By early evening, after a round of experimenting between Luke and Sona, they could basically confirm it:
The reason Luke could hear Sona's voice was Etwahl.
When Luke wasn't touching Etwahl, he couldn't hear her.
The moment he made contact with it again, her voice returned.
It was fascinating… but also a little inconvenient. Luke couldn't exactly carry Etwahl around all day like a permanent accessory.
So for now, if either Luke or Sona wanted to talk, they'd have to rely on Etwahl as the "middleman."
Sona said she was already more than satisfied.
She'd never been the demanding type—honestly, even if she could only exchange a single sentence with Luke each day, it would make her happy for a long time.
After talking to herself in her own mind for so many years, someone could finally hear her.
And that someone was Luke.
It made her feel unbelievably lucky about the decision she'd made back then. That single moment at the banquet had stayed in her thoughts for a long time—until one day, she finally gathered the courage to step into this courtyard.
If nothing had happened at that banquet, then what happened today might never have happened at all.
Right now, watching Luke—who had already learned a simple little melody and was playing it—Sona's face softened into a gentle smile.
When the piece ended, Luke looked up and asked, "So? How was it?"
"Really good. You're talented, Your Highness," Sona replied in his mind, nodding as she did.
Etwahl had let Luke touch it for so long without rejecting him. That alone said it recognized him—maybe even liked him.
And that made Sona curious.
Did that mean Luke was the second person "chosen," after her?
Plenty of people had touched Etwahl before, and all of them had been rejected.
Luke was the second person, after Sona, who could handle Etwahl without anything going wrong.
Why?
Etwahl had been with Sona since she was born.
But aside from finding out—through research—that it was at least a thousand years old, she didn't have much more information.
So she didn't understand why Etwahl had decided to accept Luke. The whole thing felt strangely… fated.
She also wanted to know what Etwahl truly was, what lay behind it—and what her own origins really were.
She just didn't know whether she'd ever live to see those answers.
Luke, meanwhile, studied Etwahl in his arms too. If he said he wasn't curious, he'd be lying.
But he didn't know much either—only that it was Sona's bonded instrument, and also a weapon with powerful magical force.
If there was ever a chance later… maybe he could take Sona back to Ionia and explore what was behind this instrument.
With that thought, Luke handed Etwahl back and said with a smile, "Let's stop here for today. Teach me something else tomorrow."
"Mm!" Sona nodded happily as she took Etwahl.
And the moment she did, the connection snapped—her voice vanished from Luke's mind again.
Luke paused, thoughtful, eyes landing on Etwahl.
It really did feel like some kind of signal device.
Just then, footsteps sounded in the hallway outside.
A moment later, Lux walked into the living room looking exhausted. She collapsed onto the couch and didn't move, like her bones had melted. Even the little tuft of blonde hair that always seemed to stick up on her head drooped sadly, and she radiated exactly zero vitality.
Luke looked at her with sympathy. Yesterday, he would've laughed in her face without hesitation.
But right now, he couldn't even find it in him.
Seeing her like this made Luke feel a wave of gloom about tomorrow too.
Turns out moods were contagious.
And right now, Luke could feel his own back-to-school blues starting to kick in.
"Why do I feel like I've lived this exact day a thousand times already?" Lux rolled over onto her back, staring at the ceiling with the bleakest expression on her face, murmuring to herself. "Sometimes I wonder… did we really live three hundred sixty-five days… or did we live one day and repeat it three hundred sixty-five times?"
At the moment, she was basically a black hole of negativity, with enough pull to drag everyone else down with her.
Sona blinked her big eyes and looked at Luke like she was silently asking, What's wrong with her? She could feel a deep sadness spilling out of Lux.
"That's what back-to-school blues look like," Luke sighed.
Then he stood up and walked out.
If he stayed two more seconds, he was pretty sure he'd start doom-spiraling on the spot.
Out in the front courtyard…
Fiora was leaning back in a rocking chair, calmly reading a book.
Her heels were placed neatly off to the side. One long leg was stretched out along the chair—no stockings, it looked like—and at a glance, you could see her slim, elegant foot. Her pale skin looked smooth and luminous, and the curve of her foot was refined and graceful, almost too pretty to be real.
Her other leg was bent, and the corner of her lips lifted slightly on that cool, delicate face. The relaxed pose added a hint of allure to her usual sharpness.
Hearing Luke's footsteps, she set the book down and turned her head to look.
Then she noticed his gaze wasn't on her face at all.
He was staring straight at her foot.
Fiora's brows knit immediately—only for her to realize Luke was frowning even harder than she was.
Luke finally lifted his eyes and looked at her. "Your foot… you've got the start of a pretty high arch going on."
Fiora paused. "High arch?"
"You can think of it as a kind of abnormal development," Luke said, explaining simply. "It might look pretty, but it's basically a deformity."
Then he added, "Stretch the other one out. Let me see."
What Luke meant was the kind of issue you got when you forced your feet into unnatural shape over time. In the bad old days, some people treated tiny, delicate feet as the ideal, and they'd do cruel, stupid things to "train" them smaller—things that looked elegant from the outside but were damaging as hell in reality.
Fiora's feet had a hint of that same problem. They looked beautiful, but Luke could tell at a glance that the structure wasn't quite normal.
After hearing his explanation, Fiora drew back the leg she'd had stretched out and lowered the other.
The other foot looked the same: refined and elegant on the surface, but with a subtle flaw if you looked closely.
Luke sat down on a chair beside her and asked after a brief look, "Your arches are too high. Did you ever wrap your feet tight when you were younger?"
With the kind of medical knowledge in his head, Luke spotted the issue immediately.
No matter how pretty someone's feet were—if they would eventually cause harm, that was unacceptable.
Fiora hesitated, then nodded with a little difficulty. "I used to wrap them with cloth for a while."
Luke frowned. "Why?"
For some reason, seeing Luke frown made Fiora feel a flicker of panic.
Her eyes shifted, and she lowered her head. "Because I wanted to learn my family's swordplay. If my feet grew too large, it would be… inconvenient."
House Laurent's fencing style was unusual. The first head of the house had supposedly taken inspiration from a dance step—like a waltz.
And that first founder had made a name for himself across Demacia with that sword style.
Later, as the techniques were refined, people realized foot size could affect certain movements to different degrees. Smaller feet made it easier to execute some of the footwork cleanly.
So within the family, they often used special soaks and treatments to guide the feet toward the "ideal" size.
But because Fiora wasn't allowed to learn swordplay as a child, she'd trained in secret for years. When she learned about all this, she'd wrapped her feet with cloth privately, trying to keep them from growing.
Luke pressed a hand to his forehead, annoyed. "You idiot. You think the family's special treatment is the same thing as wrapping your feet?"
Fiora—who looked so sharp and composed now—had apparently gone through a truly ridiculous phase as a kid.
Luke had never seen someone do something that stupid to themselves voluntarily.
It was all harm and no benefit.
Fiora's brow twitched at the words you idiot, but when she met Luke's eyes, she couldn't summon anger at all.
After a moment, her voice got quieter on its own. "It's not like it caused problems."
"Of course you can't feel it right now," Luke snapped. "Give it a few more years and you'll regret it. And you—who claim to care about swordsmanship that much—"
He looked straight at her lowered head.
"—you don't even take your own body seriously. Do you have any idea how far-reaching one careless childhood choice can be?"
Faced with Luke being this relentless, the proud duelist lowered her head like a scolded girl and didn't dare argue.
Luke continued, "Good thing I caught it early. If you wait a few years and your progress suddenly slows, you'll have nobody to blame but yourself."
The moment she heard it could affect her swordsmanship later, Fiora's head snapped up.
The calm in her cool eyes cracked—her gaze trembled as she looked at Luke, urgent now.
"Do you have a way to fix it?"
She'd once learned swordplay out of rebellion—trying to defy her family.
But now it was something she genuinely loved, something she treated like her life itself.
And if there was a chance that in a few years her swordsmanship might stop improving because of this…
Even Fiora panicked.
"I literally just told you I caught it early," Luke said, then smiled. "Relax. Even if you waited a few years, I'd still have a solution."
Only then did Fiora exhale in relief.
And then she saw the amusement in his eyes and realized he'd deliberately scared her just to see her lose composure.
Annoyance and embarrassment flared together.
She took a slow breath, steadied herself, and asked, "So what's the solution?"
"If the development's off, you correct it back," Luke replied.
As he spoke, he dragged over a small chair and sat down in front of the rocking chair like a professional therapist.
Then he reached out and took Fiora's right foot in his hand.
Her skin was soft and fine beneath his fingers.
The warmth of his palm made an electric sensation shoot up from her foot through her entire body. She shivered instinctively, and her first reaction was to yank her foot back.
"Don't move," Luke said.
So Fiora… behaved.
Head lowered, she let him hold her foot.
She shifted slightly, adjusting into a more comfortable position, face flushed pink. Having someone hold her foot like this felt strange—and embarrassingly intimate.
Luke, meanwhile, had no extra thoughts. He was using a technique from his medical knowledge—measuring, checking the bones and structure—and confirming that the development really was off.
Feet affected strength. There was truth to that, because your feet carried your body weight.
Good arches acted like shock absorbers, helping disperse force when you landed. Visually, the arch was like an arched bridge—and what did an arched bridge do?
It absorbed impact, adapted to terrain, and stayed stable.
So the better the arch, the better those effects.
But extremes caused problems in two directions.
One was flat feet: obvious strain, reduced shock dispersion, and stability issues.
The other was an overly high arch: pain in the sole, tightened tendons, unstable walking, balance problems—and over time, abnormal stress that could warp development.
Fiora's feet looked exceptionally beautiful, but she was edging toward high-arch risk. Even if she couldn't feel it now, it would catch up to her eventually.
"Is it serious?" Fiora asked, watching Luke touch and press along different parts of her foot, seeing his frown deepen. She couldn't help worrying.
And every time he moved his hand, that strange sensation made her even more unsettled.
"It's not extremely serious," Luke said casually. "But correcting it properly takes time."
Then both his hands suddenly applied force.
A sharp crack sounded—bone shifting into place—and Fiora startled. Before she could process it, there was another crisp crack.
And strangely, the sensation that flashed through her was… comfortable.
Luke pulled his hands back.
Fiora looked at him. "That's it?"
"Correction isn't the hard part," Luke said, glancing at her—then, seeing the look in her eyes like she hadn't quite gotten enough, he added, "The rest costs extra."
Fiora blinked. "You're charging me for this?"
"What, you think I'm running a charity?" Luke scoffed. "My correction technique is top-tier. One hundred gold per foot is a bargain."
One hundred gold?
For some reason, Fiora suddenly felt a powerful urge to pay more.
She forced that impulse down, calmly set her left foot in front of him, and said, "I'll give it to you later."
Luke took her left foot, both hands applying force.
Crack.
Crack.
After the two clean snaps, Fiora felt a kind of lightness she'd never experienced before.
"Try walking a few steps," Luke said.
Fiora turned, slid her right foot into her heel, then the left.
She stood, then walked back and forth a few times.
Her expression shifted.
She turned to Luke, surprise in her eyes.
He'd only done a couple quick adjustments—yet the way walking felt now was completely different, like she'd swapped to a more comfortable pair of feet.
It was… ridiculous.
Seeing her stare, Luke smiled. "That was only a temporary correction. You can feel the difference already. With long-term correction, it'll stay like this."
Fiora nodded slowly.
Luke continued, "When you've got time, you can massage them yourself too. Tiptoe and rotate left ten times, right ten times, three rounds per foot. Then do foot stretches. It'll all help relieve muscle fatigue."
With that, he stood and headed back toward the living room.
Fiora asked, "What are you going to do now?"
Luke glanced back at her. "Wash my hands."
Fiora went quiet, her face reddening a little more.
After Luke went inside, she returned to the rocking chair, took off her heels, and did a few foot stretches just like he'd told her.
When she finished, she lifted her hand and sniffed lightly near her nose—then finally relaxed.
Good.
No smell.
And maybe because she'd been soaking in medicated baths every day lately, there was even a faint, clean fragrance.
By the time Luke came back out after washing his hands, a carriage had stopped outside the courtyard.
Kahina climbed down. When she saw Luke, she hurried in, bright with excitement.
"Your Highness! Today the paper sold one hundred fifty thousand copies—almost the entire batch we printed yesterday!"
After Luke had delivered the drafted copy yesterday, the printing work had begun immediately.
It took hours, and they printed one hundred fifty thousand copies.
Today's sales proved Luke's marketing had worked.
That number already covered a huge chunk of the capital's population.
The result was exactly what Luke expected. He thought for a moment and said, "From now on, keep this model. Print one hundred thousand copies a day. Officially raise the price to five coppers per copy. And like I told you before—unlock weekly and monthly subscriptions."
The price increase wasn't some sudden greed.
The first-day price of two coppers had been a promotional rate—partly to test the market response.
Five coppers per copy was the planned price from the beginning.
Because at two coppers, Luke was basically running a charity.
At the current pace, the paper could bring in around five hundred gold a day. For most people, that was already a staggering amount.
Five hundred gold a day meant fifteen thousand gold a month—an obscene fortune.
Even after necessary expenses, Luke could profit at least ten thousand gold a month.
That was practically one foot into the world of the ultra-wealthy.
Weekly and monthly subscriptions were a service model: pay a set amount, and you'd get delivery to your home for a week or a month.
It was basically a membership plan—and another way to profit.
And this was only the beginning. The newspaper's real money wasn't limited to sales alone.
TN: I'll never understand foot fetish...
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810.