Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 129: An Afternoon in the Life of Peko.

The mid-morning sun warmed the polished cobblestones of Old Shinkotsu as Peko walked down the center of the bustling avenue.

Old Shinkotsu was a pristine snapshot of a bygone era. Massive wooden estates with sweeping, tiled roofs lined the streets, while wealthy Beast-folk merchants and nobles walked past her wearing meticulously tailored, traditional silk garbs. It was a district built on strict discipline and wealth, but the moment Peko stepped into the flow of traffic, the entire street organically shifted around her.

She moved with the indifferent dignity of a wandering empress. Long strands of chestnut hair caught the sunlight, framing striking violet eyes that scanned the historic architecture with an unwavering calm. Her crisp white robes flowed around her without catching a single speck of dust, giving her the ethereal presence of a fairy gliding over the earth.

The crowd naturally parted to make space for her, creating a wide, unobstructed path all the way down the avenue.

When Nom-Nom walked through these exact same streets, the locals violently scrambled out of the way, driven by their survival instinct screaming at them to avoid the Greater Dragon walking towards them.

But as Peko moved, the citizens stepped aside in pure, mesmerizing awe. Beastkin merchants stopped their haggling just to stare, completely captivated by her flawless grace.

Peko ignored the attention entirely.

She simply followed the sloping cobblestone street until it fed into the massive walls and the gate that divided the capital.

The moment her boots crossed the threshold, the quiet, disciplined elegance of Old Shinkotsu instantly vanished, aggressively replaced by the vibrant, chaotic noise of New Shinkotsu.

It was a complete sensory overload. The new district was a messy, sprawling clash of every culture on the continent. Sturdy Dwarven stonework formed the foundations of intricately carved Elven buildings. Human merchants haggled with Demon-folk, while Beast-folk street vendors aggressively advertised their roasted skewers to anyone who walked by.

The air was thick with a chaotic mix of forged iron, foreign spices, and sweet pastries. All of which made Peko’s nose scrunch with the overload.

Yet, even in the heart of this chaotic, multi-racial melting pot, the effect Peko had on the crowd remained exactly the same. Everyone stepped aside, granting the beautiful woman in white robes a wide berth as she made her way through the bustling market towards the Grand Library.

The doors of the Grand Library of Shinkotsu swung open, welcoming Peko into a massive, multi-tiered sanctuary of knowledge.

Endless rows of towering wooden bookshelves stretched high into the ceiling, packed tight with everything from centuries of theory, historical records, geographical maps, and current events.

Peko greeted the elderly Beastkin librarian at the front desk with a polite, silent nod before walking into the labyrinth of aisles.

She didn’t just pull a single book; she gathered all that could fit in her hands before carrying them to a quiet corner table.

And for the next several hours, Peko completely lost herself in the literature.

With her highly accelerated baseline cognition, she effortlessly devoured entire volumes from cover to cover, turning the pages as though she was counting them.

She absorbed the complete, unabridged Dynastic Records of Fugen in less than half an hour.

The comprehensive text detailed that the Fugen royal family traced their ancestry back to the mythical bloodline of an ancient, nine-tailed Kitsune magic beast that had been officially classified as extinct for the past five thousand years.

Because of this potent bloodline, the current ruler, Emperor Ryūjin, is a monstrous Tier 8 expert, and sitting just beneath him in the hierarchy were four highly capable princes, all resting at Tier 7, alongside a thirteen-year-old princess who had yet to awaken her full potential.

Closing the heavy historical ledger, Peko immediately opened a massive, thousand-page compendium on Global Accords and Mandates.

She read through centuries of dense legal frameworks and border treaties before her violet eyes locked onto a certain universally enforced decree: The Mandate of Unity.

The international treaty strictly required every single registered practitioner above Tier 6 to report directly to Pantheon’s headquarters in Cardella, the City of Heroes, to fight against each year’s Night of the Red Moon.

They were legally obligated to arrive exactly three months before the Red Moon arrived to train and prepare for a highly coordinated, global offensive.

Their ultimate objective was to literally invade the invader’s realm and defeat the ’Keeper of the Red Moon’ in order to end the Night.

However, the mandate served a crucial dual purpose.

According to the text, the intensity of the horrors invading any given city during the Night of the Red Moon scaled proportionally to the average strength of the population currently residing within it.

By legally siphoning off the absolute strongest individuals from every nation, the Mandate of Unity drastically lowered the average combat power of the major cities. This ensured the remaining citizens and lower-tier guards would face a much more manageable, appropriately scaled invasion force.

The only explicit exemptions to this global draft were the ruling leaders of the nations and their immediate successors.

Peko lowered the massive book, her perfectly composed expression shifting into a slight, analytical frown.

[So Emperor Ryūjin and his Crown Prince are exempt...] she mused, mentally cross-referencing the current date with the impending Red Moon. [But that means the other three Tier 7 princes, and the actual powerhouses of this entire nation are currently gone.]

She slowly turned her head, her gaze locking onto a massive, highly detailed map of the known world pinned to the nearby library wall.

Tracing the geography with her eyes, she mentally mapped the sheer, unfathomable scale of the world.

Fugen was part of a scattered archipelago sitting at the absolute northern fringes of the known map. Directly below the chain of island nations stretched the unimaginably vast northern half of the main continent, the sprawling territory of the Demon-Folk known as the Gehenna Basin.

Bisecting the entire Great Continent landmass was a massive, horizontal black line indicating the impassable, frozen range known as the Heaven-Severing Glaciers.

Only by crossing the Demon-Folk territories, surviving the monstrous domain of ice, and venturing even further south through the extremely dangerous and untamed Great Forest would one finally reach Cardella.

[The distance is practically...] Peko realized as the tactical implications rapidly clicked into place.

If the terrorist outfit, Entropy, decided to execute a major offensive against Fugen now, the nation would be functionally a sitting duck.

Yes, the Emperor and the Crown Prince remained, but a nation could not be defended by two men alone.

The distance between the island and the City of Heroes was so unimaginably vast that Fugen’s strongest wouldn’t even receive a distress signal in time.

By the time any Tier 7 reinforcements actually crossed the continent to help their Emperor, Entropy would be long done, and the capital would be nothing more than ash and rubble.

[Well, not our problem...] Peko eventually decided, casually brushing a stray chestnut hair behind her ear as she dismissed the geopolitical crisis. [Whatever it may be, we are perfectly capable of protecting ourselves.]

Rising from her seat, Peko returned the massive stack of completed texts to the shelves before pulling out her final challenge of the day: a heavy, velvet-bound encyclopedia detailing the complex political hierarchy and every established noble family in Fugen.

Returning to her table, she rapidly consumed the first three hundred pages, absorbing the histories and scandals of minor lords before arriving at a deeply entrenched powerhouse, the Kamo family.

The text detailed their absolute, unbreakable monopoly over the entire pharmaceutical and alchemy industry within Fugen’s borders.

But before she could even turn the page to consume the rest of their lineage, a cloying, overpowering scent of expensive but obnoxiously applied cologne washed over her table.

Peko didn’t even look up, just sighed.

This was the third consecutive day this particular nuisance had decided to grace her with his presence.

"Reading about my illustrious ancestors, are we?" A grating, inherently smug voice broke the sacred silence of her corner.