There had been many debates among the girls about the purpose of Fire Island, and ultimately, the wealthiest had won — since Nora had funded all the building materials, Eleanor and Peggy had no choice but to concede.
The blueprint of the manor had been roughly finalized, and the construction process had its ups and downs, even necessitating several redos and material wastages.
Finally, the building before them stood complete — a tall, beautiful wooden house with two stories. The second floor housed the bedrooms for the girls, while the first floor comprised the living room, dining room, and foyer.
To the right of the entrance was the kitchen, suitable for cooking food. To the left, a storeroom was used to store various equipment, Magic Potions, trophies, and essential living supplies.
From a residential perspective, this double-story wooden house was enough to meet everyone’s needs.
However, in Nora’s plan, it was just the entrance house for the entire estate.
The entire wooden frame was constructed, naturally with no interior decoration. Due to the characteristics of the half-plane of Fire Island, one shouldn’t even think about running water, though temporary electricity supply was considered plausible.
By the time the girls moved in the purchased furniture into the wooden house on Fire Island, it was already late at night.
"Aske and Mia haven’t come back yet," Medea said with a playful tone, "Maybe they are on a date somewhere."
Nora silently furrowed her brow, just to hear Eleanor argue,
"How could that be! Mia is just a few years old! Don’t you think it’s childish and ridiculous to say such things?"
"Ah~" Medea seemed to deliberately oppose her, her fingers lightly tapping against her chin as if pondering, "But I’ve heard that some men do like underage girls..."
"Shut up, Medea," Peggy said coldly before Nora could speak, "A pedophile? That’s laughable; how could Aske be such a pervert."
"Oh, do you know him that well?" Medea’s purple eyes swirled, her tone teasing.
"Of course, I was one of the first to follow him," Peggy replied.
"What do you mean by ’one of the first’?" Aske’s figure emerged out of thin air.
He looked at the beautiful wooden house before him, his expression one of astonishment, "It’s built so quickly?"
At the end of the sewer, the two indeed came upon an electrically charged wire fence. Thus, Aske teleported back to Fire Island early, and Mia entered the Shadow Realm.
Then, wielding the insulating pliers prepared beforehand, she cut the wires one by one.
In the Shadow Realm, cutting the wire fence didn’t affect the wire fence in the Main Plane.
Instead, the gaps in the wire fence in the Shadow Realm, as time slowly passed, would gradually extend and reconverge, eventually synchronizing completely with that of the Main Plane.
Hence, Mia swiftly cut an accessible gap without triggering any alarms.
After passing through the wire fence and climbing out of the sewer in the Shadow Realm, Mia found herself in a courtyard, the surrounding colors turning into varying shades of gray.
She moved swiftly through the Shadow Realm, nimbly maneuvering through corridors and passageways, avoiding moonlight from the windows and lights from indoors.
Suddenly, she halted in her tracks. Ahead, in an arcade, two guards were questioning a stranger, their flashlight beams blocking her path.
"It’s me," the stranger removed their hood, sighing helplessly, "Do you recognize me?"
"It turned out to be Lady Varomina," both guards hurriedly saluted.
Since they were dispatched here by Emperor Zoe, they naturally recognized Lady Varomina, who often accompanied Emperor Zoe.
"And who is with you?" one guard asked, directing his flashlight behind her. The other individual, also clad in a hooded robe, had their face concealed under the hood, head bowed,
"She’s a relative of mine," Varomina replied indifferently, "She had a severe illness in her childhood, which disfigured her. So, I sent her to the Monastery. You wouldn’t want to inspect her face as well, would you?"
"No, not at all!" the guards hastily said, waving their hands.
In this world, one of the most notorious disfiguring diseases was erysipelas, where the bacteria attack the facial skin causing extensive necrosis and the pus was highly contagious, thus people generally avoided the disfigured.
Zoe and Theodora once had an elder sister named Eudokia, disfigured by disease in her youth and sent to the Monastery by Emperor Constantine.
For a princess of the realm, that was the custom, not to mention ordinary citizens’ children. Those well-off were sent to serve God at the Monastery, others were simply abandoned.
Thus, the two guards almost scrambled to make way for Varomina and the disfigured individual to continue forward.
Taking advantage of the situation, Mia in the Shadow Realm dived and jumped over the guards’ flashlight beams, landing lightly on the ground.
"Even so, you don’t have to ’worry’ about her," Varomina suddenly spoke up, lowering her voice after walking a distance, "The ’care’ she receives is extremely thorough, no ’accidents’ will happen."
"I’m just ’curious’," the person behind Varomina responded in a similarly low voice, "After all, with that person ’watching’ over her, no one with ’malicious intentions’ can succeed, right? I just wanted to pay my respects to that highness."