei, which was the wrong target, so a bug occurred. The time was still set to five years ago, but Ye Lei from five years ago was obviously not in that rented house, so they had to send her to her location from five years ago exactly as she was.

Then she immediately ran to Hillius to find herself... With her speed, no matter where she woke up, a day would be more than enough to reach Hillius. Even she would be confused after seeing the city completely intact, so her first thought was to find Raino.

This part of the conjecture corresponds to the content in the notebook.

Loya didn't know about the giant octopus.

This shows that Ye Lei has not changed in the past five years, has not suddenly become a beast and caused chaos, and has even integrated into the city, becoming a part of it and gaining the praise of the local residents.

Indeed, if Ye Lei had made a move, given her destructive power, this city wouldn't be in its current state.

"Where is Ye Lei now? What does she usually do?" Lei Ye continued to ask.

"Huh...?" Loya tilted her head suspiciously. "Didn't you say you were going on a business trip and would be back in a few days? As for your daily life..."

She paused, her eyes darkening. "Have I been causing you trouble by visiting the shop so often? But I really didn't mean anything by it. I know you two have a great relationship and are a model couple in Hillius..."

Keyword capture: business trip, good relationship.

The fact that Ye Lei was on a business trip shows that she has a job; she actually does have a job.

Thinking of the certificate in the cabinet, Lei Ye guessed that she had taught him his engineering skills, and that her job was most likely related to the making of magical items, or that the small shop was indeed a husband-and-wife shop, run by the two of them.

As for having a very good relationship...

Hearing this praise, Lei Ye felt a chill run down his spine. Ye Lei, after her rebirth, came to his side immediately and completely rewrote his adventure story from the very first stroke. Lei Ye's past was forcibly rewritten. He didn't get to hear Luo Ya's reply that day, agreeing to become his teammate. There was no Forest River after that. He embarked on a completely different path and spent five whole years with this indescribable thing disguised as a human.

The terrifying, hellish scene was still vivid in his mind, easily destroying the combat power system that Lei Ye had built up in his understanding over five years. The Forest River and the Demon King were all weaklings. Ye Lei's combat power was so heaven-defying that Lei Ye couldn't think of any possibility of defeating her.

And this monster lived among the people like a normal person, even becoming one of their closest kin.

The more I think about it, the scarier it gets; it really does feel like that pseudo-human invasion scenario.

"What's wrong? You look strange."

Lei Ye exhaled a breath of stale air, shook his head, "It's nothing," and then held out his hand to Luo Ya, "Can I see your guild card?"

The guild card is the most important document for guild members, recording all sorts of information about an explorer. Moreover, the data can be updated regularly through the information board at the counter. In this strange world that at first glance looks like the Middle Ages, this guild card is simply cutting-edge technology.

...That's incredibly advanced technology!

When Lei Ye saw Loya take out her guild card, he was dumbfounded. This thing could not be called a "card" at all. It was more like a stone slab. Moreover, the material used was the same as the control panel of the guild counter. Lei Ye remembered that this material could not be mass-produced.

"ah..."

He thought of Tucker's gun barrel, and then he thought of Ye Lei's machine tool.

"What's wrong...?"

"It's nothing, my ear just hurts."

Lei Ye fiddled with it like an elderly person trying out a smartphone for the first time, the magic flowing and turning into text, displaying Loya's information on the stone slab.

A high-level mage and a mid-level thief? Without a team, meaning she's just a mercenary, it's understandable that she's completed so many commissions—after all, she can leech off others' achievements. But the fact that this lazybones, Loya, is so active still greatly shocked Lei Ye.

Moreover, she possessed a considerable amount of magic, most of which were minor skills suitable for clearing out mobs. In the past, she would have always looked down on such magic.

It seems that living as a lone wolf has changed her strategy. Lei Ye noticed that she has even learned some basic skills such as using daggers and short bows.

"What's wrong now, Boss Lei? Your expression is so strange."

"It's nothing, just a bit of a sigh. Here you go, thank you for lending it to me. I have one more question: how have I performed as an explorer over the years?"

"An explorer?" Loya grew increasingly suspicious. "Boss Lei, you're acting really strange today. You keep saying odd things. When have you ever done the work of an explorer?"

Judging from Loya's subtle changes in expression and body language, she has begun to harbor a subtle suspicion of Raino.

It's normal to be skeptical, after all, the Elf race has extremely high intelligence, and Lei Ye's performance today must be very different from 'Lei Ye'.

Otherwise... how about we reveal our hand?

Tell Loya about what he went through; it's always more efficient to have multiple minds working together to analyze it.

If we were to find someone trustworthy to analyze intelligence, given the current situation, it would only be Loya.

"Do you know, Ye Lei, she..."

The words that followed stuck in Lei Ye's throat, and he couldn't spit them out no matter what he tried.

The image of Loya's death kept flashing through his mind.

He suddenly realized something: Ye Lei was clearly going through her own planned date, so why did she suddenly switch to battle mode halfway through the date? There must be a reason.

Lei Ye finally realized that he couldn't tell anyone about this, he had to keep it to himself even if it meant death, and he couldn't act too differently from how others saw him, especially in front of Ye Lei.

All the peace he saw was shrouded in the shadow of Ye Lei's potential madness at any moment, and how could he possibly fathom the monster's moods? What Lei Ye needed to do was to pretend, to pretend to be the same Lei Ye as before, and to maintain this peace for the time being.

"She... she's such a wonderful girlfriend." Raino finally managed to squeeze out the second half of his sentence, almost gritting his teeth as he said it.

Subconsciously, he still couldn't imagine that he and that giant octopus would become the model couple in other people's eyes.

"Mmm," Loya replied in a muffled voice.

"Let me ask you something else. Do you know the Forest River? Do you remember names like Anlashi, Formalin, and Ais?"

"Forest River? Never heard of it. As for the names you mentioned, I only remember that Formaline was the librarian of the Grand Library, and that's all I know."

As expected, Mori no Kawa also disappeared, and his mothers, like vanished money, never appeared in this version of the story.

Lei Ye suddenly became agitated.

Loya knew Formaline because she was at least an ordinary librarian. But what about the others? Think about the various events that happened when he first met them. If Lei Ye hadn't met them and had just stayed in Hillius as a simple small business owner, wouldn't his mothers have died in their respective predicaments?

But what's the use of being anxious now? If something really does happen, it's already happened.

There are still things to do, Raiye, calm down.

Lei Ye checked his storage bag and searched around but couldn't find his own guild card. Or rather, the only guild card he found was the original version, the one he got with Luo Ya on the first day after he transmigrated. Compared to Luo Ya's card, it was far outdated and unusable.

According to Luo Ya, after meeting Ye Lei, Lei Ye embarked on the path of becoming an engineer and stopped being an explorer. Therefore, it was normal that Lei Ye did not upgrade his guild card when the guild card was updated and upgraded later.

I glanced at Loya; for some reason, she seemed to be in a bad mood, so it wasn't a good time to get any more information from her.

"Take your time eating, I have something to take care of."

He got up, went to the counter, and handed over his initial version guild card.

"Is this still usable?"

The staff member at the counter also looked unfamiliar, but she seemed to know Lei Ye, acting overly friendly. If Lei Ye had a system that could see favorability ratings, her favorability rating would be at least 67.

She took over Lei Ye's guild card and operated it on a huge stone slab. During this process, Lei Ye craned his neck to look inside, and he was amazed by all the equipment inside, especially the stone slab that the staff was operating. If it had color images instead of just black and white text, it would really be similar to an electronic device.

"Is the technology really that amazing, Ye Lei?"

Lei Ye muttered to himself, glancing down at the bottom right corner of the stone slab where he saw a line of small characters.

(TheLeiYe)

"Haha." He was truly at his wit's end.

"Hey Boss Lei, your guild card is damaged and unusable. Let me make you a new one. Of course, this service is free of charge."

"Okay, what should I do?"

"Please press your magic tattoo here."

Lei Ye felt like a country bumpkin who had just arrived in a big city. He couldn't understand any of the steps, so he obediently followed other people's instructions, worried that he might do something wrong and cause trouble that would expose his secret.

But it still caused trouble.

As soon as he pressed his magic rune onto the surface, the magic lamps throughout the Explorers' Guild began to flash wildly, and a commotion erupted throughout the guild. Some people were so startled that they dropped their wine glasses on the ground.

"I...I...I didn't do anything, damn it..." Lei Ye innocently raised his hands.

What he saw in the saleswoman's eyes was not a reproachful look, but rather an admiring gaze that sparkled like stars.

Immediately afterwards, Raiye heard strange noises coming from the stone slab.

The sound instantly confirmed to him that he had indeed made the stone slab, because no one else in the other world could have been to the internet cafe downstairs from his house—

(Ding ding dong~) (A mysterious little tune)

"An ASS-level explorer has completed registration at counter number three."

The Seekers of Hillius Guild wishes you a pleasant day and looks forward to your continued activity.