A doctor took a sample of her blood, carried it over to what looked like a tool spirit they referred to as an A.I., and fed it into the system. After a moment, the A.I. had fully broken down every compound in the poison coursing through her veins, identified its origin, and generated a cure from scratch.
The doctors synthesized it on the spot and administered it through a shot directly into her arm. The entire process, from blood draw to injection, took less time than most cultivators would spend just diagnosing the problem.
Through it all, Ethan watched from the side with a calm smile on his face, arms folded across his chest like a man watching his favorite team perform exactly as expected.
And when she was fully healed—every wound sealed, every trace of poison flushed from her system—she sat up on the medical table and looked at Ethan with an expression that demanded answers.
She wanted to know what had just happened and how a cripple had access to something like this.
"I might be a cripple, but I discovered ways for mortals like myself to be capable. I then worked on fusing such means with cultivation, and that's what you saw… so, what do you want to do with my tongue?" Ethan asked, and her face flushed red so fast it was almost visible in real time.
"Y-you! I don't need your filthy human tongue… now speak your request. I'm not so ungrateful as to take without repaying you." She said coldly, forcing her composure back into place with visible effort.
"I don't need anything. I'm just a mortal; I would die in like 60 years… so, I guess I would like to know who you are." Ethan said thoughtfully, his tone carrying none of the weight those words should have held. He spoke about his own death like it was a minor inconvenience.
"You can ask for anything… I can try to give you the ability to cultivate." She said after some hesitation, the offer leaving her mouth before she had fully thought it through. Giving a human the ability to cultivate wasn't simple—it would cost her dearly, and there was no guarantee it would even work. But the words were out, and she didn't take them back.
"I know how hard a task that would be for you. You don't need to trouble yourself; I accepted my fate." Ethan said softly, waving her offer away with a gentle shake of his head, as though she had offered him a cup of tea he wasn't thirsty for.
"How did you kill those bandits?" She asked softly, the question that had been sitting at the back of her mind finally pushing its way forward.
She recalled how Ethan had wiped them out almost instantly—every single one of them reduced to mist in the span of a heartbeat.
"Oh, that was this," Ethan said casually, pushing a button on his watch. Instantly, plates of metal materialized out of thin air and assembled themselves around his body, forming a full suit of armor in under a second. In the center of the chest plate, a glowing blue spiritual stone pulsed with a steady, powerful light—the heart of the entire suit.
"Although I'm a cripple, I built means to fight cultivators…" Ethan said with a smile.
Well, he hadn't built it himself—others had constructed it for him based on his designs and direction. He didn't have the technical knowledge to assemble something this complex with his own hands. But the concept, the vision, and the funding were all his.
"I'm Zara Goldstar. I'm the princess of the Elven Empire. You… might be a mortal, and a lesser lifeform. But be honored, human—you have my respect." She said, and despite the condescension woven into every other word, Ethan just smiled at her as if she had paid him the highest compliment of his life.
"Zara… you really are beautiful. Even the name is beautiful, but you're so lewd." Ethan said the last part under his breath—quietly, but not quietly enough. Her face turned red in an instant.
"You! I'm not!" She snapped, pointing a finger at him as though the gesture alone could defend her honor.
"I'm not saying that's a bad thing… I think it makes you even more perfect. The fact that you don't hide it… it makes you perfect." Ethan said, and once again, every word rang true. She could feel it. There was no lie, no exaggeration, no angle being played.
She was left speechless, her finger still raised in accusation but with nothing behind it. Her hand began to shake slightly, not from anger, but from the sheer frustration of not knowing how to handle someone like him.
"But it's a shame… the fact that you hide your ears, as if scared I would do something to you—that saddens me. Why would I ever harm you?" Ethan said, shaking his head in genuine disappointment as his gaze drifted to the sides of her head, where her hair had been carefully arranged to conceal what lay beneath—her beautiful, golden-blonde locks draped strategically over her ears.
He sighed softly and turned to walk away without pressing further. Behind him, Zara's hand drifted up to touch the side of her head, her fingers brushing over the hair that covered her ears. He was right—she had hidden them deliberately.
She hadn't wanted Ethan to discover she was an elf, knowing all too well that humans trafficked elf ears on the black market as trophies and alchemical ingredients. She had been certain she'd concealed her race perfectly, so how had he figured it out?
She completely overlooked the fact that she had been calling Ethan "human" and "lesser lifeform" to his face from the very first sentence she spoke to him. That might have been a hint.
"Can I know your name?" Zara asked softly, her voice carrying none of the sharpness it had before.
"I'm Ethan Knight, the trash prince of the United Empire. Pleasure to meet you." Ethan said with a light smile that made the title sound like something he wore with pride rather than shame.
"Ethan Knight, you have done a great deed by saving me… I want to reward you, but the reward you asked for was too small… so I will permit you to look at my ears." She said softly, and Ethan raised an eyebrow as she slowly reached up and tucked her hair back, revealing her long, elegant, pointy ears for the first time. They caught the light inside the ship, the skin smooth and slightly flushed at the tips.
"And I thank you for allowing me to bathe in your full beauty," Ethan said with a warm smile, and she snorted lightly at his words, turning her face away from him to hide the blush that was already spreading across her cheeks.
"Are you hungry?" Ethan asked softly, and the warmth in his tone was immediately met with a sneer of disdain from Zara.
Elves were renowned across every empire and race for their alchemy skills, which far surpassed those of any other civilization. This mastery extended beyond just potions and pills—it bled into their cooking as well.
Elven chefs could apply alchemical principles to their cuisine, meaning their food was unimaginably delicious on a level that other races simply couldn't compete with. The idea that a human—a cripple, no less—could offer her something worth eating was laughable.
"Haha, these meals were made with my recipes. I dare say they rival the elves." Ethan said with a confident smile.
"You dare?" She snapped, the insult to her people's culinary legacy cutting deeper than any sword.
"Yes, mainly because I've never tasted an elf's food. So, I have nothing to base my knowledge on. But you do… so, I guess I'm looking forward to you telling me if I'm wrong or not." Ethan said lightly, and her expression twisted as she realized he had just maneuvered her into a position where refusing to eat would mean refusing to prove him wrong. It was a trap wrapped in a smile.
"Fine. I shall do you the favor of putting you in your place." She said with a sneer, lifting her chin as though she were doing him a great honor.
Ethan nodded and went to retrieve the food that had already been prepared. When he returned and placed the dish in front of her, Zara's face immediately contorted in disgust as she stared down at what she had been given.
It was curry. A rich, golden-orange curry with chunks of chicken. Fun fact—this world didn't have curry. It was something Ethan had created entirely from scratch, adapting recipes from his past life and teaching his personal chefs how to prepare it from the ground up.
After all, he had been cooking since he was a child back in his previous life, out of pure necessity. His mother couldn't cook to save her life—or anyone else's, for that matter.
"What is this? It looks like shit." She asked with a deep frown, poking at the sauce with visible suspicion.
"That's mango chicken curry… and should a princess say such things? Lewd, and with an unfiltered mouth." Ethan said softly, and her face flushed red. Before she could snap back at him—
"I like that. You're not fake like those other nobles," Ethan said, looking at her with a gaze that held no teasing, no humor, just a quiet sincerity that caught her off guard mid-breath. She blushed despite herself.
"S-shut up! I will kill you if you keep saying stuff like that." She snapped in embarrassment, the threat carrying about as much weight as a feather at this point.
She snorted and forced her attention back to the food, desperate for something to focus on that wasn't his eyes. She dipped a finger into the curry—an act that would have horrified any etiquette teacher in the Elven Empire—brought it to her lips, and tasted it.
She froze.
It was amazing. It was sweet, but not cloyingly so—balanced perfectly against the warmth of the spices beneath it. She could taste every individual ingredient that had gone into the dish, each one used with a precision and skill that she wouldn't have expected from a mortal kitchen.
The flavors were layered, blending together in a way that told her the chef understood not just cooking, but the science behind how ingredients interacted with each other at a fundamental level.
The heat of the flames used to prepare it had been controlled down to the degree, ensuring that nothing was over or undercooked. It was, by every measure she knew, exceptional.