That this obedient, beautiful, and agreeable daughter adored and respected her father above all else was certainly a good thing.

If, on top of all that, this obedient, beautiful, and agreeable daughter also vowed never to marry, it would absolutely be a blessing beyond measure.

But why, after experiencing such blessings, did Lin Luo feel utterly miserable? After pondering for a long time, he finally understood: it was because this daughter presented a massive obstacle to his grand undertaking of finding a mother for her...

“A child without a mother is unhappy, so Suigin-tou, you must understand that as a dutiful daughter, you cannot cause your father distress in this area. In fact, you must strive with all your might to help your father, do you understand?” While the others busied themselves preparing dinner, Lin Luo, using his unhealed injuries as an excuse to sit aside, shut down all telepathic communications with everyone else, leaving only Suigin-tou, whom he spoke to quietly in his mind.

“I only need Father. I don’t want a mother,” Suigin-tou replied seriously, tilting her head up.

Hearing this, Lin Luo felt a surge of being revered and placed upon a pedestal, a weightlessness overcoming him. But immediately, remembering his mission, he adopted a stern expression and corrected her. “That’s not how it works. A family isn't complete without a mother. Think about it—even tadpoles travel thousands of miles across the ocean to find their mothers. That shows how crucial a mother is. If Suigin-tou had a mother, she would undoubtedly be very happy too.”

“The tadpoles and their mother live in the same pond, Father. It’s not thousands of miles across the ocean,” Suigin-tou kindly pointed out the inaccuracy in Lin Luo’s analogy.

Lin Luo felt thoroughly defeated; this was the first time he had lost the advantage in an argument, and it stung. “I was just giving an example.”

“Is Father hungry? I will prepare dinner,” Suigin-tou said, glancing at Lin Luo, then toward Mikoto and the others, before speaking.

“Isn’t someone already preparing it? Your body has just recovered; you should rest more. Besides, I think we still need to discuss that topic about mothers…”

Lin Luo still intended to work on Suigin-tou, to turn her from an obstacle into an ally, but before he could finish, Suigin-tou said with a smile, “My body is perfectly fine, Father. You don’t need to worry.”

Then she swiftly ran toward the spot where wisps of cooking smoke were already rising.

Watching her departing figure, Lin Luo couldn't help but drift into a daze. The Suigin-tou before him was vastly different from the one in his memory—not the villainous queen with an aura of malevolence, nor the strong, profound girl burdened by inner attachments. Her magnetic voice now betrayed happiness and joy, delivered with grace and poise.

Although there was an initial, overwhelming sense of dissonance for Lin Luo, upon deeper reflection, it felt inevitable. After all, regarding love and respect for Father, Suigin-tou was arguably the most intense among all the Rozen Maidens. To meet the so-called Father, she had claimed she would do anything, whether good or evil.

Compared to the other girls, who possessed a more intricate human nature, Suigin-tou was undoubtedly incomplete. Not just physically, but also in emotion, values, thought processes, and even soul. Her existence was singular, utterly unattainable for humans. She possessed nothing beyond love and hatred, and between these two extremes, there was an absolute void, no intermediary substance.

Humans cannot live, fight, and then die solely for love, but Suigin-tou could. She was born for love, fought for love, and her entire, all-consuming objective was simple and strikingly clear.

Therefore, despite her incomplete body, she possessed a solitary pride, aloof and sovereign, like a deity standing high above the moonlit heavens, gazing down in isolation—unique.

Originally a discarded thing, possessing no inherent meaning or value, yet she moved, she fought, betting everything, breaking through thorns and never yielding. The entire genesis of this lay in her love for her Creator Father; to meet him, to receive that dreamed-of embrace and whisper, she wouldn't hesitate to destroy the entire world under her Black Wings. She endowed her own existence with meaning through her actions.

Thus, her lexicon contained only love and hate, never good or evil.

Mercury is poisonous; the lamp is warm. Evil outwardly, yet beautiful within—this was Suigin-tou.

Now that his "impersonated" Father was standing before her, her attitude and tone naturally couldn't be as cold and dismissive as they were towards ordinary humans or the other Rozen Maidens. Perhaps the Suigin-tou he encountered now was an entirely new, truest version of herself, never before revealed to others? No, not perhaps—it was certain.

Still, come to think of it, interrupting him earlier... she was definitely a little poisonous. Did she really not want a mother that much?

“Ah~~” Lin Luo sighed inwardly. He realized he had to prepare himself for a long campaign.

Setting aside Lin Luo’s self-pitying lamentations, the girls’ side was bustling with activity. With the threat of enemies gone, their former routines had returned, the only difference being that their daily lives now consisted only of themselves and no other humans.

Naturally, tasks like boiling water and cooking fell to self-sufficiency. While these were trivial matters in the eyes of ordinary people, for this group of girls, they presented an enormous challenge.

As the saying goes, the road to Shu is harder than climbing to the azure sky; perhaps this saying should now be altered: the difficulty of cooking and boiling water is harder than ascending to heaven.

Let's look at the composition of this workforce first... Mikoto Misaka, the Railgun who only knows how to discharge electricity and be tsundere. Well, she isn't entirely ignorant about food, but that’s only when modern equipment is readily available, allowing her to barely produce something edible. But now, even the cleverest housewife is stuck without ingredients; there isn't even a pot, so she can’t cook, no matter how much electricity she can generate.

“Hmm… If I flattened this large rock, it could serve as a griddle,” Mikoto muttered, eyeing a rock nearly half her height.

Beside Mikoto was Rei. For the ultimate airhead who could sleep for five hundred years in one go, if she could cook, it would defy nature. Everyone understood this well, so they didn't assign her such a difficult task; they only asked her to sort vegetables, but...

“Is this green thing a scallion or garlic?” Rei asked, examining a bunch of vegetables in her hand, looking thoroughly confused.

“Didn’t I tell you when we picked them? That’s celery,” Mikoto turned back to tell her, then resumed her rock-flattening project.

“Oh, oh, it’s celery! Then I’ll boil it with this grass carp.” Rei suddenly understood and cheerfully placed both items into the same stone bowl.

Lin Luo felt speechless. He couldn't tell if Japanese vegetables differed from Chinese ones, or if the vegetables in this world differed from those in the A Certain Magical Index universe, because in his view, the green plant called celery was actually cilantro, and the grass carp was actually a catfish.

Cilantro, you finally get to be a main dish—congratulations! And as for the catfish, welcome to the family reunion. Lastly... what kind of dish results from boiling 'celery' and 'grass carp' together?

“That’s strange, why won’t the skin come off?” Just as Lin Luo was wondering how to complain about Mikoto and Rei, he suddenly heard a very frustrated voice and instinctively looked over. Lin Luo saw the great Roman Emperor, using her legendary sword Flamberg, gently and carefully attempting to peel a tomato...

You’ve got to be kidding me, peeling a tomato... Seeing this, Lin Luo nearly vomited blood.

“Nero, that’s not for peeling,” Shokuhou Misaki spoke up from beside her.

Oh! Queen, as expected, you know a bit... Lin Luo was about to say that, but—

“That skin is for peeling off,” the Queen snatched the tomato from the Emperor’s hand and began meticulously peeling the skin away, sliver by sliver.

Lin Luo felt he had vomited three liters of blood and couldn't recover.

“Fine, I’ll handle that annoying round thing. In return, I'll take care of that pheasant,” Nero abandoned the tomato and walked over to the other side, picking up a wild pheasant. Flamberg flashed, a sword shadow almost too fast to track, trailing faint sparks as it cleaved the pheasant into pieces... which were immediately cooked in the process.

“Hahahaha! Such a small matter couldn't possibly stump me! Look, it’s ready to eat!” Nero laughed excitedly at everyone. She picked up a piece of the cooked pheasant and shoved it into her mouth, then...

“Ugh, it tastes awful!”

Of course, it tastes awful... Lin Luo was utterly speechless. This was the first time he had ever seen someone roast a live pheasant whole, skin, feathers, and all—no, wait, cleave and roast it whole, skin, feathers, and guts included... What kind of dish was this?

Looking at the pile of pheasant meat charred black, Lin Luo felt a wave of nausea.

“Hmph, you brats don't know how to do anything. I don’t know how you managed to survive before! Let me do it!” Evangelin, perhaps still miffed from Lin Luo’s earlier sarcasm, finally seized an opportunity to scold, saying fiercely.

“You little vampire dare to boss this Emperor around? I am the Monarch of Rome, the King of the World! Things like this shouldn't be my job,” Nero immediately became displeased. While Evangelin calling others 'brats' was somewhat normal, Nero was a figure from over a thousand years ago and was actually older than Ivon.

But Evangelin was undeterred and sneered, “The reason you lost your kingdom is precisely because you can’t even handle such simple tasks.”

“What did you say?” Nero was furious. Just as Lin Luo thought a major battle was about to erupt, the Emperor suddenly smirked. “Then I’d like to see exactly how you, a vampire, handle this. Come on, peel this onion.” With that, she presented an onion to Evangelin.

“Don’t bring that near me! I hate onions, and garlic too!” Seeing the onion right in front of her, Evangelin quickly jumped away, hiding behind Shokuhou and staring hatefully at Nero. “Are you doing this on purpose? You know I’m a vampire, yet you ask me to peel an onion.”

“What a useless vampire, afraid of an onion. That’s our food,” Nero commented with an expression implying, ‘We eat onions, onions eat you, therefore you, the vampire, are the weakest.’

Evangelin was furious with hatred but dared not approach, because Nero was holding... an onion.

Lin Luo didn't know how to react; he hadn't realized the great Emperor could possess such a calculatingly malicious side.

“All you fools stop playing around! Father is very hungry. I will prepare dinner today,” finally, it was Suigin-tou, who had just arrived... Well, thankfully, she could distinguish between scallions and garlic—that was amazing.

“Little runt, what did you say? Daring to call this Empress a fool! Unforgivable!”

“Hmph, a mere little doll. I am a Puppeteer, be careful I hang you up,” Suigin-tou retorted.

“I’m not afraid of you!”

“Alright, alright, hurry up and cook, the three of you... Nero, slice this fish. Evangeline, use magic to start the fire and cool it down a bit. And Suigin-tou, hmm, grow out your feathers and use them as firewood…” The Queen couldn't stand it anymore and started assigning tasks, though her last instruction was admittedly a bit too much to ask.

...Five minutes later, looking at the utter chaos, Lin Luo could bear it no longer. He stood up and said helplessly, “Perhaps I should do it. Otherwise, I suspect this dinner won’t be ready until tomorrow morning.”

Lin Luo expected that once he stepped in, they would all happily step aside. But to his surprise, not only did they not back down, they glared at him with the eyes one reserves for the enemy of all women.

“What’s wrong?” Lin Luo asked, confused.

“Get lost and go sit over there!” Evangelin blocked Lin Luo’s path with a stone spatula.

“Huh?”

“I already said, we’ve got this dinner covered. You go cool off somewhere, and if you dare interfere... I’ll freeze you for ten years,” Evangelin warned fiercely.

Not just her, even Nero had betrayed him. “If you truly try to intervene, I will stop you with all my might.”

“What?” Lin Luo was completely stunned. What was going on? He just wanted to eat dinner a little earlier.

Though unsure what the girls were plotting, Lin Luo could see they were serious. They guarded their makeshift cooking battlefield with resolute gazes; if he dared touch a single ingredient, he might actually be dismembered.

“Forget it, you continue then,” Lin Luo retreated under the circumstances.

After Lin Luo stepped back, Evangelin spoke solemnly to the others. “Damn it! How can we need that guy’s help just to make a meal? Does this mean we’ll all starve without him? We absolutely cannot be looked down upon! These immediate challenges are the first step toward self-reliance. Come on, let’s have a decisive victory!”

The girls agreed, showing expressions of fierce combat toward the food before them.

“Celery!”

“Grass Carp!”

“Onion!”

“Pheasant!”

“Tomato!”

“Frog... ugh, why do I have a frog in my hand?”

“Ah! Don’t eat Guata!”

Watching the scene erupt in fiery activity, Lin Luo was mortified. It was just making dinner; did it need to resemble a life-or-death battle? The hearts of girls were truly inscrutable.

Finally, about an hour later, their dinner was complete. Covered in soot and presenting six bowls of unrecognizable dishes, they arrived before Lin Luo with solemn triumph.

“Alright, you try it.”

Lin Luo couldn't remain calm looking at the six bowls. He noticed the catfish's eye was blinking in the first bowl, the pheasant in the second still had most of its feathers, and the third was dark and murky... Lin Luo asked and learned that it was a baked tomato. As for the rest, he didn't even want to look.

“Can these things... be eaten?” Lin Luo asked, his heart in his throat.

“Of course. Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Father, please taste it.”

“We worked so hard to make this; if you don’t eat it, it’s showing us disrespect.”

“If you don’t show us respect, you’ll suffer.”

Lin Luo knew that if he refused to eat, he might very well end up eaten by them. Under such "unavoidable hospitality," Lin Luo could only close his eyes and begin his feast... but how could the legendary killer cuisine prepared by beautiful women be easily consumed?

After only three bites, Lin Luo’s stomach churned as if the seas were overturning. Even if he were beaten to death, he wouldn't want another bite.

“Ah, it really is no good? We truly can’t eat this stuff,” Seeing Lin Luo’s expression as if he were swallowing poison, everyone immediately sighed in disappointment.

You knew you couldn't eat it and still forced it on me—did you want me dead? Lin Luo was extremely frustrated.

“If Shinku were here, it wouldn't be this troublesome with her being such a master chef,” Mikoto suddenly said.

“Speaking of which, where are Shinku and Lezard?” Her comment reminded Lin Luo that those two hadn’t returned yet, causing him a bit of worry.

Shokuhou shook her head. “We don’t know. We were together when we went looking for food earlier, but after a short while, she said she found an interesting spot and left with Lezard.”

“It’s getting late, shouldn’t we be worried if they’re in danger?” Mikoto asked with a frown.

Shokuhou shrugged. “Probably not, since there aren’t many enemies in this world anymore, except for the Dragons.”

Lin Luo nodded. “Yes, except for the Dragons... except for the Dragons... wait, Dragons?” Suddenly, his expression changed drastically. He had thought of a very dangerous possibility.

“Uh, what’s wrong?” Everyone looked at him, puzzled.

“Did you see any dragons when you were gathering food earlier?” Lin Luo asked in return.

“Yes, a very large dragon was flying overhead,” Rei answered firmly.

Hearing this, Lin Luo immediately got a headache. “I heard dragons love shiny, glittering things, like gems or gems or gems...”

“Ah!” With that statement, everyone understood Lin Luo’s concern. Evangelin frowned. “No way. Even if she’s greedy, she wouldn’t deliberately provoke the Dragon Clan, right? She must have some shred of sense.”

“Yeah, and Lezard is with her. She shouldn't let Shinku run wild.”

“Ah! Found them! Found them!” Just then, a girl’s voice rang out. Everyone turned to look, seeing two girls running quickly toward them—it was Shinku and Lezard.

“Shinku? And Lezard? We were just talking about you... What are you doing?” Lin Luo stopped mid-question, because he saw the two looked like thieves: Shinku was carrying a large sack on her back, while Lezard cradled two large eggs in her hands, both looking flustered.

“What are you holding?” Lin Luo asked, his voice trembling.

“Gems and dragon eggs,” Shinku answered crisply.

“” The entire group face-planted... This girl really went to loot a dragon lair.

But before anyone could say anything, Shinku and Lezard darted past them, saying, “No time to talk, run! A whole swarm of dragons is chasing us!”

A swarm of dragons?

The girls paused, instinctively turning back to look. In an instant, everyone’s faces turned ashen. In the sky nearly a thousand meters behind them, blotting out the sun, over a hundred giant dragons were charging toward them.

“Shinku! Lezard! You damn brats!”