As the quote says, "parting is such sweet sorrow".

Especially when the future holds no promises of ever meeting again.

"Listen, man," Jake told Song, refusing to accept this parting, and making a promise to the future. "You take care of yourself, all right? I'll be back. Do whatever you need to do to keep your division together, okay?"

Song smiled at him.

"All right. Don't worry."

"I want you to promise me," Jake insisted. "Just as I promise to return here."

Song nodded.

"I promise. Now go back home, we can buy some time to rebuild here."

"Okay," Jake said, turning back and leaving his promise behind.

'If I have no choice but to leave, then I'm leaving with no ceremony. After all, I have to return here as soon as possible.'

Upon his return, he might be able to find a way to start helping Evergreen back to its feet – he just hoped that Song and the rest of the remaining awakeners would somehow hold out until then.

There is no immediate danger, so with luck, the awakeners and civilians within Evergreen would be spared the brunt of the upcoming conflict.

"Well, looks like this is it. Take care of yourself."

"Agreed. Watch our friend's back for me."

"Sure," Liam said before bidding Song farewell, "been doing that since the tutorials."

The friendship between these three was extraordinary – both Liam and Song were roughly the same age and forged their friendship in the fires of danger and the horrors of war. Jake, too – but despite his attachment to shopping, he still found a very good friend in Song as well.

'I wish he had entered the Grand Duelists together..' Liam thought, not willing to dwell on the fact that their division is calling them back.

Thus, it was with a heavy heart that they bid Evergreen farewell, and began their journey back to Carter, along with Maven and the other Grand Duelist.

***

The heavy haze of sorrow around the four Grand Duelists on their return journey to Carter, with attempts at small talk fading away into awkward silences that stretched on for hours on end..

Even Maven found himself walking on eggshells around the two rookies, and he couldn't figure out why.

They were close to home when Maven started hearing murmurs from someone.

It sounded soft, but thanks to the silence, everyone else picked up on it easily.

"No.. well, here.. this sounds good... this.. all right."

"Hmm? What did you say?" Liam asked Jake.

He seemed focused on something, which is why he couldn't answer, and just muttered constantly.

Maven found it odd – could their parting have just affected him that way?

Liam approached Jake to hear in detail what he was muttering about.

"I can buy this for 150k, and still have room.. the store's currently out of stock of flyers, but they'll restock by the start of next week.. Hmm, this looks good. I think I should upgrade, maybe get a new necklace too.."

Liam drowned out the muttering with his own laughter, complete with the fakest smile he ever made.

'This is – I can't believe you're still shopping now!'

"What the hell is going on? What are the two of you saying?" Maven curiously asked Liam, because he wanted to know a bit about what Jake was muttering about.

"Nothing, he's just trying to put a timeline together about what happened in Evergreen. You know, lots of things happened, we're going to have to get it right if we'll report to Master Li, that sort of thing."

Liam couldn't believe how much of a bullshitter he had become.

'I can't believe I've come a long way from being a criminology student to blatantly lying like this. I hope you get me a few items for my silence.'

"I see, I see!" Maven replied with a laugh. "What an interesting novice. Can't really call you novices anymore due to what you've been through, especially since your friend took me out, first night here.."

While Maven was laughing, Liam approached Jake to warn him that somebody might be able to figure him out.

"It's not the time for that, we're close to Carter now, we can put that aside for later," he whispered.

Thankfully, Jake could hear him, and whispered back.

"Well I buy stuff when I'm upset," he replied. "And I really feel like crap right now. I want to shop to forget. Did you know I'm close to maxing out my points? I can buy a lot of things right now."

Liam sighed.

"Fine, but don't draw too much attention to yourself.. and get me something too, if you can."

***

Kelderian was currently in his office, deep in thought.

How would he bring back a customer who jumped ship?

That was one of the most difficult things a merchant can do, so they do the less difficult thing: keep their customers loyal.

"I barely see him at our store these days," he mused out loud, traces of tears down his cheeks and bitterness etched on his face.

"Yes, I noticed a decrease in the number of purchases he has made."

"There are two things you need to be good at while they're around: love and business. Understand?"

"I.. I kind of do, sir, but how.."

"This isn't the time or place to be talking back to me!" Kelderian lashed out at the staff member, voice more annoyed than angry.

The staff were also on edge, and unfortunately, one of them had to be a bit snippy with Kelderian while they were all seeing Jake start to spend less of his points on the Awakening Store.

The reason for that was that he had to increase his purchasing performance at the Superstore, so he had to buy their products as of late.

Based on the calculations of Kelderian's staff, Jake was already at the highest possible performance rating, and didn't have to purchase there exclusively anymore.

Unfortunately, Kelderian was struggling because he didn't know that development yet, and was trying to find out what was going wrong by himself.

"Apologies, sir."

"Don't apologize. Just tell the rank and file that we'll have to bring out the anti-bacterial lip balm: it's time for us to kiss ass."

"Come again, sir?"

"What I meant was, we're going to have to kiss Jake Smithson's ass if we want to keep him as a customer."

"How are we going to do that?"

"Velocity roadster aside, our product line isn't that different compared to the Superstore."

"That's true."

"They can sell the bike, but we can get Jake back to buying from us after that."

"How do we get to that?"

"Some may call this cheating, but.." Kelderian trailed off before enumerating his thoughts.

Reverting the minds of customer back to where they were is impossible: which is why special measures need to be taken.

The catch is, these special measures often take place under-the-table; and while Kelderian wanted to do something to help bring Jake back on their side, he was hard-pressed to come up with an idea on how to do that.

He had maxed out the discounts on the available items.

Their acquisition of new stock is moving too slowly for his liking.

Clients still have yet to return their calls.

And Kelderian knew that the Superstore was also doing the same.

'We're basically two sides of the same coin,' Kelderian thought. 'Nearly everyone in my position would push their luck and go in cold, but not me. I take calculated risks; I don't gamble with my business.'

Sometimes, the merchants make mistakes: even if the results could only be anticipated vaguely, there are times when a wrench gets thrown in their plans.

That's when the result isn't like how they expected, or if something else pops up beyond their expectations.

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Finally, there are times where that kind of behavior actually produces results – but those are rare cases, like catching lightning in a bottle.

In most cases, plans based on their expectations fail, and such failure leads to massive financial and career damage.

Kelderian also knows this, which is why he would rather err on the side of caution.

"Sir, what do you mean by cheating?"

"..it's not particularly about latching onto a single high-paying customer, we should be at least looking at brand loyalty at this point.."

"Sir? I was asking you a question."

"What? I was about to get an epiphany! You ruined my moment! Is that how you regard your boss?"

"I'm sorry, sir! But we just need to know the steps we'll take now."

"Fine, let's open up the Diamond Label," Kelderian answered, and the staff stopped what they were doing and looked at Kelderian like he grew an extra head.

"How? We can't just open that wing of the Store on a whim, you know how our system works!"

One of the employees thought Kelderian's plan was absurd: in the first place, the right to open new labels does not lie with employees or management, but rather from the rules of the service itself.

If the customer doesn't qualify, he can't access the new label.

"Of course, I know how it works," Kelderian replied, and his employees started to whisper about how his mind left along with their customer.

At first glance, this looked like the manager who has lost a loyal customer, and was now throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks in order to bring the customer back.

In this case, though, Kelderian knew what he was doing.

"Here's how it goes: we give Jake the qualifying criteria for the Diamond Label. Since he's some ways away from getting there, he'll do what he can to qualify. We're technically not going against regulations, because in this dimension, there is only one customer existing!"

The explanation was sound.

'Well, the reason we don't actually do such a thing is because there are so many customers in other shopping malls; we don't want to alienate our customer base. We only have one customer here, though, so there shouldn't be any problem with it.'

Nothing about it went against the rules Corporate HQ posted.

As Kelderian continued with the details, the staff member wondered.

'Boss is actually pretty sharp. I wonder what turned him from a doddering old bureaucrat to a salesman?'

And when he finished the plan's outline, the entire staff applauded.

'Yeah, you're not the Kelderian I used to work for. What an impressive coup.'

***

Li and Klay had their nose to the ground since Jake and Liam's departure to Evergreen.

And shortly after Maven sent word that they had made contact and were due to return in a couple of days.. it was here that the event Li was fearing took place: the moment when the proverbial "other shoe" drops.

"Klay, what did you just say?"

"Our most recent raid ended in disaster. Our raiding team – wiped out to the last man."

"You're telling me this because it wasn't the monster who killed them, right?"

"It's not clear, but judging from the wounds on their bodies, they were likely killed by other awakeners," Klay explained.

Members of the Grand Duelists, dead.

"What sort of idiot with a death wish thinks they can get away with killing a member of the Ten Stars?" Li asked.

Murdering an awakener affiliated with one of the Ten Stars is an unspoken taboo in this world.

Because if the Ten Stars were roused into action, mountains tended to be leveled, cities tended to vanish, and entire divisions were reduced to atoms in mere moments.

The kind of power the Ten Stars level divisions can put to bear is why it serves as a deterrence: any division cannot handle the wrath of the Ten Stars.

This is also the reason why, even though the Ten Stars may have their disputes, they still work together to keep the relative peace within Nohas.

Should war be declared, lines will be drawn, and the conflict will be bloody, and this is why most disputes involving the Ten Stars – and divisions allied with them – are settled through negotiation.

If this is the case, then who killed the Grand Duelists' raiding team?

"This happened some distance from Carter, my security team is having a hard time gathering information quickly."

"The other divisions there, were there witnesses?"

"For some reason, they say that it just happened without warning, and they could not find the culprit. Odd.. it is like their demeanor is very passive."

"What..?" Li asked, in disbelief, "they just stand around even though awakeners from our division died?"

"I'm sorry," Klay answered, bowing his head.

Li took a steadying breath.

This meant a large loss of reputation for the Grand Duelists if they were unable to find the culprits.

Klay, on behalf of the GD security assigned to determine what happened to their awakeners, kept his head down as an apology for this sequence of events.

"Raise your head, that's enough," Li said, not blaming him or his security unit for this. "We both know it's not your fault. It seems I have been passive for too long now."

"What do you mean?"

"I prioritized finding a peaceful resolution of this succession crisis within our division, but now that our own blood has spilled, we have to take action. I will address LJ and Connor personally to see to it that their little schoolyard fight is tabled for the moment."

Klay smiled; he wanted to be there when his friend finally laid down the law.

'About time you got the Grand Duelists to make their move, old friend.'

***