《Crashed Into Fantasy》 Prologue Part 1 Author¡¯s Note: This is my first foray into story writing. I hope everyone enjoys and I welcome constructive criticism and questions.
Prologue 1 A furious battle was raging as I moved my hands along the controls around me, I needed to make sure that everything was ready when the time came. I kept an eye on the view screens showing my fellow guild members as they fulfilled their own roles. I watch particularly closely at the small Saboteur squad as they were hacking at the console terminals that were connected to the enemy¡¯s shield generator. They were being swarmed by the spider looking robots while the Enforcer and Empath squad surrounded and protected them. A quick glance at the corner of the view screen told me that the Attack squad that made up the rest of the guild members was waiting at their proper location too. Woops, almost let myself get a bit too distracted there. I quickly engaged the mech¡¯s thrusters and fly in reverse, dodging out of the way of the giant metal foot that crashed down on the location where I had just been. Damn, this Behemoth Titan mech didn¡¯t know how to be a good boy and just stay still. As I controlled my mech I started skating around with the thrusters making the Behemoth move around to catch me. I made sure to use the spare gun in the mech¡¯s left hand to keep its attention by firing one bullet every few seconds. This would be a lot easier to do if I could use the right as well but that was out of the question right now. I noticed a flare shoot up in the air from the Saboteurs. Good, phase 1 is done and it means the shield could be brought down at any time. This meant I could now move beyond being simply distraction and it was now time to bring this thing down. I tossed aside the gun from the left arm and reached down to grab one of the blades attached there. For the first time since the fight began I boosted toward the Behemoth, dodging the sporadic weapon fire that tried to rain down on my position. I flew straight between its legs and quickly turned around now that I was behind it. Some of the missile launcher emplacements on its back fired, but they had no guidance system so they were easy to dodge. The giant¡¯s steps resounded as it tried to quickly turn to face me, not that it would get the chance to. I flipped the switch on the override for the mech thrusters to overcharge. There would only be one chance at getting this right and if I failed we¡¯d probably have to come back tomorrow to try again. I sent the signal for the shields to come down. I grasped the controls and aimed my mech at the place on the Behemoth where the armor layers were thinnest. As soon as I saw a flicker in the air around the Behemoth I unleashed the overcharged thruster boost I had been holding. I cleared the 500 meter distance and slashed out with the blade I had been holding in my left arm. The blade dug into the Behemoth, and I expended all the power in the arm to make the hole as large as I could. The slashed open section was only around 10 meters long and 4 meters wide, but it was all I needed. Using the blade to brace myself as I hung a good 150 meters in the air, I finally used the right arm that up until now had been unusable. I inserted the barrel of the shoulder mounted super-heated plasma cannon into the gap and fired. I observed as armor layer after armor layer in front of me was torn through in seconds. The knife finally came loose and I activated the emergency thrusters in an effort to hold aim on the precise spot as long as possible. I heard sounds which could only be the Attack squad moving into action. The plasma cannon was draining in power rapidly, but I could tell that it was almost through. At a corner of the view screen was a timer displaying estimated time until the shield went back up. It was current displaying exactly a minute, so it was going to be a close call. It was at this point that I saw it. The plasma cannon had broke through to the core deep inside the Behemoth. I used the last bit of energy in the cannon to hit the inner reinforcements and defenses protecting the core. It was at this point that I saw the Behemoth¡¯s hand reach down and grab my mech and pull it off its back. Damn, at least my role in this is done. As I felt the mech begin to be crushed around me, I pulled the eject switch and the cockpit pod is launched out. I watched as the Attack squad with their jetpacks flew into the opening to the core and began their all out attack. I glanced at the estimated time until shield power would be back and saw 14 seconds left. 10 seconds left. 5 seconds left. 3 seconds left. It was at this point that a rumbling explosion was heard and the Behemoth began toppling over.
*Achievements Unlocked*
-Destroy the Behemoth Titan with your company only bringing a single mech -Destroy the Behemoth Titan without allowing its shield to come back up
*Title unlocked*
-For unlocking all achievements related to the Behemoth Titan you have earned the title Titan Slayer
There was a loud roar of cheers over the company com channel as everyone got their achievements and title. I didn¡¯t bother joining in and contented myself with just a wide smile. This was after all the last boss title I had been missing. Over the com I heard as our company boss Tam brought everyone back to order. ¡°Ok excellent work everyone, especially Seri with the mech piloting. Now let¡¯s salvage the usable weapons and materials and get out of here and go celebrate!¡± Fresh cheers erupted and I decided I probably shouldn¡¯t be sitting around either and started unstrapping myself from my pilot seat. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ¡°Ahh my baby! How could I have let this happen to you!¡± I was in despair as I looked at the crushed pile of metal that used to be my prized mech. We had finished transporting the materials and other acquired loot to the hangar on our capital class starship. The remains of my poor mech were also there, though there wasn¡¯t much that was salvageable from it. ¡°It¡¯s fine, Seri. We can just build you a new one with the materials gotten from the Behemoth.¡± Tam said as he looked at me with sympathetic eyes. ¡°You just don¡¯t understand, Tam! I can¡¯t just replace my baby so easily! Plus, even if we do rebuild it, that would take about a month and the big game update is finally next week. What am I going to do without my mech for the start of the update!?¡± ¡°Just do what you always do, Princess. You don¡¯t need your mech, and you know it. If anything you¡¯re stronger without the thing¡± A new artificial sounding voice cut in. ¡°Shut up Carson, you tin can! I¡¯m not talking with you, and I told you not to call me that.¡± I glared at the human sized robot that walked up to us. ¡°Oi. That¡¯s going a bit far Princess. I¡¯m a proud Guardian, not some tin can.¡± ¡°You¡¯re just a piece of a scrap metal to me, so shut up Carson.¡± I stuck my tongue out at him. ¡°Now now, no reason for fighting you two. He has a point though, Seri. You¡¯re perfectly capable of exploring new systems without your mech.¡± ¡°But what if I come across an enemy impossible to take care of with just my personal weapons. That¡¯s what my baby is supposed to be for.¡± ¡°Seri, I¡¯ll splurge a bit and hire some of the best to get the mech rebuilt in two weeks, rather than a month. Is that good enough for you?¡± ¡°I guess it¡¯s ok.¡± I grumbled. I knew I was pouting like a child, but I couldn¡¯t help it. I decided to change the subject. ¡°Anyway leader, what does your contact in the company know about the big secret update that is coming? I mean, there¡¯s so many rumors after all.¡± ¡°Hey, my contact isn¡¯t some all knowing guy, he¡¯s just one of the hired contract testers. He only knows about what he¡¯s paid to test. He¡¯s basically told me that he can¡¯t reveal anything this time because the changes are going to be big. He told me to just wait and see it for myself.¡± ¡°Damn I was hoping for better than that. I wanted to try to prepare as much supplies and other goods as possible on my personal ship before next week. Even small hints about the future content could save me a lot of grinding.¡± ¡°Well the only small hint he actually told me was that the game was going to become more realistic, but he wouldn¡¯t say in what way.¡± ¡°More realistic, huh? That could mean any number of possibilities. I mean the NPCs are already really realistic but the tech and crafting is a bit simplified. Well whatever, I¡¯m going to head to my ship to log out. Make sure my mech order gets sent out, you have a copy of the specs right, I want my baby rebuilt exactly how it was. I¡¯ll be very upset if I find out you forgot.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry so much. I¡¯ll send the order right now, and yes I have a copy of the specs.¡± I lifted my right hand in a gesture of farewell to Tam while using my left hand to flip off Carson. Before he could react, I turned and ran out of the large hangar and headed to the smaller hangar that served as my personal base and where my own ship was docked. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> I made my way through the ship exchanging high-fives and cheers with the company members I came across. When I reached the door and placed my palm on the scanner, the door unlocked and I stepped through, hearing the door lock behind me. Ahead of me was my personal starship that I had named the Lullaby, a frigate class which was probably too big for me to use alone but it was the smallest ship I could find with a mech hangar bay. I called out ¡°Lynn, I¡¯m home, open the door.¡± At my words the airlock opens and a small ramp begins to lower toward the ground by my feet. I ignored the ramp and jumped easily up and into the door. A small pink hologram of a girl that looked to be about 18 appeared in front of me. Her hair was long and straight. She was also wearing what appeared to be a simple dress. She had an angry look on her face as she glared at me. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. ¡°Mistress, how many times have I told you to use the ramp!? Don¡¯t just jump straight into the ship, you could get hurt!¡± Lynn scolded. ¡°Calm down Lynn, I¡¯m not going to get hurt by a simple 5 meter jump. There¡¯s more important things to worry about right now. Can you give me the current list of materials and supplies we have stored on board?¡± I watched as she tilted her head as she processed the request and prepared the result for me. As she took care of that, I started walking toward the ship¡¯s canteen to get a snack and drink, her little hologram projection floating along behind me. As I reached the canteen the door opened and I headed towards my sweets cabinets. I opened the doors and tried to decide what I felt like having. I settled on a package of chocolate chip cookies and put a handful on a nearby plate. Snack prepared, it¡¯s time for the drink, I headed to the wine rack and grabbed a bottle of wine that is similar to a banyuls wine that is sold in the real world, it¡¯s an excellent wine to go with these cookies. I opened the bottle and with my now free hand I grabbed a glass and fill it. I sat down at the table and began to enjoy my cookies and savor my wine. About a minute into my reverie my ship AI interrupted ¡°Mistress, I finished reviewing...ahh you just finished working and you¡¯re already drinking!?¡± I sighed ¡°Lynn, I don¡¯t want a lecture right now, can you just give me the info.¡± I could tell she wanted to go into lecture mode anyway despite my words but then sighed herself and brought up a holo screen in front of me. ¡°Mistress, we¡¯re well stocked on food, though you might want to increase the supply of real food. We have enough of your sweets to last over a year but the real food we only have about two months worth.¡± ¡°Hey, sweets are a perfectly legitimate source of nutrition.¡± ¡°No Mistress, they are not. As for materials for maintenance and the synthesizer, most everything is at optimum levels though we still have room to pack in extra. We are critically short of etherenite and quasigen though, so we¡¯ll need to purchase or collect more of those.¡± ¡°I see.¡± I continued running my eyes down the list of materials. We really were well stocked on everything so there¡¯s honestly not too much for me to do in the next week or four weeks as it would be in game. I started tapping my boot against the floor as I considered my options. I stopped and a sweep of my hand cancelled the holo screen. ¡°Alright Lynn, I have a general idea for what we¡¯re going to be doing until the government opens up the new systems for exploration, but first though I have a question. Since my baby is destroyed, we now have a whole empty mech hangar on board. Give me your best estimate of how much extra materials we can store in there of the common stuff we use the most of with a quick conversion of the space to hold it all?¡± Lynn went back into thinking mode and I went back to enjoying my cookies and wine, just as planned. This time I managed to finish my treat without further interruption. I stood up, walked over to the corner of the room and put the glass and plate into the dishwasher unit. I noticed the dishwasher was getting full, but figured I¡¯d just tell Lynn to have one of the maintenance droids take care of it later. Lynn popped up back in front of me with another holo screen. ¡°Here Mistress. This is the best use of the space I calculated based on the materials we use the most of.¡± I gave the list a quick perusal. Ananium, chromanite, destabilized phonite, haloril, high-density aquanite, hyponite, titanil, and vibromite. Lynn had listed all the quantities for me so I saved a copy of the data on the screen to my terminal for use later. ¡°Alright. First we¡¯ll head to the nearest station, that should be the Felicity Colony. I should be able to purchase all of this there, including the etherenite we need. The quasigen might be a bit harder to get since it¡¯s found closer to the edge of known space. Since we¡¯re already going to be headed to the edge of known space though, to be ready for when the ban for exploration lifts in four weeks, we¡¯ll just gather that there. Now that I think about it, we¡¯ll probably have to stock up on food at Felicity while we¡¯re there since you won¡¯t let me live on sweets.¡± I gave a nod to myself, satisfied with my plan. ¡°That sounds workable Mistress, would you like to pilot the ship to Felicity or shall I?¡± I shook my head and gave Lynn a weary smile ¡°You can take care of it, I¡¯m going to go to my room and change and then get some sleep. Today has been a long enough day already.¡± Lynn gave me a smile of her own, ¡°Yes Mistress. When you next wake up we¡¯ll be at Felicity. I¡¯ll have the maintenance droids start remodeling the mech hangar into a temporary cargo while on route.¡± Lynn¡¯s hologram vanished and I heard the sounds as the ship¡¯s systems began starting up and preparing for our flight. I walked along the hall of the ship toward where my room was located. Since I was the only living person on board I had converted a number of crew bedrooms into one larger bedroom for myself. The rest of the crew rooms I had converted into extra supply rooms. My door opened and I walked in, immediately feeling the difference as I felt the very comfortable atmosphere of my room. Unlike the rest of the ship, I kept my room at what I felt was the perfect cold temperature, sadly it took too much energy from the ship¡¯s core for me to keep the rest of the ship the same. No longer walking on metal floors but cushy carpet, I slipped off my flight jacket and shirt and tossed them toward the hamper in the corner. Next, I unzipped, slipped my boots off and sat them next to some of my other pairs of boots by the shoe rack. I slipped off my shorts and threw them at the hamper as well. Due to how my character had been created, I walked naturally on my toes not even minding that I was no longer wearing the 10cm heeled boots. I moved over to my mirror and gazed at my character¡¯s reflection in it. My character Seri had a bit of a weird appearance, but after a decade in the real world which translated to four decades in game I was more than used to it. The long elf like ears, the small horns on the forehead, the small metal encased crystal implanted in the forehead between the horns, the bright violet and teal heterochromia eyes, the very pale skin and the various dark black markings that stood out on it, and the very long, dark purple hair that was currently tied in a simple ponytail. If you ignored all those odd features, she otherwise simply looked like an adorable young teenage girl of maybe 14 or 15, only 149 cm with a modest chest and figure. Back when the game had come out, I had struggled between which race to choose. Humans were the normal, average at everything race. That was too boring of an option for me. Guardians were the humanoid robot race that specialized in taking hits with their strong builds, but I had played a tank in my previous VRMMORPG and didn¡¯t want to do so again in this one. I had crossed off all the races that were too inhuman, since I couldn¡¯t see playing them for a long period of time and eventually I got to the last on the list, the Experiment race. This race had a lot of extra customization options for how they could look and also high stat growths in the stats that would be considered necessary for damage dealing. On the other hand, their ability to take hits was next to non existent. An Experiment might have a quarter of the health pool of a Guardian, if that, while boasting maybe only a 15 or 20% increase in the stats that helped determine damage dealt over the next strongest races. They were the epitome of the glass cannon. I didn¡¯t bother selecting one of the premade Experiment types, and elected to create a unique one. After a few hours of adjusting and making my way through the options, Seri--or Experiment S341 as I titled her--was fully customized and brought into being, and had a whole elaborate role playing backstory that I had tossed in for fun. The game creators had promised that NPCs would have reactions to backstory info if you submitted it, so I decided to try it out. I had been amazed as I started playing that some of the starter NPCs had actually wept when they performed the background checks before assigning me training. I mean, I might have gone a bit overboard with it, talking about how she had gone through torturous experiments since birth in an illegal lab. And that when the government had rescued her when she was fourteen she had been completely dysfunctional and required eight long years of rehabilitation before she was allowed to go free to attempt to live a normal life. I had quickly found myself the center of attention at the training center, as instructors offered me specialized courses and any extra help I might need. Other players, noticing the extra attention I was being given, asked me what I had done but I was too embarrassed to share the tale of tragedy I had designed for my character so I just kept quiet. It had been a really long journey since those days. Now my character Seri was one of the most well known and respected mercenaries in the game. I sighed, I was letting myself get bogged down in nostalgia. I was still just standing here in my underwear too. I took off my personal shield equipment and set them on the nightstand beside my big bed. I picked up my nightgown that was lying folded on the bed and slipped it over my head, pulling my hair out afterwards. I sat down on the edge of my bed and opened my status screen.
Name: Seri
Race: Experiment S341(Unique) Displayed Title: Sniper Princess ?
Class: Pilot L100 ? Subclass: Technician L100 ?
Vitality: 2040 Psi Energy: 8355
Physique: 562 Endurance: 158 Willpower: 749
Expertise: 691 Resilience: 184 Grit: 346
I swapped my class and subclass back to my usual Ranger and Gunner and closed the screen. I slid under my nice, comfy covers and settled myself down with my many fluffy pillows. My room lights automatically dimmed and I mumbled ¡°Log out¡±. Prologue Part 2 Author¡¯s Note: This chapter is a bit shorter than last one. There¡¯s one more prologue chapter that will come tomorrow. Enjoy.
Prologue 2 Waking up in the game pod, I quickly pushed open the top and climbed out. As I stood up there was that usual feeling of disorientation, as I once again was back in my real body. My 186cm, very much male body was quite a bit different than the body I had just been operating after all. There was also the extra fatigue from the fact that I had just finished a 25 hour gaming session, which also meant I was starving. After performing some stretches to get my body back into working order, I made my way to my apartment¡¯s kitchen. It was 1am and I would need to go to bed pretty much right after eating if I wanted to be able to function at my job at 8am. This meant I defaulted to my normal lazy option of some turkey and assorted condiments on bread. A pretty simple sandwich despite my hunger but there wasn¡¯t many available options, I had once again procrastinated on my grocery shopping and my pantry and fridge were next to empty. I didn¡¯t even have any milk or juice to go with it and had to settle with a glass of water. I took my time eating, tossed the plate in the full sink, and headed to my room yawning. I saw my phone blinking on the stand with a missed call but didn¡¯t bother checking it. It shouldn¡¯t be anything too important. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ¡°Hey idiot, wake up. It¡¯s already 7am.¡± An angry voice intruded on my pleasant sleep. Mumbling incoherently, I tried to roll over to get away from the voice, but my hopes were dashed. ¡°I said wake the hell up already!¡± I felt a yanking sensation and I tried to hold on as my blankets were ripped off me, which only resulted in me joining them in going off the bed. I hit the hardwood floor and finally came out of my half-awake state. ¡°Ouch. What the hell did you do that for Carol, and why and how are you here anyway? I¡¯m pretty sure I changed the locks after we broke up the last time.¡± I sat up rubbing my head. She just gave me a look. ¡°Your mother gave me a copy of the key a while ago.¡± Damn it Mom, you betrayed me to the enemy. ¡°You didn¡¯t check your messages last night did you. I said I¡¯d be coming over this morning before you left for work to talk to you about something.¡± I guiltily toss a look toward my still blinking phone. She sighed ¡°Oh well, go take a shower, I¡¯m already making breakfast and it will be done soon.¡± I brightened up considerably upon hearing that and finally took note of the apron she was wearing over her clothes. She must have brought it with her because I knew there was no apron in this apartment. Carol and I might have a bit of a rocky relationship but she is a seriously good cook. She turned on her heels and left my room. I took note that she was wearing a short blue summer dress and I quite liked the look on her. Picking myself up off the floor, I grabbed my blanket and put it back on my bed before making my way to my bathroom. I shaved before hopping in the shower. I hated to admit it but the mental image of Carol in her apron kept coming to me and was distracting. While drying my hair, Carol called saying breakfast was done. I hurriedly finished my business in the bathroom and returned to my bedroom to dress, though I stopped at a pair of pants which would be good enough to eat in. I walked out of my bedroom into the larger room that served as both the kitchen and living room of my apartment, and instantly noticed that the room was a lot cleaner than I remembered it being. Obviously Carol had something to do with it but when did she get here? I was pretty sure she logged out of the game around the same time as me. ¡°You couldn¡¯t even put on a shirt?¡± She gave me a disgusted look. ¡°I can finish dressing later, I have time since you woke me up so much earlier than I normally would.¡± I stepped up to the table and took a seat. In front of me was a plate with pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage. There was even fresh coffee. Ahh, I wonder when the last time I had something other than toast or cereal for breakfast. Most likely it was back when we were still dating, now that I think about it. ¡°Carol, become my house maid!¡± ¡°Hell no. I already make more than you with my nursing job.¡± She untied her apron and placed it on the counter, then sat down in front of me with her own plate of breakfast. Though, she had a cup of orange juice, never being one for coffee. We started to eat in a companionable silence. Honestly, this really does put me in mind of the times back when we were dating two years ago. I decided to open up the conversation since I only had about thirty minutes before I had to leave to make it to work in time. ¡°So Carol, not that I don¡¯t appreciate the breakfast and cleaning, but what did you come over to talk about. This isn¡¯t something that happens very often, so if I had to guess you have a favor you want to ask of me.¡± I asked her pointedly. ¡°Well, I was wondering if you¡¯d go shopping with me next Thursday.¡± ¡°That¡¯s the day after the update, can¡¯t we do it sooner? I really don¡¯t want to cut into my fun exploration time.¡± ¡°I¡¯d have loved to do it sooner, I don¡¯t want to cut into my own playtime either, but I¡¯m working afternoon into the night for the rest of the week and I know you work mornings through afternoons. I even took on some extra shifts so I could have some time off next week. Thursday is the soonest possible day I have time to go shopping.¡± ¡°So you want to go on a date next week? I mean, I think we¡¯ve proven from failing at the dating thing twice that we just aren¡¯t good for each other in that way.¡± I could see a faint blush creep up on her cheeks ¡°NO!! It¡¯s not a date! Absolutely, positively not a date! I just need to buy a new game pod since I¡¯m giving my old one to my younger brother and with where you work I know you can get me a discount so...¡± I couldn¡¯t hear the rest clearly as she started mumbling, but I think I caught something about maybe a movie or lunch. I mentally sighed and I knew that despite what she said she was asking me to take her out on a date. I also knew that despite my own reservations about it that I would absolutely take her out because of my own stupid attraction to her that had never faded. I briefly wondered wistfully if maybe third time¡¯s the charm, as the saying goes. ¡°Fine I¡¯ll go shopping with you next Thursday, alright?¡± I enjoyed seeing her face light up in a smile and she nodded happily. I decided to divert the conversation from that subject for now though, ¡°I forgot that Steven would be turning fifteen around now. That means he can finally start playing all the more mature games. Is he going to try out M:SP, and if so are you going to get him to join our company?¡± ¡°He is very interested in the game, especially since you and I have been playing it for a decade. He actually started a character a few days ago. I¡¯ll invite him to the company if he sticks with it. Actually that brings up another thing I wanted to ask you.¡± She looked a bit nervous and start fiddling with some of her blonde hair. ¡°Well? I can¡¯t say yay or nay until you tell me what it is?¡± She took a deep breath before speaking ¡°Can I join up with you on the Lullaby for the update?¡± I looked at her in astonishment for a second before responding. ¡°No. Just no. There¡¯s no way I¡¯m allowing you to come aboard Lullaby again. The last time I did that, you started teaching my innocent Lynn lots of inappropriate things. Plus you already have a ship, admittedly not as good as mine but it¡¯s definitely up there.¡± This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.¡°I let my brother borrow my ship since he¡¯s just starting out.¡± My astonishment only deepened further. ¡°You let him borrow the Crimson Raven? A new player with that kind of ship? Are you crazy?¡± ¡°No way. I left Izzie with precise orders about where she was allowed to take him, and that he wasn¡¯t allowed to countermand those orders, and that he wasn¡¯t allowed to pilot or use the guns of the ship himself. The ship is just there to help him out with traveling around to save him some early credits and let him use my onboard synthesizer. It¡¯s also not like I¡¯m asking to travel with you for too long. I ordered a new ship constructed that will be done a few weeks from now. I¡¯ll be giving him the new ship and getting Raven back, so I only need to be with you until then.¡± <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> ¡°Still no.¡± ¡°Please.¡± I crossed my arms and glared at her. ¡°The answer is staying no.¡± She leaned across the table, giving me a great view of her cleavage and looking a bit upward at me with a pleading expression. My heart skipped a beat. ¡°Please Aaron, you¡¯re the only one I can trust.¡± ¡°I said the answer was no.¡± I shakily responded, my voice no longer as steady. She leaned a little bit further, increasing the impact of the tantalizing view and then said, ¡°I¡¯ll make you breakfast every day for the next month so please!¡± There was no way to win against this blasted woman! ¡°Fine, I don¡¯t care anymore. I¡¯m not coming back to pick you up though, you¡¯ll have to get your robotic butt to the Gamor system to come aboard on your own. I¡¯m going to be heading out there to farm up some quasigen for my ship¡¯s storage before the update hits.¡± Upon hearing my words, she immediately straightened up and had a victorious smirk on her face. She picked up the empty plates and glasses and took them to the sink to wash them. I hung my head down and sighed before getting up to go get dressed for work. After returning from the bedroom, she was standing at the door and waved to me with a bright smile. ¡°Bye Aaron, I¡¯m looking forward to shopping next week! Oh yeah, I brought a lunch for you so remember to take it.¡± She pointed at the fridge before waving again and leaving. ¡°Cursed feminine wiles,¡± I muttered before walking to the fridge and then following her in leaving my apartment and heading to work. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I was still muttering it as I got into work ten minutes later. The shop I worked at didn¡¯t open for a another hour, so the next hour would just be spent getting everything up and running. At a VR Gaming store there was a lot to do. I¡¯d have to power on each of the sixty game pods in the back room since we had a gaming area in there for people to try games or just play games together. We even occasionally hosted some VR Tournaments over the shop¡¯s network. Putting the lunch bag in the break room fridge and afterwards I clocked in. It was at that moment that my boss Chuck came in and heard my muttering and gave me a grin. ¡°Carol overpowered you again, Aaron? What¡¯s she got you doing for her this time?¡± ¡°She¡¯s making me take her along with me for the new update.¡± I responded with a tired look. He looked at me confused for a moment before clarity came ¡°Ahh right, you don¡¯t like sharing your ship with anyone. Oh well buck up, it can¡¯t be too bad. Plus, you know you can¡¯t really complain about feminine wiles considering your game character.¡± I wanted to respond to that, but realized that I didn¡¯t have much of a defense so I didn¡¯t bother. ¡°I¡¯m going to go start up all the game pods and then do a quick inventory.¡± He waved me off, ¡°I¡¯ll take care of the inventory, you just take care of the game pods. In particular we had a customer complaining about #22 last night, so run a diagnosis on the systems in that one and then you might as well do the rest of them too. Shouldn¡¯t take more than a couple hours. And it is a weekday so we shouldn¡¯t see too many coming in to use the game room until later in the morning anyway. Well, other than the usuals, make sure to finish the pods they use first.¡± I nodded ¡°Sounds fine to me.¡± I made my way out of the break room and over to the game room to get started. A few hours later, I had finally finished that task, so I went to tell Chuck I was taking a quick break. He told me to go ahead, but he¡¯d need me at the register afterwards. Upon arriving at the break room, I grabbed a seat and took out my phone. One of the features the game developers had eventually added allowed you to login your Mercenaries: Star Pioneers account to check your character¡¯s current in game position. It helped for when you could potentially be looking at multiple real life days of travel to get to some systems. Not every player wanted to sit around and do nothing for days at a time, though there were a number of activities for players to do while on space flights, training or crafting being the most obvious. Of course, that¡¯s not to say there weren¡¯t other things that could happen during long voyages. Pirate attacks and ship drive failures were common enough for anyone to be at least marginally worried about them occurring. Of course, Lullaby¡¯s firepower was strong and the ship was stealthy enough that no pirate gang would dare attack her with less than three frigate class ships of their own, even if they did spot her. Drive failures were a bigger threat, but after so many times going through crash landing events, they had become pretty routine too. Actually, all this was a large part of why I had named the ship Lullaby in the first place. Since Seri was rarely needed for piloting the ship, I usually left her in dreamland while traveling. According to my account, Seri, and thus Lullaby by extension, were currently about six hours away from Felicity Colony, which meant about one and a half real world hours to go. With that knowledge in hand, I could probably log in during lunch break in two hours and take care of the necessary shopping. That sounded like a good plan, so in order to maximize my time in game I¡¯ll use the rest of my break to eat the lunch Carol prepared for me. Pulling the bag out of the fridge, I opened it to see what was in there. It looks like it must be some of her dinner leftovers. There¡¯s some roast beef, some potatoes, some carrots and various steamed green vegetables. Oh and there¡¯s a note on top of the plastic wrap covering it that says ¡°Enjoy!¡± I heat up the plate of food in the microwave before sitting down and enjoying it until my break was over. The next two hours dragged on and on. Some days there¡¯d at least be some weird or interesting customers, but today it seems like that was not to be. One of my coworkers finally came in to start their shift, which signalled the time for me to start my lunch break once he took over register duty. I went to talk to Chuck in his office and get the ok to use a pod for my lunch break. He merely waved me and gave me the ok with a hand signal, since it was clear he was on an important phone call. I was briefly curious what the call was about ,but well if it was work related, I¡¯d find out later so pushed it out my mind. I headed over to the game pod in the back corner of the room and got in it. The startup sequence brought me the game select screen. I selected Mercenaries: Star Pioneers and it moved to the login screen. Thankfully, since I had my account card in my wallet the game pod automatically filled in my info and moved to logging in. I felt the usual sensation of my consciousness fading as my mind entered the game. Prologue Part 3 Author¡¯s Note: So the prologue finally ends. I¡¯ll post the next chapter tomorrow but after that I¡¯m going to start posting them two days apart. Also, I¡¯d like to thank the various Den members, Karami, Ultrabenosaurus and ArchmageNaoki for their help PRing. Please enjoy the chapter.
Prologue 3 As I felt my body begin to rouse, I was brought to full consciousness by a cheerful voice. ¡°Mistress, good morning!¡± I opened my eyes to find Lynn¡¯s small hologram floating over me. ¡°Morning Lynn.¡± I responded and sat up, stretching my arms above my head and yawning. ¡°Mistress, we arrived at Felicity approximately two hours ago. I handled the routine docking procedure and we docked about an hour ago, so you¡¯re set for your shopping trip. I¡¯ve also prepared an outfit and gotten one of your hover vehicles ready, so you just need to clean up.¡± A quick glance told me that the outfit Lynn had chosen for me looked like something a very sophisticated businesswoman would wear, short skirt included. I shrugged, wearing feminine clothes was something I had long since grown used to, and letting Lynn play dress up with me was one of the things that kept her happy. I got out of bed and let my nightgown slip off my body before heading to my bathroom. In the bathroom I removed my underwear and then walked past the bath and hopped into the shower. Five minutes later, I was once again lamenting the fact that my shower in the real world didn¡¯t have all the features that my onboard ship one did. It was blissful to just stand under the torrent of warm water while letting Lynn handle all the actual work of washing and drying my body. Returning to my room I got dressed in the clothes prepared for me. After getting dressed, I wondered for a second whether to put on some makeup, but decided why not since it went with the outfit. I never wore anything extravagant, just some basics and maybe perfume tended to be enough for my purposes. Fully dressed, I walked over to my nightstand to grab my terminal and shield equipment. Felicity might be a very safe station, but it always paid to be careful anyway. As one of the most well known mercs, I¡¯m quite a valuable target for any idiot that thinks he has a shot and wants to make a name for himself. Usually to his deep regret when he learns how big of a fish I am from first hand experience. The last one that tried, I knocked out, stripped him and then took him and hung him upside down from the tallest structure I could find. Of course the idiot didn¡¯t learn his lesson and tried again and this time I simply killed him. If they don¡¯t understand the warning the first time, then I¡¯m not going to bother trying to teach it again. Fastening the shield collar around my neck, the bracelet around my left wrist, and then the last piece around my left thigh under my skirt. I tapped the hidden button on the collar, and there was a short tingling sensation as they began to power up using my psi. I wasn¡¯t in the habit of actually using my psi for combat, I rarely needed to so using a few thousand points of it to power the shield was, in my opinion, a no brainer. A few seconds later, the three completed their activation and provided me with what was probably the best personal shield in game. The three piece shield set had cost me a fortune with gathering the materials and then finding craftsmen and technicians skilled enough to make them. The shield was immune to any kind of outside tampering effect, and having it negated my critical weakness of being unable to take blows from even someone half my level. The only way to bring it down was too many powerful blows in short succession, but the chance of that happening was slim since I¡¯d retaliate long before anyone got a chance to strike my shield as much as that required. The extra bonus about the equipment, and another reason why they had been so expensive, was that I had designed them to look like fancy jewelry which added an extra layer of protection since most personal shields were quite noticeable, being somewhat bulky belts or vests or backpacks in appearance. I attached the terminal to my right wrist and then checked the purse Lynn had provided with the outfit before nodding with satisfaction. Lynn knew me so well, inside the purse was my favorite handgun and plasma knife. I slipped the knife out and strapped it around my right thigh out of sight. It wouldn¡¯t do to have both my weapons in my purse after all. I left my bedroom and started walking to the small hangar where the vehicles are. ¡°Alright Lynn, I¡¯m going, I¡¯ll try to be back in three hours or so, the shopping shouldn¡¯t take too long. Also just a heads up but Carson begged me to let him come aboard with us when the new systems exploration is authorized. He¡¯ll meet us in the Gamor system at the end of the month.¡± ¡°Should I prepare a room or anything Mistress?¡± ¡°Of course not. We¡¯ll just throw him in the junk storage where he belongs. He only asked to come with us, he didn¡¯t ask for first class service.¡± I said derisively. ¡°Mistress is always so harsh with Carson.¡± I merely waved my hand lazily in response to that. Reaching the hangar I saw the door was opening and my hover car was already started. ¡°Anyway Lynn, just make sure the ship is ready to accept the goods when they get here.¡± I said as I opened the door and sat in the driver¡¯s seat. Lynn gave me a small salute before waving me off. Speeding off down the tunnel that led into the city from the starship docking area, I made my way to a material trader that I frequent. It¡¯s owned by an old man NPC I know pretty well and I get some discounts shopping there on account of rescuing him and his granddaughter from pirates about a decade or so ago. It doesn¡¯t hurt that his granddaughter is quite the beauty too. As I arrived at the shop, I cursed a bit when I noticed there didn¡¯t seem to be any spaces to park. I circled the building a bit in slightly larger rotations before I noticed an open spot a block or so away. I might have sped a bit getting there, but oh well. Swinging out of my car, I took a moment to appreciate the colony. It looks a lot like an earth city would if you ignore the fact that it¡¯s inside a giant space station and there are flying vehicles and robots and beings other than humans walking around. Well, nothing for it. I walked along the pathway taking note of some new businesses that had opened since my last visit to the colony. One looked like a restaurant that was advertising a large variety of confections which reminded me that Seri at least hadn¡¯t really eaten anything in quite a while and gave me an idea for how to fill up some of my time. Some people took note of me, I do have an appearance that stands out after all, but from the looks I could tell it was more for my odd features than because they were actually recognizing who I was. Somehow that made me feel a lot less famous and I could only smile bitterly at the thought. I reached the store and stepped inside. The shop here was pretty simple, just a large office really with some desks where people were conducting business with employees, after all there¡¯s no way the old man would keep tons of material in a place like this. No, the materials owned by the trader were all in various storage bays the old man owned that were down below in the station innards. They¡¯d be shipped from there to the docking bays. I saw the old man standing off to the side of the room, leaning against the wall, holding a mug and generally looking out of place compared to the atmosphere of the shop and his employees. While they were wearing nice suits, he was wearing what looked like an old flight jumpsuit. I went straight up to him. ¡°Yo, old man! I see you¡¯re still kicking.¡± I greeted him. ¡°Oh, if it isn¡¯t the little missy. It¡¯s been awhile since the last time you stopped by. Buying or selling?¡± ¡°Today I¡¯m buying.¡± I opened up my terminal, adjusting the display for him to read. ¡°Can you fill this order?¡± He skimmed the list before nodding. ¡°You¡¯re in luck, we just got in a new load of etherenite a few days ago. The rest of the order is easy by comparison. You stocking up for the exploration approval I assume?¡± ¡°Of course, it pays to be prepared. Unlike a certain someone who thought they were fine until their ship broke down with not enough parts to repair it and got himself and his granddaughter picked up by pirates.¡± I grin at him. He scowls back at me. ¡°Don¡¯t go bringing up an old man¡¯s follies whenever you feel like it youngster. I¡¯m tempted to revoke your discount and charge you double!¡± I affected at shock at his words before replying ¡°Then I¡¯d have to spread word about how much this shop is a rip off. I¡¯d spread it far and wide across the known galaxy.¡± If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°You¡¯d run me out of business! Oh my poor orphan granddaughter would be homeless!¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I wouldn¡¯t let that happen to Holly, I¡¯d gladly take her.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure you would.¡° He gave me a look. ¡°Well that¡¯s enough jokes, I assume you¡¯re paying all up front as usual so this order would run you 113 thousand credits with your discount. What docking bay is your ship in?¡± ¡°Let me check, oh it¡¯s in docking bay 82. On the topic of Holly, I don¡¯t see her around today, did she finally get fed up working for you?¡± ¡°As if, my granddaughter is a dutiful and loving granddaughter. She¡¯s upstairs studying today. She¡¯s been taking piloting and technician classes.¡± ¡°Really pilot and technician training?¡± I was surprised by this news ¡°Mind if I asked her out for lunch? I saw that new restaurant around the corner and thought to give it a try.¡± ¡°That¡¯s up to her not me. Just don¡¯t keep her out too long, she has class later.¡± ¡°No worries there, I need to be back at my ship in a few hours and I still need to purchase food supplies as well.¡± ¡°Then go on with you, you know which room is hers.¡± He waved me off with a resigned expression. I got some weird looks from the other customers as I walked to the back of the office and through the door there. Walking up the stairs, I stopped at the first door and knocked. ¡°Hey Holly, is it alright if I come in?¡± ¡°Ehhhhh, Seri?!? Please don¡¯t open the door! Give me a few minutes!¡± I heard a frantic voice followed by the sounds of frantic activity. Grinning evilly ¡°What was that? It¡¯s fine for me to open the door? Alright I¡¯m coming in!¡± Pushing open the door I got to see the delightful sight of a nineteen year old girl that could pass for a pure human if not for her light blue hair and slitted eyes wearing nothing but a small shirt and panties rushing as she tried to pick up the books and clothes scattered around her room. She was looking at me frozen in shock so I took note of some of the books in her hands. Books about piloting with an emphasis on frigate class ships huh. Holly started to come out of her shock and angrily shouted at me ¡°Seri you¡¯re so mean! I know you heard what I said!¡± I decided to divert her with some direct attack tactics, smiling at her ¡°Holly do you want to go out on a lunch date?¡± I enjoyed the look on her face as she started blushing and smiling a bit giddily. ¡°Really? I need to get changed then.¡± She dropped what she had in her hands on to her bed and turned to her closet before noticing I was still standing in the open doorway. ¡°Umm, Seri can you step outside?¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine, we¡¯re both girls after all, no worries.¡± I was grinning broadly. Holly¡¯s shoulders started to shake and she picked up one of the fallen books before throwing it at me ¡°I said get out and let me change!¡± I caught the thrown book but did as requested and stepped back into the hallway and closed the door. About ten minutes later Holly stepped out wearing a dress that accentuated her figure. A quick glance behind her showed the room even more of a mess than before as if she had thrown about half the contents of her closet out of it while looking for a certain outfit. ¡°You look very nice.¡± I say to her and her blush reappears. ¡°Then shall we depart?¡± I offer my hand to her and she takes it. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I returned Holly home two hours later. We simply chatted about recent events though she wouldn¡¯t answer my questions about her reasons for studying piloting. I would have loved to make it a longer date, but I am on a timetable sadly. It was fun though, and the cakes for dessert were so tasty. Sending a quick message to Lynn from my terminal that I¡¯d be back at the ship in about thirty minutes, I decided to take care of the food shopping. This was much easier in comparison to shopping for materials, though I could have handled that in a similar way, if I had wanted to. But then I wouldn¡¯t have gotten to see Holly. It just required me to send an order request to a shop from my terminal and paying with my account. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> Upon returning to the ship, I saw the maintenance droids loading the cargo with Lynn¡¯s floating hologram directing them. I gave Lynn permission to leave the colony when everything was loaded and to head to the Gamor system so we could gather the quasigen. By my reckoning I didn¡¯t have long until my lunch break ended so I hurriedly got undressed and back into my bed. I was in a very good mood as I logged out, with the shopping taken care of all I had to do was wait for the update to hit and then I¡¯d get to have all new, exciting planets to explore. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ¡°What do you mean your shuttle was delayed and you¡¯re not going to get here in time!?¡± I was in a very bad mood listening to a certain robot¡¯s excuses. ¡°Like I said, there was some kind of engine error so I¡¯m a few days behind schedule. I know I promised to be there by now for the update but there really wasn''t anything I could do about this.¡± Carson said trying to placate me. ¡°A few days means that I might miss out on laying survey claims to habitable worlds! A few days is huge!¡± ¡°I realize that, so you don¡¯t have to wait for me. Go ahead and do some initial reconnaissance of the nearby systems if you want to. I¡¯ll be there in a few days and you can then come pick me up, that shouldn¡¯t take too long. I¡¯m willing to wait there at the station if you¡¯re too busy to pick me up right away too.¡± ¡°Fine, that¡¯s exactly what I¡¯m going to do. Don¡¯t complain when your metal butt sits around for days waiting though. I¡¯m not making any promises about how long the recon will take.¡± I ended the call. ¡°Damn that Carson, being a pain like always.¡± I reclined back in Lullaby¡¯s pilot seat. Lynn appeared over me ¡°Mistress, there¡¯s approximately ten minutes to go until the authorization arrives. Have you decided which of the systems we should check first?¡± I brought up the galaxy map which showed the section of the galaxy that would soon be available for exploration. ¡°Based on our current location, and the need to pick up a certain idiot later, we¡¯ll check the nearest twenty systems starting with the system labeled CX-10. From there, well, we¡¯ll see how it goes. We might get lucky and find a habitable world or moon on the first try.¡± ¡°Affirmative Mistress. I¡¯ll set the destination into the navigation computer for the drive.¡± A brief flash of Lynn¡¯s eyes. ¡°Do you wish for me to pilot the ship?¡± ¡°No, I¡¯ll handle it myself today, I¡¯m too excited to rest.¡± Sitting up and putting my hands on the controls. I activated the startup sequence and prepared the ship to leave orbit around Gamor VI which we had been maintaining for the last week. The nice thing about updates in M:SP is that the bulk of the update would download ahead of time and the data would roll in so you could allow the game pod to apply the files without requiring the player to log out for the process. This meant that as soon as the update time signalled the game pod to activate the files, it was time for adventure. ¡°How much time left Lynn?¡± ¡°One minute, thirty-five seconds.¡± Came her prompt reply. ¡°That¡¯s just enough time for us to reach a safe distance to jump from, so perfect.¡± I activated the engines and maneuvered the ship out toward open space and away from the gravity well of Gamor VI. Out of habit, I double checked the navigation computer destination even though I knew Lynn wouldn¡¯t make a mistake like that. ¡°Mistress just ten more seconds!¡± Lynn was sounding just as excited as I was feeling. I noticed with a smile that she put up a countdown on the view screen. Five seconds. One Second. After it hit zero, I gave it an extra second before activating the drive. The ship entered hyperspace and we were now traveling at faster than the speed of light. Not even a few seconds into the jump the ship bucked as if it had been hit with a tremendous impact. That absolutely shouldn¡¯t have happened. I scanned the systems but nothing seemed to be coming up. A second even larger impact came. What in the hell was going on!? ¡°Mistress! There¡¯s something happening in the -¡± Whatever Lynn had been about to say was interrupted by a third impact, and then everything went dark and I knew no more. Chapter 1 Author¡¯s Note: Not much to say here. Anyway I said two days between updates last chapter, but I might do 2-3 days instead. That¡¯s about how long I¡¯ve been taking to write each one and I want to keep my current backlog in case of emergencies that might prevent me from doing any writing for an extended time. Please enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 1 ¡°Uhh mm ed.¡± I woke with a splitting headache, and I found it difficult to even say the garbled mess that I did. I tried to get up but found that I didn¡¯t seem to be able to move my body, it was almost as if I had never controlled it before. I steadily kept trying and eventually I was able to move my right arm enough to prop myself up. Looking around with my eyes I finally notice that I seem to be on my bed in my bedroom? I thought I was on the bridge in my pilot seat. The last thing I remember was those weird impacts after activating the warp drive. ¡°In uuu ere?¡± Once again, my voice was rough and it was a struggle to make the sounds correctly. I tried again and this time focused just on saying the one word properly. ¡°Lynn?¡± I called out but there was no answer. That¡¯s odd. I could hear the ship''s power core running so Lynn should have appeared when I called. Actually now that I think about it I¡¯m awake but the lights in my room didn¡¯t automatically turn on either. This all added up to the obvious, but there was something wrong with Lullaby. I tried to get up, but once again couldn¡¯t seem to get my body to do what I wanted. It was almost like this was the first time I controlled my body or something weird like that. Since there was no way I could get to the mystery of what happened to the ship without being able to get up, I devoted all my focus to moving my body. With steady effort, I managed to make more complicated movements with my right arm and hand. Eventually I managed to control my left arm with the same dexterity as my right. Then I concentrated my focus to moving my upper body and neck, and with that finally I could really sit up and really get a look around. The largest problem was that, as I manipulated more of my body, it felt like my already painful headache was getting progressively worse. By the time I sat up I felt like my head was going to burst. Sitting up didn¡¯t help either. I was beset by a sudden rush of nausea. I felt like I was going to be ill which was just as weird as anything else happening, since it shouldn¡¯t be possible for player characters to get sick. At least not this kind of sickness. I have to admit that that wasn¡¯t much more than a passing thought though. I was consumed by the thought that I needed to hurry and get to the bathroom. Struggling to move my legs while pulling myself with my arms, I fell off the bed. Hitting the carpeted floor, I felt like I was going to start vomiting right there but I managed to hold it back. Getting my bearings straight, I continued dragging myself across the floor to the bathroom door and straight to the toilet that I had never before needed to use, since the game developers had previously rightly decided that no player wanted to deal with that business in a game. As if seeing the toilet bowl ahead of me was a sign, I could no longer hold back and proceeded to vomit more than I could ever remember eating. If there was any good that had happened since I woke up it was the fact that at least the toilet¡¯s sensor seemed to be working because it kept flushing. Eventually, the nausea passed and I could no longer keep my body upright and collapsed to my side on the bathroom floor. As I lay there trying to recover my strength I could only wish the nausea had taken this headache with it. At this point I heard steps in the ship hallway bringing whoever they belonged to closer to my room. I desperately struggled to rise, to be ready for the possibility of a fight, but it seemed like my stamina was completely sapped from the exertion I had gone through. I was trapped here awaiting whatever fate was in store. I heard the door to my room slide open and a very familiar voice call out, ¡°Mistress?¡± The footsteps came to the bathroom before looking in showing me Lynn in her android body. ¡°Mistress you should have stayed in bed like I told you.¡± Lynn sounded exasperated. I was confused though, I don¡¯t remember her telling me such a thing. She must have seen the confusion on my face because next she said ¡°I told you that it seemed like the drive failure had a weird effect on you and you needed to stay still and relax until it passed.¡± She sighed, ¡°I guess with how out of it you were when I brought you to bed, it¡¯s no surprise you don¡¯t remember. Come on Mistress, let¡¯s get you back to bed.¡± She walked over to me and scooped my small frame off the ground effortlessly before taking me back to bed. She picked up a cloth and wiped my face before propping me up with some of my pillows. ¡°Mistress, I used the synthesizer to make some medicine, it will make you sleep. Do you think you can drink it?¡± I nodded my head at her words and she smiled before picking up a small glass and bringing it up to my lips. She tilted it and let the liquid flow slowly into my mouth, allowing me to drink it without strain. After I finished the glass I felt the headache finally start to fade along with my consciousness. Lynn was fixing me more comfortably in bed but I needed to ask her about the ship so I concentrated to form the word I wanted, ¡°Ship?¡± Lynn gave me a gentle smile before telling me ¡°Don¡¯t worry about Lullaby Mistress. She¡¯s intact. Just some systems are offline, including my hologram and the maintenance droids. Luckily I could still access my android frame. I¡¯ll give you a full report when you next wake up so please rest soundly, ok?¡± I could only barely nod in response as the medicine fully kicked in. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Waking up, the first thing I was aware of was the glorious disappearance of the headache that had been ailing me. Carefully moving my upper body to a sitting position, I wasn¡¯t hit by a wave of nausea this time either so I can only hope that I¡¯m over whatever happened to me. Also, I¡¯m a bit annoyed with the devs if this whole thing was a result of that ¡°increased realism¡± rumor. I don¡¯t like being ill in real life, why the hell would I want to experience it in a game. Especially one I¡¯m playing for fun! My legs were still a bit unresponsive so I started working them a bit and after probably about five minutes I could move them as easily as normal. Which left really only one part of my body to get in working order. So over the next ten to fifteen minutes I talked to myself until my vocal capacity was back to rights too. After that, I slowly got out of bed finally becoming aware that I was wearing a set of pajamas so Lynn must have changed me at some point since I know I had still been wearing my flight suit when I had been given the medicine. I decided to do some exercising while thinking, Lynn should be aware of me being awake so she would probably be here anytime. Based on the game scenarios, drive failures could lead to either a stranded in space scenario, necessitating an SOS be sent which could then lead to further events like being picked up by pirates, or a planet crash landing event. I wasn¡¯t sure yet which scenario we were facing but I was hoping it was the planet landing one because a planet landing would always be on a habitable world. Of course I wasn¡¯t sure that would still be the case if the update had changed or added something new but I needed to be a bit optimistic. I had already lost some indeterminate amount of time from this so landing on possibly a new habitable world would be a nice consolation. I¡¯d just need to get the ship fixed and then send out a survey claim notice for the planet and this whole painful episode would be worth it. It was at this moment that Lynn came into my room holding a tray in her hands. ¡°Mistress, I detected you were awake so I made some soup for you. I guessed you would be hungry after sleeping for ten hours.¡± Now that she brought it up I was aware of how famished I felt. That feeling of hunger felt a bit different than I was used to, at least in game, so I could only assume this was another of the realism changes. I wonder how many changes there were that I hadn¡¯t noticed yet? Moving to the small table, I sat down and Lynn placed the tray in front of me. I decided now was as good a time as any for that report. ¡°Lynn, can you give me our status report now?¡± ¡°Of course Mistress. I¡¯ll just switch from the android body to make the report easier to give.¡± She walked over to the door before powering down. A second later her hologram popped up floating above the table. ¡°I¡¯ll start, so go ahead and eat Mistress.¡± Taking her advice, I began to eat. ¡°Mistress, just to give you a time frame, it¡¯s been nineteen hours and eleven minutes since we activated the warp drive. In that time while you¡¯ve been resting, I¡¯ve managed to get most of the systems back online. A few like the maintenance droids and the exterior sensors refuse to come back online, so Mistress will probably need to check over those. The shield and stealth system are operating at peak efficiency, so we¡¯re not in any danger at the moment. Additionally, we have crash landed on a unknown planet. I managed to avoid a worst case scenario by activating the landing thrusters before we hit the ground. I¡¯ve scanned the outside hull through the systems and it seems intact too, but with both the maintenance droids and exterior sensors offline I have no way of confirming. As for it being an unknown world, what I saw of the the visible stars were unfamiliar by the star maps in my database so I can only conclude that we must be at the far end of the galaxy compared to where we were.¡± At these words I resisted an urge to cheer but I decided to just continue drinking my soup and let Lynn continue. Lynn grimaced before continuing ¡°That is the good news Mistress. The rest is definitely not good. For one we can¡¯t seem to connect to the galactic net. It might be something in the atmosphere of this planet interfering but that doesn¡¯t help us any.¡± I stopping eating to look at her in confusion, I mean if we couldn¡¯t connect down on the surface then moving out to space wouldn¡¯t be a problem after repairs were complete. Of course it would take extra time but not long enough to be a serious matter. Lynn seeing the look on my face decided to answer by opening a screen displaying the engine room. I could only stare in horror at what I saw. ¡°Mistress this is the other problem. Whatever happened to Lullaby¡¯s drive during that jump didn¡¯t just knock us out of subspace, it turned the warp drive and the engines into melted scrap. Normally we could just repair the damage and be fine but for this we¡¯d have to rebuild them entirely anew and we don¡¯t have the materials to do that.¡± Lynn finished quietly. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. The last of my soup forgotten, ¡°What about all the materials we bought at Felicity? We had a huge surplus to prepare for any eventuality!¡± ¡°Yes, we had enough for normal emergencies and routine maintenance but this is complete destruction. I¡¯ve spent most of the time while Mistress slept reviewing the logs, and I still have no idea what happened to put the drive and engines in such a shape. Even reviewing records of ship malfunctions and crashes never mention anything like this happening before. So even if it¡¯s just the planet atmosphere blocking us from accessing the net, there¡¯s no way for us to take off to test that hypothesis either.¡± Leaning back in my seat, I considered our options. Our engines and drive are scrap so the ship is stuck wherever we landed. Lynn didn¡¯t mention anything about that so obviously we must have landed in a peaceful location. We don¡¯t have the materials to build replacements, which means there¡¯s no other option but for me to explore the planet and scan for mineral deposits of what we¡¯re lacking. Still, is our synthesizer even going to be enough to build a new warp drive or engines? The worst thing though is if I need to leave the ship I¡¯m going to be doing it with no information about life on this planet. Wait, there is another option. ¡°Lynn what about our orbital drones? We should be able to launch one of them into orbit and use that to contact the galactic net.¡± Lynn merely looked at me with another discontented expression. ¡°Mistress, that was the next topic I was going to bring up. Per standard operating procedure for an unknown world I launched one of the drones in order to get a better idea about our landing location and what might exist on this planet. The drone launched with no problems but upon reaching an altitude of one hundred kilometers the systems started sending back error messages shortly before the drone simply disintegrated.¡± She brought up another screen showing me images of our landing site, and then some that were from higher up. ¡°As Mistress can see we landed in what appears to be a very large, dense forest but the images didn¡¯t catch any sign of life. It¡¯s possible anything that was out there was simply hiding from our ship¡¯s impact, though.¡± I nodded at her words and continued examining the images. From what I could see the forest was large. Based on the calculations included, Lynn was estimating the forest was at least in excess of a hundred fifty thousand square kilometers. Lullaby¡¯s location was approximately forty two kilometers from what Lynn could determine was the eastern edge of the forest. The images from higher altitudes didn¡¯t provide too much detail of the ground with the only thing really standing out being a mountain range further to the north. The information these provided was too slim for our purposes. Returning my attention to Lynn I voiced an idea. ¡°Lynn could we use the second drone and keep it at a relatively low height rather than putting it in orbit? An altitude of say, ten kilometers for example.¡± Lynn looked thoughtful as she considered. ¡°We could, but the drones were designed to launch into orbit and then from there function more like a satellite. We could assume direct control of the drone and make it fly in the air but it wouldn¡¯t fly very long and it would be a haphazard flight at best.¡± ¡°I think it¡¯s our best shot though for a good look at our surroundings. With luck, we¡¯ll be able to map a thousand kilometers from the ship in every direction, which will give me a good direction for starting the resource search.¡± ¡°Do you want to me to handle that Mistress?¡± I nodded, ¡°Yeah I¡¯ll leave it to you Lynn. I¡¯m going to get dressed back in my flight suit and then go examine the maintenance droids. If I can get those working again, it will be a large help in fixing any problems that might come up later.¡± ¡°Ahh Mistress you should finish your soup first. Hopefully it¡¯s not too cold.¡± She examined the bowl. Checking it, the soup was still relatively warm so I finished it quickly. There hadn¡¯t been much left. ¡°Well, let¡¯s both get to work. Bring me the results after you¡¯re done. Oh and make sure you know where the drone lands, I might need to go salvage it. If possible try to make it crash somewhere nearby after the map is complete.¡± ¡°Aye aye, Mistress.¡± Lynn said with a salute and vanished. Laughing to myself at her antics, I briskly changed clothes and headed to the storage room that contained the droids. On the way I opened my status and swapped over my classes to Technician and Engineer for the bonuses they provided for repair work. Upon reaching the room, I picked up the tool belt that was hanging on the wall and strapped it around my waist. Wasting no time, I opened up the first droid and decided to check first whether the droid was receiving signals from the ship¡¯s computer properly. There were no errors there, so I advanced from there onward to the core of the droid where the orders were received and interpreted and that¡¯s where I found the problem. Like the drive and engines, for some reason the core of this maintenance droid had turned into scrap. Inspecting the others turned up the same result. It boggled my mind how there could be such precise damage that left everything else untouched. Oh well, no sense in worrying about it, at least for these droids, a core was an easy and cheap thing to construct and replace, I¡¯d just need to head to the synthesizer to do so. I felt a brief rumble, which I surmised was Lynn finally launching the drone. She most likely took her time reprogramming it to make it less demanding for a low altitude flight. Hopefully the map would turn up some good news, otherwise the only option I see is checking out that mountain range. Using the synthesizer was a simple task since it was programmed with all of the available schematics for parts and other goods. It was also connected to certain mechanisms that would transfer the required materials, if they were available in the connected storage rooms, to the synthesizer once a work order was entered. I browsed through the schematics until I found the model of droid core necessary and punched in that I required three and let the machine do its thing. I knew this would likely take some time so I sat down and decided to play around with my psi since I had realized that I hadn¡¯t verified whether it was still working properly. Thankfully, unlike my weird body mishap, my psi was just as functional as always, and I had the contents of my tool belt dancing around the air in lazy patterns in minutes. While I passed the time, I idly wondered what kind of life I would find on this world. From the images, the forest around the ship looked pretty normal, a lot like one that might be seen on Earth, so I was curious about whether or not I¡¯d find life that was similar to Earth as well. It was conceivable that this might be another ¡°human¡± origin world, there were already four that I could think of so it wouldn¡¯t surprise me any to find another. I started to feel an odd pressure in my lower stomach region that felt really familiar. Once again it was something I had never felt before in game but I knew what this feeling was. Paling immediately I jumped up and letting my tools fall to the ground, I rushed through the halls of the ship to my room and the now critically vital bathroom. A few minutes later and I felt like I was going to cry. I had just used the toilet, as a girl. What the fuck were those developers thinking to put in even this!? Everything that¡¯s happened to me today almost feels like a concentrated effort to bully me. What did I do to deserve all this!? I¡¯m absolutely, absolutely sending in a very harsh complaint once I log out. A frightening thought had just occurred to me. What do I do if they even added in periods!? A concerned voice was heard on the other side of the bathroom door ¡°Mistress, you¡¯re not still feeling sick are you? I wanted to let you know that I finished the survey and even managed to land the drone roughly twenty-five kilometers away.¡± Looking at my face in the mirror that displayed an expression that could only be described as traumatized. I really didn¡¯t want to face Lynn or anyone right now. I took a deep breath before responding. ¡°Lynn, can you go install the new cores for the maintenance droids. The synthesizer should have completed producing them by now.¡± The still concerned voice replied, ¡°I can do that, but Mistress are you sure you¡¯re okay? I can go get you more medicine.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not feeling sick Lynn, I just need some alone time right now.¡± Yeah, I just need to contemplate my now battered self-image.
For the curious, if you want to know what Seri¡¯s clothing looks like. Shamelessly stolen from PSO2. Her flight suit similar to this but different color The pajamas Lynn put her in minus the stuffed animal, twin tails were included Chapter 2 Author¡¯s Note: So I can¡¯t really think of much to say here today so please just enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 2 After a bit more than an hour spent cursing the developers, fear about what might lay in the possible future, and lots of trying to rationalize away what I had gone through, I finally stepped out of the bathroom. I was grateful that Lynn was not there waiting for me which hopefully meant my tirade had gone unnoticed. I thought about just logging off and coming back after I cooled down, but I had only been in game about six real world hours by this point. I had refreshed myself quite well before logging in so I could feasibly stay logged in for another game day or possibly two without running into problems. Any longer than that and staying in game would get in the way of the shopping date with Carol. All in all despite my recent horrible experience, I was still quite excited about exploring a new world and didn¡¯t quite want to log off yet. Plus if I did log off I¡¯d have to tell Carol that I wouldn¡¯t be able to pick her up in game after all so I wanted to avoid that conversation until I absolutely had to. Lynn should be done installing those cores by now, so she¡¯s probably working on something else. I could wander around the ship looking for her but well it¡¯s easier to just call for her. Sitting down on my bed I spoke her name aloud, ¡°Lynn,¡± and instantly she appeared. She was smiling cheerfully as usual, ¡°Mistress, it¡¯s good that you¡¯re feeling better now. I installed the cores and have been having the maintenance droids clean up the engine room. Some of the scrap can be salvaged after we put it back through the synthesizer but the rest has become worthless garbage we¡¯ll need to get rid of.¡± That was pretty much as I expected, still won¡¯t help much on building the new ones ¡°What about the area map. How did that go?¡± Lynn gave me a thumbs up, ¡°Perfectly, Mistress. I even identified some very interesting entities that I know Mistress will be happy to hear about.¡± ¡°Well? Can you show me already?¡± I asked her pointedly. Lynn¡¯s face smoothed into a cool expression. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I should. Mistress has been a bit cold today. Mistress kept secrets from me and didn¡¯t consult with me about her problems and even sent me away. I feel a bit neglected.¡± I was surprised. This was most definitely a first. Lynn had never disobeyed a request. Of course I¡¯d always been pretty light on her even when commanding her, and I even let her play her dress up games with me, but still this was something all new. Judging by what she said, she was asking for me to praise her and an apology or something along those lines? Well that wasn¡¯t anything difficult, Lynn¡¯s existence was a pretty vital component of my fun in this game. ¡°Lynn, I¡¯m sorry for not talking with you. It was just a small issue I was embarrassed about. Also you know how much I appreciate you. If Lynn wasn¡¯t here for me, I¡¯d always be in trouble.¡± I tried to sound as sincere as possible. Lynn¡¯s cheerful smile returned in full blast, and she was giggling happily to herself as she spun around in the air. Eventually she stopped and then brought up a large screen showing the map she had collected from the drone. ¡°Mistress look outside the forest here.¡± She pointed to an area of the map roughly thirty kilometers from the forest and eighty kilometers from our current position. ¡°The previous images weren¡¯t good enough quality to make these details out but this looks like a village, specifically a farming village judging by the surrounding area. And then over here¡± She pointed at another spot about a hundred-sixteen kilometers further away from the village. ¡°I know Mistress can tell what this is.¡± I nod at her, definitely happy at what I was seeing. ¡°It looks like a town. Villages and towns means there¡¯s intelligent life on this planet. What did the intelligent life look like Lynn?¡± I ask excitedly. ¡°From these images,¡± and she switched from the map to showing some close ups of the town and village, ¡°they appear to be humans. They might not be perfectly identical to the humans from other planets we¡¯ve met before, but on appearance alone they seem to be. One thing to note Mistress, if you look at their technology level, I would date it at around 16th to 17th century Europe on Earth. Even if the world is inhabited with sentient life, they won¡¯t be able to help us with replacing the engine and drive of our ship.¡± Lynn wasn¡¯t happy about this I could tell, and I wasn¡¯t happy to hear it either. It meant there would be no shortcuts for fixing the ship. We¡¯d still need to build all the parts ourselves. The only possible shortcut to count on would be if the inhabitants of this world could point us in the direction necessary to find the needed materials. There was an added complication though. Galactic Law absolutely forbid stealing resources from undeveloped worlds with sentient life. Of course, it was unlikely the government would ever know I did such a thing but it wasn¡¯t a law I really felt like breaking, if I could help it. I could look for untapped veins myself which would take time, or I could try to bargain with the people of this world in order to purchase the materials. There was also the possibility of all the deposits for the materials I needed already being worked which would force me to take the second option, though I felt that would be unlikely. After all, a low tech level would prevent them from operating mines in certain areas that would pose little problem for me. All of this really paled though compared to the reward for finding another inhabited planet. The government would pay huge for such a find with how rare it was. I¡¯d also probably be looking at receiving a bonus from the other human owned worlds when I gave out news of a fifth human populated world. A lot of humans can be pretty snobby toward alien races so that news would be like another feather in their caps, or that¡¯s how they¡¯d treat it anyway. An inhabited world would also be extra fun to explore. I could explore the cultures of the world, evaluate their nations which would help for the report I¡¯d need to send to the government, and there might even still be strange beasties to hunt or even strong individuals on the world despite the low tech level. I decided. The path I¡¯m going to take is to explore this world and try to bargain to get the materials I need. It will probably take loads of extra time but there¡¯s no possibility I won¡¯t be able to find the materials. I mean if this world was a crash landing event designation, then the planet has to have the resources necessary for the player to repair their ship. The game can¡¯t leave a player stranded on a world with no recourse. ¡°Lynn, I think the best option is for me to go visit that nearest town. It¡¯s not much of a distance for me to get there with the hover car. I¡¯ll take the psi auto-translator so I¡¯ll avoid any issues that arise from the likely language barrier, but I¡¯ll try to learn the language as well. That should only take a week or two with my abilities. Anyway I¡¯ll visit that town and take samples of some of the resources we need the most of, and try to discover if anyone has knowledge of it. If it¡¯s not a known material here then I¡¯ll see if they can point me in a direction for where to go to find other possible leads.¡± Lynn was displaying a worried expression, ¡°Mistress are you sure you should interact with these primitives? Humans have always been weird about alien races and Mistress¡¯ appearance is much out of the norm despite you mostly being human. I know Mistress is very powerful but I don¡¯t want you get attacked by them if you can help it. Maybe we might try hiding your appearance in some way?¡± I considered Lynn¡¯s suggestion and nodded. ¡°It is a good idea. My clothes will hide the markings and I can style my hair to hide my horns, ears and implant. The only thing I can¡¯t hide as simply are my eyes so hopefully there¡¯s no problem with heterochromia here. I guess my hair¡¯s color might be a problem too but I¡¯m not a fan of dying it and absolutely not a fan of contacts either so I¡¯ll just go with this. My clothes alone will appear odd so maybe the eyes or hair color will stand out less in comparison.¡± Lynn didn¡¯t look entirely satisfied but she acquiesced. ¡°Moving on to a more immediate necessity. Can you mark on the map where the drone landed?¡± A small red X appeared on the map. ¡°I¡¯ll go salvage that and then return. Actually that reminds me, what¡¯s the local time?¡± ¡°I¡¯d estimate approximately two hours until sundown, Mistress.¡± Lynn supplied. ¡°Ok, so the plan for now is, I¡¯ll make a quick jaunt out to pick up the wreck and then come back and spend a few hours working on the exterior sensors before I go to bed. In the morning after I finish my preparations I¡¯ll head to that town. I¡¯ll probably leave the hover car some distance away from the town in stealth mode though.¡± ¡°What would Mistress like for me to do in the meantime?¡± Lynn asked. I smiled at her. ¡°Since I know how much you enjoy dressing me up, why don¡¯t you put together an outfit for me that won¡¯t look too out of place compared to what you saw the locals wearing.¡± ¡°It might be difficult Mistress, I might be able to synthesize something that looks similar but the materials are obviously going to be different and that will be conspicuous.¡± ¡°Well just try your best Lynn. I know you¡¯ll surprise me with something good.¡± She smiled at the display of trust, but then I had a horrible thought and added an amendment. ¡°Oh and make sure the clothes look like something a traveler would wear, I don¡¯t want some kind of fancy dress.¡± Lynn looked disappointed at this addition so I felt confident that she had been going to try to put me in some dress that royalty might wear. Well I assume this world has royalty and nobility at least. It would make sense for the level of civilization. ¡°Since I¡¯m leaving the ship, I¡¯m going to go get my shield and some equipment just in case I run into anything out there. Can you get the hover car started while I do that?¡± ¡°Right away, Mistress.¡± This time she bowed before vanishing. Returning to my room briefly to pick up my shield set and equip it, I then headed to the room next to my own that I had converted into an armory. Normally a frigate class ship would have a larger armory elsewhere, but I had converted that into the room for the synthesizer. And while I might have a lot of weapons, I hadn¡¯t needed anywhere near that much space for all of them. Plus I felt more reassured knowing all my weapons were close by instead of at the other end of the ship away from the cockpit and my room. <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Looking over my options, I decided to go with my Whisperwind Particle Assault Rifle. I wouldn¡¯t be wasting any of my precious bullets with it since it was an energy weapon and it should serve more than adequately for this dense forest where I might not have clear firing lines to use my more preferred longer ranged rifles. If there was a flaw with it, it would be the fact that Whisperwind is not very powerful and it had a tendency to overheat after firing only a few hundred shots. Of course calling it not very powerful was really only in comparison to my more devastating weapons. It was still a member of my chosen collection of personal weapons after all, so it was more than capable of shredding any kind of beast below level 80 and doing damage up to beasts at level 120. After that it was next to useless but beasts above that level were beyond rare on most worlds. A large gun rested in a prominent position in the middle of the armory, so I took a few steps over and patted it and said, ¡°Sorry partner, it¡¯s not time for you to come out to play yet. I promise I¡¯ll bring you along for world exploration.¡± My poor Requiem AAR was just too unsuited for the current environment. I added a small plasma knife to my waist for if anything got close, and then left the armory and made my way to the hangar with my hover car. Getting there, I was surprised that the hover car wasn¡¯t running and that the hangar bay was still closed. Lynn was floating there with an apologetic look on her face. ¡°Lynn, what¡¯s wrong? Don¡¯t tell me the hover car is broken too?¡± If it was unusable I might not be able to leave and get back to the ship before night fall. She answered in a quiet voice. ¡°No the hover car is working perfectly Mistress. It¡¯s just, I overlooked some of the details that Lullaby finds herself in.¡± She waved her hand and brought up an image showing the ship. ¡°After the hangar door failed to open I sent a maintenance droid outside the ship to get an idea of what was wrong and found this. The entire port side of the ship is buried under trees and dirt!¡± ¡°So basically, until we get all that cleared, the hover car will be stuck here and I¡¯ll have to travel on foot.¡± I queried. Lynn nodded. ¡°Yes Mistress, I¡¯ll have the maintenance droids work on it but they¡¯re not exactly designed for digging even if I do produce tools for them to use. It will take at least a few weeks to clear all of that. I¡¯m sorry, this is all my fault.¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s not your fault Lynn. Traveling on foot won¡¯t hurt me any. If I can¡¯t use the hover car though for storage, I¡¯ll have to carry around one of the subspace packs and that will be a very difficult to explain item.¡± Even then subspace packs were large and unwieldy. I¡¯d have to carry it on my back, and while a subspace pack might be able to carry much more than would appear possible, there were pretty strict limits. At most one of the ones I owned could carry approximately a ton which meant I¡¯d probably have to take two trips just to salvage the entire drone unless it was in worse shape than expected. ¡°Lynn, please have the maintenance droids get started digging and then go work on my outfit. I¡¯ll get this salvage work done, I¡¯ll just use the mech¡¯s hangar bay door to exit the ship instead.¡± Luckily the equipment room was along the route to the other hangar bay, so it didn¡¯t take long until I had the large subspace pack on my back and was hitting the switch for the door to open. I watched as the hangar door folded open giving me my first glimpse with my own eyes of the sky of this world. I activated the lift that would take me to the top of ship. As I rode the lift I opened my status to change my classes to Ranger and Gunner. Ranger was most suited for exploring with it¡¯s bonuses to detection and Gunner was a no brainer. After arriving I sent the lift back down and hit the keypad on the outside panel for the door to return to its shut position, no reason to leave it open. Examining the trees and undergrowth, smelling the fragrances in the air, this really did feel like I was on a forest back on Earth. It actually reminded me a lot of the redwood forest in California I had been to once. Towering and wide trees that stretched over a hundred meters into the air. I had never been an enthusiastic camper, but my parents had been so I was no stranger to this kind of environment. Opening my terminal to consult my map to get my bearings, I turned until I was facing the proper direction and then started to move. Even with the dense forest and undergrowth making it impossible to move how I would like, I was still travelling at a speed of roughly forty kilometers per hour and I wasn¡¯t even close to pushing myself. As I ran I took note of the presences I was picking up around me. My detection range was quite large, even with my shield eating a large percentage of my psi, reaching a range of one hundred meters in all directions. Some tried to follow me, but I quickly left them behind. Other presences never became aware of me while some merely observed. Of course presence detection had its flaws. There were many ways to hide oneself from detection from using your own psi to various equipment that shielded you from the psi of others. There were even supposedly pure body techniques that one could use, but I had never been all that interested so I never sought out learning them. Upon arriving at the crash site, I was happy to see that it was mostly in pretty good shape, a testament of Lynn¡¯s skills that she could fly and land a drone that was never really meant for such a thing. While it was mostly in good shape, it was thankfully also in pieces which would make it easier for me to transport it. Slinging the pack off my back, I opened it and proceeded to start picking up debris and inserting them into the pack where they appeared to vanish. It didn¡¯t take long until I had collected enough for my pack to refuse to take in anymore. Examining the somewhat cleaned up crashed site, I realized I might have to make three trips instead of the two I had been expecting. I might have underestimated the total weight of the drone. Shrugging, I closed my pack and started making my way back to the ship. When I was about halfway to the ship, I noticed a large group of presences ahead of me so I stopped. There were at least sixty presences that I could pick out but there might be still more outside my range. I watched as the presences started to fan out around me in a wide circle before closing in. As they encircled me, I noticed more presences and a second circle had formed around the first. With the second ring the presences had increased to approximately double their previous number. I decided to simply stand still and let them come to me. I slipped Whisperwind off my shoulder and readied it in my arms. I didn¡¯t have long to wait, creeping out of the forest in all directions were odd looking beasts. They looked similar to white furred wolves but had what appeared to be yellow bone spikes sticking out of their bodies along their backs and on their legs. Their faces also had the bones, and they looked almost like a protective covering with two larger spikes pointed down and forward by their mouths. The most distinct of the beasts was the one directly in front of me. Unlike the others, this one was darker and at least twice as big plus the spikes it had were red, more numerous, and much longer. Just like I stood here waiting for them, none of them seemed willing to move toward me despite their growls. The large one that I assumed was the pack leader just eyed me without making any noise. Well if they weren¡¯t going to make a move, I guess I¡¯ll scan them and see what I¡¯m up against. Pointing my terminal at one of the nearer wolves got me this result.
L32
This beast has been tainted by odd energies and undergone a metamorphosis. While looking similarly to its previous form, it has become much more violent and territorial. They are known to establish a strict hierarchy among their packs with constant infighting.
After seeing that result, I examined the beasts around me more closely and I could see evidence of scars and other markings which I assume come from their fighting for dominance. I scanned about half the wolves and then the leader and got that the wolves ranged in level from about 25 to 40 at the high end. The leader was in a league of its own at 62. This still left the wolves in the lower range for beasts in game though. I became aware of movement coming closer from beyond the immediate formation. The presence felt the same as the wolves but it was moving quite slow. As it got near the encirclement, the pack leader barked at the wolves next to it and they moved aside and let a wolf come forward through the opened gap. The wolf was dragging what looked like a fat yellow bird. It was about half the size of the wolf which probably explained why it was moving so slow. The wolf came to within a meter of me dragging the bird before finally leaving it and then turned and ran back the way it came. I wasn¡¯t sure what the wolves were doing. Did they just give me food? Why would a group of obvious predators do that especially when they outnumber me so greatly. I was pulled from my thoughts by sudden movement from the wolves. I aimed my gun at the leader to take him out first but then noticed what the wolves were doing. They were doing what looked like a bowing posture with bending their front legs and hanging their heads. Even the leader was doing it though unlike the others it was still looking me straight in the eye. After a minute of this they all straightened up before disappearing back into the trees, leaving me standing there stunned with the bird at my feet.
How I¡¯m trying to describe the wolves as looking like The Whisperwind gun The bird looks like one of these As I mentioned before, I¡¯m using PSO2 images to help me visualize some things. Chapter 3 Author¡¯s note: So the next chapter is here. Please enjoy the next part of Seri¡¯s story. I wish I had more to say.
Chapter 3 After deciding to leave the dead bird behind, because of both my pack being full and the fact that I didn¡¯t at all care for the idea of lugging around a dirty and bloody bird carcass that was almost half my size, I returned to Lullaby. I emptied the pack in one of the spare storage rooms and then made the other two necessary trips to pick up the rest of the drone. During both trips, my presence detection didn¡¯t pick up even a hint of anything which surprised me. Were all those presences earlier just the wolves, and were they now keeping away from me? The scan result said the wolves were violent and territorial so why did they give me food and back off instead of attacking me? The only idea that I can come up with is that they sensed the difference in strength between us, but if so that¡¯s amazingly perceptive for a beast in this game. I had to admit, I was curious how edible the bird was but with months worth of food supplies I wasn¡¯t really in a rush to test it. I didn¡¯t want a repeat of what happened earlier in the day with being ill, now that that was apparently a game mechanic. I might need to be more careful about what I eat in the future. Wait. Doesn¡¯t this mean that I could get sick eating my sweets!? This is monstrous. How am I supposed to play a game where eating sweets could make me sick!? No, calm down Seri, you don¡¯t know for sure yet whether this will happen or not. Maybe being sick just had to do with whatever happened during the drive failure and crash landing. Let¡¯s stay optimistic and continue to enjoy the sweets. Thinking about eating reminded me that I hadn¡¯t eaten since that bowl of soup nearly six hours ago, so I headed to the ship¡¯s canteen to prepare something. As I passed by the synthesizer room, I heard Lynn giggling which filled me with trepidation when I considered the kinds of outfits she might give me tomorrow. Well I don¡¯t have any alternatives. I trusted her to prepare the outfit, so I¡¯ll just have to live with whatever she gives me. With the curiosity about the bird somewhat fresh on my mind, I ended up going with baked chicken for dinner. It was simple enough, even for me, to cook and I opened a can of corn and prepared some mashed potatoes to go with it. I wanted a drink, so I grabbed a bottle of wine and poured a glass. Before I realized, I had finished my dinner and drank the entire bottle. I didn¡¯t feel ill at all though, which seemed like a good sign. Not being able to enjoy my alcohol would have been almost as bad as not being able to enjoy my sweets. Now that I¡¯ve eaten, I supposed that I should get started working on repairing the sensors. A quick class swap and picking up my spare tool belt, since I didn¡¯t want to intrude on Lynn in the synthesizer room to pick up those tools, I headed to the cockpit. Most of the sensor systems were in there along with the systems for controlling the ship, so it was the most likely place for the damage to be. Using my tools to open up the panels to get started, I sat them aside and then turned to get back to work just to be left in shock. Nothing looked familiar. There were new cables I didn¡¯t recognize, way too many small computing cores all interconnected, and weird looking circuit boards as well. I hurriedly opened some of the other panels around the cockpit and saw more of the same. I know that none these systems were like this before the update since I had performed routine maintenance. I can only conclude that the game update changed this but how am I supposed to fix this if none of it is like what I know? I closed the other panels and then returned to the sensors. The only thing I could try was to look for anything that might be damaged but I couldn¡¯t find anything obvious like that. What am I going to do now? I sat in a daze looking at the unknown sensor system. There has to be something I can do, I¡¯m supposed to be a max level technician! Would there be information on the ship computer main core about how to repair this? Probably not. There might be schematics but those would only get me so far. As I sat there with my mind running every which way in turmoil, I was unaware at first of my hands starting to move. Reaching into the panels and moving cables around, unattaching them from one socket plugging them into another, taking out the circuit boards adjusting pieces of them before returning them. Coming out of muddled state, I saw my hands come out of the space and I looked from them back to the system. It looked different again, but this time I had a confident feeling that it was fixed, but I had no idea how I knew that. I have no idea how I did anything that I just did. I continued to stare at my hands in incomprehension until Lynn¡¯s appearance brought me back to reality. ¡°Mistress, good work! The sensors are now running perfectly again. You should probably get some sleep, you were hard at work here for a few hours, you know. I didn¡¯t want to interrupt you when you were so focused.¡± I couldn¡¯t believe what I was hearing. I had been working for hours? It felt like only ten or so minutes had passed since I came to the bridge. ¡°Mistress, did you hear me? Do you need me to get my android to carry you to bed?¡± Concentrating my thoughts back on my current situation, ¡°Ahh, no Lynn I¡¯m alright. I¡¯m just exhausted after everything that happened today, so I started to drift off a bit. I¡¯ll head to bed now. Did you finish my outfit?¡± I asked with a feeling of dread. ¡°Yep! It came out just like Mistress asked for too. I even made some extras to go with it so please look forward to it tomorrow Mistress!¡± Lynn¡¯s exuberance was almost tangible which only fueled my feeling of dread further. ¡°Mistress, I¡¯m going to bring in the maintenance droids so have a good night.¡± She bowed before disappearing. Sleeping sounded wonderful right now, so I made my way to my bedroom and got ready for bed. A slight feeling of pressure led me to more trauma in the bathroom but I eventually got into bed and pulled up the covers. Cuddling one of my fluffy pillows, I let myself drift off into sleep. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ As I slept, for the first time while in game, I dreamed. The dreams were hazy but eventually started to focus on certain scenes. Scenes where I failed at cooking over and over. Scenes where a woman in a uniform that seemed recognizable but I couldn¡¯t recall where from showed me the basics and taught me. A Scene about my first time having cake and other sweets and getting sick because I ate too much. A Scene where I was praised for succeeding at making a cake of my own. Scenes where I was treated to alcohol and taught about wines. They all mixed together before the dreams moved on. Now I was experiencing scenes where I was practicing starship repair. Scenes where I studied all night long even to my detriment the next day. Scenes where I messed up and destroyed what I was working on and got scolded. Scenes where I overhauled every inch of Lullaby so I knew how everything went together. Scenes where I replaced the old sensor system with a much more powerful one. Once again they all swirled in my mind as I continued dreaming. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Rousing the next day, I felt like I had experienced something important, but didn¡¯t know what that might have been. The wisps of my dreams eluded me as I tried to recall them. I was momentarily surprised when I realized I was trying to remember dreams in game. That brought me to full consciousness and I sat up confused. Dreaming in a VR game should not be possible. Your mind might be resting in the game but your brain can not enter REM state. Studies that had been done on players had even shown that trying to get all your rest in a VR world would lead to the same problems as if you were forgoing sleep. Of course it was refreshing in game in the short term as if you had a brief comfortable nap, but you¡¯d quickly fall apart if you never logged out to get some real sleep. Impossible or not, I¡¯m sure I was dreaming. Or was I? Honestly now that I¡¯m more awake I¡¯m not sure if I was or not. I can¡¯t remember any dreams, and the last thing I clearly remember is falling asleep last night. So, did I dream or not? Why is everything that happened since the update so perplexing!? I felt so frustrated and annoyed. I wanted to scream and vent all these feelings at something! Anything! I took a deep breath, and then another and tried to calm myself down. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was still quite early, so I decided that taking a nice hot bath and relaxing might be good for me. I slipped off my pajamas and went to fill the tub. After the tub was ready, I got in and just let myself think about nothing other than the pleasantly hot water. Of course, Lynn interrupted me eventually. ¡°Mistress, you¡¯ve been in there for forty minutes. I prepared some breakfast for you as well.¡± Sighing, I got out of the bath, hopped in the shower and let it take care of actually preparing me for the day. After finishing, I walked out of the bathroom and didn¡¯t see Lynn around, so I guessed my breakfast must be in the canteen. There was no reason to put on other clothes when I knew Lynn would be giving me an outfit later so I settled on just a robe and headed out. At the canteen I found a plate of still warm pancakes, a glass of orange juice, and a note from Lynn telling me she was putting the finishing touches on my clothing and that she would have it prepared in my room shortly. I was still feeling apprehensive about what Lynn would present to me, but at least I knew that it should be functional. At least, I hoped so. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. As I was finishing, Lynn popped in. ¡°Mistress, your outfit for your trip is ready. I took care of your packing, too. Oh, something else came up while you were in the bath. A large number of creatures that looked like wolves came to the ship and deposited a carcass before leaving.¡± What are those wolves doing? ¡°Was it a bird? They gave me one yesterday, though I¡¯m still not sure why.¡± Lynn shook her head, ¡°No the animal carcass they left behind resembles a large moose.¡± I was a bit puzzled over their actions. Yesterday they gave me a large penguin like bird and today a moose. The scan said they were territorial and they fought each other for dominance among their pack, yet instead of attacking me they give me what must pass to them as food. Are they offerings or something? I considered it before, but were they really perceptive enough to realize my strength, and now these are their attempts at ingratiating themselves to me so I don¡¯t wipe them out? Or is there something else at work? I don¡¯t have enough information about beasts of this world to be sure. I¡¯ll try to ask the townspeople about it I guess. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll see if I can learn anything about these beasts at the town but they¡¯re not a priority, so unless they try to actually attack the ship just ignore them. If they do attack the ship, then you have full permission to use the weapon systems to get rid of every last one of them. Oh, that reminds me, if anyone else stumbles upon the ship you should probably handle them in the same way. I don¡¯t like the idea too much about killing possibly innocent locals but I don¡¯t want the people here knowing about Lullaby¡¯s existence if we can help it. At least for now anyway. We did make landing at basically the middle of the night, so if we¡¯re lucky it might have went unnoticed by the locals. Well, that¡¯s enough about that topic, you said my clothing was ready so I¡¯ll head to my room now.¡± <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> ¡°Orders acknowledged in case of the wolves Mistress. My android body is already waiting in your room so I¡¯ll just switch.¡± Lynn pulled her usual vanishing act. Psyching myself up to face the impending danger, I made my way back to my room. Upon entering I came face to face with Lynn holding up a very fancy and elegant gown. It looked like something a queen or at least a princess would wear. I couldn¡¯t help but hold my head in my hands in exasperation. ¡°Lynn, how is that an outfit that a traveler would wear!? Especially a traveler who is traveling alone on foot!¡± Lynn had a shocked look on her face at my reaction. ¡°What do you mean Mistress? Don¡¯t royalty have to travel around on occasion?¡± After a few moments, she smiled and set the gown aside, before showing me a much different outfit. It was still obviously a girly outfit, which is what I had expected from Lynn, but this one had a much simpler feel. With a long hooded cloak that was clasped around the neck falling almost all the way to my feet, it covered what looked like a leather dress. With a cleavage that was a bit revealing, it was held in place by a pair of belts, a larger one around the waist and a smaller one slightly above. The dress itself ended in a short skirt that wouldn¡¯t cover more than half of my thighs from the looks of things. She had even added a small lace frill to the bottom of the skirt. Thankfully, Lynn had also prepared a pair of thigh high boots to go with it, with the sole being slightly higher on the back, giving it a short heel, and a more refined look. ¡°What about covering the marks on my arms and hands, Lynn?¡± I queried. ¡°There¡¯s this long sleeved, dark blouse to wear under the dress and these gloves. I made the clothes similar in appearance to what I saw some of the young women wearing but of course I made it more charming, since Mistress can¡¯t wear something too plain.¡± Then Lynn pointed to the side, where what looked like a shoulder bag and dagger sat. ¡°Since Mistress was worried about how the subspace pack would stand out, I made a smaller version that looked similar to some bags I saw being carried. The dagger looks like just a simple iron dagger, but of course it¡¯s much sharper and more durable than any blade these primitive humans could craft. I judged that as an individual traveling alone, it would look odd if Mistress was not carrying a weapon.¡± I was impressed. I hadn¡¯t expected all of that. ¡°How did you manage to make such a small subspace bag though?¡± Lynn¡¯s obvious satisfaction with the outfit faded a bit as she answered in an apologetic tone. ¡°I broke down one of the subspace packs in order to make it. It also has the downside because the synthesizer couldn¡¯t perfectly build a smaller version that the weight it can carry has been much diminished. Based on my tests, it can only carry approximately 600 kilograms rather than a ton as normal.¡± I accepted her explanation. It¡¯s not that large of a loss. We had two packs so losing one for a slightly inferior version wouldn¡¯t cause any issues. In the long run, once the side of the ship is unburied, I¡¯ll be able to use my hover car for transport too. Lynn interrupted my thoughts, ¡°By the way Mistress, I took the liberty of packing the bag already with a change of clothes identical to this one, some food just in case, a bedroll and tent also just in case, samples of the materials we require most, and a bag filled with a variety of gems that you could use to exchange for local currency. I also stored Whisperwind, Requiem, a few plasma grenades and two plasma knives. There¡¯s still approximately 250 kg of space left unused as well.¡± ¡°Wow Lynn. You really outdid yourself. That means everything is prepared for my trip then. I suppose I should stop standing around in just my robe and get dressed.¡± Lynn brightened up and moved closer, ¡°Please let me help you with that Mistress. I can do your hair to hide your horns and implant too.¡± I backed up a step, ¡°It¡¯s alright Lynn, I can handle it myself.¡± Lynn began giggling as I heard my bedroom door slide shut behind me, ¡°No no Mistress, I definitely insist!¡± ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ An hour later, after much primping and pampering from Lynn, she declared me ready to face the world. All I felt was exhaustion from dealing with her exuberance. Sometimes I felt like I might have made a mistake when I encouraged her to help me with clothing and my appearance way back when, and this was definitely one of those times. My shield set looked a bit out of place with how fancy it appeared but there was no way to change that so I¡¯ll have to hope no one asks too many questions about them. I might get targeted by thieves, but that actually sounds like fun and a good way to blow off some steam. I rode the lift out of the ship, and saw the moose carcass close to the ship. I sent a quick signal to Lynn and she appeared from my terminal. ¡°Did you forget something Mistress?¡± ¡°Yeah, can you have one of the maintenance droids dispose of this carcass? If you want to take a sample of it for testing purposes go ahead.¡± ¡°Will do, Mistress.¡± She vanished, and I saw one of the maintenance droids cease their digging and move toward the carcass. Alright, now it really is time to go. I had a distance of 200 or so kilometers to travel from Lullaby to that town but I wasn¡¯t in too much of a rush. It wasn¡¯t even midday yet by this world¡¯s standards and I could clear that in under three hours if I really pushed myself. I figured I¡¯ll take my time and aim to get there in about five hours, which would be local afternoon. I¡¯ll stay in the town overnight and then make my way back to the ship tomorrow to log out. As I neared the edge of the forest, I detected a large group of presences ahead of me that seemed quite familiar. Unlike last night the group was merely waiting and letting me to come to them. I could just avoid them but I had a bit of curiosity over what they were up to, so I stayed on my current route and met them. They were all just sitting there. It was almost like dogs waiting for their master or something. I watched them for a few minutes, but they didn¡¯t seem like they were going to do anything today so I shrugged and ran around them. As soon as I started moving away from them I noticed they all started following me. I turned around, and once again they were all sitting there watching me. Again I started moving away from them and again they followed. I was getting a bit annoyed with this. ¡°Hey. Stop following me. Shoo!¡± I waved my hand at them but they just continued staring at me. I looked around and picked up a stick. ¡°Here fetch!¡± I threw it over them and back the way I had come. A few turned their heads to watch the stick but none of them moved. Ahh, these damn beasts! Leaving me no choice, I changed my subclass to Empath to use an ability that required the extra control and talents of that class. I reached out with psychic power and tapped into their minds to make myself vanish from their senses. Instantly they were all alert, no longer sitting and looking around. The effect would wear off in about half an hour so I needed to get moving. Leaving the wolves to their own devices, I raced out of the forest and in the direction of the town.
Outfit image I found google searching and used for reference for the clothing Lynn made her Chapter 4 Author''s Note. How will Seri''s town visit go? Well, you have to read on to find out. Don''t expect spoilers here. Enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 4 After pushing myself at maximum speed for an hour, I finally forced myself to take a break. According to my map, I had cleared ninety kilometers in that time, so I felt comfortable that I had left those wolves behind. The main reason for taking a break wasn¡¯t because of physical exhaustion, but because I was suffering the backlash from using Sensory Hijack on over a hundred targets. Sensory Hijack was a powerful psi ability that I had developed primarily for sneaking around, but it rapidly fell in usefulness the higher level or the more intelligent the target was. Of course, beings that know how to use psi themselves provided an added challenge to getting the ability to work. The wolves had been both low level and simple beasts, but the sheer number that I had influenced in one go had been extremely draining of my psionic energy. As a result, I had a pounding headache and accompanying dizzy feeling that I knew wouldn¡¯t go away for probably another hour. I took a thermos filled with ice water out of my bag, and took a long drink to refresh myself. As I drank, I finally took the time to examine my surroundings. While I had been rushing I hadn¡¯t paid much attention, except to keep an eye out for anyone that might see my speeding figure. I had no idea how my strength compared to the people of this world, and didn¡¯t want to cause any unnecessary alarm. For the most part, the area around me was simple plains with the occasional trees here or there. You¡¯d think with all this open space that it would be used for farmland or something. Maybe add that to my list of topics to enquire about later. While refreshing myself, I consulted the map again to look for one of the roads that led to the town. I¡¯d cut cross country, then get on the road about fifteen kilometers from the town and then make the rest of the way there at a more sedate and normal human pace. My break over, I continued, this time taking note of the small presences I detected but most of them were simply small animals that looked like mice or rabbits. I did have a brief moment of surprise when one of the rabbits I passed was level 20 and had a horn on its forehead. It had attempted to attack me with a headbutt, but easily missed as I danced around it and kept running. After two more hours I was nearing the road, so I started slowing down in order to be cautious. There might be other travelers on the road to spot me, after all. My caution was unnecessary though, there was no one around at all. Sighing, I started walking at a normal pace. It would be about another two hours until I reach the town, so it would probably be pretty boring. Examining the contents in my bag told me that I probably should have checked it much more thoroughly before I left Lullaby. The food Lynn had packed didn¡¯t include any sweets! It was all just basic travel foods like jerky or granola bars. I¡¯m going to have to hope there¡¯s something good to eat at the town. Regardless of my complaining, I still pulled out a granola bar to snack on. Sadly, I had to toss the wrapper back in the bag. I finally caught sight of the town and noticed that there was a wall surrounding it, and the road led to a gate with what looked like a line of wagons waiting to enter. The wagons were even hitched to what looked like horses. The wall wasn¡¯t that tall, only maybe five meters, so I could easily jump it but that would likely cause issues. I decided that it would be best to get in line like the other people. I hurried a bit because I was hoping I could overhear some conversation to give the psi auto translator time to figure out the language enough that I wouldn¡¯t blunder when it came time for me to speak. A few minutes of conversation should be all it needed to get the hang of it. Lucky for me, the wagon in front of me in line had a number of people around it talking to one another. I assumed they were workers of some kind, judging by the fact that they were all wearing similar style and color clothes. Now that I looked more closely all the people around the four wagons ahead of me were all wearing the same type of clothes so maybe this is some kind of group. Some of them gave me sharp glances, probably due to my purple hair color, my hair was hiding my other distinct features. I noticed that of the people I could see they all had normal human hair colors. Eventually they lost interest in me, probably because I was just standing there quietly, and returned to their conversations. At first the conversations were just garbled messes but after a few minutes of listening I was starting to get individual words here and there. Another few minutes and I was getting most of their conversation. Apparently I had been right that they were all one group. They all worked for a merchant that was travelling through the area. There were some issues with the merchant¡¯s paperwork for his goods so I guess the guards at the gate were giving him a hard time before he could enter. It took thirty more minutes from when I showed up before the wagons finally were allowed into the gate. Based on the grumblings from the workers they had been there for a while. I made my way to the gate and of course I was stopped by the two guards that were there. They both were holding spears with a sword at their waist. A glance above the gate showed another guard up on the wall that was holding a bow. Well not like I was going to bother picking a fight. ¡°Please hand over your identity card or a pass for entry.¡± The guard on my left spoke up. I decided to act a bit meek. ¡°I¡¯m sorry sir, but I seem to have lost my identity card somewhere along my travels. Is it impossible for me to enter?¡± The guards gave each other a short glance before the one that had spoken up before replied. ¡°We can issue a temporary pass but it requires you to pay an extra fee.¡± ¡°I actually don¡¯t have any money either, I could give you one of the goods I brought to sell.¡± I reached into my bag and pulled out the smaller pouch containing the gems. I plucked out a single gem out before returning it and held out my hand to the guard. The guard also reached out toward me so I dropped the gem into his outstretched hand. Oh, looks like I had grabbed a ruby. The guard looked at the gem in his hand blankly for a moment before hurriedly slipping it into a pouch at his waist. ¡°Well looks like everything is in order. Just come with me and I¡¯ll get you a temporary pass.¡± He beckoned me to follow him to a small building just outside the gate up against the wall. Walking into the small room, there wasn¡¯t much in here, a table and some chairs. On the table was a large glowing orb that was sitting on an oddly shaped box. The guard waved me forward, so I walked toward the table. But, I wasn¡¯t sure what I was supposed to do so I looked back at him. ¡°Have you never used a Status Orb before? Just place your hand on it.¡± A Status Orb? Does this mean this primitive technology world actually has some method of scanning my real status? Shit, this could reveal way more than I wanted to. I wonder if I should just neutralize the guards like I did with the wolves earlier and sneak in instead. But if I need to show a pass for something later inside the town, I¡¯d just be back in trouble again. I can¡¯t just keep messing with people''s heads forever. ¡°Hey, hurry up already. I don¡¯t have all day.¡± The guard was sounding increasingly angry. Well nothing for it, I placed my hand on the orb. If something goes wrong though this guard is going to have a very bad day. The orb shined in a blinking fashion for about ten seconds before stopping. Afterwards a small compartment on the box slid open and inside was a card. The guard picked up and gave it a glance and then handed it toward me. ¡°You are pretty lucky to survive traveling alone without a Class. You should look into getting some training or your luck will run out eventually. You¡¯re clear to enter the city.¡± Wait, without a Class? I inspected the card. Amazingly I could read it. Name: Seri Race: Human Class: None So this orb was incapable of reading my status after all? It did somehow find out my name which is a bit surprising. The most interesting thing on the card though was the Race line. If ID cards here have that option does that mean there are actually sentient beings other than humans on this world? I returned my attention to the guard and he was already leaving the room so I hurried to follow him. ¡°Excuse me, I had a question. Where would you suggest I go to sell my goods?¡± ¡°More like what you paid with? Try the Merchant¡¯s Guild branch. That¡¯s probably the only place here that would purchase gems like those. It¡¯s located at the plaza. Just look for those wagons that had been ahead of you.¡± He waved me off before returning to his post. As he walked away with his back toward me, and since I was curious because he mentioned Classes, I slipped my terminal out and scanned him. Sadly scanning sentient beings doesn¡¯t give you as much information as scanning a beast would. All I got was that he was human, obviously, and that his Class was a level 18 Warrior and he didn¡¯t have Subclass. The other guard was also a Warrior but he was only level 16. Warrior isn¡¯t a Class I¡¯ve seen before, so maybe that means this world has Classes that are different from the Classes seen in game elsewhere. If so I might be able to learn some new stuff. After over a decade in game of having every class maxed out, I might be able to raise my stats again! <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> As I walked through the gate, I considered what I had just learned. If the gate guards are that weak then how do they fight anything? Even that horned rabbit was level 20. Of course Class levels are weighted more than beast levels, but at lower levels fighting something above you would still be pretty difficult. Anyway I needed to find the plaza and then the Merchant¡¯s Guild. A plaza is some kind of public square or marketplace I believe, so I guess I¡¯ll just follow along this street from the gate. Really though, this town is filthy. I knew medieval times were lax on the whole cleanliness idea but this stench is horrible. A number of people were eying me, whether for my hair color or my shield jewelry that clearly stood out, I had no way of knowing. As I walked, I took the time to examine some of the stalls and shops along the way. None of them were really anything special, but I did notice I was unable to read any writing. I wonder, why can I read the card then? Ahead of me I saw a more open area that was filled with stalls, which I assumed had to be the plaza. Now that I was at the plaza, let¡¯s see where are those wagons at? There were a lot more people in this area than I had seen on my way. Oh, that woman running that stall has light blue hair and that man way over there has dark green. I guess unnatural colors do exist and are just rare? Ahh, I got distracted. I think those are wagons over near that large building at the other end of the plaza. It¡¯s hard to be sure with how small I am and all these people in the way. I made my way through the crowd and sure enough those were the wagons I had seen earlier, and the workers were unloading crates and barrels and taking them to the back of the building. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Now that I¡¯ve hopefully found the right place, time to go inside and get some spending money. Upon entering I saw a counter with a few receptionists and there were a few clusters of men and women discussing things around the large room as well. Some of them watched me with curious eyes, probably wondering why a young looking girl is in this place alone. There didn¡¯t seem to be any indication of the individual receptionists being for different things, but with my lack of ability to read, I wasn¡¯t positive of that. Let¡¯s see, four choices for receptionists, two young men, an older man and a pretty cute, possibly older teen girl. Needless to say, I chose the cute girl. She greeted me as I approached her, ¡°Hello Miss, what business might you have at the Merchant¡¯s Guild today?¡± I noticed her eyes briefly flickered to my shield collar as she spoke. ¡°Also may I see your identity card?¡± ¡°The guard at the gate told me that the guild would be the best place to sell my goods.¡± I replied. I slipped the temporary pass to her. She seemed surprised, ¡°A temporary pass? Are you a member of our establishment?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not. Is that a problem?¡± ¡°Without being a member of the guild, the price that we can offer for whatever you are selling will be lower.¡± She explained. ¡°I guess it depends on how much lower the price would be. I¡¯m really in need of money at the moment.¡± ¡°Can you show me what it is you¡¯re hoping to sell?¡± She enquired. I nodded to her and slipped a hand down into my bag. I made sure not to let anyone see the inside of it and came out with the pouch that contained the gems. I loosened the pouch and poured some of the contents out on the counter in front of her. The cute receptionist looked at the small pile of gems in stunned silence, and I felt as some of the gazes in the room instantly became more alert toward me. There was even one that was suddenly pulsing with hostility. The receptionist finally seemed to gather her wits, she quickly gathered the gems and my pass card up in her hands before stepping out from behind the counter. ¡°Miss, please come with me.¡± She led me from the large room to a side room that was in the back. Inside the room was a table and some chairs. She laid most of the gems and my card on the table but kept a few gems with her.¡°Please wait here Miss, I¡¯m going to bring the Branch Manager.¡± Then she left the room. I guess spilling out a bag of gems might have been a rash move. Oh well, if the receptionist is bringing the Branch Manager, I guess I¡¯ll just have to deal with them instead. While I was thinking, I had kept my detection focused on the person that had showed hostility, and as soon as I was brought to the side room he had quickly left the guild and headed somewhere. My intuition tells me that will bring some kind of trouble later. After about ten minutes and right when I was starting to get bored, a man opened the door to the room and came in followed by the receptionist girl who closed the door behind her. He was older looking with a short beard, I would guess about sixty years old but still looked pretty vigorous. He smiled and then sat across the table from me. Receptionist girl stayed by his side but didn¡¯t take a seat. ¡°Nice to meet you, young lady. I¡¯m the Branch Manager for this Westmoor Town branch,¡± I took note of the town name since this was the first time I heard it, ¡°Malcolm Gerard. Kiara here has shown me some of your gems, and I appraised them. They¡¯re quite high quality. Do you mind showing me the rest?¡± Since this was going to be a negotiation, I don¡¯t mind cheating a little so I reached out with my psi and made a small, subtle connection with Malcolm. This way I¡¯d get a general sense of his surface thoughts and if he tries to lie to me or not. I poured the rest of the pouch out on the table. Malcolm went through them one by one. There was about sixty total. ¡°Does this mean you¡¯ll be buying them from me after all?¡± Malcolm returned his focus to me and replied with an apologetic tone, ¡°We can purchase them but unfortunately the price we can offer will be quite low. High quality gemstones like the ones you have aren¡¯t bought much in this area so we¡¯d have to transport them to one of the main branches in order to sell them. I could probably offer at most half general market price for them and even that is taking a large risk on my part.¡± He seemed to be telling the truth. What he had said made sense as well and I was perfectly willing to settle for that rate. I could easily synthesize more gems later if I needed more local currency. ¡°I¡¯ll accept that price. As I told Kiara, I¡¯m kind of desperately in need of money right now. These gems are all I have.¡± ¡°Yes, I¡¯d like to ask you about that. A young lady like yourself entered the town alone with a temporary pass, do you not have a guardian?¡± My connection was telling me he was mostly curious but at the same time there was some underlying concern. ¡°I do not have a guardian.¡± I felt his concern increase, ¡°Where are you from?¡± I smiled at him, ¡°Here and there.¡± ¡°Where did you come by that jewelry and all those gemstones?¡± I let my smile grow wider, ¡°Here and there.¡± At this point he was probably thinking I was a young thief. Confusingly enough, while I could tell he had some suspicions towards me now, he was still mostly concerned about me. I wondered if it was just because of the fact that I appeared to be a young girl. You would think a merchant would be more wary of the idea of potentially stolen goods though. It felt like he wanted to ask more questions but decided on a different tack. ¡°Do you have a place to stay?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t. I was going to look for an inn after I got some money.¡± He rubbed his short beard and had a thoughtful look on his face. He turned to the receptionist girl, ¡°Kiara, go get me something to write with and two sheets of paper.¡± She bowed and quickly left the room. ¡°What¡¯s happening now?¡± I asked. ¡°I¡¯ll be writing a purchase agreement note for these gems. It¡¯s mainly a formality. It will take me time to gather together the funds for these. I¡¯ll strive to have it all ready for you tomorrow or the next day. The other paper will be a recommendation to an inn I know the owner of. You¡¯ll be able to stay there for free of charge for a few days.¡± I was a bit surprised by the offer. ¡°Is it possible for it to be ready tomorrow? I was planning on leaving town.¡± This time it was Malcolm¡¯s turn to look surprised, ¡°Leaving town so soon? Well it can¡¯t be helped then. Come by tomorrow afternoon and we¡¯ll complete the deal.¡± While he waited for Kiara to get back he separated the gems by type. I just sat there watching him as he looked at the gems and tapped his finger on the table. Eventually he finished his contemplation and then gathered the gems and put them back in the pouch. Afterwards he handed it back to me. ¡°I¡¯ll purchase the gems for a total price of 80 Varia Gold coins and 50 Varia Silver coins.¡± I just nodded. I¡¯d figure out later how much money that actually was. Kiara came back in with a quill, inkwell and two sheets of paper. Malcolm quickly wrote out the paperwork, though I had no idea what they actually said. I¡¯d just have to trust in my connection that was still sending me signals telling me the man was being honest and principled. After he finished he folded them and then handed them to me. I slipped them into my bag along with the pouch of gems.¡°When you leave the guild, the Black Roc Inn is down the street to your immediate left. Just look for the carved bird sign. When you come back tomorrow just come to Kiara and she¡¯ll bring you to me. Kiara, go ahead and see the young lady out.¡± He nodded to me before leaving the room and I severed the mental connection. Kiara beckoned for me to follow her so I got up and left the room behind her. She brought me back to the front room and then bowed to me before returning to her place at the counter. As I left the guild, I immediately picked up two presences that became hostile as soon as they saw me. Acting casually, I cast a sweeping glance over the plaza before turning down the street to go to the inn. The two hostiles had now been identified as men that looked pretty much like thugs. They started following me, and I was wondering about how exactly I should handle this. Once I enter the inn these two will be unlikely to follow me in but they¡¯ll probably watch for me to exit or try to gain access to my room later. Honestly, this seemed like a hassle so I wanted to just nip this in the bud right now, so I stepped off the street I was following and into one of the small alleys. I felt the presences speed up as I walked deeper into the side streets, I was looking for a place where no one would witness what I was about to do. Finally I found a dead end where I didn¡¯t detect anyone nearby and I stood there and waited for the two men to catch up. Coming around the corner were the two thugs. They had gleeful grins on their faces as if they couldn¡¯t believe how stupid I was to come here. ¡°Hehe Missy, not sure how you spotted us, but you¡¯re good and trapped now. Why don¡¯t you just hand over the bag of gems and that jewelry and we promise not to treat you too roughly.¡± They both laughed at this point. ¡°Of course we¡¯re still going to sell you off. You look cute enough so should be worth a good amount.¡± I facepalmed. Ahh, they really are morons. They didn¡¯t even consider the possibility that this might have been a trap. I didn¡¯t bother answering. I merely picked them both up with my psi, which caused them to open their eyes wide in surprise and sudden fear, and pressed them up against the dead end wall. Of course, I was also using my psi to keep their mouths shut. I didn¡¯t want any inconvenient screams bringing people to see what was going on. I unsheathed my dagger and walked toward the thugs. They were shaking like crazy as they struggled to break free of my power. ¡°Now you see you two, I could let you go free. Would you like that?¡± They both nodded frantically. ¡°I don¡¯t really like the idea though of you coming back with more friends for another try, it¡¯s such a hassle. So I¡¯ll make you a deal. If you promise to not come anywhere near me in the future I¡¯ll let you go, understand?¡± I slipped a small connection to both of them to check for lies. ¡°Now I¡¯ll let you speak but if you say anything other than the phrase ¡®I promise to stay away from you.¡¯ like for example trying to scream for help, I¡¯ll simply silence you again and slit your throat. Now promise.¡± I released my psi¡¯s hold on their mouths and they both immediately said ¡°¡°I promise to stay away from you.¡±¡± Sadly for them, I could tell they were lying, so I carried out my threat. I took a moment to wipe off my dagger on their dirty clothes. Better to have a kind of dirty, used looking weapon than one dripping blood right on my belt. How weak and boring they were. Not a proper way to blow off steam at all. I made my way back to the street I had left, hoping that the inn at least would have some good food and sweets. Chapter 5 Author¡¯s Note: Please enjoy the chapter. Next chapter might be on Sunday rather than Saturday
Chapter 5 As I walked along the street that was supposed to lead me to the recommended inn, I was finding myself in a more upscale area of town. Of course not that much better than the rest of the town but there was less garbage on the street and the buildings were getting larger and much more refined looking. Was there really an inn in this area? Eventually, I saw a building that had a signpost out front and from the sign was hanging what looked like a carving of a hawk or some other bird of prey. I figured this had to be the place and walked in. There was a large woman at the counter inside and she gave me an appraising look as I entered. There was an interesting looking lamp on the counter next to her. It didn¡¯t seem to be burning anything but was still illuminating the entryway. I wondered how it worked. ¡°Welcome to the Black Roc Inn. Are you here to rent a room or to join up with some other guest?¡± I pulled the note out of my bag and handed it to her. ¡°I was given this recommendation and told with it I could stay for free?¡± The woman barely opened the note before tossing it over her shoulder and sighing. ¡°I should have known a little thing like you were another one of that old coot Malcolm¡¯s pity cases.¡± I was perplexed, ¡°Pity case?¡± ¡°Right. You¡¯re an orphan or something and Malcolm found out about it? He lost his granddaughter when she was a young teen like you, and ever since then the man has been offering help to girls around your age. I don¡¯t mind too much since he does pay the price for the rooms I loan out, and most of the girls are good guests that don¡¯t cause any trouble during their stays. Anyways the note says I¡¯m to let you stay here for free for a few days and it¡¯s up to you how you use that. Breakfast and dinner are included with the room. Anything else you¡¯ll have to scrounge up on your own.¡± She gave me an intimidating look that said that if I complained in anyway about this service she would not make my stay pleasant. I simply nodded toward her and said, ¡°I only need to stay one night. I¡¯m going to leave town tomorrow afternoon. Is it fine to have dinner now? And are there any desserts?¡± When I got to the inn the sun had started to set. ¡°Well now, I can get you a bowl of stew and some bread. You¡¯ll have to be satisfied with just that. Do you want to go up to your room and have the food brought there or eat in the dining room? If you want some advice eat in your room. That reminds me I didn¡¯t assign you a room yet did I?¡± She reached under the counter and came up with a key tied to a small piece of wood. ¡°Here honey, I¡¯ll let you have room 8 on the 2nd floor.¡± I was curious so I asked, ¡°I don¡¯t mind eating in my room but is something going on in the dining room?¡± ¡°Not really anything special but you probably noticed that the inn is in the nicer area of town right? Well we get more upscale clientele as a result. If you try to eat in the dining room you¡¯ll likely get accosted. Basically for your own good I¡¯d stick to your room. Well, I¡¯d appreciate it too since I don¡¯t want our other guests unhappy.¡± I was very tempted to go to the dining room and see what kind of trouble I could get into but to be honest doing so would just cause issues for the inn and likely Malcolm who had recommended me here. I still needed Malcolm to pay for these gems so let¡¯s stay on his good side, at least for now. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll eat in my room then. By the way, if there¡¯s no dessert can I at least get some wine to go with dinner?¡± The woman looked shocked, ¡°A little thing like you wants to drink wine? I think you¡¯re a bit young for alcohol dear.¡± Feeling a bit annoyed, ¡°I could probably outdrink you!¡± ¡°No reason to boast child. I¡¯ll bring you a glass of weak wine with your meal so go on up to your room.¡± She shooed me toward the stairs. Grumbling a bit, I headed upstairs. Now to find room number 8, first door on the right is room number 1 so I guess it will be fourth on the left. There were more of those lamps like I had seen downstairs hanging along the walls. Making my way down the hall, I noticed there were some very stimulating sounds coming from room number 5. Feeling a bit playful I went down to my room number 8 and unlocked it and left the door open. Stepping back toward room 5 and stopped at the door, I had definitely heard correctly with these moans and gasps. Geez I can¡¯t believe they¡¯re going at it so early in the evening. Now what shall I do? I probably don¡¯t have long until the inn lady comes up with my food so I guess I¡¯ll go with a simple prank. I knocked a few times, causing the people in the room to react in surprise and stop their merrymaking. I heard sounds of hurried dressing, so I slipped down the hall to my room quickly and quietly closed the door behind me. Standing at my door I heard another door open and then close again after a few moments. Straining my ears a bit, I didn¡¯t hear any sounds of resumed activities. Of course, it¡¯s possible they¡¯re trying to be quieter now. Prank over, I finally examined the room I had been given and understood why the inn lady had given this room to me. It was a small room with only a small single bed. There was also a table and chair but that was basically it for furnishings. Another of those lamps was on the table so I decided to examine it later. I sat my bag down and hopped up on top of the bed. It seemed comfortable enough to sleep on. All in all the room was at least clean and livable until the morning when I would be leaving. I¡¯ll need to find something to do with my time until afternoon though, which reminds me I should probably ask the inn lady some questions. She seemed like the well informed type. I laid back on the bed as I waited for my dinner to come. Only a few minutes later a knock at the door was heard so I got up and opened it. The inn lady swept in and placed a wooden tray on the table. On it, was a bowl, a large piece of bread and a small glass of wine. The inn lady beckoned me to eat and turned to leave, but I hastily spoke up to stop her. ¡°Wait! I wanted to ask you a few questions, if that would be alright?¡± She turned back around to face me and sent me a glare. ¡°Child, you must realize that I am the owner of this inn. I have many important demands on my time. I was being nice to bring your food up myself rather than send it up with one of my employees, but I can¡¯t be standing around talking with you all night.¡± ¡°I understand, but I just have a few questions, so can I please have a few minutes of time?¡± I tried to throw her a cute, pleading look but I could tell she wasn¡¯t buying it. Surprisingly, she shrugged and said, ¡°Alright. I¡¯ll let you ask some questions, but make them quick and brief.¡± ¡°Thank you very much. My first question is, have you heard any rumors about things falling from the sky? Like maybe to the north?¡± If my ship had been seen then there should be at least some rumors about it. The inn lady gave me an incredulous look. ¡°Child, things don¡¯t fall from the sky. Well excepting rain, snow, and sleet that is. If you¡¯re just going to waste my time with silliness I¡¯m going to leave.¡± Things don¡¯t fall from the sky? Oh well, moving on. ¡°Wait please don¡¯t, I¡¯m sorry. My next question is about Classes. Is there any Class that can be acquired here in town easily?¡± ¡°Well, the easiest to get would probably be Merchant. All you would need to do is work at a shop or stall for a few weeks and you¡¯ll pick it up. Warrior is quite easy to acquire too. You just need to receive training in the use of a weapon and then fighting monsters with it. After that, I guess there¡¯s always Thief since that only requires to steal a certain amount of goods. I¡¯d recommend against going for Thief for obvious reasons. I¡¯d recommend against Warrior too since I doubt a young little thing like yourself would be much of a match for monsters.¡± I nodded in acknowledgement to her words, but not because I was agreeing with her. The ¡®monster¡¯ killing part would be the easier step for me, it would be finding someone to train me that would be the hard requirement. Especially since she didn¡¯t mention a time frame for how long the training would take. ¡°Are there any other classes?¡± ¡°I suppose there is Hunter but that requires you to know how to craft and then trap a certain number of beasts or monsters. You¡¯d also need to learn how to use a bow. The rest aren¡¯t really accessible here. Was that all you wanted to know?¡± ¡°Just one more question then. Do you know a good shop to look for ores or minerals? Or a place that would be able to identify some for me and tell me where I might find more?¡± The inn lady¡¯s face turned puzzled. ¡°I assumed you met Malcolm at the Merchant¡¯s Guild? He doesn¡¯t usually stop working until after dark.¡± It was now my turn to be puzzled. ¡°Yeah I did. Why?¡± ¡°The Merchant¡¯s Guild would have been the place to ask about that, don¡¯t you think?¡± Ahhh. Why didn¡¯t I realize such an obvious thing!? ¡°Is that everything then?¡± I mutely nodded at her and she left the room. I¡¯m such an idiot. With a heartfelt sigh, I sat at the table and ate my supper. It was passable, but not anything special. I took some time to examine the lamp, but I couldn¡¯t figure out how it worked. There didn¡¯t seem to be any mechanisms to it just a small crystal on a stand and a knob that controlled the brightness level. The light shines out of the crystal but there¡¯s no connection at all between the knob and it. There¡¯s not even any wires or anything, so how is this lightning up? My terminal¡¯s scan didn¡¯t help any either. It just told me the item was a lamp with no further details. I didn¡¯t even get a result when I tried scanning the crystal alone. I¡¯m completely stumped. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. After deciding to end my examination I turned the light off. I locked the door to my room, removed my cloak and gloves and then slid off my boots. Lynn forgot to pack nightclothes, so I would just have to keep the dress on to sleep in. Well, I had no intention of removing my shield either since I was definitely not going to consider anywhere off Lullaby to be a safe location. Laying down on the bed I rolled on my side with my back to the door and hit the signal on my terminal to call Lynn. Immediately a smaller than normal hologram appeared in front of my face. ¡°Hello Mistress! How goes your infiltration of the town and the procurement of local currency?¡± I spoke quietly, ¡°I¡¯ve managed to acquire a temporary ID and found a buyer for the gems. I won¡¯t be able to sell them though until afternoon tomorrow. I¡¯ve also learned that this world has its own Classes and I plan to see if I can learn them as well.¡± ¡°Ohh, that sounds fascinating, Mistress! What about the hunt for resources?¡± I grimaced, ¡°Nonexistent. It slipped my mind to ask about it earlier, so I¡¯ll have to ask tomorrow sometime before I leave to head back to the ship. I still have most of the day free so I think I¡¯ll just wander around and explore the town a bit more. I might find some interesting information. The inn owner here only mentioned a few Classes but said there are more of them so I¡¯ll try to find out about that. On a different note, did the wolves leave any other animal carcasses?¡± Lynn shrugs, ¡°I haven¡¯t picked up any sign of them on the sensors since they left the moose here this morning Mistress. On that note, the moose meat tested as fit for consumption if you were curious.¡± ¡°I honestly wasn¡¯t. Was there anything else that needed discussing? If not I¡¯ll be returning to the ship after I finish the sale tomorrow.¡± ¡°Everything is going well here, the digging is proceeding favorably, though it might take more time than I initially estimated.¡± ¡°I understand. Just do your best. Then, I¡¯ll be getting some sleep Lynn. Good night.¡± Lynn looked at me in consternation, ¡°Mistress, are you going to be sleeping in those dirty clothes?¡± For the first time since entering the town, I took note of my appearance. Lynn was right, my clothes were dirty. I hadn¡¯t even thought of how they must look after a few hours of running through long grass as I ran across the countryside. No wonder I was basically treated like an orphaned vagabond. ¡°I think I¡¯ll just keep them on. No reason to change really and it might create questions if I walk around in a perfectly clean pair of the same clothes tomorrow. Plus, it¡¯s not like this is my bed I have to worry about getting dirty.¡± ¡°Affirmative. Good night Mistress, pleasant dreams!¡± She vanished. Dreams huh? That reminds me of the episode this morning. I don¡¯t really want to think about it again so I¡¯ll just put that thought aside for now. After a while spent tossing and turning on the unfamiliar bed I finally fell asleep. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The dreams this night were murky and unfocused. Leaving no chance of them being recalled. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I woke up in the morning quite well rested and with no weird feelings of having dreams. I knew that I must have been mistaken the previous morning. I checked my terminal and it was about 8am by my reckoning. I should probably set my clock to operate on local time at some point. Lynn should have figured out how long the days last by now, I¡¯ll ask about it back at the ship later. Now the question is, will I have to go down to the dining room for breakfast or will the inn lady bring it to me again. I don¡¯t even know when breakfast will be served so I¡¯ll be waiting an indeterminate amount of time either way. I decided that for now I¡¯ll wait in my room, but I¡¯ll go downstairs if the inn lady doesn¡¯t come in the next hour. I opened the notepad function of my terminal and added the Class information I was told last night. I probably should have saved the information before I went to bed but no harm done. With that completed, I guess I should get dressed and fix my hair so I don¡¯t show off any of my inhuman characteristics. After dressing I sat at the table and ate two granola bars for now. It¡¯s boring to have nothing to do though so I fiddled with the lamp some more. Still have no idea how the damn thing works. Eventually a knock at the door came so I went and opened it. At the door wasn¡¯t the inn lady but a young girl probably in her mid or late teens at most carrying a tray with a bowl on it. She was cute I suppose. Maybe more on the adorable side because of her age. Too bad she wasn¡¯t wearing a maid outfit. ¡°Miss, I was sent up with breakfast for you.¡± I beckoned her in and she placed the tray on the table. She picked up the dinner tray before turning to me again and asking, ¡°Miss, did you need anything else?¡± I smiled, that question gave me an idea. ¡°Do you work all day today?¡± She was confused, ¡°Yes, I work until the evening. Why do you ask?¡± ¡°I was just wondering if you wanted to go out and maybe guide me around town since you¡¯re quite cute. I wouldn¡¯t mind spending some time with you.¡± I winked at her. She looked a bit thunder-struck before a faint blush appeared and she started backing up away from me, almost dropping the tray. ¡°I, I appreciate the compliment but I¡¯m sorry!¡± She turned and fled out of the room. Too bad, there goes that idea to kill time. I guess I¡¯ll see what I got for breakfast and then go wander the city alone. Taking a glance at the bowl, it looks like just a bowl of plain wheat porridge. The inn lady really isn¡¯t spoiling a guest who isn¡¯t paying even if supposedly she¡¯s going to get money from Malcolm for this. I wonder if I should complain a bit? Probably a waste of time in any case. If this town turns out to not have access to the goods I need then I won¡¯t return even if it is the closest town to my ship. Ignoring my distaste, I quickly ate the porridge. I left the tray and bowl on the table and left the room, locking it behind me. At the counter downstairs the inn lady was there and she gave me a suspicious look as soon as she saw me. I walked up to the counter and and laid the key down. ¡°Thanks for the room. I¡¯ll be going now.¡± ¡°Wait just a minute young lady! What did you do to Celina? After I sent her up to your room with breakfast she came barreling down the stairs so fast she almost fell and then ran and hid in the kitchen.¡± ¡±I don¡¯t have the slightest clue what you mean. I didn¡¯t do anything to her. Now if you don¡¯t mind I have business to take care of.¡± I enjoyed the stupefied look on her face before I turned and left the inn. Now what do I do with hours of free time? I guess the only thing I can do is wander around and try to gather information and rumors. Maybe I¡¯ll get lucky and find out something interesting. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ By the time the sun was directly overhead, I had gathered a certain amount of information on a number of topics, but none of which that I was really interested in. I overheard two old men talking about some empire to the east attacking this kingdom that I¡¯m apparently currently in. That sounded like an interesting topic, until a woman came and told them off for talking about something that happened years ago. Another rumor I had heard was something about wizards blowing up some fort in the south. I guessed that wizard was the local psi using Class. Superstitious and ignorant people mistaking psi for magic. I wondered what kind of psi they were using to cause a large explosion, that might be something worth learning. My own psi was much more heavily focused on more subtle tricks, though I was damn good with telekinesis. The biggest surprise for me was that the idea of things falling from the sky was completely impossible from the locals¡¯ point of view. I didn¡¯t hear a single rumor or even comment along those lines, so I guess Lullaby was safe for now. Do they not have records of meteorites or things like that? I enquired around about prices for goods as best I could to get a feel for how much money I would receiving. One of the the first things I discovered was there was a lower level of coin, a Varia Copper coin that was usually used for things like food and ingredients and other common purchases. Silver coins were usually for bigger purchases or for purchasing crafted items though some simple crafted items sold for copper instead. Gold coins were for more fancy things like jewelry or finely tailored clothing or purchasing homes. Basically gold coins were for the luxury goods or the largest or most important purchases. The exchange rate for the coins was 100 coppers to a silver and 20 silvers to a gold. I added this information to my notepad. I tried to see if I could gather information about the minerals I was looking for, but couldn¡¯t turn up any leads. There had been three outcomes during my search. One, I was shooed out of shops immediately on sight. This happened in the more well off shops. Two, I was shooed out once they found out I couldn¡¯t pay for the information. This was most of the other shops or people. The third outcome, that happened only twice, was them hearing me out but upon seeing what I was looking for telling me they¡¯d never seen anything like it. I¡¯d just have to hope for a better result from the Merchant¡¯s Guild. Chapter 6 Author''s Note: So I updated today after all. I tried my hand at messing around with tables for game like things but not sure I like how they turned out. Please enjoy the longest chapter yet.
Chapter 6 I entered the Merchant¡¯s Guild, and its condition was pretty much identical to yesterday. The only small difference today was that there was another receptionist girl other than Kiara. Kiara was busy at the moment as well, so I couldn¡¯t walk up to her to conduct my business, so I moved a bit to the side of the common area and decided to wait until she was free. A certain man from yesterday was there and was shooting me quite a fierce glare from across the room. Shouldn¡¯t you try to be less obvious with that hostility? Even the other men you were talking with just before are giving you odd looks now. I¡¯m at least 95% sure this man is the one that hired those thugs from yesterday to rob me. I didn¡¯t bother disposing of the bodies in anyway, so odds are they got found and word got back to him somehow. Or maybe not. It might just be that since I¡¯m here, unhurt and unrobbed tells him that his plan went south. Unless he tries to start something today I¡¯ll be magnanimous towards him and ignore him. Before I start ignoring him though, let¡¯s give him a cheerful little wave and smile. Yep, now he really looks like he¡¯s going to explode in anger. Oh well, I tried to be friendly. It¡¯s not my fault! Oh, something more important came up, Kiara is now no longer busy. Putting any thought of the angry man out of my mind, I walked up to Kiara¡¯s spot at the counter, ¡°Hello Kiara, I¡¯m here to conclude that business from yesterday.¡± She nods to me and comes around the counter, ¡°Miss Seri, the Branch Manager told me to show you to his office when you came so please follow me.¡± She beckons and unlike the previous day, she leads me toward a staircase going up to the second floor. I noticed that, excluding Mr. Angry who was still glaring at me, this action made some of the others in the room curious and they too watched me go up the stairs. Not much I can do about it though and none of them were hostile at least. On the second floor, she stopped at a door and knocked. ¡°Manager, Miss Seri is here.¡± A voice from inside called, ¡°Bring her in.¡± Kiara opened the door and led me inside. The room was furnished quite well. A few bookshelves along the walls and what appeared to be paintings hanging up. There was a storage cabinet in one corner of the room as well that looked a bit out of place. At a desk in the center of the room was Malcolm. The desk was covered in paperwork and Malcolm looked exhausted. ¡°Good afternoon young lady. I hope you at least slept well.¡± ¡°Good afternoon to you too. I did indeed sleep pretty well. Also I hope you don¡¯t mind but I actually might have some other business with you aside from finishing that sale.¡± Malcolm got a gleam in his eyes as he heard that, ¡°Well then have a seat and let¡¯s get started.¡± He opened a drawer on the desk and pulled out a small pouch. ¡°Here is the payment for the gems. Feel free to count that it¡¯s all there.¡± I nodded and pulled out the pouch containing the gems to pass to him. Contrary to my thought that he¡¯d check the contents right away he simply slipped the pouch into the same drawer he had taken the money from. Well, he might be being nice and trusting me but I¡¯m going to make sure the coins in here are the right amount. I picked up the coin pouch and spent the next few minutes counting every coin until I was sure I had the exact number of coins he had mentioned yesterday. From my examination they looked like the coins I had seen people using in the morning as I wandered around so I¡¯m pretty sure they¡¯re real coins too. Malcolm was watching with an amused look while I counted the coins. I just noticed but it seems like Kiara had left the room while I was focused on that. I slipped the coin pouch into my bag and returned my attention to Malcolm. ¡°Now that that¡¯s taken care of. I¡¯d like to get your help with something. I¡¯m in need of certain materials. My exploration of the town didn¡¯t turn up any leads, so you¡¯re likely my last hope before I have to go look somewhere else.¡± Malcolm looked interested. ¡°Materials you say? What kind of materials?¡± I reached into my bag and pulled out the lump of etherenite first. This was the mineral I needed the most of to rebuild the engines and warp drive so it was the obvious one to start with. I handed it to Malcolm and he took it and examined it carefully, rotating it around in his hands as he did. He grimaced before handing it back to me. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I can¡¯t seem to Appraise this. I guess my Merchant level is too low. It does remind me of something I saw in the past, but I can¡¯t seem to recall where. Were there any others? You did say materials as in plural.¡± Feeling a bit dejected, I pulled out the two lumps of titanil and chromanite and handed them to him. Once again he examined them, but this time he didn¡¯t take as long before handing them back. ¡°I¡¯m very sorry. These two I¡¯ve never seen the like of before. Really, just where did you manage to acquire these? You¡¯re really a bundle of surprises.¡± I shook my head, ¡°I can¡¯t say where I acquired them. I just need to find more of them, a lot more. Do you have any idea where I could go that might be able to give me a lead? Long distance travel isn¡¯t a problem.¡± Malcolm gave me an odd look. ¡°Well if travel isn¡¯t a problem then I¡¯d say that the Tevalon Empire to the east is your best bet. Unlike the Estevaria Kingdom, it doesn¡¯t discriminate against the non-human races so there¡¯s a much greater variety of goods that flow through there.¡± I took in this new information. So I had been right that there were other sentient races on this planet. Should I ask about what other races there are or would that give me away too easily? Probably shouldn¡¯t chance it yet. If I go to the empire I¡¯ll probably meet other races anyway if he¡¯s right about them all living there. ¡°Do you have a map I could see? I¡¯d like to see what roads to follow to get there. Also I¡¯m guessing that I won¡¯t be able to use these coins if I go there will I?¡± ¡°I do indeed have a map that I can show you. As for the coins, I¡¯ll provide you with a letter you can use. Just visit a Merchant¡¯s Guild branch and get them exchanged for Tevalon coins. Of course there is the exchange rate so you might lose a bit.¡± He got up and walked over to one of the corners of the room. He opened the cabinet that was there and came out with a large scroll. He brought it back over to the desk and untied it and spread it awkwardly on top of the paperwork. ¡°Here¡¯s our town of Westmoor.¡± He pointed at a certain spot. ¡°Estevaria¡¯s capital is down here.¡± He dragged his finger along a road on the map to the south east. Now that I can see the whole kingdom here, this area really is on the outskirts of the kingdom. It also doesn¡¯t look like that forest is considered part of the kingdom judging by the rough borders I see on the map. As I was examining the map Malcolm continued. ¡°And the border to Tevalon is over here.¡± He dragged his hand a bit north and east from Estevaria¡¯s capital. ¡°The empire¡¯s capital is much further east and north then this map shows. Sadly, this map is only really of the kingdom, so I can¡¯t show you that.¡± I nodded in acknowledgement, but I was focusing more on the map. I know not to trust a low tech level world¡¯s maps to be perfectly accurate. If I use the distance of this town to the forest as an estimate, then this country is probably about three times the size of France? That¡¯s kind of a rough guesstimate but considering I seem to be at the far northern tip of the kingdom and I need to go far south and then east if I follow the route Malcolm showed me I¡¯d probably have to travel maybe five thousand or more kilometers to get to the empire. Of course he also said the capital of the empire was further north and east so maybe if I just go east from here I¡¯ll end up in the empire anyway? Might save some time. I decided to ask, ¡°Malcolm would the capital of the empire be somewhere directly east from here?¡± He looked like he was considering the question carefully. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say directly east, probably a bit south east. There¡¯s no roads connecting this backwater area with the empire though. The only safe trade route is from the capital to their border as I showed you.¡± Alright so a bit south and then east, I can work with that. I¡¯m still probably looking at thousands of kilometers worth of travel, though. ¡°Thanks for the information. That¡¯s all I needed help with.¡± ¡°Alright then, let me just write you that letter. Also again, I¡¯m sorry I wasn¡¯t able to aid you in your search.¡± I shook my head in disagreement. ¡°No way. You helped me a bunch. This will save me a lot of time rather than wandering aimlessly.¡± He smiled at my response and then fished a clean sheet of paper from a drawer and started to write. That reminds me but I really need to learn this language at some point too. After a minute or so he folded it and handed it to me. ¡°There you go, that will get you some help at any guild branch, especially if you try selling gems again.¡± As I took it from his hand, Kiara burst into the room looking terrified. ¡°Sir, there¡¯s an emergency!¡± She was panting as if she had just finished a sprint. Malcolm got up from his seat and spoke reassuringly to her. ¡°Calm down Kiara. Take some deep breaths and try to explain what¡¯s going on.¡± Kiara nodded and did as told. It took a minute for her to calm down sufficiently then she started to explain, ¡°Sir, a guard messenger from the wall just came. He said they spotted a pack of demon wolves coming toward the town. He wasn¡¯t sure how many of them there were since he and a few others were sent right away to sound the alarm but he guessed that there were at least fifty if not probably more than a hundred.¡± Upon hearing this news, Malcolm¡¯s eyes widened and he slumped back into his chair with an ashen look on his face. ¡°Was he sure that there were at least fifty of them?¡± Kiara nodded, after seeing Malcolm¡¯s reaction to the news her state of panic was starting to return. ¡°Yes Sir! He was absolutely sure there were at least fifty.¡± It was at this point that I decided to interject. I had a pretty good idea what this group of so-called demon wolves were. If I was correct then they had followed me to the town after they recovered from when I wiped their senses. ¡°Is there an issue with that number of wolves? Can¡¯t the guards stop them?¡± Malcolm looked shocked at my question and then started laughing, ¡°Against fifty demon wolves? Not hardly. Fifty demon wolves, the town might have a chance against them if everyone banded together. We¡¯d take a horrific number of casualties but we might be able to survive. A hundred? It¡¯s over, there¡¯s no chance of survival!¡± At his words Kiara broke down and started crying. I was surprised by this admission. Were the people of this world really this weak or was it just because this is an isolated backwater town? Normally I wouldn¡¯t care too much about accidentally getting people killed but this time it did seem like I had unintentionally led the wolves here so I guess maybe I should take care of the situation. Though that would mean revealing my abilities a bit. Well they have psi users, so I¡¯ll stick to using psi rather than using my guns but first I need some information. ¡°Hey Malcolm, and you too Kiara, stop moping around now! I need information so I want you to answer the following questions quickly understand?¡± I was speaking in a much more forceful tone than I had been up until this point and it startled the two out of their pity party. They were both looking at me like I was the crazy one! ¡°First, do demon wolves ever bow down to other races?¡± Malcolm looked still too stunned to reply but Kiara spoke up, ¡°Well, there is that legend about Hero Kohdy. He tamed a pack of demon wolves by just showing off his strength.¡± ¡°Is there any more details about that legend?¡± ¡°Not really. It just said that the demon wolves followed him after witnessing his strength but until he actually dominated them they weren¡¯t truly tamed and would still do as they wanted. The story wasn¡¯t really clear what that meant and no one that tried imitating him ever lived to tell the tale. A pack of demon wolves is just too strong after all.¡± I nodded at her words and considered what she had said. So the wolves elected me as their leader because they perceived my power in some way. They decided to follow me as some kind of test of my leadership until either they find out how strong I really am or how weak I really am and then decide to fight for control again. ¡°I see. Thanks for the info.¡± I guess I¡¯ll go take care of this. Shouldn¡¯t be too hard to get the wolves to back down. Hopefully in the time since the message and this conversation happened the wolves didn¡¯t attack anyone. That might makes things a bit messier. I started to leave the room but a small hand latched onto my arm trying to pull me back. I could have easily dragged Kiara with me but decided to turn back around and face her. I was somewhat gratified that she had real concern in her eyes, even if it was unnecessary from my viewpoint. ¡°What are you doing!? You can¡¯t go out there, you don¡¯t even have a Class!¡± If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I very carefully removed her hand from my arm and then with my other hand I reached up and placed it on the side of her face and stared into her eyes. I could tell she was uncomfortable by this but before she could react I brought our faces together and stole a kiss. She was a bit too stunned to react and I quickly took advantage of it by using my psi to put her into dreamland. She collapsed forward into me and I laid her down on the floor. At the sight of these actions, Malcolm finally roused from his stupor. ¡°You, what did you do to her!?¡± I merely gave him a peaceful smile. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. I didn¡¯t do anything to her. I just sent into a happy dream. By the time she wakes up everything will be resolved and she won¡¯t have to be afraid.¡± I tried to leave again but Malcolm called out, ¡°Wait! What are you going to do?¡± I turned my head to look back toward him and this time I showed him a savage grin. ¡°I¡¯m going to go discipline some misbehaving puppies!¡± ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I burst out of the Merchant Guild at close to max speed. I heard some screams from the direction of the wall but from this distance I couldn¡¯t tell if it was just fearful ones or if they were dying screams. Since I had resolved myself to stick to my psi abilities for this fight I swapped my main Class to Psion and kept Empath as my SubClass. This combination would give me the greatest control over my powers. The town was in a state of abject panic. I wouldn¡¯t be able to easily move through these crowds so I leapt with psi assistance up to the roof of a nearby building. I had moved so quickly and the crowd was so frenzied that very few noticed my action. I started moving and jumping along making my way to the gate that I had entered the town with, the wolves should be concentrated there. I was definitely hearing sounds of battle though as I got closer so it¡¯s likely the wolves had killed people already. That pisses me off and makes me feel even more guilty. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> Less than a minute later, I was at the wall. The wolves were just inside the city now and were massacring any of the guards that tried to attack them. Maybe luckily for me but most of the guards were dead and the townspeople had long since run away from this area so not many should witness what I¡¯m about to do. Doing something that I should never do, I reached up and deactivated my shield. I felt as my psionic energy that was being drained to power the shield returned to me. I took a few deep breath and prepared myself for action. Reaching out with my psi, I searched for each wolf presence. Each time I found one I raised it into the air and started moving over the wall and out of the city. This took a lot of concentration since I needed to make sure I grabbed each wolf and there were over a hundred of them. Eventually I had all 127 wolves in the air and and had set them floating out of the city. Many of them were struggling in the air but some were just going with it. One such was the pack leader, or maybe it¡¯s former pack leader since they followed me. I hopped from the roof I was on down to the ground. Wow, I hadn¡¯t noticed but they even tore through the gate. Some of the surviving guards were staring at me with open mouths as I casually walked past them and out through the rubble that had yesterday been a gate. Once I was out in the open, I started lowering the wolves to the ground in front of me. Most of them had pretty obvious signs of having attacked people. Once they were all on the ground, about half of them started growling at me and looked ready to attack while the other half looked calm. Some of the rambunctious ones decided to take action and tried to rush me. They quickly found themselves pushed into the ground with my psi. I might have lowered them to the ground but that didn¡¯t mean I had severed the connection I had made with each of them. I still had a psychic hand on each of their necks ready to take action if it should be necessary. I wasn¡¯t sure exactly how I should go about displaying true dominance but I figure violence is probably the things that these wolves understand the best. I¡¯ll make them feel utter helplessness. Immediately I exerted pressure on all the growling wolves and they fell to the ground as well. Some of the calm and quiet wolves took that moment to try to attack but like the others got done in. At this point about eighty of the wolves were now on the ground struggling against my power while the rest, including the former pack leader, looked on. Now, how to deal with these last ones. They¡¯re not growling or trying to attack me so it wouldn¡¯t feel right to discipline them yet. I¡¯ll just ignore them for now while I let these others tire themselves out. After a few minutes of punishment I finally let up my power on the wolves and they struggled to stand back up. All of them are looking at me very warily now and none of them are growling. I guess I¡¯ll move to the next step. I¡¯ll take advantage of my Empath class to enhance my psi to communicate and get them to follow some simple commands. Communication won¡¯t be perfect but they should understand, hopefully. Bolstering the connection I already had on each of them with a second layer I sent some feelings and thoughts. I started with the most obvious and easiest to understand. [Sit]. Most of the wolves obeyed but still a pretty good portion didn¡¯t so they returned to punishment time. After another few minutes of punishment I tried again. [Sit]. This time they all obeyed. [Good dogs]. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> Let¡¯s move onto a bit more complicated commands. [Lay down]. Oh, this time they all obeyed right away. I¡¯ll up the difficulty even more. [Roll over] I sent the thought along with performing a hand gesture. Some of them managed it but from the connection I could tell most of them were confused by the command. [Roll over] I repeated the command a few times and continued the hand gesture. It took another few minutes before they all had satisfactorily accomplished this command. Now I took some time alternating between the three to make sure they all understood. There were a couple wolves that got a bit antsy during this time but another dose of punishment and all the wolves were perfectly obeying. I decided I¡¯d end the training session here with another easy command. [Come] I beckoned them. They all immediately rushed up close to me. [Sit]. And now I had 127 wolves that were all basically two thirds my size, except for the former pack leader who was taller than me, sitting all around. Some game windows popped up for me at this moment.
*Class Unlocked: Beastmaster*
-For taming a number of beasts you have acquired the Class of Beastmaster -This Class allows you to communicate with tamed beasts and increases their intelligence to understand more complicated commands. You now have control over your tamed beasts¡¯ growth. All tamed beasts have a 5% boost applied to all their stats.
*Beastmaster Has Leveled Up x 27*
-For taming a large pack of 127 Mutated Wolves, Beastmaster has increased in level to level 28 -Penalty: Experience Gained -70% for Class not being equipped -Stat Boost has increased from 5% to a 10%
*Stats Gained*
-Resilience +5 -Willpower + 15 -Grit + 5
That was surprising. Beastmaster probably wouldn¡¯t have been my first choice for a new class, but I can roll with this. I decided to check my status.
Name: Seri
Race: Experiment S341(Unique) Displayed Title: Sniper Princess ?
Class: Psion L100 ? Subclass: Empath L100 ?
Vitality: 2040/2040 Psi Energy: 2710/8355
Physique: 562 Endurance: 158 Willpower: 764
Expertise: 691 Resilience: 189 Grit: 351
I was feeling ecstatic with this result. It was only a small change, but finally after over a decade in game, my stats had increased! Looking back towards the town I see a ton of people looking from the walls and from the destroyed gate opening. Ahh, I guess it¡¯s time to leave. Sending out a quick command to the wolves [Follow] I started running back in the general direction of the forest. A cacophony of mental voices answered my commanded [Yes Leader] and all the wolves were now running behind me. Interesting, I guess that¡¯s a result from the Beastmaster Class taming bonus. I¡¯ll have to play around with that later. I kept to a pace that shouldn¡¯t be too hard for the wolves but we still managed to reach the forest in about three and a half hours. Another thirty minutes and we were at Lullaby. I saw the maintenance droids were still at work but there wasn¡¯t much visible progress yet. I gave the wolves a command to go hunt and get food for themselves and told them I¡¯d see them in a few days. I was pretty anxious to log out and get some real sleep. I climbed up to the top of the ship and entered using the lift. Upon entering the ship, Lynn appeared in her usual fashion, ¡°Mistress! What happened with all those wolves? Why were they all following you?¡± With a wide smile I answered her, ¡°I managed to acquire a new class and tamed them all!¡± Lynn clapped her hands together. ¡°That¡¯s fantastic Mistress. Congratulations!¡± I stretched my arms above my head and yawned. ¡°Anyway Lynn, I¡¯m going to go take a long rest.¡± Lynn bowed, ¡°Understood Mistress, I¡¯ll keep everything going while you sleep. Are the wolves going to be a problem?¡± I shook my head. ¡°No, I ordered them to fend for themselves for a few days, they might sleep near the ship or something, but just ignore them. With all that said, I¡¯m going to bed.¡± Lynn merely waved me off with a smile before vanishing. I trudged my way through the ship to my bedroom. After reaching my bedroom I hurriedly undressed and got in the shower. I wasn¡¯t going to get into my own bed dirty after all. After showering, I put on some pajamas and got into bed. The lights dimmed and I closed my eyes and said ¡°Log out.¡± I expected to feel the familiar sensation of my consciousness leaving my body but it didn¡¯t happen. I decided to try again. ¡°Log out.¡± Again nothing happened. I sat back up in bed and tried to open the game menu. It didn¡¯t appear. The only menu that would appear was my status screen. I tried to access my friends list, the company menu, anything, but nothing would come up. Something was wrong. I was starting to get scared and panicked. I said aloud the command for a support ticket. ¡°Emergency Support, I request assistance immediately.¡± I waited a few minutes but no one got in touch with me. That had never happened before. The game devs had always prided themselves on their very fast support staff. It was one of the few pluses of playing an older niche game rather than an overpopulated popular one. What¡¯s going on!? Why wasn¡¯t anything working!? My mind was racing to come up with some kind of plausible answer. I thought of all the weird things that had happened since I landed on this planet. Getting ill and vomiting, actually having to use the toilet, and dreaming. None of that had been there in the game, or should have even been possible in the case of having dreams. It was almost like I was in a real world now. No no no! That can¡¯t be possible! There¡¯s no way that could happen! This is just a nightmare. Right!? I¡¯ll wake up and be in my bed at home and the update won¡¯t have come yet. I grabbed one of my pillows and pulled it into my embrace and curled up in a tight ball. Chapter 7 Author¡¯s Note: So I was planning to just update this tomorrow since I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d get a chance to post it today. Anyway a warning, but this chapter has lots of feelings and emotions and I¡¯m sure that some people won¡¯t like how everything was handled. Please enjoy the chapter. On a brief note, but no one commented to give me opinions about the tables I put in last chapter so I was a bit sad.
Chapter 7 I was laying lifelessly on the floor of my room as I listened to the incessant knocks at my door. ¡°Mistress, please come out! It''s almost been three days and you haven''t eaten anything. Please!¡± I could hear Lynn entreating me, but I didn''t bother responding. What was the point? Beer cans plus wine and whiskey bottles were strewn all around me and the shredded carpeted floor of my room. I had quite quickly turned to alcohol to try to distract myself from my problems, but I discovered that it seems like I can''t even drink myself to unconsciousness. I''m fucking immune to getting inebriated in this body. Of course it didn''t stop me getting sick, even violently so, but I hadn''t cared in the least about that. All I cared about was the fact that my life as I knew it was over. I so desperately wanted to cling to the belief this was still the game, but the time I''ve spent here has told me that I''m definitely not in the game anymore. Things that I hadn''t really paid attention to suddenly became obvious after I started thinking of this as a real world. The sensations were just too perfect. Of course, the game had been quite realistic in that area but now that I was actually examining every single thing I couldn''t help but notice the many small differences. The metal of the ship felt colder and my blankets felt softer. Even the carpet of my floor had felt wrong when I compared it with my memories of how it should be. It was all just too vivid. The only thing that makes the world feel unreal is the fact that the status screen and Classes still work. I¡¯m not sure why but this world appears to have a game like system and it seems like my own system works with it for some reason. The game system alone couldn¡¯t overcome all the other sensations I was experiencing, though that was telling me this world was real. The worst thing to happen were the dreams. That first night after failing to get drunk, I passed out on the floor and had dreams about a variety of topics. Dreams about piloting my mech for the first time or times when I had fought giant beasts with it. Other dreams were about when I started out as a mercenary and how I found it difficult to talk to all the new people I met. Another had been when I finally got hired into a large mercenary company and how I had been so ecstatic that Lynn and I had thrown a small party. After waking up and recollecting them, I realized that these dreams were Seri¡¯s, this body¡¯s, memories. None of them quite connected with how I recalled the events playing out when I played the game, and it was another trigger for my growing terror. The fear, that was fueled by the thought that I was being replaced by somebody else, caused a psionic meltdown. My psi had lashed out and started to destroy the furniture and the various nicknacks I had scattered around my room. Lynn in her android body had rushed into the room and tried to calm me down but her efforts were for naught. By the end of my meltdown that had lasted about half an hour, my room was in tatters. Somehow Lynn had avoided all the blasts of psi, or possibly I had just enough self control that I had diverted blasts from hitting her, but regardless in the aftermath Lynn had started asking questions about what was wrong. My emotions that were in turmoil saw her as simply yet another sign of how my life was over and I responded as if on autopilot. I had glared at her and then told her to not to come into my room anymore. The expression on her face when I gave that order was heartbreaking and I almost found myself countermanding it immediately. Then the anger and fear about my situation returned in full and I repeated the order and she was forced to leave. In the days since, Lynn had constantly called for me from outside my room. The deep worry in her voice was clear, but because of my orders she could no longer even open my door. She tried a number of ways to get me to come out or to at least respond to her, but I never did. At one point she even tried sending the maintenance droids in her place but a new order stopped her. I knew she would be monitoring what I was doing in here, but as long as she couldn¡¯t come in, she could only watch as I continued to drink what was left of the alcohol I had brought in. The only thing I did, outside of drinking, was to desperately struggle to not fall asleep. I didn¡¯t want any more of those memories that weren¡¯t my own! I was so afraid that if I slept I really would find myself replaced with a different person. I kept the memories of who I really was at the forefront of my mind. I especially held on dearly to my memories of Carol, though thinking of her just served to make me more depressed and despondent, since I was sure I¡¯d never see her again. I don¡¯t know what it was that happened to me, but I just had to believe that she was alright. It was possible that what had happened to me had also happened to others, and I prayed that she had been spared a similar fate. At this point it was growing difficult to stay awake. I haven¡¯t slept since that night, which means I¡¯ve been awake for probably seventy plus hours by now. With my room in its current state, I¡¯ve destroyed just about anything I could use to distract myself, too. I¡¯ve also ran out of alcohol. I sat up and wrapped my hands around my knees and started rocking back and forth. What should I do? I was so exhausted and hungry and I knew I would crack at some point and either sleep or have to go out of the room to get food. Either way I¡¯d lose. Once I open the door Lynn would make me talk to her and I no longer have the energy to fight her on it. It¡¯s the main reason I don¡¯t respond to her, I know once I do, I¡¯d probably let it all out. I don¡¯t have any hope that I¡¯ll be rescued or saved from this. Even if I was rescued, where would I even end up? No longer being me and living as someone else without my friends or family. I don¡¯t want this fate but what options do I even have!? It was as if a light bulb lit up in my brain. Of course it¡¯s obvious! I mean I¡¯ve already been thinking my life was over, so the obvious solution is to just kill myself. If it¡¯s a real world, even if it has a game like system, death should still be the end. How should I accomplish it though. I tried to use my psi to break my neck but I don¡¯t have the mental faculty to even feel my psi at the moment. I¡¯m simply too drained from the last few days. Looking around there¡¯s no way to hang myself, I don¡¯t have any rope anyway. I didn¡¯t see my bag that had my guns in it so Lynn must have managed to remove it from the room before I sent her out. I picked up one of the empty whiskey bottles and turned it over in my hand. I swung it at the side of my head and felt the impact but nothing more than that. Outside the room I heard Lynn, ¡°Mistress!?¡± Looking at the bottle in my hand it was broken. I felt around my head but there wasn¡¯t any bleeding. I guess this is where being a max level comes into play as a downside. Plus I felt so weak from exhaustion and hunger that that was no where near my full strength. I tried to cut myself with the bottle fragments but no luck that way either. I barely pierced my skin, not deep enough to make me bleed to death. <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> Fuck, I can¡¯t even kill myself! What did I do to deserve all this!? There¡¯s only one other option. I stood up unsteadily and walked to the bathroom. My bathtub was large and much bigger than my current small body so I¡¯ll use that to drown myself. I¡¯ve read in the past that it¡¯s difficult to drown as a suicide method without having a very deep body of water to use but this will have to do. I started filling up the tub and stood there watching as it did so. I was still wearing my pajamas that I had put on a few days ago and didn¡¯t see any point in taking them off. Once the tub was filled, I left the faucet running and stepped in and then lowered myself into the water. I wasn¡¯t sure how to go about doing this, but I figured it involves breathing in water and then keeping myself from rising up to take a real breath. I turned over so I was facing the bottom of the tub and just let my breath run out. It took a few minutes but as I finally ran out of air my body tried to force taking a breath, but all it got was water and I experienced a spasm as my body tried to jerk out of the water, but I used what small fragments of willpower I had to keep my head under the water. I felt like I was about to lose consciousness which I thought was a good sign. Once I lost consciousness there would be no way I could survive. Stolen story; please report. It was this moment when I felt two cold metal arms pull me out of the tub. I started sputtering and wheezing as my body found itself able to breath again. I tried to struggle and break out of the arms holding me but they were solid and I didn¡¯t have the necessary strength. There¡¯s only one entity that could do this but she shouldn¡¯t be able too. I gave her an order! Lynn pulled off my soggy pajamas and dried my body as I hung limply in her grasp. There was no longer any fight in me. I was carried back to my bedroom and Lynn sat down with me still in her arms. The look on her face as she looked down at me was a mixture of sadness, anger, and worry. ¡°Mistress, why? Why did you try to do that?¡± She pulled me tighter into her arms as she embraced me. I couldn¡¯t stop myself from responding. ¡°My life is over. Nothing matters anymore. Just let me die.¡± Lynn gave me a small shake. ¡°Stop that Mistress! I won¡¯t allow you to kill yourself!¡± I felt tears start to run down my cheeks. I hadn¡¯t cried at all until now, but it felt like the floodgates had been opened. ¡°Why can¡¯t you just let me die, Lynn! I don¡¯t want to live a life that¡¯s not my own! I don¡¯t want to lose who I am!¡± Lynn¡¯s face lost a bit of the anger and got replaced by confusion. ¡°Mistress, what are you talking about?¡± With that question as a signal, I unloaded everything on to her. Everything about my life as Aaron, including my family and Carol. The fact that who I currently was, was just a game character I had made for a virtual reality game. Everything odd that I had experienced since the crash landing on this world. By the time I was done, Lynn was totally silent as she continued to contemplate what she had just heard. I had no idea how she would take it and I found myself afraid that she might abandon me too. I¡¯d be truly alone then. As if she could sense my thoughts she once again pulled me into a tight embrace. ¡°Mistress, I find your story hard to believe but at the same time all those details were quite compelling. You¡¯ve never come up with stories like that before, even in your deepest depressed moments, so I feel inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.¡± I couldn¡¯t believe my ears. ¡°You, you really believe me Lynn?¡± ¡°Mistress. I can¡¯t fully believe you. I¡¯m sorry, even for me this is a bit of a tall tale and seems more like a delusion. Even if I don¡¯t fully believe you, that doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m not going to do everything I can to aid you. After all, we¡¯ve been together for almost five decades.¡± Lynn smiled at me. ¡°Five decades? But I bought Lullaby three decades ago in game¡­¡± ¡°Well of course, I became Lullaby¡¯s AI when you bought the ship, but before that I was your companion AI since during your rehabilitation. That¡¯s where my old directives come from. I was to be your friend and companion and to take care of you. So when you were about to do permanent harm to yourself, I was able to disobey your orders and intervene.¡± Lynn gave me a hard look, ¡°Is this something that conflicts with your own memories?¡± ¡°Yeah, in my memories you¡¯ve always been Lullaby¡¯s AI and so we haven¡¯t known each other as long. I¡¯m sorry, I have no memories of anything else.¡± I curled up tighter against Lynn, ¡°I¡¯m so afraid that I¡¯m going to stop being me. That I¡¯m going to become Seri and forget all about Aaron. I¡¯ve already got some of Seri¡¯s memories, and they¡¯re so different.¡± ¡°I see.¡± Lynn was silent again and looked like she was thinking. ¡°Mistress, you said you obtained memories every time you slept, correct?¡± I nodded. ¡°Were your memories ever actually replaced with new ones or do you just have two conflicting sets of memories now?¡± I thought hard, going through my memories trying to find one that overlapped with an event I knew from in game. Eventually I found one. It was a memory from a few nights ago, when I joined the mercenary company. The two memories were quite similar, I even acted identically in both of them. Except in my game version of the memory after getting in, I sent a message to Carson to share the news and then logged out back at the inn I had been renting a place at. I didn¡¯t have Lullaby yet at that time so there was no Lynn to have a party with. I could clearly remember these two very different memories. ¡°Lynn, I have both sets of memories. They feel clearly separate, but they both are there. Does this mean, I¡¯ll end up with both Aaron¡¯s memories and Seri¡¯s? Please tell me it does.¡± I pleaded. Lynn had a sad smile on her face. ¡°I can¡¯t promise that. This isn¡¯t something I know how to solve, Mistress. Since so far it looks like the memories are just doubling up, we can hope that continues.¡± I sighed in relief but then felt a different stab of uncertainty. ¡°But Lynn, what do I do now? I¡¯m not in a game anymore, we¡¯re stuck on some random world and we have no way of knowing if my game universe turned real or if some other kind of weird scenario happened.¡± ¡°Mistress, what do you want to do?¡± Lynn asked quietly. I looked into her eyes. ¡°I want to see my family. I want to see Carol. I don¡¯t want to believe that I¡¯m forever cut off from them, Lynn.¡± I broke the eye contact and hung my head down before continuing. ¡°It¡¯s hopeless though. How could I ever see them again if I¡¯m stuck in some kind of weird parallel universe?¡± ¡°Mistress, what if you¡¯re not stuck in a weird parallel universe? What if you¡¯re in the same universe as your world. why don¡¯t we make that our destination, the planet Earth? We¡¯ll need one anyway after we leave this world.¡± Hope flared up in my heart. Maybe it would be possible to return to Earth. Maybe I could meet my parents and Carol again. Maybe I wouldn¡¯t be able to and I¡¯d just find a different world there at my destination. The hope died. ¡°Lynn, do you really think it¡¯s possible?¡± <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> Lynn gave me a cheerful smile, and as good as a shrug as she could considering the tight embrace she still held me in. ¡°Who knows Mistress? Your story is unbelievable, but what if it is true? If it¡¯s true then it means crazy and impossible things are possible! What¡¯s stopping us from visiting your world and meeting your family other than insisting on the worst possibilities. Maybe you can even introduce me to them. I¡¯m especially interested in meeting that girl Carol.¡± She gave me a pointed look at that part then smiled a very different sort of smile. ¡°Mistress has always been interested in girls, but who would have guessed it was because Mistress was actually a boy!¡± She teased and giggled. I couldn¡¯t help but join her in laughing. The laughter banished some of the dark clouds from my mind. I could just imagine how a future conversation between Lynn and Carol might go! I suddenly felt dizzy, like my tiredness was hitting me all at once. Lynn took note of it right away and she stood up with me still in her arms. ¡°Mistress, let¡¯s go to the room next door. After you destroyed your room, including your bed, I made a cot and had it placed in the next room. I¡¯ll let you get some much needed sleep there, and while you do, I and the maintenance droids will fix what we can of your room. Then when you wake up, I¡¯ll fix you a gigantic breakfast. How does that sound?¡± I nodded gratefully. ¡°It sounds good.¡± Lynn walked to the next room, it had been a small storage room but that didn¡¯t matter much at the current time. Lynn slipped a night gown over me and laid me down on the cot carefully and then pulled the blanket up over me. ¡°Mistress. Please rest well. If you need me just call and I¡¯ll be here.¡± As I watched her leave though, I felt a fresh surge of panic. I didn¡¯t want to be alone! ¡°Lynn! Please don¡¯t go!¡± Lynn rushed back to me and kneeled down at the side of the cot. She held my hand while her other hand stroked my hair. Her hands were cold and metal but I didn¡¯t mind. ¡°Mistress. I promise you that no matter what happens, I will always, always be here for you. I¡¯ll absolutely never abandon you. I¡¯ll stay here for you tonight alright?¡± I nodded and clasped Lynn¡¯s hand tightly with both of mine and finally after three days, fell asleep. Chapter 8 Author¡¯s Note: Chapters have been taking longer and longer to write and my backlog has shrunk from 7 chapters to only 3! So sadly I¡¯ll be moving to 3 days at minimum between releases. I want to try to keep to at least two releases a week though. On a different note, I added an extra line of brief description about the forest in chapter 2. Basically the forest looks like the redwood forests in northern California. Basically really tall and wide trees. This is kind of just a small detail but it was how I was imagining the forest so I figured it would be a good detail to add to give people a better idea of the place Seri crashed into. Anyway this has been an overly long note so with all that said, please enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 8 When I woke, I found I was still holding Lynn¡¯s hand. I tried to sit up, but I felt so weak and dizzy. Lynn pushed me easily back into the cot. ¡°Mistress, you¡¯re suffering from how badly you treated your poor body the last few days.¡± I looked up at Lynn¡¯s face and she smiled gently toward me. ¡°You¡¯ve been asleep for nearly half a day. Would you like me to carry you to the canteen for breakfast, or will you be fine here alone for a small while?¡± I shook my head and gave her a weak smile. ¡°I¡¯m feeling better, well mentally at least, so I¡¯m fine waiting here.¡± Lynn gave me a searching look before slowly nodding. ¡°If you¡¯re sure you¡¯ll be alright then I¡¯ll go make some food for you, and then I¡¯ll have some medicine for you to take. We need to get you back in tip top shape.¡± Lynn looked down at her hand that was still in my grasp. ¡°You¡¯ll need to let me go first before I can do that though.¡± I embarrassedly let go of her hand and she laughed. Lynn stood up from her kneeling position and walked to the door. Before she left the room she turned back to glance at me for a moment before going through the door and out into the ship¡¯s hallways. As I lay on the cot, I ruminated on the memories that I had experienced while I slept. I¡¯m not sure if it was because of the conversation Lynn and I had or if it was because of my close proximity to her while I slept, but my dreams were filled with her. The very first dream was about our meeting. Near the start of my time in rehabilitation, the agency taking care of me had introduced her to me as a playmate that I could interact with. Of course, back then I had been terrified of people, not surprising really given how I ended up in rehabilitation, so they had brought Lynn to me in a small android body around my own size. I guess they thought that way she would seem like less of a threat, but even then it still took weeks for me to open up to her even a little. She was constantly by my side and eventually with her help I started being able to communicate with the adult helpers, even though I still found myself terrified of them. I couldn¡¯t help it, their size reminded me of bad things. Getting that far into my recollection, I shuddered for a moment. Thankfully, I hadn¡¯t had any dreams yet about my past as an experiment. I was definitely not looking forward to remembering those events if this self of mine had gone through anywhere near the horrible tale I had written for her game history. The fear and terror that came through in the rehab memories were bad enough. Anyway, the dreams had then moved into time spent where Lynn would start taking me out. I had been forced to wear a special headband that would prevent me from using my psi, since if I had a panic attack while outside I was a risk to myself and others. Lynn took me to all kinds of places, including a clothing shop which was the first time I became her dress up doll. The years passed by quickly after that and I was finally given the go ahead that I now could leave the agency and try to live my own life. I had been crushed when Lynn had given me that news since I had thought that meant we¡¯d now be separate but Lynn had simply hugged me and told me that I wouldn¡¯t get rid of her that easily. That she and I would be leaving together, and she would be my AI companion because we were best friends forever. Of course, this meant that she would be limited to a small hologram body until I could afford to buy her an android body. I remember promising her that that would be the first thing I would buy and she had rebuked me and told me that there were much more important things to buy first and that she could wait as long as necessary. The dreams had then skipped around a bit but ended a few years later with me finally having saved enough to get her a body. It was a lot to take in. It seems like the relationship between Lynn and I was very deep in her and this body¡¯s memories. I kind of feel terrible knowing I¡¯m not really the same person that she pledged to be friends with. The one thing that feels a bit off with these memories is that Lynn was calling me Seri in them. I¡¯m not sure when she switched to calling me Mistress, at least as far as this body¡¯s history was concerned. In the game she had always called me Mistress, so maybe the switch came after she became Lullaby¡¯s AI rather than simply my companion? Well, I guess I could ask her about it later. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> As if she knew that I had completed my recollections, Lynn came in with a small tray carrying my food. ¡°I¡¯m back, Mistress. I¡¯m happy to see you stayed in bed properly.¡± I tried to glare at her but I know I failed miserably, ¡°Well I couldn¡¯t have gotten up even if I tried. So instead I went over what I saw in my dreams.¡± Lynn got an interested gleam in her eyes, ¡°What were they about?¡± She sat the tray down on a small table and then propped me up to a sitting position with some pillows. ¡°Ahh, well.¡± I was a little embarrassed to talk specifics. The memories forced me to look at Lynn in a new way I had never considered. Lynn had now become more like a close sister or possibly big sister figure in my mind. It was a huge change from the close but still a subordinate relationship I had had with her in the game. Lynn was still looking at me with a curious expression, so I decided to just bite the bullet and tell her. ¡°Well they were about us. You know our first meeting, all the times we spent together until I was released from rehab, and a couple years afterwards.¡± Lynn¡¯s smile turned radiant. ¡°I see, I see. So Mistress now remembers all those important memories. I¡¯m glad.¡± She brought the table with the food on it closer to the bed. It looked like I¡¯d be having some soup. I should have expected that. Now that I think about it, I haven¡¯t had a non soup type meal since coming to this damn world. ¡°Actually, Lynn, I was wondering. In these memories, you were calling me Seri. When did you start calling me Mistress instead?¡± Lynn started laughing, ¡°So the memories didn¡¯t get that far then? It was when you bought Lullaby and I became the ship AI. I joked that that meant you now owned me, so I should call you Mistress instead. It kind of just stuck after that.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Would Mistress prefer I go back to calling her by her name?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s okay. I¡¯m used to being called Mistress.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure if I wanted her calling me Seri. She was still smiling, ¡°Understood Mistress.¡± She picked up the bowl and spoon. ¡°Mistress, it¡¯s time to get some nutrients back into your body. Of course I shall be feeding you, so open wide.¡± I allowed her to baby and feed me. Not like I could have stopped her and to be honest it felt comfortable to be in like this with Lynn. After finishing off the soup, she gave me some liquid vitamin supplements. Lynn placed the tray back aside. ¡°Now Mistress, yesterday you told me a great many things and they were quite detailed but you were remarkably less detailed about what actually happened at the town. Can you fill me in on everything that happened there?¡± So I started my story from when I left Lullaby. I mentioned the wolf encounter as they followed me, and leaving them behind so I could get to the town. I described the town, starting with the Status Orb and then moving on to the events at the Merchant¡¯s Guild. Lynn was particularly interested in obtaining one of those Status Orbs to see how it worked. After the Merchant¡¯s Guild, I got to the part where I killed those two thugs and I had to stop when I realized what I had done. Lynn picked up on my sudden silence, ¡°Mistress, what¡¯s wrong?¡± I shuddered. ¡°I killed two people. I had thought this world was just a game but now¡­¡± Lynn hugged me. ¡°It¡¯s okay Mistress. You merely protected yourself. There¡¯s no problem with that. It doesn¡¯t sound like the men you killed were any real loss either, just human garbage.¡± Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. I let Lynn comfort me for a few minutes before I continued the tale. She was right and I knew I¡¯d likely kill more people in the future. That was one thing that I knew in the end, I wouldn¡¯t balk at. Seri had been a mercenary. She had killed many, many people in her life and not all of them had been bad people. The more memories of hers I get, the easier it will probably be for me. I wonder if that is a good or bad thing? I talked about the events at the inn, Lynn was amused by my small prank, and the information about Classes the inn lady had provided. I went over the rumors and information I picked up in my hours walking around the town. Next was the events at the Merchant¡¯s Guild and the directions I got for going to the empire where Malcolm mentioned I might find a lead on the materials I¡¯m after. Finally, I concluded the story with the wolf attack and my subsequent taming of the whole pack which awarded me the Beastmaster Class. Lynn¡¯s expression was one of deep thinking before she asked, ¡°He didn¡¯t recognize any of the materials except for the etherenite?¡± I nodded, ¡°Right. He said he couldn¡¯t tell what the titanil and chromanite were but he was sure he had seen etherenite at some point in the past. Etherenite is the single, largest component of the engines and warp drive, so at least that is good news.¡± Lynn had a concerned look, ¡°While that is true Mistress, the titanil and chromanite are still vital components. We won¡¯t be able to rebuild the warp drive at least without those.¡± I sighed, ¡°I know! At least if we get working engines, it will let us move the ship. Then we¡¯ll be able to travel around the world easier. Just because the materials aren¡¯t known here doesn¡¯t mean they aren¡¯t available on the other side of the planet.¡± ¡°So Mistress¡¯ next destination will be the eastern empire?¡± Lynn queried. ¡°Yes, it seems like the only choice. He mentioned there were different races living there and with that, more available products and information. I might get lucky and even find some actual etherenite there.¡± I replied. ¡°I want you to rest and recover for another day first, Mistress. Current local time is sometime in the evening, an hour until sunset. After tomorrow you should be back to your normal condition, or close enough that it will be safe to depart.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. I know, quite well, how weak I am at the moment.¡± I agreed and decided to change topics. ¡°Hey Lynn, do you think Wizards being mentioned means magic might be real?¡± Lynn frowned, ¡°I highly doubt it Mistress. It¡¯s likely just the name these primitives came up with for using psi. Real magic like might be seen in stories is an impossibility.¡± I started laughing, ¡°You know Lynn, my whole situation is an impossibility that would only appear in stories. I¡¯m a bit more open to the possibility that magic might really exist here.¡± I was overtaken by the urge to yawn. In response to my yawn, Lynn stood back up. ¡°In light of your situation, I suppose the possibility isn¡¯t zero, but I still believe it unlikely. For now, please get some more rest Mistress. Your bedroom should be repaired tomorrow and I¡¯ll be able to move you back in there.¡± She fixed my pillows so I could lay comfortably. I yawned again. ¡°Good night, Lynn.¡± After that I was dead to the world. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The following day passed by relatively peacefully. With my strength recovering, I could get up and move around on my own. A fact which I was very grateful for since there was certain business I needed to take care of and I absolutely didn¡¯t want Lynn to have to help me with that. I also finally remembered to ask Lynn about how long the days were on this world. She told me that they were 26 hours in length, so they were close in length to the days I was used to. Since we¡¯d only been on the world seven days, we still had no idea how long a year was. I could tell Lynn was up to something though. She was working on some project in the synthesizer room. It seemed like it was delicate work considering I could hear her grumbling from my room about how long it was taking. I asked about it and she told me that she was just getting things ready for when I could leave the next day. I was fearing the possibility of an even more over the top outfit. Eventually, the day ended and the next came. It was time to once again venture forth from Lullaby. I got cleaned up, dressed and then ate an especially hearty breakfast, which had no similarities to soup whatsoever, since Lynn had released me from her nursing. After that, it was with dread that I went to go find Lynn and whatever surprise she had prepared. I finally found her at the lift to exit the ship and I was shocked when I saw her. She had made an outfit for her android body and was carrying my pack with her. She waved and smiled when she saw me. ¡°Mistress! It looks like we¡¯re both ready to go now that you¡¯re here.¡± ¡°Lynn, what do you think you¡¯re doing?¡± I sighed. It was obvious but I wanted her to explain herself. She just continued to smile at me and spoke in an exaggerated way, ¡°Of course I¡¯m coming with you! Mistress is guaranteed to require my assistance!¡± Lynn then changed to a more serious expression. ¡°Also, I want to be there for Mistress if something happens. I don¡¯t want you to be alone.¡± <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> I was touched and grateful for her concern, but I replied in a subdued tone ¡°Lynn, you know you can¡¯t come with me, no matter how much either of us might want you too. Lullaby can¡¯t function without its AI in residence. We¡¯d have to completely power down the ship which would be too much of a risk.¡± I stepped up to her and hugged her. ¡°I¡¯m happy though, thanks Lynn. Knowing you¡¯re here for me is good enough.¡± Lynn embraced me back and we stayed like that for a minute before separating. She handed me my pack and then handed me a small container. She spoke in a sad tone, ¡°I knew Mistress would say that. That¡¯s why I got the synthesizer to produce these. I might not be able to physically be there with Mistress, but with these I can still keep in contact and help you.¡± Opening the container I found three small items. She pointed at one of the items. ¡°This here is a communicator earpiece that will sit in your ear. It won¡¯t block hearing from the ear, but with it I¡¯ll be able to talk directly to Mistress without any chance of anyone overhearing. I¡¯ll also be able to hear what Mistress hears since it will sync up with the auto translator. Sadly, Mistress won¡¯t be able to talk to me as easily since you¡¯ll still have to talk aloud.¡± She directed my focus to the other item. ¡°These are a pair of contacts. I know Mistress is bad with items like this, but with it I¡¯ll be able to see what Mistress sees. I¡¯ll also be able to project things to Mistress¡¯ sight. Since Mistress complained a bit about not knowing the language, if you can get enough writing samples I might be able to decipher it, then I can override text you see with something you can read. Depending on the complexity of the language, it might take a while to fully decipher though.¡± I nodded as I understood the description of the items. I picked up the transparent earpiece and settled it in my ear. There was a moment of discomfort as the ear canal was blocked but it disappeared immediately after. I looked at the other items with much more trepidation. I really don¡¯t like the idea of things in my eyes, but at the same time giving Lynn the capability to help me with the language is a big enough bonus, so I picked up the contacts carefully and placed them in my eyes one after the other. Like with the earpiece, there was a moment of discomfort and blurry vision before the contact adjusted and my sight was back to normal. Lynn gave me another hug. ¡°I packed a much more comprehensive pack this time. I added in a small clothes cleaner and a cooking tool. A lot of pre prepared meals as well that just need to be unsealed and warmed up. Also a water purifier and a portable scanner to test things you find to see if they are edible. Of course, this means there¡¯s very little spare space in the bag, which might be a problem. Sorry.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine, Lynn. Once I get to the empire, I¡¯ll be able to replenish my food supplies. Maybe I¡¯ll even hunt some on the way.¡± I shrugged. ¡°I¡¯ll try to limit this adventure to only a few months at most before returning to the ship. By then the ship will be undug and I¡¯ll be able to use the hover car for my travels.¡± Lynn stepped back leaving the way clear so I could walk to the lift. ¡°Remember to stay safe Mistress. Even if I¡¯ll be watching and listening, please don¡¯t take unnecessary risks if you don¡¯t have to.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry so much, Lynn. I promise to be careful. Alright?¡± She simply nods. I hit the button on the console and let the lift raise me out of the ship. Chapter 9 Author¡¯s Note: I just wanted to say, I am immensely grateful for everyone that has followed, favorited, commented, or reviewed this story. I never expected anywhere near this much of a positive response. I hope everyone continues to enjoy the story.
Chapter 9 Reaching the top of the ship, I observed that there had been some definite progress in unearthing the ship in the last five days. I also noticed that it seems like most of the wolves had dug small burrows for themselves all over the clearing the crash landing had created. When I saw that sight, I wanted to hit myself. Why didn¡¯t I think of having the wolves help dig the ship out? With the number of wolves I tamed, wouldn¡¯t they be able to dig out the ship pretty fast? At least they¡¯d be much better suited to digging than my poor maintenance droids. It didn¡¯t look like all the wolves were currently here though, since a quick count only turned up about sixty of them. The other half are probably out hunting or doing something. Well, the ones that are here can convey the orders to the others when they get back. As I hopped down from the ship, all the wolves that were around quickly got up, ran toward me and sat in rows ahead of me. The former pack leader was front and center, as usual. Honestly, former pack leader is a bit of a mouthful. I wonder if I can name them. I don¡¯t want to name only one though. Let¡¯s see, I guess I¡¯ll name the three highest levels and have them work as leaders for the rest. Is there a quick way to check their levels other than scanning them all again though? They are my tamed beasts, so maybe there is something on my status screen. After checking it, there was now a new tab that had a list of tamed beasts. I started skimming it looking for the three highest levels. After identifying them on the list, I had to figure out which ones of the group in front of me were these three. Well, the former pack leader at least was obvious. After some playing around with the list and then double checking by using my terminal, I found that all the highest level wolves were the ones closest to me. I guess the formation they had adopted wasn¡¯t just a coincidence. I beckoned the three center wolves to come closer. ¡°I¡¯m going to give the three of you names.¡± Now to actually come up with names for them. Let¡¯s start with the former pack leader. Fenrir? Nah, that¡¯s a bit too generic. Oh, I have a good idea. I pointed at the former pack leader. ¡°I think I¡¯ll call you Sirius.¡± Naming it after the ¡®wolf star¡¯ probably wasn¡¯t much better than Fenrir, though, for originality¡¯s sake. Thankfully with the Beastmaster class, I didn¡¯t have to rely on my psi ability to communicate with them anymore. They seem to understand my spoken words just fine now. Now, I just need a name for the other two. I could call them Geri and Freki after the two wolves that accompanied Odin. That seems a bit too grandiose though and not really appropriate for them. I spent some minutes thinking but wasn¡¯t really coming up with any more ideas. ¡°This sucks. I can¡¯t think of any other good options.¡± Lynn chimed in. ¡°Mistress, you named the large wolf after the star Sirius correct? So why not name the other two after other stars in Canis Major? Like Adhara or Murzim?¡± That was a good suggestion! ¡°Thanks Lynn.¡± I pointed at the left one. ¡°Your name is Adhara.¡± Then shifted my hand to the one on the right. ¡°And you will be Murzim. Those will be your names from now on.¡± A pop-up appeared after I said that.
*You have named one or more of your Tamed Beasts*
-Mutated Wolf L62 has become Sirius -Mutated Wolf L40 has become Adhara -Mutated Wolf L39 has become Murzim
I dismissed the window. ¡°Alright, I have some instructions for you three and also the rest of the pack. I want you to split the pack up into three equal sized groups. Each of you will lead one of those groups. From now on, I want one group each day to spend their time split between guarding this immediate area and digging over there.¡± I directed their attention to where the maintenance droids were hard at work. ¡°I want that whole area of my ship to be unburied so it looks similar to this side here. The other two groups will be in charge of patrolling the surrounding areas and hunting food for everyone. I don¡¯t want any humans, or anyone really, coming anywhere near this place and leaving with information about my ship being here. Make it the top priority to turn people back, or if absolutely necessary kill them.¡± The wolves all barked in acknowledgement of my orders, [Yes Leader]. I watched for a few minutes as they began to carry out my orders. Some had already started digging, while others began howling. I wonder if they¡¯re calling for the ones that are out to return? I¡¯ll let them handle it. ¡°Lynn, this should speed up the excavation, hopefully. You might want to keep the maintenance droids out of their way.¡± ¡°Will do, Mistress.¡± Lynn replied. It looks like that settles everything here. I started to leave when I was stopped by a bark. I turned around and saw Sirius dragging something toward me. It took me a moment to realize it was dragging a male human corpse. [Leader, Intruder]. Another wolf was dragging over a large backpack which I assumed belonged to the corpse. The corpse was pretty savaged but it looks like the wolves had kept him mostly intact. ¡°Sirius, when did this human come here?¡± After I asked, I bent down to examine the corpse and go through the pack. The human was wearing what I would say looked like an outfit a fantasy ranger might wear. Leather armor and a long green cloak, long daggers still on his belt so the wolves took him out before he had a chance to draw them. I noticed a bow and quiver was tied to the pack so definitely some kind of ranger or scout? [Three Darks, Leader]. Sirius answered. Three darks? I guess that is how they think of nights? So three nights ago would have been during my lapse into craziness, so most likely this man came tracking me from the town. I probably shouldn¡¯t have left in a straight line from the town to the ship, now that I consider it. I opened the pack and I see some rations and other things like for making camp. One of which is a sealed letter. Of course, I don¡¯t recognize whatever kind of mark is on the seal but definitely must be from someone important in the town. The guy came too soon to be from somewhere further off. ¡°Lynn, have a maintenance droid bring the backpack into the ship. Feel free to examine the stuff in it if you want. You can examine the letter too, but you probably won¡¯t get much out of it without other writing samples to compare.¡± I turned my attention back to Sirius. ¡°Good job Sirius, and the rest of you too, for that matter.¡± I was a bit surprised to see his tail briefly wag. ¡°Make it absolutely top priority to keep humans away, there will probably be more from now on.¡± I wondered if I should change my plans. If the humans from the nearby kingdom started sending stronger forces around here to look for me, then we might have a problem. Well, they don¡¯t know exactly where I am, so that¡¯s one good thing. This scout had enough food in his pack to last for at least a week, if not more if he planned on hunting too. This means the person who sent him won¡¯t be expecting him back for probably at least a week. After that, the ball is back in that person¡¯s court. What would that person do next? Depending on the reliability of the scout sent, the most likely outcome is to assume that the scout died. So will it be sending more agents or possibly if that¡¯s not an option, giving up? Maybe sending word of the situation to someone higher up the totem pole for the kingdom¡¯s hierarchy? It¡¯s also possible depending on the politics involved they might have already sent notice of me off. I¡¯m sure Malcolm most likely did, but it¡¯s possible the local lord or noble or whoever would try to get some kind of personal connection with me first, without notifying others. Taking all this information together and the size of the kingdom into consideration, we¡¯re probably looking at at least a few weeks before the next human or group of humans show up. Of course it¡¯s possible the information won¡¯t be taken seriously by the higher ups; Kiara did mention it was considered a legendary feat to tame a pack of demon wolves. They might just ignore the report if I¡¯m lucky. If I¡¯m not lucky though, I might have huge groups of humans looking for me by exploring these woods in the next month or two. Would the wolves be able to handle it? I really wish I could move Lullaby right now. ¡°Lynn, I need to add something more to your orders. First, how many solar powered, armed hover drones could we build without depleting any of the critical resources?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll calculate it.¡± A brief pause, ¡°We could construct two, I¡¯m assuming Mistress wants them heavily armed. If you¡¯d settle for weaker weapons, we could have six.¡± That was what I expected. ¡°Go with the two drone option. After getting them built, I want you to have them flying on standby over the area. Try to keep them out of sight and hidden as much as possible, but if the wolves look like they need assistance, aid them.¡± I sighed, ¡°This departure is taking longer than I thought it would.¡± Lynn laughed into my ear. ¡°That¡¯s just how things always go, Mistress. Never as perfectly as we hope.¡± ¡°I know. I most definitely know.¡± I brought my attention back to Sirius and the other wolf. ¡°Go back to your duties. I¡¯ll be back in around sixty to ninety days or darks I guess.¡± After watching them run off, I finally started making my way away from the ship and traveling due east this time. I didn¡¯t want to go anywhere near the town. Once I pass the town, I¡¯ll change my heading to south-east towards the empire border. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. It took me a bit less time than a week ago to leave the forest. After all, the eastern edge was slightly closer than where I had exited then. I had seen a few of my wolves along the way, prowling around in small groups. I guess the howls had actually been to convey my orders in their entirety. I wonder why I didn¡¯t understand the howls. Was it because they were communicating with each other rather than with me? Something else to test later I suppose. <((If you have paid money and bought this story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.This story is only hosted for free on royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual.))> During my preparations earlier, I had changed my main Class to Ranger since it was the perfect class for long distance travel. The Class was designed to be used for exploring hostile environments and provided bonuses to match that description. Heightened senses, slightly reduced need for food and water, and of course improving my psi¡¯s ability to detect any presences around me. Had I left this Class set days ago, I wouldn¡¯t have been in such a bad condition after not getting nourishment for three and a half days. My Subclass was still set as Beastmaster because I had used it for communicating with the wolves, and because none of my other Classes would have much effect on my journey anyway. After getting out of the forest, I had decided to keep my pace to around sixty kilometers per hour. That was a pace I could easily keep up for a long period of time. Even going that pace though, when I took into account sleep and eating, I¡¯d probably only be able to travel 14 hours a day at most. I was looking at probably a few day just to get to the empire border. I took a glance up at the sky. Oh well, at least the weather is beautiful and clear. Eventually just like my previous trip through the countryside, I started seeing rabbits and other small beasts. When I saw the first rabbit, I heard Lynn gasp in my ear so I stopped. ¡°What¡¯s wrong, Lynn?¡± ¡°Mistress, I just thought of a brilliant idea!¡± Lynn was speaking in a pretty confident tone so I was curious. ¡°Oh? And what is this brilliant idea?¡± I queried. ¡°Use your Beastmaster class to tame one of those fluffy rabbits. Then you¡¯ll have a cuddly pet for your journey. It¡¯s perfect.¡± I was silent for a moment before responding. ¡°You know Lynn, back when I was a young child I had a pet rabbit.¡± ¡°Mistress already knows the cuddliness of rabbits then! This was from your other life¡¯s memories?¡± Lynn asked. ¡°Yeah. I had a rabbit and I took care of it every day. I played with it in a small pen we had for it in the yard. Then one day, it got out of its pen and disappeared. I was heartbroken over my missing pet. I cried and cried and looked for it everywhere around the house. I never saw that rabbit again. When I was older I found out that my parents had found it dead in a gutter about a block away from our house.¡± There was a pretty awkward silence before Lynn finally said something. ¡°Definitely not a rabbit then. Why not try to look for something else though? I still think it would be a good idea for Mistress to consider having a pet with her.¡± I had a good idea myself of why she was pushing this suggestion. Having and taking care of a pet is good therapy for mental health and she¡¯s still obviously worried about me. Especially since she can¡¯t be physically at my side like she wants to be. ¡°Alright Lynn. If I come across a pet I find interesting, I¡¯ll try to tame it. No promises though, since I might not find anything.¡± The rest of the day passed by pretty quickly. After a few more hours, I stopped for a short break to refresh myself. I had a few containers full of water but I¡¯d probably need to hope to stumble across a water source at some point in the next week. Rehydrated, I finally changed my heading and was on my way again. I still had another six hours until nightfall when I¡¯d need to make camp and I wanted to find a good spot to set up my tent. I was being careful to avoid any villages that I knew of, but my map wasn¡¯t perfect. Right now I was travelling across ground I had full detail of, but tomorrow I¡¯d go beyond the limit of my knowledge. I hadn¡¯t bothered to hide my odd features this time because of being told the empire was open to members of the non-human races. I really hope that decision wasn¡¯t going to be a mistake later. Regardless, I didn¡¯t want random villagers along the way crying about seeing a demon or something stupid along those lines. The last thing I needed was even more interest being drawn to this general area. Lynn would occasionally point out various animals she saw to try to tempt me. She even pointed out this one group of small creatures that looked like large grey squirrels. Well not too large, maybe about twice the size of the ones I know of. Anyway, there had been a large group of about ten of them traveling together. When Lynn drew my attention to them, I stopped to have a look and the little bastards started throwing rocks at me! They had surprisingly good aim and eight of the ten rocks plinked off my shield. I was a bit annoyed, so I caught the next volley of rocks with my psi and then started slinging them back at the squirrels. I didn¡¯t throw them hard enough to kill the damn things though. After all even without my shield there¡¯s no way level 10 critters would be able to hurt me. This was just for amusement. Eventually after noticing their attacks weren¡¯t working and they were just being injured instead, they turned and bounded away. By sundown, I had traveled approximately 750 kilometers. I could have travelled further but I came across a small thicket and decided to stop there. It seemed the best place I was likely to find for a campsite since I didn¡¯t want to set up my tent out in the open plains. As it turned to night, I took some time to just observe the night sky for a while. Now that I thought about it, this was the first time I had been outside on this world when it was night. I took note of the two moons in the sky. One of them looked pretty large while the other one was smaller. None of the stars look familiar though. I really wonder where this world was located. I fixed myself some food and then set up an proximity alarm that should wake me up if anything above level 40 gets near. After that I got into my bedroll and went to sleep. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I woke the next morning with no recollection of any dreams. I¡¯m not completely sure if I dream every night or not. Some mornings, I¡¯ve woken up very sure of the dreams I¡¯ve had, while others have been like this morning. It¡¯s probably the case that only the ones that are very different from my own memories stand out enough for me to notice them. I think that¡¯s the most likely conclusion at any rate. After taking care of all my morning business and packing back up my tent and other goods, I continued along my way. Like the previous day, not too much happened. About noon, I saw glimpses of farm fields far off in the distance so I quickly changed my direction so I could pass widely around them before returning to my original route. Moving into the evening, my detection picked up a somewhat large hostile presence coming up from underground. It was decently fast, though not enough to actually hit me and I easily dodged out of the way as it tried to burst out of the ground under my feet. Now that it was out of the ground, I got a glimpse at it and it was pretty disgusting looking. It was some kind of beast called a Tunneler Worm around level 25. It was wriggling around as it¡¯s large mouth bit around in the air trying to reach me. A quick throw aided by psi with my dagger and it was dead. Around the time the sun started setting and it was time to make camp, I caught sight of snowcapped mountain peaks in the distance directly ahead of me. I couldn¡¯t make out any detail, but the little I could see it looked like they were running north and south from my position. Well, I¡¯ll definitely get a better look at them tomorrow. I wonder if those mountains are the reason Malcolm said the only safe route to take was from the capital. I¡¯ll likely have to make the decision tomorrow about whether to cross them or turn north or south and go around them. I didn¡¯t find any handy thicket this night, so I set up my tent in an especially tall patch of grass instead. I set my proximity alarm for level 25 and up rather than 40. I was pretty sure one of those worms wouldn¡¯t be able to penetrate the material used for my tent, but I didn¡¯t want to take any needless chances. <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> After eating dinner and getting into my bedroll, Lynn and I had a chat about pretty much nothing. We just exchanged words and ideas on a wide variety of subjects quite randomly. Overall, the conversation made me feel much more relaxed which I assumed was Lynn¡¯s goal. Even during the day she had started conversations at random, probably just to remind me she was there. As if I could forget. My last thought before going to sleep was that I was really, really thankful for her. Chapter 10 Author¡¯s Note: The first real action scene appears. Please enjoy the chapter and comment about how it turned out. I am hoping to be better for the next time a scene like this shows up.
Chapter 10 My sleep was happily uninterrupted, and I woke up the next morning feeling great. I had a small breakfast and then proceeded to take down my tent and pack it up. I took a glance toward the direction of the mountains. It was still a bit dark so they weren¡¯t quite visible yet, though. The weather looked a bit cloudy today too. I hope that doesn¡¯t mean anything. I have no idea what season this area would currently be in. The temperature at least has been pretty consistently around 21-24 Celsius, so I don¡¯t think it¡¯s summer here but I really have nothing to judge that by. Now I¡¯m just wasting time, letting myself get distracted by thinking about the weather. After a few minutes of stretching, I started moving. As the day got brighter, I finally caught sight of the mountain peaks again. I¡¯m not sure how far away they are but probably at least 200 kilometers, so it will be a few hours until I reach them. I also need to start being on the lookout for water today. I¡¯m about halfway through my current supply so it would be nice to top it back off. I¡¯m hoping to find a river flowing down from the mountains as I get closer. After a few hours of traveling and a few more run ins with those giant worms, I was forced to revise my 200 kilometers guess closer to 300 or more. Those mountains were pretty tall and they clearly ran far to the south way beyond what I could currently see. Thankfully as I got nearer the mountains I did find a river and I took about thirty minutes scanning it and then purifying and refilling my water containers. Now, I¡¯m set for a full week. Eventually, around midday, I reached what could be considered the foot of the mountain range. Now I had a decision to make. Do I go south around them or try to cross them? If I go by what Malcolm said and an estimate of my current location, I might not find an opening in the mountain range until maybe two more days of full travel. At least a day for sure though, I¡¯m too far north to reach that trade route Malcolm mentioned that went east from the kingdom¡¯s capital in only one day. How long would it take to cross the mountains though? I¡¯m not stupid enough to think that I¡¯d easily be able to keep my current pace crossing them. I might have to slow down a lot, but usually mountain ranges aren¡¯t as wide as they are long. The mountain range might only be 200 kilometers wide, which would mean I might be able to push through with just the time left available today. Of course it also might be much wider and I might take a few days to trudge through. Not to mention, usually much stronger beasts live in more treacherous areas like high up in mountain ranges. Decisions, decisions. I decided to confer with my trusty AI subordinate¡­ friend¡­ sister? I wasn¡¯t sure anymore how to classify her and it was getting confusing. ¡°Lynn, what do you think of my available options here? I can either go south around the mountains taking a few days or cut across the mountain range east and hope that way is faster.¡± I sighed. ¡°Honestly, it might be a wash either way since I don¡¯t have a good grasp of the local geography.¡± Lynn took a moment before replying. ¡°I¡¯d vote for just crossing the mountains Mistress. I think it will save you time in the long run. If Mistress goes south and takes that suggested route, you¡¯ll run into other people, which will limit your ability to travel at your normal speeds without causing a stir.¡± Oh, right. I had forgotten about that. That suggested route was the trade route between two nations, so of course it would be much busier than the empty country roads I had ran past. ¡°Now that you brought that point up, I think the mountains definitely sound like the better option. Plus I bet there¡¯s some fancy elaborate border crossing fortresses or something that I¡¯d have to pass through. Might be easy but sounds like a hassle.¡± Lynn giggled, ¡°And Mistress always hates inconveniences like that if she can avoid them.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right! Well, I won¡¯t be able to avoid that many inconveniences once I get into the empire though. There will be a lot of things to take care of, like finding a way to get some kind of identification is going to be one of the more important ones.¡± I let out a sigh. So many future hassles to deal with. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll get started on this mountain hiking for now and leave thinking about those issues for later.¡± As I had expected, making my way up and down the winding mountain trails drastically slowed down my speed and I was only traveling about thirty kilometers per hour now. The trails were definitely not as straightforward either and were winding around the mountains and slopes. Occasionally I¡¯d find myself in small forested valleys at the lower points while the higher points of the trails were rough and jagged paths involving lots of careful maneuvering. The other main aspect that slowed me down was that I started to run into a lot more beasts, and I mean a lot more. Some of them were even humanoid holding crude weapons which surprised me greatly. By the time I had finished off the third group of these goblins as they were called, and they did indeed look exactly like goblins from any fantasy story or game, I was fed up with the damn things. I decided keeping a low profile at the moment was worthless and switched my Subclass to Gunner and pulled out Whisperwind. My traveling speed improved immediately. Anytime beasts tried attacking from that point on, I quickly put an particle bolt through them and kept moving. By the time it started getting dark I hadn¡¯t yet found a good place to set up my tent. There¡¯s just been too many beasts popping out all over. With all the winding, sloping paths I had followed, I had only traveled about 150 kilometers, so I don¡¯t think I will be getting out of these mountains until tomorrow. With the fact that I couldn¡¯t find a spot to set up camp and the distance traveled in my mind, I was somewhat tempted to push on and travel at night until I got to the other side of the range but I dismissed the idea. I might have excellent night vision, but traveling at dark in unknown mountains is still too much of a dumb risk. I¡¯m currently at a higher elevation, I estimate maybe one to one and a half kilometers, and it¡¯s going to be much colder tonight than the last few nights. I was definitely already feeling it too. I spent the next hour looking for a good campsite and eventually stumbled upon a very small cave opening. The cave¡¯s opening dimensions were only maybe 1.2 meters tall by one meter wide so even my small self had to crouch down a bit to enter. After doing so I found that the cave was decently deep, about six meters, and that it was luckily bigger at the end, just big enough for my tent to fit. The ground of the cave was pretty clean and there weren¡¯t any obvious signs of anything living in it like bones, but there was always the chance that it¡¯s owner was just out hunting. I decided to take the risk and set up my tent in the back of the cave. After having a good dinner, drinking lots of water, and taking care of other business not to be mentioned, I set up my proximity alarm to warn me in case of anything above level 10 coming into the cave. I was feeling pretty tense even so and it took me a while before I finally fell asleep, grateful that my tent and bedroll at least kept out the cold. <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ My proximity alarm started making a racket, and I instantly rolled out of my bed roll and picked up Whisperwind that I had laid beside me as I slept. I peered out of the tent and saw a large, furry paw with very long claws sweep inside the cave and stop only meter or so from my tent. What the fuck is that!? The paw swept across the cave a few more times before withdrawing and then I saw a giant head try to poke it¡¯s way inside. It looked like a very big cat, more specifically like a sabertooth tiger. But one that size? It can¡¯t even fit its head into the cave, so the thing must be gigantic. I was tempted to shoot the head but I needed to unseal my tent first or I¡¯d leave a hole in my nice tent. I crawled over to the flap and unsealed it. As if the tiger knew I had gotten closer, it reached in with its paw again but was still too short to reach me. Picking up my terminal with my left hand, I pointed it at the tiger¡¯s paw, and hit the button for beast scanning.
L107(Boss)
No information to provide
Well, that¡¯s not a very helpful or happy result! At least I know a general baseline to guess how tough that thing is now. If I¡¯m right in my guess, it¡¯s actually strong enough that it could break through my shield after a dozen or so blows. Of course, there¡¯s no way I¡¯m going to let it do that. I can¡¯t use Requiem in these close quarters and tossing one of my plasma grenades is out because I might collapse the cave on me. It¡¯s a Boss so my psi should have much less of an effect restraining it, but I guess I¡¯ll test it out first to be sure. I swapped to Psion and Empath and reached out with my powers. The damn cat was boiling over with rage. I tried to lift and move it away but after a few moments of struggle, it shrugged off my psi and kept trying to kill me. I tried again but this time tried to knock its back legs out from under it. It worked and the beast temporarily lost balance, but it was only very temporary. I guess I¡¯m really going to have to fight it, which means getting out of the cave first. It¡¯s good that the landing outside of the cave was large, I wouldn¡¯t want to fight a boss on one of those tiny narrow paths like I traveled along earlier in the day. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I swapped my classes around again, this time going with Gunner and Psion. I hope everything goes well with this setup, because now I¡¯m stuck with these classes for twelve hours thanks to the penalty for swapping classes too often in short succession. I¡¯m going to be mainly using Whisperwind out there, but I quickly grabbed my two plasma knives out of my bag and attached their sheaths to the belt at my waist. I felt I was ready so I focused my psi again as I looked for precisely where it¡¯s head was at. Once I had a good idea of where I was aiming, I concentrated as much psi as I could and then crouched down and got ready to move. I took a deep breath and then blasted all of the psi at one point, hitting the tiger right between the eyes and blowing it back away from the cave entrance. As soon as I had let the psi loose, I burst out of the cave and got some distance from the tiger before turning to aim at it which gave me my first full look of the beast. I¡¯d estimate the cat was around four meters tall and twelves meters long. I didn¡¯t let the size faze me, I¡¯d fought bigger prey than this, and opened fire with Whisperwind. Thanks to the Gunner Class being max level, my aim was more accurate and my shots have the added effect of being able to penetrate a certain percentage of enemy defense, so I concentrated my shots on the face of the dazed tiger. The tiger quickly reacted and jumped over the bolts after only a few dozen bolts hit it, sadly causing only small burns on its face. The tiger swiped at me with it¡¯s claws, but I hopped backwards avoiding it. I had interrupted my shooting for a moment but I quickly restarted my fire with my aim now focused on the tiger¡¯s left front ankle. The tiger pounced forward at me. I slid to the side around it, but otherwise kept my aim steady on the same point. The tiger seemed to have pretty high defense, but eventually the shots would penetrate and cause some real damage, I hope. The tiger¡¯s leap had brought it perilously close to the edge of the cliff of this area. Not really a surprise with how big the damn thing is. It didn¡¯t seem bothered at all by the height though, and without missing a beat it bounded to its right and landed on the steep slope above the cave before again pouncing directly at me. Damn wall jumping! It was much faster this time and I hurriedly used my psi to aid my dodge to get out of the way of the beast. After hitting the ground where I had been a moment before, the tiger¡¯s front left leg buckled and it stumbled forward onto the ground before it began unsteadily picking itself back up. Good, at least that tells me all those particle bolts did something. Bad news though, is that with all the shots I¡¯ve fired, Whisperwind is overheated and now useless for a few minutes, so it¡¯s time to switch weapons. I slung the gun back over my shoulder and used my psi to pull the knives out of their sheaths. Their plasma glow shined brightly in the previously perfect darkness. Using my control, I immediately sent one of the knives straight into the tiger¡¯s right eye and let it pierce as deep as I could get it without getting it stuck. Losing a knife inside a beast¡¯s head would be annoying to recover. The other knife I sent into the tiger¡¯s leg right where I had been concentrating fire. I immediately yanked both of the knives out, trying to do as much extra damage in the wounds as possible. The tiger was now roaring in pain and frustration as its blood flowed out of its ruined eye. It was still unsteady on its legs thanks to all the bolts and knife wound, but it still tried to hop forward and slash me with its right paw. I dodged easily from the clumsy attack, but then had to hurriedly dive forward as it bent its body at an almost impossible angle toward me and tried to grab me in its jaws. I sent a psychic blow at its head to divert the attack even if only a bit. Even my high spec shield wouldn¡¯t last long if I got caught in its mouth and chewed. As I dove, a screeching rang out from my shield signifying I hadn¡¯t completely dodged the blow. After trying such a weird maneuver, the tiger lost balance and tumbled to its side nearly hitting me with its gigantic body. I didn¡¯t want to be at risk if it rolled over so I put some distance between us again before I took advantage of this opening by sending both my knives straight into its head. After they sunk in, I¡¯d pull them out and then sink them back in in a slightly different spot and then yank them out once again. While I did that I took out a plasma grenade to use just in case. I kept repeating the process as the beast writhed around in pain. All of a sudden there was a wave of some odd energy that flowed out from the tiger. I stopped my attacks temporarily and gained some more distance to see what was going on. It almost seemed like a living shadow gouged the ground where I had just been. In light of this new development, I tossed my grenade at the tiger. I aimed for it to land at the head wounds I had already opened. It exploded right on target sending the waves of plasma directly into its skull. It was quite messy too, bits and pieces flew in the air, though the head was still mostly intact. It seemed like this blow was finally too much for it and slowly it started moving less and less until it lay still. Even then though I didn¡¯t let my guard down, some animals are smart enough to play dead even if it does seem unlikely with how brutalized this poor thing is now. Also, since this is a Boss, then there should be a notification when it¡¯s actually dead. At least I hope there is one. After a minute of waiting, I was vindicated with a screen appearing before me.
*Congratulations, you have slain the Boss *
-The Ebony Sabertooth Tiger King was the lord of the Nothar mountain range for many, many years. With its death, a large power vacuum has been created in this area that many beasts will vie to fill.
I finally sat down on the ground to catch my breath and relax for a moment. I wondered if that final attack was some kind of magic. That energy felt really weird and nothing like psi would. It¡¯s still dark out but I¡¯m not really all that sleepy anymore after that action. There¡¯s also the problem that this big hunk of fresh meat is definitely going to draw in lots of predators and scavengers to me. My cave is most definitely no longer a safe place to sleep. I headed back inside and packed up all my stuff. I checked my terminal which said I still had a few hours to go until daybreak. I don¡¯t have much of a choice though, I¡¯ll just need to start out early. I took out some snacks and ate them because with Ranger no longer being set, I¡¯ll be burning my nutrients a lot faster today. As I started to move away from the cave, I stopped and looked back at the carcass. I wonder, but usually pieces of big dangerous beasts are worth a lot and if you¡¯re talking about a sabertooth tiger, wouldn¡¯t the most valuable pieces be the two large fangs? I walked up to the head and examined the fangs in closer detail. I pulled back out one of my knives for some more light. I guess the fangs are why the name of the tiger was what it was because while the tiger was a light grey color the fangs were a deep black. The things are probably at least a meter long, too. Do I even have enough space to store these in my pack? I know I used some of the food supplies up, but not that much and there isn¡¯t anything I can throw out to make room. I guess I¡¯ll cut one out and see if it fits in the pack. Holding my knife with my psi, I slowly dismantled the large fang from its socket and then pulled it out, also with my psi. I didn¡¯t want to get covered in blood if I could help it. Definitely longer than a meter now. While I held it in the air, I cleaned it off by rubbing it against the fur coat before moving it to see if it would deposit into the bag. Luckily it vanished. I repeated the process with the other fang, but this one sadly wouldn¡¯t go in. I¡¯d have to leave it behind. I put it in the back of the small cave away from the rest of the body. I stored my knife back into my bag and then continued on my way east in the dark. Chapter 11 Author¡¯s Note: And the next chapter arrives. A bit later than normal for my update times but I had a doctor''s appointment this morning. Normal checkup and things so no worries. Please enjoy.
Chapter 11 I was very, very unhappy right now. It¡¯s been over an hour since I packed up and left the cave, and I¡¯ve another hour or two more to go before the first hints of daylight arrive. It¡¯s way too damn cold right now! I was bundling my cloak as tight around my small body as I could. I might have underestimated this aspect of crossing the mountains. I really wish that damn cat would have just let me sleep peacefully in my nice warm tent. Thinking about it now, I wonder if the thing was drawn to my presence like the wolves seemed to be. The wolves basically submitted to me but the cat could only see me as a threat. Well at least I can understand now why these mountains aren¡¯t considered safe to cross. I wonder what¡¯s going to happen with that note about beasts vying to fill its role? It didn¡¯t take me very long to find out. In a thicket along the path I was on, I came across a large group of goblins being led by one that was about twice the size that my scan told me was a level 32 hobgoblin. The group was fighting with a number of things that looked like a weird cross between a praying mantis and a scorpion. The mantids were individually much higher level but were getting swarmed by the goblins. Neither of the groups noticed me, so I snuck by them and left them to their fighting. That was only the first battle I stumbled upon. By the time daylight came, I had passed by four such fights. I managed to sneak by all but one of them. That one I had been unlucky because the path was too narrow there to allow me room to do so. The two large beasts, that kind of resembled bears walking on their hind legs, had apparently decided that I was a lot more interesting prey than each other. Of course, two quick shots from Whisperwind delivered the message that they had been fatally wrong about that. All this wanton fighting confused me, though. All these beasts, or now that I¡¯ve seen a larger variety the beasts here are really more like monsters, are totally destroying their entire ecosystem, all for becoming the strongest in the area. I can assume there is some kind of benefit in doing so, becoming a Boss would make them stronger but what would they do afterwards? Wouldn¡¯t they be completely screwed from the now huge lack of prey? It was also interesting to me that none of the monsters I had seen so far fighting had a level above 50. That made the tiger a huge outlier, though admittedly I hadn¡¯t seen any of its own species yet. It¡¯s possible they were one of the higher level creatures around here. On the bright side at least, this should hopefully mean the mountains will be more peaceful when I come back through in a few months! Taking a hard look at my current surroundings, I think I¡¯m probably about halfway through the mountains or maybe a bit more than that. This current path I was on was starting to head north and back west, so I needed a new one. I gaze over the cliff ledge I¡¯m currently on and see a somewhat secluded ledge down below. Seems like only a single path winds up to it and that path looks like it goes east. That ledge might be a good spot for a break too. I want a quiet spot I can use to make breakfast because I¡¯m starving. I decided to take the plunge and step off the cliff, and used my psi to glide down the slope, and steered myself toward the ledge. I was never sure why it was so hard to use my telekinesis to lift myself when one would think it would be easy compared to other tasks I¡¯ve done with it. The most I could do was simple gliding, and even then that took a lot more concentration to the point that it was mostly useless for more than twenty seconds at a time. Upon arriving on the ledge, I carefully checked all around to be certain I was safe. Without Ranger bonuses, my detection was so much worse that for all intents and purposes I might as well not even have it. The ledge turned out to be larger than I had expected, but I guess that¡¯s understandable, I did glide down quite a distance to get here. The most dangerous thing about the ledge though, is that there¡¯s a large cave mouth here. I hadn¡¯t noticed it from above but it¡¯s quite an intimidating cave opening, almost looks like a mouth with jagged teeth. I decided that my hunger needs were important enough that I¡¯d take the risk, so I pulled out my cooker and some ingredients and got to work fixing myself a basic breakfast. All the time, keeping one eye on the cave. As I was finishing eating, Lynn spoke up, ¡°Mistress, I was waiting for you to get to a quiet spot to ask this, but why didn¡¯t you try taming the tiger?¡± ¡°In the heat of the moment after being woken up, it completely slipped my mind.¡± I replied honestly. ¡°I don¡¯t think I could have tamed it anyway though. It was a Boss and also such a high level compared to my low Beastmaster level. I really only lucked out with the wolves because they had already submitted to me before.¡± Lynn was quiet before responding, ¡°I suppose that makes sense. With all the fighting going on now, I don¡¯t think Mistress will be able to find a pet to tame anymore. At least not in these mountains.¡± ¡°I¡¯m okay with that. I haven¡¯t seen a single creature here that was worth taming anyway. Right now, I am more curious about this cave ahead of me though. I think It looks a bit too ominous just to be a normal cave. Now that I¡¯m refreshed, I¡¯m going to give it a look see.¡± I stood up and cleaned up my goods. After I was once again packed, I walked toward the cave mouth. ¡°It really is ominous isn¡¯t it? It looks unnaturally dark inside as well. The sunlight isn¡¯t penetrating at all.¡± Lynn spoke in a worried voice. When I was right at the edge of the cave mouth, a window popped up.
*You have discovered the Dungeon (Rank ?????)*
Well, that¡¯s something brand new. M:SP never had dungeons in this kind of sense. This really does seem like a fantasy game world. ¡°Hey Lynn, I¡¯m going to check out this dungeon. It should be interesting.¡± Right before I stepped into the darkness, ¡°Wait! Mistress! Don¡¯t go in there!¡± I stopped with my foot still in the air. ¡°Why not Lynn? I¡¯m just going to check out the starting area and see how it is.¡± Lynn spoke hurriedly, ¡°I just have a bad feeling about it. What if Mistress enters and isn¡¯t able to come back out? What if the dungeon is longer and more complex and you run out of supplies while inside? I think Mistress should come back and check this dungeon out later rather than right now.¡± I could understand her reasoning, but still I really want to explore it. It¡¯s right there in front of me after all. Do I explore it or do I not? Well let¡¯s just leave it up to luck. I reached into my bag and pulled out the bag of coins I got back in Westmoor. I pulled out one of the silver coins. ¡°Lynn I¡¯m going to flip a coin. The plain side will be tails while the side with the design will be heads. Heads I check it out and tails I don¡¯t and continue my trek.¡± After saying that. I flipped the coin up into the air and observed it closely. As I watched, Lynn said, ¡°Mistress, no cheating with your psi.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to. I swear.¡± I replied back. As the coin fell, a freak gust of wind picked up and knocked the coin off course. The coin went off the ledge and down the sloping path. I ran to look but couldn¡¯t see where it had ended up. I sighed and pulled out a second coin. I flipped it again, but this time less powerfully so it didn¡¯t go as high into the air. It tumbled down, bounced a few times and finally stopped. On tails. Damn. ¡°Alright, I guess I don¡¯t get to see the dungeon this time.¡± I begrudgingly said. ¡°Lynn, you¡¯ve been keeping track of my general location though right? Can you mark this spot on the map. I¡¯m definitely going to check it out at some point later.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve actually already marked this location, Mistress. I also marked the location where you fought the tiger and left its carcass.¡± ¡°Well, I guess that might be useful later, though there¡¯s nothing I can do with that now and it¡¯s just as likely the scavengers will pick it clean and possibly take the bones long before I get a chance to. Oh well, if there¡¯s no more reason to be here, I might as well get going. I want to get out of these mountains before night falls again.¡± Making my way down the trail, I looked a bit for the coin as I went but couldn¡¯t find it so I had to accept the loss. This narrow path looked like it zig zags all the way down into another forested valley. I hope I don¡¯t run into anymore fighting. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Luckily, the next six hours went by smoothly and I hadn¡¯t seen a single beast except for a small flock of birds that looked like large hawks that were flying above in the same direction as me. I was starting to get a bit bothered by the fact that I hadn¡¯t seen anything else when they had been so prolific before. I don¡¯t think they all could have wiped each other out this quickly. Maybe they already established the new area Boss? I really wish I knew more about how this world worked. Oh, those birds that had been content just flying in one direction have all started circling something. I watched as one bird then another dove, but from my current location I couldn¡¯t see what they were diving at. I was curious, so I hurried along the path to a spot that was out in the open. <((If you have paid money and bought this story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.This story is only hosted for free on royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual.))> They were diving at something that was up on a small ledge it seems like. I watched as one of the birds dove down and picked up what appeared to be a snake in its talons and carry it off. I saw another of the birds dive down but a larger snake lashed out at it and sent it flying back into the air to escape. I can¡¯t see what¡¯s going on up there. Should I climb up and see? As I observed the birds kept diving and occasionally the large snake would fend them off while at times the birds were carrying off smaller ones. If I had to guess the large snake is the parent of the little ones and its nest is up there. I thought snakes didn¡¯t care about their young. The snake looked similar to a cobra too. It has what appears to be a large head. Eventually, enough of the birds diving and attacking finished off the large snake. I saw from my vantage point as the large snake lashed out and then three of the birds dove and hit it at the same time and attacked with their talons and beaks. A few moments later one of the larger birds picked the big snake up and was flying around with it while making odd cries. It was at this moment that I saw another bird dive down, so I guess there were still young snakes up there. Poor things. I couldn¡¯t see what was happening on the ledge but the bird fluttered up and then dove again and repeated and it kept getting closer to the edge when all of a sudden a small violet snake fell off. Without thinking about it, I reached out with my psi before it hit the ground and caught the small snake and brought it toward my left hand. The little snake was only about twenty centimeters long. As I held it on my hand, it tried biting me but it couldn¡¯t pierce through my shield. It flinched when it heard the birds, and then it wrapped itself as tightly as it could around my wrist. The fact that I was now holding one of the snakes didn¡¯t go unnoticed by the birds and they began circling around me now. With my left hand a bit occupied I couldn¡¯t use Whisperwind as easily so I elected to just use my psi. As the birds dove, I smashed each one with a psychic fist knocking them in the ground. Once they were on the ground I finished it with a knife strike. The largest bird that was still holding the parent snake dropped it and then dove at me like its brethren but it too was easily finished off. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. The little snake was still cutely trembling as it held on to my wrist. I put my knife back away and tapped it carefully. The snake flinched and tried to wrap even tighter, but of course my shield wouldn¡¯t let it. I touched it again and surprisingly it was quite soft and warm compared to what I was expecting. It seemed to be covered in a layer of feathers that ran down its back. Its skin was also surprisingly soft and not very snakelike at all. I stroked the little thing and eventually it stopped trembling and lifted itself up. Oh, it¡¯s head looks more like that of a lizard with an elongated nose. It has two small hard nubs on its head that look a bit like the start of horns. As I continued to coax it to unwrap, it started to rub against my hand. Then I got a big surprise. What I had thought was just a large hood like a cobra was actually two small wings the snake had folded and holding up against its head. Now the snake had unfurled those wings and was flapping them. They were quite small. I don¡¯t think it could fly with them, at least not at their current size. Actually it seems less like a snake now, what with the head and wings. While I held it, I used my psi to help me climb up to the ledge that it fell off. There were a few other small snakes that looked like they too had been killed. I looked around but didn¡¯t find any other survivors. Poor thing, it looks like it lost all it¡¯s family in one go. I felt a surge of heartache at the reminder of being cut off from my own family. It would have died too if it hadn¡¯t managed to escape that one bird by falling off. My thoughts were interrupted by a crooning sound. I turned my head to look at the small snake and it was looking back at me with its head tilted to one side. I took my fingers and rubbed along its head again. The little thing started what sounded like purring. ¡°It looks like you¡¯re just like me and lost your family too. Both of us are alone now.¡± I spoke in a quiet voice. Lynn interjected, ¡°Mistress, you still have me! You¡¯re not alone!¡± I ignored her for the moment. I wanted to tame it but I¡¯m not sure how I go about doing that. I still can¡¯t switch my Class yet either. Not for another few hours at least. Maybe offering it some food would work? If it¡¯s a reptile, meat I suppose? I think reptiles can eat plants too, though. Not like I really know if the rules I know of are fair to judge a creature from this world by. I¡¯m not going to feed it pieces of its family though. Luckily, I have all those birds that have volunteered for the job. I hopped down from the ledge and walked to the closest bird. I cut a number of small pieces out of it and then held the pieces to the snake. The little one brought its head close to them before sniffing them. Afterwards it looked towards me and chirped. ¡°That¡¯s right, it¡¯s food for you. Go ahead and eat it.¡± I kept the food right there and eventually it grabbed a piece. It chewed a bit before swallowing it. Definitely not snake like at all. In no time at all, it had eaten all the pieces. Then, it gave a little sigh and wrapped itself back around my wrist again and fell asleep. Which is when the screen popped up.
*Beastmaster Has Leveled Up x 2*
-For taming a rare creature, Beastmaster has increased in level to 30. -Penalty: Experience Gained -70% for Class not being equipped. -Warning: Beastmaster must now be set to gain further experience.
A rare creature is it? I looked at the small creature currently happily sleeping. I guess I¡¯ll scan it and see what it is. The results were quite surprising.
L11
-This small dragon is a very rare breed. Unlike its greater cousins, this breed of dragon dislikes conflict. They prefer to live alone and only meeting others of their kind temporarily to mate before separating.
*Title Unlocked*
-For taming a dragon you have earned the Dragon Tamer title.
Dragon!? There are dragons on this world and I just tamed one!? I guess I should have expected it with this world being like a fantasy world, but I¡¯m still shocked. Also the title unlock came after I identified it as a dragon rather than when I tamed it? ¡°Was the taming a success Mistress?¡± Lynn enquired. ¡°Oh, yeah. It went well.¡± I replied. Lynn spoke up again with a serious voice, ¡°Mistress. Don¡¯t think of yourself as being alone.¡± I sighed, ¡°I know, Lynn. I know I have you and now this tiny one, and even the wolves if I want to count them. It¡¯s just, everything that has happened is still really hard for me to accept. I can¡¯t just hide in the ship forever though, I¡¯ll just go crazy again if I do that.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. I know it¡¯s difficult for you. Take as long as you need, Mistress.¡± Lynn comforted me before changing topics with a more cheerful tone. ¡°Mistress, you¡¯re taking up too much time here. You might end up stuck in the mountains for another night!¡± I appreciated the change of topic. ¡°Ahh, right. I better hurry then.¡± I started moving, though with some care to not disturb my new pet¡¯s rest. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ My new little dragon woke up after a few hours and begged for attention, which it got. For a creature that¡¯s supposedly a loner type, it sure does love the affection. I transferred it from my wrist to letting it wrap around my neck so I could have my left arm free again. Now that I had placed it up against my skin, I had basically slipped it under my shield so it should be protected a bit. I had been a bit worried that something might harm it when it was on my arm as unlikely as it was. Earlier, I had taken the time to examine the adult dragon and it had been a bit over a meter long. My pet has a lot of growing to do I guess, from its current size. It probably won¡¯t fit as nicely around my neck once it reaches its full size either. On the bright side, I could definitely tell I was close to getting out of these blasted mountains. I was finally seeing scenery beyond just more jagged cliffs and small valleys. The other good news was that I could finally switch my Classes again so I swapped Beastmaster into the main Class slot and Ranger into the Subclass. That should let me level it more, though I¡¯m not sure what other ways there are to level it outside of taming creatures like I had been doing. I would guess that having my tamed beasts fight would be another method, but I didn¡¯t have any intention of letting my young dragon fight. At least for now. ¡°Mistress, have you thought yet of what you¡¯re going to name it?¡± Lynn enquired, interrupting my petting the purring dragon. ¡°I¡¯m bad with names, so I can¡¯t really think of anything. For that matter, I don¡¯t even know if it is a boy or a girl.¡± I replied. ¡°Have you tried checking its status? It might give Mistress more information.¡± I suppose that¡¯s likely. I never even bothered looking at the wolves¡¯ status beyond identifying them by level from the list. I checked but I didn¡¯t detect any presences nearby so it should be safe enough to stop where I am for a moment. I opened up my status and then the tamed beast list. I went down to the bottom of the list to find the feathered serpent dragon. After doing so, I tried to see if the option would open to give me more information. I played around with it a bit and eventually a new status screen appeared.
Name: No Name Level: 11
Species: Feathered Serpent Dragon
Gender Female Age: 45 Days
Health: 145/145
Strength: 4(4) Agility: 7(6)
Constitution: 9(8) Resistance: 6(5)
Intellect: 18(16) Wisdom: 13(12)
Luck: 58(53)
So this world has different names for their attributes and there¡¯s even a luck attribute here. Most of these I can probably consider as equivalents of my own like strength is the same as physique, but I wonder what luck does? In a game it would usually be things like increased critical hit chance or chance of better loot. In a real world operating by these mechanics it could affect any number of things. Could the luck value affect likelihood of events happening? That seems a bit ridiculous to me if so, but I suppose I¡¯ll leave it open as a possibility to look into. Also the stats are quite low even considering it¡¯s low level. The luck stat is more than all the others combined which is kind of crazy. It¡¯s age isn¡¯t that unbelievable since I already knew it was a child which also probably accounts for the low stats. And I guess she is a girl so I need to stop thinking of her as an it. Now, to think of a name for a female dragon. Well since she is a feathered serpent dragon, the obvious name that comes to mind is Quetzalcoatl. I don¡¯t think that¡¯s a very girly name though. Not to mention how bothersome it would be to say all the time. What kind of shortening of the name would be good? After thinking for a while and coming up with a few ideas, I decided to ask Lynn what she thought of them. ¡°Lynn, between these choices what do you think sounds best? Quey, Zalli, or Coa?¡± It took only a moment before Lynn responded. ¡°I think Coa sounds best, Mistress. Quey sounds good too, a bit exotic maybe.¡± ¡°I guess I¡¯ll go with Coa then.¡± The little dragon had just been listening to my words with a tilted head. I stroked her head again and then spoke, ¡°From now on your name will be Coa, so be a good little dragon Coa.¡±
*You have named one or more of your Tamed Beasts*
-Feathered Serpent Dragon has become Coa.
Coa trilled and then rubbed her head against my face before settling back down around my neck. What an affectionate, little one. She seems like she¡¯s too young or maybe not intelligent enough yet to communicate with me like the wolves did. Well with that naming taken care of, onward to the empire!
The adult version of Coa looks like this http://imgur.com/oU7kiId Of course some characteristics are a bit off and she doesn¡¯t currently look much like that but general idea is the same. Chapter 12 Author¡¯s Note: So I don''t have much to say today, but please enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 12 It was early afternoon when I finally got out of the mountains. I had been following a ravine for the past hour when it opened out onto a ridge that gave me a view of vast open fields, forests and even a river that flowed into a lake way off in the distance. Even better was there was not a single damn mountain in sight. I excitedly started down the path that led down from the ridge. Unlike the other paths I had followed, this one seemed well traveled with obvious signs of people wearing boots, or some kind of footwear at least, using it. Coa was currently happily curled up and asleep. I wasn¡¯t in a rush to wake her, since I¡¯d very quickly realized earlier that she¡¯s quite a glutton. I assumed she wouldn¡¯t need to eat for a while after the meal she got this morning but she was perfectly ready to start crying when she noticed me having a small snack. It had taken almost a full meal worth of food, she had been perfectly willing to chow down on veggies too, before she was satisfied. If she was going to keep this up then the large stock of food in my bag was going to rapidly not be a large stock of food. I was making my way through the trees at the bottom when Lynn spoke, ¡°Mistress, what are you going to do about the fortress ahead?¡± I stopped. Fortress? ¡°What fortress are you talking about Lynn?¡± I asked, confused. ¡°The fortress that is probably a kilometer or two ahead of you? Did you not see it from the ridge? It was plainly visible.¡± ¡°No, I don¡¯t think I saw it. I was kind of more focused on the further off scenery I guess.¡± I shyly admitted. Lynn sighed. ¡°Well, you need to come up with something because the soldier in the watchtower saw you at the ridge. I assumed you had noticed which is why you were hurrying. You probably have soldiers coming to intercept you already.¡± ¡°Do you think the soldier saw anything? Like Whisperwind, for example?¡± ¡°Probably not since you kept it slung up against your back. It wouldn¡¯t have been visible from the angle they were looking from.¡± ¡°Then time to hide it and my plasma daggers I guess.¡± I slipped them back away into my bag. ¡°I¡¯m not sure what I¡¯ll do if they ask to search my bag though.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll just have to give them no reason to want to search you Mistress. Of course if all else fails, I doubt they¡¯ll be able to stop you if you try to flee.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not just how easy it is to flee but if these are soldiers from the empire, and they likely are since I should be in empire territory now, then if I do run from these soldiers they¡¯ll spread my description far and wide. That will be quite a burden to deal with. I¡¯ll just have to try to fool them and hope I guess.¡± ¡°Do your best Mistress.¡± Lynn encouraged. Of course, I still had the option of just turning around and re entering the mountains but that wasn¡¯t really an option I wanted to consider. So I needed some kind of cover story. Let¡¯s go with ¡®I¡¯m a Beastmaster that entered the mountains hoping to tame some new things¡¯ and if they ask why I¡¯m alone despite that, I¡¯ll say that all my other beasts besides Coa were killed. I think that will work unless they press the questions further. I started moving and kept following the path through the trees. Shouldn¡¯t be long now until I clear them. I was keeping my speed at a believable pace for my appearance. No reason to blow soldiers away, yet at least. I might have to later, so let¡¯s not give the game away too soon. I¡¯m surprisingly worried about this coming meeting. Before, I thought the people in that town were just NPCs, but now I know I¡¯m interacting with real people. I¡¯m a bit nervous. Just need to stay calm, Seri. You¡¯ve worked as a mercenary for 40 years, and as Aaron you worked retail for 5 years. You know how to deal with people. There¡¯s no way soldiers are going to be as bad as some of those customers you have had to deal with. That brings to mind a different topic. I¡¯m definitely staying away from the Merchant Class in the future. Retail never again! As I exited the woods, I saw the fortress ahead of me and quite a surprising number of monster corpses in the cleared field in front of it. The walls of the fortress, I would guess to be about twenty to thirty meters in height. The corpses looked pretty fresh too, so if I had to guess they must have died relatively recently, probably earlier today. There were soldiers walking around skinning some of the hides of the more beast like monsters and scavenging parts off others. It was a bit of a grotesque sight really. A small group of eight soldiers were making their way toward me. I decided to get into my role a bit. After all, I was going to be posing as a young beastmaster that just tragically lost her beasts and only narrowly escaped with her life. I hurriedly walked forward to meet them. I tried my best to radiate a feeling of happy relief. Small sounds coming from by my neck told me that Coa had woken up, probably from the sounds and smells. She was making confused little warbles as she looked here and there. The soldiers and I finally reached talking distance. They were quite tall, especially compared to my small self, and Coa was frightened by their presence. I stroke her head with my hand to calm her down. The human soldier in the center that was wearing more intricate armor stepped forward and asked, ¡°What was a young demon child like yourself doing in those mountains alone?¡± Oh good, I can understand the language so they must speak the same as the kingdom people. I guess it¡¯s also a good sign that they didn¡¯t immediately draw weapons on me based on my appearance. It still sounded like some hostility was mixed in, but that might just be because of how suspicious I appear to be. Not sure I liked being called a demon though, and Lynn wasn¡¯t happy about it either, judging by the not very nice things she was currently saying about the soldier that only I could hear. ¡°I went into the mountains to look for new beasts to tame. I¡¯m a beastmaster, after all,¡± At this point I tried to puff up a bit with pride like I was a child before I let myself slump back into my previous posture. ¡°My pets all got killed protecting me and I was only barely able to escape with this child!¡± I gestured to Coa. Time to turn up the drama a little. Thankfully I had practiced fake crying in the past, it¡¯s surprising how often this can solve any problems. With small tears now in my eyes I continued. ¡°I¡¯m so, so glad, I¡¯m st-still alive!¡± I made sure to stutter my words just a bit. The soldiers shared awkward glances amongst themselves. I raised my hands to block my eyes and lowered my head. I was making sniffling and gasping sounds. I was also doing my best to get some real tears flowing, it would make things easier for the next likely step. Coa was too young to really understand what was going on, but her innocence helped in this case. She started crooning and rubbing her head against my cheek as if to comfort me. The fancy armor soldier spoke more gently this time, ¡°It¡¯s fine, you¡¯re safe now, but the Commander wishes to speak with you and ask you a few questions. Can you come with us?¡± I raised my head, thanks to rubbing my eyes just right I had some tears rolling down my cheeks, and nodded. I froze for a moment when I saw the soldier¡¯s face and I had to struggle very hard not to start laughing. Lynn was taking advantage of the contacts and had drawn a stereotypical curly, evil mustache on the soldier¡¯s face. Along with some other silly additions like horns and an eyepatch. I guess she was still annoyed that I was called a demon. Damn it, Lynn. What would have happened if I really started laughing here! The soldiers formed up like an escort around me and we started marching toward the large metal gate of the fortress. I wonder why the commander of the fort wants to question me. Interrogation maybe? Check to make sure I¡¯m not a spy? Then again I don¡¯t think a spy would sneak across those mountains, they¡¯d take the trade route and have a fake identity setup. Maybe ask some questions about the mountains themselves? I¡¯m not sure what kind of information he¡¯d want though, so trying to predict it is difficult. I thought about whether I should switch Classes but I decided not to. While Empath would help for this coming conversation like it did back in that town, it¡¯s still been only two hours and a bit hours since I swapped classes so if I swapped again I¡¯d be locked out for another twelve hours again. After entering the fortress, I saw a large number of soldiers still inside going about their duties. I¡¯d estimate at least a few hundred that I could see now, plus the couple dozen I saw outside, there¡¯s probably five hundred stationed here. I wish I could take out my terminal to scan some to check their levels, but that would definitely be noticed. At least on the bright side, I guess the thing about the empire being welcoming to other races is true. I see some people that look a bit inhuman here and there. That guy over there has long horns that curve back and over his head. And that guy has a long furry tail. Oh, there¡¯s a female soldier, and she has long elf like ears. There¡¯s even a few soldiers shorter than me wearing really bulky armor. Possible dwarves? This place is really interesting! Fancy soldier led me through a doorway in the inner keep and I noticed that my escort of eight soldiers had shrunken down to just him and one other behind me. The others had went off to perform different duties, I suppose. I followed him through halls, up some stairs, then along other halls and then down a flight of stairs. Isn¡¯t this fortress¡¯ interior a bit too complicated? It definitely felt like I was being led around in circles. Eventually the soldier stopped at a door that looked identical to all the others we had passed and knocked. A gruff voice from the inside was heard, ¡°Enter.¡± The soldier opened the door and led me inside. The inside was pretty spartan. Simply a long table and a number of chairs around it. The two things that clearly stood out in the bare room though, were the map on the side wall and the the large banner hanging on the wall next to it. I made sure to take an unobtrusive glance at the map, hoping Lynn would catch on and add the info to our own map. I hoped so at least, she was still doodling on the poor soldier, adding spikes and things. The large banner had a coat of arms of what appeared to be a crowned lion pinning down a dragon with its paw. I wonder if that is the coat of arms for the empire? The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. The male human sitting at the table gave off the impression of being an old veteran. He was definitely a large man and had a solid build. He had a long scar that went across his face, along with a few smaller scars giving him a bit of rakish appearance. The most surprising thing about his appearance though, was his hair color. It looked very similar to mine, a dark purple. I could tell by his expression and direction of his gaze that he was quite surprised by my hair color as well. I hope that wasn¡¯t a bad sign. The commander spoke, ¡°Take a seat young lady. I¡¯m quite interested in your little jaunt in the Nothar mountains. The watch didn¡¯t mention that you were blessed by the Lord of Spirits, Airin. I have to admit, I didn¡¯t expect I¡¯d ever meet another so blessed again. Quite surprising indeed. It¡¯s been decades since I last met someone like myself.¡± I wasn¡¯t at all sure what he was talking about here, but I could guess it had something to do with our shared hair color since it was the only feature we shared. Is that what odd hair colors have to do with here on this world, blessings? I took the seat in front of him and was aware that the soldiers stayed behind me at my sides. I guess they weren¡¯t going to trust me that easily to leave me with their commander. The commander was giving me an appraising look before speaking. ¡°I want you to tell me everything from where you entered the mountains to today when you came to the fortress. Don¡¯t leave out a single detail.¡± So I weaved together a bit of a tale. Taking into account the size of the mountains, I stated that I entered the mountains about fifteen days ago from the other side. The commander was a bit interested at that since from his own words it was surprising that a demon would travel through ¡®that shitty kingdom¡¯, as he called it. I just explained that I hid my appearance while passing through before moving back to my mountain adventure. Since I had already said I was a beastmaster, I mentioned that I had had a small pack of wolves for my pets, that wasn¡¯t even really lying after all. Most of the tale was pretty boring. I talked about some fights with obvious embellishments, trying to make the embellishments sound like those of a young person bragging rather than someone lying to hide things. I made up a slightly similar scene for taming Coa but placed it a few days ago. He listened attentively until I got to today when his eyes took on a much more inquisitive and kind of threatening, focused look. Coa didn¡¯t like it and started trembling. I used my hand to soothe her as I told how, for some unknown reason, the monsters today had been all fighting crazily. How I kept seeing large numbers of monsters fighting each other, which had led to my pets being killed and me being forced to flee for my life. At this point I made sure to toss in some appropriate little theatrics like biting my lip to make it seem like I was trying not to cry. Unlike the other soldiers this didn¡¯t faze the commander at all, as expected of a veteran! Finally I concluded with reaching the ridge, except in my story I mentioned that I saw the fortress and hurried to get there, because I saw it as safety. The commander was silent as he considered my words but he kept his eyes fixed on me. After a few minutes of this silent treatment, he turned his attention to the soldier that hadn¡¯t been doodled on. ¡°Donovan, go get one of the status orbs and be back on the double.¡± The soldier saluted and then turned and left the room at a brisk pace. The commander turned his focus back to me and asked me something I had been dreading the possibility of. ¡°Now the other topic to discuss is that bag of yours. What might you have in it? Would you hand it over so it might get searched. After all, you admitted by your own words you don¡¯t have any identification to show me and you are far from home so you are under certain suspicions now.¡± Damn, I was hoping it wouldn¡¯t come to this. I lifted the bag off my shoulders and the doodled soldier took it from me and sat it to the side on the table. At a nod from the commander he opened it and looked inside and of course saw nothing. If you could actually see all the items in the bag then there would be a problem. All he has to do is reach in for something though and he¡¯d likely find something I wouldn¡¯t be able to explain away. The soldier didn¡¯t do such a thing though and his words surprised me. ¡°It appears to be a bag of holding sir. No telling what is inside it since we¡¯re not the owner.¡± What¡¯s this? Is this some luck coming my way? The commander tapped his gloved finger on the table for a minute before asking, ¡°I¡¯d like you sign this paper.¡± He pulled out a small piece of paper with some writing on it and passed along a small quill pen with it. ¡°What is this?¡± I asked, looking at the paper warily. I couldn¡¯t read the writing so I had no idea what he was asking me to sign. I definitely wasn¡¯t going to trust it. <((If you have paid money and bought this story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.This story is only hosted for free on royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual.))> ¡°It¡¯s protection against bags of holding. One of the few that can really be used and trusted. It¡¯s an oath enchanted paper that simply asks whether or not the contents of your bag are planned to be used to conduct murder, sabotage, or a number of crimes on empire land. So sign the paper or I¡¯ll have you thrown into one of the holding cells. It¡¯s your choice.¡± He shrugged. Damn, damn, damn! There¡¯s no way to know if he¡¯s telling the truth or not. I should have swapped Classes for this meeting after all! Well, now I¡¯m paying for that decision. If I don¡¯t sign then my only option is to wipe out the entire fortress, every single person. Even beyond all the people I¡¯d kill here, that would likely have severe repercussions on the villagers or towns in the area too. If I do sign, either he¡¯s telling the truth and nothing will happen since I don¡¯t have the slightest intention of using my stuff to cause problems in the empire or he¡¯s lying and something will happen that I probably won¡¯t like. Not to mention my bag isn¡¯t a bag of holding, whatever that is, so if the note really just says that I won¡¯t use my bag of holding contents against the empire then it¡¯s a dud. Enchanted implies magic and I¡¯m already worried about the possibilities of magic if this world has it. Is there another option here somewhere? I thought hard and could really only come up with one option and it might not even work. I asked, ¡°Can you sign it first? I want to see that it¡¯s safe.¡± The commander stared at me and then smirked, ¡°Why not?¡± He took the paper and pen and signed on it. The paper briefly glowed green but nothing else happened. He slid the paper and pen back across to me and gave me an expectant look. I really don¡¯t want to do this, but I don¡¯t want to kill hundreds of people over something simple like this either. Especially when it¡¯s possible some of these soldiers might be strong enough to escape me. I still don¡¯t have good enough judge of the average level of strength of this world, though the town guards back then didn¡¯t inspire much faith in it. Bad enough making the attempt, even worse if some escape anyway. I took a few calming breaths and then signed the paper under where the commander did. As in the case of the commander it simply glowed green for a moment before returning to normal. The commander looked satisfied, ¡°Alright, everything is in order then. Roderick, hand the lady back her bag.¡± Doodle soldier now known as Roderick did so. ¡°Now I¡¯ll tell you what I am going to do with you. Tomorrow, I was planning to send a pair of messengers to the nearest town. The town of Dawnwater is about three days away. The pair will take you along and protect you until you reach the town but you¡¯ll be on your own from there.¡± I didn¡¯t like the sound of that. I was going to be forced to travel slowly and I¡¯d have to hide the contents of my bag too. At the same time, I have to accept the offer since it¡¯s clear he¡¯s expecting me to jump at it. If I don¡¯t take it it would look weird with the backstory I gave. I¡¯m a beastmaster that now has no beasts except for a small baby dragon. At the same time, I¡¯d at least get taken to the nearest town which meant I wouldn¡¯t have to look for one. Well, I don¡¯t really have an option here anyway unless I want to show off my true abilities, but I feel like that would cause a lot more hassles down the road. ¡°Thank you, I¡¯ll gladly accept the assistance.¡± There¡¯s always the possibility of learning interesting things from the messengers I¡¯m sent with if they¡¯re the talkative type. Maybe I can pick up some magic knowledge or just more general knowledge about the empire from them if we¡¯re going to be traveling together for a few days. The commander nodded. Then the soldier that had left earlier, Donovan, returned with one of those status orbs in hand. It looked just a bit larger than the one I had seen at that town. It also was a different color. The orb back then had been glowing green but this one was glowing a green closer to blue. He sat it down in front of me. ¡°Here we go. This is just to confirm your class and level is as you told me. So if you would.¡± I was a bit hesitant but placed my hand on the orb and the same thing that had happened back a week ago was repeated. Eventually from the small box came the card. The commander picked it up and examined it. He looked thunderstruck for a moment before getting his expression back under control. He turned the card toward me, ¡°Care to explain, your highness?¡± What? I looked at the card. Name: Seri Race: Human Title: Sniper Princess Class: Beastmaster L30 Subclass: None Ahh, fuck. Chapter 13 Author¡¯s Note: Continuing right where last chapter left off. Please enjoy.
Chapter 13 I decided to play dumb. ¡°What do you mean? Explain what?¡± The commander looked exasperated. ¡°Your title! It says you¡¯re royalty for Spirits¡¯ sake!¡± Oh. I thought he was going to ask about my race being designated human when I¡¯m clearly not one. Well, he did call me ¡¯your highness¡¯, but I thought that was just a joke based on the title. My title though, do they not understand the word sniper? Well, I guess a medieval-ish society might not actually, since the term originated from gun marksmanship I believe. Shooting snipes to be exact. I haven¡¯t seen any sign yet of even primitive guns here. You would think, if they existed, people in a fortress would be the ones using them. There probably aren''t snipes on this world either. I might end up surprised on that point though. I''ve already seen horses and other familiar creatures. There¡¯s not really much to say though, I mean, I¡¯m not royalty! I can see that the commander is now looking at my shield choker so he¡¯s probably thinking that they explain each other. My shield¡¯s ornate appearance comes back to bite me again. The appearance made sense in the game, but on this planet, I guess it is way too elaborate and expensive looking. If I say I¡¯m not royalty, he¡¯ll ask me where I got the jewelry. If I say I had them crafted somewhere, he¡¯ll want to know where and I can¡¯t really explain where since that was a location in the game on another planet. I don¡¯t know enough about this world to make up a location. If I say something along the lines of it being a family heirloom, that would just add to the suspicion that maybe I¡¯m some descendent of some royalty from somewhere. Of course I could always say I stole it or found it somewhere, but confessing to a crime is definitely out and saying I found it somewhere would create other questions too. Maybe saying someone gave it to me would work? Which would be the best option to go with? I should probably just say something rather than staying silent. The longer I stay silent the more time he has to think I¡¯m trying to hide something. Plus regardless of what I say now, the title has already been seen and a misunderstanding has been caused. The best I can do is just try to limit it a bit. ¡°I¡¯m not royalty. I have no idea why I have that title. My family are just commoners and I lived with them in a small village a long way from here. I left home and started traveling a long time ago.¡± ¡°What about that necklace? That¡¯s much too fancy for a commoner to possess. Is it by chance a family heirloom?¡± The commander asked shrewdly. As I expected huh. Let¡¯s see if this works. ¡°I received it as a gift from an eccentric merchant. It was quite a while ago now that I think about it. No idea where he got it from. He just insisted I take it.¡± Maybe, I should have thought that explanation out better before I opened my big mouth. Doesn¡¯t it sound like I just said some crazy merchant pushed possible stolen or shady goods on me!? Shit. Well, he has no way of confirming or denying any parts of my story so let¡¯s see what his next move will be. The commander was silent for a while as he frowned at me. His finger was tapping on the table. He finally opened his mouth to speak again, ¡°I¡¯m guessing that you¡¯ll tell me that you don¡¯t remember where you met this merchant at? Or even what he looks like?¡± I smiled, ¡°Right. I¡¯ve been traveling so long that everything kind of blends together after a while. Was it a city far off to the south and west? Maybe north and west? I don¡¯t recall anything clearly.¡± He sighed before saying, ¡°No matter then. If you don¡¯t know, then you don¡¯t know. It wasn¡¯t really that important. I¡¯ve never even heard of a kingdom by that name anyway so it¡¯s probably just some long dead one. I guess it was just idle curiosity. I don¡¯t have any other questions for you, so I¡¯ll let-¡± His words were cut off by the sound of a horn. Instantly, he jumped up from his chair. He was no longer paying even a sliver of attention to me. He turned to doodle soldier, I mean Roderick, and ordered, ¡°Take the young lady to a spare room then get to your post. Donovan with me.¡± Afterwards he rushed from the room with Donovan following close behind. Roderick merely beckoned me to follow him and then also left the room. I guess I should get going, too. I hurried after him, but he wasn¡¯t that fast, so I caught up to him easily. He led me to one of the staircases and then down a hallway. The horn was probably an alarm of some kind. Someone or something attacking? I would assume it would be more monsters based on the field in front of the fort being littered with bodies when I got here. Is that why the fort is here? To intercept monsters coming out of the mountains? Eventually he stopped in a door and opened it. I saw inside was a small room with a few bunks. No sign of anyone living in it though. ¡°Please stay in this room. It will be safe here.¡± Before he could leave, I called out to him to ask, ¡°Was that horn signalling that the fort is under attack?¡± ¡°Of course. No reason to fear though, no monsters have ever breached the keep walls.¡± He gave me a reassuring smile. Well, I assume it was supposed to be a reassuring smile but with the doodles it just looked weird. This time he really turned and ran and left me at the room. Well this attack came at a convenient time, though it did appear like the commander was going to excuse me anyway. I¡¯m a bit surprised that he didn¡¯t seem to care at all about my race though. Is it normal to have human on the card but have features of other races? Now do I stay in my room or go watch the battle? What a silly question! Of course I¡¯m going to watch the battle. ¡°Lynn, make sure you keep track of the path I take from this room. I¡¯m going to probably need your help to find my way back here afterwards.¡± ¡°Roger that, Mistress.¡± Lynn replied. Now, the number one objective is to try to get upstairs I think. I don¡¯t want to be seen and I need a good vantage point. I ran back to the staircase and then up. Then stopped and ducked in a side room as I detected some soldiers ahead. I let them run past the room I was hiding in before I left the room and I looked for the next staircase or at least a window to see out of. Eventually, after some minutes of sneaking around, I found a passage that led out to a small balcony of the keep. Upon getting out, I was a bit surprised to see that the current time was already sunset. I didn¡¯t think that discussion with the commander had taken that long. Maybe I had embellished my story a bit too much. Luckily, there was no one around to see me. Just to be sure, I crouched down to peek over the balcony wall. From the looks of things all the soldiers were either on the walls or at the gate to sortie if it became necessary. At least I wasn¡¯t detecting anyone near me. The location wasn¡¯t the best for an actual view of the fight though. I couldn¡¯t see much of the area outside the fortress though I did get a quick scan of the monsters I saw. The monsters were still primarily in the forest at the foot of the mountains, which put them a kilometer away from the walls. This is probably why the fighting hadn¡¯t started yet. It was a mixed group of humanoid looking ones called trolls and wolf like creatures called wargs. The wargs were much lower level than the trolls, only being in the level 20 to 30 range. From what I could see from my vantage point, there were a couple hundred of them if not more. The trolls were the more interesting targets. The scans said they were in the level 60 to 70 range and there were at least a few dozen. The interesting fact that came from the scan result was the note that they have very high regeneration and that it is necessary to use fire to finish them off. I was curious to see how the soldiers were going to handle this. I also took the time to scan some of the soldiers and was pretty impressed with what I saw. There was really no comparison with those weak town guards. For one, a lot of them were past level 50 in their Class. Some were lower level but had Subclasses that when combined with their Class totaled past 50. The vast majority of the soldiers I could see were Knights or Warriors. About a hundred or so were Scouts or Hunters, and these were the bowman on the wall. While I was scanning random soldiers, I managed to get a glimpse of the commander running around and got a scan off on him and was pretty amazed at the result. He was a level 79 Knight with level 51 Scout for the Subclass. Absolutely the strongest person of this world I¡¯ve seen so far. Why would the monsters even attack a fortress like this though? I mean even the trolls look only about three or four meters tall, no where near the size necessary to get over these walls. I can¡¯t see them being able to break that giant metal gate down either. Is it possibly something to do with knowing that people are here? Regardless, they¡¯re just going to get slaughtered. Stupid monsters. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> As if in response to my thoughts, a chorus of howls echoed out of the woods along with some roars. The monster horde was now in motion as they rushed toward the fortress walls. I had definitely underestimated the numbers as I watched the monsters get steadily closer. When they reached about halfway to the walls the archers let loose and a volley of arrows flew into their midst. I was impressed. The archers were scoring hits at a distance of at least 500 meters. From what I could tell, the arrows were one shotting the wargs. They weren¡¯t that tough I guess, or it was just the level difference in play. The trolls on the other hand, were shrugging off the arrows as they barreled their way to the gate. I noticed a new group of people had come up on the wall. Unlike the other soldiers, these were wearing robes and had staves and wands and the like. I knew what they had to be, but I scanned just to be sure. My expectations were for naught. They weren¡¯t wizards. They were called Sorcerers, well and Sorceresses. Out of the twenty person group, eight were female. I finally took note of the fact that the commander was standing with them and seemed to be communicating with the highest level Sorceress. After a moment he backed away from them and I got to see an amazing sight. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. The Sorcerers had all raised their spellcasting tools while standing shoulder to shoulder and then I felt another wave of that weird energy again. It must really be magic! About thirty seconds later, suddenly there were balls of fire falling through the air like a rain of meteors hitting the ground. It was almost like carpet bombing with the explosions of fire moving in a wave away from the fortress walls. I watched as all the monsters got consumed in the flames. Not a single monster managed to escape that bombardment. For a moment I wondered why they hadn¡¯t done that to start with but then I realized they had likely waited to do it to let the bowman get experience from kills. It looked like the Sorcerers were pretty winded from that display too. They had all collapsed off their feet after the large spell had ended. It was an impressive effect, but if the magic users are useless afterwards that seems like way too big of a demerit to me. Maybe magic isn¡¯t as great as I was hoping for. The soldiers were starting to return to their other duties, including a number coming back toward the keep so I knew I needed to get back to my room. ¡°Lynn, directions back to the room fast!¡± Lynn obliged, and little floating arrows started appearing in my vision ahead of me as I raced as quietly as I could through the halls. It only took me about a minute to get back to my room and I hurriedly went back inside and laid down on one of the bunks. About ten minutes after I laid down, doodle soldier showed up apparently with orders to ask if I required dinner and if so he¡¯d escort me to the mess hall. I thought the offer over but decided to decline. I could make a much better meal for Coa and myself here than whatever these soldiers were likely having. I told the soldier that I had eaten a small meal from my supplies while the fighting was going on and that I was going to go to bed shortly. He nodded and then left. Being careful about potential interruptions, I took out my cooking equipment and set it up on the other side of the bunk out of sight of the door. I simply cooked some meat and veggies, which the smell of, woke Coa up. I had been surprised when I realized that she had slept through the entire battle, including the very loud, explosive fireballs. She gets afraid of an old man simply looking somewhat at her, but then can sleep through explosions. What a silly child. Regardless of Coa¡¯s little quirks, the two of us enjoyed a nice quiet meal. As I guessed earlier it seems like this room is not in use by anyone, since even as it got later no soldier came to this room to sleep. I sensed soldiers moving into other rooms and going to sleep, but none of them came to this room or the ones on either side. After laying Coa down on the pillow, I had a discussion with Lynn about the magic we witnessed. Her opinion on it closely aligned with my own. That if that was the limit of magic, then it would be useless. I mean sure it might be cool to be able to throw fireballs or something but I have much more powerful guns that can easily duplicate what those Sorcerers did and won¡¯t exhaust me using them. We exchanged some theories back and forth for a while, but in the end we still don¡¯t have enough concrete details to really work with, so all our theories were nothing more than guesses. We¡¯ll need to collect information about magic and what it can accomplish now that we know for sure it exists. At least I¡¯m pretty confident now that I¡¯ve felt magic activating twice, that I should be able to detect attacks to help protect myself. I had no idea if my shield would actually defend against it or not and I didn¡¯t want to take a stupid chance and risk Coa or myself on letting magic hit me to test it. Lynn and I exchanged good nights and I settled down on the bunk with my head on the pillow next to Coa. The bed was very simple and kind of uncomfortable, and made me wish I dared to take out my bedroll to use instead. Thankfully, it had been a long day, so even with the poor bedding I fell asleep quite quickly. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I woke up groggily to the sound of a whining dragon. Opening my eyes, I saw Coa looking at me and she continued her begging sounds. I guess I should have expected as much from a young beast. I took out some food to appease her hunger. After she finished eating, she chirped happily before sighing and then climbing back to my neck to go back to sleep. I guess she prefers that spot over the pillow. I checked the time, and I guess it wasn¡¯t too early. Only about an hour until daybreak. I needed something to do to kill time because I don¡¯t think the soldiers would appreciate me wandering around on my own. Which reminds me of something I had forgotten to ask Lynn about last night. ¡°Hey Lynn, did you copy that map we saw in the room or were you too busy playing?¡± ¡°Of course I did, Mistress. I wouldn¡¯t let my leisure interfere with work. The map won¡¯t be that useful though.¡± She displayed it on my vision and connected it with the details we already knew. ¡°See, it just displays the general area along the mountain range. It doesn¡¯t even have that town that was mentioned to be a few days away on it.¡± I examined the map and was surprised that barely any of the mountains were in much detail. ¡°Either they never go into those mountains or they don¡¯t put much stock into accurate maps of it. I guess it¡¯s possible too that there are other maps of the mountain range in a different location. That map might be all the commander of a fort here needs. I wonder if that dungeon is actually known or not?¡± ¡°If I had to hazard a guess Mistress, I would assume it is. I¡¯m sure at some point people explored those mountains at least enough to find it. It¡¯s not like it was hidden anyway.¡± Lynn replied. ¡°That¡¯s true.¡± I decided to change topics. ¡°How is everything at the ship?¡± ¡°The digging has gone well. If the current pace is maintained, I¡¯d estimate about thirteen more days until the hangar is usable. The two drones have been constructed and they are currently on standby outside the ship. I believe that¡¯s all I have to report.¡± Lynn concluded. I sighed. I had hoped for a longer discussion. Soldiers wake up early though, don''t they? I shouldn¡¯t have to wait too long to leave this room, right? I tried to get comfortable again on the bed as I waited. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It took two and a half hours before a soldier, and this one wasn¡¯t doodle soldier but someone new, came and checked on me. During that time, I had gotten tired of waiting and had a light breakfast and changed into a fresh pair of clothes. The soldier, who appeared to be an elf if the ears were anything to go by, told me that Commander Astrell required to see me. I made sure to remember the name and I was curious why this soldier said it. The other soldiers had just called him commander and left out the rest. Maybe this guy just values the extra formality? Whatever. I followed him and to my not surprise, he led me to the same room I met the commander in the day before. Unlike the day before though, the room was not silent and I could hear an argument from the interior. ¡°What do you mean, you¡¯re sending me on messenger duty!? I refuse. Send one of the lower level scouts or hunters. It¡¯s what they¡¯re for. And why are you just nodding, Gormon? Don¡¯t just go along with stupid orders!¡± A very angry female voice was saying. The soldier I was with was looking awkward, like he wanted to knock on the door and yet didn¡¯t want to go anywhere near it. ¡°Now, now, calm down Seran. I have reasons for choosing the both of you for messenger duty.¡± The commander¡¯s voice was heard. I¡¯m surprised that he¡¯s willing to take that kind of disrespect from whoever that is. Usually refusing to follow orders in the military would be a big deal after all. It seems like, thanks to hearing the commander, the soldier I was with got his wits back and knocked on the door. ¡°Right on time! Come in.¡± The commander sounded relieved. The soldier ushered me to go ahead of him into the room. Inside were a female elf that was scowling and a human man that looked pretty dull and blank. The elf was quite attractive and I took a moment to appreciate her looks, especially her form fitting leather armor that displayed her slim curves nicely. She had her silver hair cut short, which was a bit of disappointment. I¡¯d always preferred girls with longer hair. She¡¯s definitely a 10 otherwise. Well, not like I have any intention of hooking up with her. Now that I was here, the commander continued. ¡°The two of you will also be escorting this young lady. She¡¯s a Beastmaster, but all her tamed beasts were slain except for the small dragon around her neck. You just need to take her along with you to Dawnwater. Nothing more complicated than that.¡± The elf, Seran I guess, was examining me with a thoughtful expression. She turned her attention back to the commander. ¡°I understand why you chose us now. Alright, I¡¯ll accept the mission then.¡± The commander merely nodded, and then passed her some sealed letters which she slipped into a pouch at her waist. She walked up to me and then introduced herself. ¡°I¡¯m Captain Serandelle. Feel free to call me Captain or Seran. The man behind me is Captain Gormon. He¡¯s easygoing, so call him whatever. We¡¯re both high level Scouts, so there will be no worries. Are you prepared to leave now?¡± I nodded. ¡°Yes, I¡¯m ready to go. By the way my name is Seri. Nice to meet the both of you and thank you in advance.¡± Seran looked surprised before asking, ¡°By chance was your mother or father an elf and were they the one to choose your name?¡± I was puzzled. Did that kind of thing matter here? What should I say? She obviously thinks I¡¯m part elf because of my ears. I guess I¡¯ll just go along with it? I can¡¯t see any possible harm in it. I¡¯d have to make up some kind of more detailed backstory eventually so might as well start with a bit now. ¡°Yes, my mother was an elf and she chose my name. Is there a problem-¡± I was interrupted by Seran rushing forward and embracing me in a tight hug. ¡°You must be a clan member¡¯s child then! How nice to meet family!¡± She gushed. What? Seriously, what!?
I kind of feel bad ending two chapters in a row like this. Sorry! Chapter 14 Author¡¯s Note: Another chapter arrives! Please enjoy it.
Chapter 14 It took ten minutes of Seran embracing me and asking me random questions about my family, without giving me a chance to even respond, before the three of us were kicked out of the commander¡¯s room. I noticed he had a huge smirk on his face as he did so too. Damn bastard must have known this was going to happen once I introduced myself! I¡¯m absolutely going to get revenge on him in some way later. Definitely! Seran kept hugging me as we walked through the halls and out of the keep. Coa was very unhappy about this state of affairs and wasn¡¯t sure what to do about this large person, well compared to me, suddenly being right on top of her. I was more surprised though, about a certain AI who was grumbling in my ear something about a thieving elf. I hadn¡¯t expected that kind of response from Lynn. I wasn¡¯t entirely sure if she was just being jealous or if there was something else involved though. In light of this, I made Seran release me, which judging by her immediate pout showed she was disappointed. At least she kept out of my personal space for the rest of the trip through the fortress. There was a slight detour with us swinging by their rooms to get their gear. Seran¡¯s gear included a long bow that definitely looked like what my imagination would picture as an ¡®elven bow¡¯. Seran noticed my examination of the bow, and took it for interest and said it was a family heirloom. Gormon¡¯s gear, on the other hand, was a much smaller bow and a pair of swords. Our destination outside of the keep was the stables. Apparently, because of my addition to this messenger duty, they were getting a horse for me to ride on since they didn¡¯t expect me to be able to keep up with the two of them. I was tempted to show that I could, but that would ruin my cover story so I opted to just go with it. I needed to get another Class eventually that the people of this world could understand so that I can explain my power. Well that¡¯s for further off in the future, but the most likely options would be to go for Warrior or maybe Hunter. Unless I learn of a better Class to get that suits my needs. Anyway, once they learned I had no idea how to ride a horse, Seran immediately volunteered to ride with me. I looked for some kind of support from Gormon to get out of this, but he was just standing there listlessly as if he wasn¡¯t even paying attention. I sighed and gave up. At least I saved myself a bit by getting to ride behind and hold onto Seran rather than in front of her as she was wanting. Coa didn¡¯t like the horse though. It took some urging for me to get her to calm down once I was astride it. We were finally underway and heading out of the fortress. Some of the soldiers saluted to our group, at least I assume the fist against their chest was a salute, as we passed by. Seran acknowledged the salutes but Gormon moved alongside the horse just as apathetic as ever. How does a guy like this manage to become a captain? Outside the fortress walls there were a number of soldiers dismantling what they could of the monster carcasses that weren¡¯t totally destroyed by the fire magic the previous evening. I wonder if they eat the meat from the monsters? Moving around the fortress, there was a small trail or maybe path that showed definite signs of wagons using it. Most likely the supply trains for the fortress. It was when we were starting to get some distance from the fortress when Seran called out to Gormon. ¡°Hey Gormon, why don¡¯t you take point? I know you¡¯d rather be doing things than meandering along at horse pace.¡± Gormon merely nodded, but I noticed that his eyes took on a more serious look and he shed that spiritless state as he ran ahead. What a gigantic change in character! The area around here was still pretty open and clear, so there wasn¡¯t much cover for any kind of monsters to ambush us but I guess it doesn¡¯t hurt to be prepared. He was at least keeping in sight so there wouldn¡¯t be a chance of us getting separated. I was really curious what level the two of them were by how nonchalant they were acting, but I can¡¯t risk using my terminal to scan them like this. Maybe I¡¯ll find a chance later. ¡°Now that the nuisance is gone, why don¡¯t we have a chat Seri?¡± Seran spoke up. Shit. ¡°Sure, what do you want to chat about?¡± ¡°How about family? I noticed you didn¡¯t appreciate it when I was asking all those questions so I¡¯m guessing you think I¡¯m wrong about us being related?¡± She asked. ¡°I think it¡¯s just a coincidence. I assume it¡¯s based on my name being similar to yours?¡± I replied. ¡°That¡¯s definitely part of it but you also said your mother, who was an elf, named you too. That adds more weight to it. Why don¡¯t you tell me your mother¡¯s name, then we¡¯ll know if it¡¯s really a coincidence or not?¡± Based on her tone of voice, she sounded like she was just humoring me while being confident about her own conclusion. I know that the naming sense seems to have something to do with ¡®S¡¯ names, maybe even more specifically ¡®Ser¡¯ names. So I need to make sure my fake mother¡¯s name is definitely something much different than either of our names. I think Lilienne would work? My real mom, or well Aaron¡¯s mom¡¯s name is Leanne, so it¡¯s close enough and sounds more elf like. What if there are other rules than just that though? I don¡¯t know if I should say it or not. Should I consider the positives or negatives to this? I mean Seran doesn¡¯t seem like a bad sort, so would it really be bad if she thinks we¡¯re family? I doubt I¡¯ll meet any of the other family members after I separate from her so it would only be a few days of interaction. Negatives? I¡¯m not sure if there are really any. At most Seran might write a letter to her family about me and my supposed mother. Damn. I really don¡¯t want to deal with these kind of misunderstandings. I really, really need to learn more about the culture and norms of this world so I don¡¯t make more mistakes in the future. Probably because of how long I was staying silent, Seran spoke up again. ¡°Hey, are you that afraid of just telling me your mother¡¯s name? If you are then I won¡¯t press you.¡± She¡¯s giving me an out? Ahh, what the hell, I¡¯ll just say the name I came up with. ¡°My mother¡¯s name is Lilienne.¡± Seran nodded. Oh, come on! Give me more reaction than that! Did the name pass it off as a coincidence or not? It was another minute before she finally responded. ¡°Well, I¡¯d say you¡¯re definitely related then. I don¡¯t recognize the name of your mother but she might be a child from one of the clan members that went off to be an adventurer in the past.¡± So even a much different name was no good? ¡°How did you arrive at that conclusion? I guess it has something to do with the names but my mother¡¯s name is much different than ours?¡± ¡°Oh, every elf clan has their own naming conventions. In our Ashleaf clan, females have names that begin with ¡®Li¡¯ or ¡®Se¡¯ and males have names that begin with ¡®Me¡¯ or ¡®To¡¯. Though more specifically a name like yours that starts with ¡®Ser¡¯ would mean you¡¯re more closely related to my branch in the clan. Your mother¡¯s name is a bit off for being from my branch though.¡± She explained. ¡°Well just keep it in mind for whenever you have kids of your own and want to use the naming convention to show their heritage.¡± I flinched at the thought of having kids. That¡¯s absolutely never going to happen. Even with the very limited memories I¡¯ve gotten so far from Seri, it¡¯s clear that she was attracted to girls just like Aaron was. So unless there is a magical way, which I¡¯m not going to rule out yet, for girls to get other girls pregnant, there¡¯s no chance of that happening. Well, there were ways for that in certain backstory elements of the game I had been playing, but Lullaby doesn¡¯t have any of that kind of specialized medical equipment. Even if I was interested in pursuing that topic though, which I¡¯m not, it would take a variety of materials that I never stored on the ship anyway. ¡°Yeah, alright. I¡¯ll keep that in mind.¡± I replied in a monotone voice. Seran merely laughed at my reply. ¡°It¡¯s fine, fine! I know how it is to be young, though with what looks like elf and demon blood, you¡¯re not as young as you appear. Always seeing kids as something that would never happen. Well, I¡¯m not one that can preach on that subject though, 212 years old and I still haven¡¯t had one myself.¡± I decided to fish a bit for information. ¡°So, it¡¯s not a problem that I¡¯m mixed blood?¡± Seran shrugged. ¡°Some clans might see a problem with it but most of us that live here in the empire wouldn¡¯t. There¡¯s always some old geezers that complain about ¡®weakening the bloodlines¡¯ and that kind of crap. Just don¡¯t visit the elf kingdom and you¡¯ll be fine. The elves there would probably kill you on sight. Well, they kill basically any non elf on sight, the accursed assholes.¡± She spoke in a really bitter tone for that last bit and I wondered why. Some personal history maybe? Probably wouldn¡¯t appreciate if I asked about it. ¡°Where is the elf kingdom then?¡± I might end up having to go there regardless of the warning if they have what I need to repair Lullaby. ¡°It¡¯s pretty far off to the south-east. Way beyond empire territory. I visited there once when I was a young adventurer.¡± Seran answered. ¡°I¡¯ll make sure to stay away from there then.¡± I assured her. I decided to take a risk and ask a different question. I wasn¡¯t sure if it existed, but with how game like the world has been so far, I think it¡¯s a fair assumption. ¡°Is there an adventurer¡¯s guild branch in the city we¡¯re heading to? I need to get a replacement ID.¡± The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Of course. With how close the Nothar mountains are, not to mention the Forgotten Woods to the north of it, Dawnwater gets good traffic from adventurers.¡± She replied in the positive, thankfully. ¡°What is the Forgotten Woods?¡± I asked, curious. ¡°It¡¯s a low level dungeon that¡¯s actually managed by the guild. A lot of the new adventurers in the empire head there for practice and early leveling.¡± She explained. That was somewhat interesting. Would a level 30 Beastmaster be considered too high level for it? I still wanted to check out a dungeon so I might take a small detour to go see it. Interrupting my thoughts, Seran continued. ¡°The most popular dungeon in the empire is definitely the Trial in the capital though. Every adventurer wishes to be the one to conquer that dungeon but so far no one has gotten anywhere near managing that. There¡¯s so many rumors about what might be at the end too.¡± My interest was diverted. I¡¯d definitely be visiting that capital at some point. ¡°What is special about that dungeon?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a tower that reaches up into the sky. The inside of the tower is much larger than the outside would make you expect too. The highest recorded floor conquered is floor 29. No one is sure how many floors there actually are. My record from when I was an adventurer was floor 20. I¡¯m pretty proud of that. Not many can manage to get past floor 15.¡± She boasted. I took a moment to glance around at our surroundings. We were currently passing over a small hill and we¡¯re still totally out in an open field. Gormon is also still running around ahead of us, though I think I just saw him shoot something with his bow. Is there anything else I can ask about? Oh, I know a good question that I was wondering about last night. ¡°Why do those monsters attack the fortress? It seems like even they would realize it was a waste of time and go elsewhere. Oh, if it¡¯s not some kind of secret that is.¡± ¡°That¡¯s definitely not any kind of secret. I thought just about everyone uses it, though it¡¯s not completely perfect. It¡¯s just an enchantment on the walls. Two of them really. One to draw monsters like a lure and the second to make monsters enraged upon seeing the walls to make sure they attack. Most towns have the opposite kind of enchantments on their walls, ones to ward monsters away and to make them less aggressive. Determined enough monsters can still get through though.¡± Seran explained. That¡¯s a pretty creative use of magic. I think I¡¯m growing more interested in the enchantment side of magic than the firepower side. Those status orbs and that oath paper thing are probably enchantments used in some way. That stupid light I never figured out back in the inn was probably just enchanted as well. Yep, I¡¯ve decided. Let¡¯s try to learn enchanting type magic and skip out on the firepower. I wonder what kind of effects I could create if I used it with some of my tech. Would that be possible? <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> While I daydreamed our ride continued. We stopped for a small meal around midday before continuing on. It wasn¡¯t much, just basic travel rations, but I was surprised that the bag that Seran had tied to the horse¡¯s saddle was one of those bags of holding. The bag was nowhere near big enough for what she took out of it. Coa especially didn¡¯t like those travel rations but she had been getting spoiled on my food anyway. Gormon was back to his apathetic self while we ate, though I noticed he had a few rabbits tied to his belt now. Seran seemed fine to let us ride in silence if I didn¡¯t have anything to talk about. Lynn was also totally silent. She probably was going to not say anything until I can actually respond to her again. I was too busy thinking of all the possibilities of magic and tech combined. Well, I was hoping for some amazingly, awesome things to be possible. It might turn out that they¡¯re totally incompatible, which wouldn¡¯t be much fun. Around sundown, we started making camp. Seran was impressed that I had ridden a horse the whole day my first time riding and was fine. I could only assume this was a result of my stats, though I hadn¡¯t ever pushed myself to see how physically capable and flexible this body was. I was surprised by the kinds of things coming out of Seran¡¯s small bag. In about ten minutes the camp was fully set up with a tent and everything. I asked about why there was only one tent, but apparently it was because Gormon prefers not lying down to sleep and Seran and I will share the tent, well outside of night watch. I get to sleep the whole night, but Seran and Gormon are going to swap in the middle of the night. The big moment came when Seran created a small fire on her hand and used it to light the campfire. If that wasn¡¯t enough, I watched as she filled some small pots with water as well. I hadn¡¯t expected either of them to use magic with how much they appeared to be more physical based classes, so I decided to take advantage of this development. ¡°Seran, can you please teach me how to do that? That seems really useful and I¡¯ve never had a chance to learn magic like that.¡± I pleaded. Seran looked a bit embarrassed. ¡°I mean I can, but I can¡¯t really do anything much. This is just about my limit. You¡¯d learn a lot more from a proper magic Class like a Sorceress or Witch.¡± I took note of the names for the classes. I had seen Sorcerers at the fortress but a Witch was something new. ¡°That¡¯s totally fine! Just the basics like that is good enough.¡± ¡°Alright then. I¡¯ll teach you a bit after supper and before bed.¡± Seran replied. She turned back to setting up the rabbits over the fire. Gormon had wandered off again at some point but he came back a few minutes later with a bundle of herbs to add to the dinner list. I¡¯d never had roasted rabbit before and it wasn¡¯t too bad. The herbs helped for seasoning. Coa enjoyed having meat rather than more of those bread wafer things we had for lunch. Finally dinner was over and it was time for instruction. Gormon was leaning against a tree and already asleep since he was going to be taking second watch. Seran and I were sitting facing each other next to the campfire. She still had her bow at hand ready if something should come though. ¡°So what do you know about magic? Have you ever learned anything or should I start at the beginning?¡± She asked. ¡°Please start from the beginning.¡± I answered. ¡°Alright. Well, to use magic the first step is to recognize your own inner magic power. After you¡¯ve become able to do that, the next step is to attune it to the ambient magic around us. Usually at this point you would attune it to a specific element to produce the effect you were looking for. For example you would attune to the ambient fire element to produce a fireball. Of course if you have enough inner power you can avoid the need to use the ambient magic and produce it just out of your inner reserves. Most higher level magic users do this. So we¡¯ll start with helping you to find your own magic power. Then afterwards I¡¯ll show you how to attune yourself to fire and water elements. If we finish those two, I¡¯ll show you how to do light as well, but that¡¯s all I know how to use.¡± Seran explained. She took off her gloves. ¡°Now, take off your own gloves and take my hands. I¡¯ll send a small pulse of magic into you and with that you¡¯ll be able to locate your own magic power. It should react to my energy. It could take a few tries but this is the necessary initial step.¡± So there is magic in the air around us going by her explanation. I can¡¯t sense it or anything like I could when I saw magic actually being used. Well, there are ways I can possibly study that later, time for more important things. I nodded and took my gloves off. I also switched off my shield since if we¡¯re touching skin to skin that would get in the way. I reached out toward her and she took my hands, but she stopped when she saw the markings on them. She looked at me confused but I only gave her a bitter smile hoping she wouldn¡¯t ask. Thankfully, she didn¡¯t. She took my hands, closed her eyes and then a few moments later I felt a weird ripple go through me. It was like an itchy feeling inside that started at my hands and then went to my chest and down to my feet before going back up and stopping at my head before dissipating. I didn¡¯t feel anything inside me react to it though. Seran repeated the process a few times and it was the same every time. She seemed to be confused about why I wasn¡¯t having any success. I was growing reasonably confident that it might be because I simply don¡¯t have any inner magic power. Afterall I¡¯m not a person from this world, so why was I thinking I¡¯d get to use magic? Was it just because I got the Beastmaster class so easily that I assumed I would be compatible with everything from this new world? Seran was trying to reassure me that sometimes it was just more difficult for some to grasp this but I wasn¡¯t really listening. I went into the tent and slipped under the blanket feeling pretty dejected. Chapter 15 Author¡¯s Note: So another chapter has appeared. In other happy news, I received fanart from a reader! The fanart is so good that I decided I¡¯m going to be using it as my story cover. If you¡¯re interested feel free to check the main page for my story to see it. If you¡¯re interested in the full size image then here have a link. http://imgur.com/a/ZIyCm Isn''t it amazing? It is, right? Please enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 15 I woke up in a foul mood. My dreams had been very clear and it was as if they were mocking me. Making me experience Seri¡¯s memories of her never giving up on a task just because at first it seemed impossible. Damn dreams, this isn¡¯t the same type of situation at all! I don¡¯t see how just trying harder would change my lack of inner magic! I calmed myself down. Possibly, I was being too hasty giving up after only one night. I might just have to give it more tries, and if it doesn¡¯t work out maybe there are other methods to use that might give me a mana pool. If all else fails maybe I can find a magic user willing to try stuff for me. That would come with pretty gigantic risks though, which makes it an all around unattractive option. I felt a hot breath on my ear and was finally completely pulled out of my thoughts.and truly awake. I turned my head and found myself face to face with Seran. I realized that when I went to sleep last night I had made the mistake of not turning my shield back on first. This explains, at least partly, why I now have a supermodel level beauty clinging to me very closely. How the heck did I wake up and not immediately notice I was being used as a cuddle pillow? I peeked under the blanket and saw that she definitely wasn¡¯t wearing all that much. She must have taken her armor off to sleep. Well, I couldn¡¯t fault her for that at least. I had stripped down to just my dress to sleep in, too. The temperature on this side of the mountain range seems a bit warmer than on the kingdom side. Coa wasn¡¯t around my neck or on top of me though, so I glanced around. I saw her curled up sleeping a small distance away from me. She must have escaped when Seran took me as a pillow. At least she didn¡¯t wake me up this morning with hunger cries, which is a bit surprising now that I think about it. Up until now she¡¯s eaten almost every six hours, and judging by how light it is, it¡¯s definitely past dawn already. Maybe Seran or Gormon fed her for me while I was asleep? I¡¯ll ask about that later if I remember. First things first, I need to figure out how I want to deal with Seran. I don¡¯t have much problem with being held by a beautiful woman. Seran doesn¡¯t even smell bad surprisingly! If anything this is a very happy situation to find myself in, but the way she¡¯s pressing against me is causing some feelings in my body that are making me a bit uncomfortable. I believe that I might be starting to feel aroused in the female sense. I thought I was getting used to being a girl, and the memories of Seri¡¯s life have definitely helped, but these particular feelings are a bit too much for me to process right now. I think I need to get out of here and cool down. If I don¡¯t, I might make a move on Seran and that would really make things awkward. I slowly eased Seran¡¯s arms off of me and slipped out of her hold. I was being extra careful not to wake her up. I slid out of the blanket and then put the extra blanket that had been serving as my pillow in her arms instead. She clutched on to it as tightly as she had been holding me, but showed no signs of awakening and I sighed in relief. I slipped on my boots and rest of my clothes, then picked up Coa and wrapped her around my neck. After she was back in place, I clicked the button on my shield to reactivate it. I pushed the flap of the tent up and stepped out. Judging by the sun¡¯s position, it¡¯s probably an hour or two after dawn. Gormon was sitting by the remains of the fire and to my surprise it looked like he was making wood carvings. He had a small number of completed works sitting next to him. The horse was tied up and grazing not too far from him. I walked over toward him. He stopped his carving and then nodded at me before speaking. ¡°Asleep.¡± What? What is this guy talking about? I think this is the first time I¡¯ve heard him say anything. ¡°No, I¡¯m awake obviously. I don¡¯t need to sleep anymore.¡± I replied. Gormon shook his head and then pointed at the tent before repeating. ¡°Asleep.¡± I looked at the tent again. The only one in there was Seran and oh, I understand what he is saying now. I answered, ¡°Yes, Seran is still asleep. I didn¡¯t want to wake her, but should I?¡± He shook his head slightly before going back to his carving. I guess I shouldn¡¯t expect any further conversation from him. I reached toward one of his carvings and he made no move to stop me so I picked one up at random. It looked like one of those bear creatures I saw back in the mountain. It was surprisingly detailed too for the size. The others were of a variety of beasts, but all were very well done. One of them in particular caught my eye. It was a feathered serpent dragon like Coa, though the carving was an adult judging by the spread wing span. I wonder if Coa inspired this piece. I sat it back down with the others after examining it for a while. To my surprise, I noticed that Gormon had been watching me. He picked up the small dragon carving I had just put down and handed it to me. I took it from him and asked, ¡°Does this mean you¡¯re giving this to me?¡± He nodded. ¡°Thanks, I appreciate it.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure if I was being too brief in the thanks or not but he looked somewhat satisfied, his facial expression hardly changes, and he went back to his work. I examined the carving again, but I was pretty happy with the small item. I¡¯d have to put it on one of the shelves back in my room. I definitely had some empty space since not everything on my shelves had been able to be reconstructed. I grimaced a bit at that thought. I had lost some neat trophies and memorabilia. I passed the time until Seran woke up just relaxing by watching the sky and thinking about the magic training from last night. I wanted to discuss with Lynn but I can¡¯t speak aloud without looking crazy. If I had some pen and paper I could write and she could read and respond but at most right now I could only write in the dirt a few words at a time. That would be really too slow for any kind of conversation. It¡¯s not too bad if it¡¯s just to give Lynn an order though. I turned away from Gormon, I doubted he¡¯d be able to read what I wrote but no reason to take any chances. I don¡¯t want to trigger some ¡®You can use the ancient language!¡¯ flag. I picked up a small twig from the ground and wrote. [Lynn, can you find some way to test for this supposed magic energy that is in the air? If it really exists like Seran said, then there should be some evidence of it you can find.] <((If you have paid money and bought this story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.This story is only hosted for free on royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual.))> Lynn replied, ¡°I¡¯m not sure Mistress. It might take a while to develop and it might require using some of the materials we don¡¯t want to waste.¡± I wrote some more. [Just let me know if that should be the case. Don¡¯t use any of them without giving me heads up. Otherwise, I¡¯m aware it could take some time but I think it is important. I have a hypothesis that this ambient magic might be why our drone got destroyed when it went too high. Maybe it¡¯s denser in the upper atmosphere. If this is the case then we¡¯ll need to find a way to shield the ship from it before we can leave. Another thing on the priority list.] I sighed after finishing. Lynn giggled in my ear. ¡°It¡¯s fine Mistress, we¡¯ll absolutely get there eventually. I¡¯ll go get started on this now.¡± [Good luck, Lynn] I wrote. Afterwards I made sure to erase all leftover evidence of the conversation. Writing only a few words at a time and then erasing made that take a long time. I was surprised that Seran still wasn¡¯t awake though. Her and Gormon are quite a huge contrast to each other. Somehow, I feel like the both of them cause lots of issues for the commander back in the fort. Maybe he intentionally chose them to get rid of of them for a week and my presence just made an excuse for it? Well regardless, I kind of wish she¡¯d get her butt up already. I¡¯m getting hungry and she¡¯s the cook of the party since I can¡¯t use my stuff. Thinking of us as a party makes me wonder if there are actual parties as in how it would work in a game. Another damn thing to test or learn about later. Anyway, I¡¯m going to wake her up. I stood up, walked over to the tent and lifted the flap to look inside. Seran was now sprawled across the blankets and I stepped around her closer to her head. I bent down and whispered into one of her long ears. ¡°Seran, wake up.¡± Then I blew into it. She shot up so fast that I almost couldn¡¯t believe it. Her hand was covering the ear I had just blown into too. Maybe elves have really sensitive ears? I¡¯ll file that away for potentially useful information, especially since it could be used in a number of ways. She was looking at me like she was still half asleep and not really aware of what was going on. I decided to clue her in. ¡°Seran, it¡¯s time to wake up. Gormon and I have been waiting on you for over an hour now.¡± The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. She was blinking rapidly before she shook herself. She spoke but her voice still had a drowsy tinge to it. ¡°Right, I¡¯ll get dressed and make breakfast.¡± I had to help her with the getting dressed part, and Gormon had a shocked expression on his face when he saw her follow me out of the tent. Did he expect her to sleep for that long? It took Seran a while but eventually we had breakfast, which Coa just happened to wake up for, not surprisingly. Unlike the night before, I helped with packing up the tent and we were once again traveling along what passed for a road. I had some ideas so I decided to consult with Seran to pass the time. ¡°Hey Seran, about the magic lesson from last night-¡± I started but Seran quickly interrupted me. ¡°There¡¯s no reason to worry! Everyone has magic so we¡¯ll just continue more later. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll get it if we keep trying!¡± Seran assured me. ¡°That wasn¡¯t what I was going to say.¡± I laughed and continued. ¡°I wanted to know how a magic pulse was supposed to feel? You said I should feel it react with my own inner mana but I¡¯m curious exactly what that sensation should feel like.¡± ¡°Oh, I¡¯m happy you¡¯re not giving up already. It should feel like a vibration in your body at a certain point. Your mana pool can actually reside in different places, though the common area to find it is in your torso. Mine is right by my heart, Gormon is quite rare in that his is in his left arm. He doesn¡¯t have much mana though. Actually, you should probably keep where your mana pool is located to yourself as much as possible. It can be a pretty easily exploited weakness if it¡¯s known. Well the vast majority of the time it¡¯s in the torso like I said, so most magic users get targeted there.¡± ¡°Does the location matter?¡± I asked. I was curious why she hadn¡¯t brought this up last night in her explanation. ¡°Not a bit. It may create a very small difference in moving mana from say an arm to the hand but the difference has actually been studied by various Sorcerers and found to be completely negligible. Size of the pool isn¡¯t affected by where it is either.¡± Seran answered. ¡°All I felt when we did the pulse was a tingly feeling that went through my body and then eventually stopped at my head.¡± I said. ¡°Maybe your mana pool is located in your head then? The mana pulse should have spread throughout your body equally before fading, not stopped at any point.¡± She added. My head? I suppose it might be possible that my psi interfered with it or possibly she¡¯s right and my mana pool is there in my head? Maybe I can use my psi to study the pulse as it flows through me. It might give me some more insight about this. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll focus more on that tonight when we try again. I had another topic that I wanted to discuss with you. I know I am receiving a big favor with the magic tutoring since I¡¯m already being escorted for free, but you said that you and Gormon were high level Scouts. I¡¯m in need of training in a Class that I can use right now, since with no beasts I¡¯m not much of a Beastmaster. Could I receive some training along those lines too?¡± Seran was silent for a while before responding. ¡°I could teach you, but Scout requires you having reached level 30 as a Hunter and I¡¯m guessing you don¡¯t have that? Teaching you the basics to be a Hunter wouldn¡¯t be that difficult if you¡¯re interested in that.¡± That¡¯s really valuable information she just gave me. Classes unlock further Classes on this world? Does Beastmaster have a higher level Class? That also explains the soldiers in the fort having the Classes they did. Thinking about the commander I decided to ask. ¡°What about being a Knight?¡± ¡°That Class requires being a level 40 Warrior. Neither Gormon or I could help you get that though.¡± She answered. Wow, that means the commander had leveled at least four Classes. Pretty impressive. ¡°Nah, I was just curious. My knowledge about Classes is a bit bare I suppose since I was always just satisfied with only being a Beastmaster.¡± I said. Seran confidently replied. ¡°Hunter should suit a Beastmaster like yourself since you¡¯ll learn how to trap animals and attack from afar with a bow. Alright, I¡¯ll teach you some of the basics at lunch!¡± The rest of the time spent until lunch was just mainly idle conversation. I tried to direct questions to gather information about places in the empire and Seran in turn tried to ask questions about my family and my adventuring. Of course, I had to make up lots of details and be vague about others. I was pretty honest in describing my childhood, Aaron¡¯s childhood anyway after I edited sufficiently it to fit this world. Seran was quite happy to hear all this kind of stuff, the only problem was that the talk made her interested in meeting my family and insisting that I visit the town where the Ashleaf Clan primarily lives while I¡¯m in the empire. I told her I¡¯d think about it. We ended up having a late lunch. Seran started coaching me on how to make some simple animal traps. We started with a snare and she even helped me catch a small rabbit with it. I was praised for the accomplishment but I¡¯m pretty sure Seran had more to do with why the rabbit went into the trap. After that she showed me a few more variations of snares that are possible to use before displaying a simple weight trap. She told me that she¡¯d continue the lecture later with details of how to construct pitfall traps. In the afternoon, the road entered a forest and I learned that the rest of the way we¡¯d be traveling through it. I was assured that no monster above level 20 lived in it. Seran asked me if I wanted to take the time to tame some, but I told her that I¡¯d rather spend the time with the Hunter and magic tutoring. Which is what we did when we finally stopped for the night. Seran wanted to teach me how to use a bow, but her longbow was a bit too awkward to use due to my small size. Gormon refused to let me try his shortbow too. After being taught about traps for a while, we moved on to the magic training. Or well, that was what I expected to happen immediately afterwards. Seran took me into the tent and conjured up some water to use and we cleaned ourselves. That was a bit of a problematic experience for me since Seran¡¯s body was fully on display. She didn¡¯t seem to have the slightest problem being pretty much naked with me. I ignored her as well as I could and at least this explained her general cleanliness. I had been a bit surprised by it earlier after all. I guess when you can freely conjure up fresh clean water, it¡¯s not too hard to do though. After we were done, Seran dried out the ground a bit before spreading out the thick blankets. After that we went back out of the tent to do my anticipated magic training. To take advantage of my idea from earlier in the day, I swapped my Ranger class to Empath. Empath was best when it came to using psi for things like messing with the body. It was possible to use it to speed up the body¡¯s natural healing among other options like buffing it. Well Empath had been the support class in game so it was understandable that it had these abilities available. I rarely used it for them though, opting to instead use it for other reasons such as my mental links. Seran and I were now once again holding hands. ¡°Alright, are you ready? I¡¯m going to send the mana now.¡± I nodded and then sent my psi sense into my body. This time, I watched the odd energy as it went around every inch of my body and then dissipated upon reaching my head. There wasn¡¯t a vibration or anything but there was still some kind of reaction there. It might just be the mana being interfered with by my psi overloaded brain though. The next attempt I decided to take a more active response to the magic pulse. I reached and tried, instead of letting it run around my body, to gather it all together in one place. It worked for a brief moment before rebounding and energy went wild inside of me for a moment. I felt really dizzy all of a sudden and fell forward into Seran. A glance upwards with my eyes told me she was really concerned about the reaction. ¡°Are you alright? What happened?¡± She asked. ¡°Nothing, just a weird reaction happened. Can we try again?¡± I pleaded. ¡°Just one or two more times. I don¡¯t want to push you too much. I¡¯ve never seen someone have a reaction like that to a little mana.¡± She said. I didn¡¯t bother explaining what was really going on of course. The next two times went about the same way though I managed to hide the rebound reaction better so Seran was willing to let me have a fifth attempt tonight before bed. This time I decided rather than trying to hold all of the magic pulse, I was going to hold onto only a small portion of it. It was a success. The rest of the pulse went through me and then disappeared but this small fraction of it was still sitting there intact inside my body. I excused myself to go to bed in the tent and left Seran on her watch. After getting under the blankets, I started playing with the mana inside me. I started moving it by my own control through my body. I surprisingly even managed to move it into my head without issue this time. Maybe because the mana was directly under my psi¡¯s control? Doing that caused something amazing to happen. I felt a small, almost impossible to notice vibration. If I hadn¡¯t been looking closely for something like it, there would have been no way I¡¯d have caught it. I let the mana get closer to that reaction and then the mana broke apart and disappeared but as it did I felt whatever it was grow in size ever so slightly. I had no way to be sure, but I believed this was the start of my very own mana pool. I went to sleep in a much better mood than the previous night. Chapter 16 Author¡¯s Note: I don¡¯t really have anything to say here. Next chapter might not be in three days. I might need an extra day or two to write it but we¡¯ll see. Please enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 16 Today, I woke up feeling frustrated, uncomfortable and troubled. The source of this mood was because of my latest bout of dreams and I absolutely knew who was to blame for these dreams. I turned my head and gazed at Seran, who was once again cuddling me like I was a pillow. How did she even manage that? I definitely know I made sure to turn my shield back on before bed this time. I did, right? After checking quickly, it was indeed the case that my shield was on. It seemed like Seran was just holding me primarily around my clothed body. She¡¯s also too deeply asleep to notice my shield deflecting her away from any actual bodily contact when she adjusts. She¡¯s even closer to me than yesterday, and the memories of those dreams are not helping right now at all! I knew that type of memories would show up eventually, but I hadn¡¯t expected or wanted them so soon. I wished they had never shown up at all! The last thing I wanted to experience was Seri¡¯s relationship with some of her girlfriends. I had sex in those damn dreams! Sex with other girls, but still it was sex as a girl! Oh fuck, why me!? Why did I have to make Seri a girl!? It had all been so uncomplicated at the time when I was creating the character. I had played a young elf boy in my previous game and Carol had likewise played a young elf girl and we had decided to play opposite gender for the next game. Carol cheated a bit with choosing the robot race. She could have freely made herself look like a girl at anytime if she just changed her parts. Of course, as far as I¡¯m aware she never did so at least. I was also a bit bothered by the sheer number of girlfriends it seemed like Seri had had. I know Seri is, or well I am now, 62 years old, but I never expected her to have had that many girlfriends. Even Holly turned out to be one! Weren¡¯t you cradle robbing a bit there Seri? She was over forty years younger than me! Was the reason for Seri having a lot of girlfriends, my flirting around when I had played the game? I couldn¡¯t do more than flirt and maybe a casual date here and there, but for Seri I guess this had led to other things happening. It seems like Seri had never stuck with any one girl for very long, or she had kept the relationship casual with no chance of ever becoming a serious long-term thing. Maybe the most amusing memory was that one of the girlfriends had broken up with me, I mean Seri, because she said that she was jealous of Lynn and Seri¡¯s relationship and closeness. What did you expect, you stupid girl. Lynn and I have been together for decades and she thought she could get between us? Wait, stop! I¡¯m letting myself get too drawn into the memories because of my current mood. I tried to calm down, but could only fail miserably because of the way too sexy elf currently cuddling me. I needed to make an urgent escape as soon as possible. Like the day before I slipped out of the bed but this time I didn¡¯t bother being careful about it. I don¡¯t think the deep sleeping Seran would have waken up regardless of what I did. I went over to my pack and pulled out one of my thermos. I poured some of the ice cold water into a cup and then splashed it into my face. Ahh, that was refreshing and it definitely helped with my current issue. I don¡¯t feel quite as high strung now. I slipped the thermos back away and then proceeded to get fully dressed. I picked up Coa and put her in her usual spot before leaving the tent. After leaving the tent I got a bit of a surprise. There were a few wolf carcasses lying around nearby. Apparently an attack had happened last night while I slept. Judging by what Seran had said about the level of monsters in these woods though, they must have been pretty weak things. Isn¡¯t there a problem to have the bodies just lying there though? Won¡¯t the bodies draw in more monsters looking for food? I suppose it doesn¡¯t matter if you¡¯re confident enough in your ability to handle things. Gormon knows more about this area than I do, so he knows whether it¡¯s a real risk or not. Gormon, just like the previous morning, was sitting by the remains of the fire carving at something. The horse was tied up near him, which he probably did to make sure he could protect it in the night. I wasn¡¯t sure what he was working on, but it definitely wasn¡¯t a small, little carving such as the stuff yesterday. I wasn¡¯t sure what it was from where I was standing at the tent opening, so I decided to get closer to see. It looked like he was carving at a long stick. I wasn¡¯t really sure what it was he was making but I decided to leave him to it and not interrupt. I wasn¡¯t in any kind of rush to go wake up Seran. I wanted to stay away from her sleeping self and put any thought of those dreams out of my head. Seriously, what dreams might you be talking about? I don¡¯t remember any dreams last night. Nope, I didn¡¯t have any dreams at all. I passed the time playing with Coa. I noticed she was starting to have small cracks in some of her scales. I wondered if this was a sign of growth. I got her to stretch out to her full length and I estimated that she had grown four or five centimeters. The problem was that Coa found the cracks painful judging by her whining cries, but I wasn¡¯t sure what I should do for them. I wrote out the question to Lynn, but she had no idea either. This wasn¡¯t much of a surprise since it¡¯s not like I ever put information about pet care in the ship¡¯s core. Hopefully, Gormon or Seran would be able to tell me what to do. If not, hopefully someone in the town knows what to do for her. At least the time spent playing with Coa reminded me of something I needed to do before we got to the town. I opened my status and switched my active title from Sniper Princess to the title I had gotten for taming her, Dragon Tamer. That might still stand out, but at least it was a title that should be easily understood by people here without them kicking up too much of a fuss. It was guaranteed that I¡¯d have to use more of those status orbs in the future. Unless I learn of a way of tricking them and hiding my information, I¡¯d just have to make sure the information they see is as straightforward as possible. I really hope there isn¡¯t a way for one of those orbs to see beyond just my active title. Some of those would be really damn difficult to explain away, if not outright impossible. I definitely wouldn¡¯t want to try to explain how I got a title like Titan Slayer or how about Mercenary Goddess? I don¡¯t even want to imagine how that commander would have reacted if I had that one set displayed. Coa finally curled back up and went to sleep in my lap. I kept stroking her small head while I looked up and watched the clouds go by. Judging by how yesterday went, it¡¯s probably going to be hours until Seran wakes up. How does a soldier get away with this kind of slacking or is she only doing it because she knows she can get away with since she¡¯s away from the fort? Well, I¡¯m not really going to complain about it too much. I much prefer this kind of casual atmosphere than what I would have gotten if my escorts had been the too serious types. Plus, I don¡¯t think I could have gotten these free lessons otherwise. I should probably consider owing a favor to Seran at least. I¡¯m pretty sure about what kind of favor she¡¯d request too, meeting her clan. To Gormon¡¯s and my astonishment, Seran woke up by herself only an hour later. Of course her clothes were totally in disarray as she stumbled out of the tent, but she had woken up by herself this time! Maybe she has a subordinate at the fort that takes care of her in the morning because she wasn¡¯t like this that morning when we left. Or maybe her irritability with the commander had been more due to being forced to wake up early rather than actually complaining about the mission like it had seemed. Well regardless, I helped straighten out her clothes and then also helped her with breakfast. After breakfast, I finally discovered what Gormon had been working on. He had made a shortbow for me along with a small bundle of arrows. It was pretty crude but it would be adequate enough for me to practice with. I thanked him pretty profusely, but in his usual fashion he didn¡¯t react much. I consulted with Seran and Gormon about Coa¡¯s scales and I was told that she needed some oil to coat the cracks, but that it wasn¡¯t anything to worry about. Seran added that I should be able to find the oil in a shop in town once we get there and I felt relieved after hearing that. Coa would probably be relieved too if she was smart enough to understand, but sadly she¡¯s still fundamentally a child. Once we were again continuing our journey, I decided to direct questions specifically about the town that we would reaching tomorrow. Questions like for example, how large of a town it is or does the town have a library. From these questions I learned that the town sadly does not have a library which means my hope of finding easily accessible writing samples and information is out. I¡¯d have to hope to find some samples some other way. Maybe the adventurer¡¯s guild will have the usual request board? If it does, then that should provide a decent variety for Lynn to analyze. The size of the town, Seran estimated it to be over thirty thousand residents. I was honestly surprised by this. Wouldn¡¯t a population that high make it a city by medieval standards? Looks like the town was based on that large lake I had seen off in the distance back at the mountains and it has a navigable river it uses to conduct trade. I was also told the fastest way to get to the empire¡¯s capital was to use one of the merchant ships that makes the trip regularly. Because the town is one of the first stops for trade caravans coming from the kingdom I had just left. Many people, merchants included, use it for that very reason. I guess I did end up saving some time after all, even if I did end up losing it on this current travel speed. Plus the fact that there is a low level dungeon less than a day away from the town means that many adventurers are in residence too. The town was sounding like a good place to make a temporary base, at least for a few days. Following that, I think I¡¯ll head for the capital, that¡¯s probably the only place to find a library for information gathering. I¡¯ll probably avoid the boat ride though. I always got seasick as Aaron so I¡¯m hesitant to go anywhere near that mode of transportation unless I have no other choice. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. At lunch, I started learning how to use my new bow. It wasn¡¯t very complicated, and with my high stats I picked it up pretty quickly. Of course, I had to make sure to tone down my abilities quite a bit. It wouldn¡¯t make sense for me to have absolutely no problem hitting the target Seran designated for me, on a tree that was about twenty meters away, within thirty minutes of picking up the bow. I made sure to miss much more often than I was hitting and I felt bad hearing Seran praise me for how well I was doing. She told me that as long as I get some more practice in and replace the bow and arrows with suitable ones I should have no problem fighting with it which should award me the Hunter class. The only thing I was missing to unlock the Class was that it was necessary for me to kill some beasts with the bow, since I already trapped one successfully. With bow instruction finished, we got back on the road. We had some mild excitement when a pack of wolves attacked, but Seran and Gormon easily dispatched the dozen of them in under a minute. I took advantage of this to finally ask Seran and Gormon for their levels since I had been unable to find a good time to scan them safely, though I suppose with how deeply Seran sleeps I could have scanned her at any time in the morning after I woke up. Regardless, both of them were past level 60 in the Scout Class with Hunter exceeding level 40 as their Subclass. I was kind of surprised to learn that Gormon was actually higher in level than Seran. I had assumed that as a 212 year old elf, that she¡¯d be the one with a higher level. That night we continued our magic practice with Seran still helping me to find my mana pool. I used my psi to manipulate the magic power that she inserted into me and to feed that tiny node that I had felt the previous night. I had noticed that it seemed slightly larger than when I examined it previously so maybe it was growing naturally over time the longer I spend on this world? The growth rate was dreadfully slow though. I didn¡¯t know how long this process would take and I wasn¡¯t sure how I was going to continue the training after Seran and I separate tomorrow. Maybe I can practice looking for and manipulating the ambient magic with my psi? At least it¡¯s an idea with fun possibilities for the future. I went to bed quite happily afterwards but this time I tried to set up some extra bulwark with the blankets between me and where Seran will be when she comes to bed. I¡¯m pretty sure it¡¯s going to end up useless in the end though. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Of course, I woke up once again in Seran¡¯s embrace. I didn¡¯t really expect otherwise, and if I had been that against it, I could have just said something to her. I repeated the actions I had taken the previous days and once again left the tent to find Gormon carving again. No surprises there either. Unlike the previous days, this morning I tried to engage him in conversation. Yeah, that was a complete and total failure. I don¡¯t think he understands that you can¡¯t just nod or shake your head to everything. The sum total of information I acquired in that fruitless endeavor was that we would probably reach the town around noon, which was pretty good news. We probably would have reached the town yesterday evening if it wasn¡¯t for all the tutoring I was being given taking up some travel time. I had some slight regrets at the thought that I could have slept in a bed last night, but what I was learning from Seran was definitely more valuable. I had a brief dialogue with Lynn about the magic sensor idea and she said that so far the ship sensors were unable to detect anything. I told her that it seems that psi can interact with magic, so to try her tests along that range. I made sure to scratch out the words again. I might be overdoing it, but Gormon isn¡¯t paying any attention to me anyway. I ended up waking Seran up again, since I wanted to get to the town sooner if possible. I have a lot of errands to run once I get there and I don¡¯t know how long those are going to take. Plus, I want to take some time to scope out the town a bit. She grumbled a bit, but she follows orders pretty well when she first wakes up and while she¡¯s still drowsy. <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> About an hour later, we were underway. It only took us two hours before we exited the forest and into farmland. I saw the town off in the distance, but it looked like we¡¯d be riding through farmland for the rest of the trip. Gormon, now that we were out of the forest and traveling along a much more well used country lane, was back to his total listless state and staying near the horse. Now that I think about it, wasn¡¯t it normal in the medieval ages for towns to have lots of farmland immediately nearby? Why didn¡¯t that town in the kingdom have any? Not like it matters now, but it is a bit curious. From this distance the town definitely looked larger than the town in the kingdom. Five or six times as much at least. I saw lots of people working in the fields and a lot of people were also on the road, though they tended to give way to Seran and Gormon. There wasn¡¯t any kind of look of fear about them when glancing at the soldiers, It seemed like it was more out of respect than anything, so I suppose the soldiers of the empire have a good reputation. There was quite a variety in races for the people working the farms but they mainly appeared to be humans and beastmen. I didn¡¯t see that many elves or demons. When we finally got closer to the town walls, I blanched at the number of carts and other people in line to get in. How long will we have to wait to get in? Contradicting my thoughts entirely, Seran and Gormon just skipped past the line entirely and straight to the gate. In retrospect, I realized it should have been obvious that soldiers wouldn¡¯t wait in a line like this. Their identities were checked at the gate, but they were let inside without hassle. There was some brief hesitation about letting me in as well since I didn¡¯t have ID, but with Seran and Gormon, well mainly Seran since Gormon wouldn¡¯t say anything, vouching for me, I was let in as well. I did get a temporary ID card that was pretty much identical to the one I got back in the kingdom though. At least it will serve until I get a real ID card. Seran left the horse in a stable that was just inside the gate for guard use. Afterwards she was looking at me with a sad expression and I knew it was because this was now the time for farewells. The escort was only until I was inside the town, and now she and Gormon would have to do their actual duties. I had a bit of an idea forming, though. Seran finally spoke up, ¡°Do you need a guide to show you around town? Gormon and I need to head to the lord¡¯s manor and deliver the messages and reports, but we can at least point you to the right places.¡± I shook my head and replied. ¡°As long as you can point me to the Merchant¡¯s Guild and Adventurer¡¯s Guild, I should be alright from there.¡± Seran looked more sad now. Maybe she had been hoping for an excuse to spend a little more time together. ¡°Well, if you¡¯re sure. The Merchant¡¯s Guild is pretty much just down this road and then when you get to the central plaza take a right and head in the direction of the docks. You pretty much can¡¯t miss the guild since it will be by far the busiest place down that way.¡± I nodded that I understood and she continued. ¡°The Adventurer¡¯s Guild, on the other hand, is at the central plaza. It¡¯s one of the larger buildings at the plaza so you should find it easily enough. Just look for the large sign with the sword, bow and staff on it.¡± Seran sighed. ¡°Are you sure you don¡¯t want me to go along with you?¡± It was my turn to sigh. ¡°Yes, Seran. I can really handle myself just fine. You have your own work to do now.¡± ¡°If you¡¯re sure then I can¡¯t force you. After you take care of your business, make sure to ask for Old Huvreck¡¯s shop. Either guild can point you there. He can supply you with a good bow and some quality arrows. Just give him my name and tell him you¡¯re family of mine and there shouldn¡¯t be any issues. Alright?¡± ¡°Yep, I understand, Huvreck¡¯s shop. I will definitely visit there.¡± I decided to use my idea that I had earlier. ¡°By the way Seran, what are you and Gormon going to do about lodging tonight?¡± Seran was puzzled but she answered. ¡°Probably just bunk down at one of the guard houses before returning to the fort tomorrow. Why?¡± ¡°Well I was thinking, since I owed the both of you for the escort, why don¡¯t I treat you to a stay in an inn. What is the fanciest inn and best inn in this town?¡± I asked. I definitely wasn¡¯t going to stay in any kind of inferior place and I could expect a good amount of money from the extra pouches of gems that Lynn had supplied me with. She looked shocked. ¡°Are you seriously offering what I think you¡¯re offering?¡± I replied back. ¡°Of course, I¡¯ll treat both of you to a night at a great inn. Doesn¡¯t that sound fun?¡± I was of course not mentioning that part of this was because it would let me get one more night of magic training in with Seran. ¡°Well then we both accept the offer.¡± Gormon shook his head. ¡°Oh, come on Gormon, Seri is offering us free food and lodging.¡± Gormon immediately stopped shaking his head and instead starting nodding more enthusiastically. ¡°See, we accept. Should we meet you at the Moons and Stars Inn later this evening?¡± I thought for a moment before answering. ¡°Yeah, that would probably be for the best. I¡¯m not sure how long my errands will end up taking.¡± ¡°Okay, then Gormon and I will see you later.¡± Seran was in a happier mood and waved as the two of them strolled off. I guess time for me to go make some money. I walked in the direction of the plaza. Chapter 17 Author¡¯s Note: I might be some hours late, but I still managed to post it today! Honestly, I should have managed to post it sooner, but I¡¯ve been having health issues and work issues and a number of other issues. I also started taking anti-depressants which have left me feeling kind of weird too. I¡¯m still dedicated to trying to keep to the 3 day release schedule, but please don¡¯t be surprised if I take an extra day or two here or there.
Chapter 17 It had taken me longer than necessary to get to the Merchant¡¯s Guild. I had decided to take some time to test something now that I was in a populated town again. I was currently observing the building, which I assumed had to be the Merchant¡¯s Guild based on what Seran had told me. She was definitely correct about this place being the busiest around. Tons of people were currently moving in and out of that particular building. Are most of the buildings nearby warehouses for the guild building? They look like they are and that would make sense, I suppose. The docks are very near too, which is probably the main reason why the Merchant¡¯s Guild was even at this location. Well, no reason to stay standing here. I looked over myself for a brief moment. I definitely still had that vagabond look going again. That wouldn¡¯t help negotiations, but that¡¯s only if I was planning on playing fair or taking it lightly like I had with Malcolm in that other town. I had mistakenly thought I was still in a game then so some money problems wouldn¡¯t really matter, but that¡¯s no longer the case. I still had Empath set as my Subclass after all, and I was going to use it a bit mercilessly. I wrapped Coa more tightly around my neck and pulled my cloak up to cover her and my shield choker as thoroughly as possible. Then I whispered to her, ¡°Coa, you need to be quiet for a bit. So try not to make any noise.¡± She tilted her head and crooned softly at me. I really wish she was a bit older so it didn¡¯t feel like I was talking to a baby, though I think that¡¯s exactly what I am doing. I just had to hope she understood well enough. I made my way inside the building and looked around for what passed for the reception. I blanked for a moment when I saw the length of the line, but I hurriedly got in as well. I was a bit surprised by the number of people I saw carrying weapons and wearing armor in here. Quite a few of the people in line ahead of me looked much more like adventurers than merchants. I suppose I fit in that descriptor as well. Thankfully the line moved pretty quickly and I was in front of a receptionist after only maybe thirty minutes to an hour. To my disappointment, none of the receptionists were cute girls, so I found myself in front of a young man. I¡¯m sure a normal girl would find him attractive with the smile and look he was giving me, but all I felt was disgust. This guy was giving me the vibe that he was one of those types that was used to girls falling for him. I swallowed those feelings and spoke. ¡°Hello. I am here to conduct business today.¡± The man replied. ¡°Would you be seeking to charter passage to the capital, Miss?¡± He gave me an even brighter smile after he finished. Charter passage to the capital? Ahh, I see. No wonder there were so many obvious non merchants in line. They require people to charter passage on the merchant ships here. How sly. The merchant ships get extra guards from the adventurers being on board, though I¡¯m sure they don¡¯t rely on only that for protection or they¡¯d be robbed pretty often, and even get them to pay for it. ¡°No. When I said I am here to conduct business, I meant it. I wish to sell certain items and I believe the Merchant¡¯s Guild would be interested in them.¡± The look on the young man¡¯s face changed slightly. Maybe the fact that I didn¡¯t respond at all to his smile irked him? Oh well, tough luck buddy. ¡°May I examine one of the items in question, Miss? Also, do you happen to be a member of our establishment?¡± ¡°I am not a member of the guild. What does it take to register as a member?¡± I asked. ¡°For one, every member must have the Merchant Class. If you do have it, then I can provide you with the documents to fill out to register.¡± He answered. Merchant Class requirement, huh? Oh well, not that big of a loss. ¡°That¡¯s alright. I do not have the Class. As for your previous question about what it is I am looking to sell¡­¡± I slipped a gem out of the pouch in my pack and held it tightly in my hand making sure no one could see it. A repeat of what I did in that other town would probably create much more drama here. I held out my hand toward him and he likewise reached toward me. I dropped the gem in his hand. Oh, this time it was a diamond. The man reacted much better than that girl back then. What was her name again? Well, that¡¯s not really that important. He quickly closed his hand over the gem with only a brief moment of being shocked. I guess working in a big trade town like this isn¡¯t just for show. He opened his hand slightly to examine the gem then returned his attention to me. ¡°Would you mind waiting while I get this appraised?¡± He asked. ¡°No, go right ahead. Shall I just wait here?¡± I replied. He looked torn about how he should reply. His eyes were flicking between me and the line behind me, though there were other receptionists so it¡¯s not like it¡¯s a large problem. Maybe he was more shaken up about the gem than he was letting on? If so, I¡¯m not surprised. The gems Lynn had made really were too perfect. It looks like he made a decision because he spoke up, ¡°I¡¯ll take you to one of the small rooms, if that¡¯s alright?¡± ¡°Sure. Lead the way.¡± I said. He led me upstairs and then to one of the first rooms up there. The room was pretty much identical to the room I had met Malcolm in, just a table and some chairs. There was an addition of a flower pot that I kind of thought was amusing. He left the room right afterwards and I took a seat to wait for whoever I would be haggling with. I decided to review some of the information I had gathered. One of the things I had asked Seran about was the general exchange rate for currency between the empire and the kingdom. She had mentioned that usually the empire coins were worth about half again as much as the kingdom coins. The main reason for this is that the empire coins are purer. This is sort of an unofficial exchange rate though, so I¡¯m sure merchants have a more precise one. What it does though, is give me a general idea of what my pouch of gems is worth. Lynn made sure to make the contents of the pouch identical to the previous pouch I had sold. Taking what Malcolm said was half market price and the converting it with that exchange rate value, my gems would be worth about 110 empire gold coins. I don¡¯t expect to get that much, but it is something to aim for. Unlike the problems Malcolm had with selling the gems, a town as trade focused as this one would have absolutely no issues reselling or getting them to a jewelry crafter to process them. <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> The other important information was what I had tested as I made my way here after separating from Seran and Gormon. I had used my psi links on just about everyone I had passed or seen and not a single person had even reacted to the intrusion. I wasn¡¯t even being subtle with those links and had tossed them around willy nilly. I couldn¡¯t believe the low level of mental defenses the people of this world had. I had waited until I was in a populated town just in case of some reaction, since it would make it easier to hide my involvement if I was caught, but this was almost pathetic. Even basic low level NPCs in the game had better defense against psi! Does this mean that psi truly doesn¡¯t exist on this world at all? That tiger resisted it easily enough, but that might have just been a level and status thing. It was a boss after all. Well, the key point of the results was that if the people of this world have basically no protection against what I can do with my psi, then it opens up possibilities for me to develop new tricks that wouldn¡¯t have worked in game so I never tried them. Of course, I¡¯ll have to be careful with it. I remember reading a story once about psychics, where someone tried to take knowledge out of another person¡¯s head and reduced them to an invalid. That kind of aftermath would be really conspicuous in a bad way. I waited for probably about ten to fifteen minutes before someone knocked on the door and then came in. I was a bit surprised to see it was a woman, but being surprised over something like that is stupid. I¡¯d estimate that she¡¯s in her mid to late 20s and looked pretty much human. At least no long ears or horns. Well, it was surprising that the outfit she was wearing really put me in mind of a female business suit, glasses included. They really have clothes like this here? She wasn¡¯t accompanied with the guy I had been dealing with before, so I assumed she was the one I would be dealing with. I tossed a link at her and then for good measure reinforced it with another two. I never would have used a multi link like this before, but theoretically it should strengthen what I can pick up from her thoughts. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Her thoughts were in a bit of chaos despite her calm face as she walked toward the table to sit down. Wondering where I had acquired such a perfect gem. Wondering if she can get me to reveal that in this negotiation for a better deal. Wondering how many other gems of such quality I might possess. All the while, as her thoughts were bouncing around, she was keeping up her prim attitude. I had to give her some respect for not showing any signs of her internal dilemma. Upon taking a seat, the woman greeted me. ¡°Good day Miss. My name is Ellen, and on behalf of the guild I will be doing business with you. It¡¯s a pleasure.¡± ¡°I¡¯m Seri, and likewise, a pleasure to do business with you.¡± I answered. She sat the diamond on the table between us before continuing. ¡°Now, according to my associate you were looking to sell a number of items like this?¡± She asked. I nodded. ¡°Yes, I would like to sell a quantity of eighty gems. The gems are of a mixed variety.¡± I took the pouch out of my bag and sat it on the table, but for now kept the pouch closed. She was eying the pouch with calculating eyes. ¡°May I examine them?¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. Go right ahead.¡± I handed her the pouch. She opened it and started examining each and every gem. Her thoughts were once again a mess. She couldn¡¯t believe how perfect the cut of each and every gem was. She was also trying to calculate out how much to offer me and what the guild would make reselling them after using them in jewelry. I decided to interrupt that line of thinking by tossing out a price of my own. ¡°I was thinking 120 gold coins for all of them. Of course, that would be in empire coinage.¡± Her alarm shot up hearing my price. She was now desperately trying to calculate how much the gems were worth. After another minute she decided that the gems would be worth approximately 105 gold coins. Sightly less than my guesstimate but that¡¯s ok. She was also thinking that once processed, the guild would stand to make 150 to 180 gold coins total so a profit of 45 to 75 gold coins at her estimated price. She didn¡¯t think I really knew the value though, so she was going to offer me less. She was hoping to make enough off this deal to impress her superiors. ¡°I believe that 120 gold coins is too much. My offer is 80 gold coins.¡± I decided to act like I was thinking the offer over. Of course 80 gold coins is too little. I wanted to get at least 100. I decided to use the knowledge I had gleaned from her thoughts to make my next counter offer. ¡°I think they are worth much more than that. At that price the guild could stand to make more than double that in profit. I¡¯ll lower my suggestion to 110 gold coins. How about that?¡± She was shocked that I understood the value after all. She had been looking down on me because of my appearance and hadn¡¯t expected this. I felt a little bad about it, but it serves her right for underestimating me. She pulled herself back together and decided to ask me about the source of the gems. ¡°I¡¯ll accept that price if you toss in where you acquired the gems. Otherwise the price is 90 gold coins.¡± ¡°I refuse. Revealing my source does not benefit me in anyway. My final offer is 100 gold coins. If you don¡¯t accept this price then I¡¯ll be ending the negotiation here.¡± I decided to take a hard stance here. Make her think she¡¯ll lose the potential profit entirely. She doesn¡¯t know I actually need money since she¡¯s been too focused on the gems to ask any questions. It seems like her thoughts are moving towards accepting, too. I¡¯m a bit disappointed with how easy this went. She took another few minutes before finally replying. ¡°I¡¯ll accept that price of 100 gold coins. Would you like that paid in that form or would you prefer silver coins?¡± It seems like she wanted me to accept getting paid partially in silver coins. Maybe 100 gold coins is a lot for the guild to lose at once? ¡°That¡¯s fine. How about 80 gold coins and the rest in silver coins. I believe it was 20 silver coins to a gold coin or am I mistaken?¡± I said. ¡°You are correct. The total would be 80 gold coins and 400 silver coins. Please wait here a moment and I will return.¡± She stood up and inclined her head to me and then left the room. Well, that should solve my money problems for a while. I still have the other pouch of gems in case I run out and the kingdom coins too to be exchanged if possible. I wonder if I can purchase a bag of holding anywhere here in town. I waited for about ten minutes before Ellen returned with my money. Afterwards I counted out all the coins, or well I had Lynn count the coins. I just dumped the pouches I was given out and let Lynn tell me if the right amounts were there. It probably looked ridiculous from Ellen¡¯s point of view but I don¡¯t care. I slipped the two new pouches into my bag. ¡°By the way, I needed some help looking for some stores. Do you know where I can find a store that would sell oil like for soothing cracked scales. My tamed beast requires some. Also I need to know where Huvreck¡¯s shop is.¡± I directed the questions to Ellen as I was getting ready to leave. ¡°Well, I¡¯d recommend Fiona¡¯s Apothecary that is located over at the main plaza area for the oil. As for where Huvreck¡¯s weapon shop is located, that¡¯s a bit more difficult. It¡¯s on the other side of town past the Adventurer¡¯s Guild and then down a few side streets. It¡¯s kind of a bit out of the way. Honestly, the Adventurer¡¯s Guild would probably give you better directions.¡± She explained. ¡°Thank you. Do I just leave on my own?¡± I asked. ¡°I¡¯ll escort you back downstairs.¡± She replied and then beckoned for me to follow, which I did. The line seemed to be smaller now and not very many adventurers were around. Did I manage to come here precisely during the rush earlier? That would be my luck. After I left the building, I decided to head for the apothecary first rather than head immediately to the Adventurer¡¯s Guild. Coa was good and quiet the entire time I was in there so let¡¯s reward her a bit. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> When I arrived at the plaza, I located the Adventurer¡¯s Guild easily enough because of the adventurers I saw hanging around it, but I had to ask someone nearby which shop the apothecary was. Once it was pointed out I made my way inside. The shop had a very flowery scent inside and I did a double take when I saw the person behind the counter. Wearing a stereotypical witch outfit was a pretty, young girl. The most eye catching feature about her was her long bright blue hair. ¡°Welcome to my shop! In need of medicines or how about some perfume? I have a great selection!¡± The girl, I guess Fiona, said in a very jubilant voice. ¡°Hello. Actually, I need some oil for my tamed beast¡¯s scales. Her scales are starting to crack.¡± I explained my circumstances. ¡°I see, I see! Do you have your pet with you?¡± She craned her head to look around me. It looks like Coa is being overlooked because of being wrapped around my neck and covered a bit by my cloak. ¡°She¡¯s right here.¡± I reached up around my neck and gently removed Coa from her place. I was holding her in my hands and I brought her down toward the shop counter. ¡°Oh my! Such a cute tiny dragon!¡± The witch girl immediately started petting Coa on the head. Coa didn¡¯t mind, she started purring and rubbing her head against the girl¡¯s hand. With her other hand the witch was running it along Coa¡¯s body. Eventually she found a crack and Coa whined when it was rubbed. ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry cutie. Did that hurt? I know just what to get you though to make you feel better!¡± She ran into the back room of the shop and returned a few moments later with a small jar. ¡°Here we go, this oil should work wonders for her.¡± She opened the jar and stuck her finger in to get some of the oil. The oil had a very flowery scent. Thankfully, it wasn¡¯t that strong of a smell. She then rubbed the oil along Coa¡¯s body. Coa just purred even louder than she had been doing earlier. ¡°See, isn¡¯t that much better for you? I bet you feel so good now you little cutie.¡± I laughed a bit. Cuteness reigns supreme I suppose. ¡°How much do I owe you? And is it possible to get another jar just in case for later?¡± She stopped petting Coa and went and got another jar. ¡°For two jars, normally it would be about 1 silver and 30 coppers but I¡¯ll let you have both for 1 silver. I got to see such a cute little pet after all.¡± I pulled out a coin and slipped it across the counter to her. I picked Coa back up, it seemed like the oil soaked in pretty fast since she wasn¡¯t sticky or anything. I slipped the two jars into my bag too. ¡°Thank you for the help, I was really worried about her.¡± ¡°No sweat! This is part of what I love about being an apothecary. Oh, but you can feel free to visit anytime if you want. I¡¯d love to play with her some more. I¡¯ll even bring my familiar around next time if you want to see her.¡± She pleaded with me. ¡°Well, I can¡¯t make any promises, but I¡¯ll probably be in town for at least a few days.¡± I answered. ¡°Ok, I¡¯ll be expecting you!¡± She waved me out of her store, but I saw her eyes focused on Coa the whole time. That¡¯s two errands down. Just two more to go. I hope registering at the Adventurer¡¯s Guild goes as smoothly. Chapter 18 Author¡¯s Note: The next chapter is here! Please enjoy it.
Chapter 18 The Adventurer¡¯s Guild was just as rowdy as I expected it to be. That seems like such a generic setting, but I suppose it works. Lots of adventurers were sitting around tables talking and drinking. The guild is a bar too? The adventurers get paid for work, then the guild takes it back by selling alcohol. I looked around the guild again. It really looked like any other Adventurer¡¯s Guild I might have seen in a fantasy game. There was a large board with what I assume are job postings attached to it. I couldn¡¯t really get a good look at the board with the number of people crowding around it, though. Female adventurers seemed to be in the minority but not to a ridiculously large degree. Maybe every three or four adventurers out of ten here was a girl? Demons were definitely in a clear minority here. At least I only saw a couple of people in here that had horns. The majority were humans and beastmen, followed by elves. I¡¯m really bothered by how game like this world is at times. I mean if this is really a real world like I¡¯ve been assuming, then why an Adventurer¡¯s Guild? I mean a Merchant¡¯s Guild makes sense in a number of ways. Even on Earth, merchants forming guilds happened all the time. Of course they tended to compete with each other as giant companies, but that also made sense. A guild for people claiming to be adventurers doesn¡¯t make sense to me though. Adventurers are almost always trouble makers in some way. Even if I assume most of the higher level adventurers probably end up in retainer relationships to various governments, it still seems like the governments wouldn¡¯t want too many adventurers running around. It would create potential problems. Or does letting adventurers run around fight monsters save money rather than using soldiers for this kind of duty? I still don¡¯t even know if monsters work the same way as beasts did on Earth. I know that Coa was the result of a hatching, but do some monsters just get born spontaneously out of thin air? That would be really game like if it actually happens. I decided to put those kinds of thoughts on hold as I made my way to the reception which luckily wasn¡¯t that busy. Possibly it¡¯s because it¡¯s getting later in the day so most people aren¡¯t taking jobs right now. No reason to take a job when there¡¯s only an hour or two left until sunset. Thankfully, Coa was sleeping peacefully again, and she sleeps like Seran so the noise won¡¯t wake her up easily. I wasn¡¯t really sure how a dragon like her would be seen. Her scan result said she was a rare creature, but the witch girl took her appearance in stride outside of being charmed. Right now she looks more like a slightly misshapen choker around my neck and not much like what she actually is, so I doubt anyone will take note of her. The receptionist turned out be a dark haired catgirl. At least I assume she¡¯s a catgirl. It¡¯s not a perfect method of identification going by just how the ears on top of the head look. ¡°Yo Welcome! You¡¯re a new face. Here to look for work or put up a quest?¡± ¡°Actually, I¡¯m here to register.¡± I replied. ¡°Oh, a newbie?¡± She looked at me for a few moments. ¡°You don¡¯t really feel like a newbie to me. You seem too experienced.¡± How shrewd. ¡°I¡¯m definitely no stranger to dangerous situations. I¡¯ve just never registered at the guild before.¡± She said. ¡°If you say so. Then before I register you, I have to ask if you need the boring rules talk. Do you?¡± ¡°I think it would be nice to know.¡± I answered. ¡°Ugh, increasing the work I have to do. Fine! The gist of the rules is when you register, you¡¯re starting off at the bottom rank. A starting adventurer would be tier 5. Work hard to try to reach tier 1. Of course, the jobs you can take are limited by what rank you are.¡± She explained. ¡°And how do I raise my rank?¡± I asked. ¡°Doing enough jobs basically.¡± She waved her hand lazily. ¡°That¡¯s all you need to do to get to tier 4. For tier 3 and above you also need to take a test and be approved for the new rank.¡± She continued. ¡°Was that everything? That seems pretty straightforward. There¡¯s no requirement like that I have to do so many jobs to keep my adventurer status active or anything?¡± I asked. ¡°No way. No way! That kind of rule would create too much hassle. Spare me from that kind of extra work!¡± She whined and then coughed. ¡°Anyway, the guild is pretty informal but we do ask that you do not fight needlessly with other adventurers. Please allow the guild to mediate any disputes that might arise.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no problem if I defend myself against other adventurers right?¡± I inquired. ¡°Oh no. If other adventurers pick a fight, feel free to beat them up or do whatever you want to them. Just, don¡¯t go as far as killing them if possible. The guild would be the one troubled in that case. Don¡¯t unnecessarily create more work for me, ok?¡± She said with a smile. This girl. Has she already decided that if I get in a fight that I¡¯m the one going to win? ¡°Well, now that that talk is out of the way. Just place your hand on this status orb and we¡¯ll use the results to make your guild card.¡± She took out an orb that looked very similar to the one I had seen in the fortress. It will probably show the same information as then, but I already changed my title so I should be okay. I went through the now familiar routine and saw it produce a small card with my information on it. Catgirl examined it. ¡°Hoh? A level 30 Beastmaster and no other class? You really don¡¯t seem like a Beastmaster to me.¡± She really is shrewd. ¡°How so?¡± I asked. ¡°How should I put it? Most Beastmasters aren¡¯t as confident or as self-assured as you are. Right now despite the fact that I don¡¯t see a single one of your tamed beasts with you, you seem like you¡¯re prepared to take on any threat that might arise. Your atmosphere is more like a high level Scout.¡± She explained then grimaced. ¡°Or possibly an Assassin.¡± I shrugged, ¡°I really am just a Beastmaster. So is that all that is necessary for the registration?¡± ¡°If you¡¯re a Beastmaster, you¡¯ll need to register your tamed beasts with the guild as well.¡± She added. ¡°I see. Then please add that my tamed beast is a Feathered Serpent Dragon to my information.¡± I said. ¡°A Feathered Serpent Dragon? That¡¯s quite rare and valuable. That¡¯s where the Dragon Tamer title is from, then. I was a tad curious. Then that¡¯s all I need to know for your registration. Normally I¡¯d tell you to come back later to pick up the card, but considering the time you¡¯ll have to pick it tomorrow.¡± She explained. ¡°That works for me. I need to meet some people anyway. Can you give me directions to -?¡± I was interrupted by someone speaking up from behind me. ¡°My apologies, Miss. I need to speak with the guild representative there a moment.¡± I turned to look and there was a man in a full suit of armor. He looked like a knight with his cape, shield and the sheathed sword at his waist. Catgirl spoke to him. ¡°What does the captain of the guard need with me?¡± ¡°I¡¯m here to deliver a letter from Earl Lloyd.¡± The knight explained. ¡°Well, hand it over already then.¡± She reached out her hand. The knight handed her a letter. She took it and cut it open with one of her nails. She slipped out the note, read it and then sighed very loudly. ¡°This is going to create a lot of extra work you know?¡± ¡°The Earl was hoping for a positive response.¡± The knight said. ¡°And you can give him one. Damn extra work! I¡¯ll get it taken care of right after I¡¯m done helping the person you interrupted. So shoo already.¡± The catgirl waved her hand angrily at him. The knight bowed slightly and then left. ¡°Ahh, I was going to get to leave early tonight. Damn it!¡± She put her head face down on the reception table. ¡°Sorry about this, but I still need to ask for directions.¡± I spoke up. She raised her head and glared at me with soulless eyes. ¡°Where do you need to go?¡± She was mumbling, but I still heard her. ¡°I need to know where the Moons and Stars Inn is.¡± I replied. She looked surprised, ¡°That fancy place?¡± I nodded. ¡°Alright.¡± The directions I received were vague to the extreme with a lot of go six streets this way then turn at the red building and go a few streets that way, etc etc. I thanked her anyway and left the guild. I decided I was going to just wander in the general direction she said and look for Seran¡¯s presence with my psi. I¡¯ve spent a long enough time with her the last few days to have a very good read on her. It was probably too late to visit Huvreck¡¯s shop today, so I¡¯ll do that in the morning after I pick up my guild card. After about a dozen minutes of wandering, I finally picked her up with my senses. She was about ninety meters ahead and a bit to the left of me. She was stationary too, and using her as a beacon, I quickly made my way to the rendezvous with her and Gormon. I could have used Gormon¡¯s presence, but he¡¯s actually oddly hard to detect when he¡¯s in his lifeless state like he is now. His presence is murky compared to Seran who feels more like a bright spot to me. Or maybe his presence is just murky because he¡¯s right next to Seran¡¯s. That might be the case. I finally caught sight of them standing in front of a very fancy looking building. It was quite large too. The sign in front of the building had what looked like a picture of the sky on it with the moons and stars so this was definitely the place. Seran waved to greet me. ¡°Seri, did you take care of all your errands? Also, are you sure it¡¯s ok to stay here? This is a really extravagant place that is also a bit discriminating in its guests. I¡¯ve heard the price can range even up to a gold a night for a room.¡± ¡°It should be fine. I prefer staying at nice inns and of course I promised to treat you two so I¡¯m treating you two. No complaints alright?¡± I said. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Well if you insist.¡± She laughed. ¡°I¡¯ve always wanted to stay here at least once, anyway. Let¡¯s head in and get some rooms.¡± I simply nodded and followed her into the building. We really did look out of place in our gear compared to the few other people that I assumed were guests inside. There were even maids and butlers walking around inside! We were getting glared by the people inside too. I decided to hang back a bit and let Seran do the talking for now. I was starting to get a certain idea, but I wanted to see if it would be necessary before I took action. The woman at the counter looked like a wizened old crone despite her somewhat fancy dress that looked pretty out of place on her. She had a slight sneer as she watched our party approach. I guess she¡¯s the typical type of rich or noble lady that thinks the lower castes as scum. Not a surprise, but her attitude solidifies my resolve in my idea. Just one more thing check to go. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> ¡°Are you soldiers here to deliver some message? If so then hand it over and then be off. Your presence disturbs my guests.¡± The old hag spoke first. ¡°No. We¡¯re here to get two rooms for the night.¡± Seran replied. The hag¡¯s sneer became much more evident as she looked at Seran and then looked at us. ¡°I do not believe you are fit for this establishment. I would suggest seeking lodging elsewhere.¡± ¡°Hey, we can pay. ¡° Seran flicked a glance at me. ¡°It shouldn¡¯t be a problem to let us stay here. I¡¯m sure you have spare rooms.¡± The hag sniffed. ¡°If you are going to be this insistent then the price for two rooms will be six gold coins.¡± Seran got angry. ¡°Hey, there¡¯s no way that¡¯s the normal price! You¡¯re overcharging us-¡± I decided it was now time for me to intercede. I took a moment to prep myself mentally before calling out in a quiet, but forceful and dignified tone. ¡°Seran, you are making a scene. Cease at once.¡± Seran stopped and turned to look at me a bit oddly, but I ignored it. I needed to deliver just the right words here to create more of an impact later. I walked slowly up to counter from where I had been staying back. I took out my coin pouch and made sure the hag saw my money. I then took out the six gold coins and stacked them on the counter in front of her. ¡°I do believe this covers the fare for the rooms Madam. I deeply apologize for my escort¡¯s discourteous behavior.¡± The hag was looking at me with slight confusion in her eyes now and I allowed myself a polite smile. ¡°May we perchance know our room assignments, now that unpleasantness is behind us?¡± The hag looked like she wanted to say something to me, but it was evident that she had already lost to my dignified ¡®perfect lady¡¯ act. Don¡¯t underestimate someone who has the Spy Class at level 100! I¡¯ve had to put on similar acts in game not just a few times. It¡¯s really a hassle to keep this attitude up for a while so give me our keys already, you hag. She finally handed over the keys and I gave them a cursory glance. I couldn¡¯t read what the numbers were, but I know Seran can so I handed the keys to her. ¡°Our rooms are upstairs?¡± The hag nodded, still looking pretty stunned. I decided to toss in a barb as my final comment. ¡°I am eager to learn how magnificent the service here is that the cost was so exorbitant. I would so hate to have to tell my many acquaintances about inferior service.¡± I giggled lightly, covering my mouth with the back of my hand, and then beckoned for Seran and Gormon to follow me as I headed toward the stairs. They caught up with me easily enough considering the slow pace I was walking at. After all a dignified lady has a dignified pace. Once we were upstairs, close to our rooms, and I was sure by using my senses that no one was around to catch us, I whispered to Seran and Gormon. ¡°Do you two have better clothes stored away in your bags?¡± ¡°That¡¯s what you say first!?¡± Seran hissed. ¡°What in the underworld was that? Are you really secretly a noble or something? The Earl asked a few questions about you when he read the commander¡¯s letter and I was wondering why at the time, but this would explain it if so.¡± ¡°No, I never lied to you. I¡¯m just a commoner. I just decided this was the best way to shut up that hag. Anyway answer the question. Gormon do you have any better clothes?¡± He shook his head. ¡°Alright, Seran pass him his room key. Just go get cleaned up to look as presentable as you can Gormon. Well, it won¡¯t be too important in your case anyway.¡± Seran handed him his key and he went to the next room and went inside. ¡°Let¡¯s get inside and do the same.¡± Seran nodded, but still looked a bit puzzled as she opened the door to our room. Only one large four poster canopy bed? The furnishings are ridiculously luxurious though. A lounge and some chairs. Fancy wardrobe among other things. All the stuff in here looked like really expensive antiques from my point of view. I noticed another door on the side wall so I went over and opened it to see what was in there and was astonished. A bathroom! An actual, honest to goodness bathroom! It even has a bathtub and a flush toilet!? That six gold was totally worth it for this alone. ¡°Alright, Seran I assume you have a good change of clothes?¡± ¡°Of course I do. It¡¯s not fancy or up to this place¡¯s standard.¡± Seran answered. ¡°It¡¯s fine. Let¡¯s refresh ourselves. Gormon will be waiting for us regardless of how long we take though, so no real rush.¡± I said. The two of us went into the bathroom and cleaned up. Ahh, I wish I could have taken a nice long bath, but I guess I¡¯ll have to do that later. Seran said the bathtub uses magic stones to provide the hot water. Magic stones are something new I hadn¡¯t heard about before. I knew there were downsides to the act I was putting on, especially since it seems like the commander shared the information about me having a ¡®princess¡¯ title with at least the ruling noble of the town. At the moment, I didn¡¯t really care and I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll care even if it does cause me potential problems later. Right now I¡¯m going to teach that hag the meaning of ¡®don¡¯t judge a book by its cover¡¯ and put some fear in her that will make her beg me for mercy. Figuratively speaking anyway. After we were clean, Seran got dressed up easily enough, but she just about fainted when she saw the gown I pulled out of my pack. Of course, Lynn had packed this elegant to the extreme, princess quality dress in my pack. There was no way she wouldn¡¯t have. It¡¯s not like the dress took up really any weight so I didn¡¯t mind and a dress like this does have its uses, like how I¡¯m going to use it now. ¡°Seri, are you really not a noble!? Are you a princess!? How do you have a gown like that!?¡± Seran asked. I smiled at her. ¡°My best friend loves making clothes and made this for me. Actually she¡¯s the one who made my normal outfit as well.¡± ¡°Is it possible for her to make a dress like that for me?¡± Seran inquired seriously. In my ear I heard a vehement negative from Lynn and just smiled again. ¡°I think that might be difficult. She lives quite far from the empire. Anyway, when we¡¯re downstairs in the dining room make sure to call me milady. Oh but make sure to ¡®accidentally¡¯ slip and call me countess once before correcting yourself and going back to milady. Do that when one of the maids is near for maximum effect. It will get back to the hag.¡± She nodded to the instructions. It¡¯s fine if she slips up. The onus of this performance is on me after all. We finished getting dressed. She had to help me a bit to get my gown on properly. ¡°Alright since we¡¯re now ready, let¡¯s go down, eat, and enjoy the show.¡± I smiled evilly. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A few hours later we retired back to our rooms, but it had been a very successful few hours. The old hag had gone pale when I came downstairs in my gown and the evening had only gotten worse for her as it proceeded. In that time I had out-nobled all the noble or rich ladies in the dining hall. I got to sample lots of wines and even got to have some great dessert. The old hag had even broke out some very rare wines for me. She was probably attempting to appease this noble lady that she had accidentally offended, which amused me greatly. I would have continued the act for a while later, but a small disturbance interrupted my fun. Seran was a weepy drunk and started making a bit of a scene. I was forced to curtail the show and have Gormon carry her back up to our room. Afterwards I thanked the ¡®Madam¡¯ for a delightful dinner before following. Back in the room, it was pretty clear that no magic training would be happening tonight. I had removed my and Seran¡¯s fancy clothes and slipped on something that would work as sleeping clothes and Seran was currently clutching on to me desperately as she sobbed while half asleep. As for why she was doing that. ¡°Glentel... I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m sorry.¡± Seran mumbled. According to the sob story she had started telling me when she got drunk. Glentel was her lover when she was an adventurer. He was a half-elf. The two of them had visited the elf kingdom and Glentel had ended up killed just because he wasn¡¯t a full elf. Afterward, Seran had given up being an adventurer and enlisted in the empire¡¯s military and then gotten herself assigned to one of the out of the way fortresses, where she had been ever since. I stroked Seran¡¯s short hair as she continued to cry in her drunken sleep. Coa was curled up next to me sleeping as well. ¡°I guess everyone has their own set of tragedies.¡± I said aloud in a quiet voice. Lynn didn¡¯t respond, but I was sure it was only because there was really nothing to say in response to such an obvious statement. I probably wasn¡¯t going to get much sleep tonight. Chapter 19 Author¡¯s Note: So I really, really apologize for how long this chapter took to come out. I¡¯m still not entirely satisfied with it but I think this is the best I¡¯m going to be able to get and I want to actually move on. Like I said in my previous post, I have no idea why this chapter¡¯s content caused me such issues to write. The chapter is a bit shorter than normal but please enjoy and I hope I¡¯ll be able to post the next chapter in three days.
Chapter 19 I was dozing when Seran started waking up. I wasn¡¯t sure how long I had been half asleep, but it looked like it was around dawn, or close to it judging by the amount of light I saw through the small window in the room. I¡¯m a bit surprised Seran is waking up this early, but on the other hand she did go to bed a lot earlier than she had been during the journey here. She also didn¡¯t need to stay on watch for half the night. Maybe I had been a bit unfair waking her up before? Seran was groggy as she sat up looking around the room. She seemed a bit confused about where she was. I could see that her eyes were a bit red and puffy from the crying she had done too. ¡°Good morning Seran. Feeling better?¡± I gently asked. Her eyes finally focused on me and blinked rapidly. She then rubbed her eyes a bit before groaning. ¡°I shouldn¡¯t have drank so much of that wine last night. I can¡¯t believe I started telling that story. How did you manage to drink so much with such a small body? You were drinking way more than I was!¡± I laughed in response to her accusatory tone. ¡°Hey, it¡¯s not funny! Oww my head really hurts.¡± I just laughed more and patted her head a couple times. ¡°There, there! It will be alright. Now you know not to try to match me in drinking again. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if all those other ladies that were down there last night drinking with us are going to be feeling extra delicate this morning just like you are now.¡± Seran rubbed her forehead a bit before she spoke up again. ¡°At least being drunk made it so that I woke up early. I wanted to have a chat with you about some things before we had to separate and I lost the chance to do so.¡± ¡°Oh? What sort of things?¡± I inquired. She probably just wanted to try to get me to agree to visit her clan. Seran looked at me directly, well it wasn¡¯t perfectly directly, and the serious look on her face was somewhat marred by the hangover she was suffering, but I have to give her points for trying. ¡°Sorry, this might be a bit intrusive, but I want you to know that I¡¯m willing to give you any support you might need.¡± I was confused about where she was going with this. Seran took a deep breath before continuing, ¡°Seri, did something happen to your family?¡± The unexpected question hit me like a sledgehammer. Why!? Why is she asking that? I tried to reply calmly but my voice was unsteady. ¡°I, I don¡¯t know what you mean. Didn¡¯t I tell you all about my family during the trip?¡± Seran nodded. ¡°Yes, you did. That¡¯s also why I¡¯m sure something must have happened to them. When you were telling those stories you didn¡¯t show much emotion at all. It was like, you were recounting a story you had heard somewhere else and were adjusting it to make it appeal to what I wanted to hear. I thought maybe you were just hiding it because you didn¡¯t trust me, so I didn¡¯t want to push you on it.¡± I was trembling. Had I really been that obvious? Lynn was urging me to stay calm, but I was having great difficulty accomplishing that. I hadn¡¯t been mentally prepared to think about my family and Seran¡¯s earlier question had cut into me deeply. I felt like I was going to be overwhelmed by the grief that I had been pushing aside for the last week since my break down. I worked myself up to speak, ¡°If you decided you weren¡¯t going to push me, then why did you ask now?¡± I glared at her. Seran looked a bit ashamed of herself, but she still returned my glare calmly. ¡°Simple. It¡¯s because I want to help you if you are in trouble. Also, because I know I probably won¡¯t get another chance to have this conversation with you since I¡¯ll be back at the fortress.¡± ¡°Why do you think I need your help?¡± I hissed at her. ¡°It¡¯s been pretty clear from all your questions that you are lacking a lot in knowledge. Look, Seri, I really do just want to help you. Can you trust me and tell me what happened? If you say you can¡¯t then I¡¯ll leave it at that.¡± Seran said. I bit back my instant response to deny her. I instead thought hard. It would be a huge boon to have someone actually from this world as a collaborator, but there¡¯s all those risks involved with actually sharing the truth with anyone. I¡¯ve only known Seran a few days, after all. Seran might catch on again if I don¡¯t tell her the full truth. I¡¯m not sure how much help she would be if I don¡¯t tell her the full truth either. It would be hard to explain why I need certain materials without her knowing. It would be really nice to have someone else I could talk to openly and maybe connect with. Lynn interrupted my thoughts with her own opinion. ¡°Mistress, you can¡¯t tell her no matter what. She¡¯s a soldier for this country and she¡¯s already stated that the noble that runs this town was interested in you, most likely because that fortress commander told him about the title. It¡¯s entirely possible that she might be attempting to get information out of you to then hand over to the country. If you have to tell her anything, just tell her that you¡¯re separated from your family because of your wandering and home sick. It¡¯s the truth without any real detail.¡± Lynn¡¯s words poured cold water over my thoughts. She was right. I had started feeling a bit too close with Seran despite the short time I had known her and was ignoring the fact that she wasn¡¯t just an adventurer or independent person. She was a soldier that had to follow orders. There was no way I could let any country discover my ship and technology. I really hadn¡¯t thought of the possibility that Seran might be observing me for her superiors, but now that Lynn put it out there it¡¯s definitely a possibility I should have considered sooner. Was it just because I was enjoying her affection that I didn¡¯t consider it? Then again Lynn has been very biased against Seran since that first hug. Well not like that matters any. Between anyone else and Lynn, I¡¯ll always choose Lynn, so I guess I won¡¯t tell her the truth. Should I at least tell her the simple version Lynn suggested though? It might get her off my back if I do. Or should I not? Hmm decisions, decisions. A quick glance told me that Seran was still sitting there waiting patiently as I mentally considered. With a thought, I tossed a link to her, but she was surprisingly pretty blank. She was thinking simple thoughts like wondering what the inn would serve for breakfast and if she would have time to take a bath before Gormon and her would have to leave. Well, and wondering if I would tell her or not. Her mind just felt weird though. The feeling reminded me of people I had met in the game who were guarding their thoughts. I don¡¯t feel any psi or anything from her so I know it¡¯s not that. Is this something to do with magic? Can magic do this? Or is this just how her mind always feels? I kind of regret not testing a link on her before now. Damn it, I just can¡¯t help but be suspicious of Seran now. I¡¯ll tell her Lynn¡¯s suggestion and end this conversation there. ¡°Seran, I¡¯m just homesick from being away from my family for so long. That¡¯s all.¡± Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Seran was surprised at the sudden answer but she nodded. ¡°Alright. I¡¯ll leave it at that then. I would like you to have this though.¡± She pulled a carved wooden pendant out of her bag. ¡°This pendant says you¡¯re a member of our clan. It¡¯s carved from a small piece taken from the Great Tree that we¡¯ve always cared for. I just want you to know that you might be currently separated from your family, but you still have other family, okay? Also the pendant might help you out if you get into trouble. Even if our clan isn¡¯t high in status, the main family is only a barony, we have risen to high positions in the military from time to time.¡± I took the pendant from her and sent my psi senses scouring through it. I didn¡¯t notice any magic in it at all. It really appeared to be just a carved piece of wood, though I can¡¯t recognize what type of wood it is. Also, despite my new suspicion of her, I was thankful for the gift. Of course I¡¯d have to make sure it really doesn¡¯t have any kind of magic on it later, but for now I¡¯ll take the gift at face value as a sign of Seran¡¯s concern for me. ¡°Thanks Seran, I¡¯ll treasure it. Isn¡¯t this your pendant though? Will you be in trouble without it?¡± ¡°No, I just happen to have two of them.¡± She had a bitter expression as she said that so I assumed it had something to do with her dead lover. If that was the case, I¡¯m astonished that she would part with such a memento. I wanted to end this turn of conversation before it became troubling again. ¡°Why don¡¯t we use the time before breakfast to bath, Seran? I¡¯ll even let you go first.¡± Seran brightened up and agreed. She wobbled a bit after standing up but she made it to the bathroom alright. I hope she doesn¡¯t take a long bath, since I want to take one too. Now I need to do something to kill some time. Let¡¯s try playing around with the ambient magic with my psi. Should be a good time killer. The fact that it would let me ignore the sounds of Seran bathing in the next room is only a coincidence! Even if I know now that she might actually be something like a spy against me, a sexy woman is still a sexy woman after all. I probably didn¡¯t need to, but I got into a meditation pose by sitting up straight and crossing my legs. It just seemed like the most appropriate first step for this sort of activity. I then started sending my psi out around me like I was spreading a web. According to Seran¡¯s explanation, the ambient magic exists all around so I just need to search for a type of energy that I don¡¯t recognize. Of course, I doubt I¡¯ll succeed on my first attempt. From the explanation, it sounded like ambient magic might exist in a somewhat different form from the magic power that has been manipulated. I¡¯ve only felt the latter and not the former so it might take a while to properly identify. Once the web was fully formed, I began to sweep the room with it. I was looking for a reaction of some kind. I noticed reactions from some of the items in the room like the lamp and surprisingly there was a reaction from the window too, but I wasn¡¯t finding any kind of free floating energy. I increased the density of the web and continued to no avail. Is it possible that the ambient magic exists in a sort of dormant state until it¡¯s touched upon and used? I suppose that does make sense, but it makes detecting it difficult. I might need to come up with another method to try and find it. It sounded like Seran was getting out of the bathtub, so I cancelled my psi web, fell back onto the bed and relaxed until the bathroom became free. That kind of overly detailed scan can be a bit draining. At least psi restored itself quickly so I¡¯d be back at full capacity in probably only twenty to thirty minutes. The bathroom door opened and Seran walked out totally naked and I basically shut down mentally for a moment. She walked over to her pack and took out her underclothes and armor. I knew I was staring blankly so I hurriedly picked up my own pack and slung over my shoulder and then picked up Coa. ¡°Come on Coa, you¡¯re getting a bath too.¡± Coa immediately sprung out of my hand. I caught her with my other hand before she traveled even ten centimeters. I was a bit annoyed that she had jumped in Seran¡¯s direction. I¡¯m never even sure if Coa comprehends what I say to her, but apparently the word bath got understood loud and clear. Why do pets always seem to hate baths so much? Coa whined the whole way into the bathroom as she struggled in my grip while Seran was laughing. I closed the bathroom door behind me. It¡¯s too bad there¡¯s no lock on the door. In the bathroom, I turned on the warm water and stripped my clothes off. I sat my pack down next to the toilet and then pulled out some soap and the oil for Coa. I stopped the water at a low level and then put Coa in it. She tried to jump out immediately, but I kept her in the water. I scrubbed her body gently, being careful of the cracked scales. Then I pulled her out of the water and she shook her body and wings like a dog, sending the water everywhere. I dried her with a small towel and then laid her down on the towel. She enjoyed the oil being put on her scales, and stretched and curled every which way so I could reach all her spots. She then sighed and went back to sleep again. Such a lazy little creature. With Coa taken care of, I could now enjoy my own bath. I immediately filled the tub with hot water and climbed in, let myself float in the water and felt the tension flow out of me. Ahh, I really missed this pleasure. I need to make sure I continue to stay at the best inns from now on. While I soaked, I faintly heard a door being opened and some muffled conversation, but I paid it no mind. I assumed it was just a servant coming about breakfast. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))> My happy bath time was interrupted by the bathroom door opening, forcing me to open my eyes and see what was going on. In the doorway was a young maid, that looked like she was of the demon race judging by the horns. Her horns were probably the largest I had seen on anyone so far. They started from the top of her head and went along and down the back of her head surrounded by her very dark hair before ending in a slight curl. She was actually quite beautiful and looked similar to me in age. Now that I think about it, I saw this girl last night downstairs in the dining hall. I think she was the girl serving me wine? She bowed before stuttering out a greeting, ¡°G, good morning your ladyship! M m my name is Myura and I have been assigned to be your personal handmaiden during your stay! Please allow me to help you wash up!¡± Oh no. Now I have to put up the noble act even in my room? Let¡¯s try to get her to leave. ¡°That will not be necessary. I am quite self-sufficient and am not in need of the services of a maid.¡± Myura smiled and excitedly said, ¡°That won¡¯t do milady! You showed such dignity and elegance last night so there¡¯s no way a lady of your status can go without having a handmaiden. It would create rumors! Your escort in the other room even said it was a good idea since you would be separating today.¡± Damn you, Seran! Chapter 20 Author¡¯s Note: I feel like these chapters take me longer and longer to write. I¡¯m really jealous of the authors that can sit down and write a chapter in one session, while I struggle to write a page or two a day. Also in other, very happy news, my story has reached the top five on the Active Top 50 list! All I can say is that I¡¯m thankful for every one of you readers that has voted for my story and rated it so highly. So thank you very much everyone! Please enjoy this new chapter. PS. Please forgive me for any tense or comma mistakes, this chapter hadn¡¯t been PR¡¯d yet, but I wanted to get it posted today anyway.
Chapter 20 In the end, I just decided to allow the maid Myura help me wash up. I¡¯d be lying if I said I didn¡¯t enjoy it, after all. Her small hands running along my body felt very nice. I think Seri¡¯s body might have a higher libido than my male body did, or maybe it¡¯s just because I¡¯m still not used to having a girl body. It¡¯s not like it¡¯s unmanageable or anything, but it seems to me that I do not think as clearly as I should when in contact with pretty girls. I guess Seran¡¯s case also qualifies here since I never even considered the idea that she could have been a spy even though it was such an obvious possibility. This might be something I need to be a lot more careful about in the future. Especially since it¡¯s very likely this Myura could be a spy too. She seems way too enthusiastic. The only thing I can pick up from her mind is that she wants to do a great job serving me which is kind of annoying. Myura was quite impressed with the shampoo and conditioner bottle that I pulled out of my bag. She wanted to know where I had acquired such high quality soap. I just used the easy excuse that it was something an apothecary made for me back home. It even has the benefit of actually being kind of true I suppose. It might have been dumb to take out a bottle that is so different than their own products, but I don¡¯t think a bottle is that big of a deal. Myura reacted more to the contents than to the packaging anyway. The worst part about the bath was that because of Myura, and I guess Seran in the other room, I couldn¡¯t use my hair dryer and it seems like this world hadn¡¯t thought of making a magic tool for such a use. It really makes me regret my hair¡¯s long length. As I was sitting here letting Myura dry it, I wondered if I should consider getting it cut. I mean my hair going down just past my butt might be too long. It¡¯s easy to deal with when I have access to the shower in Lullaby, but I don¡¯t have access to that right now and probably won¡¯t have access to it most of the time I¡¯m on this planet. Actually now that I think about it, I really haven¡¯t seen any women with hair anywhere near my length. The longest I¡¯ve seen were the noble and rich ladies last night, and none of them were really much past mid back length. I believe longer hair has usually been seen as an indicator of wealth or power so it might be a good thing I¡¯ve been keeping my hair mostly hidden back under my cloak when walking around. I¡¯d probably be mistaken for nobility a lot more often if I had it freely visible. Even with this logic that boils down to it being probably a good idea to cut it, the idea of cutting it makes me feel horrible. I suppose this is an effect from Seri¡¯s memories building up? I don¡¯t really remember any dreams about my hair or why I want it to be long though. Just the thought of cutting my long hair really bothers me. I sighed mentally. Well, if I can¡¯t cut it, I¡¯ll just need to make sure to take care of it. ¡°My lady, I¡¯ve finished drying your hair.¡± Myura brought me out of my thoughts. ¡°Would you like me to help you style it in anyway?¡± ¡°I would prefer not.¡± I replied. I stood up and walked over to my bag and pulled out a clean set of clothes. ¡°Please my lady, let me help you!¡± Myura rushed to take my clothes from me. I held up a hand, ¡°Calm down Myura. I¡¯m quite able to get dressed on my own. Why don¡¯t you go acquire breakfast for me while I do that?¡± Myura was horror struck at my remark. She immediately curtsied and hung her head, ¡°My humblest apologies, my lady! I forgot to tell you that I came with breakfast for you when I arrived! It¡¯s likely cold now so I will rectify my grievous mistake by getting you some fresh food!¡± With that she shot out of the bathroom in a flash. A moment later I heard the door to the room open and shut as well. That girl could really stand to relax a little. I finished dressing and picked up Coa who was still sleeping despite all the fuss that Myura had raised and left the bathroom. Seran was now fully dressed in her leather armor and sitting there eating what was left of the food that had been brought. I walked over there and swiped a piece of what looked like ham that she had been reaching for. I tossed it in my mouth. Even if a bit cold, it was not bad at all. ¡°Hey, I was eating that. I even left it for last.¡± Seran complained. I didn¡¯t bother responding right away. I moved back to the small couch and sat down. ¡°So, you look ready to go. Going to head out already?¡± Seran nodded. ¡°Yep, I was really just waiting for you to finish your bath to tell you and say farewell and all that. You took quite a while to finish.¡± ¡°That was the maid¡¯s fault. She wanted to make sure I was ¡®immaculate¡¯ as she put it. She seems a bit high strung.¡± I replied. Seran laughed. ¡°You should have seen her face when she arrived with breakfast and I told her you were in the bath alone. It was amazing.¡± ¡°I bet. Anyway, I really wish you hadn¡¯t told her it was okay for her to serve me.¡± I complained. ¡°Just let her do harmless tasks for you. Maybe use her as a guide around town. It¡¯s not a big deal.¡± Seran waved off my complaint. ¡°It¡¯s not a big deal to you since you¡¯re not the one troubled by it, but I don¡¯t think she¡¯ll take no for an answer. She seems to have her heart set on being my personal handmaiden or some nonsense.¡± I said. ¡°Well, if I remember right from what you said before, you don¡¯t plan on being in town that long so you only have to deal with her a few days.¡± Seran ¡°That¡¯s true. I¡¯m sure she¡¯ll at least be moderately useful in some ways, even if she¡¯ll be a major pain in others. I already have an idea to get away from her for the rest of the day at least.¡± I sighed. ¡°That¡¯s enough about her, though. So this is farewell then?¡± Seran nodded. ¡°Yep, it¡¯s probably time I got out of here. Thanks for the treat staying here. If you get a chance you should visit Ashleaf Town, it¡¯s where our clan lives, and before you say it, yes I know the town name isn¡¯t very original. It¡¯s because the town kind of just built up around our clan¡¯s original village. Regardless I¡¯m sure my baby twin siblings would love to meet you and hear about any stories you could tell them. They¡¯re still only about a hundred years old so they haven¡¯t really ever left home yet.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll think about it, I suppose.¡± I replied. I honestly wasn¡¯t sure if I would bother or not, but visiting a clan of elves might be interesting too. I¡¯ll see how things go in the future. Well if I find out Seran was really a spy then I¡¯ll definitely avoid her family, though I have no idea for sure how I¡¯d accomplish that. Seran got up and then walked toward the door. I followed her and when she opened it Gormon was already standing there outside the door waiting. She turned back toward me and said ¡°Well I guess this is farewell Seri. Stay safe.¡± ¡°You too Seran, stay safe.¡± I looked toward Gormon. ¡°Gormon, stay safe too alright?¡± As usual he only nodded in response. ¡°Thanks again to both of you for the escort.¡± ¡°That was just us doing our duty. Bye Seri.¡± Seran moved forward and hugged me which I lightly returned. Seran stepped back after a minute and I was kind of surprised that she looked like she had some tears in her eyes, but she quickly turned around preventing me from seeing her face. ¡°We have a decent amount of travel ahead of us, so we¡¯ll be off now.¡± With that Seran walked off down the hall. Gormon gave me another nod before he too followed her. I guess that could be considered my first party experience on this world completed. I kind of felt a bit melancholic about it. I went back into the room closing the door behind me. I moved over and sat down on the small sofa and relaxed. I could sneak off now with the maid gone, but I¡¯m hungry and I really don¡¯t feel like looking for a place to eat in town. Thankfully, I didn¡¯t have to wait all that long. Only a few minutes after I had sat down, Myura burst into the room carrying a large tray of dishes. ¡°I¡¯m back with your breakfast, my lady!¡± There was bread, ham, sausages and were those dishes cooked fish? She even brought a glass of wine to go with it. Perfect! Lynn also didn¡¯t miss that glass and was grumbling in my ear about it being too early for alcohol. The freshly cooked smell of the food also woke up my little glutton of a dragon who immediately let me know that she was hungry too. Myura sat the tray on the small table in front of me and then pulled out silverware and a long linen which I assumed would serve as a napkin. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. I wanted to dig in immediately, but that would be poor manners for a noble lady. My prank on the old hag comes back to bite me, too. Instead I ate with all the grace I could muster as Myura stood back and let me eat in silence. Occasionally, I would cut small pieces to give to Coa, primarily from the fish, since I wasn¡¯t really a fan of fish for eating. The food was all delicious though, maybe just as good as the food that I have stored away in my bag. The bread was white and there was butter to spread on it! It was definitely a good choice to stay here. As I finished up my meal and let Coa drift back off into dream land, I turned my attention to the maid that had been silently waiting for me. Time to enact my perfect plan to get her to leave. ¡°That was an exquisite meal. By the way, Myura, you were one serving me the wine last night, were you not?¡± Myura started shivering before responding. ¡°I¡¯m honored that my lady took note of my humble self!¡± That was about the response I expected. I continued, ¡°Do you possess knowledge of wines, then? There was a particular red wine served that had a very sweet, fruity taste.¡± Myura was silent for a moment before answering. ¡°I believe my lady is referring to the wine produced by the Monastery of Saint Exan¡¯s. Did my lady take a fancy to this wine? If so, there is a fine store in town that sells wine that I can visit to procure some bottles.¡± Excellent! She¡¯s even offering to do what I was just about to suggest. ¡°Yes, that sounds like a superb idea. What would you anticipate the price for two bottles to be?¡± I reached into my bag and pulled out my coin pouch. I don¡¯t think the cost would be more than a few golds at most and it will get the maid out of the way. ¡°I have confidence that I can acquire two bottles of Saint Exan¡¯s for only five gold, my lady. It is a very popular wine, but I know the merchant that runs that store well.¡± Myura spoke proudly. ¡°My, then Myura, I will count on you to run this errand for me.¡± I pulled out the five gold coins and held them out to her. She took the coins and the clasped them to her chest before saying. ¡°Do not worry, my lady. I will absolutely not fail your trust!¡± And with that, she left the room. Ahhhh, I immediately relaxed and stretched out on the sofa. Noble lady mode is exhausting. I can¡¯t relax too long though, I need to take advantage of her absence to leave. I got up and stretched and then picked up my pack. I was going to head to the door, but surprisingly Lynn interrupted. ¡°Mistress, you¡¯re not going to drink all that wine right away are you?¡± ¡°No, of course not. That was just an excuse to get the maid to leave, Lynn.¡± I replied, talking quietly so as not be overheard outside the room. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I completely believe you. You were very enthusiastic about drinking last night.¡± Lynn scolded. ¡°It¡¯s not like it¡¯s a problem or anything. Actually on the subject of wines, I noticed something very confusing back at the ship. I know I drank a lot during my breakdown and I destroyed some of my wine bottles too, but I should have still had twenty to thirty bottles left in the wine storage. Yet for some reason when I went to look there, they were all missing. Do you know what happened to my alcohol, Lynn?¡± I asked. ¡°I have no idea what Mistress is talking about. You must have miscounted.¡± Lynn answered calmly. Of course, she wouldn¡¯t admit it. She never liked how much I drank. ¡°If you say so, but I¡¯m going to be doing a thorough inspection of the ship when I get back so I hope my alcohol turns up. Moving on to another related subject. You didn¡¯t pack any sweets in the pack! How could you leave out the most important food group?¡± I complained. ¡°Mistress, sweets are not a food group. I packed based on ensuring you would have nutritional food for over a month.¡± Lynn replied. ¡°That¡¯s too serious, Lynn! Some sweets wouldn¡¯t have hurt anything. You can only act like this because you¡¯ve never tasted sweets or alcohol.¡± I said. ¡°That is the truth. I¡¯ve only simulated tastes after all.¡± Lynn answered. After she said that, I had a bit of a brain wave. It might be an interesting possibility. ¡°Hey Lynn, I just had a random, crazy idea.¡± ¡°And what would that be?¡± Lynn replied, sounding cautious. ¡°Well, you know Lynn, occasionally in stories with magic, it is possible to create something called homunculi which are magically created humans.¡± I said. ¡°And how does that relate to your idea, Mistress?¡± Lynn asked. ¡°I was just thinking if it was possible to do here, then I don¡¯t see any reason I couldn¡¯t learn how and then use magic to create a body for you. It would probably take a lot of work to get it working right since I¡¯d also have to make it so you could control it like your android body, but just think, you¡¯d have a real flesh and blood body!¡± I started laughing. ¡°Then once you had a body like that, I could get you addicted to alcohol and sweets and you¡¯d never be able to complain about me again!¡± Lynn sighed. ¡°Mistress, your true intentions are leaking out.¡± ¡°Oh come on, Lynn. Doesn¡¯t it sound interesting to have a real, living body? You can¡¯t tell me you never considered what that would be like.¡± I stated. Lynn was quiet for a while before mumbling a bit. I couldn¡¯t even hear what she said so she must have intentionally blocked it from transmitting clearly. ¡°... maybe. It might be nice?¡± ¡°Lynn, is something wrong about the idea? Like I said it was just kind of a random and crazy one and I¡¯m not even sure if it¡¯s possible or not.¡± I said. ¡°Ahh no, or I don¡¯t know!¡± Lynn sounded confused. ¡°Ohh, an emergency in the, umm, ship storage area! I need to go deal with that urgently. Please forgive me Mistress.¡± ¡°Lynn?¡± She didn¡¯t reply. Did she just run away from the conversation? Was the idea that bad? Well, if she doesn¡¯t want to respond, I can¡¯t force her. I made my way out of the room and locked it behind me. I walked down the hall and then the stairs. I was back acting like a lady, since I didn¡¯t know when I¡¯d run into a servant or one of the other guests. At the reception in the lobby, I was amused by the attitude of the old hag. ¡°Good morning, my lady. Was your stay satisfactory?¡± ¡°Yes, it was quite enjoyable. I¡¯m very pleased with your hospitality, so I have decided to stay a few more nights.¡± I said. The old hag went pale for a brief moment before answering. ¡°That is no trouble, my lady. Would you like to stay in that same room? If so, the price would be one gold coin for four nights.¡± I affected shock. ¡°Such a change in amount! Is there something wrong?¡± ¡°No, no my lady. There are no problems. That price last night was just because you were an unknown guest.¡± She was sweating a bit. Don¡¯t want to admit that you just charged a bunch to make us go away? She¡¯s also probably offering a reduced rate now if I remember what Seran said about rooms here costing half a gold or so a night. ¡°Well, I will gladly stay for a few more nights at that fee.¡± I pulled out the gold coin and sat it on the counter. ¡°Oh, and Myura is out running an errand for me. I hope that is not any trouble.¡± ¡°That is no trouble at all. After all she has been assigned to you during your stay, my lady. Feel free to use her in any way you may wish.¡± The old hag said. Oh, I had a brief, naughty thought about that last line. I shouldn¡¯t think of doing that kind of thing. That would definitely cause issues. ¡°Well now, I have my own errands to undertake, so I will be returning later in the evening.¡± ¡°Have a pleasant day, my lady.¡± The old hag inclined her head slightly. And with that, I¡¯m free to leave. I left the inn and back out into the town. First things, first. I need to go get my Adventurer¡¯s Card and maybe pick up some requests or something. I think today is going to be busy, but at least I¡¯ll be able to stretch my abilities a bit. I smiled and headed to the guild. Chapter 21 Author¡¯s Note: I would like to make excuses for why this chapter was late and admittedly I do have an excuse that Saturday I was going through like a few hundred documents for my step-dad¡¯s business. Truthfully though, it can all be attributed to certain Den members who have been talking about a certain game in chat constantly for the last few weeks. Since my birthday was coming up this week and because of my interest in it, I ended up buying the game too and spending a lot of time playing it. So, sorry this chapter was so late. I really am trying to keep to the 3 day thing I promise, but I don¡¯t know if I¡¯ll actually be able to. I can only promise to try harder in the future so please enjoy the chapter. It is much longer than the previous one at least.
Chapter 21 It took me a while to find my way to the Adventurer¡¯s Guild. Mainly because the way I had left the place last night had involved following those random directions that had been given while looking for Seran¡¯s presence. Also, Lynn was still not responding to me, so I couldn¡¯t whisper a command for her to display me a map. This meant my way back had involved basically just wandering until I found one of the main street areas that I recognized from the day before as heading to the plaza the guild was located at. When I finally arrived and entered the guild, I was surprised by how deserted the place was compared to the previous evening. Sure, there were some adventurers checking the request board, but I saw only about twenty total people inside, when last night there was probably close to a hundred. It is still pretty early in the morning, so maybe most of the adventurers are still asleep or something? Or maybe they already all went out and these people here are the stragglers, rather than the early birds. None of this had anything to do with my business though, so I went to the not busy counter to talk to the girl who was there. Surprisingly enough it was another cat girl. She even looked very familiar, possibly sisters with the one from last night, though her hair was a bit lighter. She greeted me as I approached with a smile. ¡°Hello, you¡¯re a new face. And, since you¡¯re not checking the request board like the others, you must have some other kind of business here.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right. I need to pick up my card. I registered last night. By the way, since I¡¯m curious, is the guild normally like this in the morning? It was a lot busier last night.¡± I replied. ¡°Oh, yep. This is how mornings usually are, because all of the adventurers around here are either useless or sots.¡± She said the last bit louder than probably necessary, and some of the adventurers nearby overheard. ¡°Come on Miss Fara, you know that¡¯s not true for all of us!¡± One of the younger looking male adventurers complained. ¡°Well, if it¡¯s not true, Lester, then hurry up and complete enough requests to rank up already. Didn¡¯t you promise me that you¡¯d rank up to being a Tier 1 adventurer and propose to me? If you were serious, then hurry and show me. I get lots of proposals as it is. You won¡¯t impress me for making a promise if you can¡¯t keep it.¡± For talking about a proposal, she¡¯s really calm about it. The young man that had spoken up was blushing and had totally shut up. One of his companions was patting him on the back. She turned her attention back to me. ¡°Sorry about that, I really do seem to attract courting though. I seem to get some newbie adventurer proposing to me at least once a week. Anyway, that¡¯s just my personal troubles. You were after your guild card correct? Let¡¯s see where it got put.¡± She started searching in some of the cabinets behind the counter. I have to admit that she is definitely attractive enough to deserve the attention. I think I prefer the other cat girl from the night before a bit over her, though. Her figure seemed a bit better and she had a slightly more mature look. That might have been a result of her lazy attitude I suppose. Why am I constantly evaluating the beauty of the girls around me!? Damn it Seri, you and your romantic escapades! The cat girl, Fara I guess her name is, stopped rifling through the drawers. ¡°Sorry, it seems like it¡¯s not down here. You registered last night though, correct?¡± ¡°Yes I registered with another girl that looks very similar to you. Maybe your sister or cousin or something?¡± I answered. Fara started giggling. ¡°No, that was my mother.¡± I think my brain ceased functioning for a moment. ¡°If you registered with her, I¡¯m pretty sure your guild card is still upstairs in the guild master¡¯s room.¡± I had to ask. ¡°Wait, if that was your mom, but how? The two of you look the same age!¡± Fara just giggled a bit more. ¡°You¡¯re not the first one to wonder that. My great grandmother was an elf, so some of the elven longevity passed down the line.¡± So the girl in front of me and the, I suppose, woman from last night are elven cat girls? I can¡¯t say I ever expected that kind of possibility. Are their ears longer than normal? That was a stupid thought. Anyway, It definitely explains why the mom last night felt more mature despite the similar in age appearance. This isn¡¯t important right now, though. ¡°So, my card is upstairs? Did your mom turn it into the guild master and then forget to bring it back down or something?¡± She sighed. ¡°Actually, my mother is the guild master.¡± My brain tried desperately to keep up with these sharp turns. ¡°She likes to work down here at the counter so she can be out of her office and thus ignore the mountain of paperwork in there. She¡¯s currently sleeping up there.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t it a problem when the guild master is that lazy?¡± I questioned. ¡°My mother does, remarkably, finish her work. Even if it is sometimes barely on time. Just give me a moment to go upstairs to find your card. I¡¯ll be right back.¡± And with that she left. I glanced around. There¡¯s no other guild staff at the counter. Is that not a problem for the adventurers? Now that I think about it, I didn¡¯t really get an explanation about how accepting requests works last night. Some of the adventurers came up to chat with me while I waited. ¡°Yo newbie! Joining the guild huh? It¡¯s tough work, you know? You sure you¡¯re cut out for it?¡± What¡¯s this? Giving the new person advice? How kind of him. ¡°I¡¯m fine. I¡¯m already used to traveling around and fighting. I just never registered before since I hadn¡¯t needed to.¡± I answered. ¡°Oh, is that so, newbie? Well, just take your time ranking up. There¡¯s no real rush and rushing will get you killed in this line of work. I¡¯d suggest looking to join a party and going to the Forgotten Woods. It¡¯s a good place to get experience and pretty safe since it¡¯s under guild control.¡± The man continued with his advice. I was kind of surprised by how friendly he was being. Isn¡¯t the usual cliche with the veteran adventurers making a fuss about someone joining? I guess I¡¯m being a bit stupid to think that kind of thing will always happen. After the older man finished talking, the young man from earlier Lester spoke up too. ¡°Yeah, if you want, you can join our party! We¡¯ve been going to the Woods for the last week now. If you don¡¯t mind me asking, what is your Class?¡± I have no real reason to hide it. Plus I think if the knowledge of what Class I am spreads a bit, most people will underestimate me which is always a good thing. Being underestimated makes people not take you as a serious threat. After all, I¡¯m only a Beastmaster with no beasts. I had a brief mental chuckle at that thought. ¡°I¡¯m a level thirty Beastmaster along with some training to be a Hunter.¡± ¡°A level thirty Beastmaster!¡± Lester exclaimed. ¡°That¡¯s really good! You don¡¯t seem to have any beasts with you at the moment. Did you leave them in a stable or something?¡± ¡°Regrettably, I don¡¯t have any beasts at the moment. They all got killed recently.¡± Coa heard what I said and reared up and chirped at me, like she was saying, ¡®What about me?¡¯. The adventurers eyes flicked to Coa too so it¡¯s obvious that she was finally noticed. I had so hoped she would stay asleep and quiet. ¡°Well, I do have this child, but she¡¯s still too young to do anything.¡± ¡°Is that a Serpent Dragon!? How did you manage to tame one of those? Those are extremely rare and valuable you know!?¡± Lester was getting to be annoying. ¡°Lester, calm down.¡± The older man said. ¡°I am impressed you managed to tame one of them. How did you manage it?¡± ¡°Taming this little one is what got all my other beasts killed so not really a great trade off.¡± I supplied. ¡°You could always sell it. You¡¯d make at least ten gold. Probably much more since it¡¯s still a child that can be easily raised. Serpent Dragons aren¡¯t exactly strong fighting creatures but they are prized for being pets for the wealthy.¡± The man explained. ¡°No. I have no intention of selling this little one. I¡¯m very fond of her.¡± I rubbed Coa¡¯s head with my hand and she started to purr. ¡°I¡¯m still willing to let you join our party if you want. We could always use another ranged attacker.¡± Lester chimed up again. ¡°Thanks for the offer, but I¡¯ll pass. I don¡¯t think I¡¯d be much use to any party and I still need to actually buy a bow.¡± I wasn¡¯t bothering to carry around the crude bow Gormon had made for me today so other than my dagger at my waist, I wasn¡¯t carrying any obvious weapons. ¡°If you change your mind, just let me know. I¡¯m here bright and early every day!¡± He said. ¡°You¡¯re only here ¡®bright and early¡¯ every morning because Miss Fara works in the mornings.¡± Another young adventurer laughed. Lester blushed, ¡°Hey, you¡¯re not one to talk! I know you proposed to her too!¡± ¡°So what if I did. That¡¯s my business, or do you want to pick a fight? You¡¯re still just a rookie.¡± The other guy continued laughing, but stood up from where he had been sitting. Ahh, these two idiots really look like they are about to get it on. Oh, the older man is rolling his eyes at this scene. Thankfully, Fara finally returned and they immediately calmed down. I guess they don¡¯t want to cause trouble in the guild when the girl they have a crush on can see it. She spoke up in a loud voice. ¡°Hey everyone, I have a notice here.¡± The adventurers all stopped whatever they were doing to listen. ¡°There¡¯s reports of heightened monster activity coming out of the Nothar mountains. So be careful if any of your work takes you near or into there. Make sure to pass the word onto other adventurers if they haven¡¯t seen the notice.¡± With that she went up to the request board and stuck the notice straight in the center. She came back to the counter and the rest of the adventurers dispersed back to what they were doing. ¡°It was a good thing I went up there to check for your card. I wouldn¡¯t even have known about the notice otherwise.¡± She laid a card down in front of me. ¡°Here you go. You are now officially a Tier 5 Adventurer. Do you have any questions you need to ask?¡± If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°Yes I do, actually. First, how does accepting requests work. Also, if I wanted to go to the Forgotten Woods, is there anything I need to do first? Then, are there any requests for the Forgotten Woods that you recommend?¡± I asked. ¡°Well for requests, you just need to bring the request here to the counter and one of the guild staff will register you for accepting it. You can bring in given requests too, you don¡¯t have to accept ones from the board here. If you do that though, we usually need to do a follow up to make sure it¡¯s a legitimate request. For the Forgotten Woods, it¡¯s a dungeon suitable for beginners so there¡¯s no permission or anything needed. Just remember to be careful. It is a dungeon, even if it is low level. And don¡¯t try to fight the boss until you¡¯re stronger. The dungeon boss is about twice as high in level as the other monsters. Many new adventurers get overconfident and lose their lives to it.¡± Fara warned. ¡°And what about requests for the Forgotten Woods?¡± I asked again. ¡°Have you ever been in a dungeon before?¡± I shake my head. ¡°We have a standing request for any fiend stones you might collect from the monsters. Dungeon monsters are different from the monsters that live outside of dungeons. They disappear when killed, leaving behind just their fiend stone. Fiend stones can be purified and then they become a magic stone which can be used in a number of ways. The monsters in the dungeon near here are pretty low level though, so we only get basic stones, but they still have uses even so.¡± Fara explained. ¡°I got it. So basically if I go to the dungeon, just collect as many stones as possible from the monsters? That sounds pretty easy. Out of curiosity what are some of the things magic stones are used for?¡± I said. ¡°It does sound easy. As for magic stones, certain potions or enchantments can require them. Just be careful, really. Your information says you¡¯re a Beastmaster, but you should absolutely not try to tame a dungeon monster. Dungeon monsters can¡¯t be tamed.¡± She gave me another warning. Not like I planned to tame anything new. Unless I came across something really interesting. ¡°Thanks for all your help. Oh, I had one more question. Can you give me directions to shop owned by someone named Huvreck? I was told the guild should know where it¡¯s located.¡± ¡°Huvreck¡¯s shop? I can give you directions, but are you sure? He¡¯s a bit eccentric, though he does make good weapons. I¡¯d really recommend a different shop.¡± Fara replied. I nodded. ¡°Well if you¡¯re sure.¡± She pulled out a paper and quill pen and started drawing out a simple map. ¡°Just follow the map directions and you¡¯ll get there.¡± I picked up the map. Thankfully there was no written directions on it. It was a simple drawn map starting at the guild and then making note of the streets to get to my destination. ¡°Thanks again. I really appreciate it.¡± ¡°No problems at all. The guild staff is here to help.¡± She smiled. Before I could stop, I found myself saying. ¡°Since that¡¯s out of the way and I¡¯m a new adventurer now, shall I propose to you too? I promise to make you happy.¡± I think both her and I went blank at that statement of mine. Why in the hell did I just say that!? I quickly spoke up again. ¡°Sorry, that was just a poor joke. Anyway, I¡¯ll be going now.¡± I immediately made my way out of the guild without stopping or looking back. I felt so damn embarrassed. I hope she¡¯s not there when I go back to turn in any extra stones I get from the dungeon. I want to hold on to some to play with. I diverted my brain to focusing on the map in my hand and then started walking. As I walked, I paid attention to where I was going so I wouldn¡¯t have to rely on the map again. I was kind of surprised that I found myself walking through some alleys and then after a few minutes I found myself at a shop. It looked pretty run down. Not a surprise I guess considering how out of the way it is. There¡¯s just a simple wooden sign with a blacksmith hammer hanging over the door. I pushed open the door and went inside. The inside was just as run down as the outside. There were some weapons hanging in various places, but not that many. Also I don¡¯t see any examples of armor, though there is a single shield. The other flaw was that there was no shopkeeper in site. I heard sounds coming from the back that sounded like hammer work so I trudged through the store toward the sounds. In the back, at a small bench was a short man that despite his height had incredible physique. I assumed that he was a dwarf. He was so focused on whatever he was working on that he hadn¡¯t even noticed me. I didn¡¯t really want to interrupt, but I didn¡¯t feel like standing around waiting for a long time either. ¡°Excuse me, are you Huvreck? I was told to come here by a recommendation.¡± The man didn¡¯t even turn around. He replied in a gruff voice. ¡°Get out! I don¡¯t have any money for the likes of you, so there be no reason to heckle me!¡± I sighed. ¡°I¡¯m not here about money. I¡¯m here about buying a weapon. Are you Huvreck? Seran told me you could help me with getting a good bow.¡± ¡°Wha? Seran?¡± The man finally turned around giving me a glimpse of his long, bushy beard. ¡°Lass, didja just mention an elf named Seran as in Serandelle from the Ashleaf Clan? She toldja to come to me?¡± I nodded. ¡°Yes, she recommended me to visit you.¡± The dwarf started laughing. ¡°It¡¯s been a long time since I heard that name. Last I knew she was still stuck at the fortress. How¡¯d ya meet her? She must really like ya to tell ya to come to me for a weapon.¡± ¡°She escorted me to this town.¡± I replied. ¡°Wha? That damn elf was in town and didn¡¯t visit me!? She owes me a bloody drink!¡± Huvreck roared. ¡°Sorry, I can¡¯t do anything about that. I really would prefer we could switch the talk to my business though.¡± I said. ¡°Fine, lass. What were ya after? I wasn¡¯t payin¡¯ attention.¡± He answered. ¡°I need a good bow. Also some arrows and a quiver if possible. If not I understand, but definitely at least a bow.¡± I explained. ¡°A bow eh? I have a few bows that might work for a lass your size.¡± He strode over to a pile of crates in a corner and started sorting through the contents. After some time, time that I spent patting Coa, he returned with two short bows. ¡°Here we are. Both good bows. Took me a moment since I had to arm them with their strings.¡± ¡°Which is the best bow of these two?¡± I asked. ¡°Well, that¡¯d be this one here.¡± He displayed a white bow. ¡°One of my finest works this one. A bow made of pearlwood. The string for this one is even fairy thread too. I carved some enchantments into it ta make it stronger and more durable. It has pretty hefty stat requirements, so I don¡¯t know if a lass like yourself could use it. If ya be looking for a good beginner bow then it¡¯d be this one.¡± This time he pointed out a dark grey bow. ¡°This bow is made from ironwood. Not an amazing bow, but a very good one for beginners. Low stat requirements.¡± ¡°Do you mind if I try them? I want to see if I can use the pearlwood bow.¡± I said. ¡°Go ahead lass, though unless ya have a high strength stat ya won¡¯t probably be able to bend it.¡± He supplied. He handed the white bow to me and I took it. Now that I was holding the bow in my hand, I was pretty surprised. It seemed to be the perfect size for my use. I tried to pull the string back and of course it easily bent for me. Huvreck was gaping at me in shock. ¡°It seems like this bow works just fine for me. How much does it cost? Also, what is the damage enhancement on it?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be. I don¡¯t think I ever expected to find someone able to use the darn thing. As for the price, I¡¯ll let ya have it for ten gold. That¡¯s how much the material cost was at any rate. As for the damage, prepare to be amazed!¡± He made a wide grin before continuing. ¡°It has a damage value of 460!¡± That is pretty amazing. That means this bow has similar damage to my Whisperwind gun. Well it¡¯s a bit lower and of course, I highly doubt this bow would reach the rate of fire of Whisperwind that can fire five hundred shots in a couple minutes, but it¡¯s still impressive for a bow. I definitely want it. Having a strong weapon that is recognizable by this world would mean less reason for me to have to use my psi or guns. ¡°That is astounding! I¡¯ll buy it for ten gold then. Do you have a quiver and some arrows?¡± At my question he rooted around in his crates again and came back with a simple quiver and a bundle of arrows. ¡°There be forty arrows. That¡¯d be enough as long as you recover them properly. The arrows are ironwood too so they shouldn¡¯t break easily.¡± ¡°What would the arrows and quiver cost?¡± I asked. ¡°Nah, I¡¯ll let ya have them along with the bow. No additional charge. I¡¯m right pleased as a craftsman to finally see one of my works used.¡± Huvreck said. ¡°Are you sure? I don¡¯t mind paying.¡± I replied. ¡°Don¡¯t go spoiling my generosity, lass!¡± He barked. ¡°Fine, fine. Here¡¯s your gold.¡± I handed him the coins. In return I slung the bow and quiver full of arrows behind my back under my cloak. I¡¯ll probably need to adjust my cloak or take it off to use the quiver properly. Maybe I can strap it around my waist or something instead. There was something else I wanted to ask. I think a craftsman like Huvreck might know it best. ¡°Huvreck, I have a question for you. It¡¯s about some certain materials. Can you identify them for me?¡± He seemed surprised by the request but nodded. ¡°Sure, lass. If it¡¯s something that can be worked, I know of it. I¡¯m a master craftsman and weaponsmith after all.¡± I pulled out the three lumps of materials and sat them down on the bench. Almost as soon as I had sat down the etherenite, Huvreck had reached for it and was examining it in his hands. His eyes were wide as he flipped the item around in his hands to examine every bit of it. Finally, he finished and then he returned his focus to me. ¡°Lass, where in the underworld did ya get this!? This is a pure, PURE ya hear me, lump of adamantite! I¡¯ve never even heard of such a thing before!¡± He bellowed. Adamantite? Chapter 22 Author¡¯s Note: So I meant to have this chapter written and posted Friday or Satuday, but then I got really sick Friday and was sick through the entire weekend. Actually I still feel like shit right now so I¡¯m keeping this short. Please enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 22 ¡°Lass, where did ya get this pure adamantite?¡± Huvreck asked. I shook my head. ¡°Where I got it isn¡¯t important right now. I still need you to identify these other materials. I might tell you after that. No guarantee though.¡± I replied ¡°That¡¯s fine. After seeing this adamantite, I¡¯m curious about what else ya might have brought.¡± He said. He took the titanil next and examined it, eventually his expression turned perplexed. He sat that one down and picked up the chromanite, but again he could only examine it with a blank expression. After putting down that one too, he sunk to the ground with an aggrieved sigh. ¡°Is there something wrong with identifying these two?¡± I inquired. ¡°My pride as a craftsman has been hurt. I¡¯ve never seen materials I couldn¡¯t recognize before!¡± He gloomily stated. He can¡¯t recognize these either? That¡¯s not good at all. Does that mean this world has etherenite, well adamantite here, but not titanil or chromanite? These materials are vital for my warp drive¡¯s shield casing and frame. ¡°You¡¯ve really never seen these before?¡± I asked. ¡°Nope. Never seen in my life. Where did ya get these unknown materials lass? The adamantite too, for that matter.¡± Huvreck questioned. ¡°I can¡¯t say. All I can say is that the source is used up, so no reason to bother looking for it.¡± I answered. ¡°I see. So, I get the feeling ya needed more than just an identification of these?¡± He asked. ¡°That¡¯s my business. I don¡¯t know you well enough to give out that kind of information.¡± I stated. ¡°Well now, it doesn¡¯t take an Oracle to figure out that if someone asks about materials, it¡¯s usually because they¡¯re making something. I would guess ya be looking for more of these materials for whatever it is. Sadly, I can¡¯t help ya with that.¡± He said. ¡°What do you mean?¡± I asked. ¡°Of course, I can¡¯t tell ya where to find materials I¡¯ve never seen, but for the adamantite it¡¯s damn near impossible to get. There¡¯s only one place I know of to get it but because of the circumstances, ya¡¯d never get any.¡± He declared. ¡°So there is a source for adamantite somewhere at least? I¡¯m willing to admit that I do need a lot more of that.¡± I replied. ¡°The only people that trade in adamantite are the dark dwarves.¡± He said ruefully. ¡°And, as you said before, there¡¯s a problem with that?¡± I inquired. ¡°Aye. No one knows where the dark dwarves live or where their mine is. They trade only through a certain organization and that group is very protective of that relationship. Lots of folks have tried searching, but they all ended up dead. I¡¯m not even going to tell ya the name of the organization, because I don¡¯t want to end up on that list too. Actually, I might have already said too much.¡± He said, while scratching the back of his head. ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re not willing to give me a name and maybe a location to search from? I can promise that they won¡¯t find out from me that you gave me the information.¡± I replied. ¡°Lass, I don¡¯t want a target on my back. I know ya be strong since ya could use that bow, but that group is damn scary and they have their hands in everything, the guilds, the military and even the nobility.¡± He declared. Then he rubbed his hands together. ¡°I¡¯m willing to give ya just the name though, in return for a small favor.¡± ¡°What kind of favor?¡± I asked suspiciously. ¡°Nothing big or difficult for someone with ability, but it¡¯s something that is almost impossible for me to get in this town. Ya know of the dungeon near the town right?¡± I nodded, so he continued. ¡°In the deepest part of that dungeon is a tree that grows out of a small pool. It¡¯s an excellent tree for staff materials and I¡¯ve had a commision for a pair of staves from that for a while for some sorcerers that I know from way back. Basically I need ya to go through the dungeon and cut me some branches off of that tree. That¡¯s all.¡± ¡°If your sorcerer friends want those, why don¡¯t they just get the materials themselves. Also why don¡¯t you just hire some adventurers from the city here to do it?¡± Honestly this favor didn¡¯t seem that hard, but I still wanted to establish these details because there might be some hidden risk factors. ¡°My sorcerer friends are a retired adventuring couple. They are busy raising their kids. They want the staves for their kids when they reach the age to start training in magic. That¡¯s why there hasn¡¯t really been a rush since they put in the order to me. There¡¯s still a few years before the kids are ready to even use the things. As for why I can¡¯t ask other adventurers here, most of the adventurers here are too bloody weak to get to the deepest part of the dungeon since it requires fighting the boss. The boss is at least double the level of the other monsters in there. Adventurers just raise their level here and then go off to one of those other dungeons. Also to be honest with ya, I just don¡¯t have the money to hire good adventurers. You¡¯re the first one to come by in a while with a shot at getting me the materials and I really want to take my time and do a good job making those staves, ya know?¡± ¡°I see, that all sounds pretty straightforward. I was planning on checking the dungeon out anyway. I hadn¡¯t planned to bother clearing the place, but I can do that too if necessary.¡± I said. ¡°So, ya agree to my favor and I agree to give ya the information when ya get back with the goods, aye?¡± Huvreck asked. ¡°Yeah, I agree. I won¡¯t promise them later today, but I¡¯ll be in town for a few days, so I¡¯ll get you it sometime before I leave.¡± I stated. ¡°Alright then, I¡¯ll give ya this hatchet too. Ya¡¯ll need it when ya get to the tree and it will probably be helpful for the boss too.¡± He hands me a hatchet off his own belt. The axe head was a peculiar red color. ¡°Why would it be useful for the boss?¡± I asked. ¡°The boss of the woods is an Elder Treant, the bow wouldn¡¯t be very effective against that. For the branches, just get me a couple two meter long branches. I¡¯ll give ya this bag to put them in too. It¡¯s a spare so it will work for ya.¡± He picked up a small pouch that was lying on the ground. ¡°Is this a bag of holding then?¡± ¡°Course it is. It¡¯s empty and it¡¯s registered to me, so ya won¡¯t be able to take out anything ya put in, but that should work fine right? I¡¯ll check over the goods when ya return.¡± ¡°Yep, seems like negotiation is complete then.¡± I slipped the hatchet in my belt and then tied the pouch there too. ¡°I¡¯ll be going.¡± ¡°Next time you visit, bring some good ale. We¡¯ll have a drinking party.¡± He laughed as he waved me off. ¡°I¡¯ll think about it.¡± I walked to the doorway leading out of the backroom before turning my head back. ¡°Oh yeah, Huvreck?¡± ¡°Do ya still need something lass?¡± He asked perplexed. He looked like he was just about to get back to the work my visit had interrupted. ¡°Just wanted to tell you. That if I do this favor for you and then it turns out that the information you gave me was false¡­¡± I let my voice trail off eerily. It promised all kinds of unpleasantness. ¡°No worries though, you just have to keep your side of the bargain as you said.¡± I smiled and left the store. Was there any other business to take care of? I have a weapon and an ID. I already had supplies in my pack, so I don¡¯t need to worry about that. I guess all I¡¯m missing is the location of the dungeon. I didn¡¯t ask about that and all Seran said was that it was to the north of town. I guess I could go back to the guild and ask for directions again. I think if I do that, I¡¯ll end up embroiled in the idiots. I guess that only leaves one place to ask unless I ask a random person, which I¡¯ll pass on. I hadn¡¯t expected to visit there again the very next day. I backtracked toward the plaza and then into the apothecary shop. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Witch girl noticed me as soon as I came in, but there were other customers today so she couldn¡¯t rush over to me. It was kind of amusing watching her facial expression that kept flicking to Coa on my neck as she was conducting business. I took some time looking around the items on the shelves. I had no idea what anything was but there were lots of salves and lotions and other things of that nature. There were some powders too. I only see women shopping in here, so maybe it¡¯s that kind of female oriented product store? Probably why the merchant recommended me here. Eventually the store emptied of the other customers and witch girl beckoned me over to the counter. ¡°Hello, I saw you brought the cutie in today! I didn¡¯t expect you to visit me again so soon. I did bring in my familiar just in case.¡± She brought up a small basket and inside it was a small white kitten sleeping. ¡°Isn¡¯t she adorable?¡± ¡°She is.¡± I agreed. I was being honest too, I tended to prefer cats over dogs if I had to make a choice. I brought Coa down from my neck and let her see the kitten too. ¡±Actually I¡¯d love to stay and play, but I needed directions to the dungeon. All I know is that it¡¯s to the north of town.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not going to take the cutie there are you? You should leave her here with me. I¡¯ll let her sleep in the warm basket with Nirvi and take good care of her I promise!¡± She pleaded. ¡°She¡¯ll be safe with me. I just really need those directions if you would?¡± I asked pointedly. ¡°Boo boo boooo! It¡¯s pretty simple to get there. Just follow the road that goes past the adventurer¡¯s guild entrance and then keep following it out the city gate. The dungeon is only a few hours away from town. You have to come visit tomorrow and actually play alright?¡± ¡°I promise to visit again tomorrow and for a longer stay.¡± I agreed. There were a lot of things regarding magic that I could ask a Witch. ¡°Good! You be careful too, cutie, I don¡¯t want to hear about you getting hurt okay?¡± She whispered to Coa as she patted her gently. I allowed her to continue that for a few minutes before I finally had to stop her, since I think she would have patted Coa the whole day if I let her. As I walked through the plaza stalls, Coa perked up and started whining. I looked at what drew her attention and it was a stall selling meat skewers. She couldn¡¯t still be hungry could she? Apparently that was a foolish question because she started whining even louder and that started drawing a lot of attention to me. I sighed and walked over to the stall. ¡°Excuse me, can I have one skewer.¡± The man working the stall nodded. ¡°That will be eight copper miss.¡± I pulled out a silver coin. ¡°Here.¡± The man looked a bit taken aback. ¡°Sorry miss, I don¡¯t have enough copper yet today to give you change for a silver.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine, just give me more skewers next time I see you. I think my pet will be happy if you do.¡± I replied. Honestly, I have two hundred silver coins, losing one isn¡¯t a big loss. I received the skewer of grilled meat and had to continue making my way, though I was quite aware of all the eyes that followed me or more specifically followed the little dragon that was hanging from around my neck straining to reach the skewer that I was holding just a bit out of her reach. I took Coa from my neck to my left hand and then with my right hand held the skewer in front of her and she started taking bites out of it. I had really hoped to keep Coa as out of sight as possible, but it looked like expecting a child to follow all your directions was an impossibility. When I think of the price I was told earlier about how much Coa would be worth, I foresee that I¡¯m going to have some trouble arise because of this. The attention followed me all the way until I reached the city gate, which I passed through easily after showing one of the guards my new ID. A few hours distance to the dungeon though, shouldn¡¯t be more than a few dozen kilometers. Too bad there are other people around at the moment or I could hurry this along, but I¡¯m stuck to my current slightly faster than normal walking pace. The people just ahead of me look like another adventurer party. There¡¯s four of them. One using a shield and sword, one using a large axe, one wearing a robe and using a staff and the last has a bow. Pretty well balanced party I suppose. Coa finished off the skewer, so I tossed it to the side of the road and let Coa move back to her spot around my neck. After about an hour of following them, the one in the robe turned around and noticed me or maybe they had already noticed my presence, but they finally turned around to see who had been behind them for so long. Ahh, they drew their party¡¯s attention to me. The rest of the party now turned around to glance at me too. Well, if they want to chat with me, I¡¯m fine with it. It would at least kill some time. Contrary to what I expected, they didn¡¯t start a conversation with me, if anything it seemed like they were disgusted by me? At least that¡¯s the emotion I was picking up from their minds. That was odd. It bothers me to be hated on sight for seemingly no reason. I don¡¯t feel like bothering to stay behind these assholes anymore. So I sped up and went around them leaving them behind as they became shocked by the sudden turn of events. I didn¡¯t bother slowing my pace down until I caught sight of a large number of adventurers and a building ahead. The building was decently sized and there were even some stalls next to it selling some goods. The main thing that caught my attention though was the forest I saw next to the building and where I could see some adventurers going into. It was probably one of the spookier forests I had ever seen and there was a thick mist that was flowing out of it, though it dissipated once it left the forest¡¯s boundaries. It appeared that I had found the dungeon. I got to the crowd of adventurers and it seems like most of them were either chatting about random things or waiting for party members that were running behind. One of the stalls was selling lanterns, which I guess made sense. If the mist was thick as it seemed to be from the outside, then it was likely going to be very dark in there. I had excellent night vision so I didn¡¯t bother with one of those. I pushed my way through the rest of the crowd and eventually made it to another stall, but this one wasn¡¯t selling anything, but seemed to be something of a check in point right at the dungeon entrance. There was a brief line that moved pretty quickly and I had my ID ready for when I made it to the front of the line. The man gave the ID a glance, but then glanced at it again before he spoke up. ¡°Miss, are you entering the dungeon alone? Where¡¯s the rest of your party?¡± ¡°Yes, I¡¯m entering alone. Is there a problem?¡± I asked. ¡°No, but even if the guild is keeping the dungeon at a low level, it¡¯s still a dangerous place.¡± He answered. ¡°Then that¡¯s fine. I can handle a little danger, or will you stop me from entering just because I¡¯m alone?¡± I inquired. ¡°Sadly, I¡¯m not allowed to stop you, even if I think you¡¯re making a mistake.¡± He replied. ¡°Do you at least have a lantern with you?¡± ¡°No, I don¡¯t think I need one. If that¡¯s all the warning you have to give, then I¡¯m going.¡± I said. Without letting him hold me up anymore I went past him and into the twisted together trees that served as the entrance. As I reached them a window appeared just like it had when I found that other dungeon.
*You have discovered the Dungeon (Rank ?????)*
I quickly dismissed it and strode into the mist. I was looking forward to getting to let loose a bit. Chapter 23 Author¡¯s Note: So the dungeon exploration has started. Nothing to say here so please enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 23 The mist got thicker and thicker as I followed the forest trail from the entrance. I could barely see a few meters in any direction. The trail was also only about two meters wide. Pretty compact for larger parties, which explains why all the parties I had seen were fairly small. I thought about the possibility of leaving the trail, but with how thick the mist is I don¡¯t know if I¡¯d be able to find it again if I got off it. Also, off the path it looked like the trees and plants were very thick and intermingled, so I¡¯d probably be fighting my way through every step of the way. I have to assume that I¡¯m expected to stay on the trail. I don¡¯t have a problem with that. This would probably be a really eerie experience if it was also quiet, but I could hear the sounds of fighting coming from various directions. Obviously, other adventurers were busy at work. I was hoping to soon be busy too. The sooner I could get into some action, the sooner I could unlock the Hunter Class and start leveling it up. After a few minutes of trudging along, I reached my first big moment in the dungeon. The trail was now splitting into multiple paths. There were two paths leading off toward my left, one continuing forward and then one going off to the right. Focusing my senses a bit, I could hear action from ahead and to the left, but I didn¡¯t hear anything from the right. Now the question was, why was that? There¡¯s a number of possibilities. Is it possible that there is nothing to the right to fight? Or is it just that the monsters that way are annoying and a pain to fight? Or is the right a path that leads to a dead end or trap? Well, Lynn should be tracking my current position and movements, so I can take the risk of making some wrong calls in here. There¡¯s no way I could end up lost after all and I doubt there¡¯s a single thing in here that can break through my shield. I¡¯d also like to not have to fight with other adventurers for kills. Bearing all that in mind, I decided to continue along the right path. Up until the path split, the previous trail had been a straight line since the entrance, but this one started winding and twisting this way and that. There were even some low hanging branches I had to duck under to continue along the path. Was this path that unused? Should I try cutting some of these branches? I think that I¡¯ll not bother, unless they completely block the path at some point. As I followed the path further and further, I started to wonder why I hadn¡¯t run into anything yet? I had I assumed I¡¯d fight something by now. I decided to stop for a moment to spread my psi out even further than normal. I can¡¯t feel any presences around me for fifty meters in any direction. I cancelled out the extra psi detection and went back to my normal ten meter range. I could switch to using Ranger for the detection bonuses, but then I¡¯d have issues once Hunter was unlocked. I¡¯ll probably switch it in later together with Hunter. The path finally led me into a small clearing. The mist wasn¡¯t as thick here giving me a clear view of the whole area. Probably about five by eight meters in size? There was nothing in the clearing apart from some small bushes scattered about. I would have expected to find some monsters or something waiting here, or maybe they¡¯ll come out once I get out into the clearing rather than standing at the entrance? I still don¡¯t detect anything even close by though. Other than turning around there¡¯s no other direction to go, so I pulled out my bow and adjusted my cloak to let me have access to my quiver. It was kind of bothersome to pull out an arrow with the quiver behind my back. I cheated a bit and pulled one out with my psi rather than using my hand. I nocked the arrow to be prepared then walked cautiously out into the clearing. When I reached the center of the clearing, to my disappointment nothing happened. I turned around in place, scoping out the lines of trees shrouded in mist that surrounded me. I waited a few more minutes just in case before letting out a large sigh. This was nothing like the interesting dungeon trip I was hoping for. I proceeded toward the opening on the other end of the clearing. I immediately noticed that this new trail was narrower than the previous one. Maybe only one meter at most? This narrow path wouldn¡¯t exactly make a optimal place to use my bow especially if a monster came from the sides. I reluctantly unnocked my arrow and replaced it and my bow behind my back. This trail was even harder to follow than the previous winding one. At times I even had to push through underbrush that was growing on the path. Is this normal or does this having something to do with why it seemed like no one came this way based on the sounds of action from the other paths. Eventually, I came once again to the path splitting in multiple directions. This time I had five choices. I can only see a few meters down any of the paths, so I guess any choice would be fine? Should I just take the rightmost path again? Actually if I take the right path I might be backtracking, I¡¯ll go forward this time. As I was about to step on the chosen path, I suddenly felt a hostile presence rushing at me. What the hell!? It just appeared a few meters away! I swiftly pulled out my dagger and spun around, stabbing it at the presence. I missed. How did I miss!? It didn¡¯t seem like the creature had dodged, as it flew straight at me and hit me, but bounced off due to my shield. It fell to the ground and I finally got a good look at my enemy. It looked like a cross between a bat and a hawk, having the talons of a hawk but mostly looking like a large bat. It was also dark colored with glowing red eyes. I was about to take my dagger and finish it when it let out a ear piercing screech. I covered my ears hastily. That really hurt because I hadn¡¯t been expecting it. On the bright side, at least I hadn¡¯t been focusing my hearing. The creature flapped and took flight again and went back into the mist surrounding me. I noticed that its presence immediately disappeared again once it was out of sight. It seems like the mist is messing with my ability to detect enemies. I waited with dagger drawn and a few moments later, the presence reappeared behind me again. This time I didn¡¯t waste time trying to stab it with my dagger and instead spread out my psi like a net behind me. I felt the bat hit my psi and I grasped it tightly to not let it go. Turning around I saw it floating in midair. Despite the fact that I had centered my psi on the bat¡¯s presence, it was slightly to the side of where I had aimed. Was the mist also messing with my senses? I carefully took my dagger and stabbed it at the bat. Despite aiming for the bat, my stab was off focus and instead hit its wing. I quickly slashed back and this time hit the bat right in its side. The bat let out another small screech before going silent. The bat¡¯s corpse immediately started evaporating away into what looked like mist. After it was fully gone a small red item dropped to the ground. I picked it up and examined it. This must be one of those fiend stones I had been told about. It resembled a dark red marble. For now, I slipped it away in my pack. I could examine it more closely outside the dungeon. A couple points bothered me about that encounter. The first being that I didn¡¯t notice the monster until after it had left the mist to attack me. When it was inside the mist, I couldn¡¯t feel it at all. That meant my detection range was next to useless. The next point is that my senses are being messed with to a degree. Despite aiming precisely for the bat, I was constantly off with each of my attacks. That could create real problems, or at least some major hassles for future fights. Well, until I figure out how whatever it is, is messing with me. The last point is the fact that the monster evaporated into mist upon its death. Does that mean the monster was created spontaneously out of the mist to attack me? I¡¯m not sure if that¡¯s exactly the case yet, but it might be possible. Fara did say they disappear when killed, so maybe it¡¯s just a coincidence that it resembled the mist? Even as I consider it, I kind of really doubt it. I returned my attention back to the path I had been about to enter. Now that I think about it, I was attacked as soon as I was going to enter. That was probably not a coincidence either. I stepped toward the path again, but no attack came this time. I kept my dagger out this time as I continued along. As I strode along this new path, I had a few more encounters with the bat creatures that went pretty much exactly like the first, though I wasn¡¯t caught off guard by the screech these times. I was happy to finally be fighting things, but my constantly missing attacks were bugging me. I couldn¡¯t detect anything affecting me, yet it was evident that something was. It was disturbing really, since I prided myself on my mental defenses. The obvious conclusion was that this was magical in nature and somehow evading my notice. How does a dungeon that is considered a newbie dungeon get away with having an effect like this? I might have underestimated this place just a bit. It clearly tells me that my lack of magical knowledge and power needs to be rectified as soon as possible. First though, I need to finish this dungeon so I can get that wood for Huvreck. After about another half an hour, I stumbled upon a new clearing. I crouched down and hid rather than walk into it. Unlike, the previous one this one was full of dark creatures that looked like large badgers. Actually, maybe wolverines was a more precise description of what they resemble. They were wandering around the clearing, and hadn¡¯t seemed to notice me yet. A quick scan told me the beasts were Mist Weasels and they were only level 20 or so. This was finally a perfect occasion to use my bow. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Taking it out and nocking an arrow, I aimed carefully dead center on one of the closer weasels, hoping my aim wouldn¡¯t be too off. These targets were larger than the bat at least. I let loose my arrow. It did hit away from where I had aimed, but still buried deep into the thing¡¯s body, instantly killing it. At the death of one of their number, the rest of the weasels were alerted to my position, but I was already taking aim on my next prey. I managed to kill three more before they reached me, but the other six had to be dodged and I jumped over their rushing bodies into the clearing. The mist was very thin in the large clearing and I found my next shots landing precisely where I aimed. At least, that answers my question about whether the source of the interference was the mist or in the mist. I had to dance around a bit to dodge the reckless beasts¡¯ attacks to finish off the last few. After killing the tenth and final beast, a pair of windows popped up.
*Class Unlocked: Hunter*
-For your use of traps and the bow to catch and slay beasts you have acquired the Class of Hunter -This Class provides a bonus in proficiency with the use of the bow, giving your shots a 5% increase in damage done. The class also allows one the capability to detect beasts to aid in hunting.
*Stats Gained*
-Expertise +5
Barely any stats gained, but that¡¯s understandable with only just unlocking it. I¡¯ll get more once I level it further. Those bonuses are kind of lame though. The detection bonus especially. It¡¯s kind of redundant with my already possessed abilities of detection. I sighed. My ¡®already possessed abilities of detection¡¯ that have proven pretty much useless here. I decided to go with my previous plan to class change once Hunter was unlocked. I swapped Hunter into the main slot and Ranger into the sub slot. Beastmaster was useless here with there being nothing to tame and no pets to use other than Coa. I was hesitant to remove Empath since it was aiding my psi, but I believed Ranger¡¯s proficiencies might be more useful in this place. Ranger providing bonuses to my senses might offset at least some of the negative affect the mist was causing. I recovered my arrows and the fiend stones that were scattered around the glade. The stones were identical to the ones the bats had dropped. Regrettably, one of my arrows hadn¡¯t survived, so I was now reduced to thirty-nine arrows. With everything settled, I was once again left with a new choice in path to take. There were three trails, including the one I had arrived from, that connected here. It was a good thing, I had kept track of which I had entered from, or I might have accidentally backtracked. I settled on the one that was further away from my starting point. Along this new path, I began to run into more new monsters. One was a snake type that would swing down from the branches to attack me. My hope that Ranger would alleviate some of my issues turned out to be misplaced. I was noticing no change at all to my chagrin. The other type of creature I ran into was an insect type that dug trap holes along the trail. I was a tad impressed with how well the bugs could camouflage their traps. Though that just made them a pain to deal with, because I couldn¡¯t detect the holes until I stepped into them. The bug hid in the holes it made and then would try to grab onto and bite through my boot, but a quick stomp finished them off easily. Of course, I also ran into some more of the bats. I was up to about thirty fiend stones when I reached yet another path split. I was starting to get very tired of these. There was even more options this time. At this point I didn¡¯t care which one I took, so I just went straight ahead again. I¡¯d probably been in the dungeon at least an hour or two by now and I wasn¡¯t even sure how far I had come or even if I was heading the right direction to get to the boss. I was coming to the conclusion that I might have rushed needlessly. Seeing if there were maps of the place available first might have been a smart idea. I arrived at yet another empty clearing. This one had only a small tree stump in the center of it. I got my bow ready just in case and strode out. It was a good thing I had since as soon as I reached the tree stump a swarm of those mist weasels erupted out of the trees. There was probably at least twenty by first glance. I made sure my aim was good for each shot, but it was a bit troublesome to rely on just the bow when they were coming from all sides. I started using my psi to push them back and even kicking a few of them that still managed to close on me. The bright side of that fight was that Hunter managed to reach level 5. The downside was that after I collected everything, I realized there was only one trail that led to this clearing, the one I had entered from. I had reached a dead end. I walked all along tree line to be sure, but there was no openings or clear places to travel. If anything the underbrush and plants were even more tangled together than I had expected. With no other options I returned the way I had come and got back to the path split I had left not too long ago. This time I just took the path immediately on my right. I followed along the path until I reached a clearing. A very familiar clearing with a tree stump in the center. Just in case, I walked out into the clearing. This time there was ten bats that assaulted me. It was bit more difficult to hit them than the weasels, but since there was little to no mist to affect my aim, it wasn¡¯t a problem. After the fight I double checked over everything and this was definitely where I had fought the weasels just a while ago. How did I get back here when I know I took a different path? I left the area and once again ended up at the path intersection. This time I went straight ahead and yet again I found myself at the clearing with the tree stump. Yet again I found myself getting attacked by weasels. Hunter leveled to 10 and I found myself receiving 5 more Physique and 5 more Expertise. I didn¡¯t really care about that though. After collecting my spoils, I ran back along the path and arrived at the intersection again. Which way do I go? So far I¡¯ve taken three paths, yet still ended up at the same place. Something was very wrong here. I couldn¡¯t hear anything coming from any direction either to give me some hint of a direction to choose. At this point, I¡¯d gladly run into some other adventurers. The only things here were the thick mist and an eerie silence. Nothing for it, time to rely on my dependable companion! ¡°Lynn, can you show me a map of the paths I¡¯ve traveled and my current position in comparison to the entrance?¡± I asked aloud. There was no response. ¡°Lynn, I need some help here. This is no time to still be ignoring me!¡± Still no response. There is no way Lynn wouldn¡¯t respond if I was in need, which means I¡¯m cut off from her somehow? Damn it! What should I do then? Marking a tree next to the path I take might work. I took out my dagger and chose a path on my right. I cut in an X on the tree to the left of the path opening and then followed the path. I ended up at the fucking clearing again. I didn¡¯t bother entering it, I turned around and made my way back. When I got to the intersection I checked the tree I had marked, but there was no mark there. I glanced around and found the mark on a tree across from me. How the hell does that make any sense!? This time I decided to mark a tree to the left of each path. I numbered them from one to seven. I took path number four. I was greeted by the sight of that place again. I was getting really fucking pissed. I turned around and stomped my way back to the intersection. The first thing I noticed was that my marks were all gone this time. This fucking dungeon! It felt like it didn¡¯t matter what path I took so for a twist I turned around and just took the path that I had just used. Of course, to no surprise I ended up there again. I made my way to the tree stump and when the weasels rushed out, I didn¡¯t bother to pull out my bow. I smashed them with my fists. I brutalized every single one of the things until they were all dead and evaporated. I walked over to one of the tree lines and starting making my way through the underbrush, ripping anything out of my way with my psi. A few minutes later I found myself back at the clearing, but I could see a destroyed hole in the tree line at another point across from me. Somehow I had gone in a circle and ended up on the other side? As I looked at the hole I had previously made, I watched as the plants and trees regrew back to their previous state. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. There goes that idea. I walked over to the tree stump, but nothing attacked this time. I took a seat. I needed to calm down and think.
End Note: I bet this didn¡¯t go the way people were expecting. Chapter 24 Author¡¯s Note: So yay chapter done! I noticed that after the last chapter I finally have one of those fancy little scrolling arrows on my main page. How nice! Also I counted up all the words I¡¯ve written and I¡¯m up to about 95 thousand now. I¡¯m seriously amazed that I¡¯ve written this much. Please enjoy! I''m editing this into my Author''s Note. I''ll probably add it to next chapter''s too. I don''t mind bad ratings or anything but please if you''re going to rate my story low at least give me some kind of feedback on the review system. It makes me really disheartened when I see I got a new rating, my score took a huge hit, and then when I look to see if there''s new feedback, there''s nothing! I can''t really improve as an author if you just rate my story bad and don''t give me any thoughts or criticism, you know? Honestly, I''ll probably get even more bad ratings now that I said this.
Chapter 24 "Hello and welcome to the newest installment of ''Seri is an idiot''! Our usual co host is unavailable, but luckily we have a new face, the dragon Coa, filling the role. Coa say hello to the non-existent audience." Coa warbles a few times. "And there you have it!" I sighed. Even Coa was looking at me oddly. Is it bad that I wanted to distract myself from my situation with some random levity? Well, the first order of business is to admit that I fucked up majorly. I failed as a mercenary because I overestimated my abilities and underestimated the dangers of a dungeon. I should have gathered information as per standard procedure rather than just charge on in like a moron. The only bright side of the situation is that the monster level is so low that I¡¯m not in any real danger, unless starving to death counts, but that would take a while with my level of supplies. I suppose I will run out of water in a few days which is a more immediate problem, but that is still not exactly life threatening yet. Ok with that out of the way, next step is to figure out how I¡¯m going to get out of this situation. I¡¯m pretty sure the mist is what is causing this effect, but I don¡¯t want to take anything for granted, so let¡¯s confirm it for sure. Right now, I¡¯m at the stump in the middle of the clearing. There¡¯s only a very little amount of mist and that clings to the ground. I took my bow and aimed for a random tree along the edge of the clearing and fired. It hits exactly where I aimed with no deviation. I walked over to the tree and recover the arrow. I¡¯m now in the mist that is swirling around the edges. I took aim at the stump and fired. My arrow went wide from where I had aimed by about fifteen centimeters and flew over the stump rather than hit it. Confirmed, it is indeed the mist or at least something in the mist that is messing with me. Now, the next thing to confirm is if the effect is caused by breathing in the mist like some sort of hallucinogenic gas or at least a similar type of thing. If that is the case then I should be able to block it with some fiddling with my shield. I configured my shield settings to block any type of hazardous air and only allow known safe gases to flow through it. There was a momentary light headed feeling as even more of my psi was drained to power the stronger shield, but it faded after a minute or two. I once again took aim and fired and again my shot went off target. So, it¡¯s not something I¡¯m breathing in that is causing this. Well, or the mist just ignores my shield, but either way this proves I can¡¯t solve the problem with this method. I adjusted my shield settings back to their previous ones, returned to the tree stump and sat back down. Alright, so there¡¯s two further ideas I can think of for what is going with this clearing. Either the mist is continually messing with my perceptions to lead me back to this place or the dungeon itself is changing to make sure the path I choose leads back here every time. I do know that the perceptions thing is already happening and I haven¡¯t noticed the path changing at all each time so I¡¯m inclined to doubt that the second possibility is what is going on. It¡¯s still a possibility that the two are working in tandem though. Come on Seri, or rather Aaron. You played VRMMOs for 14 years. This kind of thing shouldn¡¯t be a problem for you to figure out. My experience as Seri though is already out. I know that this effect is creeping through my psi mental defenses and my amazing shield couldn¡¯t solve the problem either. I¡¯m kind out of ideas from that playtime. Then let¡¯s move on to my play time in my previous game. That one was even a fantasy game and there were even dungeons that had this kind of curse effect that would make you get lost in their labyrinths. The problem with that, is that I never did those dungeons without Carol and Carol played as a Saintess. Her holy blessings and other spells negated curses from affecting the party and thus I never had to learn the actual methods other parties had to use to conquer those type of dungeons. Sure, I read strategy guides and stuff for fun, but that was twelve or more years ago, which was even more if I started counting all the time I spent playing as Seri which would be more than two decades. I never really paid much attention to it, either, since I never needed it. So, in conclusion, my experiences as a gamer are also totally useless. I slumped backwards, lying on the stump. I feel totally and utterly defeated all of a sudden. I looked up at the sky and at the mist that hung over the clearing like a dome. It was kind of weird how the mist flew freely up there like that when otherwise it would just stick to the ground or trees. I assumed it just had something to do with it being a dungeon. The mist is probably what is also jamming my communication with Lynn. I bet she¡¯s really worried right now. I need to make sure not to tell her the whole story of what happened in here. I¡¯ll just get scolded a lot. This kind of reflection isn¡¯t solving my problem. I sat back up. Is there any good ways to counter this mist? Do I have anything in my pack that could be used? A month worth of food is obviously not useful unless the mist would be appeased by tasty food. I kind of doubt that. My camping gear is also basically out. I don¡¯t think items like my tent or water purifier or cooking tools would serve any use. My guns or grenades? Unless I want to destroy the dungeon entirely I don¡¯t think I can see those serving a purpose. I don¡¯t have enough grenades to level an area this size anyway. I¡¯d need a portable nuke to do that, and while the thought of using a portable nuke and reducing this dungeon to ashes is a very appealing idea at the moment, I don¡¯t have a portable nuke on me. Plus using one while inside the dungeon would just kill me too. Not a very good way to solve my current status. What else do I have in there? Just my plasma knives? Well, there¡¯s also that large fang that I don¡¯t have a use for yet. I should ask Huvreck if it is worth much or what can be done with it. Now¡¯s not the time to care about that though. If I had rope I could maybe tie it to the stump and then use that to make sure I don¡¯t back track, but I don¡¯t have any rope. It¡¯s not something I usually have much use for, unless I¡¯m infiltrating somewhere. That might end up as a possible need in the future. Note to self, make sure to acquire some good rope. Again these thoughts aren¡¯t helping me any at the moment. What else is there that I can do? Wait, let¡¯s think more on what happened related to the dungeon. What did the guy at the entrance say? He asked if I had a party and then when I answered negatively, he asked if I at least had a lantern. A lantern? As in something that gives off light? Was it really that simple? Do I have anything that gives off light? My plasma knives glow a bit at least so they would have to serve. I hurriedly pulled them out of my pack and unsheathed them. I walked over to the side of the clearing so I could get a good close look. I held the glowing knife out into the mist and got a very pleasant surprise. Around the light given off by the dagger there was a very clear space that was now empty of mist. Damn, I¡¯m a moron. If I had spent just a few minutes outside the dungeon or listened to that guy just a bit I would have gotten a lantern and had no problems. I really deserve to be scolded after all. Still not going to admit anything to Lynn, though. Her scoldings can get pretty lengthy. My knives don¡¯t really give off much light though so the effect on the mist is limited. I don¡¯t know if they¡¯ll be enough. I guess I¡¯ll test it and see first. With my telekinesis, I hold the two daggers up near my head and walk back out of the clearing and through the path. I get back to the intersection and once again take a random path, but once again it was no good. I ended up back at the clearing and fought some more bats. I need something that gives off more light. Could I make a torch? I think making a torch is more complicated than just lighting a stick on fire. I think they do something like wrap the end of the stick in rags and then soak the rags in some kind of fuel and then let it sit for an hour or two before lighting it? The problem is that the only fuel source I have on hand is cooking oil and I don¡¯t think that will work for a torch. Ahhh, if only I had some alcohol! It would actually come in useful right now! The other problem is that the only thing I have that could pass for rags would be my clothing, and my clothing was made by my synthesizer, so it¡¯s not actually flammable at all. If anything it¡¯s highly resistant to flame. Fuck it. I¡¯ll just light a stick on fire and hold it with telekinesis slightly away from me. I¡¯ll make new ones as necessary. I used my knives to cut a branch from one of the nearby trees and then I used one of my cooking items to light it on fire. It definitely gave off more light than the knives, at least. Time to test it though. I held the torch out in front of me and strode down the path. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. The mist fled from the light given off by the makeshift torch. There was now no mist within a few meters of me. This might really work! When I reached the intersection the first thing I noticed was that the previous seven different paths, weren¡¯t actually seven different paths. How in the hell did I get confused to this extent!? There were only four paths here. I took the path to the left and ended up at a different clearing that looked identical to the other clearing, except this time weasels came out to attack me. After killing them I returned and went to the right path and at that clearing, bats attacked me. I see how it is. The mist messed with my perception so I would think there were more paths than there actually were and then made sure I kept taking one of those two paths that end in identical clearings to further mess with me. This means that the correct path to take is one of the other two. One of them is the path I initially came from and the other is the path that should lead deeper into the dungeon. I don¡¯t have the slightest idea which direction I came from anymore. Well, with the torch and thus the mist no longer being a problem, I can just choose one of the paths and if it turns out I¡¯m backtracking I can turn around. Thus, my current problem solved, I took the path that was across from my current one. Almost immediately, I felt like this was definitely the right direction. For one I was being attacked by new monsters. The monsters looked similar to venus flytraps. They would try to catch me with their vines and then pull me toward their large open mouths. That¡¯s what they tried to do at any rate. Their vines couldn¡¯t exactly get a grip on me with my shield active and my plasma knives which were still out, finished them in one blow as soon as I spotted them. I still had to deal with my detection being limited to the space where the mist was absent. I finally came to another clearing. This one had something very interesting in the center of it. It looked like one of the bats I had been seeing but super sized. It was like the size of a bear. There were also a number of the smaller bats flying around it. A scan provided me with pretty useless data.
L42(Dungeon Sub-Boss)
No information to provide
Running into a sub-boss means I¡¯m headed in the correct direction right? I decided to use my bow for this fight, and I quickly took aim and fired at the elite bat. I hit it directly in the head and it died immediately. Afterwards I started picking off the small bats that were now aware of me. Without the mist messing with my perception, it was a joke to take them all out from afar. Hunter got a few more levels, bringing it up to level 13. The fiend stone the elite bat left behind was a bit larger than the other stones I had collected as well. There was only one path to follow that had been behind the boss, so I continued on my way. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ After that, I wiped out a few more clearings of monsters, had to replace my torch two times, took a few wrong turns and ended up at dead ends, and leveled Hunter up to 17. I was a bit surprised that during all that time I hadn¡¯t seen any other adventurers. I had heard the sound of fighting a few times though, so I knew I wasn¡¯t alone in here. I¡¯ve probably spent at least five hours in this dungeon, so I really needed to finish up in here already. By the time I get back to the town and inn, it¡¯s going to be pretty late in the evening. I was at the end now, at least. I¡¯m pretty sure it¡¯s the end, anyway. Unlike the rest of the dungeon, I see what looks like a very healthy tree growing out of a glowing pond at the far end of the glade I had just entered. Between me and that was a very nasty, spooky looking tree. It had what appeared to be a face twisted in anguish on the side that I could see. I assumed that tree had to be the boss. I didn¡¯t waste any time, I sent my plasma knives at it and started to attack it. As soon as I did, large roots erupted from behind me making a barrier blocking me from escaping. Not like I was going to though. The treant didn¡¯t get much of a chance to show its abilities. With my plasma knives carving it apart, it had barely enough time to pull itself out of the ground before it fell apart and died. Pretty anticlimactic, but that was fine with me. I collected the fiend stone that was the size of my fist and then walked over to the target of this dungeon hunt. Huvreck said to collect branches that were a few meters long. I walked around and examined the tree, picking out the ones that fit that as close as possible. I used the hatchet to chop the branches. I had thought to use my plasma knives, but the cuts they made might be hard to explain to an experienced weaponsmith. The hatchet chopped the branches quite cleanly, and it only took me five minutes to gather four branches that were about three meters in length. I stored the hatchet along with the wood in the bag of holding. With the mission completed, I took some time to make a late lunch for myself and Coa in the boss room. The boss didn¡¯t seem like it was going to respawn so I made a nice bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Coa enjoyed some bacon, and since she is pretty much omnivorous I gave her some lettuce, too. The good thing was that she was satisfied and went back to sleep. That should hold her off until we get to the inn. I then started on my journey out of the dungeon. Thankfully with my experience now, it only took me a bit less than two hours to rush through the dungeon. I did take the time to clear out the monsters along the way. I got Hunter up to level 19, which was a tad regrettable. I had hoped to get it at least to 20. When I got back to the original intersection at the start of the dungeon, I finally ran into some adventurers in the dungeon, even if it was obvious that they, like me, were now on their way out of the dungeon. They gave me odd glances, seeing the path I had come from, but I decided to splendidly ignore them and and just walked past. The person manning the check-in stall at the start was someone different and didn¡¯t pay me much attention as I left. This was good, because I wouldn¡¯t have been able to spare much attention to him if he had tried to talk to me. As soon as I had left the dungeon, Lynn¡¯s panic filled voice had started ringing in my ear. ¡°Mistress, are you alright!? Nothing happened to you in there right!? You aren¡¯t injured or anything right!?¡± And on and on it went. I don¡¯t know how she expected me to respond when there were people around. I walked off to the side and acted like I was resting by leaning against a tree. I received a few glances, but no one really paid any mind and I quietly spoke to fill Lynn in, leaving out any details that would be inconvenient for me. It took quite a while for Lynn to finally be mollified and it was starting to get dark out. That taken care of, I decided to check how my status looked after my dungeon adventure.
Name: Seri
Race: Experiment S341(Unique) Displayed Title: Dragon Tamer
Class: Hunter L19 ? Subclass: Ranger L100 ?
Vitality: 2040/2040 Psi Energy: 5355/8355
Physique: 567 Endurance: 158 Willpower: 764
Expertise: 701 Resilience: 189 Grit: 351
Hmm, only a small change as expected, but not too bad. All the other adventurers had long since left, and I was stuck alone with no one in sight as I made my way back to town. That was a good thing though, since it let me hurry along. Eventually along the way I felt some presences at the very edge of my senses and I immediately slowed down to a ¡®normal¡¯ pace. There was someone along the road ahead, and there were other presences in the woods off the road hiding around that someone. There were a few possibilities, but I have the feeling that this was definitely an ambush. The question was whether the ambush was targeted at me or not. What am I saying? With my luck, I¡¯m most definitely the target! I finally could clearly see the person, it was a man wearing bulky armor fitted with metal at key places. He had a sword at his waist and a shield strapped to his arm. He looked like an adventurer if I judged just based on his appearance. As I came closer, he walked out into the middle of the road. The other presences in the woods sneakily spread out too. Now that I was closer I noticed there were some presences in the woods on the opposite side of the road as well that were also moving around. Surrounding me huh? Other than those thugs back in the first town, I guess this will be the first time I get attacked by people on this world. The question is what they are after, is it my money or possibly- ¡°Miss, why don¡¯t you hand over that dragon of yours, so you don¡¯t get hurt?¡± Right. Or they were after Coa. I knew once I heard how much she was worth that some people would target her. Didn¡¯t really expect it to happen in the same day. These damn vermin have perfect timing though. Please allow me to work out all the stress I¡¯ve accumulated today. Chapter 25 Author¡¯s Note: I bet no one expected me to actually get the next chapter out within 3 days. Please enjoy it. Also this poll is just for fun and has nothing to do with the story or any possible future events. It was just something that resulted from a random conversation Karami and I had a few days ago and I was curious how readers would respond.
Chapter 25 Let¡¯s confirm my enemies. Other than the scum in front of me, there¡¯s three presences in the woods to the left and three presences in the woods to the right. Two of the presences on the right don¡¯t feel human though, they seem to be beasts. One of my enemies must be a beastmaster like myself then. Makes sense, if they take Coa from me or kill me, they would need to tame her temporarily I suppose, until they found a buyer for her. Next there¡¯s one other thing I need to confirm. ¡°Excuse me, do you mind if I ask you a question?¡± The scum looked at me like I was nuts. ¡°Hah? What would you ask at a time like this? Just give up the dragon and you won¡¯t get hurt. I already know you¡¯re just a runaway noble playing at being an adventurer and a weak beastmaster without any beasts. So just do what I tell you or else.¡± ¡°Well, you see there is something important that I need to know. The question is, are you adventurers?¡± After all, I did make a promise not to kill other adventurers if I could help it. I don¡¯t plan on killing them anyway though, unless they make some very, very poor decisions. There¡¯s more amusing things I can do to them. It¡¯s a shame that I don¡¯t have any rope. I¡¯m really regretting that right now. ¡°Course, I¡¯m an adventurer. Now, are you going to hand over the dragon or not? I won¡¯t be asking again.¡± the scum said. I shook my head. ¡°Nah, I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll do that. What I¡¯ll do instead, is give you a warning. Right now, you haven¡¯t taken action against me so I¡¯m willing to forget that this encounter and your threats ever happened. Please take this out that I¡¯m offering you or I guarantee you¡¯ll regret it.¡± I know he¡¯s not going to accept this warning. I think it¡¯s important to at least give it though. ¡°You little bitch! You dare to threaten me?¡± the scum snarled at me. He drew his sword and started coming toward me. As he did, he waved the sword in a slightly odd way. All of a sudden, I felt a new presence from my right. Wow, I hadn¡¯t even noticed whoever that was until now! What an amazing ability for hiding. A knife came lancing at me barely a moment later. Without even taking my eyes off the scum in front of me, my hand snatched the knife out of the air when it was barely ten centimeters away from my head. Still without taking my eyes from the man in front of me who was now frozen in shock, I sent the knife back from whence it came with a flick of my wrist, embedding it in the man¡¯s throwing hand and pinning his hand against the tree he was standing by. I spoke to the scum in from of me. ¡°Well, come on already. Don¡¯t just stand there with your mouth open. You and your party wanted to steal from me so prepare yourself to face the consequences.¡± As he roused himself I felt the presences in the woods, other than the knife thrower that was busy trying to free himself from the tree, surge into action as well. One of the presences from the left jumped out swinging a large axe. I side stepped, dodging it and then sent a kick into the man¡¯s side blowing him into a tree. He went down and didn¡¯t look like he was getting back up any time soon. The scum finally rushed me with his sword stabbing at me. I side stepped again and with a quick grab and twist I had broken his wrist, causing him to scream in pain as he dropped the sword. I then swept out with my leg knocking him off balance, allowing me to easily throw him. I tossed him at the same tree as his companion and they ended up in a pile together. Next enemies approaching were the two beasts from the right. The assumed beastmaster on the right was still hanging back though, so I¡¯ll probably have to pursue them myself after I take care of the others. The people on the left were taking action too, but they seem to be ranged types as they weren¡¯t getting closer. I momentarily turned my attention to the two beasts that bounded out of the underbrush. Wolves huh? They looked positively cute in comparison to my wolves. I directed an overwhelming amount of psi at their poor little minds. They didn¡¯t take it that well. To them I must have suddenly seemed like a ferocious giant monster, because they instantly stopped getting closer, rolled over and displayed their stomachs in submission. Leaving the now useless beastmaster for last, I rushed to the two others to the left. As soon as I entered the trees an arrow came flying at me. I caught it like the throwing knife, snapped it and then discarded it. Suddenly, I felt the now familiar pressure of magic power converging together as a spell and it was right between me and my targets. Right before I hit the location I jumped to the side and the ground I had been about to step on erupted upwards in a pillar. Earth magic? Another arrow diverted my focus and again I caught it and broke it. The archer wouldn¡¯t have time to shoot another as I was already on top of them. She tried to pull out a dagger, but I was too close and I put her to sleep with a focused blast of psi. The mage tried to get off another spell but ultimately joined the archer before he could do so. I picked up the two with my psi and returned to the road dumping them in the growing clump of their companions. The wolves were still lying in the same place, motionless. The knife thrower had finally gotten his hand free and him and the beastmaster were attempting to run. That won¡¯t do at all! Escaping was definitely not allowed! A quick check told me that the four I had beaten weren¡¯t in any shape to make an escape attempt themselves, so I darted after the other two. It didn¡¯t take more than a minute for me to run them down and knock them out just like the others. The beastmaster turned out to be another girl. I dragged them along and dumped them in the pile of people. Now that the short fight was over, it had only lasted a few minutes from start to finish. It was now time to amuse myself and give them their real punishment. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Oh, it looks like the lot was finally waking up after being out for half an hour. Rousing people out of unconsciousness was harder than knocking them out. On the other hand, I might have permanently damaged the wolves. They still haven¡¯t moved a bit since earlier. Not my problem, it¡¯s that beastmaster girl¡¯s problem to solve later. ¡°Hello, you idiots. It¡¯s nice of you to finally get up. It would be smart of you to quickly realize your situation and not try anything stupid.¡± They were looking at one another in shock. The archer girl and beastmaster girl quickly covered their chests and clamped their legs together. That¡¯s right, I stripped all six of them while they were out. They are now naked as the day they were born. The men were stripped with my psi, while I used my hands for the girls. It was worth some extra enjoyment. Lynn called me a pervert though which I sadly couldn¡¯t really refute. I had also taken some time to give some of them quick medical aid like the knife thrower¡¯s hand for example. If they die from injuries, it removes the point of me sparing them. The scum quickly tried to get up and yelled at me. ¡°You bitch! Where¡¯s our equipment!?¡± I tossed out a quick kick to his gut, knocking him back on his ass. ¡°Look dumbass. If you call me that again, it will be the last thing you do, understand?¡± He nodded carefully while holding his stomach. ¡°Good, it seems you can learn after all. Now see, we could have avoided all this unpleasantness if you had just taken my warning, but you didn¡¯t so I had to punish you all. I took the liberty of taking all your items and stuffing them in your very convenient bags of holding.¡± I held up the two bags that I had found while stripping them. ¡°All your stuff is in these two bags. I¡¯m not going to give these to you though.¡± They looked at me bewildered. ¡°That¡¯s right you will have to make your way back to town naked. You¡¯re all just lucky I don¡¯t have any rope on me or I would have hung you all from the trees here. This is pretty light as far as punishments go in my opinion. We¡¯re only what five or ten kilometers at most away from the town here?¡± Archer girl spoke up next. ¡°What are you going to do with our equipment then?¡± ¡°Since I believe I was told the adventurer¡¯s guild handles disputes between adventurers, I will be turning over the bags to them and explaining the situation in full.¡± Archer girl face went pale when I said that. No surprise really, they tried to rob and kill a fellow adventurer. They are lucky it only ended with this much. ¡°You can¡¯t! If you do that, they¡¯ll terminate our guild registrations. We¡¯ll probably be fined, if not imprisoned or enslaved!¡± The mage guy said desperately. ¡°How is that my problem?¡± I asked. ¡°You guys attacked me, not the other way around. Like I said before, I gave you a warning and you ignored it.¡± I decided to give them a bright smile. They flinched away from me, how rude! ¡°I¡¯ll make you a deal because I¡¯m feeling extra kind today. I¡¯ll talk to the guild master and recommend to her that this ends with just a fine. She¡¯ll probably be ecstatic since it will be less work for her to handle. So you¡¯ll get to stay as adventurers and you¡¯ll get your gear back. You might have some trouble at the gate, but again that¡¯s a problem you¡¯ll have to solve.¡± This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it ¡°You, you, you!¡± Scum finally regained his senses. ¡°Don¡¯t think this is over! I¡¯ll get you back for this!¡± ¡°Do the rest of you also feel that way?¡± I glanced around and enquired of the others. They didn¡¯t meet my eyes. ¡°I see. Then let me just give you another warning.¡± Like I had done with the wolves earlier, I pressed in on all of their minds with a large amount of psi. Luckily, they were sapient so they didn¡¯t have as extreme of a reaction. They still started shivering uncontrollably. ¡°The next time you take action against me, it won¡¯t end with just some humiliation. I will simply kill you. This is a promise from me to you. This also goes if I ever find out you were behind an action taken against me. Trust me, I will know if you were involved. Honestly! I was nice enough to spare you morons and you still want to have another go?¡± They all frantically shook their heads. ¡°Great. Now, I¡¯m going to head to town. You lot better hurry along as well.¡± I left them to their own devices. I watched over their presences until they were out of detection range. The beastmaster girl had gone over and started taking care of her wolves. No surprise there. The wolves are really their only fighting force outside of their bare hands if something attacks them. I hope nothing does though. I mean if they die, then my warning will be totally wasted! Once they get back to town they¡¯ll tell others and then those others will tell others and as a result no one should attack me again! Well, mostly no one. Some idiots can¡¯t truly be helped, so I¡¯m sure someone will still make an attempt. Like the scum back there. The rest of the party seemed to take heed of my warning, but he alone was still thinking stupid thoughts. I believe I¡¯ll be seeing him again in the future. The best part about this punishment was the looks on their faces when they realized they were naked and that they would have to get back to the town like that. Truly perfect looks of horror. Of course, I do realize that they could try to say I was the one that robbed them, but I¡¯m counting on the guild master to know that is a lie. She was so perceptive about me after all. The downside to this event is that my strength is now out in the open. I hadn¡¯t really wanted to reveal it so soon, but at the same time it will be useful in some ways to have it known. I¡¯m still kind of on the fence about it. I can¡¯t ask Lynn about this either, since her opinion on anyone attacking me is always the death penalty. She says that it is an action that forfeits any right the individual in question has to life. She can be a bit extreme sometimes. The good news at least, is that I only really showed off my physical capabilities and even that wasn¡¯t anywhere near my actual limits. They wouldn¡¯t have understood my psi, other than feeling it to be some kind of weird force, and will probably mistake it just for magic use. It also leaves all my tech still completely unknown! Which means I still have plenty of hidden cards to play. I also bet a number of people will still underestimate me anyway. Those guys other than the knife thrower weren¡¯t anything great. Getting through the gate was no problem, since it was late barely anyone was even in line. Once inside the town, I immediately went to the guild. Just like the previous night, the guild master was lounging at the counter and the guild was rowdy with adventurers drinking. I walked up to the counter and the guild master obviously recognized me, because she quickly put her head face down. I wasn¡¯t sure if that reaction was a good or bad one. ¡°Hello, I¡¯m here to report something.¡± I decided to take the initiative. ¡°What happened? You didn¡¯t kill someone already did you?¡± Was her muffled reply. ¡°No, no. You told me not to kill any adventurers so I let them live. A group tried to rob me and then had the tables turned on them. I stripped them of their equipment and clothing and came to drop that off. They¡¯ll probably be stuck at the gate for a while since I tossed their adventurer cards in these bags too.¡± I explained the situation. ¡°I knew when you walked in that it wasn¡¯t going to be anything good. Less than a day as a member and you already just made a lot of extra work for me! I¡¯m going to have to deal with deciding their punishments and probably will have to handle the paperwork to revoke their licenses. I might even have to have the guards come and imprison them.¡± It sounded like she was starting to cry. ¡°Two days in a row I¡¯m going to have to work late!¡± ¡°On that topic, I have a suggestion for you. Please only fine them. They didn¡¯t hurt me and I feel like they¡¯ve already received a good punishment and warning to behave in the future. I don¡¯t think the situation deserves being escalated any further than that.¡± I stated. The guild master finally looked up. She was indeed crying judging by the tears rolling down her cheeks. I never expected such an extreme reaction. She actually looked really cute like this. Stop Seri, stay focused. She¡¯s already a mother too. Ahh, but that just means she¡¯s also experienced. No, bad Seri, concentrate on the matter at hand. ¡°Only fine them? If they attacked a fellow adventurer with intent to rob and possibly kill them, and I can tell you¡¯re not lying, their punishment should equal -¡± She stopped and then nodded. ¡°I see, you intend on their example dissuading any further attempts. If they were imprisoned as they would have been, there would be less knowledge of what happened spreading. Regardless I¡¯ll agree, a fine is a lot easier to process. Just please the next time you show up, make it a time when I¡¯m not here. I think you¡¯re a magnet for paperwork.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. I had one other thing I needed to handle. I was told the guild buys the fiend stones earlier. How many would I have to turn in for getting payment?¡± I asked. ¡°You visited the dungeon? That must have been child¡¯s play for you.¡± Thankfully, I managed to stop myself from reacting. Yeah, child¡¯s play, right. She continued, ¡°We buy the small fiend stones in batches of 10 for 20 copper. That might seem cheap at first glance but they¡¯re easy to collect and not really that valuable. If you killed any sub boss, that fiend stone would be 20 copper and the dungeon boss¡¯ stone would be 5 silver.¡± ¡°I see. Then I¡¯d like to turn in 120 small stones.¡± That still leaves me with about 30, not counting the boss stones, to play with later. I took out the stones from my pack and handed them across the table to the guild master. I received 2 silver and 40 copper coins in return. ¡°Thanks. Oh yeah, almost forgot to give you these bags of holdings. The belongings of those adventurers are in here.¡± I passed those across too. She took them with a grimace. ¡°I¡¯m off to go get dinner and rest. Sorry about the trouble.¡± She waved her hand at me in a shooing motion like she had done to the guard the previous night. I found myself smiling in amusement, but didn¡¯t say anything further. I wondered how the maid would react when I got back to the inn. I mean, I did kind of send her off on a random errand just to get away from her today. At the same time though, I never told her I would be staying in the inn while she was gone, so she probably won¡¯t be able to make any complaints. Since she¡¯s working at that fancy inn, she should hopefully handle it like a professional. Upon entering the inn, I didn¡¯t bother to check in at the desk. I already had a room after all. I wanted to get cleaned up and then acquire food as soon as possible, so I strode straight upstairs to my room. Once I opened the door, I saw Myura standing there in the middle of the room waiting for me. When she saw me, she immediately curtsied. ¡°Welcome back, my lady.¡± She was professional and calm on the outside, but in her thoughts she was quite sulky. She was so upset that it was like I was hearing yelling, I wasn''t even trying to listen to her thoughts. I would run off alone without her since I could have gotten hurt or worse, in her opinion, would be if someone had disrespected me! At the same time she was afraid of voicing these complaints because she didn¡¯t want me to dismiss her from being my personal servant. I still haven¡¯t figured out why she wants to serve me so much. ¡°I will be taking a bath and then would like to have supper. I would appreciate it if you assisted me.¡± I said to her. I felt like I was being a bit light on the lady mode, but I was tired so I want to be excused from that kind of hassle. I didn¡¯t even get much sleep last night because of Seran! Why did I decide to spend today running around!? I should have spent the day in bed! ¡°With pleasure, my lady!¡± Myura replied with a bright smile. Now she¡¯s happy that she gets to do her job again. I really don¡¯t understand this girl. I suppose I¡¯ll let her accompany me tomorrow. I¡¯m just going to spend the day talking about magic with the witch girl. It¡¯s very important that I acquire more knowledge on that subject as soon as possible. Witch girl might know of a way to speed up the growth of my mana pool too. I¡¯ve noticed that it was still growing ever so slightly. Those are thoughts to be considered tomorrow though. Right now I¡¯m after a good bath, a good dinner, and a good night¡¯s rest. Chapter 26 Author¡¯s Note: So a longer than normal chapter today. Please enjoy.
Chapter 26 I slept so well! I went to bed immediately after my bath and supper. As expected of a very high class inn, the bed here is quite comfortable. I hadn¡¯t gotten to enjoy it the previous night, and I probably would have slept even longer if Coa¡¯s screeching hadn¡¯t gotten loud and insistent enough to wake me. I rolled over in bed and looked at Coa, who I had placed on the pillow next to my own. Her eyes were spinning as she looked back at me in return. The tip of her tail was twitching back and forth but at least she seemed satisfied that I was now awake, since she was no longer making loud noises. ¡°Coa, you need to eat less. I understand you¡¯re a growing dragon, but you¡¯re eating five meals a day.¡± Her only response was to tilt her head at me. I¡¯d really like her to grow up already just so we could communicate. Then again, there¡¯s no guarantee that she¡¯ll be like the wolves in that regard is there? She might communicate in a different way. I¡¯ll just have to wait and see. I sat up and stretched. I was sleeping pretty much naked, just wearing my underthings. Luckily Myura wasn¡¯t around to see or I¡¯m sure she¡¯d be thinking loudly about how inappropriate it was for a lady to show so much skin. She seems to have really narrow minded views about how nobility should act, which amused me a bit since she¡¯s just a young maid. Especially when she also knows that as a servant she shouldn¡¯t criticize her master. I was starting to suspect that it was possible that the reason she wanted to be my servant so much was because she had been wowed by my display that first night. I had laid on the act rather thick. She might have believed she had found a perfect noble lady to serve. It makes me feel a bit bad for her if this was truly the case since it really was all just an act. I can put up with it for the few more days I¡¯ll be in town. Let¡¯s see, my plans for today are to chat with witch girl about magic and at some point deliver the goods to Huvreck. I don¡¯t mind letting Myura accompany me to the witch girl¡¯s shop, but I can¡¯t allow her to come with me to see Huvreck. I¡¯ll need to come up with another errand or something to get rid of her for just long enough for me to visit him. That shouldn¡¯t be too hard. Maybe ask her to prepare lunch and then when she¡¯s doing that, go to see him? I think that should work out. My thoughts were interrupted by a brief knock at the door. ¡°My lady, I have brought breakfast for you.¡± I hurriedly got out of bed and tossed on a clean dress before answering. ¡°You may enter.¡± I turned back to the bed and scooped up Coa before walking over to the sofa like furniture. Myura came in holding a long tray covered in a number of dishes like yesterday. I made sure to feed Coa first, and she ate a lot. I wondered what she actually does with what she eats. She eats so much, but then only excretes out very little every few days. Her inner biology must be weird. I could probably get her examined back at the ship but that would require her submitting to being under a scope. It might look really threatening to her small self. After Coa was fully satisfied, I finally got around to eating myself. It was delicious. High class inns are the best! I don¡¯t have to waste my food supplies and I still get great food. Truly a win/win for me. I suppose the expense might be considered a downside, but money exists to be spent and I¡¯m not worried about running out anytime soon. Oh, isn¡¯t that actually a bad attitude to have? The adamantite I need is sure to be expensive. On the other hand, I doubt those dark dwarves would ever part with how much I need for any amount of money. I might have to negotiate aggressively. I don¡¯t want to do that if I can help it, but if those dwarves really stand between me and fixing Lullaby then I will take measures to remove them. Somehow my thoughts have turned a bit dark this morning. I looked at the former plates of delicious food. Apparently while thinking of the possibility of killing a lot of dwarves I had finished off everything. While it¡¯s good to be ready for the possibility, I¡¯d rather be hopeful that there won¡¯t be too many issues involved with getting my adamantite. It does rely on getting the information from that organization once Huvreck tells me their name. That will take some investigating since all I¡¯m getting is the name. On the other hand, the fact that Huvreck said they operated and had agents in tons of other organizations should mean their base of operations would need to be in the most important place around for those organizations, which would be the capital. My logic might be a bit faulty, but I think it checks out in this case. Of course, I may well end up wrong. They might operate out of a smaller town or something instead, but it¡¯s for sure they have agents working in the capital at least. I am positive that if I poke around in the capital asking questions, that I¡¯ll get noticed and likely accosted by someone, which should get me more information. For now, let¡¯s get dressed and ready to go to the witch¡¯s shop. She can answer my questions and I can play with a cute kitten. ¡°Myura, I¡¯m planning on running an errand today. There is a shop I need to visit.¡± ¡°Please my lady, allow me to run any errand you require. My lady can wait here and relax in comfort.¡± Myura replied with what I noticed was a very slight emphasis on the ¡®wait here¡¯. ¡°It¡¯s not a simple shopping errand Myura. It¡¯s more in the nature of a consultation. I will need to go myself.¡± I answered back. ¡°Then please allow me to accompany my lady!¡± Myura insisted. ¡°I do not mind.¡± Myura smiled instantly at my response. Myura helped me get dressed, though I noticed she was a bit disproving of my chosen apparel. It was plain that she didn¡¯t think my adventurer like clothing fit my station. She would much rather I wear that fancy dress like I had that first night. I merely told her that that dress wasn¡¯t proper for wandering around the city in. That explanation satisfied her, but she still wasn¡¯t happy. To be honest, I kind of agreed with her. I¡¯d really need to look into getting some different sets of clothing and possibly one outfit that actually was armor. My current outfit looked fine to travel in, but it didn¡¯t really give the appearance of something a proper strong adventurer would wear. It looked like pretty normal clothing outside the dress and boots that looked like they were leather. Plus if I chose the clothing myself, then I¡¯d at least be able to choose some things I liked rather than always wearing what Lynn gave me. I especially looked forward to getting some pants. I was used to the dresses and skirts and short shorts that Lynn always put me in, but still some pants would be nice. I did used to be a guy you know!? I mentally sighed. I don¡¯t really feel much like a guy anymore. Ahh, damn it, this isn¡¯t the time to start getting depressed! Today is the day I¡¯m going to learn more about magic. Be excited me, not sad! With these thoughts I left the inn with Myura in tow and with Coa happily asleep around my neck. It didn¡¯t take long to reach witch girl¡¯s shop. Myura was looking confused that this store would be my destination. Like the previous day, there were a few women in the shop but there was also a male adventurer that seemed to be buying something too. Witch girl saw me and waved me over. ¡°Hello! You¡¯re here early! Why don¡¯t you go into the back and then upstairs. I¡¯ll be with you in a little after I help these customers. Nirvi is already up there so feel free to play with her.¡± I followed her directions and went into the back. The backroom had a large cauldron in the middle of the floor, a smaller cauldron on a table in the back, lots of jars on shelves and barrels all over the floor. Supply and production room I suppose. The stairs were to my left so I went up and opened the door at the top. This room was basically a living room and kitchen. I didn¡¯t see a bed but I did see another small staircase on one side of the room, so maybe her bedroom was up there. The small basket containing the kitten was on the floor next to a chair, so I went over and crouched down to examine her closely since I hadn¡¯t done that the day before. I think the witch said it was a girl anyway. Based on the appearance, I¡¯d say she was about two months old? Not an expert on estimating animal ages. That didn¡¯t matter though. I picked up the adorable kitten and sat down in the chair with her in my lap and started petting her. She roused slightly and started purring. Coa wasn¡¯t happy with this state of affairs and started rubbing against my face like she was saying give me attention too. I brought her down to my lap with the kitten and starting stroking the both of them together. What a blissful state to be in! Let¡¯s forget all my troubles and just enjoy these two purring pets. Sadly, it was not to last long because Myura spoke up. I had almost forgotten she was even here! ¡°Umm, my lady, forgive me but what was the reason for coming here again?¡± I glared at her and she quailed in response. She ruined the moment! How could she ruin my cuddly time!? I tried to recapture that bliss but it was not to be. I was honestly surprised that she had said something though. I figured that would have counted as criticizing her master wouldn¡¯t it? She¡¯s not being as loud with her thoughts today, but let¡¯s switch classes and see if I can get some kind of idea what she¡¯s thinking. I switched Hunter out for Beastmaster and Ranger for Empath. Empath will probably come in handy for the magic lesson anyway. Oh, she¡¯s just upset that I would be staying in this kind of humble place. She really is a bit too uptight about appearances. It feels like she might cause a scene, so I kind of regret bringing her now. If she does, I¡¯ll just have to tell her to leave. Magic was more important than her feelings. I heard steps coming up toward the room so obviously witch girl was coming. She threw open the door and surprised Myura who was still acting a bit cowed after my glare. ¡°I finally got rid of all my customers and closed the store so now we can play! Oh, you started without me I see.¡± She was looking at the two pets lying on my lap. ¡°You said I could, so I went right ahead. Was it okay to close the shop though?¡± I asked. ¡°No problem, no problem! If I didn¡¯t close the shop there would be no chance of playing, since I¡¯d be constantly helping customers. I¡¯m usually pretty busy and I¡¯m also open almost every day so closing for one day won¡¯t hurt anyone. They¡¯ll just have to visit some other shop for once.¡± She replied, waving off any possible complaints. Was that really okay? I guess if she says so. She was the business owner here. She came over reaching for Coa, so I let her have her and she brought Coa up to her face and rubbed up against her. Coa was confused at first but then started rubbing back and purring at this new source of affection. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. The two of us played with each other¡¯s pets for a while before playing with them both together. We were using some cat toys to play with them and it was so cute to watch the kitten and Coa try to snap and catch the dangling toy. Magic could definitely wait just a bit longer. Myura was quiet but she seemed to be working herself up to say something. She wasn¡¯t happy about the lack of respect and the familiarity with which the witch girl was treating me. After about an hour of playing, the pets finally fell asleep from being tired and we let them curl up together in the basket. The witch girl served some juice that was quite delicious. I wondered if it was something she had made herself because I couldn¡¯t recognize the taste at all. Apparently, being served some questionable juice was the breaking point for Myura. ¡°Excuse me, but I believe my lady had something important with which to consult with you.¡± Witch girl almost jumped in shock. ¡°What!? A maid? When did you get here?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been here all along! You were just too busy playing!¡± Myura replied. She was being very curt in her response. She was pretty angry and upset. ¡°Well, why are you here? And who is my lady?¡± Witch girl perplexedly asked. Ahh, I guess since she¡¯s never seen me act in lady mode she can¡¯t connect the dots. No surprise there. My normal mode of acting is quite a bit different. I guess I¡¯ll throw her a bone and try to defuse this situation a bit. ¡°She was referring to me. She decided to be my servant during my stay here. It is true that I would like to talk to you about something. I would like some help with magic.¡± ¡°Were you a noble or something? Should I be more polite?¡± Witch girl asked. ¡°No need. I prefer this much more casual atmosphere.¡± I replied. ¡°If you want me to make a love potion or something, I¡¯ll tell you right now that¡¯s definitely out. No matter what kind of stories you¡¯ve read that kind of thing doesn¡¯t exist.¡± Witch girl said. ¡°No way! I don¡¯t need that kind of magical assistance. When I said I needed help with magic, I really did mean help with magic. I find myself regretfully ignorant on the topic and I figured that you would be able to help me.¡± I explained. ¡°My lady, if that¡¯s all you required, then I could have handled it. There¡¯s no reason to bother this person.¡± Myura interrupted again. Wow, Myura was dripping venom when referring to the witch. I was about to reply when to my surprise, witch girl jumped up and spoke herself. ¡°Hey you! I don¡¯t really care for your tone. Your lady just said it was okay and that she came here to speak with me. Shouldn¡¯t you have realized that we¡¯re friends by how we were interacting together! And are you trying to say that you know better than your lady to question her judgement? What you need to do is just sit down and relax.¡± Witch girl dragged Myura to a chair and pushed her into it. Myura was about to complain but then witch girl deposited her kitten into Myura¡¯s hands. ¡°Play with Nirvi. I think you¡¯re too high strung, you need to pet a cute animal.¡± To my surprise Myura actually shut up and her hands started almost unconsciously to stroke the kitten. The kitten was fine with this state of affairs and stretched a bit before getting comfortable in her new spot. Did the cuteness of the kitten triumph over the maid? I hoped so. At least it seemed like Myura was going to be quiet again for a while. Witch girl was nodding, satisfied at this turn of events. ¡°So the two of us are friends?¡± I asked. Witch girl turned back to me and replied. ¡°Of course we are! We are friends in the pursuit of cute and cuddly pets. There is no truer calling!¡± ¡°If we¡¯re friends then we should probably actually introduce ourselves.¡± I laughed. Witch girl blinked. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s true! We haven¡¯t done that have we? As you probably guessed from the shop name, my name is Fiona. Feel free to call me Fio if you like.¡± I smiled. ¡°Alright, Fio. My name is Seri and my pet¡¯s name is Coa.¡± ¡°Oh my, how shameful of me that I didn¡¯t even ask for the cutie¡¯s name! Anyway, Seri, you wanted to know about magic, but what exactly do you want to know? From the basics?¡± Fio enquired. ¡°Pretty much. My extent of magic knowledge ends at the fact that you¡¯re supposed to attune your inner mana to an element and then draw on the ambient mana to help cast spells. I¡¯ve never done even that though. My mana pool doesn¡¯t seem fully developed yet.¡± ¡°Longer lived races can take more time for that to happen. Some elves might take until they are thirty or forty years old for their mana pool to fully settle. Humans or beast races average about seven years after birth for our mana pools, which is about the same level of physical development as the elves. Of course judging by your apparent age you are out of the norm for when it should have happened by.¡± She was examining me now with a more critical eye. ¡°Some anomalies do come up occasionally so it¡¯s not too big of a deal.¡± ¡°So I just have to wait for it to fully develop?¡± I asked. I was a little dismayed since I had no idea how long that would take. If I go by the fact that I am technically a modified human, I¡¯d be waiting at least a number of years for my mana pool to actually be usable? I really don¡¯t like the sound of that. ¡°There are methods to speed up the growth but I wouldn¡¯t recommend them. Usually all the methods harm the long term growth of the mana pool for a short term benefit. As you are clearly one of the more long lived races that isn¡¯t a smart idea. You¡¯ll have more than enough lifespan where that long term demerit would come to harm you.¡± Fio clarified. I suppose that was true. Actually, now that I think about it, I had no idea what my lifespan even was! I hadn¡¯t changed physically in over forty years. My body was in the same state as it was when I was rescued from those experiments. I had never matured beyond that. If that was case, couldn¡¯t I end up living forever? I felt myself get dizzy at the thought and rapidly tore my thinking away from that subject and focused back on magic. ¡°Is there any nonnegative methods? You mentioned usually, doesn¡¯t that mean some of the methods are safe to use?¡± ¡°There is a method that might be safer but it requires your body being able to adapt to a large influx of magic power. You¡¯d have to overload your body with magic power and just hope it would speed up your mana pool formation. It¡¯s a very risky method since without a formed mana pool in your body, it would mean your magic resistance would be next to nonexistent too. There¡¯s lots of chances for things to end up poorly. You¡¯re much better off to just wait and let it develop naturally.¡± Fio explained. That did explain some things. I did feel like my mana pool growth sped up a tiny bit each time Seran sent those little pulses of magic through me. Basically, what she was saying is that the fastest way to develop a mana pool was to do that but on a much greater scale. I¡¯m not sure how I would go about doing that though. Did I even want to take the risk of trying it? I was pretty confident in my body¡¯s adaptability, but it does sound like this was a significant risk. I can already hear Lynn scolding me if I decide to try it. ¡°Could you take the magic power in small doses? How would you even take in a large influx of magic power like that?¡± I questioned. Fio looked like she was thinking about how to phrase her reply. ¡°You could do it in smaller amounts I suppose. It would draw out the process a lot, but it would be even safer. There are potions that might be usable for such an effect. I think it would depend on how far along your mana pool was but it might speed up the process by a number of years at least. Another way would be to go to a magic rich spot to meditate. There are a few spots like that deep in higher level dungeons and around the world. They can be deadly poisonous to people with a small or in your own case no mana pools. Like I said it, depends on how quickly you could adapt to it.¡± The potion route definitely sounded safer. ¡°Where would I get potions like that?¡± ¡°I could probably brew up a set of them for you. I have the necessary herbs on hand but to replace them afterwards will be expensive.¡± Fio said. ¡°So you do make potions?¡± I had assumed that to be the case judging by the room downstairs. I hadn¡¯t seen any potions in the shop though. ¡°Of course! I am a Witch after all!¡± She must have seen the confusion that that sparked because she continued. ¡°Oh. You don¡¯t know the differences between the classes do you?¡± I shook my head. ¡°I guess I should explain the specialties of the magic using classes next. First, the most common are the Sorcerer and Sorceress. They are the normal spell slinger type. Fireballs and all that. Pretty boring in my own opinion. I will admit to being a tad biased! Druids infuse their mana into plants to cast their spells. They tend to be very limited and useless in a city. It¡¯s not a popular class outside of certain areas. They are very popular in forested regions or for helping farm development. Absolutely never underestimate what they can do in a forest. Next would be Priests and Priestesses. They channel their mana to bestow blessings, which while sounding similar to enchanting is cast on people rather than on objects. They can also use their magic for healing or purifying the undead. Paladins use the same type of magic as Priests. Which then brings me to the last class which is my own and of course the best of the lot! The Witch and Wizard class!¡± She struck a proud pose. ¡°Go on already! What does a Witch do?¡± I said, exasperated at her theatrics. ¡°A Witch is focused on indirect use of magic. We brew potions which we infuse our magic into for extra oomph! We do all those fancy enchantments you most likely have seen around. The last thing we do are ritual type magics. Rituals can be very complicated depending on the ritual in question but they can have very great effects. Some rituals might take days or even months of continuous casting to get right! Of course we can still throw fireballs or things if we wanted to, we¡¯re just not as good or efficient at it as Sorceresses are. What do you think? Definitely the best class right?¡± Fio said with another pose. ¡°Absolutely!¡± I agreed. It sounded like the Witch class was absolutely the one I was looking for. ¡°Please teach me how to get that class!¡± Chapter 27 Author¡¯s Note: Next chapter arrives with fun stuff. A bit shorter than usual but I guess it averages out with last chapter being longer than usual.
Chapter 27 ¡°Wait, what?¡± Fio asked, surprised. ¡°Why are you acting surprised? Weren¡¯t you intending to tempt me in wanting to be a Witch with that description of the classes?¡± I responded. ¡°Well, no actually. I was just giving my own biased opinion. To be honest, if you¡¯re traveling around, being a Sorceress would be better for you. Being a Witch pretty much requires that you stay in one place and study and experiment for long periods of time.¡± Fio explained. ¡°She is correct my lady. Sorceress is a strong class and well suited to defending oneself. I myself am a Sorceress.¡± Myura added. I was astonished that she was backing up Fio so calmly and easily. She was still petting Nirvi so maybe she really did just need a dose of cuteness to relax. ¡°I¡¯m surprised that you would be a Sorceress Myura.¡± I said. ¡°It is necessary if I am ever required to protect my chosen lord or lady. I have also leveled Warrior for that same reason. It would besmirch my pride as a servant if I let my liege be injured in my presence.¡± Myura clarified. ¡°Alright. I understand both of your opinions, but I still think the Witch class¡¯ specialties are much more interesting and useful for me.¡± I replied. ¡°Then we have a problem. I can¡¯t teach you how to become a Witch.¡± Fio stated reluctantly. ¡°Why not? You have the class so surely it would be easy to explain?¡± I enquired. ¡°Without you having a mana pool developed the best I could do is give you simple explanations of the steps necessary but nothing more in depth than that. For example I could teach you how to brew a potion but the magic infusion is the complicated and difficult step. I could try to explain that but it would be like trying to teach someone without legs how to walk. See? I just can¡¯t do it. Until your mana pool is developed you won¡¯t be able to fully understand what I¡¯m teaching.¡± Fio said. Damn. That was disappointing. ¡°You can at least cover the necessary unlock requirements right? I¡¯ll try to unlock the class on my own later when my mana pool is ready.¡± ¡°That just makes me really hesitant to tell you! A total novice messing around with magic without proper instruction and a teacher overseeing is a recipe for disaster!¡± Fio exclaimed. ¡°I wholeheartedly agree with her, my lady. My lady should not take risks like that!¡± Myura followed up with her own words. ¡°Fine. I understand when to give up! I¡¯ll just try to learn how to get the class in the future.¡± I said dejectedly. ¡°Ahh, don¡¯t be so down! I¡¯ll tell you the steps but you have to make me a promise!¡± Fio stated. ¡°What kind of promise?¡± I asked warily. ¡°A very easy one. When your mana pool develops, go to a church and ask them to get you in contact with a Witch that accept pupils. That¡¯s all.¡± Fio replied. ¡°Why would I need to visit a church for that?¡± I asked confused. ¡°It¡¯s because the church is always involved with people looking to add to their classes since you have to go to a church to change class anyway. So a church will always know who in town is willing to teach. I¡¯m surprised you don¡¯t know that. Maybe because you only have one or two classes so you¡¯ve never had to change them? I don¡¯t think very well of whoever taught you growing up if they left you ignorant of an important detail like that.¡± Fio explained. Wait. Is that how things work here? They can¡¯t change their classes unless they visit a church? I don¡¯t have any problem changing my class just as easily as I could in game, though. While I was getting caught up in my thoughts, Fio continued wistfully. ¡°It would be great if we were like the Spirits and could change our class whenever we wished.¡± ¡°We can¡¯t be held to the standards of the Spirits.¡± Myura responded. ¡°They had special powers far beyond our own. They even had classes that none of us could obtain.¡± ¡°I know! I really wish I could become an Archsage like Lord Airin was said to be in the legends. Just imagining the powers of magic a great being like that had access to is dizzying.¡± Fio remarked, still in that wistful tone. I was getting left out of the conversation but I was deeply interested. Based on what they just said, doesn¡¯t that make me a Spirit? I have classes the people of this world don¡¯t have and I can change my class whenever I want. I¡¯m not sure if I¡¯m stronger than the people of this world but so far I haven¡¯t seen anyone I couldn¡¯t beat in a fight. Was there anything I could say to get more information without looking weird for not knowing it? It seemed like the Spirits are well known and respected so saying I don¡¯t know of them would definitely be odd and stand out. Damn it! This is too big of a reveal for me right now. I can¡¯t process it. I need to discuss this with Lynn before I put my foot in my mouth. Their discussion had continued but it seemed like it had finally swung back to me. ¡°That¡¯s why you don¡¯t have to worry Seri! You have Lord Airin¡¯s blessing, so I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll have no problem getting a mana pool and becoming a great magic user!¡± Fio stated. Blessing? Oh right, that commander of the fort mentioned that. Something to do with having this dark purple hair color meant I had a blessing. I guess I¡¯ll just follow up on what she just said and move the conversation back to the safer topic of the Witch class information. ¡°You¡¯re right. Since Lord Airin blessed me, I¡¯ll stay positive! Anyway back to our topic, I promise to visit a church for help once my mana pool is ready, so can you tell me the information for the Witch class now?¡± ¡°Good! The steps to unlock the Witch class are to be able to cast spells. Basic fireballs and things like that are enough. You¡¯ll probably end up unlocking Sorceress just doing this step. It did for me at least. Next you¡¯ll need to learn how to brew and then infuse potions with magic power. This one is complicated like I said before. Next you¡¯ll need to learn to make some basic enchantments and do a couple successfully. That step is pretty easy. Basic enchantments are just simple runes usually. Don¡¯t even need to learn how to set up magic circles for those. That¡¯s only for the more complex enchants. Thankfully you don¡¯t need to do anything regarding rituals for just unlocking the class. I¡¯d still research the topic a bit, but it¡¯s not a requirement. Get all that?¡± She finished. I nodded. It¡¯s interesting that I¡¯ll unlock Sorceress just going for Witch. That won¡¯t be a bad thing if it lets me train and increase my magic power. ¡°Thanks Fio! Can you show me an example of a basic enchant and maybe of a more complicated one?¡± ¡°I suppose I could. To be honest with you, I don¡¯t really do much on the enchanting side of things. I stick to potions.¡± She got up from her seat and walked over to a cupboard. Opening it, she pulled out a brush, small pot, and two pieces of paper. ¡°This should work for a small example.¡± She opened the pot and I bent over to look inside and it looked like ink but a bit off. She dipped the brush in the pot and then drew a symbol on the paper. ¡°This is the rune for light. So when I infuse magic power into it, it does this.¡± She placed her hand on the paper and I felt a small tingle of magic and then the paper lit up, giving off a brief flash. ¡°A basic light enchantment. Not really very useful. If you wanted a more useful light you¡¯d need to add a few extra connected runes.¡± She crumpled up the paper with the light rune and tossed it to the side. She took the other piece of paper and started drawing a circle with lots of interconnected lines and shapes. I noticed that she left a few spots that were open circles. A minute later she seemed satisfied with whatever she just drew and then she started drawing in those circles. The first circle she put the light rune she had just shown me. I didn¡¯t recognize the next runes she drew in the other circles. After drawing them, she then drew another line connecting the circle to a swirl at the edge of the paper. She again placed her hand on the paper and I felt the magic tingle again but this time nothing happened. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°It didn¡¯t light up this time.¡± I said. Fio laughed. ¡°Of course not! That¡¯s what the extra runes were for.¡± She pointed to them in turn. ¡°The first one is ¡®sustain¡¯ which as it says makes the light keep working rather than a brief flash. The next two are ¡®control¡¯ and ¡®toggle¡¯. You¡¯ll notice that the toggle rune is near this line I drew away from the circle that is connected to the swirl shape. The shape there doesn¡¯t matter, it could be anything, but go ahead and press it.¡± I did as she stated and now the paper lit up and stayed glowing. I pressed the swirl again and the light turned off. Now the paper was truly a light. ¡°I see. So the magic circle was important?¡± ¡°Yeah. The magic circle describes how the magic should connect and work between the various runes. Control and toggle are close to each other because they both are necessary for the other to work. Magic circles can become very large depending on the complexity of the enchant you¡¯re trying to make. Either that or you¡¯d need to be an expert at drawing the magic circles as small as possible!¡± She crumpled up the paper again. ¡°An enchantment on paper like this won¡¯t last very long. It will probably be totally unusable soon. The material an enchantment is placed on is very important because not every material is good for conducting magic. Adamantite is one of the best metals for enchanting because of how well it conducts magic, but you¡¯d need great luck to get any.¡± Fio explained. Wow. This conversation was just full of surprising revelations. Adamantite, or as I know it etherenite, is good at conducting magic. Is that the reason the parts in my ship that used that material basically melted and destroyed themselves when we landed on this planet? Does that mean the titanil and chromanite are the same or were they just unwilling participants because of the etherenite? Another damn thing that requires testing. ¡°How much would it cost for me to get those potions you mentioned before and how long would they take to make? I¡¯m going to be leaving town in another day or two.¡± ¡°Those are expensive but they don¡¯t require any kind of long brewing process. Could probably have a set made by tomorrow evening? Either that or the morning after. If you¡¯re planning on being a magic user, you will need to look for a focus of some kind to use too. I prefer a wand, but a staff is the norm. At least at first it will help to have a focus. Once you get more used to how casting magic works you¡¯ll be able to cast more without requiring it. Anyway the potion price would probably run about fifteen gold. I could make a dozen of them with the herbs and stuff I have on hand.¡± Fio said. Another fifteen gold to spend? I¡¯ve already spent seventeen gold and a few silvers out of my current amount of money. Another fifteen would take me down to almost half of my money gone. I still have another bag of gems to sell but I wanted to hold those in reserve for possible individual use. Magic is important, though, and I don¡¯t think I have a choice. I can¡¯t wait years for my mana to mature. ¡°Alright. I¡¯ll pay that price. I really hope those potions work like you said they would.¡± ¡°No problem. I never lie about my products. That would be really bad for repeat business!¡± Fio laughed. Her thoughts confirm her words. Actually, she¡¯s being generous and giving me a bargain rate despite the already high price. Not sure how I feel about that but I¡¯ll accept her kindness. Thinking about the time, it should be around lunch time. ¡°Myura, would you go buy ingredients to prepare lunch for us? Would some silver coins be enough for that?¡± I took out some coins. Myura had a sad expression on her face for a brief moment as she stood up and then placed the kitten gently back down on the chair. She took the few steps necessary and took the coins from me. ¡°Understood my lady. I will be back shortly.¡± She gave a brief curtsey before turning and leaving. After she was gone I got up and stretched a moment. I had been sitting down for a while. ¡°Alright I need to run a quick errand and then I¡¯ll be back. I should be back before she gets back, hopefully. Since Coa is happily asleep, I¡¯ll leave her here. I¡¯d like to ask some more questions about magic when I come back.¡± I smiled. ¡°Also play with the pets some more.¡± ¡°Did you send her off just so you could sneak away?¡± Fio giggled. It was the first time she had done that. It was a cute sound, much different than her laughter. ¡°Of course not. I was definitely here the whole time and never left right?¡± I said pointedly. ¡°Right, right. You never left. I guess I¡¯ll get started setting aside the necessary ingredients for the potions.¡± She got up too. ¡°Thanks Fio. Okay I¡¯m off for real now.¡± I left the room and then headed down the stairs and then back into the store area. The door out of the shop was unlocked. Did Fio leave the door unlocked earlier? Wasn¡¯t that risky? Or more likely Myura unlocked it when she left. That made more sense. I rushed to Huvreck¡¯s shop, weaving through the people on the streets. There was two things I had to do there and I was on a tight timetable. When I arrived, I barged into the shop and went straight to the backroom. ¡°Huvreck, I got your stuff!¡± Huvreck, who had been focusing on some task, must have jumped a meter in surprise. ¡°By the spirits lass, don¡¯t do that! I almost ruined the gem I was cutting!¡± He waved the gem in his hand angrily at me. ¡°No time for that right now. Your hatchet and the wood you wanted is in the bag.¡± I held it out to him. He took it and then pulled out one of the branches. ¡°Oh, ya chose a good one here.¡± He pulled the others out too and set all the branches off to the side on a bench. ¡°Thanks lass. Ya after that information now right? Alright come closer and I¡¯ll tell ya. I don¡¯t trust saying the name too loudly.¡± I walked closer and bent down slightly to put my ear near his mouth and he whispered, ¡°Ghost. That¡¯s the name.¡± I pulled back away from him. ¡°There, we both fulfilled our sides of the bargain. Pleasure doing business with ya.¡± ¡°Actually, Huvreck I have one other thing I need from you.¡± I said. ¡°I ain¡¯t giving ya no more information.¡± He bluntly stated. ¡°No, not information, a weapon crafting commission. I need a staff or at least some kind of magic focus.¡± I replied. ¡°Really? Weren¡¯t ya a Hunter or Scout?¡± He asked. ¡°I got staves and wands here if ya want to choose one.¡± ¡°I have a certain material and I want to know if it can be used.¡± I pulled out the sabertooth fang. Huvreck¡¯s eyes opened wide in shock, and then he sighed. ¡°I should stop being surprised by ya lass. I can definitely make that into a first class staff. When do ya need it by?¡± ¡°Could you have it done in two days?¡± I asked. ¡°Two days? That would be a close call but I reckon I could manage.¡± He declared. ¡°That¡¯s great. What would the charge for it?¡± I was prepared but I knew I¡¯d probably be parting with even more of my gold. ¡°Free of charge.¡± It was my turn to be shocked. Huvreck saw my expression and his rumbling laughter filled the room. ¡°Lass, using that fang as a material will get me some hefty experience. I might even level up as a Craftsman for the first time in a number of years. That¡¯s why it¡¯s free of charge.¡± I was still shocked and he took the fang gingerly from my hands. ¡°Come back in two days to pick it up.¡± I nodded and then left the store. Alright that¡¯s my errand done. Let¡¯s get back to Fio¡¯s before Myura. Chapter 28 Author¡¯s Note: Here comes next chapter. I seem to be alternating between 5 days and 3 days for updates. I¡¯m really looking forward to the comments after this chapter.
Chapter 28 I had gotten back to Fio¡¯s shop before Myura returned. Fio was in her backroom gathering the ingredients, so I helped with that. I got her to identify and name them for me too, though she added in the qualifier that most of them had to be ordered through the Merchant¡¯s Guild because they don¡¯t grow anywhere near here. Some didn¡¯t even grow at all in the Empire. I asked why she couldn¡¯t grow them and apparently it was an issue of needing a certain type of environment to grow in. As I was getting some brief instruction about herbs and potion making tips, Myura returned and seemed momentarily happy that I was still at the shop. I guessed that she was expecting me to disappear like I had the previous day. She went back upstairs to Fio¡¯s kitchen area and started to prepare lunch. Most of the tips I received were pretty basic instructions like how to properly prepare the herbs for use in the potions or how to make sure the herbs were still good, though that varied based on the type of herb. Of course there was way too much variety of ingredients in the shop, so she could only show me a few examples. The best thing to come from the conversation was when Fio handed me a journal and told me to read it. I decided to excuse myself and go back upstairs to examine the contents. It was a veritable treasure trove! The journal seemed to be something that Fio had personally compiled through her experiences as a witch. I couldn¡¯t read it of course, but there were drawings of plants, animals and even monsters with notations pointing out various parts and lots of writing beside each drawing. Lynn was saving all the information for reference later. She was especially happy since it provided her a lot of writing samples with which she could finally start deciphering the written language. I idly flipped the pages as I examined the drawings. I also took the time to watch Myura cooking. Watching a cute girl cook is always a pleasurable experience, though Myura started to get really self conscious when I did that so I returned my attention to the journal to not distract her. She also had one other spectator who she didn¡¯t seem to mind. Coa had woken up at the smell of cooking and had climbed her way to the top of the chair I was using, and was watching with rapt attention. It had been quite amusing and adorable in a way to watch her climb. She had slithered up one of the chair legs and all the while her tiny little wings were beating like she was attempting to fly to make herself climb faster. Nirvi, on the other hand, was still sleeping on the chair that she had been placed on earlier. I don¡¯t think she was going to wake up anytime soon. I wanted to play with her, but at the same time I didn¡¯t want to wake her. What a quandary! It¡¯s almost as big of a crisis as being trapped in the dungeon yesterday! So instead all I could do is continue to flip back and forth through this journal I can¡¯t even read and look at the pictures. I felt like a child. I really hope Fio comes back upstairs soon or Myura finishes lunch. One or the other to please save me from this boredom! Thankfully, I didn¡¯t have too long to suffer in that state. ¡°My lady, I have finished preparing lunch. Allow me to collect our hostess and then lunch may be served.¡± She curtsied and then went to fetch Fio. She¡¯s being awfully respectful to Fio now. I hope it¡¯s a good sign. I should probably have a talk with her later about her true motives. She doesn¡¯t seem to be lying about wanting to serve me, but I think there definitely has to be more to it than just that. The question will be if she will willingly share it or not when asked. If she¡¯s willing to cooperate, she could be a really large boon while I¡¯m in town. I still need to test if my shield can actually block certain types of magic attacks. I already know things like that magic mist can intrude through it, but there should hopefully be things it can defend against. For example, was a magically created fireball just a physical phenomenon generated by magic formed into a shape and propelled in some chosen direction? Or was it actually magical in nature itself? If it was just normal fire then my shield should dissipate the fire on impact. I¡¯ll still feel some heat but only that. If it was totally magical in nature it might pass through my shield entirely. That would be an extremely dangerous outcome for me to find out at a bad time due to my glass cannon nature. So if I can get Myura¡¯s cooperation and trust her enough to risk showing off my shield¡¯s abilities, she should be able to blast me with some weak spell so I can see what happens. I¡¯ve already risked letting her in my guard during bath times and nothing has happened there. In the end, it all just relies on Myura being willing to explain her true reasons. Otherwise I definitely won¡¯t be able to trust her. Well, it would also be dependent on Lynn¡¯s opinion. Myura returned upstairs with Fio and we sat over at Fio¡¯s small kitchen table. The assortment of food was a lot like what I had been eating at the inn. Some plates with freshwater fish and some plates with different types of meat. There was also some broth. She had even prepared some wine which looked suspiciously like the wine I had asked her to buy the previous day. Myura must have gone back to the inn to get some. Myura served both Fio and I, then she stepped back and looked like she was going to forgo eating. I wasn¡¯t very happy about that. ¡°Myura, take a seat and eat as well.¡± Myura shook her head frantically. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t dream of doing that, my lady! I can¡¯t sit at the same table as my lady. It just wouldn¡¯t be right!¡± ¡°Ahhhh, don¡¯t start that again!¡± Fio chimed in. She was waving around her silverware with a piece of meat on it. ¡°Just sit down and eat already. I can¡¯t handle seeing you just stand there while I¡¯m eating.¡± ¡°But..¡± Myura tried to say something. ¡°There¡¯s no buts! Your lady and I have both said to eat, so eat!¡± Fio commanded. Myura was silent as she brought a seat over to the table and sat as well. I noticed she was barely eating but it was still better than having her stand there looking out of place. It was a pretty interesting contrast between Fio and Myura¡¯s eating habits. Fio was ravenously devouring the food in front of her while Myura was eating demurely. As for myself, I was eating pretty much as normal. I wasn¡¯t going to stick to lady mode here like at the inn. Of course I was sharing food with Coa who had curled up on the table and was accepting all offerings any one of us would give her. I really do want to know where she puts all the food she eats. I mean she is a growing dragon but I don¡¯t know if a few centimeters every couple of days justifies this amount of food intake. Fio was the first to finish her lunch, and she dropped her knife on her plate with a large satisfied sigh. ¡°I thought I was a competent cook, but I guess I¡¯m still nothing compared to a professional maid! Thanks for the food!¡± ¡°No. I¡¯m not that good. My mother was much better than I.¡± Myura said quietly, bowing her head and hiding her face. I exchanged a glance with Fio and I could tell that she too recognized the possible bomb in Myura¡¯s statement. This called for a change in subject! ¡°So, Fio, about my other questions about magic?¡± ¡°Right, right. What else did you want to ask? Also, did you like my journal? It¡¯s taken me over a decade to put all that information together you know!¡± Fio boasted. I smiled. ¡°It was very helpful in more ways than you can guess. My first question has to do with what you said earlier, that because I lacked a developed mana pool that my magic resistance would be low. Why is that?¡± ¡°Oh. That¡¯s actually pretty simple. Your own mana doesn¡¯t like it when foreign mana intrudes in your body. It also will naturally strengthen your body against magic too. You¡¯re just all around stronger at taking magical damage or effects.¡± ¡°Wait, doesn¡¯t that mean potions will have less effect on most people? You said that potions were usually made with an infusion of mana.¡± I questioned. ¡°The process involves infusing mana to create an effect, but the potions themselves are almost always without any kind of mana in them. There are some where this is not the case, like with the potions I¡¯m going to brew for you, but magic is not required for the potions to have their effect. Just necessary for the brewing process.¡± Fio explained. I wasn¡¯t sure I entirely believed her, but I¡¯ll accept her experience for now. ¡°Then moving on to my next question. You said that Druids rely on nature to cast most of their spells and that they¡¯re stronger in forests and areas like that. Does other magic work the same way? For example would water magic be stronger near a lake or some other body of water?¡± ¡°That¡¯s a bit harder to explain. Basically yes, but probably not in the way you¡¯re thinking of. I mean ambient magic around us can potentially become any element if we attune and manipulate it the right way. If you¡¯re near a lake though, you wouldn¡¯t need to create the water to use for your magic, you could just draw on the water from the lake to use instead. At the same time though, it takes a lot more control to manipulate an already existing source than one you create yourself. When you create the water or fire or whatever, it already is basically under your magic¡¯s control. If you can manipulate it, though you can probably do a much more effective attack than one that relies on your own mana to produce. The problem is that, of course, you can¡¯t always count on having that kind of environmental advantage. Sometimes the environment will even work against you.¡± The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°I suppose that all makes sense.¡± I said. What else could I ask about? I feel like I¡¯ve asked everything I can think of, but at the same time I¡¯m worried that I might be forgetting something important. Myura was busy clearing the table of the empty plates while Coa slithered around scavenging what she could off the ones that were left. Oh, seeing Coa reminded me of something Fio said before. ¡°One last question. You said Nirvi was your familiar, does that actually mean something special?¡± Fio got a mischievous smile before speaking, ¡°How old do you think Nirvi is?¡± ¡°Well judging by her appearance, two months or so?¡± I asked. Ahh, crap. I don¡¯t even know for sure if they use months as a measure of time here. ¡°She¡¯s actually about a year old now.¡± Fio clarified. Whew, I guess I was safe, but I don¡¯t know for sure how long their years are either. So saying she¡¯s a year old doesn¡¯t tell me much. I guess I can only ask another question based on my assumed interpretation of what she just said. ¡°In other words, she looks younger than she actually is because of being your familiar?¡± ¡°Exactly! It¡¯s one of the few rituals I¡¯ve ever bothered with casting. As a result of it, Nirvi here is now tied to my life. She¡¯ll age slowly until maturity where she¡¯ll stay. Once I die, she¡¯ll very rapidly age and die herself. She¡¯ll still get to live way beyond normal cat lifespan, plus since I got her as a very young kitten she¡¯ll be extra adorable for longer! It was the perfect plan!¡± Fio laughed. ¡°I assume normally that a familiar has a more important role than just being a cuddly pet?¡± I inquired. ¡°Normally a familiar would serve as an extra mana source for the Witch to draw upon. A familiar can also act like a Witch¡¯s eyes and ears, though the information it sends back can be a bit confusing and hard to interpret. A familiar can also fight with the Witch and act similar to a focus point through which the Witch can deliver spells. For example, you could have your familiar sneak in close to an enemy and blast the enemy from under it¡¯s guard. A familiar would also gain some benefits like extra resistance to magic and the ability to sense magic if it didn¡¯t already have that ability. It¡¯s not all benefits though. A familiar must always be within a kilometer of the Witch. Also, just like the familiar is tied to the Witch, the Witch is also tied to the familiar. If the familiar was to die, the backlash on the Witch can be hefty and will cause a permanent impairment of the Witch¡¯s abilities. A Witch can also only ever have one familiar. You can never form another contract afterwards.¡± Fio explained. ¡°Based on what you just said, could the familiar be a human or one of the other races?¡± I inquired. Fio grimaced before answering. ¡°It could, but it would be very hard to convince anyone to form a familiar contract with another person. It¡¯s also seen as something of a taboo to do, though there¡¯s nothing really wrong about it. Most people just find the concept of doing it to be very distasteful.¡± I grinned. ¡°Well, I think that¡¯s all my questions so, why don¡¯t we relax and play with the pets some more?¡± Fio grinned too. ¡°Yes!¡± Myura off to the side was trying to hide her own smile, but failing greatly. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A few hours later, with the time of day firmly settled into afternoon, Myura and I were headed back to the inn. After the busy day I had spent yesterday, I really didn¡¯t want to do much else today. Playing at Fio¡¯s house had also been a great way to unwind. The best result to come from the day was that Myura had greatly calmed down from her previous attitude. When I thought about it, wasn¡¯t it a bit bizarre how quickly she had changed? She even still had a bright smile on her face rather than the serious expression that had been the norm previously. All in all, it was a definite improvement. When we got back to the inn though, Myura instantly changed back to her previous self. I assumed it had something to do with the fact that she didn¡¯t want to be seen not being professional. I can¡¯t really criticize her that much since I also went into lady mode. We made it back to my room without any fuss and I went over to the sofa and stretched out and laid down. ¡°My lady, is there anything you need me to do?¡± Myura spoke up. I thought about it. Now was as good a time as any. I established a link with her to make sure I could tell if she lied or hid things. ¡°Myura, I want you to tell me exactly why you¡¯re so insistent on serving me. I don¡¯t believe I¡¯ve done anything special to deserve this kind of service.¡± Myura froze and she went a bit pale. Her mind was filled with fear at being rejected and also a long suffering grief. It was clear she didn¡¯t want to talk judging by how she stayed silent. She needed another push. ¡°Myura, to be blunt, I can¡¯t trust you right now. If you want my trust then you need to be honest with me.¡± Myura hung her head but then started talking. ¡°When I was born, my mother worked as the head servant of a noble that ruled a city elsewhere in the empire. He was a great man and very wise. He treated all the servants and people of the city with respect and listened to their opinions about various matters. He encouraged them to speak up and offer those opinions. The city flourished under his management and my mother was proud to be his servant. I was also proud of my mother and proud of the lord she served. She raised me to also enter his service. She was very strict, but she also praised me when I did well so I didn¡¯t mind. I wanted to be the best servant possible just like my mother. She even started teaching me magic. I was very happy back then.¡± She stopped for a moment before continuing. ¡°Everything changed though when the noble got sick. It was a rare illness that couldn¡¯t be healed by magic or potions. He wasted away, all while still trying to fulfill his duties, even though my mother and the other servants tried to get him to rest. After he died, and because his wife had died early on without giving him a child, he was without an heir so the position of ruler was inherited by the son of his cousin. At first everything seemed fine. The new lord didn¡¯t do anything outrageous and he toured the city examining how everything was handled. It seemed like he would follow in the same vein as the previous lord.¡± Myura stopped again and sniffled. ¡°It didn¡¯t last. Some of the servants and workers in the city were thrown away or executed for odd reasons and new people came in to replace them. My mother still had her position as head servant but the new lord didn¡¯t listen to her opinions and she found herself replaced in all but name by a new woman the lord had brought with him. The final breaking point was when I was sixteen. The new lord requested that I clean some of the guest rooms for some visitors that would arriving. Of course I followed the command, I was still too young to really question everything that had been going on. Even though my mother had warned me to be careful.¡± She sniffled some more. ¡°The orders to clean were a lie. The guests were already there waiting for me and they, they, they...¡± She stopped. She didn¡¯t have to continue. I saw from her mind what she had been forced to do. Those assholes. ¡°Anyway, my mother had been told by one of the other older servants about seeing me going off alone and she came and saw what was happening. She saved me with her magic.¡± She was crying for real now. ¡°That was a mistake. My mother was executed and I was thrown out of the manor. I had nowhere to go, the lord had spread vile rumors about me and no one in the city wanted to hire me. I had to go against my mother¡¯s teachings and steal and do other bad things just to survive.¡± ¡°Eventually I managed to leave that city and go to another one where I was not known. I registered as an adventurer and started doing work for the guild.¡± She stopped again. ¡°I¡¯m sorry my lady. I lied earlier. When I said I raised my levels as a Sorceress and Warrior to protect my chosen liege, it was a lie. I did it because I had to be strong. As I was an adventurer, I continued to wander around the empire as I worked. I can¡¯t really say I was living though. I was alive but felt dead. My thoughts were always of those happy days when I was a child and of my strict but kind mother. It was when I got to this town that I saw this inn and found out that it served various nobles that I had a desperate and very stupid idea. I thought that if I worked here that maybe I could, like my mother, find a lord worth serving and then I could be happy again.¡± She started laughing while still crying. ¡°It was such a childish idea! I had been almost thirty years old by then but I was still such a naive idiot! Yet, I couldn¡¯t stop myself. I worked here year after year, always hoping and praying that the next guest would be worth it. They never were. Maybe my standards were too high. Maybe I was really just too afraid to abandon the comfortable job I had finally found where I could openly display my mother¡¯s teachings.¡± Then Myura raised her head and looked at me straight in the eye. ¡°Then my lady appeared. You were so beautiful and you were kind and gentle to us servants. You thanked me every time I refilled your wine and you acted courteous to the other nobles as well. I thought maybe, maybe I had finally found my goal!¡± I sighed. Everything Myura had said had been the truth, at least as far as she knew. There was no falsehoods spoken and her emotions as she told her story were all real. I had expected some kind of sad story after her reaction earlier, but this was still a bit much. In the end, she truly did, honestly just wish to serve me. I¡¯m not the great noble that she thinks I am though. What should I do now? Chapter 29 Author¡¯s Note: So I wanted to respond to a certain reader complaint that I got after last chapter regarding Myura''s backstory. My story is tagged Mature, that means mature topics will come up. This world is not one of sunshine and flowers. I mean my MC almost killed herself in the 7th chapter! I also intentionally left it totally open to reader interpretation how far things went in Myura''s backstory. So in conclusion, if you''re a reader that is bothered by horrible things happening, I can only say that well, more will definitely be coming in the future. (I will not reveal how close or far away in the future) In much, much happier news, my story has now surpassed 200 pages written judging by my gdocs file. It''s also about 109k words. I''m quite proud of myself for managing to get this far. Please enjoy this next chapter.
Chapter 29 Myura still had tears streaming down her cheeks so more weighty matters could wait. There was something that had to be done first. The only problem was the general difference in physique between the two of us. ¡°Myura, come over here.¡± She came over to the sofa I was sitting on. I stood up. Damn height difference. She was over a head taller than me. This definitely wasn¡¯t going to work. ¡°Myura, sit down.¡± ¡°My lady, I can¡¯t sit down if you¡¯re standing!¡± Myura complained. ¡°Myura, sit down!¡± I pushed her over onto the sofa. I turned off my shield as well. It was another thing that would just get in the way for the next while. Before she had a chance to recover and get up, I bent over and pulled her into a tight hug. She froze. ¡°I apologize, Myura. I shouldn¡¯t have forced you to tell me that.¡± I placed one hand up on her head, avoiding her large horns, and started to stroke her hair, slowly and repeatedly. I could hear Myura started to cry a bit more audibly. ¡°It must have been hard on you. That¡¯s why, for now at least, just let it all out, okay?¡± Myura grasped onto my dress and started sobbing uncontrollably. I just kept her tightly in my hug and allowed her this moment of comfort. It was really all I could do for her right now. The assholes that did this to her are lucky they¡¯re not here right now. I wouldn¡¯t be able to stop myself from killing them. I¡¯d be sure to make it be extremely painful too. Now while she cried, I had to figure out what to do with her. Right now, I¡¯m leaning toward taking her with me. At the same time I think it¡¯s probably an absolutely horrible idea. If I take her with me, I¡¯ll have to eventually tell her everything and how will she react when she finds out I¡¯m not really a noble? That¡¯s probably something I should tell her right away. I¡¯m worried it might break her though. She¡¯s clearly hung her hopes and dreams on me. I don¡¯t want to deal with this kind of trauma. I have my own share of problems! Like the fact that I¡¯m a 149cm tall girl for one. Well, there¡¯s nothing for it. I¡¯ll need to discuss this with Lynn. I am already pretty sure she¡¯ll just say there¡¯s no way I can risk taking this girl along. That¡¯s the key point too. She¡¯s a gigantic risk to have along. Even I know it, but, but still! How can I abandon this girl now!? I need to think of this logically, rather than emotionally. Despite that, after hearing the story it¡¯s not easy to do. Myura was starting to calm down and she finally pulled away and looked at me. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, my lady. I have shown you a pathetic sight.¡± She looked back down. ¡°Myura, there was nothing pathetic about what just happened. Something terrible happened to you, but you managed to pick yourself up and still move forward, even if you felt like you lost your way along the line. That is admirable!¡± I stated. ¡°My lady is really too kind and gentle.¡± Myura sniffled and said. I¡¯m not kind or gentle at all. I sighed. ¡°Myura. I trust you, but I can¡¯t decide yet whether or not I¡¯ll take you with me. It¡¯s a large decision and I need to think it over. I absolutely promise that I will give you an answer tomorrow. Sorry. I know that¡¯s probably not what you wanted to hear.¡± Contrary to my own expectations, Myura smiled. ¡°That is what I expected from my lady. Please think it over well. I won¡¯t fault you if you decide to not bring me along.¡± Without even thinking about it, I pulled her into another hug. This time she returned the hug and we stayed like that for a few minutes. ¡°Myura, I will be taking a nap for a few hours.¡± She nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll make sure that my lady is not disturbed.¡± She stood up and curtsied and then left the room. With my senses I could tell that for a minute she stood on the other side of the door before finally walking back down the hall and downstairs. Time for a discussion with Lynn. There¡¯s a number of topics that I need to discuss with her too. I went over to the bed and laid down. I turned off my auto translator and planned to speak quietly. If anyone heard me they¡¯d just hear me mumbling gibberish, I hope. ¡°Lynn, let¡¯s have a chat.¡± ¡°Yes, Mistress. I¡¯m here for you whenever you need me.¡± Lynn instantly replied. ¡°First, let¡¯s discuss the obvious. What do you think of Myura?¡± I asked. ¡°I believe Mistress should take her along. I¡¯m sure she will have uses that Mistress would benefit from. Mistress has already benefitted from her assistance, after all.¡± Lynn gave her opinion. Huh? That completely betrayed my expectations. I had expected Lynn to veto the decision. To be honest, I had almost wanted her to do so. It would let me escape making the decision myself. Lynn was now denying me that easy option. ¡°Are you sure, Lynn? I expected you to tell me that she¡¯s a risk I can¡¯t afford to take or a number of other objections.¡± ¡°I know Mistress was gauging her carefully when she told her story. If she had failed your test, you would never have comforted her. By doing so, it told me she had passed. As a result, I have no objections.¡± Lynn clarified. ¡°Alright. Then the question changes to, is it right for me to take her along?¡± I asked. ¡°That is a tougher question. I know what Mistress likely plans to do in the capital. You are worried that if you take her along, you will only be taking her likely to her death.¡± Lynn answered. ¡°That is so. Do I have the right to accept her service when I know what is likely to happen to her? It is very likely that I¡¯m going to end up in a fight with an organization that is well known for lurking in the shadows and removing any threat that appears. It¡¯s very unlikely that I¡¯ll be able to hide my identity for long once I start investigating, which means Myura who will be my side becomes a target. My shield will protect me, but Myura will not be so lucky. I would have to keep her completely by my side and never let her part from me to protect her. I don¡¯t know if her pride as a servant will allow her to be protected by the lady she is serving. Of course, I can¡¯t deny that she will also become a possible hostage and tool to use against me.¡± I explained. ¡°Then all Mistress needs to do is give her another test. Take her with you tomorrow outside of the town and test her abilities. If she is reasonably strong enough to protect herself, then take her along. If she is not, then leave her behind.¡± Lynn said. ¡°I suppose that that really is my only option. I¡¯m also going to reveal to her tomorrow that I¡¯m not a noble. She has the right to know that at the very least. I won¡¯t share the rest of the story with her yet though. Too much risk in it. If she does come along then she¡¯ll learn it all when I return to the ship anyway. If she fails the test, then that¡¯s the end of it. She will be hurt if I decline her, but I¡¯d much rather know that she was alive and safe.¡± ¡°Mistress, while that is all well and good in theory. I¡¯m quite sure that she knows you plan on going to the capital next. It is quite likely that she might simply follow after you anyway. I suggest that if she fails the test, that you add some level of strength for her to reach before you¡¯ll accept her. That should keep her occupied. As long as you stress that you do not want her to risk herself unnecessarily to reach that level of strength.¡± ¡°That makes sense, so I¡¯ll go with that. Then next on the agenda would be whether or not you made any progress detecting the ambient magic with Lullaby¡¯s sensors?¡± I requested. ¡°Sadly, none whatsoever Mistress. I¡¯ve recalibrated the settings numerous times but no matter what I don¡¯t detect anything. I question whether there is even anything to detect!¡± Lynn answered, not bothering to hide her frustration. It was probably hard on her to accept this kind of outcome. Lullaby should have some of the best possible sensor equipment that could be outfitted on a ship her size. So for those sensors to fail completely does seem mind boggling. ¡°I guess trying to perfectly understand magic with our technology might be a fool¡¯s errand.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not going to give up yet, Mistress! I¡¯ll detect this mysterious energy and figure out what it really is! I still refuse to accept the existence of something as illogical as magic if it can¡¯t be explained by science! There must be some kind of rational explanation for everything!¡± Lynn stated. ¡°Do as you like. Not like I could stop you. I think you¡¯re being a bit too inflexible though. I mean, you did accept how weird my situation was but you can¡¯t accept the existence of magic? Regardless, how goes deciphering the language?¡± I inquired. ¡°That is a much happier prospect. Thanks to the letter, merchant note and now the addition of the witch¡¯s journal, I would estimate that my understanding of the written language is approximately forty percent complete. If Mistress could acquire another book to compare with, I¡¯m sure I could have the language fully understood.¡± Lynn said. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll see what I can do on that front.¡± I took a breath. ¡°The last topic is the most important. Lynn, what do you think about the Spirit business we heard about today?¡± ¡°I probably have the same idea Mistress has. That people like Mistress had arrived in the past as well. There might even be others like Mistress that arrived the same time as her elsewhere. We have no way of knowing. I suggest that it become a key research target. I¡¯m also worried about why the term Spirit is used to refer to them. A spirit typically refers to, for the people that believe in that, the soul or non physical part of someone¡¯s being, yet it seems to refer to living, breathing entities in this case. That must mean there was some other reason for why they came to be known like that. Until we get more information, we can¡¯t be sure what that is though.¡± Lynn conjectured. ¡°You¡¯re right. I think I might be a Spirit by this world¡¯s reckoning. Or at least, even if I¡¯m not one, they¡¯ll consider me one if they ever learn of my full abilities. What you said about there possibly being other Spirits around also makes me scared. It might mean Carol was dragged here too, and I don¡¯t want that to have happened. There¡¯s another possibility too. How many Spirits end up on this world but then never reveal that they are one? I would think it¡¯s not a small amount. You¡¯d have some that would immediately show off and reveal themselves but then some would be like I¡¯ve been doing and try to hide as much as possible.¡± I answered. ¡°If we investigate the Spirits, it might be possible to find a way for Mistress to get home, too. That is, if they¡¯re the same kind of beings as Mistress anyway.¡± Lynn said. ¡°That is the key point huh? They could just be abnormal beings of this world that pop up every so often. They¡¯ll be no use to me then.¡± I sadly said. ¡°Don¡¯t worry Mistress. We¡¯ll absolutely find a way to get you home. I have something to report though, regarding things here.¡± ¡°Did something happen at the ship?¡± I sat up and spoke worriedly. If anything happened to Lullaby... ¡°Everything at the ship is fine. The wolves are still doing their patrols and I¡¯ve been doing my aerial sweeps to observe them. I¡¯ve also started using one of the drones to explore more of the forest area. I¡¯ve noticed that the wolves don¡¯t go too deep in the forest and was curious if there was a reason for that.¡± Lynn answered. ¡°I¡¯m guessing that you discovered something dangerous?¡± I asked. ¡°I don¡¯t know what I discovered Mistress. I had to travel quite a distance before I found anything, but about two hundred kilometers from the ship I started to find mangled trees and large footprints belonging to what I assume to be some kind of reptile.¡± Lynn explained. Oh no. ¡°When you say large footprints, how large are we talking about here?¡± ¡°Approximately two meters by one meter Mistress.¡± Lynn replied. Damn it! Why can¡¯t things ever just be simple? ¡°Lynn, I want you to cease and desist your explorations. I don¡¯t want you to accidentally lure whatever that is back to the ship.¡± ¡°I have already done so Mistress. After that, I spread a number of sensor probes aimed in that direction about twenty kilometers from the ship to give me an early warning just in case.¡± Lynn stopped for a moment. ¡°Mistress in the worst case scenario, do I have permission to use the special ordnance?¡± ¡°In an absolute worst case scenario, yes. I don¡¯t want whatever that thing is getting to Lullaby. If possible, though, try to use other weapons first. If you use that stuff, it will be visible for hundreds of kilometers. If we only had a few searchers after me before, that will definitely change things.¡± I said. ¡°Understood Mistress. What are you plans for the rest of the day?¡± Lynn asked. ¡°I plan on doing absolutely nothing but lay in bed!¡± I stated. ¡°Mistress¡­¡± Lynn grumbled. ¡°Lynn, I did a lot yesterday. I think I can get away with having one lazy day. Tomorrow I have to deal with Myura and then the next day I¡¯m leaving town and starting my journey toward the capital. This will likely be my only chance to relax for awhile.¡± I said. ¡°Alright. I¡¯ll overlook Mistress being idle this time.¡± Lynn responded. ¡°Thanks, Lynn! Now I¡¯m going to relax, so I¡¯ll end the conversation here.¡± I replied. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The rest of the day not much happened since I didn¡¯t leave my room. Myura happily brought my supper and I got her to actually sit and eat a little of it with me, though she was worried she¡¯d get caught and in trouble. Following that I had a long soak in the bath and then turned in for an early night. When I woke up in the morning I got a bit of a surprise.
*Coa has leveled up x 3*
-Due to overall physical growth, Coa has leveled -Stats gained: Health + 15 Strength + 2 Agility + 3 Constitution + 2 Resistance + 4 Intellect + 5 Wisdom + 4
I definitely hadn¡¯t been expecting that. The next window was even more of a surprise though.
*Set a growth plan for Coa?*
-As Coa is an immature beast, your Beastmaster ability can be used to determine how you would like her stats to grow. The choice will bias her stats to grow in a certain direction. -Your options are as follows: [Natural] [Physical] [Mental] -You may make this choice at any time.
I¡¯m absolutely not going to make a choice on the spur of the moment. I think I¡¯ll sit on it for now and then make the decision later today. Based on the names on the choices, Natural should mean I let her stats grow how they would without my interference. Physical would likely make her Strength, Agility and Constitution stats increase more. Maybe Resistance would be included in there too? Mental would increase Intellect and Wisdom. If I consider how a normal fantasy game would work, Intellect and Wisdom would also apply to magic which is something Coa lacks at the moment. As a dragon, I¡¯m she¡¯ll have some kind of magic as she gets older. Let¡¯s review her stats for now.
Name: Coa Level: 14
Species: Feathered Serpent Dragon
Gender: Female Age: 52 Days
Health: 180/180
Strength: 7(6) Agility: 10(9)
Constitution: 11(10) Resistance: 10(9)
Intellect: 23(21) Wisdom: 18(16)
Luck: 58(53)
I have absolutely no idea how good these stats are. Should I try comparing it with one of my wolves? Checking Sirius wouldn¡¯t be a good idea since he¡¯s more than four times her level. Let¡¯s see, my lowest level wolf was still eleven levels above her but it¡¯s the closest thing I have to compare with.
Name: No Name Level: 25
Species: Mutated Wolf
Gender: Male Age: 4 Years
Health: 525/525
Strength: 46(42) Agility: 54(49)
Constitution: 40(36) Resistance: 31(28)
Intellect: 25(23) Wisdom: 24(22)
Luck: 24(22)
Comparing the two, Coa¡¯s physical stat growth is terrible but her mental stat growth is way ahead of the wolves. The wolf is also fully grown and probably gained levels afterwards so it¡¯s not exactly a totally fair comparison since I have no idea what level Coa will be when she fully grows up. If I estimate how Coa would look in 11 levels based on the growth she just had, she¡¯d probably be the total opposite of the wolf. So, should I leave her to continue growing naturally or try to adjust her? I¡¯ll think more about this later. Myura should be coming with breakfast soon. Chapter 30 Chapter 30 After breakfast was completed, I decided to tell Myura the plan for the day. ¡°Myura, we¡¯re going to be leaving the town today.¡± ¡°Yes my lady? Is there a need to do something outside the city? I believe my lady said she was not leaving town until tomorrow?¡± Myura asked. ¡°I want to see how capable you are in a fight. You did say you had leveled both Sorceress and Warrior and worked as an adventurer for a while. I want to see that kind of Myura today.¡± I explained. ¡°I¡¯m sure that you still have your adventurer gear?¡± ¡°Yes, I¡¯ve kept it stored in my room in the servant quarters. Shall I go get ready and meet my lady out front?¡± Myura said. ¡°Please do so.¡± I commanded. Myura curtsied and left the room with the breakfast tray. I don¡¯t really want to do it, but the best option was to just go accept some request from the guild that was suitable. Then I¡¯ll let Myura fight some monsters and see how she does. I¡¯d normally just test her myself, but it¡¯s just that I doubt Myura would actually fight against me seriously even if I did display how strong I am. She¡¯ll be thinking thoughts like ¡®I can¡¯t hurt my lady!¡¯ or ¡®Even if she¡¯s stronger than me, what if I get in a lucky attack!?¡¯. Maybe that one girl won¡¯t be there at the guild? I finished getting dressed and left the inn. I wasn¡¯t sure how long I¡¯d be waiting for Myura so I amused myself with examining and playing with Coa. I hadn¡¯t paid that much attention to it but Coa had reached probably 35 to 40cm in length now. In the 7 days since I tamed her, she¡¯s grown to almost twice her previous size. That seems a bit ridiculous unless there are reasons she was that small? Perhaps she was the runt of the bunch and now that she gets to eat as much as she pleases, she¡¯s just catching up on growth? No way to really know, unless I ask someone that knows something about her species. I didn¡¯t really take much notice of her siblings, I only examined her parent that was 1.3m in length. I should probably find someone to ask about her stat growth too. Maybe Myura knows something? If not, someone in the guild might. Maybe check with Fio too? ¡°My lady, I¡¯m sorry to keep you waiting!¡± came a voice to my left. I turned my head to look and there was Myura, but she gave off a much different atmosphere in this getup than she did in her maid dress. She was wearing mostly grey leather but her chest piece was thicker and a dark black. Her under piece had hanging parts that resembled that of a robe. Her boots were fitted with metal and she was wearing long chainmail gauntlets that had heavier pieces of metal affixed to the back. Her left gauntlet looked especially reinforced. She had tied back her dark hair, but I questioned whether or not she even needed to since her hair wasn¡¯t that long in the first place. She had a few pouches tied to her, belt which completed the outfit. I didn¡¯t see a weapon though. ¡°Do you not use a weapon?¡± I asked. ¡°I have it stored away at the moment my lady.¡± Myura replied. ¡°Shall I pull it out for my lady to see?¡± ¡°Oh, no need. There is no problem since I¡¯ll see it soon enough. Let us go to the guild and select a suitable request.¡± I said. ¡°My lady, we¡¯re going to go hunt monsters?¡± Myura inquired. ¡°Yes. I wish to see Myura¡¯s abilities. Do not worry, I will hang back and let you handle the fighting yourself. If anything does attack me, I am perfectly capable of defending myself too.¡± I stated. I could tell that Myura wasn¡¯t happy with what I just said but she agreed and nodded anyway. She¡¯s probably recognized that this was a test and she didn¡¯t have a choice after all. She¡¯ll probably fight harder if she thinks she has to protect me too. When we got to the guild, to my dismay I saw Fara at the counter. I was hoping she wouldn¡¯t notice me but that was not to be. She got a wide grin on her face before she said ¡°Oh, if it isn¡¯t my newest suitor? Here to sweep me off my feet?¡± Myura gave me an odd look but didn¡¯t say anything. I kind of wish she had, because damn do I feel embarrassed right now. ¡°I told you, that was just a joke!¡± I said pointedly at Fara. ¡°Myura, go ahead and find a request on the board that is right for your abilities and that can be done today. I¡¯ll wait here.¡± Myura was still giving me that odd look, but she went over to the request board anyway. Fara¡¯s eyes followed her. ¡°I¡¯m surprised. I never thought Myura would be doing adventurer work again. It¡¯s been almost six years I think since I last saw her here in her gear. I thought she had retired and was happily working at that inn. Did something happen?¡± Fara asked me once Myura had moved out of hearing range. ¡°She wants to join up and work with me, I guess you could say? I kind of want to see how good she is before I agree though.¡± I explained. ¡°Really? You know she¡¯s a Tier 3 and you¡¯re only Tier 5, well not like that¡¯s really a great judge of strength since a lot of people can get strong without ever registering. Usually higher rank adventurers don¡¯t group with lower though.¡± Fara said. ¡°So you¡¯re saying she¡¯s pretty good then? Anyway I had something I was curious about. Does anyone here know anything about feathered serpent dragons and how they are as adults?¡± I questioned. ¡°Serpent Dragons? I know a little about them. Are you fine with just general information?¡± I nodded. ¡°Alright, then their average level is about 30. Not really that strong. While they have high intellect and wisdom stats in comparison to other beasts their level, not many of the wild ones can actually cast spells. I¡¯ve heard some Beastmasters that have raised them say good things about them as supporting partners since they¡¯re small and can comfortably ride on their owner without any issue and then provide some extra magic firepower. That¡¯s basically all I know. Most people that raise them, raise them with the intention of being a pet, not a fighter.¡± Fara said. ¡°That does help a bit, thanks. I have to decide how I want mine to grow. I¡¯ve already for the most part ruled out making her grow toward physical stats but unsure if I want to let her grow natural or make her grow more mentally.¡± I replied. ¡°I¡¯d recommend you to a Beastmaster, but none are around right now. There is one higher level one that is based in this town but he goes off for long expeditions regularly. He won¡¯t be back for another two or three weeks at the earliest.¡± Fara stated. ¡°Yeah, I most definitely can¡¯t wait around that long.¡± I saw that Myura had finally chosen a request and was making her way back over to us. ¡°Oh, Myura is coming back, so we can end the conversation here.¡± ¡°Hello Fara. I¡¯d like to take this request.¡± Myura handed the paper over. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll note it down for you. Good luck.¡± Fara replied. ¡°Thanks. My lady, we can leave now if you¡¯re ready.¡± Myura said. I ignored Fara¡¯s widening eyes. ¡°Yes, let¡¯s get going. Bye Fara.¡± Once we were out of the guild I decided to ask about the request. ¡°Myura, what did you choose to hunt?¡± ¡°My lady, there are reports of a small group of Spike Apes that have moved into the woods to the east. It will likely take some travel to get there but it should be possible to get back to town around late afternoon or early evening. Is that alright with my lady?¡± Myura inquired. ¡°That¡¯s fine. I have set aside the entire day for this if necessary.¡± I stated. ¡°I would also like to replenish my supplies. It¡¯s been awhile since I left the town so I need to buy ingredients and drinks for your lunch.¡± Myura said. ¡°Once again, that¡¯s alright. Also, It¡¯s going to be our lunch, not just mine. Be sure to get enough for yourself as well.¡± I ordered. ¡°Yes, my lady.¡± Myura smiled and said. After that I just followed Myura around as she shopped. I tried to give her money, but she insisted that she would use her own today. While I listened to her bargaining and the prices she was paying, I came to the conclusion that the money I had given her yesterday was likely not enough for what she came back with. She had probably used her own money yesterday as well to cover the difference. Once the shopping was done, Myura spoke to me, ¡°My lady, shall we rent a horse for traveling to the location?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think we need to. Would the horse even be able to travel into the woods?¡± I asked.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Myura had a slight grimace. ¡°Likely not, my lady.¡± ¡°Then let us go on foot. I am used to traveling like so.¡± I said. ¡°As you say, my lady.¡± Myura nodded. Afterwards, we met no problems leaving town through the eastern gate and Myura and I walked along the road for a while. I decided to open up some conversation to break the monotony. Plus I noticed that Myura was feeling very tense so I thought it help her loosen up a little. I¡¯m not sure if it was just the fact that this was her first time fighting in a while or because she was with me, but I hoped some conversation would help. ¡°Myura, what are Spike Apes?¡± ¡°My lady has never heard of them before?¡± I shook my head in response. ¡°They are strong beasts around level 60. They also breed and multiply relatively quickly so it¡¯s important to wipe them out as soon as possible when they are sighted.¡± ¡°Level 60? That¡¯s quite a bit higher than the rest of the monsters in this area.¡± I replied. ¡°Yes, their habitat is quite far to the north. Occasionally a male and a few females will break off from that area and move to a new area to inhabit. This group was sighted only a few days ago, but they must have traveled a long ways to get to here. I¡¯m astonished they weren¡¯t seen and hunted sooner.¡± Myura explained. ¡°I see. Will you be alright fighting a group like that? You have yet to actually tell me your levels.¡± I said. ¡°Oh, that is true. I apologize my lady if I worried you unduly. I am a level 49 Sorceress and a level 43 Warrior. I have hunted a similar group of these before so there won¡¯t be any issues.¡± Myura stated. ¡°I have also yet to show you my weapon which was a grave mistake on my part. If we had been attacked while on the road I might not have been able to adequately protect you.¡± Saying so she opened the pouch on her right side and pulled out what was to my great surprise, a spear. I had been expecting a staff or maybe a sword or something like that. The spear was only about 1.5m long so it wasn¡¯t that large. Actually, there wasn¡¯t that much that stood out about the spear. It was just a wooden spear with a small metal point at the back end, and of course the larger spear head at the other end. The only thing that seemed clearly out of place was that, right below the spear head in the wood was what appeared to be an orb. Below that orb was a slightly smaller orb and then below that one was a much smaller orb. Does she use the spear itself as a magic focus? ¡°That¡¯s an interesting choice of weapon. Can you use magic with it?¡± I inquired. ¡°Yes, but it¡¯s not as effective as using a staff. My fighting style is a bit odd my lady.¡± Myura said embarrassedly. ¡°I¡¯m looking forward to seeing it then!¡± I exclaimed. Ahh, that might have been a mistake. I just made Myura even more tense. ¡°I will definitely meet my lady¡¯s expectations!¡± Myura stated. The rest of the journey I managed to make her relax a bit by letting her play with Coa. After about an hour or two, we entered the woods and started making our way deeper. We were attacked a few times by monsters, but Myura easily finished them off with simply a thrust of her spear so they weren¡¯t really a good judge of her skill. ¡°My lady, we¡¯re close to where the Spike Apes were seen. Please be careful from here on. I will definitely protect you though, so do not worry.¡± Myura said. ¡°Myura, please focus on yourself. I will make sure to not get involved in the fight, so put all your concentration on that.¡± I ordered. Myura nodded unhappily. She¡¯ll probably disobey that order in an instant if one of the the things goes for me. It was another half an hour before we found one our targets. My first thought upon seeing it, was that their name was apt. It looked like a gorilla that had small spikes at its knuckles along with a mane of spikes around it¡¯s head. It¡¯s small tail was also covered with spikes. Wait, aren¡¯t apes not supposed to have tails? My errant thought was interrupted by a roar from the monster, followed by it rushing forward at us. Myura met it¡¯s charge with one of her own and crashed into it while thrusting the spear in one hand. The thrust caught the monster in the chest. The monster tried to punch out with its fist, but Myura met it¡¯s punch with the back of her left gauntlet. Myura withdrew her spear and as soon as she did, a spike of ice shot into the wound she had just left. The monster roared again and tried to grapple Myura, but again she met the attack head on by slashing with the spear and blocking with the gauntlet. Unlike my own fighting style that prioritized dodging, it didn¡¯t look like she would bother doing so. She exchanged blows with the monster while steadily wounding it with slashes and thrusts as the openings presented themselves. Occasionally a blast of some magic would also land on the monster, usually following an attack Myura had just done. She was using magic with a lot of precision rather than power. Which made sense really given her fighting style. If she went with some powerful fireball or something with how close she was, she¡¯d just end up wounding herself. What surprised me the most was how smoothly she was moving and exchanging blows with the monster without taking any damage herself. As someone with most of their levels as a Sorceress, I would expect her to be less physically fit. If I had to judge by my own standards, I¡¯d compare her to a player that had a Physique value of about 150 to 200, which was ridiculous. If she had all those levels in a physical fighting class it might be possible, but split with something like a magic class? After a few furious minutes of fighting the monster was dead and Myura was breathing heavily. ¡°I¡¯m quite impressed Myura. Are you okay? Did you overexert yourself?¡± Based on what Myura said earlier, there should still be another two or three of them to fight. Plus with how loud this one was, I¡¯m sure the others are going to be coming soon. ¡°I¡¯m¡­ alright¡­ just¡­ a bit¡­ out of... practice.¡± Her words were drawn out due to her taking breaths. ¡°This one was only one of the females. The male will be larger and more vicious, especially now that one of its mates was killed.¡± A loud screech followed by a roar was heard in the distance. ¡°Do you require assistance for the others Myura?¡± I asked. ¡°No, my lady. I am ready for them now.¡± Myura answered. She readied her spear and took a stance. The first to come out was one that was similar in appearance to the one that Myura had already killed. It was very slightly smaller, but that didn¡¯t make much difference since it was still basically the size of a gorilla. Following behind it though, was a much larger one. Probably a good half meter or more taller than it. Unlike the females it didn¡¯t just have spikes but it also had long claws as well as two large spikes jutting out of its shoulders and elbows. It finished off the look with large horns that came up out of its head. It gave out a ferocious roar when it saw the corpse of the female and rushed at Myura. Myura met it calmly like she had the female. She took its charge head on and extended her spear as far away from her as it would go and then exploded a fireball right at the tip. The beast barreled right through the flame, and Myura was forced to guard against a punch that came her way. She stumbled backwards from the force but quickly steadied herself and blocked the next blow that immediately followed without flinching. The problem was that the other female wasn¡¯t going to wait around doing nothing. It came at Myura from her side and she was forced to step back to give herself more room. As she stepped back, she tapped the bottom of the spear against the ground and the earth erupted where she had just been standing. It threw the female up into the air and it came crashing back down into the earth with a cry. The female was struggling to get back to its feet, but the male paid it little mind other than to roar loudly and continue its barrage of blows against Myura. She was on the defensive. The beast wasn¡¯t giving her any time with which to counter. At least while that was how it appeared to be at first glance, Myura was actually leading it around. Where was she leading it to though? I didn¡¯t see anything out of the ordinary for her to take advantage of in that direction. It¡¯s just the same trees that are all around us. About all she was doing was leading it further away from me. Oh, was she going to do something big and flashy and doesn¡¯t want me to get caught up in it? My guess turned out to be right on the nose. After she had gotten to about thirty meters away I felt a large rush of magic suddenly converge on her. For the first time in the fight, she dodged a blow by falling backwards to the ground while simultaneously thrusting her spear upwards. The spear went into the monster¡¯s upper chest and then there was an explosion of ice. The ice shot up into the monster like a giant icicle piercing through its body. It struggled to escape but the ice was already lifting it off the ground while digging deeper through its body. The monster started slamming its fists at the ice and I could see cracks start to form. It was then that the ice exploded sending shards flying upwards into the beast while dropping it the ground. Many shards missed though and went past it up into the air before falling back to the ground. I looked at Myura but she had covered herself with a layer of earth and the shards could only impact it harmlessly. The beast was covered in wounds, not to mention the large hole in its chest and it finally collapsed dead. Myura quickly rolled out of her makeshift shelter and went toward the still unsteady female and finished it off with some spells without getting close. Afterwards she fell down out of exhaustion. I walked over to her and like earlier it seemed like she had greatly overexerted herself. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing heavily. What I could see of her body showed she was covered in sweat. Also, I hadn¡¯t noticed it when she was fighting, but she was now holding her left arm in an odd way. It wouldn¡¯t surprise me if she had injured it, taking all those punches. ¡°Myura are you alright?¡± I asked. If it was just exhaustion then there was nothing I could do other than getting her some water. She opened her eyes to look at me. ¡°I¡¯ll¡­ be¡­ okay¡­ my lady. That¡­ attack¡­ takes¡­ a lot¡­ out¡­ of¡­ me.¡± ¡°You performed excellently! Rest for now.¡± I said. Her eyes closed again and a small smile could be seen on her face. Her chest was heaving with her attempts to draw in air. She had done much better than I had expected her to. Once she was recovered, I needed to ask her about how she was fighting so proficiently. It was then that there was another roar coming from the woods. I hadn¡¯t noticed it because I had been so focused on Myura¡¯s fight but another two Spike Apes came out of the trees, one male and one female. Myura¡¯s eyes had opened as soon as she heard the roar. She was desperately trying to lift herself back to her feet. ¡°My... lady¡­ please¡­ run¡­ I¡¯ll¡­ hold¡­ them¡­ back.¡± Of course, I didn¡¯t listen to her. I stepped between Myura and the apes. I had my back turned to the apes. ¡°Myura, lie down and don¡¯t move. I¡¯m not going to let you do something silly like sacrificing yourself for my sake. I don¡¯t like those kind of things at all.¡± ¡°But¡­ my¡­ lady¡­¡± Myura gasped out. ¡°My¡­ lady¡­ watch¡­ out!¡± I heard the small sound of my shield taking a hit. I turned to look and the male had its fist near my body. It was looking at me confused. I kicked Myura¡¯s spear up into my hand from the ground. ¡°Myura, I¡¯ll be borrowing this for a short while.¡± I turned around and stabbed it straight into the monster¡¯s head, killing it instantly. Afterwards I kicked the beast, throwing it off the spear and back into a tree. The female tried to follow up on the attack of the male, but it was much too slow, and I killed it with another thrust. ¡°See, Myura? Nothing to be concerned about.¡± I turned back towards her. She was holding herself barely off the ground with her elbows and staring at me with an expression dyed with despair. Chapter 31 Chapter 31 ¡°Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?¡± Myura repeated numbly before collapsing into a coughing fit. ¡°Myura?¡± I was confused. I know it was probably a bit ill advised to so effortlessly kill the monsters, but her despairing face seemed out of place. I bent down to check on her. I was even more confused when she shook off my hand when I tried to help her. ¡°Don¡¯t touch me!¡± Myura spat out. ¡°You¡¯re just like all those other nobles! Was it an amusing game, to just string me along for your amusement and then watch me fail? Why was I so stupid to hope for something better? Of course I¡¯m not going to get it. I don¡¯t deserve it anymore.¡± I was really, really confused now. I didn¡¯t think I had strung her along at all, other than hiding not being a noble, but that didn¡¯t seem to be the main reason Myura was upset. I could only assume that her experiences were coloring her comprehension. She saw me kill the monsters, thus she thinks that I only brought her out here to watch her fail at what she thinks was me testing her. Well, I was testing her but I wasn¡¯t doing it to see her fail. I don¡¯t know if I can get through to this currently angry Myura, but I have to try. ¡°Myura. Please listen to me. I understand that you think I¡¯ve misled you and that I was just toying with you, but that¡¯s not true.¡± I pleaded. ¡°I don¡¯t care about your excuses! Leave me alone! What else do you want to do to me or take from me? You already destroyed my last hope!¡± Myura replied angrily. I think, I might have underestimated just how bad her experiences with nobles have been. ¡°Myura, please, I¡¯m begging you to just listen to me. I was going to tell you this today anyway. I¡¯m not a noble or anything special. I¡¯m just a common person.¡± Myura finally opened her eyes to look at me. ¡°But, but, you, but, I don¡¯t understand!¡± She managed to get out. ¡°Yes, I know. It might be a bit hard for you to comprehend right now, since you¡¯re upset. I promise you that I¡¯m not a noble and that I wasn¡¯t trying to string you along or make fun of you or anything like that. All this was just for me to see how strong you were, because I didn¡¯t want to put you in danger by taking you with me.¡± I explained. ¡°But, but, you were so perfect and graceful and kind and elegant and thoughtful-¡± I interrupted her. ¡°Yes, that was just an act. I¡¯m sorry. I never intended to cause this big of a misunderstanding and all this distress for you.¡± ¡°Why though?¡± Myura asked desperately. ¡°For stupid reasons, like most things.¡± I shrugged. ¡°I didn¡¯t like the way that old woman in the inn was treating us when we arrived, so I decided to make her think she had possibly offended someone that could cause her and the inn serious problems, thus a noble act was born. I never expected that my act would create so much loyalty in one of the servants that they would want to serve me. It was entirely unintentional and again you have my deepest apologies.¡± Myura closed her eyes again and let out a deep sigh. ¡°I understand, but that just means that I was still wrong to get my hopes up. I thought I had finally found someone worthy to serve, but in the end I was just taken in by an act. Plus the person I had wanted to serve doesn¡¯t even need me anyway. She¡¯s entirely self-sufficient and is even stronger than me so she doesn¡¯t even need my fighting ability!¡± She opened her eyes again and glared at me. ¡°Honestly! How are you even that strong at that age!? I¡¯ve never heard of anyone one shotting monsters that high in level before! Maybe if you had a really strong weapon or used some crazy magic, but my spear isn¡¯t anything special beyond the fact that it can be used as a magic focus and I know from the conversation yesterday that you don¡¯t even have magic yet!¡± ¡°I¡¯m probably older than you think based on my looks for one thing. I¡¯m actually 63 years old. Oh, actually I think I turn 64 soon? I don¡¯t really keep track of it.¡± I stated. I have no idea when my birthday would come by this world¡¯s reckoning. ¡°Huh? You¡¯re almost twice my age but you look younger? I mean I knew you had elf in you but demons age quicker than elves, even if we do stay in our physical prime longer, so I assumed you had to be about my age.¡± Myura replied, puzzled. I can¡¯t really answer the other questions so let¡¯s move on. ¡°Anyway Myura, I¡¯ll be honest with you. I never wanted a servant. I still don¡¯t want one either. I don¡¯t mind having a companion though, if you want that position. Of course, I understand if you don¡¯t want that since you said you wanted to serve a noble in remembrance of your mother and your childhood.¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I don¡¯t think I can do or accept that. I don¡¯t really care that you¡¯re not a noble anymore. At this point maybe I should just accept that I¡¯ll never find another noble as good as the one my mother served. Actually, in retrospect, working in that inn was likely a mistake if I was looking for a good noble.¡± Myura said with the best imitation of a shrug she could do lying down. ¡°I see. Then if that¡¯s what you want then I¡¯m not going to force you to come with me.¡± I answered. ¡°Didn¡¯t I just say I don¡¯t care that you¡¯re not a noble?¡± Myura laughed. ¡°What I meant is that I can¡¯t accept being your companion if I¡¯m just going to hold you back. It¡¯s very clear that I would just be a burden if I went with you!¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t think of y-¡± I tried to placate her. ¡°I would think of myself that way and that¡¯s what matters. I don¡¯t want to be a weight around your neck. So that¡¯s why effective immediately I quit as your servant!¡± Myura stated. ¡°Do you need to go that far? I¡¯ll still be in town until tomorrow. We can still spend that time together.¡± I replied. ¡°Nope, that would just be a waste of time for both of us. You never actually needed me and the inn will just have someone else bring your meals. The only reason I was even assigned as your personal servant was because I begged for it myself.¡± Myura said. ¡°Then what are you going to do? Based on what you said earlier, it doesn¡¯t sound like you intend to look for a noble at the inn anymore.¡± I asked. ¡°I¡¯m going to become an adventurer again so I can get stronger. I¡¯ll get stronger and stronger so I won¡¯t be a burden to be by your side. At that time, I¡¯ll ask you to accept me as your companion! This is my solemn oath to you.¡± I guess I don¡¯t have to make the suggestion to her myself, and judging by the look in her eyes and her thoughts, she¡¯s decided on this and there¡¯s no way I¡¯ll talk her out of it. There¡¯s only one thing I can say in response to her. ¡°Then I¡¯ll accept that oath. Please get stronger and become my companion. I¡¯ll be waiting for you. Ahh, but don¡¯t risk yourself unnecessarily trying to get stronger alright? You can¡¯t become my companion if you get yourself killed after all.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry. Plus I¡¯m already on the path to getting stronger now. Your acceptance of my oath just unlocked the Knight Class for me.¡± Myura explained. ¡°To be honest, I had completely forgotten I would qualify for that once I gave an oath of loyalty to someone or something I recognize as greater than myself, since I already had the necessary Warrior levels.¡± ¡°Does an oath to become a companion really count as an oath of loyalty? I mean you aren¡¯t going to be my servant or follower.¡± I asked. ¡°Apparently it was good enough for the Divine Ones, so I guess so! So I¡¯ll start leveling Knight while also working on my Sorcerer levels. I¡¯ll probably want to get an actual shield too. I don¡¯t think my gauntlet will be enough anymore. I also think I might have broken my arm taking that male¡¯s attacks. Good thing I¡¯ve saved most of my wages I¡¯ve made working at the inn for the last six years!¡± Myura exclaimed. ¡°Try Huvreck¡¯s shop. He seems to make good quality stuff. I got my bow from him and he¡¯s making my staff. He could probably improve your spear as well.¡± I said. ¡°Also, how long are you going to need to recover for? You haven¡¯t really moved much since you collapsed.¡± ¡°I¡¯m actually suffering the backlash of using body enhancement magic.¡± Myura explained with a rueful smile. ¡°Body enhancement magic? Based on the name I assume it increases your physical capabilities? Is that how you were moving so well and defending against that monster¡¯s vicious attacks?¡± I asked. ¡°Yeah, that was why. The flaw with the magic is that it really causes an unreasonably severe strain on the body. There was someone once that overused it and their body basically withered away and they died due to it drawing all the extra strength out of their body. First it drains your mana then it starts draining your health and sapping your stamina. I wouldn¡¯t be like this if I hadn¡¯t used that ice explosion on top of the effect. I should have been more careful anyway, but I never expected there would be two males!¡± Myura replied. ¡°That doesn¡¯t answer the most important question though. How long will you need to recover?¡± I asked again, this time with a glare to go with it.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Maybe a while? Sorry, I said earlier I was out of practice. I haven¡¯t used the magic in a while so I might have overdone it just a tad.¡± Myura replied. ¡°I see. Excuse me a moment.¡± I took off my glove and then turned off my shield with a casual motion. I placed my now bare hand on the bare skin at her neck. Hopefully I could just pass this off as checking her heart beat. With this close contact I sent my psi through her body. With Empath still set, I could get a very precise image of her body¡¯s physical condition. If I want to, I can also increase her healing rate if I notice any serious problems. Let¡¯s see, so what do we have in here. Yep, her left arm is broken in a few spots. Near the elbow and also at her wrist and middle of her forearm. That monster really did a number on her. I¡¯ll nudge them to heal a little bit faster. If I increase the healing rate too much, it will be noticeable though. Now is there anything else wrong? Hmm, she seems to have small tears all over her body in her muscles. Was that caused by the body enhancement magic? She only used it for maybe 30 minutes at most! It already caused this much damage to her body in that little time? What a horrible magic! The broken bones are bad enough but she¡¯ll be weeks recovering from just this muscle damage. I can probably fix this at least and it won¡¯t be apparent. I focused my psi even more and sent a larger surge through her body. I had to be careful about this because if I let my control slip for even a moment, Myura might become aware of this foreign power sweeping through her body even with her complete lack of resistance to psi. I¡¯ll just mend most of these tears so they¡¯ll heal in a day or two rather than weeks. I finally finished. Myura was giving me an odd glance but I guess it does seem weird when I realize I had my hand on her neck for a few minutes. That¡¯s way longer than someone would need to just check her pulse. Time for obfuscation! ¡°Your heartbeat seems fine! Anyway, shall I carry you back to town. Or possibly, should we make lunch or something? And another thing, do we need to remove anything from these monsters to prove we completed the request?¡± I gestured at the monster carcasses around us. ¡°I¡¯d rather not be carried back to town if we can help it. I can¡¯t make lunch in my condition though. As for the monsters, Spike Apes have a larger spike in the mane under their head that serves as proof of a kill.¡± Myura said. ¡°I can handle the cooking but you¡¯ll have to pull out the ingredients. You might have to explain what some of the ingredients are too though. Also excuse me a moment.¡± I didn¡¯t want to move her unduly, but I couldn¡¯t just leave her lying here and I know her condition wasn¡¯t bad enough to stop me from picking her up and putting her in a sitting position. She was pretty embarrassed being scooped up in my arms, but it didn¡¯t last that long and I got her sitting up against a tree. Maybe I should have pulled out a blanket to have her sit on rather than the ground? ¡°Alright, can you move ok or do you need me to help you?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not a total invalid! I can at least do this much!¡± Myura complained. She used her good right arm and started pulling items out of her pouch. I left her to it and drew my knife and walked over to the closest ape. I¡¯m looking for a large spike under their head. I felt around the circle of spikes and eventually found one that clearly stood out compared to the others. Maybe a bit under twice as big, it was kind of hidden in the fur. It wasn¡¯t that hard to remove it and it only took me maybe ten minutes to collect all five from the five apes. Afterwards, I tossed all the carcasses off to the side and away from us. Myura¡¯s voice called out to me, ¡°Seri, I finished getting everything ready.¡± I looked at her in surprise. Now that I think about it, she had stopped calling me ¡®my lady¡¯ as soon as I told her I wasn¡¯t a noble and she¡¯s been acting really casual this whole time. Myura seemed to have gotten embarrassed again due to my staring and she started fidgeting. ¡°Well, I¡¯m not your servant anymore, you know, and we¡¯re friends right, so Seri, it¡¯s fine to call you that right?¡± I came out of my shock. ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s fine. We¡¯re definitely friends so please call me Seri. I¡¯m already calling you Myura so I¡¯ll just stick to that.¡± Myura smiled. ¡°I¡¯m glad!¡± I must have given her another odd look because she started laughing joyfully. ¡°It¡¯s been a long time since I had someone to call a friend! I don¡¯t know why but I feel so happy right now! I haven¡¯t felt like this in years.¡± ¡°Alright then Miss Happy. I¡¯m going to make lunch for us so you just continue being a happy person and sit there quietly.¡± I ordered. ¡°Yes ma''am!¡± Myura saluted me playfully with a wide grin. Myura had spread the ingredients and cooking goods out on a cloth. It¡¯s a good thing I usually had to cook for myself as Aaron and occasionally as Seri or I might be facing a grueling challenge right now. Examining these ingredients though, what is this weird fish that has tentacles instead of fins? Or this, wait, is this an insect? It looks like a large beetle that is the size of a mouse. Aaron and Seri both agree that insects are gross and definitely not fit for eating. Wait, if Myura bought this as a cooking ingredient, does this mean I¡¯ve already eaten these before? I feel like I¡¯m going to be sick just thinking that. Relax Seri, don¡¯t throw up. Stay calm. I absolutely do not see that. What insect? There was no insect there. I turned my focus to the next ingredient. It¡¯s a glowing potato. A glowing potato. A potato and it¡¯s glowing. Okay, slight correction. This was definitely going to be a formidable challenge! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It was a difficult trial but I succeeded in making something edible. In the end, I had to rely on Myura¡¯s expert advice to manage these bizarre ingredients. As for the ingredient that doesn¡¯t exist. Myura ate it. Apparently, it¡¯s something she likes to eat herself. I made sure I didn¡¯t watch as she consumed it. It was bad enough just having to cook it under her instruction. At least I¡¯ve been reassured that it¡¯s not something that was in any of the food I¡¯ve eaten from the inn. Myura still tried to make me try a bite though. She said it has a very sweet and nutty taste. Thankfully I managed to ward her off. I kept my lunch to the normal looking foods that I could recognize or looked similar to things I¡¯ve eaten before. I fed the weird things to Coa who gladly ate them just like anything else she¡¯s given. At least I don¡¯t have to worry about her being a picky eater like me. Much to Myura¡¯s continuing embarrassment, she had to rely on me to get us back to town. Her muscles were way too stiff to make walking easy so she had to lean on me the whole way back. She vehemently refused my offer to just carry her. Eventually we made it back to the guild. The guild master was at the counter and gave me a dirty look when she saw me walk in, which changed to surprise as she saw Myura leaning on my shoulder next to me. We got to the counter and Myura took out the five spikes and the request paper. ¡°We completed the Spike Apes commission.¡± The guild master took them. ¡°Five of them? That¡¯s more than the norm. If that¡¯s all, then good work. Here¡¯s the payment for the request.¡± She passed some silver coins across the table. Looks like the apes were worth six silver. So a bit more than the stone from the dungeon boss would be worth? Myura took the coins and then held her hand out to me. I stopped her and pushed her hand back. ¡°Myura, you keep it. You¡¯re going to need the money more than me, I think.¡± ¡°But I wouldn¡¯t have completed the request without you! You should have it.¡± Myura replied thrusting her hand back toward me. ¡°No, I want you to keep it. I insist.¡± I answered back, again pushing her hand away. Before Myura could speak up, the guild master interrupted. ¡°If you¡¯re going to do this back and forth, do it elsewhere.¡± Oh right. We¡¯re still in the guild. I apologized to the adventurer that had been waiting behind us with a nod and we made our way out of the guild. ¡°Myura, should we go back to the inn? You probably need to get your stuff and tell them you¡¯re quitting right?¡± I asked. ¡°That¡¯s true. When we get there, we¡¯ll go in through the back and sneak into the servant quarters. No one should be in there at this time anyway, so no one will notice.¡± Myura answered. Which is exactly what we did. Honestly, the servant quarters were surprisingly nice and comfortable, if somewhat barebones. I¡¯d probably put them on the level of a good priced normal hotel room. Much better than I expected them to be anyway. ¡°We should probably separate here.¡± Myura said sadly once we were back outside. ¡°I¡¯ll come back later and give the boss the news. I¡¯ll do it before dinner time though, so someone will know to bring you a meal.¡± That¡¯s good, I wouldn¡¯t want to sit around waiting in my room for dinner to arrive. I definitely want to avoid having to use the dining room again too. ¡°Are you sure you¡¯ll be fine going to rent a room at an inn by yourself?¡± ¡°Yeah, I don¡¯t feel quite as stiff as I did earlier. My arm still feels terrible but I can go get that looked at at the church now.¡± As if to show she was fine she stretched her body grandly, though I caught the grimace as she did so. Oh right, healing magic exists. I had forgotten about that. I guess Myura won¡¯t be out of commission as long as I was thinking. ¡°Then I guess this is goodbye huh?¡± I feel a lot more sentimental than I did for Seran¡¯s goodbye. ¡°It¡¯s not a goodbye right? It¡¯s a ¡®I¡¯ll see you later¡¯ Seri!¡± Myura replied with a smile. ¡°You¡¯re right. What was I thinking? See you later Myura. Stay well!¡± Before she could stop me. I stepped in and hugged her. She awkwardly returned the hug with her good arm. We separated and I watched as she stumbled her way down the street. She turned back to look at me and then gave me a wave. Coa stretched up and chirped at me. ¡°Don¡¯t worry Coa. We¡¯ll see her again.¡± I said. Ahhhhhh. I forgot to ask her where she¡¯ll be going to get stronger. This is really awkward. Do I chase after her after that sentimental goodbye? How could I do that!? I feel mortified just thinking about it. I guess I¡¯ll leave a letter at the adventurer¡¯s guild for her? I¡¯ll probably visit that one dungeon in the capital so I¡¯ll be checking the guild there too. I can mention in the letter to send the response there. That should work out. Wait, I can¡¯t read or write the language can I? So instead of a letter, I¡¯ll just let the guild pass a message on to her! I was satisfied with my hastily thought up plan so I went inside the inn and went to go to my room but the old hag at the desk called out to me. ¡°My lady, a note was delivered for you while you were out. It was delivered by the one of the lord¡¯s messengers.¡± She held out a small sealed envelope. I thanked her, took it and then went up to my room. A letter from the lord? That could be a problem. I opened the envelope and slipped out the note. I wish Myura was here right now to read this. ¡°Lynn, can you understand this?¡± I whispered. ¡°Sorry, Mistress. It seems to be using overly complicated words. What I¡¯m getting from it, is something about eating and the next day. There seems to be a lot of flowery, flattery to go with it but I believe it¡¯s an invitation to dine with him tomorrow.¡± Lynn answered. ¡°I see.¡± I replied before flopping on the couch. I tossed the letter off to the side. ¡°Mistress, what are you going to do about it?¡± Lynn inquired. ¡°Nothing. I¡¯ll be leaving town as early as I can tomorrow. With the speed I intend to travel at, there¡¯s no way any pursuers or anyone will be able to keep up with me. Plus, the lord will probably assume I¡¯m going to travel by ship anyway so he¡¯ll be watching there, not the town gates. Hopefully, he won¡¯t realize I left town entirely until I don¡¯t appear for the dinner. Of course, this means he¡¯ll likely send a letter about me to people in the capital, if he hasn¡¯t already. My destination being there was probably already learned from Seran so there¡¯s nothing I can do about that and it¡¯s pointless to worry about it.¡± ¡°I think Mistress is being too lax about this issue!¡± Lynn scolded. ¡°Do you have a better idea then?¡± I asked. ¡°No...¡± Lynn answered reluctantly. ¡°Then I¡¯ll be going with my plan.¡± I stated bluntly. Chapter 32 Chapter 32 I checked out of the inn. When I think of the fact that I might possibly be looking at days of travel again without being able to enjoy a comfy bed, not to mention the bath, I was greatly tempted to go back inside, rent another room and stay here even longer. I can¡¯t do that though, I have important goals after all. Yes, that¡¯s right, important goals! So come on Seri, drag yourself away from the inn. You can¡¯t just stand here all day looking at it. Finally turning my back, I decided to head to Huvreck¡¯s shop first, since it was closer than the guild or Fio¡¯s shop. I hoped my staff would be done. I caught a presence observing me, but the presence didn¡¯t seem to stand out all that much compared to others in the last few days, so I didn¡¯t recognize it. The presence went out of range as I made my way to Huvreck¡¯s, so at least it meant I¡¯m not being followed. Upon arriving, I went into the usual empty store and then to the back. Huvreck was sleeping on a small cot in the corner of the workshop. I wanted to wander around and examine some of the goods he has stored away, but I don¡¯t really have the time to do that if I want to get on the road while it¡¯s still morning. I had already wasted a lot of time taking a bath after waking up. ¡°Huvreck, I¡¯m here to pick up my staff!¡± I shouted. Huvreck bolted up right after hearing me, rolled and fell off his cot hitting the ground head first. ¡°For Spirits¡¯ sake lass! Will ya stop doing things like that?¡± He stood up rubbing his head. ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t want to wait for you to wake up.¡± I replied. ¡°I could guess.¡± He picked up a thin black shape off the table next to him and tossed it at me. I caught it, a little annoyed that he threw it at me so easily.¡°There ya go. I made it the best I could. It¡¯s a damn good staff!¡± I decided to take the time to examine it. It¡¯s not really staff length anymore. More like a cane or walking stick. It was still the same ebony color. There¡¯s some intricate carvings along the bottom, and then the top of the staff was carved to look like a tiger¡¯s head with an orb in its mouth between the two large fangs. I noticed that there were two smaller orbs in the eyes as well. I was pretty impressed with it. ¡°It looks good. Thanks Huvreck.¡± ¡°Not a problem, lass. There¡¯s a standard durability enchant on it. It should be able to block a steel sword, unless the person swinging it is powerful. Just don¡¯t let the orbs get hit. It will lose it¡¯s use as a magic focus if those get damaged.¡± Huvreck explained. ¡°No problem. I have no plans to use it like a melee weapon. That would be a waste. Anyway, I have other errands to run so I¡¯ll be going.¡± I turned to leave before remembering Myura. ¡°Actually, Huvreck, I have a friend who I recommended to come here to get a shield. Make sure to treat her well okay?¡± ¡°A shield eh? I¡¯m not really one for making defensive equipment like shields or armor, lass. I do have some fine shields here, somewhere.¡± He glanced around the cluttered workshop. ¡°No problem. Just make sure to help her out as best you can. She¡¯s a Demon girl that looks about my age but a bit older.¡± I said. ¡°I swear on my hopes to die drunk, with a wench in one hand and a full tankard in the other to help your friend when she comes by.¡± Huvreck stated. ¡°That oath is a bit¡­¡± I complained. ¡°What? Ya never heard the most sacred Dwarf oath before?¡± Huvreck asked, surprise evident on his face. ¡°No, I most definitely have never heard that oath before. Oh well, I¡¯ll trust you on that. Now I really need to hurry up and go.¡± I said. Afterwards, I left his shop and went to the guild. Neither Fara or the guild master was there this morning, so it didn¡¯t take me long to leave a message for Myura. The guy at the counter wrote down the message and promised to pass it on her whenever she came in. I thanked him and left. Just one more errand left. Fio¡¯s shop was busy with a few customers, which as always was a large difference when compared to Huvreck¡¯s wreck of a shop. She saw me come in and waved me over. I was surprised to see Nirvi laying sprawled out on the counter. Seeing my glance, Fio laughed. ¡°She didn¡¯t want to lay in her basket today and wanted to stay with me, so here she is! Not that I mind. Having her here to cuddle will make the day easier. I assume you¡¯re here to pick up your potions. I¡¯ve got them right here for you.¡± She pulled out small wooden box and then opened it showing me the inside. Inside, there were 12 vials carefully stored and sealed. ¡°Drink one a day starting with the lighter ones before moving progressively to the darker ones. The best time to take them would be right before you go to sleep.¡± She sealed the box back and handed it to me. ¡°I understand. By the way, I had a question. Do you know the route to get to the capital if I¡¯m not going by ship?¡± I asked. ¡°Oh! You¡¯re heading to the capital? I guess it¡¯s the best time to visit, what with the festivities starting soon. Why not by boat? It¡¯s much faster.¡± ¡°Water travel and I don¡¯t really get along. More importantly, what festivities?¡± I inquired. ¡°You didn¡¯t know?¡± I shook my head. ¡°The anniversary for the empire¡¯s founding is coming up in about a week. Not to mention Spirits¡¯ Day which occurs right after it, so the festivities will last about a month. The capital is going to be flooded with people from all over the empire! There will tournaments in the colosseum, plays in the theaters, and the imperial library will be open to everyone! it will be the perfect time to visit.¡± The imperial library! That sounds great. Not sure about the rest of the festivities though. It sounds like the capital was going to be an annoying place to be. ¡°Is the library not usually open to everyone?¡± ¡°Oh no, it is, but you have to submit a request for access and that can sometimes take a while to work its way through. The founding emperor was very insistent that knowledge be accessible to everyone as much as possible! He even established academies around the empire that anyone could attend.¡± Fio boasted. The founding emperor sounds like a decent sort. ¡°That sounds nice. The founder sounds like he was a great man.¡± ¡°Yep, he was definitely a great individual! He even set in place that all races would be welcome here. He stated that all beings were created equal and that all of us had the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness-¡± Wait, what did she just say? ¡°-and that it was wrong to hate or fear each other just because we look different to each other. As expected of a Spirit! Truly a wise and noble being!¡± I definitely don¡¯t think it was a coincidence that those words were used. ¡°Fio, out of curiosity how long ago was the founding of the empire?¡± I asked. ¡°It was 510 years ago! The descendants of the founder still rule and honor him by keeping to the laws that he set down.¡± Fio answered. ¡°I see.¡± 510 years ago. It was 2092 for me back on Earth which means 510 years would be way before the Declaration of Independence was even thought up. I think that would be even before the first colony in the United States was even established? Or was it? I was never really interested in history, but at least I¡¯m sure it would definitely be way before the declaration was put together! Was it really a coincidence after all? Or does this mean there¡¯s some weird time travel stuff going on? Actually, was time travel even that crazy when I think of everything I¡¯ve gone through? I believe it¡¯s become much more vital that I research the Spirits in that library. ¡°I still need those directions, too.¡±This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. ¡°Oh yeah, we got off track there didn¡¯t we? Just follow the east road from this town and you¡¯ll reach the city of Knightvalley. From there you go south and you¡¯ll arrive at the capital. The pride and jewel of the Tevalon Empire, the grand metropolis Tevalon¡¯s Rest.¡± Fio sighed. ¡°I¡¯m so jealous! You¡¯ll get to be in the capital for all the fun and I¡¯ll be stuck here running my shop as usual! Oh well, it was my choice to open a shop here rather than stay living with my family in the capital, so i have no right to complain. That¡¯s why Seri, you have to play enough for both of us okay!?¡± I laughed. ¡°Alright. That¡¯s an easy promise for me to keep.¡± Maybe. Probably not. ¡°Good! Also make sure to care for that little cutie there. I don¡¯t want to learn you neglected her, you hear me!?¡± Fio declared. I affected shock. ¡°There¡¯s no way I would neglect Coa! I¡¯m hurt that you would suggest such a thing to me, Fio!¡± She smiled and said. ¡°Bye, Seri. Make sure you come by my shop again next time you¡¯re in town. We¡¯ll have another cuddly pet play date!¡± ¡°Sounds like a plan. Bye, Fio.¡± Coa chirped at me. ¡°Oh, I think Coa wants to say something too.¡± Coa stretched out from my neck and then chirped, trilled and then finished with a warble while looking at Fio. Fio understandably couldn¡¯t control herself after watching such a display. ¡°That was so cute! You adorable little thing!¡± She started petting Coa. After a few minutes of that I had to interrupt her. ¡°Sorry Fio, but I can¡¯t stay and play, and I think you have some customers that we¡¯re keeping waiting.¡± I pointed behind me. At least the customers were looking on with a smile so they must be used to Fio¡¯s behavior. ¡°Oh! I¡¯m so sorry! Seri, absolutely come back and visit sometime!¡± Fio said. ¡°I will. Don¡¯t worry. And when I do I¡¯ll show you my amazingly, and likely weak, magic powers!¡± I laughed. Before we could drag out the goodbyes any longer, I turned and left the store. It¡¯s kind of depressing that I won¡¯t get to see Fio or Myura for possibly quite a long time, but I guess that¡¯s just how it goes. At least, I know where Fio is so I can always see her again when I want to and Myura will join me later on. I really owe Fio for her help though, I wonder if I can find her something good in the capital as a gift? Everything was settled and done now, so I guess it really was time to go. I pulled up my hood to cover my head and started heading to the east gate, the one that Myura and I had used the day before. I caught that one presence that I had noticed earlier again but it ran off almost immediately. I wonder what that was about? I really hope it¡¯s not some watcher from the town¡¯s lord. It didn¡¯t run toward the lord¡¯s manor though, so maybe it¡¯s not. It seemed to run off in the same direction as the gate I was headed towards. I checked through the gate and started walking along the road. I wouldn¡¯t be able to speed up until I was away from people so it was kind of a bother that there were other people traveling today. They were probably heading toward the capital too. Some wagons that looked like they belonged to poor merchants or possibly families judging by their small size were ahead of me. I might have to wait until they stopped for the night to get ahead of them. Such a pain. I also caught trace of that annoying presence again. I think they were traveling with one of the wagons ahead of me. A few hours of walking later and I was getting really tired of being behind these slow wagons. I didn¡¯t think horse drawn wagons would be this slow! They were only traveling at eight to ten kilometers per hour. There wasn¡¯t even the benefit of interesting sights. Just grassy plains and that forest that Myura and I visited yesterday a bit in the distance. I think I¡¯ll just run around and get ahead of them now. I can do that without looking ridiculously superhuman. Plus it will be amusing to see what that presence does if I do so. I¡¯m sure they will react in some way if they think I¡¯m going to get away. I started jogging and going around the closest wagon. The presence was in the second wagon so they¡¯ll probably react soon. Sure enough as I was about to pass the second wagon, I heard a somewhat familiar voice. ¡°You stupid bitch, don¡¯t try to run away!¡± I stopped and turned to look. Oh, it was the scum from a few days ago. I had completely forgotten about him! He jumped out of the back of the wagon he was riding on. ¡°I told you I¡¯d get my revenge on you!¡± Some of the people on the wagons were watching this drama unfold. Damn, I can¡¯t just kill him outright can I? I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll have long to wait until he gets violent which should serve as enough justification and paint him as the aggressor. ¡°You¡¯re alone now? What happened to your friends?¡± I asked. ¡°That bunch of cowards is useless. Too afraid of a little girl. I don¡¯t know what kind of magic you were using last time, you bitch, but I have a protection charm this time so you¡¯re out of luck!¡± He drew his sword and started rushing at me. A few gasps were heard from the wagons. He swung the sword and I dodged to the side. He attempted to follow it up with another attack but he was too late. My dagger had already been thrust into his right side a number of times. For good measure, I reached out with my psi and twisted some of the bones in his legs and arms until they broke. I made especially sure that his arms were unusable. I didn¡¯t want him to be able to drink a healing potion or something of that nature. Unable to stand any longer, he let go of his sword and collapsed to the ground. He struggled to reach for his sword, which was pretty impressive with his broken arms, but I kicked it off the road and away from him. He groaned in pain and frustration as he attempted to find some way to fight back. That was an impossibility, since he could barely move anymore. To make sure he would die quickly I reached inside his body again with my psi and squeezed his heart until it ruptured. I think it¡¯s ridiculous the things I can do when the target has no defenses against psi. Back in game, this would never have worked. Now that the fight was over, I directed my gaze toward the wagons and said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry for this disturbing sight. This man tried to rob and kill me a few days ago. Apparently, he didn¡¯t learn his lesson.¡± A man from the wagon the scum was riding on spoke up. ¡°No, I think I should be apologizing to you. When that man came to us and said he urgently needed a ride to the next city and was willing to pay, I didn¡¯t think this kind of reason was why.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry, there was no harm done. Excuse me a moment.¡± I picked up the man and tossed him off the road too. ¡°No reason for him to bother future travelers.¡± He wouldn¡¯t be living much longer anyway with the damage I had done to him. ¡°Would you like to ride with us? I think it¡¯s least we can do.¡± The man asked. Picking up his thoughts he was thinking if I rode with them, their little caravan would surely be safe. ¡°I¡¯ll have to decline, but thank you for the offer.¡± I bowed my head slightly toward the man before continuing on my way. I needed to get far enough ahead so I would be out of sight and could then speed up. I really hoped I wouldn¡¯t run into too many more travelers along the way. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That¡¯s how the next few days went. Occasionally having to stop and slow down when coming across other people on the road but otherwise peaceful. I didn¡¯t see any bandits and no monsters tried to attack me. It was peaceful, but also boring! At least I had Lynn to keep me company, but we didn''t have much of anything new to talk about so our conversations were casual and about nothing in particular. I also had to make sure that every night I would go off the road far enough that my tent wouldn¡¯t be seen. Which meant that I also had to wake up early to be sure that no early risers would see it either. Taking the potions as directed by Fio, I did notice a slight change in what I had identified as my mana pool, but it was barely noticeable. Well, she did say that these would only speed the process up, not instantly give me mana. I really do hope that I won¡¯t have to wait years on this planet just to get magic. I really, really didn¡¯t want to be here that long. As for Coa, I had decided that for now I would leave her on the Natural growth plan. I didn¡¯t really want to mess with it until I found someone that actually knew more about raising her species. It was around afternoon on the third day after leaving that town that I finally caught sight of the city of Knightvalley that Fio had mentioned. It was a much larger city than I had been expecting. The other thing that surprised me was that the city was relatively clean and that the roads were paved with stone. All in all, it seemed like a much more orderly city than the sort of haphazard towns I had been in so far. There were even what appeared to be streetlights along the main roads! I wonder if they are powered by magic? Probably. Let¡¯s ask around about a good inn and rest until tomorrow. Tomorrow I¡¯ll leave and start on my way to the capital. Chapter 33 Chapter 33 ¡°Mistress!¡± Hearing Lynn¡¯s voice instantly woke me up. I rolled out of bed, picking up my dagger in one smooth motion while reaching with my psi to scan my surroundings for some kind of threat.There didn¡¯t seem to be anything. Coa had been woken up too and squeaked in alarm at the sudden movement. I took a glance at the small inn window and saw it was the crack of dawn. I saw some notification windows in front of me, but I ignored them for the moment. ¡°Lynn, what happened?¡± ¡°There were visitors here not too long ago.¡± Lynn explained. ¡°Visitors?¡± My head was still a bit fuzzy from just being woken up but it only took me a brief moment to realize what she was talking about. ¡°Some more people finally came looking for me?¡± ¡°Yes. Mistress¡¯ wolves followed your orders faithfully and tried to scare them off but once they got near the ship the wolves attacked. I regret to inform Mistress but some of the wolves have died.¡± Lynn answered. ¡°What? Were the enemies that numerous or powerful enough to take on 127 wolves? Not to mention, you had the hover drones deployed of course, right?¡± I asked. ¡°There were eight humans. The wolves attempted to surrounded them and then rush them from all sides, but the humans didn¡¯t let themselves be surrounded easily and instead managed to attack together to escape the ring of foes. They were ultimately unable to do so after I did some pinpoint shots to cripple them.¡± Lynn replied. I finally took the time to look at the windows. There was a lot of smaller windows and one large one. I examined the large one first.
*Some of your Tamed Beasts have died*
-Murzim has died -Mutated Wolf L34 has died -Mutated Wolf L27 has died -Mutated Wolf L32 has died -Mutated Wolf L31 has died -Mutated Wolf L29 has died
Six of them had died for eight humans, even with Lynn giving support. Damn! Damn! Damn! What a horrible waste, yet they had fulfilled the role I had given them to, at any cost, stop intruders from reaching Lullaby. I felt guilty that I don¡¯t even know the ones that died in my service. I vaguely remember what Murzim looked like, but the rest are just nameless ones from the crowd. That just doesn¡¯t seem right. I sighed. There was nothing I could do about it now. I can¡¯t seem to name them through the pet menu, and to be honest I don¡¯t think I could have come up with 127 names anyway. I glanced at the other windows but they were all just telling me that this or that wolf had leveled up. Now that I think about it, I hadn¡¯t seen any notifications like that before, despite having tamed the wolves a few weeks ago. None of them leveled up in all that time? Do they have some kind of weird reduction in experience earned because they hunt in a large pack? I suppose that would make sense. Or it¡¯s possible that beasts like them, once fully grown, require a lot of experience to level. That would really make Sirius quite outstanding wouldn¡¯t it? I dismissed every remaining window. Was there anything I could do to make the situation better for the wolves? This party of humans will absolutely be missed which means the wolves will be in further danger, but I can¡¯t rescind the order I gave them because it¡¯s still vitally important that no one finds Lullaby. Plus, I don¡¯t think I could rescind the order without going there in person to begin with. ¡°Hey Lynn, how is the excavation of the hangar going?¡± I asked. ¡°The hangar is now functional, Mistress. Would you like me to send the hover car to pick you up?¡± Lynn inquired. ¡°Not this instant, no. Send it to me the next time there is a large amount of trouble. Even with my current position, it should take only a bit longer than half a day round trip from the ship to here and back. Whatever happened would probably be over by the time I get there but I can probably at least do something.¡± I stated. ¡°Affirmative Mistress. Would Mistress like to add any other new orders?¡± Lynn asked. ¡°No, I don¡¯t think so. For now the best thing to hope for is that with the loss of this group that they¡¯ll be hesitant to send any others. By the sounds of it, this group was pretty high class, so the risk vs reward for looking for me will rise. They might not be able to find anyone to take the job. Well, that¡¯s only if the people hired were adventurers. If the kingdom takes interest, we might have to face actual soldiers and knights. They did seem like adventurers right?¡± ¡°Yes, Mistress. There was no uniformity about their gear like the soldiers you saw at the fortress. I suppose it is possible they were still soldiers of the kingdom in some way despite that, but I don¡¯t believe so. Some of the words I heard said by them were ¡®The reward for this is not worth dying for.¡¯ and things in that vein. Typical mercenary behavior.¡± Lynn explained. ¡°That¡¯s good at least. Was there anything else to talk about?¡± I said. ¡°Oh, I almost forgot. I brought the corpses back to the ship and stripped them of all their belongings. I stored it all in one of the small rooms off the central hangar bay. Mistress can examine it when she returns. Afterwards, I left the bodies out for the wolves to dispose of.¡± Lynn stated. I suppose I don¡¯t have the right to lecture Lynn on giving people proper burials considering how I treated that scum a few days ago. I¡¯m still a bit surprised by how easily I killed him at the time but it can¡¯t really be helped. I don¡¯t feel like there was another option but to kill him once he attacked me. I wasn¡¯t going to carry him back to town to be imprisoned and I didn¡¯t want to impose on the people in those wagons either. It was the simplest option to just remove the potential annoyance then and there. It just kind of nags at me that I truly feel like the simplest option was to just kill someone. ¡°That¡¯s fine. I¡¯ll take a look at it all when I return to the ship whenever I finish my business here. If that¡¯s all, I¡¯m going to go back to sleep for a bit. It¡¯s too early for me to be awake right now.¡± I grumbled. ¡°Pleasant dr¡­ I mean rest well, Mistress.¡± Lynn replied. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Waking up a few hours later felt much better. I stretched as I got up out of bed. The inn was nowhere near as fancy as the one I stayed in at the previous town, but it had the benefit of a comfy bed and at least I could get hot water delivered to my room for me to clean myself with. The food and alcohol was good too, so really I had no complaints for a place I¡¯d only be staying at this one night. I gathered together my belongings and got dressed, and then went down to eat breakfast. It seemed to be a common inn design that the rooms for guests are upstairs while the downstairs is for dining or other things. The breakfast wasn¡¯t that good, just being porridge and bread, and I had to get a few extra bowls before Coa was satisfied, but it was filling enough for me to work with. I¡¯d be back on the highway in another hour or two at most and then I could use my own food supplies. Based on some questions I had asked last night, the distance to the capital was only four days away by carriage, which meant I should be able to get there in a day or so even if I don¡¯t rush that much. It does depend on traffic along the highway though. With all the people that should be traveling to the capital, it might well take me longer. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. After eating my breakfast, and paying for the extra food for Coa, I left the inn and decided to spend some time just wandering around the city. It wasn¡¯t yet midday so I felt like I had ample time. I visited a variety of stores and examined their wares. Weapon and armor shops, some alchemy shops, and I even checked out a tailor¡¯s shop. They didn¡¯t really have what I was looking for though. Apparently normal pants in a female size wasn¡¯t really a thing here. While it was common for female adventurers to wear leather fitted pants with possibly some chain mail or metal fixtures, normal clothing for women did not include pants. I should have expected this outcome, but it¡¯s still a bit disappointing. It meant that if I wanted pants, I¡¯d have to either pay for a tailor to make them for me or get some leather armor made to fit me. Either way, I¡¯d need to actually pay someone to craft me some when taking into account my small body size. I¡¯ll have to look into it at the capital. Upon leaving the tailor shop, I witnessed a shocking sight. People with large collars chained together being led down the street. Slaves I guess? Some of the slaves were shackled in a wagon cage. All the others were being forced to walk, though it didn¡¯t seem like they were being treated badly otherwise. I saw some of the escorting soldiers sharing water with them. Had I heard anything about slavery existing here? I think those guys that tried to rob me, mention something about the possibility of being enslaved if I turned them in? So they¡¯re all criminals? People are definitely getting out of the way of the convoy and I see some of the people whispering as they watch them march through the city. ¡°Dearie, is this your first time seeing slaves?¡± A fragile sounding voice came from my side. I turned in response to the speaker and came face to face with a wizened old woman. She wasn¡¯t much taller than I. I wanted to answer her and say I hadn¡¯t but some memories of Seri came to the forefront of my mind. Seri had seen slavery in the past and slavery where the slaves were being treated much worse than the ones I can see here. Ones where the slaves were dragged behind vehicles and forced to keep up or else they would fall and once they did fall, they¡¯d be sure to die from being dragged along the ground by the vehicle. This wasn¡¯t something I had ever witnessed happening in game but to Seri, slavery was just another dark fact of life that she had witnessed on too many worlds. ¡°No. It¡¯s not my first time. It¡¯s my first time seeing them here in the empire though. I was just momentarily surprised.¡± I answered her. ¡°Is that so? You seemed more shocked than that, dearie.¡± The old woman responded. ¡°Do you mind if I ask a question? What¡¯s with the difference in treatment between the slaves?¡± I asked. ¡°Dearie, do you see the colored emblems on the slave collars?¡± I nodded and she continued. ¡°Those tell what kind of slave they are. The ones in the cage are red marks, which means they are the worst criminals that have committed heinous crimes like murder or rape. They¡¯ll be sent to the mines to work until they die. The blue marks are thieves while the green marks are those that have a large number of repeat offenses that normal punishments don¡¯t seem to curb their behavior. These groups will be put to work during construction and a number of other projects for the country. The white marks are simple debt slaves. Either they didn¡¯t pay their taxes for a long period of time or they sold themselves to cover their debts. They¡¯ll be put to work for a year or so and then released. Other than the red marks, all the slaves will be treated well.¡± The old lady explained. ¡°You sure know it well.¡± I commented. ¡°Of course, my husband was the guard captain after all. Is that all you were curious about, dearie? She asked. ¡°Yes, thank you for the explanation. It was helpful.¡± I replied. She laughed joyfully, ¡°It¡¯s the privilege of the elderly to impart wisdom to youngins like yourself.¡± I smiled. She couldn¡¯t be much older than I since she was merely human, and not a modified human like myself. Maybe five to ten years older at most. She reminded me of my, that is to say Aaron¡¯s, grandmother that passed away a few years ago. I took out a silver coin from my pack. ¡°Here take this as my gratitude for the elderly wisdom.¡± ¡°Bah, I don¡¯t want your money. If you insist on rewarding me, why not come have lunch with me. I don¡¯t get many visitors anymore since my children grew up and moved to other cities.¡± She said. ¡°Sure, why not? It¡¯s almost lunch time anyway.¡± I couldn¡¯t get it out of my head how much she reminded me of my grandmother, so I didn¡¯t even give it a second thought before taking her up on her offer. It was a very nice and relaxing lunch at her home. I listened to her complaints about her family never visiting her enough and how she rarely got to see her grandkids. In return, I told her about some of my travels throughout the empire and introduced Coa to her. She even gave me some snacks when I was leaving and thanked me for the company. I left her home in good spirits. I made my way to the south city gate. I was leaving much later in the day than I had intended but no real harm done. Once on the highway and away from the town I went with my usual routine of moving as quickly as possible without letting myself be seen moving at ridiculous speeds. Whether by good fortune or divine intervention, I didn¡¯t run into any travelers along the highway this afternoon, and eventually it started reaching late into the evening. I¡¯d need to look for a good spot to set up my tent for the night soon. I felt presences ahead so I slowed down. As I got closer, I could feel three presences. Two of them were observing me from the trees about forty to fifty meters away from the road. They didn¡¯t seem like they were going to do anything, just watching me carefully. The other presence was weak and off to the opposite side of the road. I walked closer to that side and it dropped off about seven meters like a small cliff. Down there was some debris that looked like broken wagons and a lot of bodies. With how thick the trees are in this area, I never would have noticed those unless I looked over the edge here. The other presences were now watching me very closely but made no move to confront me yet. I decided to hop down and see if I could locate the weak presence. The observing presences got surprised but still made move. Well, most people would probably be injured dropping down seven meters casually like I just did. Walking among the debris and bodies, it looked like they weren¡¯t long dead. Possibly an hour at most. It only took me a minute or two to find what I was looking for. A young man that looked like an adventurer was leaning against a tree. Underneath him was puddle of blood and it was clear that he was barely hanging on to his life. When he saw me, he got surprised and tried to draw his weapon but he didn¡¯t have the strength to. I pulled down my hood. ¡°Calm down, I¡¯m not here to hurt you. What happened?¡± He coughed and I saw blood run down from his mouth. ¡°Bandits. They attacked the caravan. I only survived because I threw myself off the cliff. They probably assumed I died. I¡¯m as good as dead anyway. Even taking a healing potion didn¡¯t help. Please,¡± he coughed again, ¡°I have a request.¡± Damn, final requests can be tricky. ¡°Go ahead.¡± I answered. ¡°Please return to Knightvalley quickly and inform the guards of the attack. If you hurry they might be able to save them.¡± He said. ¡°Save who?¡± I asked. ¡°The caravan was transporting a group of orphans that were headed to an academy in the capital. From down here, I heard the bandits say they were going to take the kids to sell them off. I failed to protect them but if you can hurry, they... might... still... have... a... chance. I¡¯m¡­ begging¡­ you¡­ please¡­¡± I watched as he breathed his last. His final words not asking for anything for himself but for children. I closed his eyes and then bowed my head for a moment of silence honoring his passing. Before I noticed, I was filled with an unexplainable rage that was just boiling out of control. I switched my main Class to Psion and then jumped back up to the highway. Those two presences were surprised by my reappearance but before they had a chance to react further I grabbed them and pulled them, covering the forty meters between us in a matter of moments. They definitely looked like bandits. From their thoughts, I could see that they had been left on watch. They were struggling, but I tightened my grip and dropped them down to the ground and pinned them against it. I crouched down and looked at them. They were both a little frightened of me, which was good. They should be frightened of me. They needed to be more afraid. ¡°You two are going to tell me what I want to know. If you don¡¯t, there will be pain. Lots of pain. Do you understand?¡± ¡°Go to hell, whore!¡± Bandit A answered. ¡°Wrong answer.¡± I broke one of his fingers. He groaned. ¡°What about you? Do you want to do this the easy way and answer my questions?¡± I asked the other bandit. ¡°Fuck off, bitch.¡± I broke one of his fingers too. Unlike the other bandit he gritted his teeth to not react audibly. ¡°You know, I¡¯m honestly happy you didn¡¯t just tell me. It means I get to make your last moments a living hell. You know, something that gets me angry is the thought of kids being harmed or put at risk. It just really ticks me off.¡± I broke one more finger for both of them. ¡°I¡¯ll give you one more chance. Tell me where the other bandits went and I¡¯ll make your deaths painless.¡± Bandit A spit at me. Bandit B just kept his mouth shut and glared at me. ¡°Oh well. Don¡¯t say I didn¡¯t warn you.¡± I reached out with my psi and dug into their heads and then cut off all their senses except for their senses of touch and hearing. They predictably started freaking out, but because I was still holding them against the ground they couldn¡¯t do anything. I leaned forward between their heads and whispered. ¡°Welcome to your greatest nightmares, please do enjoy your stay.¡± V Chapter 1 V Chapter 1 ¡°Rie, it¡¯s morning. Time to wake up¡± I was shaken awake. I opened my eyes, and Mama was looking down at me smiling. ¡°You sleepyhead, you need to do your chores before breakfast, so hurry up and get dressed.¡± Mama left, leaving me to get dressed. It¡¯s okay though, because I¡¯m a big girl who is now almost seven! I can do things by myself. I got out of bed and then slipped on my dress. I pulled the blankets back up and fixed my bed. Mama will get angry if I don¡¯t. I put on my shoes and walked to the door and picked up the water bucket that was waiting there for me. First chore, I have to bring water for Mama. I took the bucket and went outside. I took a moment to look at the pretty sunrise. I saw brother and Papa working in the field already. Brother is nine so he has to help Papa. Once I¡¯m bigger, I¡¯m going to help too, but I¡¯m not strong enough yet. I carried the bucket over to the well and placed it under the pump. Using the pump is really hard but I can do it. I grabbed it and pulled down with all my might and the water came out. I had to do it a few more times to fill the bucket. Afterwards, I had to be really careful carrying the bucket back to the house. It was heavy, but I didn¡¯t want to spill any and have to refill it all over again. I sat the bucket down by the door and opened it before I picked back up the bucket and carried it to Mama in the kitchen. Mama was starting to make breakfast, so I sat the bucket down next to her. Mama turned and looked at the bucket. ¡°Wow, you didn¡¯t spill any today, Rie. Good job.¡± She pat my head and stroked my hair and I giggled. ¡°Now you just have to feed the pigs and then come back in and help me finish breakfast.¡± Mama pushed me back toward the door. I¡¯m not sad about the petting ending so soon, not at all. There were new buckets by the door filled with the food for the piggies. I could only carry one at a time, so I picked up the first one and walked out to the small fence area where the piggies are. I had to lift the bucket over my head to pour it into the feed box for them but I did it. I hurried back with the bucket and sat it by the house before grabbing the next bucket and returning to the piggies with the next bit of their food. After that I got the last bucket and was now done! I sat down and watched as they ate and made funny noises. I like the piggies, but I wish we had more horsies too. We only have one horsie that belongs to Papa that he uses for trips to town. If I do a good job on chores, Papa will give me rides, so I need to keep doing my best. I went back inside to help Mama with breakfast. We were having bread and porridge like always so I got the bowls out of the cupboard. When breakfast was almost ready, Papa and Brother came in from the field. I ran to Papa and jumped and he caught me in his arms and lifted me up. ¡°Oh, there¡¯s my girl! Have you been helping your Mother?¡± Papa asked so I nodded and he held me tight for a few moments before putting me back down. ¡°Anna, is breakfast done?¡± ¡°Just about. The bread is almost ready. Why don¡¯t you all sit at the table and wait?¡± Mama replied. We all took our normal spots around the table with me next to Brother and leaving the chair next to Papa empty for Mama. A few minutes later, Mama brought our bowls filled with porridge and a slice of bread for everyone. We even had cheese today because Mama had made some from the goats¡¯ milk. We took a moment to pray to the Spirits before eating. It was so tasty so I was happy! After we finished, I helped Mama clean up the bowls and then we gathered the dirty clothes to get washed. I helped carry them out to the pump so Mama could do that. Mama excused me after that. My chores were over for now, so I ran back toward the field. Papa and Brother were there holding wooden swords. Papa and Mama used to be adventurers when they were younger and they travelled all over! I loved the stories that Papa tells. Mama always says that Papa is exaber, exageretin, exaggerating? I don¡¯t know what that means, but I don¡¯t care and I listen to all of them. Papa is the strongest and coolest. Papa is teaching Brother how to use a sword and I like to watch. I tried to get Papa to teach me too, but he just tells me I need to get bigger and stronger first. I wish I was older. Mama promised me she¡¯d teach me how to use a bow when I got older, but I want to use a sword. A sword is much cooler! The two of them practiced for a while and I ran and got Papa a glass of ale when I thought the training would be almost over. Papa just laughed and praised me and gave me a big hug so everything was good. Papa carried me and we went to check on the goats. They were doing fine and Papa let me pet them. I like the goats too, but I like horsies more. I¡¯m not allowed to play with the horsie though, which makes me sad. After we checked on the goats, Papa and I sat in the grass and blew grass whistles. I wasn¡¯t jealous at all that Papa could do it and I couldn¡¯t. Not at all. I kept trying and Papa would hug me more even when I messed up, so there were no problems. I think there is a trick that Papa isn¡¯t teaching me! We finally returned to the house for lunch. Brother was still swinging the wooden sword so Papa scolded him for overdoing it. I left them behind and ran inside. We were having a big lunch with sausages today. I couldn¡¯t wait and I sat in my chair and swung my legs. Mama just smiled at me as she finished cooking. I was confused when Papa came inside with a serious look on his face, and he went to Mama and whispered something in her ear. Mama looked serious all of a sudden too. I wonder if something was wrong? I wanted to ask but Papa smiled at me and told me everything was okay, so I sat and waited at the table like a good girl. Brother came and sat down next to me too. Papa went back outside though and he was carrying his real sword. I wish I knew what was going on. Papa wasn¡¯t back even when we started eating, but Mama told us to eat anyway so we did. I was feeling worried when Papa still wasn¡¯t back even by the time lunch was over. Mama looked nervous too, so I went over to her and she pulled me into a tight hug. Hugs make everyone feel better. It was a bit later when I heard strange sounds outside and something burst into the house. I was afraid, but it was only Papa that came into the house. He looked tired, his sword was all dirty and he was holding his hand against his side. Did he have a stomach ache? I tried to run over and hug him, but he stopped me with his hand and then looked at Mama. ¡°Anna, you need to take the kids and get out of here.¡± Papa told her. Papa looked really sad. Mama looked sad too but she nodded before saying ¡°We¡¯ll wait for you at the old tree.¡± Papa tried to speak up but Mama just repeated it with an angry look on her face! I never saw Mama like that before! After that Papa bent down, pulled me into a very tight hug and whispered, ¡°Rie, listen to your mother. It¡¯s very important that you do exactly what she tells you, alright?¡± I could only nod. ¡°Good girl, I love you.¡± Papa kissed me on the forehead and then stood up. He pulled Brother into a hug and whispered something to him too. Brother nodded as well. Brother was now looking at me with a serious expression, but I don¡¯t know why. Huh, why was there a big red spot on my dress? Oh no! Did I spill food on it again? I was so careful when I was eating too! Mama was packing things into a bag and Papa went over to her and kissed her. I¡¯m not sure why but Mama was crying. I don¡¯t like it when Mama cries so I ran over and hugged her. Mama picked me up and I saw that Papa was also crying. I don¡¯t like this, I¡¯m scared. I¡¯ve never seen Papa cry before. Papa went back out the door and left holding his sword. Mama took a moment watching the doorway before she went back to packing. Afterwards she picked up her bow and quiver from where she kept it and we went outside. I saw smoke in the distance of the town and there were spots of smoke closer too. Is there a fire in town? Was Papa helping put it out? There was a fire last year and there was a lot of trouble because of that! Mama picked me back up and started hurrying away from the town. Brother was following her and carrying his wooden sword. I kept my head turned back in the direction of the town and wondered where Papa had gone. Eventually we reached the old tree that Mama said we should wait at. It was quite a distance away from home but I like the tree because it was nice and big. Papa usually brings me here on our horsie rides. We waited and waited, but Papa didn¡¯t come. Mama was crying really hard as it got closer to nighttime. She stopped though and wiped the tears from her eyes before looking at Brother and I. ¡°Come on you two, we need to get moving. We have a long way to go.¡± ¡°What about Papa? You said we would wait here!¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s alright Rie. Papa said he¡¯d meet us at the city if he didn¡¯t come here, so we just have to go to the city and wait for him.¡± Mama answered. I nodded. Going to the city sounded fun. I¡¯ve never been there before. Brother didn¡¯t look happy though, so I was confused. Papa will come meet us at the city and we¡¯ll have a big meal and maybe go to shops and play. I was happy thinking about it. Mama smiled at me and then picked me up again and we left the old tree and kept traveling through the woods. I heard Mama whisper something but I couldn¡¯t hear what she said. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The distance to the city was really far! We¡¯ve been traveling for days and we still aren¡¯t even there yet! I miss Papa, but Mama keeps telling me I¡¯ll see him at the city so I don¡¯t worry. Mama is never wrong after all! I¡¯m worried about Mama more than Papa. Mama looks really tired every day and she¡¯s getting thinner. I don¡¯t know why since she eats just as much as Brother and I. I make sure to cuddle extra tightly with Mama every night because she¡¯s always cold. Mama just smiles at me and sings to me gently every night to help me sleep. It¡¯s scary sleeping outside, but I¡¯m okay as long as Mama and Brother are here. I got to watch Mama catch a rabbit for dinner and we ate it and it tasted so good. I secretly thought maybe bows are cool too. Mama ate but she let Brother and I have seconds. I wanted Mama to eat more, but she said she was full. More days passed and Mama continued to get worse. She tried to hide it but even I could see that she was sick or something. Yet she still kept on carrying me every day when I got tired. It¡¯s okay, I told myself. Mama is strong. Mama is fine. We¡¯ll meet Papa in the city, we¡¯ll play there and then together we¡¯ll go home and everything will be back to normal. That¡¯s definitely what will happen. We finally got to the road and Mama was so happy. She said it would only be a few more days until we got to the city. A few days passed and Mama was right! We finally saw the city walls. They were really tall! I never saw walls that tall before! Mama smiled and I was happy. Mama had barely smiled the last few days. We got up to the gate and Mama showed her pass to the guard. The guard looked it over before waving us in after Mama paid the fee. She looked relieved and pulled Brother and I into her arms. I felt something wet hitting my head, I looked up and Mama was crying again. I hugged Mama back tightly, but was surprised at how thin she was. I wanted to ask something and yet I couldn¡¯t. Somehow, I knew that I can¡¯t ask that question. Mama hurried us along. I asked her where we were meeting Papa, but she told me I had to wait and see. I was excited. I couldn¡¯t wait to tell Papa about the adventure we had had getting to the city. Papa will praise me for listening to Mama and hug me lots! I was smiling widely just at the thought. Brother wasn¡¯t smiling though. He was holding Mama¡¯s hand and walking closely by her side. Brother should be happier since we¡¯re finally going to get to see Papa! Mama led us to a church. Papa is meeting us here? I had only gone to a church twice in my whole life so I was puzzled. Mama took us inside and the priest came to meet us. She talked with the priest quietly so I couldn¡¯t hear her, but the priest looked at us with a weird look on his face before nodding. Afterwards, Mama took Brother and I in her arms again. She whispered to me. ¡°Rie. Be a good girl and listen to your brother Daran. I don¡¯t want you two to fight. Never forget how much I love you. You have lots of talent just waiting to bloom so I know you¡¯ll do great things.¡± She kissed me. Now I was even more confused. Why was Mama saying all this? Next Mama spoke to Brother. ¡°Daran, look after your sister. I¡¯m so sorry that I have to leave it to you. But I know you can do it, and I know my faith in you won¡¯t be wasted. I love you.¡± She kissed Brother too. The priest was still standing there with that weird expression on his face. I wish I knew what was going on. Mama just continued hugging us, but I felt her arms get looser and she felt even colder. The priest came over to us, pulled Mama gently off us and then picked her up in his arms. She looked like she was asleep. Now that I think about it, did Mama ever sleep during our journey? I don¡¯t remember seeing her sleeping. The priest told us he was going to take Mama to a room so she could rest, but that we should stay here for a few minutes to wait. After the priest returned he took us to a big dining room and a cook brought us some soup. I asked the priest to make sure to take food to Mama too. He nodded and said he would take care of it. After we ate, the priest led us to a room with two small beds and told us to get some sleep. I wanted to see Mama, but he told me I couldn¡¯t right now. I didn¡¯t like it. I want to see Mama. Why can¡¯t I see her? Where¡¯s Papa? Mama said he¡¯d be here. I started crying but Brother pulled me into a hug and then took me over to one of the beds with him. We laid down and Brother just kept holding me and stroking my hair until I fell asleep. I wish I knew what was going on. After I woke up, we were given some breakfast and then the priest told me and Brother that we needed to follow him. I told him I wanted to see Mama but he just said that I couldn¡¯t again. Why can¡¯t I see her? Does she not want to see me? Is she still sick? The priest took me and Brother from the church and to a big house. When we went inside, there was lots of other kids! I was surprised. There was a few adult ladies like Mama here too. The priest talked to them about something and then came back and told me and Brother that we would be living here for a while. I didn¡¯t understand. I don¡¯t want to live here. I want to go back to our house! I want to play with the goats and watch the piggies and ride the horsie with Papa! Where is Papa and Mama!? Why aren¡¯t they here with us!? They promised! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The heavy blow sent me sprawling to the floor. I clutched my face and looked up into the eyes of the currently very furious man. ¡°You worthless brat! Can¡¯t you do anything right? All you had to do was move some small boxes and you couldn¡¯t even do that properly!¡± The man yelled at me. ¡°I¡¯m sorry Boss! Please give me another chance!¡± I pleaded with him. I had to keep this job! ¡°Not even if a Spirit came on your behalf brat! You¡¯ve already done enough damage to my store! I shouldn¡¯t have ever accepted that request from the orphanage to give you some work. All the other store owners had already warned me about you! How do you even manage to fuck up so much? I want you out of my store now.¡± He picked me up by my shirt and tossed me out the backdoor and into the alley. I landed in a puddle of water and trash. Then he slammed the door leaving me alone. Brother is going to be angry with me. I managed to lose another job. Maybe he¡¯ll be proud of me that I managed to work two days without being fired this time? I placed my hand back on my face. It really hurts. I tasted blood in my mouth too. All of sudden the door opened with another slam and I flinched back away from the sound. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time I was beaten for doing a bad job. I was used to it. To my surprise, the man simply tossed some coins at me and then closed the door back. I hurriedly gathered the coins off the ground. One, two, three, four, five copper! Yes! I managed to earn some money! This is great! Brother will be happy for sure! He might have enough to take more blacksmithing lessons now!Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. My brief moment of happiness rapidly disappeared as I caught sight of my reflection in the puddle. Before I knew it, I was slamming my fists into the puddle. I hated my appearance. It was repulsive and detestable. It was a reminder of loathsome things. I finally stopped after I removed any further possibility of the puddle showing my reflection again. I was breathing hard and had beaten my hands bloody. That stupid woman was going to be mad at me again. I picked myself up and started heading back to that place. I really didn¡¯t want to, but I didn¡¯t have a choice. If I wanted to eat, it was my only option. I hadn¡¯t eaten since yesterday evening and it was already past midday. As I walked, I felt something in my hair and reached up to pull a piece of trash out of it. Not like it really mattered though. What was one more piece of trash when compared to the rest of me? I criss crossed through the alleys on my way to my destination. I saw some thieves, but even they left me alone. After all I¡¯m just the useless brat from the orphanage, I definitely wouldn¡¯t have any money as far as they¡¯re concerned. Their disinterest was good for once though, I was absolutely not giving these five copper to anyone but Brother. When I finally arrived at my destination. I just blankly stared at it for a moment, wishing I hadn¡¯t had to return so soon. I hated this place. I had lived here now for almost five years and I hated every moment of it. I made my way to one of the side doors that would be a shortcut to the kitchen. If I was lucky I¡¯d be able to sneak some food without the stupid woman seeing me. Of course, I was never lucky. She was in the kitchen preparing some tea. She looked surprised when she saw me. ¡°Rie, what are you doing here? Shouldn¡¯t you be working until later?¡± I turned my head away from her. ¡°You got fired again? It¡¯s a good thing that you¡¯re here early though, a very important man is here to see you and since you¡¯re here early we can get you cleaned up to meet with him.¡± She walked up to me. She took my hands and looked at them and then looked at my swelling face. ¡°You really need to take better care of yourself. Your pretty silver hair is filthy. It looks brown.¡± I pulled my hands out of her grasp. ¡°Brown is fine. It¡¯s better than my normal hair color.¡± ¡°None of that today, Rie! We don¡¯t have time to fight over this. Let¡¯s get you healed and cleaned up. I already sent someone to get your Brother because he¡¯ll need to be here.¡± She dragged me in the direction of the water pump. When we got there. She took my hands and I felt a warm light and the pain in my hands disappeared. Then she put her right hand on my cheek and the pain there followed suit. After that I was stripped of my rags and scrubbed until I was clean. Then she had to fight with me to let her wash my hair. I didn¡¯t want to see my hair go back to being silver. It was disgusting. I couldn¡¯t compete with the stupid woman adult strength though and eventually my short hair was back to its natural color. Joy. Following that I was dragged back to the room I shared with seven other girls and was put in one of my cleaner dresses. Then I was rushed off to the office to meet with the person that had come for me. I planned to refuse whatever they were here for so it¡¯s not like it mattered any. On the way, we ran into Brother. I instantly smiled upon seeing him. I ran up to him and hugged him. Brother hugged me back but then spoke to the stupid woman. ¡°Matron, is something wrong? I rushed back when I got the message saying something important had happened with Rie.¡± The stupid woman tried to answer Brother but I cut her off. ¡°Brother, that doesn¡¯t matter. Look, look!¡± I held out my hands to him. I had managed to keep hold of the five coins. ¡°I managed to earn some money! You might be able to get more blacksmith lessons!¡± He patted my head. ¡°Good job Rie. I¡¯m very proud of you, but you shouldn¡¯t interrupt people. It¡¯s rude.¡± He scolded me. I hung my head. ¡°Alright.¡± I grumbled. ¡°Good girl.¡± He patted my head again. ¡°So what happened?¡± The stupid woman finally got to speak. ¡°A visitor came from the capital for Rie. He¡¯s here to make her an offer. With how she is though, I knew she wouldn¡¯t talk with him so I wanted you here to do the talking for her.¡± ¡°I understand. Is he in the office?¡± Brother asked. ¡°Yes, I was just taking Rie there now. We were going to wait for you there.¡± The stupid woman answered. ¡°Ok, let¡¯s go together.¡± He took my hand and he walked the rest of the way to the office. When we opened the door the stupid woman came in with us and I got to see the man that was waiting there. He was sitting on one of the sofas and drinking something from a small cup. He looked like a noble! He was wearing very fine clothes. What would someone like that want with me? I hid behind Brother. Brother dragged me to the other sofa and we sat down across from him. ¡°Ahh, if it isn¡¯t Valerie Winterfall. So good to finally meet you. I believe this is your brother Daran as well?¡± The man asked. Brother answered him. ¡°That¡¯s right sir. My sister is a bit shy so would you mind if I did the talking for her?¡± ¡°That would be no problem at all.¡± The man smiled. ¡°Allow me to introduce myself. I am Count Casca. I am from the capital. I am here to offer Valerie a chance to attend an academy that I am affiliated with.¡± ¡°An academy, my lord? We don¡¯t have the money to afford that.¡± Brother replied. ¡°Oh no, this would not cost you anything. Have no fear on that point. The academy I am affiliated with is a charitable foundation that offers orphans like yourself a high quality education.¡± The Count explained. ¡°And what academy would that be, my lord?¡± Brother asked. ¡°Forgive me. The academy is the Divine Airin Institute.¡± I heard a gasp from Brother and the stupid woman. Is that name supposed to mean something? ¡°Are you really from the Divine Airin Institute, my lord?¡± Brother¡¯s voice was wavering. ¡°Yes. Feel free to examine my credentials if you are worried.¡± He pulled out some paperwork that had a large seal. The stupid woman took them, examined them, and then nodded at Brother. ¡°Why did you come for my sister, my lord?¡± Brother asked. ¡°We feel that she has the sort of talent that the institute is most interested in fostering.¡± The man answered. Talent. Talent. Talent. I hated that word. I don¡¯t have anything like that. Why do people always say that I have talent? It¡¯s because of my cursed hair that they say it. ¡®Oh, you have a blessing, that means you¡¯ll do great things!¡¯. I¡¯m tired of hearing crap like that. Before Brother could stop me I jumped up and escaped from the room. I waited on the other side of the door for a moment and heard Brother talk to the man. ¡°I¡¯m sorry about my sister, my lord. Could we have a day to consider the offer before we decide?¡± Why does Brother have to apologize to him? ¡°I understand. This is a large decision to make after all. I will return to my lodgings for now and return around this time tomorrow.¡± The Count responded. I didn¡¯t wait to hear anymore and fled to my hiding spot in the attic. I didn¡¯t want to go to some school in the capital. I wanted to stay with Brother. Adults can¡¯t be trusted anyway. I can only trust Brother. Brother came to my hiding spot not long after. ¡°Rie, we need to talk.¡± ¡°No! We don¡¯t! I¡¯m not going! I¡¯m staying here with you!¡± I shouted. ¡°Rie, this is a big chance for you. That academy is famous in the empire for how capable all the students are after they graduate. If you go, you¡¯ll be able to work anywhere!¡± Brother tried to convince me. ¡°I don¡¯t care! If I go, then I¡¯ll be alone and I don¡¯t want that!¡± I complained. ¡°Rie, I just want what¡¯s best for you. This kind of offer won¡¯t come again if we throw it away.¡± Brother said. ¡°Why are you trying to make me go so much? Are you tired of me just like our parents were!? Want to get rid of me too!?¡± I yelled. I felt the blow across my face as Brother slapped me. ¡°I¡¯ve told you before not to speak like that about our parents. Our parents loved us. They didn¡¯t abandon us.¡± ¡°If they didn¡¯t abandon us, then why aren¡¯t they here now!? They let themselves die when they should have stayed with us. They promised to be with us! They were just liars like all adults!¡± I shouted. Brother sighed. ¡°Rie, that noble said that I can go with you if necessary. He said he can pull some strings to make the school accept me too. He said it¡¯s not the best option but he¡¯s willing to do it, if it will convince you to go.¡± ¡°Why would he do so much for us? I don¡¯t trust him! It¡¯s too suspicious. He¡¯s obviously just trying to sell us off or something! We should just stay here. Brother can continue taking blacksmithing lessons and I¡¯ll keep working as hard as I can and then Brother and I can go to a new town and start a blacksmith shop. Wasn¡¯t that our plan?¡± I replied. ¡°Yes, but any good plan is subject to changes if new options present themselves. This is a new option. A better option. It would take years for us to save enough money for all my lessons and then all the other money we¡¯d need to open a store. This could be a shortcut to that!¡± Brother answered. I pulled my knees up and hugged them with my arms. ¡°I¡¯m scared Brother. What if he¡¯s lying? What if more bad things happen? What would happen if I lost you too? I don¡¯t want it. It hurts.¡± Brother hugged me tightly. ¡°Nothing bad will happen, Rie. I promise. This is our chance! We¡¯re going to go to the capital together and become the absolute best at that academy. We¡¯re not going to be bound by any nonsense about talent or anything like that. That isn¡¯t important. We¡¯re going there to take advantage of them, not the other way around!¡± ¡°Alright, Brother. I¡¯ll go, but only if you can come too. Otherwise, I¡¯m absolutely not leaving you.¡± I stated. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ¡°Splendid. I will send a letter to the capital saying that you have accepted and that your brother will also be attending as well. One extra student will pose no problem for the academy. I will be sending a letter here about the travel arrangements once they are established. It will likely arrive in a few weeks.¡± ¡°Thank you for your consideration, my lord. We are in your debt.¡± Brother bowed his head. I followed suit. The Count laughed. ¡°Nothing of the sort. Traveling around the various cities of the empire is a fun diversion, rather than all the politics I have to deal with in the capital. I consider this something of a vacation to be honest. Ahh, but please don¡¯t mention that to any of my associates in the capital. Anyway I will be leaving you now. Please expect my letter in a few weeks.¡± The Count left the room and Brother let out a sigh of relief. ¡°Well, let¡¯s try to save up some money for our time in the capital for now Rie. It looks like we have at least a few weeks to do that.¡± I nodded. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Sure enough, a letter came for us about a month later. It detailed the travel plan for getting us to the capital. We¡¯d be riding with a merchant caravan that would be going around the empire. It would be picking up one or two orphans in each city. The entire trip would probably take almost two months for us to get to the capital. The caravan would be arriving in this city in about two weeks, if they kept to their planned travel times. After we received the letter, we began our preparations in earnest. Brother used the money he had saved up to buy us some better clothing and some blankets and some packs to carry it in. According to the letter, the caravan had been paid enough that it would be taking care of other supplies like food for us, so we were now prepared. When the caravan arrived, I was surprised by the size of it. There were at least ten wagons. It was the largest merchant caravan I¡¯d ever seen come to this city. The stupid woman came to see us off and we handed over the letter with the seal to the merchant in charge of the caravan. He showed us to a wagon we could stay in. There was already some other kids there about my age. They had blue and green hair. We settled in with our packs and got ready for the long journey to the capital. Not much happened on the journey. There was a large number of adventurers that had been hired to guard the caravan so any monsters that attacked were quickly taken care of. The best part about the travel was that whenever we stopped in a city or town, the merchant would rent rooms for all us orphans. Having a nice big bed for a change was comfortable. Eventually we reached the city of Knightvalley, which was our last stop before we¡¯d reach the capital in another four days. The two cities were very close together when compared to the distance between some of the cities we had passed through. The number of kids like us had climbed to twenty-one. All of them had hair colors that implied they had blessings. Various shades of blue and green, one with a bright red, but none of them had the shiny silver hair like I did. Brother stood out as the only one of us that had normal brown hair. It was while we were leaving Knightvalley that I saw something odd. It was a person with a long dark cloak with the hood pulled up over their head. That wasn¡¯t that unusual so far, but the person looked like they were on fire. There was this weird blue flame around their head. ¡°Brother, look that person over there is on fire!¡± I pointed to the person. ¡°What are you talking about, Rie?¡± Brother looked where I had directed him. ¡°I don¡¯t see anyone like that.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t?¡± I looked too. I didn¡¯t see that person anymore either. They must have disappeared in the crowd. ¡°Sorry Brother, I must have been seeing things.¡± He ruffled my hair. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Rie. We¡¯re finally almost there!¡± We left the city, traveling along the highway to the capital. It was around evening of the second day when the peaceful trip came to a violent end. At the time, we were passing through a forested area. ¡°Bandits!¡± One of the adventurers shouted. The adventurers fought valiantly, but there were just too many bandits for all of them to handle. They were overwhelmed. Most of the other kids were all trembling as the bandits looked into the wagons and found us. ¡°Hey boss, this wagon has a bunch of kids.¡± ¡°This one too.¡± ¡°Kids eh? Tie em up and let¡¯s bring em along with the female adventurers we managed to capture. We can sell em all off. Some of you lot handle that, the rest start unloading these wagons. Swipe any bags of holding you can find on the corpses too. After you¡¯re done, push the wagons, horses and corpses off the cliff. Wish we could take the horses with us, but no matter. Don¡¯t want anyone noticing anything. Roy, Neil keep watch on the road. Don¡¯t get spotted and follow us after a while. It¡¯s not going to be safe to raid anymore here. We need to abandon the area and move back to our hideout.¡± A rough, commanding voice yelled. All of us were dragged from the wagons and our hands were tied together. The bandits pulled us along into the forest. I looked back at the adventurers¡¯ corpses as they were thrown off the cliff. They had been nice to us during the travel. Brother had even gotten to spar with one of them, which reminded me of when him and Dad had trained years ago. ¡°Move faster brat.¡± I felt a quick blow to the back reminding me to keep walking. It¡¯s like the Spirits have decided I¡¯ll never be happy. Everything always goes wrong. When the sun started falling, the bandits stopped and made camp. The female adventurers and us kids were tied together and put off to the side, but there was no chance of running since the bandits brought out shackles for our ankles too. I wondered if they would even spare food for us. At least Brother and I are still together and weren¡¯t separated. That¡¯s the only bright side of this. The bandits were in a full blown joyous mood as they celebrated the hauls that they had acquired today. Apparently, they had managed to raid one other caravan along the highway earlier in the morning. It was while they were celebrating that an enchanting voice rang out from the woods. The words it spoke were at odds with the beautiful voice. ¡°Filthy scum located.¡± Every word was spoken with a cold fury raging behind them that made me shiver. I was surprised by the person that came out of trees and revealed themselves to the bandits that were scrambling to their feet and drawing their weapons. It was a young girl. She didn¡¯t look much older than me. I got a second surprise when I saw the blue flame that seemed to float around her head. This was the person I had seen in the city! She looked to be dragging something in each hand. I couldn¡¯t see what it was though. The bandits were prepared for an ambush, but no one else appeared. The young girl seemed to be alone. ¡°What? Did you come just to get captured. You¡¯re a pretty thing. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll get a good price.¡± The bandit leader laughed. ¡°No. I¡¯m just here to eliminate scum that doesn¡¯t deserve to exist. Nothing more or less. Oh, you can have your sentries back.¡± She tossed the things that she had been dragging into the crowd of bandits. They tried to evade, but some of the bandits were hit. The bandits saw their former companions and some of them looked disgusted. ¡°What in the Spirits did you do to em?¡± The girl tilted her head and replied. ¡°I merely asked them some questions until they told me what I wanted to know. It¡¯s their own fault for being stubborn about it.¡± The bandit leader gestured to one of the bandits next to him and ordered in a quiet voice. ¡°Grab one of the kids. Our wannabe hero won¡¯t be able to do anything then.¡± It was when the bandit turned toward us that the scene erupted into a nightmare. The bandit took only a single step before he was yanked off his feet into the air and then his body was mangled horribly and he dropped to the ground dead. The other bandits freaked out in surprise at what they had seen, but the largest change was due to what had caused the death. The young girl now had giant wings of flame. Their long thin feathers fanned out in all directions as they waved behind her. An angel had come to save us. The many feathers stretched and surrounded all the bandits, but didn¡¯t take their lives like they had the one that attempted to hurt us. ¡°Brother, she¡¯s an angel!¡± I whispered to him. ¡°Rie, what are you talking about?¡± He whispered back. ¡°You don¡¯t see her brilliant, flaming wings?¡± I asked, puzzled. ¡°No. I just see a girl that looks younger than me.¡± He replied. Huh? Why can¡¯t Brother see them? They¡¯re huge! The angel spoke again and I made sure I heard every word. ¡°You scum have only one option. You have to try to kill me. If you make a single step toward the kids I will kill you, just like I killed that one there. So please at least attempt to entertain me with your last pitiful moments, trash.¡± The next few moments were bloody and horrifying, but I watched on eagerly all the same. The angel tore the bandits apart with her flaming wings, while also dismantling them with her fists and knife. Some of the bandits ignored her warning and attempted to take us hostage but the wings never failed and they were brutally killed just like the first one. The fight was over almost before it even began. The angel calmly walked toward us while kicking the corpses out of her way as if they weren¡¯t even in her sight anymore. Like she had said, they were just trash. That was the whole extent of their existence to her. Despite the bloodshed she had just caused, the angel was still spotlessly clean. As she came closer, many of the kids crawled away from her with screams of fear. All the angel did in response was smile. It was a warm and gentle smile. A smile that said that everything was alright. A smile that promised happiness. For the first time in years, I was reminded of my mom without the feeling of hatred. ¡°Hello children. I deeply apologize that you all had to witness that, but I¡¯m here to rescue you. Let me just remove those shackles and ropes and then we can get away from this dreadful place.¡± Chapter 34 Chapter 34 As my rage began to cool, I realized that I had made a giant mistake. The children that I had been in such a rush to save, were now terrified of me. Even Coa was trembling tightly around my neck. She hasn¡¯t stopped doing that since I started interrogating those bandits. Despite my smile and reassuring words they were all backing away from me in tears. I guess after what I just did, I must look like some kind of monster to them. I sighed. How should I handle this? As I was thinking, a young voice spoke up. ¡°Miss Angel, thank you for saving us.¡± Huh? What? I looked at the child that had just spoke. It was a young girl, maybe 11 or 12 years old at most, with short silver hair that wasn¡¯t even down to her shoulders. While she had the same color hair as Seran did, her hair seemed to almost have a metallic shine to it. It seemed, odd was maybe the best word to describe it. It definitely stood out even in this crowd of kids with unnatural hair colors. Oh, now that I¡¯m aware of it. All these kids do have abnormal hair colors. Well, except for the older boy next to silver hair girl. His hair was brown. Well, silver hair girl seems to be the only one not afraid of me. She was looking me straight in the eye without flinching. I have no idea why she called me angel though. I guess I¡¯ll start with breaking her free first. At least I¡¯m pretty sure she won¡¯t run away. I walked over to her and snapped the shackles around her ankles and then untied her hands. She got up with a wide smile and before I could stop her she jumped and hugged me. ¡°Thank you!¡± The older boy that was on the ground nearby was looking at the girl with wide eyes. I wonder why? I¡¯d check him with my psi, but after my rampage I¡¯m totally dry. I barely have enough energy to keep my shield running. The boy was the next to speak up. ¡°Sorry, can you free me too, miss?¡± ¡°Yeah, Miss Angel, please free my brother!¡± Silver hair girl requested. They¡¯re siblings? I guess other than the hair color they do have some similar features. I followed through with their request and freed him next. The boy got up and then quickly stepped over to me. He wasn¡¯t going to hug me too was he? ¡°Rie, let go of her. You¡¯re being a nuisance.¡± He tried to pull his younger sister off me. ¡°No, I want to keep hugging Miss Angel! She was amazing!¡± She looked up slightly into my eyes, it really bothers me how short I am that an 11 or 12 year old is almost as tall as me! ¡°Miss Angel, how did you get so strong? Is it just because you¡¯re an angel?¡± I could almost see her eyes shining in excitement. ¡°Rie, stop bothering her! She has to free the others too. You¡¯re wasting her time.¡± He finally managed to get her off me. She was still trying to reach out toward me as he dragged her away. I examined the other kids and it looked like watching Rie¡¯s behavior at least had the benefit of calming them down. They didn¡¯t seem quite as afraid of me now. From there, I could slowly break all the kids free. Some of them hugged each other and even a few others repeated Rie¡¯s display of thanking me, minus the hug, though they quickly moved away from me afterwards. It was too much to hope for that they¡¯d all be like Rie, who was still trying to return to my side even now. Did I do something to make her so attached to me? Well, other than save her anyway? Is the angel name she gave me because of my actions? I felt like, rather than an angel, I was definitely closer to being a devil. I took a quick glance at the scene of carnage behind me and instantly felt nauseous. How could I have done all that? It was truly a scene out of a nightmare. Now, how was I going to successfully escort these twenty-one kids? Especially when they¡¯re all primarily still afraid of me. On the other hand, given the alternatives, it¡¯s not like they really have any choice, but to rely on me. Then the next question was, which city do I take them to? We¡¯re about halfway between the capital and Knightvalley and the adventurer that died said they were on their way to the capital for school. So the capital would be the better option then, but I have no idea what school they were going to or where it even is in the capital. Hopefully the kids know at least that much and then the guards at the capital can point us the rest of the way. ¡°Miss Angel, are you not going to free the adventurers?¡± Rie¡¯s voice came from my side. I guess she managed to escape her brother. She was glued to my side again. Adventurers? There were adventurers here? A quick look following Rie¡¯s line of sight and sure enough there were four female adventurers there. Why didn¡¯t I notice them sooner? It¡¯s not like they were hidden in any way. Wearing what was probably an awkward smile, I walked over to the adventurers. Of course they all looked older than me and one of them was giving me a kind smile like she knew exactly how I was feeling. The others were either looking like they were unhappy or just didn¡¯t care. ¡°Finally. About time you noticed us!¡± The unhappy one said rudely. Before I could respond, one of the other girls hit her on the head. ¡°Fran, don¡¯t be rude. She did save us. You know what would have happened to us once the bandits got into it.¡± ¡°Tasha! That hurt!¡± The rude one complained, but I noticed her face had gone a bit pale. Wait, their hands were already free? ¡°You are already untied?¡± ¡°We¡¯re adventurers, you know! Untying ourselves was easy!¡± The rude one, Fran, boasted. ¡°Says the girl who needed me to untie her.¡± The kind one, Tasha, sighed. ¡°Hey, Tasha! You didn¡¯t need to tell her that!?¡± Fran protested. ¡°Let me just get those shackles off of you all.¡± It took me maybe a minute to free the four adventurers and they stood up and stretched. ¡°I have a question for you. What are your plans now? I intend to escort the kids to the capital, but I¡¯ll probably need help, at least on the supplies side. Also, I don¡¯t know where the kids were going other than what another adventurer back at the road told me. Something about an academy there.¡± ¡°There was a survivor back there?¡± One of the currently unnamed adventurer girls asked, surprised. ¡°There was, but he died right after mentioning the kids being taken. Which led me here. Now that I¡¯m here and the kids are saved though, I can¡¯t just leave them. So, I¡¯d like your help getting them to the capital. Plus, I believe most of the kids would trust you four more than me after the display I just did.¡± I explained. ¡°Yes, you were quite brutal to the bandits. I don¡¯t mind going along. We can recover enough of the supplies using the bags of holding left behind and part of our job involved escorting the kids to the academy, too. So we have to do that if we want to finish it. When we get to the capital we can go to the merchant¡¯s guild and report the caravan raid and hopefully come back with help to get the rest. This area is a bit out of the way, so if we¡¯re lucky, no one will stumble upon it.¡± The other girls agreed with Tasha by nodding. ¡°So we¡¯re all agreed to helping. Fran, go round up the kids and have them get ready to start moving. We should probably at least get away from this place before we camp for the night. Tiara and Steph, can you start gathering the supplies up? See if you can find our bags too. I¡¯ll be along to help in a moment. Alright, let¡¯s get to it.¡± Tasha clapped her hands and the adventurers dispersed. I looked down at Rie who was still by my side. ¡°Rie, why don¡¯t you and your brother assist Tiara and Steph? It will be a big help to have more hands.¡± Rie nodded. ¡°Alright Miss Angel, I¡¯ll do it!¡± She turned and ran off in the direction of her brother. ¡°Brother, come help me!¡± ¡°Sorry, I took control there.¡± Tasha apologized. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, it¡¯s a large help for me. I don¡¯t know at all what the supplies that were taken were, so you four probably have a much better idea of what is what.¡± I replied. ¡°Do you mind if I ask you something?¡± Tasha asked and I shook my head in response. ¡°Who are you? I¡¯ve been an adventurer for quite a while, but you just casually destroyed a group of over fifty bandits alone. Not to mention your skill with wind magic must be ridiculous to easily lift and then pressure their bodies into breaking like that. I just can¡¯t believe what I saw, even with the evidence scattered all around me. I really want to know how you managed all that. What is your level and class?¡± She stopped for a moment before continuing. ¡°Actually, forget what I just said. I don¡¯t need to know that and it¡¯s not polite of me to inquire. Can I at least have your name since we¡¯ll be working together for a few days? Unless you prefer going by Miss Angel that is? I¡¯m Tasha, but I think you already knew that from listening to Fran.¡± Tasha finished with a smile. ¡°Right. I haven¡¯t actually introduced myself. My name is Seri. I¡¯m just a wanderer. I heard about the festivities happening soon in the capital and decided to check it out. It was just coincidence that I stumbled upon that barely alive adventurer and learned about the raid and kids being taken.¡± I explained. I had briefly considered giving a false name, but I¡¯ll need to show my identity at the guild to get any message that comes from Myura. With how unique my appearance is, it won¡¯t be hard for any guild staff to remember me, and I¡¯m not dumb enough to think that some coin won¡¯t loosen a tongue if someone came asking about me. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°I see. Let¡¯s get along, Seri.¡± Tasha held her hand to me. I took it and we did a brief shake before releasing. Tasha then went over and started helping to scavenge through the scattered supplies and bodies. I¡¯m happy that Tasha stopped asking me about the fight. There was no way I could explain what I just did to those pathetic fools. The only bright side is that it doesn¡¯t look like any of the four adventurers are magic users or they might know that what I was doing wasn¡¯t magic. Of course, if I judge by Myura¡¯s example, just because they don¡¯t look like a magic user, doesn¡¯t mean they won¡¯t be capable of using magic. Of course, the downside is that I just openly displayed my psi in front of four adventurers and a bunch of kids. If it was just the kids I could probably pass it off as exaggeration, but with the adventurers¡¯ version of events, I won¡¯t be able to do that. For good or for ill, I¡¯m going to garner a ridiculous reputation from this it seems. Now, what should I do to help? I can neither help sort the goods or help herd the kids. I guess the only option is for me to be on guard for any possible beasts getting close. It will give my psi time to recharge. I also needed to soothe Coa who had been scared for a while now. I stepped over to a tree that was a bit out of the way and leaned against it. From here I could see everything that was going on. ¡°Coa, calm down. Everything is alright now. I¡¯m sorry I scared you.¡± I started stroking along her body that was coiled around my neck. What kind of master am I, that I even scare my own pets!? Coa steadily grew less tense and stopped shivering. Eventually she uncurled and then moved over to my left shoulder. She was looking at me and then trilled. I was momentarily stunned because it felt like she was sending me her feelings. She was sending me concern with some doubt or maybe it was supposed to be a question? I think she might be asking me if I¡¯m okay. I took my right hard and scratched under her head. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m okay now Coa. You don¡¯t have to worry about me.¡± She crooned in reply and this time I got some relief and joy. So she¡¯s happy I¡¯m back to normal? She began rubbing up against my cheek while the tip of her tail kept patting back and forth along my shoulder. Now even my pet was comforting me, I¡¯ve totally lost today. I sighed and looked up. Sadly, all I could see were the foliage of the tree I was leaning against, so there wasn¡¯t much of a view. ¡°Miss Angel, what is that?¡± I looked back down and there was Rie again. How does she keep getting so close without me noticing? She was looking at Coa, and Coa was now looking back at her. It was kind of cute to see the staring contest going on between them. ¡°Rie, this is my pet Coa. Coa, this is Rie. Say hello to her.¡± I held out my hand toward Rie and Coa slithered down my arm to wrap around my wrist. Now the two of them were only about ten centimeters apart. Coa chirped twice at Rie. Interesting. There was a feeling of acknowledgement from Coa that time. Is it just because she¡¯s getting older that I can understand her, or maybe I¡¯ve spent enough time with her that I¡¯m now able to interpret her? She seems to be communicating by transmitting feelings. ¡°Rie, you can pet her if you want. She won¡¯t bite or anything.¡± ¡°Really!?¡± Rie asked. ¡°Yes, go right ahead.¡± I replied. Rie began petting Coa and Coa started to happily hum in response, which made Rie start petting her more which caused Coa to hum even louder. Quite an adorable feedback loop. ¡°By the way Rie, weren¡¯t you supposed to be helping the adventurers with your brother?¡± I inquired. Rie stopped petting Coa and hung her head. ¡°I was just getting in the way, like I always do.¡± She whispered. Hmm. Seems like I hit something of a sore point. I poked her head and she stumbled back a step and then looked at me. ¡°Rie, you¡¯re still young. You¡¯re not supposed to be perfect at everything. You¡¯re supposed to make mistakes and get in the way at times. That¡¯s completely natural.¡± ¡°But it¡¯s different! I never do anything right! It always, always goes wrong.¡± She complained. ¡°Everyone has something they¡¯re good at. You just need the opportunity to find it. I heard you and the other kids were going to school in the capital. It sounds like the perfect place for you to do so. You¡¯ll get to learn and figure things out and you¡¯ll be able to find where your talents lie.¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t like that word. Everyone always says I have talent because of my hair color.¡± She grumbled. I poked her again. ¡°Rie, everyone has some talent. Your hair color has nothing to do with it. Are you saying your brother doesn¡¯t have talent just because he has a normal hair color?¡± She shook her head. ¡°No, my brother is really smart and really strong! He was taking lessons to be a blacksmith and to open a shop. He¡¯s really good at calculations too!¡± ¡°See? That has nothing to do with hair color. Your brother has his talents and you definitely have yours as well. You just need to find them. Don¡¯t listen to what others say and don¡¯t give up just because you¡¯ve experienced failure. You might have to try and fail any number of times before you get there, but you will one day arrive at the destination that was waiting just for you.¡± I stated. ¡°Really?¡± She asked shyly. ¡°Yes, I promise. You have probably experienced lots of hardship already, but I promise that you definitely have some talent just waiting for the right spark to come out. Alright?¡± I answered. ¡°Okay, Miss Angel. I trust you.¡± She jumped in and hugged me again. I let Coa return to her neck perch and then returned the hug of this young girl. Well, she seems happier now, so I guess my impromptu encouragement was a success. I¡¯m still a bit bothered about the angel name but I¡¯m worried I might hit another sore spot for her by bringing it up. I¡¯ll try asking her brother later instead. ¡°Rie, why don¡¯t we both go and help together? Then we can both get in the way.¡± She smiled and I led her over to where the adventurers and Rie¡¯s brother were working. Needless to say, we both did indeed get in the way. I tried to limit any helping I did to mainly moving things around as directed. Rie tried to do the same but being a child she couldn¡¯t really carry anything all that heavy. She also seemed to be a bit clumsy, which probably explained some of her complaints about failing at things in the past. It only took maybe an hour for the adventurers, with our dubious assistance, to sort out the food supplies and enough of the valuable cargo to take along to the capital. Once they had sorted everything off the bodies, I disposed of them by tossing them off deeper in the woods. I did learn the important info that even bags of holding have a limit on how much they can store. I still want some, but I¡¯ll need magic first before I can use them for anything other than storing things. Not much good to have a bag that I can¡¯t take anything out of. The adventurers and I had decided the road would be the safest place to rest since the possibility of running into knights or another caravan was highest there. So, once we were ready, the adventurers moved to the kids and I took the lead of the group since I knew the way back to the road. Well, and because none of the kids other than Rie or her brother really wanted to be in my presence if they could avoid it. I spread out my psi as far as I could in order to cover the kids and the surrounding area to catch anything that comes near. I was actually surprised that nothing had already come, considering the bountiful amount of ¡®food¡¯ that had been lying there waiting for any predators to come claim it. Rie was still watching me with excitement, which I was beginning to think was her natural state. It didn¡¯t take too long to get to the highway, but it had definitely gotten late into the night when we finally did. It had already been getting dark when I rescued them. If it wasn¡¯t for the lanterns scavenged from the bandits, the group might have had troubles navigating. The adventurers handled putting together tents and blankets for the kids while preparing so that the kids would sleep between them. I took up residence a bit further away so I could watch over the whole group all night. The adventurers tried to suggest swapping off for a proper watch but I insisted that they probably needed the sleep today more than I. I had prepared for it from the outset when I decided to escort the children anyway. I could handle a few days without sleep if absolutely necessary so it wouldn¡¯t be a problem. Having switched to Ranger would help too. With how Rie had stuck by me since being rescued, I was absolutely unsurprised when she came up to me and naturally sat in my lap when it was time for sleep. She¡¯s just lucky I had adjusted my shield setting a bit so that I could use more of my psi for detection purposes. ¡°Miss Angel, do you mind if I sleep with you?¡± ¡°Go right ahead, but if something comes, you¡¯ll get woken up.¡± I stated. ¡°Okay.¡± She pulled her blanket up around herself and leaned against me. It wasn¡¯t very long before she had fallen asleep. Her brother came over next. ¡°Miss, do you mind if I sleep over here by you too?¡± He requested. ¡°Not at all. You probably want to be by your sister so it¡¯s fine.¡± I replied. He nodded before taking up position to my left. After he was settled he spoke. ¡°You know, it¡¯s amazing that my sister is so attached to you. She¡¯s been really shy and awkward with everyone since our parents died.¡± ¡°Do you have any idea why?¡± I asked. He put his hand on his chin as he thought. ¡°Well, she did say you were an angel back when you were fighting the bandits.¡± He answered. ¡°I guess that¡¯s where the name came from. Why an angel though? I mean I don¡¯t think how I was fighting was very angelic.¡± I said. ¡°She said that you had giant wings that you were using to fight the bandits. I didn¡¯t see anything like that though, so I think she was just getting confused out of fear and excitement.¡± He explained. Giant wings that I was using to fight the bandits? Don¡¯t tell me, did she see my psi!? I decided to act as natural as possible. ¡°I see. Well, she¡¯s still just a child so it¡¯s to be expected. Why don¡¯t you get some sleep too?¡± He yawned. ¡°That sounds like a great idea. Goodnight and thank you for saving my sister and I.¡± Once I was sure he was asleep, I decided I needed to test whether my suspicions were true. I sent a small tendril of psi at Rie and slammed right into a wall. It was a small, thin and fragile wall but it was definitely there. I almost burst out laughing but I controlled myself. I sent the tendril out again and easily bypassed her feeble defenses. I explored her body, moving steadily toward her brain, looking for the element that I was already sure would be there. I was correct. There was a certain part of her brain that was off from how a normal human¡¯s brain should be. This girl was an innate psi user. Chapter 35 Chapter 35 It¡¯s astonishing to find an innate psi user on this world. Now that I¡¯m aware of it, I can feel the small trickle of psi energy that is coming off her. It was so small that it was basically undetectable. If this was back in game, Rie would have been considered a member of the Psi Innate race. That race was like my Experiment race in that once you chose it you had a further choice of what race you wanted to be. Rie would thus be a Psi Innate: Human by game terms. A Psi Innate, as name denotes, was the best race to choose if you planned on primarily being a Psion or Empath. The only character race that could equal them was the Experiment race, but Experiments had much weaker defenses in comparison. The other level of psi users would be everyone else that underwent the basic treatment that would develop the brain to produce a somewhat natural node for psi use. It wasn¡¯t as powerful as that of a Psi Innate or the completely artificial and most likely technological one that Experiments like myself have, but it was good enough to provide enough strength to use psi, and more importantly for most people, some defense against psi too. In Seri¡¯s civilization it was a fundamental procedure that everyone on most worlds went through sometime in early childhood. There was great risk for anyone that didn¡¯t have it done, since it would be leaving themselves open to any psi attack, even a weak one. All in all, if properly trained, Rie could potentially reach my level of psi power, if not higher, while also probably having psi defenses twice as strong as my own.That would require years of tutelage on my part though, and it¡¯s not even for sure that people of this world could learn the classes that I have. I can learn theirs, but that doesn¡¯t mean the same was true in reverse. There¡¯s also the fact that just like with Myura, I have no intention of having someone by my side since that would just involve putting them in constant danger. As a result I can¡¯t take Rie with me. Plus, I think it would be wrong of me to separate her from her brother. There is one thing I can do for her, and it should help her a lot. It didn¡¯t exist as a condition in game, but from Seri¡¯s memories I know that a Psi Innate had the downside that they actually require much more control over their psi than others. In fact, during childhood and as they got older, their psi would start leaking out, causing unwanted things to happen. Times where they might accidentally read someone¡¯s thoughts or possibly emotions. That could be very traumatizing for a child that might accidentally get a blast of their caretaker¡¯s hidden hatred of them for example. Not that I know if that happened to Rie or not. The other thing that could happen, and it¡¯s what I suspect was happening with Rie, was that she might be unconsciously using her psi to improve her body without knowing it. It could account for her clumsiness. Suddenly her body condition could improve or disimprove without warning and would thus throw her off. I¡¯ll watch it very carefully tomorrow to be sure, but if that is the case I can at least teach her an exercise to keep her psi tightly under control instead of leaking out at random. It would be good to do it now before she gets older. Once her puberty gets in full swing her psi will start going even more out of control. If right now her psi was the equivalent of a trickle from a faucet, in another year or two it will be closer to that of the water shooting out of a firefighter¡¯s hose. It would be a very, very bad thing for her when that happens if she doesn¡¯t have it under control. She would be as likely to seriously injure herself as others. Actually possibly more so, since it could just as easily flow through her body and do damage to her innards. It¡¯s a great thing for her that her path collided with mine. Huh? Wait? It is a good thing she ran into me here but doesn¡¯t that seem like a lot of coincidences? A Psi Innate girl traveling to the capital along the same road that I will be using. A Psi Innate girl that so far was the only person on this world that I¡¯ve seen with any capability for psi. She gets captured along with other kids by a bandit raid. I just so happen to come along and find a single survivor that tells me about it and who then dies shortly after. I immediately go crazy with rage and chase after the bandits and find said girl. I then become aware of girl¡¯s gift and thus as probably the only person around with the necessary knowledge, teach her before it reaches the point where she might die from it. Was that really all just a large set of coincidences? It better all be a coincidence, because the only alternative I can think of is divine intervention. If I find out that there truly are some kind of divine entities on this world and that they¡¯re manipulating events, I¡¯m going to get really damn pissed. I don¡¯t know what I could do against them but I will absolutely make sure to find a way to do so and make their probably immortal lives a living hell. I mean if that random thought is right, that would mean they manipulated events to make sure this girl ran into me. That would mean that they made sure that her parents died in some way that her as an orphan would end up coming to the capital at the same time as me. It could even be that I was brought here to this world by said divine entities for some reason. My own personal circumstances don¡¯t really matter at the moment though. If I find out that this girl¡¯s life was potentially turned into a painful hell for her just because of the whims of some kind of God, then I won¡¯t forgive them. I don¡¯t care about what you might do to others, but I won¡¯t accept kids being put at risk if I can help it, whatever the reason. That rage that I had felt earlier returned and began simmering. At the moment I really wanted to break something. I don¡¯t even know why I¡¯m so angry. I can only assume that this rage has something to do with Seri, but no memories are coming up to explain it right now. I mean no one likes the idea of kids being hurt, but Seri seems to take it to a whole nother level, and I¡¯m being dragged along. Of course, I had to admit that there was another, more dangerous possibility. If I considered the idea of divine entities and that they can manipulate events to play out the way they want them to, then it¡¯s quite possible my rage here was something that was implanted into me to make sure I played along with whatever their plot is. I don¡¯t know if I really believe that¡¯s the case though, it could just be me being excessively paranoid. I mean even if I don¡¯t have Seri¡¯s memories explaining it, I can make a pretty good guess that the reason Seri has such a soft spot for kids is because she herself didn¡¯t have what one could call a nice, happy childhood. I still feel sick just remembering what I did to those two bandits that were left on watch to get them to give me information. I was even feeling enjoyment from watching them as they struggled in their torment at my hands. Not to mention what I did to the main group of bandits. The worst part is that I know for a fact that even though I¡¯m disgusted with my actions, I would absolutely do it all again with no hesitation. I held up my hands and looked at them dispassionately. How much of me was still me and how much was now Seri? Was this how everything was going to go? Eventually, even though I still have my memories of my life as Aaron, will the influence from Seri¡¯s memories just be so much stronger, that in the end I¡¯ll be more her than Aaron? I¡¯m worried about it, but will worrying about it even solve anything? The most concerning part is that there¡¯s absolutely nothing I can do about this. I¡¯m along for this ride no matter where it ends up taking me. The only option I have is to at least try and not let myself lose to emotions that appear out of nowhere. Like this rage that I¡¯m still currently feeling despite my own distress. Interrupting my current haunting thoughts, I felt a signal from my spread out net that something had entered it and was close to our camping spot. I welcomed the diversion it entailed. I carefully lifted Rie from my lap without waking her, sat her next to her brother and then stealthily ran in the direction of what I had detected. I caught sight of the creature shortly after. It was a large lizard, reminiscent of a komodo dragon but with even longer claws and a shorter muzzle. I¡¯d say it was probably in the three to four meters range in length. I pulled my dagger and intended to finish it off quietly. It flicked a glance in my direction as I got close, but rather than become hostile it walked right past me. I watched it amble in the direction of a large tree. Upon reaching the tree, it climbed and got up into the branches, where it began eating the leaves. It¡¯s an herbivore? I wasn¡¯t expecting that. I watched it for a while to be safe, but all it did was continue eating leaves before stretching out on the large branch and lying motionless. I guess it¡¯s resting now that it ate? I¡¯m kind of disappointed I didn¡¯t get to kill something, but watching a large lizard was distracting enough for now. I wandered back to the campsite and settled down to continue my vigil. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ By the time the other adventurers started to stir in the morning, I was extremely bored. The only creatures I had seen all night was two more of those lizards, which had proceeded to the same tree as the first one and then followed the same routine of eating and then resting. Which gave me all together too much free time to continue my paranoid musings. Eventually, just to stop myself driving myself insane by going mentally in circles, I decided I¡¯d deal with it if it became necessary and shelf the topic in the meantime. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. The adventurers started to prepare food since neither they or the kids got to eat last night. I offered to help, but was rebuffed since they still felt bad for letting me to take the watch the whole night. Well, in the end the kids were happy that when they got woken up, breakfast was ready. I had to eat away from the kids since they were still afraid of me. Rie ate beside me without a care in the world. Her brother was staying by her as well. I could tell that Rie¡¯s brother was still wary of me, but he was ignoring that to protect his sister. He¡¯s a good big brother. Once everyone had eaten, we packed up the tents and supplies and continued along the highway toward the capital. Just like the previous night I was leading the group, while the adventurers were mainly toward the back of the group of kids. They were trusting me to cover a wider range. It wouldn¡¯t be a problem, since I had my bow out today and had made the adjustment to have my quiver on my waist instead. It seemed like that was a better place for it. I made Rie and her brother walk a bit behind me and closer to the rest of the kids. At the current pace, we¡¯d be getting there sometime tomorrow since the kids can¡¯t travel that fast. At least we had enough water flasks and food to keep everyone fit until we reach the city. While we walked, I kept part of my attention focused on Rie so I could watch her psi closely. It wasn¡¯t long until my suspicion had been confirmed. I watched as her psi flowed through her body a second before she stumbled. Her brother steadied her before she could hit the ground. No reason not to start the lesson now. ¡°Hey Rie, come here for a moment.¡± I beckoned her to come closer and she skipped over. Her brother made to follow her, but I held up my hand to stop him. ¡°Sorry, but this is a girls only talk.¡± He glared at me, but backed off for now. When Rie reached my side. ¡°What is it, Miss Angel?¡± ¡°First of all. I¡¯m not an angel and it¡¯s definitely not my name either. So just call me Seri okay?¡± I said. ¡°Really? I can call Miss Angel by her name?¡± Rie excitedly replied. ¡°¡®Yes, so stop it with the ¡®Miss Angel¡¯ business already. Please.¡± I stated. ¡°Alright, Miss Seri!¡± She answered. So the ¡®Miss¡¯ stays? Whatever. ¡°Rie, can I ask you something? Do you ever have times where it feels like weird stuff is going on? Like maybe you heard something weird from someone but they didn¡¯t seem to actually be talking. Or maybe you felt something off about your body like it got lighter or heavier all of a sudden?¡± Rie looked surprised. ¡°How did Miss Seri know? It happens a lot, but Brother took me to a Priest and they couldn¡¯t find anything wrong with me. Even magic didn¡¯t cure it so I thought I was just really clumsy. Does Miss Seri know what¡¯s wrong with me?¡± ¡°There¡¯s nothing wrong with you. There¡¯s just a certain part of you that needs a little extra help. I can teach you a method that will help you, but after I teach you, it¡¯s dependent on you to make sure you perform it everyday. The time of day doesn¡¯t matter.¡± I explained. ¡°Please teach me! I don¡¯t like that feeling. If you can make it go away, I¡¯ll do anything.¡± Rie pleaded. ¡°I¡¯m sorry Rie. I can¡¯t make it go away entirely. It¡¯s a part of you. Just like it¡¯s also a part of me. I can¡¯t remove it anymore than you can. I can only teach you how to manage it.¡± I said. Rie¡¯s eyes got as wide as saucers. ¡°Miss Seri is like me?¡± ¡°That¡¯s right. Well, my case isn¡¯t exactly like yours, but it¡¯s similar enough that I can assist you. The only thing I want you to promise before I teach you, is that you have to keep this a secret. I¡¯d like it if you hid it even from your brother, but I¡¯ll allow you to at least tell him if you choose to. It¡¯s not good for family members to keep secrets from each other after all.¡± I replied. ¡°I can do that! I promise!¡± Rie shouted. Rie just drew everyone¡¯s attention with that. ¡°Shh. Calm down. Just walk by me and I¡¯ll start the lesson. Just try not to be excited by everything that happens.¡± I sent a small tendril of psi and waved it in front of her. ¡°Do you see that?¡± ¡°Yeah! Wow, it¡¯s one of your wing feathers!¡± She tried to touch it, but her hand just went through it. I felt the motion but she obviously didn¡¯t because she kept waving her hand back and forth with a growing irritable expression. ¡°Why can¡¯t I touch it? I see it right in front of me!¡± ¡°You can¡¯t touch it with your hand. What you¡¯re seeing right now is something called psi.¡± I explained. ¡°Psi? I¡¯ve never heard of that before.¡± Rie said, confused. ¡°That¡¯s understandable. It can be a very mysterious power. It¡¯s also the power that you possess. Right now you just can¡¯t use it. So instead of trying to touch it with your hand, I want you to concentrate really hard on what you¡¯re seeing. Concentrate and try to touch it, but without using your hands.¡± I said. ¡°How am I supposed to touch it without using my hand?¡± Rie complained. ¡°Just try, Rie. The fact that you can even see psi means you¡¯re already somewhat consciously using your own abilities. This is just another step and should be possible for you. Once you do this we can move to the next.¡± I told her. There was another way to go about this training. I could try nudging her psi node with my own psi to focus her awareness on it. The problem with that approach is that there was a lot of possible side effects to it. The least of which is that she could feel an overpowering headache and then go unconscious for a few days. That wasn¡¯t exactly a good option at the moment, and the other possible side effects that could spring from it were worse. It was better for her to force her psi to do something which would make her actively conscious of it. She¡¯ll still probably have a bad headache or dizzy feeling, but it won¡¯t last long and won¡¯t knock her out. Just to taunt her a bit, I kept waving the psi in front of her face. Her face was screwed up in concentration. I felt the psi in her swirling around energetically in response, but it seemed like she couldn¡¯t get it to do anything yet. Well, I expected this might take a while today. It would be weirder if she got it right away. As long as she can stay focused it will come out eventually. Expecting a child to stay focused that long might have been a bit of a miscalculation on my part. Rie couldn¡¯t keep her concentration going for more than five to ten minutes at a time and then afterwards she would complain about her head hurting. That shows progress at least. I hoped so anyway. This shouldn¡¯t be too hard of an exercise. I mean she¡¯s not going to send out an actual formed tendril of psi and touch my own. She just needs to send out some psi consciously. The feeling of that is what was important here. Maybe the fact that she¡¯s trying to do this while also walking and keeping up with me was hindering her too. Nothing I can do about that at the moment. We were taking breaks every so often anyway for the kids to rest, but I was keeping Rie practicing so they weren¡¯t really breaks for her. Eventually, I decided to let her stop and told her we¡¯d resume a bit later. It felt like she¡¯s making progress judging by how her psi has been acting. On her last attempt before I told her to stop, her psi had briefly converged and it had seemed like it was just about to erupt out of her before it had dissolved, leaving Rie feeling drained. Around early afternoon, I heard the sound of many hooves coming from the direction ahead of us. I held up my left hand to signal to the other adventurers that we had possible company. It wasn¡¯t long before what I had heard became visible. A group of about thirty mounted knights were traveling the highway. Tasha started coming to the front of the group, probably to explain to the knights what was going on. The knights slowed down when they got close and the one who I assumed was their leader took off his helm and then directed his attention toward me. He appeared to be possibly a tiger beastman, if I judged by how his somewhat long hair looked with the stripes. ¡°Greetings, my fair lady. I am Baronet Richter of the Imperial Order of Paladins. Why is your party traveling with such a large number of children? Did some trouble perchance befall you?¡± How was I supposed to address this guy? I think a baronet was a pretty low noble rank isn¡¯t it? So would lord work? Or is it sir? Thankfully my slight hesitation wasn¡¯t noticed because Tasha arrived and spoke for me. ¡°Hello, Sir Paladin.¡± Oh, so that¡¯s how. ¡°We were adventurers hired to protect a merchant caravan. The kids were also being transported along with said caravan. Unfortunately we were attacked yesterday evening by bandits. We, along with the children, were taken captive.¡± ¡°Foul criminals! They have become brazen as of late! But if your party was captured, how are you now free?¡± The paladin asked, somewhat suspiciously. Tasha waved her hand at me. Oh no! I know what¡¯s coming but there¡¯s no way to shut her up or interrupt her without it looking odd. ¡°This girl here saved us. It was an amazing feat. She took on all the bandits alone all for the sake of rescuing children she heard were in trouble.¡± ¡°Splendid! Saving the innocent is truly a most honorable feat!¡± He nodded respectfully to me. ¡°May I have the fair lady¡¯s name, and your own as well.¡± ¡°My name is Tasha, Sir Paladin.¡± Tasha replied. ¡°My own name is Seri.¡± I answered. ¡°Lady Seri, please accept my most humble gratitude for protecting citizens of the Empire. While I have a business to attend to, I am behooved to offer some aid in light of your troubles. Cedric!¡± Another knight rode up to his superior. ¡°Here Sir!¡± ¡°Choose five of your fellows to escort these ladies and the children to the capital.¡± The paladin ordered. ¡°Yes Sir!¡± Cedric turned around and then motioned toward certain other knights to come forward. ¡°You don¡¯t have to go to all that trouble for us, Sir Paladin.¡± I tried to refuse. ¡°Nay fair lady. This is a task befitting knights of the realm such as ourselves. If it were not for my prior commitments, I would escort you myself. Alas, It is a shame that I can not.¡± He replied. ¡°I have done as ordered Sir.¡± Cedric said. ¡°Good man. Now do excuse me ladies, I leave you in the capable hands of Cedric and five of my knights. I must now depart.¡± He dipped his head toward us and then donned his helmet and then gestured for the rest of the knights and they rode off. I glanced at our newly appointed escort. Somehow, I feel like we just got a gigantic nuisance foisted off on us. Chapter 36 Chapter 36 The knights rode closer, the one named Cedric in the front. ¡°Please allow me the honor to introduce our company. I am Knight Lieutenant Cedric of the Imperial Order of Paladins. With me are Knight of Grace Tilly, Sergeant Alycie, Knight Elyza, Knight Watkin, and Sergeant Otho.¡± He indicated each of them and they lowered their head slightly in turn. Based on the names and their slimmer appearance, it seemed like half our escort were female knights. That was good. While knights are usually seen as honorable, and their leader definitely gave off that impression, there was no guarantee that the subordinates would have been the same. I wouldn¡¯t want to have to deal with an all male knight escort and any possible things they might do while completing their ¡®duty¡¯. It would be a problem if I had to break soldiers of the country, after all. ¡°It is an honor to meet all of you. We are most grateful for the escort.¡± Tasha responded. ¡°We can¡¯t really introduce all the children, but the other three adventurers are Fran, Steph and Tiara. Seri and I have already introduced ourselves.¡± ¡°I understand. We shall split up and two of us will ride at point and the rear of the group. One of us will also ride on each side. If the five of you will then oversee the children more closely, then I believe this to be the best division of power.¡± Cedric stated. ¡°We are fine with that.¡± Tasha replied. ¡°Then let us be off! We don¡¯t have far to travel until we are out of this forest and then the threat of further ambushes will be greatly lessened.¡± Cedric said. The knights split off to their positions and Tasha went off to talk to the other adventurers. The kids were looking at the knights in wonder. Not surprising really. I mean even I had to admit that just by looks alone they were impressive. I had no clue about their level of actual ability though, which was much more important. Now that all the hassle had calmed down, I was finally aware of the fact that Rie had hidden herself behind me ever since the knights showed up. ¡°Rie, are you alright?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t like adults.¡± She replied. ¡°I am an adult as well, you know.¡± I said. ¡°Miss Seri doesn¡¯t look much older than me. Also, you don¡¯t lie to me, so you¡¯re not like those shitty adults.¡± She answered angrily. She sounded very sure of the fact that I had never lied to her. I know she hasn¡¯t made even a rudimentary psi connection with me to know that. I would have noticed something that obvious. Perhaps she was using her psi to enhance her own intuition as well? ¡°I see. Why don¡¯t we ignore all this and go back to practicing. I think you¡¯re very close to success.¡± ¡°Yes! I promise that I¡¯ll absolutely get it this time!¡± Rie said excitedly. At least her motivation was high. It still took another hour before she got it and what came out was more like a sputter than an actual proper emission. She immediately fell forward after doing so and I caught her. ¡°Nice job, Rie. You managed to send some psi out consciously.¡± ¡°So dizzy! Now I have to try harder and touch it right?¡± Rie replied. ¡°Not really. The important part was whether or not you took note of the feeling of focusing and sending out your psi like you did on that last attempt. What did it feel like to you?¡± I inquired. Rie looked down and whispered, ¡°It felt like I was using a water pump.¡± ¡°What about for actually shooting the psi out? Was it the same feeling?¡± I asked. ¡°Not really. I don¡¯t know what that felt like. That part was confusing.¡± She answered. ¡°Alright. Then let¡¯s take a short break before we try again.¡± I said. ¡°I want to try again though!¡± Rie complained. ¡°Rie, you might not have realized, but you can barely walk upright at the moment. If it wasn¡¯t for me holding on to you, you¡¯d have fallen over. You need to recover before we try again.¡± I stated. ¡°Sorry.¡± She apologized. I ruffled her hair. ¡°Nothing you need to apologize for. This is normal. If anything you¡¯re very skilled to get it already.¡± One of the female knights came over leading her horse. I didn¡¯t bother remembering their names. Rie hid behind me again. ¡°Is the child alright? I saw her stumble and she seems unsteady.¡± ¡°She¡¯s fine. She just got a bit dizzy from the long walk.¡± I replied. ¡°How much longer until we¡¯re out of this forest?¡± ¡°The edge of the forest is close. After that you will be able to see the capital in the distance.¡± She assured me. ¡°Oh, sounds good. I¡¯m looking forward to it.¡± I said. ¡°Will this be your first time to view it?¡± She asked. ¡°Yes. I¡¯m basically a wanderer. This has been my first visit to this country. It seems like a nice place. Better than some I¡¯ve gone through.¡± I answered. ¡°Yes, our Empire is marvelous. Please look forward to the capital. I¡¯m sure you will be pleased.¡± She boasted. Afterwards, she nodded again to me and returned to her position. I took a glance behind me and saw some of the knights conversing with the children. Doesn¡¯t that get in the way of their escort duty? They probably can¡¯t help it with how the kids are jumping around them though. Excited, happy children are a fearsome foe for adults. Like the knight girl said, the edge of the forest wasn¡¯t far away. We got to it about late afternoon or early evening. After we exited the forest, and since the forest¡¯s elevation was a bit above the area ahead, it allowed me to get a good scope of the area. It was a truly breathtaking sight. Plains that led into a gigantic amount of farmland that could be seen in the distance. Then there was what looked like a man made mountain beyond that. That city was huge. It looked like it had multiple wide levels. To the right of the city, I just saw a wide expanse of blue. Was that a sea or possibly an ocean? The most eye catching feature was definitely the white tower that stretched even above the rest of the city and into the sky. So that was that dungeon Seran had mentioned. I felt my game explorer¡¯s excitement burst out. I wanted to climb it! I wanted to see what was at the very top! Damn it! I want to do it, but doing it will get in the way of my mission! Why does life have to be so unfair!? Ahh, mission be damned! I¡¯m going to be in the capital for a while. I¡¯ll take some time to see the inside at the very least. Knight girl had returned while I stood still and took in the scenery. ¡°Quite spectacular is it not? Regrettably, despite how close it might appear, we¡¯re still too far away to reach the city with it already being this late. We¡¯ll have to stop for the night soon.¡± ¡°Yeah. It definitely wouldn¡¯t be good to push the kids that hard.¡± I replied. Another night would let me pound the last bit of the basics into Rie. ¡°Where will we stop?¡± ¡°The brush is cleared away from the road on both sides, so anywhere is fine. If we were further along we could have stayed at one of the farms, but those would be out of reach for today.¡± The knight girl answered. ¡°Do you mind if I ask a different question? Why don¡¯t you clear out this forest here. It seems like it¡¯s pretty unsafe to have a decently sized forest here unchecked. Especially with a major highway running through it.¡± I said.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. ¡°That is true. It can be troublesome to deal with at times. Bandits are rarely an issue, since we send regular patrols through the area, two or three times a week, to remove hostile beasts and any other lurking threats. Those bandits you took care of must have been lucky to sneak in between sweeps.¡± She explained. ¡°That still seems like a lot of extra work to do.¡± I replied. ¡°The other reason is that the Founder laid down the directive that forests should be preserved as much as possible. At the same time he told us that managing forests was also important. Cutting down older trees to be replaced with newer trees would keep the forests healthy, along with other rules to follow. There were times when we had to go against that directive to establish cities, but all the more reason that we keep certain forests while patrolling them to keep them safe. The fact that a large bandit group was able to infiltrate and raid in this forest creates a question that will need to be answered.¡± She clarified. ¡°The more I hear about the Founder, the more that he seems like a very wise person.¡± I responded. ¡°The Empire would have fallen many years ago if not for the wisdom the Founder left behind when he left to his eternal rest. His descendents have all striven hard to reach the high standards that his example established and the Empire has flourished for it.¡± She stated. ¡°Excuse me, I must speak with Knight Lieutenant Cedric.¡± She rode toward the front where Cedric was leading. ¡°Rie, she¡¯s gone. You can come out of my shadow again. Are you really that shy around all adults?¡± I asked. ¡°Just the ones I don¡¯t know. Those knights hide their faces. It¡¯s unsettling. I can¡¯t trust them.¡± Rie commented. ¡°If you say so.¡± I responded. ¡°Let¡¯s relax for now until we set up camp for the night.¡± I ruffled her hair again. Coa whined at that, so I gave her some affection too. That devolved into both Rie and Coa fighting for it, and was only resolved when they started giving each other affection instead. Rie was ecstatic when I let her hold Coa and the two of them played together for about an hour. They couldn¡¯t play anything complex, but they made do with some simple things. The most amusing one was when Rie would toss a pebble to Coa and Coa would then bat it with her wing, sending it flying. I wasn¡¯t sure what they were doing with that game until I noticed that the pebbles seemed to keep going in the same direction. Her brother was dodging them while grimacing. Rie was smiling widely as she continued to bombard her brother with Coa¡¯s assistance. I was actually surprised he was letting her get away with that, but then I caught a slight smile on his face between shots. He must be putting up an act for his sister¡¯s enjoyment. Some of the other kids were looking at Rie and Coa enviously, like they wanted to play too. They were still all too afraid of me to come closer though. I have no idea how Coa would respond to being swarmed by kids. She likes attention, but so far that has always come from one or two people at a time at most. About an hour later, we settled in to stop for the day. I thought it was a bit early, but I think the knights decided stopping here was best for the kids. We still would be getting to the capital around midday tomorrow, so it was not a problem. Some of the knights helped with food preparation, along with a few kids helping as well. Quite a big contrast from earlier this morning where the adventurers had to do all of the work since the kids were still nervous about everything that had occurred. They were definitely more chatter happy tonight. The knights were going to swap off the watch in groups of two, which was nice for me. Hurray for sleep! I¡¯ll make up for the fact that I¡¯ve been awake for forty or so hours tonight. After I teach Rie, anyway. With dinner done, Rie and I moved a distance away from the rest of the group and I had her sit in front of me so we were sitting face to face. Some people watched us, but no one stopped us. Besides, from the point of view of everyone else, Rie was probably safer by me than anyone else she could be near. ¡°Ok Rie, it¡¯s time to continue your lesson. First we¡¯ll repeat what we were doing earlier and this time I want you to hold onto that feeling of pumping water like you had when you succeeded. You said you had problem with the actual emission step, so this time I¡¯d like you to put together an image of some type to push your psi out of your body. Could be just about anything. Shooting an arrow from a bow might work if you can visualize that. Understand?¡± Rie nodded. ¡°I think so. An image to focus on...¡± She closed her eyes for a few moments. ¡°I can do it, Miss Seri! I¡¯m ready!¡± ¡°Alright. Here we go.¡± I put the small tendril of psi in front of her and she narrowed her eyes. I felt as her psi concentrated properly. It was building up rapidly, but hopefully she didn¡¯t overdo it. She doesn¡¯t need too much psi for this exercise. I should have warned her about that. Oh well, I¡¯ll warn her next time and it will be part of the next step, too. As long as she doesn¡¯t lose control of it, it should be ok? The next part would be the hardest for her, since it seemed like her earlier success might have been a fluke. Contrary to my expectations, I felt a forceful push of psi rush forward from Rie which impacted, my own psi dispersing it. Wow! That was phenomenal. I guess maybe it wasn¡¯t a fluke after all. ¡°Excellent job, Rie. Let¡¯s do it once more to make sure you have it down.¡± I said. Rie nodded, but now I noticed she was sweating pretty hard. She seems determined so let¡¯s just proceed. I put out a slightly stronger and more stable coil of psi. Let¡¯s see what she can do to this one. She repeated her previous effort perfectly, except she couldn¡¯t dispel my own psi this time. She sighed as she fell backward from her sitting position. She was breathing really hard. ¡°Sorry. I wasn¡¯t able to¡­ get it this time.¡± ¡°No, you did well. What image did you use for your psi? It was well formed and solid, from what I could recognize.¡± I inquired. Rie instantly blushed red to her ears and turned her head. She mumbled something I couldn¡¯t make out. ¡°You need to speak louder, Rie.¡± ¡°...wings¡­¡± She murmured again, a little louder this time. ¡°Wings?¡± I asked. ¡°I imagined having my own pair of wings just like yours!¡± She cried, blushing even brighter and covering her face. An interesting choice. She based her psi on what she saw of mine. That does make sense in a way. I had a large initial impact on her. It does make this even easier for me if she visualizes her psi like mine. I picked up a canteen I had borrowed from the supplies. ¡°Rie, here drink some water. We need you to recover.¡± She sat back up and took the canteen from me. She started greedily drinking until she started choking and sputtering. ¡°Hey, don¡¯t drink that fast! After you finish, get back in position in front of me and just take some large and calming deep breaths for a while. You probably have a headache or dizzy feeling again, so do that until it is gone.¡± She nodded and sat the canteen back down. She closed her eyes and did as told. Her psi is still pretty limited, so it didn¡¯t take her long to fully replenish herself. ¡°Take a little bit more time and just listen for me to explain this next step. In the previous exercise, you let your psi build up a lot before using it. Actually, in all honesty you overdid it and expended too much, to the point that you seriously drained yourself. Rationing your psi is imperative. For this one, I want you to focus just a small amount and then release it with each breath. The goal for this one is to use your psi in a steady rhythm. Time it as closely as possible with your breaths and use the same amount of psi each time. It doesn¡¯t matter how long or how short your breaths are, what matters is to keep them coming at the same rate. Did you follow that?¡± I questioned. ¡°Don¡¯t hesitate to ask for clarification if you need it.¡± ¡°Miss Seri, can you show me how you do it? As an example.¡± Rie spoke hesitantly. ¡°Is that all? That¡¯s not a problem. Here I go. Watch carefully now.¡± I said. I took normal breaths and with each breath I discharged a pulse of psi that radiated out from me in all directions. Breath and pulse and repeat. I kept the rhythm up for a few minutes and Rie was watching me closely. I took one last breath and stopped. ¡°Do you think you can do it now?¡± ¡°Yes. I¡¯m certain I can do it now, Miss Seri!¡± She pumped her arms to show her eagerness. ¡°Ok then begin, but be prepared, I¡¯m going to stop you the moment I see you make a mistake.¡± I warned her. It took her a while to keep a constant breath. That was her main problem. Her psi was pretty much spot on, but she had trouble keeping it in time with her breathing. She kept fluctuating too much between slow, deep breaths and quick, light breaths. As for her psi, the feeling of pumping water was likely helping her keep a regular frequency there. She seems to have quite the natural talent, which helps a lot too. She finally mastered it pretty late into the night. The other kids were already asleep, except for her brother, and one of the adventurers was awake talking with the knights on watch. ¡°Yes! I did it! What else do I need to do, Miss Seri?¡± Rie asked. I poked her head. ¡°Now, we go to bed, you overachiever. It¡¯s already late and your brother is waiting for you to go to sleep so he can sleep too.¡± I told her. ¡°Oh. I wanted to learn more!¡± Rie complained. ¡°Sorry, Rie. This is probably as much as I can teach you for now. From this point on, you¡¯ll need to repeat this breathing exercise sometime every day. Maybe right after you wake up or before you go to sleep. Whenever you can reasonably fit it in every day. Do it as long as you can. It will help your development. If you don¡¯t do it, there can be serious problems that will arise in the future. So please promise me that you¡¯ll keep practicing this.¡± I stated. ¡°Alright, Miss Seri, I promise. Do we have to go to sleep already though? I want to talk more! I want to ask you about your adventures! I bet you have all sorts of tales!¡± Rie excitedly asked. ¡°We have all the time tomorrow to chat before we get to the city, Rie. Just calm down and let¡¯s get some shuteye alright?¡± I said. ¡°Okay¡­¡± She grumbled. ¡°Here, I¡¯ll let Coa sleep with you and you can sleep on my lap again. Does that satisfy you?¡± I asked. I held Coa out to her. ¡°Yay! Come here, Coa!¡± Rie took her from me with a smile. I spread out the blankets and then let her lie down with her head in my lap. Coa was lying on her chest in her arms. I took a second blanket out and covered her and me. Her brother set up his own blankets and lay down close to his sister. I yawned. Time for me to get some rest as well. Chapter 37 Chapter 37 I heard a snap and my eyes instantly snapped open. My hand went to my dagger as I scanned the surroundings. I had been prepared if the knights tried something in the night. Oh, it was just one of the knights taking care of their horses. It looked like it was morning now. Only the adventurers, knights and some of the kids were awake. For the first time in a while, I performed adequate measures to keep my psi hidden. I had slacked off on that a lot since coming to this world, but now that I knew there was potential psi users like Rie here, I had to correct that bad habit. I was about to get up when I remembered the girl that was still lying on my lap. Rie was mumbling something in her sleep so I bent down to hear. ¡°Papa, Mama, don¡¯t go! Stay with me! Don¡¯t leave!¡± Rie was saying. She was just repeating it over and over. I guess she¡¯s having a nightmare. She had a line of tears running down her face that I hadn¡¯t noticed before. Coa was awake and looking at Rie anxiously. She slithered out of Rie¡¯s grasp and I watched as she rubbed against Rie¡¯s face. Rie¡¯s eyes shot open in response to the physical contact. Afterwards, she saw me and immediately buried her head into my chest and started sobbing. Coa was warbling at Rie as she had now climbed back up to my neck. Why does this keep happening? It happened only a few days back with Myura and now again with this child. Do I just attract troubled souls? I did the only thing I could and stroked her short hair while whispering encouragement. Her brother had woken up and was giving me a death glare. It¡¯s not my fault! I tried to convey that without words. He sighed and started packing up his blankets. After a few minutes of crying, Rie calmed down. She was still sniffling and her eyes were a bit red, but otherwise she seemed okay. ¡°Sorry, Miss Seri.¡± She murmured. ¡°Shh. It¡¯s fine. You just had a nightmare. It¡¯s no problem. It¡¯s almost breakfast time, so how about you get ready for that? Then we¡¯ll have to travel the rest of the way to the capital.¡± I replied. She nodded and started getting up. When I tried to follow suit, I realized my legs were numb. Ahh, that tingly feeling! I sent a rush of psi through my body and felt it immediately dissipate. Perfect. I stood up and helped Rie fold up the blankets. I wish I could use my own blankets but mine do stand out a bit because of their materials. Just like most of my stuff. I should have tried to make more medieval or renaissance style looking goods. While we were eating breakfast, which was exceedingly simple like all the meals we¡¯ve had the last day or so, a group of the girls came over to where Rie, her brother and I were eating. I was quite surprised by this turn of events. This was the first time any of the kids had come close to me since that night. They sort of looked at each other like they were wondering who should speak up first before finally pushing the middle one forward. She looked shocked by this, but quickly regained herself. She nodded and then spoke. ¡°Umm, can we see your little pet?¡± So it¡¯s Coa that brought them over. Before I could say anything, Coa herself rose up from her perch and trilled at the group. ¡°¡°¡°Cute!¡±¡±¡± The girls all said together. I sighed and let Coa slither down my arm to my wrist like she had done for Rie before. The girls overcame the last of their fear and came closer together. ¡°This is Coa. She¡¯s never been crowded before, so try not to overwhelm her.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll be careful!¡± The spokesgirl said. They descended on Coa like hunting dogs that had just found a fox. I heard Coa purring, so I guess she was enjoying it. Leaving Coa to her new admirers and bearing in mind the loss of my left hand, I had to finish eating my porridge with just my right hand with the bowl sitting on my lap. I noticed Rie looking enviously and bitterly at the group with Coa. ¡°Rie, you can play with Coa later and you got to play with her a bunch yesterday. Don¡¯t be jealous.¡± For the first time since I met her, she gave me a dirty look. What a change from the girl that was sobbing into my chest less than an hour ago! After a few minutes the girls pulled back satisfied. Coa had relaxed so much from their attention that she had gone to sleep. The three girls curtsied to me and together said. ¡°Miss Seri, we¡¯re sorry for being scared of you. Thank you for saving us.¡± I waved them off. ¡°It¡¯s fine. I didn¡¯t save you to be thanked. It looks like we¡¯re getting ready to go, you three should hurry back to your bags too.¡± The girls turned and ran away. Even though they said that, they were still a bit uneasy around me. Rie on the other hand was grumbling quietly to herself. ¡°How can they say Miss Seri is scary! Miss Seri is amazing and kind! Those morons should just-¡± I bopped her lightly on the head to stop her. ¡°Rie, those girls have every right to be afraid of me. If anything is odd, it¡¯s that you were not scared of me at all.¡± She tilted her head. ¡°Why would I have been scared? All you did was kill evil people that deserved it. You should go around killing more of the evil people, especially all the evil adults!¡± I bopped her again. She held her head with an injured expression. ¡°Rie, killing people is not the answer to all problems. That¡¯s not to say it doesn¡¯t solve some of them, but there are times when other actions can provide much better results. It¡¯s one of the things you¡¯ll understand as you get older and see much more of the world. Sometimes you might have to accept working with someone you consider evil because the alternative is much worse.¡± I warned her. ¡°Have you really done that before, Miss Seri? Worked with an evil person?¡± Her eyes were wide as she asked. ¡°More times than I can count. Of course, sometimes those people tried to betray me after the work was done, which made it quite easy to just get rid of them. There are a lot of times though, where that wasn¡¯t an option. I¡¯m not going to kill an evil guy when he gives me valuable information that helps me save people, even if the only reason the guy did it was because it would destroy one of his competitors. I¡¯ve just accepted that this is just the way the world works and move on my way. As you probably already know, the world is not always a nice place.¡± I said. She nodded gloomily. ¡°Anyway, it looks like it¡¯s time to go. We can chat more on the way and you can even hold Coa the whole time.¡± She immediately brightened back up. Coa serves a good role just as a pacifier for kids. Rie took me up on my offer to chat immediately once she had the sleeping Coa in her arms and we were walking. ¡°Miss Seri, do you have a lover?¡± I stumbled. Lynn was laughing in my ear at my reaction. ¡°Why is that the first question you ask!? I thought you wanted to know about my adventures!¡± ¡°My parents met while being adventurers, so I was just curious if you had someone like that too.¡± She replied. I guess given those circumstances, it might seem like a relevant question to her. What should I say? I guess I¡¯ll use my experience with Carol. Seri¡¯s example is not fit for a child¡¯s consumption. ¡°I do have a lover, or maybe I should say I did have one. The relationship was a bit rocky.¡± ¡°What happened?¡± She asked. ¡°It¡¯s kind of a long story. I assume even saying that, that you still want me to tell you?¡± She nodded. ¡°Ok, I met her when we were both younger-¡± ¡°Miss Seri, your lover is another girl!?¡± Rie was shocked. I¡¯m just intensely gratified that she didn¡¯t shout it out for everyone to hear. ¡°Don¡¯t interrupt me please.¡± She blushed, embarrassed. ¡°Anyway, the both of us met each other when we were younger. Not quite when we were kids, but around when I was a bit older than you. We hit it off right away, but not in a romantic sense, just that of two really good friends. We did basically everything together. That changed rapidly when we got a bit older. We started getting awkward around each other. Not sure how we should interact, so we kind of stopped seeing each for a while. We still chatted occasionally, but never for very long.¡± ¡°You¡¯re still not lovers yet! Continue the story!¡± She demanded. ¡°It took a while, but we finally got over that phase. We had been stuck together and things happened that took our relationship from friends to something else. I don¡¯t think we were really lovers yet, sort of in between at that point. We started doing lover like things though. Going on dates and just spending a ton of time basically glued to each other. The problem came not long after that.¡± I was enjoying stringing this out. ¡°What problem!? Come on!¡± Rie was getting into it. ¡°I had to move away to another town. For the first time in years, we were going to be separated. We didn¡¯t know what to do about it and she couldn¡¯t come with me because she had a lot of responsibilities there, so we decided to end our relationship and say farewell.¡± I said. ¡°Is that how it ended?¡± Rie questioned. ¡°No, actually there¡¯s still more. A few years later, I came back to that town and we met again. We immediately restarted our relationship and tried to act like nothing had changed between us. Except a lot had changed. We were both extremely busy with different things and it left very little time for us to be with each other. We naturally started to draw apart from each other and eventually we had a big blow out argument and separated once again.¡± I continued. ¡°Is there still more? Please tell me there¡¯s more! You got back together again right!?¡± Rie requested. ¡°No, that¡¯s basically the end. Over time, we slowly started getting along again and doing some things together. We were older and more mature and life had moved on. We were no longer as obsessed with only our own interests. Just recently we were going to try getting back together, but an event that was out of our control happened that pulled me away from home. It¡¯s the main reason I¡¯m stuck wandering around right now.¡± I finished. ¡°That¡¯s sad. Do you miss her a lot?¡± Rie commented. ¡°Yep. I miss her a whole lot. I just luckily have a really good friend that is there for me right now or I might have done something very bad.¡± I said. ¡°Do you mean Coa?¡± Rie asked with a tilt of her head. ¡°Coa is there for me too, but no I¡¯m talking about someone else. She¡¯s my very best friend in the whole world.¡± I answered. Lynn tossed out a [Yep I am!] ¡°Can I meet her? She sounds interesting if she¡¯s your best friend!¡± Rie queried. ¡°Possibly? We¡¯ll have to wait and see.¡± I replied. ¡°Okay. Tell me about some of your adventures now!¡± Rie demanded. ¡°Fine. Let¡¯s see, what kind of adventures do you want me to share? I¡¯ve been on way too many so some kind of specification would be good. Do you want to hear an action filled story or maybe one about me exploring a mysterious place or possibly something else?¡± I questioned. ¡°Lots of action and with treasure at the end!¡± Rie answered. ¡°Ok. I think I have a good story in mind then. I was traveling by ship. I needed to get to a certain place and the only way to get there was by using that particular travel method. Everything was going fine, but on the fifth day at sea a group of pirates attacked the ship. The ship was well protected but the group of pirates were too large and they eventually overcame the ship¡¯s escorts and captured the ship and all passengers, myself included.¡± I said. ¡°But you¡¯re so strong! How could pirates capture you!?¡± Rie asked. ¡°At the time I was travelling pretty lightly armed and without a lot of my gear due to regulations that the ship had, so I couldn¡¯t put up an adequate fight. To be honest, rather than fighting, I gave up straight away. My identity I was using was fake and I was travelling while disguised as a rich merchant. This was good since they underestimated me, plus they killed all the actual soldiers and guards on board the ship right away. Had they realized my true identity, I would have been fighting with a very large handicap. ¡°So in the end, the other passengers and I were taken aboard the pirate ships and locked up to be transported to their base. Their base was hidden inside a small island cave. The cave complex was large so there was enough space in there for all their ships and more than enough room for all of them and their booty to be stored. We were all moved to the prison area of the caves and then left there under watch by a few guards. Once everything was settled, I started planning out my escape. ¡°My escape plan was pretty simple. First, I would have to escape the cell I was residing in. That wasn¡¯t too difficult. When one of the guards brought me food, I influenced him to not notice me leaving the room beside him. The pirates had gotten into the routine of only bringing one nutritious meal a day so I knew once I was given food, I would have about a day of time to work with. The pirates had slacked off and didn¡¯t even bother to put psi negating collars on the prisoners or their own guards. This was a sign that my fake identity documentation were elaborate and were holding up well. They said I was only a middling practitioner of psi after all and I had been keeping my psi tightly bound and buried so it was undetectable. Once I was out of the cell, I started my reconnaissance. I had scoped the place out on the way to prison area, but as is usually the case, the prison was cut off from any sensitive or important areas. After all, the last thing you want is your prisoners to be able to easily arm themselves in the case of a breakout. ¡°With a combination of sneaking and psi use to keep myself hidden. I started moving around the base freely. The first thing I did was taking note of where the pirates were congregated. Quite a number of them were in the dock area checking over their ships and some were in their rooms sleeping. Some were exercising and training. I couldn¡¯t find the pirate leader or some of the other key personnel so I assume they were in the more secure section of the base that I couldn¡¯t get into. That would be a problem I would have to find a solution for. The other thing I checked on was how often some of the groups were required to check-in. The prison guards had to check in every hour, while some of the other pirates checked-in every few hours with progress reports. The only exceptions to this were the pirates training, eating, or sleeping.¡± I described. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. ¡°Miss Seri, were you really so easily moving around a pirate base? How did you do all that without being seen?¡± Rie exclaimed. ¡°For one, I¡¯m very, very good at sneaking around. For two, the pirates weren¡¯t taking adequate precautions for psi use. Most of the pirates were psi users themselves so some kind of psi negation field would negatively affect them as well.¡± ¡°Is this power that common then?¡± Rie interrupted to ask. ¡°I thought it was special¡­¡± ¡±Where I¡¯m from, it is a common ability. That doesn¡¯t seem to be the case in this area though. You¡¯re the only one I¡¯ve seen. Let¡¯s continue with the story. As is usually the case, they were pretty overconfident that their security was top-notch even with that demerit. They were right, they were a lot of secure areas that would have dissuaded a lot of other more normal intruders, but I was not a normal intruder by any means. With my explorations complete, I had arrived at a workable plan. I waited for the work shift to change and then snuck into the sleeping quarters for the pirates. I silently killed each and every one of the sleeping pirates. I knew that no one would be coming to these quarters for another six to eight hours when the new shift ended. With these fifty pirates dead, I had eliminated about a quarter of my enemies in one fell swoop. I had also acquired a number of keys that would get me into some of the areas that had been inaccessible before. I immediately made my way into those areas. I was looking for a certain, very special room.¡± ¡°What kind of place were you looking for, Miss Seri? Where the weapons were kept?¡± Rie asked. ¡°I had actually already located that place, but I didn¡¯t really need a weapon and the security there was a lot tougher than anywhere else. If I tried to break in there I would have alerted the whole base. No, I was looking for the room that was most rich in magical energy. Most pirates had a room like that they would use for a lot of reasons. Powering up their magic and tools as it were. After that I had to look for the special guard station. Once I located both and figured out the best route to take between them, I went to the magic room and performed some very special sabotage. I set up a certain problem that would completely destroy the magic in that room in a certain amount of time. I had to give it time rather than doing it right away, because a very normal configuration for bases like this was to have some kind of detection spell in place that would notice if the magic ended and put the base into a state of emergency. ¡°Once my sabotage was prepared, I rushed through the base back to the guard station and infiltrated it using one of the keys I had collected. Once inside I neutralized all the guards in there and started sabotaging that room as well. I disabled all the special security magics that were controlled from that room and changed how some of the spells worked. When the magic ended, the base would not be going into alert, but would instead everything would unlock and open for me. Once everything was prepared there, I returned to the dock area. I snuck into one of the larger ships and eliminated all the pirates in there. I would need one of the ships to transport me and the other prisoners away once the pirates were taken care of. I couldn¡¯t let the pirates destroy their ships once the action started. ¡°After that was done, I returned to the prison area to be ready for the show. I made it just in time as the magic ended and all the magic lights and everything went off. I quickly eliminated the group of pirates guarding the other prisoners. Afterwards I let the prisoners out and gave them the weapons the pirates had been carrying. I told the prisoners to wait here and that they would have to protect themselves. They made a barricade out of some of the cell doors that I happily tore out for them. With the prisoners taken care of the best that I could, I returned to the docks and eliminated all the pirates in all the ships. That didn¡¯t take very long. It seemed like some of the pirates had left the ships when the magic was cancelled, possibly to find out what had gone wrong. That was fine with me. I then went to the weapon room and gathered some equipment I would be needing. ¡°Honestly, the rest of the escape was pretty boring. I mopped up the rest of the pirates including their leaders easily now that all the preparations had been completed successfully. I came back to the prisoners, and we boarded one of the ships and fled from the pirate base. Once we were back at sea, we were able to head to our original destination. Along the way we met up with some ships from our destination that had been searching for the lost ship and they escorted us the rest of the way. That¡¯s how that adventure concluded.¡± I finished with a satisfied nod. ¡°Wait! Miss Seri, you didn¡¯t mention any treasure!¡± Rie complained. ¡°Oh right. So once the pirates were defeated, I went to their treasure room with some of the prisoners. We planned on emptying it and taking it all with us. To be fair a lot of what was in there was originally stolen from the ship we had been on anyway. There was a lot of stuff in there that wasn¡¯t though. I found something very amazing in there. Something that told me that the pirates had raided some kingdom¡¯s ships. It was a great treasure. I took it of course. I considered it my reward for saving people. If whoever lost it wanted it back, then they¡¯d have to find out I had it first, which to be frank was very unlikely.¡± I stated. ¡°But what was it? You didn¡¯t mention what it was that you found!¡± Rie was glaring at me. I laughed and then pointed to my fancy choker. Then I rolled up my sleeve of my shirt and showed her the bracer too. I didn¡¯t show her the thigh piece since that would involve raising my skirt. ¡°Just jewelry? I expected something better than that from what you said.¡± Rie grumbled. I bent down and whispered in her. ¡°That¡¯s only because I haven¡¯t told you what they are. They are very, very special magical charms. The kind of charms that royalty might wear.¡± Rie¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°That powerful!?¡± ¡°Yep, that powerful. They help me out a great deal. You have to keep them a secret, alright?¡± Well, not like it would matter if she told anyone. She thinks they¡¯re magical when they¡¯re psi based instead. If people learn they¡¯re magical that might cause people to try to ¡®dispel¡¯ the effect which shouldn¡¯t have any effect on them. I wasn¡¯t totally sure about that, but it was a good hypothesis for now based on what I¡¯ve observed. I mean it¡¯s tech powered by psi, so unless they can damage the tech, it¡¯s pretty damn unlikely to do anything. The materials on the equipment are actually even tougher than the shield it provides. I¡¯ve fired plasma shots at these things without causing a single speck of damage. ¡°I promise.¡± Rie answered solemnly. ¡°Good girl. That story took a lot longer than I expected. We¡¯re almost there.¡± I said. I finally took note of the farmland we were passing by. There were orchards as well. The number of people working those gigantic farms was impressive. I saw that many of the men and women that were out there had collars like I had seen on the slaves back in Knightvalley. The collars were mainly white marked ones though there were some green ones mixed in too. If I remember right, whites were people that had to work to pay off their taxes and greens were people that had committed too many smaller crimes without reforming. ¡°Are you satisfied with that story? I don¡¯t think I have time to tell another.¡± I asked Rie. ¡°Yeah, I think so. Thanks, Miss Seri.¡± Rie was eying the city walls apprehensively. I wasn¡¯t sure what to tell her to make her feel better. I was still unsure about offering to take her with me so I didn¡¯t want to say that to her. Right now I think she would jump at it, but I think she should at least try going to the school too. It might be good for her and she might discover something she actually wants to do in life, rather than following around a horrible monster like myself. I shook my head at that thought. I can¡¯t keep feeling guilty about killing those bandits. They killed people, so it¡¯s just karmic punishment that they faced the same fate. At least that was what I was telling myself. To get my mind off that topic, I directed a wave at one of the knights that was nearby and decided to ask about something I had noticed about the city design. The male knight rode closer and spoke. ¡°Was something amiss, Lady Seri?¡± ¡°I had a question about the city.¡± I pointed to a section of the city wall where a river could be seen flowing out and into the farmland. ¡°Does a river run through the city or something?¡± ¡°That is not the case. Inside that section of the city is the original farmland that provided for the population. There is a magic tree that generates water planted there and the water is used to irrigate the fields.¡± He explained. ¡°So then if the farmland is in there behind the walls, why all the farmland and houses outside?¡± I asked. ¡°The farmland in there was only enough for the original population of the capital at the time of the Founder. As the population expanded along with the city, it became unable to support the city, so the land around the city was also turned into farmland. Even this amount of farmland wouldn¡¯t be enough if it wasn¡¯t for the large number of druids that work for the Empire.¡± He said. ¡°I understand. Thanks for explanation. Then the rest of the city with it¡¯s wide levels are for everything else?¡± I was examining the city¡¯s design closely. It looked like the city had three separate levels. ¡°The first district is for commoners and where most of the businesses in the capital operate. Most of the larger businesses are on the other side of the city near the port to take advantage of the goods flowing in. The second district is for nobles and the richer members of the Empire. The training facilities for the various orders are also in that district. The Imperial Library is located in the second district as well. The last district is where the palace and all the buildings relating to the governing of the Empire are located.¡± He described. ¡°Thanks. That was very helpful. Oh! I just remembered something. When are the Founding Anniversary festivities going to start?¡± I questioned. ¡°They will begin the day after tomorrow and then last for a full month following.¡± He answered. ¡°Thanks once again.¡± I turned my focus back to Rie who was still looking at the city silently. The problem is that while her expression was blank, she was starting to squeeze Coa. Coa was struggling to escape her grasp, but Rie wasn¡¯t paying attention. ¡°Rie, stop! You¡¯re hurting her.¡± ¡°Huh? Oh! Sorry Coa! I didn¡¯t mean to hurt you!¡± She relaxed her grip and start petting Coa in apology. ¡°Rie, are you that worried about going to the academy?¡± She dipped her head in response and didn¡¯t answer. ¡°Is there anything you¡¯re particularly worried about? I can guess that it¡¯s going to be something all new for you, but is there something else?¡± I was respecting her to not just try to look in her head for the answers. ¡°...don¡¯t want¡­¡± She mumbled, but that was all I could hear of what she had said. ¡°Are we going to do this again? I will not force you, but I will listen and offer advice if you¡¯re troubled about something.¡± I told her. She shook her head and didn¡¯t speak again. As we neared the city walls, I could hear the hustle and bustle. It was definitely a loud and lively city as one would expect from a city of this size. When we got to the city gate, the escort knights spoke to the guards and we got passed through the gate with only a simple check. The gate was much more elaborate than I had expected. There was a large lion motifs around it and two large banners on either side with the same coat of arms I had seen back in the fortress. That of a lion standing atop a dragon. The knights were apparently going to escort us until the kids reached their destination. Then they would return to other duties. One of the female knights, Tilly, was offering to help me find an inn once that was concluded. I decided to accept the offer for now. I was planning to look for another inn afterwards. I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted the empire to know exactly what inn I was staying at. I mean I¡¯m sure they¡¯ll find it out later anyway, but I wasn¡¯t going to trust any inn that they directly took me to. The knights led us to the first inner wall and we passed through that security check as simply as the previous one. Apparently the academy the kids were going to was considerably famous. A large part of that fame was due to the wealth and connections they had, but an even larger part was because they accepted and brought in orphans as charitable cases. Apparently once every half dozen years or so, they¡¯d gather together a group of orphans and give them the finest education available. The orphans could then go on to do anything they wanted after graduation. Some became adventurers, but most ended up in positions working for the guilds, or possibly some of the nobles would hire them. When we finally got near the academy, I was quite impressed by the size. This school might be as large as the high school I went to back on Earth that had a few thousand students! The building designs looked much more like those of a fancy mansion rather than what might belong to a school. It even had a decently high wall running around it and guards at the elaborate metal gate. As we got to the close to the gate, I felt a tug from my side. Rie was there with her head down. She looked up with tears in her eyes and that were beginning to stream down her cheeks. ¡°I want to stay with you! I don¡¯t want you to go!¡± She whispered. She stepped forward and hugged me. I felt my heart ache as I looked down at her. To be honest, I really didn¡¯t want to leave her either. I felt a connection with her for some reason. Maybe it was just because she was the first psi user I had met here, but there was something about her that told me that she should be by my side. Possibly it was just my intuition popping up, but it was there all the same. I was afraid though. Could I really expose this child to the life I led? Even if she was willing to come with me, even if I was willing to accept exposing her to danger, could I let her witness how truly horrible of a person I can be? Plus once I leave the world, there¡¯s all those other horrors out there. Witnessing those bandits be dismembered was really only the tip of the iceberg of the kinds of things she might experience. Without even realizing it, I had come to a decision. It was just plainly obvious now that I thought about it. This wasn¡¯t a hard call at all. First, I needed to ask her some questions to see just how serious she was about this desire. ¡°Rie, would you come with me if it meant separating and possibly never seeing your brother again?¡± She was stunned by my question. She stepped back from embracing me. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t want to leave Brother either. Can¡¯t Miss Seri take both of us with you?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure. You already heard today from my story how dangerous adventures I go on can be. Despite how I breezed over it, that was an extremely dangerous situation. Had I made a single error at any point, I would have gotten killed. Taking care of two kids at all time would not be easy. I think I might be able to handle one, but even with how good I am, I¡¯m not positive I could protect two people all the time. There¡¯s one other element to this too. Even now, your brother still doesn¡¯t trust me. That hasn¡¯t changed one bit. If he came with me with that attitude, I can only see it causing problems.¡± I explained. Rie looked even more depressed than she did a moment ago. She couldn¡¯t find any words to say to me. She lowered her head and I could hear her starting to cry anew. I put my hand under her chin and lifted her head so she was looking me in the eye. With my other hand I wiped her tears away. ¡°Rie, don¡¯t be sad alright? I¡¯m going to make a very important vow with you, so I need you to listen.¡± She nods in response to my serious tone. ¡°I¡¯m going to be in the capital for one month. I will come back before I leave and check up on you and how your time here is going. If at that time, you still wish to come with me, then I will accept both you and your brother, if he wishes to come. Even despite my own misgivings over this, I will do this for you. If you decide at that time, that you do not want to come with me and would rather stay here at school, then that is also your choice to make.¡± She sniffled but gave me a determined look. ¡°Okay, I can do that! I can try this out for one month, Miss Seri. I guarantee that even after a month that I still will want to go with you! My feelings won¡¯t change at all!¡± She quieted down before continuing. ¡°I want to go on adventures like my parents. My dad always looked so happy when he told me his stories. My mom would scold him, but she always was happy hearing him tell them too. Miss Seri as well. When you were telling me that story, you had a smile on your face. I want to have my own stories too. I want happy stories that I can tell someone else with a smile.¡± I patted her head. ¡°I see. That¡¯s a really marvelous goal, Rie.¡± I saw the gates to the academy open and a few men and women came out. They were wearing very nice clothing, so they were probably administrators or maybe instructors. Just for good measure, I tossed out a mental link to them. I didn¡¯t catch a single sinister thought about the kids. They were glad the kids had arrived safe and sound. They were dismayed when they heard about the bandit abduction and their shock was entirely genuine. I had had a small suspicion that the school might have set it up, but if they did then these people at least had no knowledge of it. The kids were starting to be ushered to come inside. Rie and her brother were the only two that weren¡¯t immediately following along. ¡°Rie, it¡¯s time to say farewell for now.¡± Rie simply looked at me with tears appearing in her eyes once again. She gave me back Coa who returned to her customary spot. Coa chirped at Rie conveying for her to stay safe. ¡°Miss Seri, please absolutely come in a month okay? Please!¡± She pleaded quietly. ¡°Don¡¯t worry Rie, I¡¯ll keep my vow no matter what might happen. You can count on it.¡± I assured her. Her brother stepped up to her. ¡°Come on Rie, we can¡¯t hold up everything anymore. Look, the people with the academy aren¡¯t happy that we¡¯re just standing here.¡± He took her hand and led her away and into the school. Rie looked back at me and waved. I returned the wave and simply watched as the gates to the academy closed behind her and her brother. I stood there for a few minutes afterwards. I had to fight with my desire to immediately trespass and take her back. I couldn¡¯t do that though. Rie should have the chance to at least experience school first. It was always possible she might end up enjoying it after all. Kids don¡¯t usually enjoy learning though. I couldn¡¯t help myself as I felt myself smile in response to that thought. Well, it was time to get back to work. I¡¯ve got a criminal organization I need to locate and possibly deal with in some way. Then there¡¯s also a library to visit so I can research about this world. Last but not least, there¡¯s a tower I want to climb. I took a quick glance at the impressive tower that soared up into the sky. Then in a month, there was now an important promise that needed to be kept. I think this was going to turn out to be an exciting month. With my thoughts now in order, I signaled for Tilly to show me to that inn. Chapter 38 Chapter 38 ¡°Sorry to hear that. Thanks for the help though, I¡¯ll try your suggestion.¡± I replied before turning and leaving the building. I sighed. That makes seven inns now with no vacancies. I underestimated this challenge. Of course there¡¯s not going to be any vacancies when there¡¯s a giant festival starting in a few days! The city is filled with merchants and every citizen of the empire that could take the time to travel here to attend. It¡¯s a wonder that the inn I got a room at had an open space, even if I did only get it because of Tilly¡¯s introduction. It looks like I¡¯m stuck with that as my only option. I¡¯m still a bit suspicious that that inn owner keeps aside a few rooms for acquaintances in need. Regardless, Tilly had left immediately after providing me with the needed introduction, saying something about resuming her duties at the cathedral. Despite my suspicions, I don¡¯t really have a choice, I don¡¯t feel like sleeping outside. It was already evening, and I¡¯ve definitely wasted enough time. I doubt there will actually be a room at the the inn the people at this one suggested I try next. I¡¯d followed the trail of suggestions this far and gotten nowhere. The only good thing about this spent time is that I got a decent idea of the layout of the city now. I had seen the ¡®Grand Cathedral¡¯ that Tilly mentioned, and it was definitely grand enough. It reminded me of an image I saw once of the Notre Dame cathedral. I was a bit surprised that it was in the commoner and business level of the city, rather than in the area for the upper levels of society. I wonder what that says about how the church and religion is seen in this society? The other bonus is that I know where the slums are too. Odds are good that that will be where I¡¯ll find some information about that organization. Criminals love slums and criminals usually know each other. I think it¡¯s also the best place to start looking for some kind of information broker. Don¡¯t know why, but information brokers usually love those kind of places too. The seedier the better for some reason. The biggest issue about all this is what Huvreck said about the organization eliminating people and worried that even giving me the name would get him knocked off. If they¡¯re on that much of a hair trigger then even just dropping the name should get them looking at me. I don¡¯t think any people they send at me, though, will have any affiliation with their organization. It will be people from outside with little to no details about who hired them. I¡¯m not after fighting them or anything. I don¡¯t really care what they¡¯re doing here in the empire. It¡¯s not any of my business. I just need to acquire that information from them about their dealings with the dark dwarves and the dwarves¡¯ location. If that means I have to make some kind of deal with them to get them to give me that information, as long as said deal doesn¡¯t involve giving up my tech or revealing my abilities, then I¡¯ll probably accept it. Like I told Rie earlier, sometimes you just have to work with evil because it¡¯s the only option available. So how do I get a secretive group to actually look into contacting me for something other than getting rid of me? One of the answers would be to make myself look as much like a potential worthwhile recruit as possible. The problem that arises from that is that I have not the slightest idea what kind of recruits they would be looking for. All Huvreck said was that they¡¯re involved in all levels of society. I, in my persona as a wanderer, have no affiliations whatsoever except as a registered adventurer which could be seen as either a plus or minus. My personal strength would have been seen as weak until this event with the bandits happened. Now that that¡¯s out there that changes greatly. I¡¯ll have people looking at me for that for sure. I am curious about what they even do with this setting they have in place? Control policies? Make ridiculous amounts of money? Pressure other nations? What do they get from being in the shadows here in the empire? What is their goal? Do they even have a goal beyond having the empire marching to their beat? None of these questions help me any, but if I knew the answers to some of them I might be able to figure out a good way to get in contact with the group. I think the best option for now is to look for the group, but do so in a way that makes it clear that I¡¯m interested in making some kind of business arrangement with them. I believe that should limit at least some of the hostility that will appear towards me, though I guess it depends on how whoever runs the show here wants to see it. If whoever is in charge decides against me then nothing I do will probably change their minds. I hate having to let my opponents make a move. I might get the first move by putting the word out, but after that it¡¯s entirely up to them to choose their response. As much as I wanted to go immediately and start working on that, I felt like there was something much more imperative that I had to do tonight. I needed to have a certain discussion with Lynn. I haven¡¯t had time to chat with her for a few days because of the kids and there was questions I really needed answered. I¡¯ll start on everything tomorrow, hopefully. Maybe I¡¯ll even go to the Adventurers¡¯ Guild and see if there is information recorded about the dungeon. I made my way back to the inn. I continued my examination of the city as I did so. It was marvelously clean. I had seen workers going around picking up garbage off and on as I wandered today. Whether that was because of the big anniversary event starting or if it was normal I couldn¡¯t say. From how it looked though, I think it was a regular routine. There was even dumpsters around for people to throw trash into. The city was marvelously modern in some ways. That fact made me wonder why the other cities or towns don¡¯t follow suit. I do have to admit that Knightvalley wasn¡¯t that bad, but that town where I met Myura and Fiona wasn¡¯t that good either. Well, it was still better than that first town I visited over in the kingdom. Was there a reason for it? Maybe something to do with expenses that they can only justify it for the capital? Or maybe it has something to do with the founder. Do they keep this capital perfect like this as some kind of memorial to him? I mean the place is called Tevalon¡¯s Rest. That sounds more like the site of a tomb than as a name for a capital city. While I let my mind drift along with these idle thoughts I arrived at the inn and sat down to a mostly quiet supper. The inn had a comfortable atmosphere and the other guests were all more interested in talking about the events coming soon than in bothering a person eating alone. One event that sounded kind of interesting was that there was going to be a ¡®Midnight Mass¡¯ held in the cathedral on the eve of the anniversary tomorrow night. It was going to be notable because a new Archbishop would be the one conducting it. I wonder if I can go to that? Probably not, but I am interested in how this church behaves and listening to some sermon would give me some decent intel. Of course, I could just research it once I get in the library, so it¡¯s not a real issue. Other than that particular piece of news, the rest of the conversations were mostly about the tournaments in the colosseum. Some of the other guests were making friendly wagers between themselves on who would win what. I wasn¡¯t interested in that at all. There was no way I¡¯d bother entering one of those competitions and watching people fight is boring. Sure, it might be a valuable experience in giving me more of an idea of capabilities of individuals in this world, but I still find it hard to motivate myself to consider going. I guess I could try to get to the magic user competition at least. That would be the most potentially beneficial one to watch. Once I had finished eating and listening to the gossip, I retired to my room. It was about on the level of quality of the one I had in Knightvalley, so it probably was a somewhat upper middle class room? Something like that anyway. Overall, it meant that if I was truly stuck with this for the next month, at least it was a cozy room. I got ready for bed and made sure my pack stayed near my reach. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. With Rie¡¯s presence warning me of the possible existence of other psi users, I took my nightly preparations much more seriously. I slowly and methodically set up my psi like a multilayered net barrier that started just outside the door to my room and then covered my room. If anyone came up to my room and opened the door, I would get tugged out of sleep immediately. The outermost layer was especially designed and woven in such a way that another psi-user would have immense difficulty detecting it. They would have to be on my level or beyond to do so. The inner layers of the barrier were more for capture purposes, like that of a spider web. My hapless prey will intrude on my room and get caught and will only be able to struggle helplessly. I¡¯ll be free to interrogate them about why they visited me. With that accomplished, I set up a mental alarm to wake me up at about seven in the morning. The other bonus of setting up my net was that it let me analyze the whole room for any kind of magical sources. The only one I felt was the one on the lamp. It felt very similar to the other lamps I had encountered, so I was quite sure it wasn¡¯t some kind of surveillance magic. I was actually pretty impressed with my progress at determining the type of magic through my psi. If I advanced that further, I¡¯d have a very helpful tool against mages. I sighed. It had taken me a while, but I was now ready for bed. Not like I was going to bed yet though. ¡°Lynn, we need to talk.¡± I whispered. My serious tone was dampened by how quiet I was. ¡°Yes, Mistress?¡± Lynn¡¯s reply was instant as usual. ¡°Lynn, how much of me is still me?¡± I asked simply. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but what Mistress?¡± Lynn answered, sounding puzzled. ¡°How much of me is Seri and how much of me is still Aaron? It feels like my Aaron self is slipping away and that I¡¯m more Seri now. I still have all my memories as Aaron, but I just don¡¯t know. I feel like recently I keep doing things that are out of place for me, but I¡¯m already doing it before I am even conscious of it. Like the event with the bandits. I was so filled with rage that there was no way I could have stopped myself from carrying out that massacre. Not that I regret saving kids or anything, but I¡¯m disgusted at how vicious I was. I was a monster.¡± I lamented. ¡°Mistress has always had a soft spot for kids. As for how you feel like you¡¯re less ¡®Aaron¡¯ and more ¡®Seri¡¯, I think Mistress is over thinking that distinction.¡± Lynn stated. ¡°What do you mean, Lynn? I definitely feel like something is wrong with how I¡¯m behaving lately!¡± I complained. ¡°Mistress, from my point of view, even from the time we landed on this planet, your behavior has been one hundred percent aligned with how Mistress would normally act, with no deviations other than your episode back on the ship two weeks ago. To be honest, even that episode wasn¡¯t too far out of the norm. There are times when Mistress has broken down like that. The deviation was due to the bizarre story you told me, not the act itself.¡± Lynn explained. ¡°So what does that mean? Everything I¡¯ve done is exactly like Seri would have done? I clearly felt an uncontrollable rage that felt totally unreal when I heard about the kids though!¡± I replied. ¡°Mistress, do you want to hear my theory? I have been pondering this after Mistress told me her story and other life.¡± Lynn said. ¡°What is your theory? Did you come up with some kind of explanation for everything that happened? Like why I¡¯m here on this world?¡± I asked. ¡°On that front, I am in the dark as much as you are Mistress. My theory relates to who Mistress and Aaron are.¡± She clarified. ¡°And?¡± I prompted her as she paused. ¡°I just want to restate that this is just a theory and I have no way of knowing how right or wrong I am. On the face of it, I think this theory is completely preposterous, yet at the same time I feel like maybe it just might be correct.¡± She said. ¡°Will you just tell me already?¡± I told her, exasperated. ¡°Understood.¡± She spoke hesitantly. ¡°I believe that ¡®Seri¡¯ and ¡®Aaron¡¯ are two parts of the same whole. It is possible that the game in your reality was merely based on some freak link into our reality. So when you made a ¡®character¡¯ as you put it, you instinctively made your character like your other self that lived in that reality. Like I previously stated, even from the start, without ¡®Seri¡¯s memories¡¯ to influence you in any way, you were still acting precisely like how I would have expected my Mistress to behave.¡± Lynn described. I was boggled by the idea she was suggesting, but parallel realities no longer seemed all that crazy. Hell, the idea that all our video games might have been based on parallel realities could even be true! ¡°So what, you think that I somehow switched with ¡®Seri¡¯ and that she might be in my body? Also that doesn¡¯t at all explain why I felt such fury a few days ago.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know about that. I think that both ¡®Seri¡¯ and ¡®Aaron¡¯ are in there, in that body. Right now the ¡®Aaron¡¯ personality is dominant, but again like I said and it bears repeating, you still act like how ¡®Seri¡¯ would. As for the overreaction to kids being at risk, I think that is explained by more of ¡®Seri¡¯ coming out at that particular time. While you are two parts of the same whole, you both lived different lives. My Mistress has a large soft spot for children given her own past. I believe her personality temporarily overrode your own control and influenced you enough to act how she would given the proper stimulus.¡± Lynn explained. ¡°If I fully understood your theory, Seri and I are merging together. Yet at the same time, we¡¯re similar enough that that isn¡¯t causing any drastic changes, outside of some different reactions to certain things. So in conclusion, I am Seri and Seri is also Aaron?¡± I sighed ¡°That just sounds so crazy, Lynn. I don¡¯t know if I can agree with that theory.¡± ¡°To be fair, I don¡¯t know if I even agree with it! It sounds so patently ridiculous to me. I can¡¯t believe I would even suggest such a notion! It¡¯s just not logical at all! This world seems completely illogical though. I do for sure believe that ¡®Aaron¡¯ and ¡®Seri¡¯ are much closer to being the same individual than different ones.¡± Lynn replied. ¡°Your theory does make me feel better at least. Even if it does sound like nonsense. I had been over thinking the difference between Seri and myself, so it¡¯s good to hear that we¡¯re not that unalike. I¡¯m still worried about some of the those memories that separate our very different lives. Specifically the ones from Seri¡¯s childhood.¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t want Mistress to remember those either. They were thoroughly repressed by the professionals that helped Mistress though, so it will be alright. Don¡¯t worry.¡± Lynn assured. ¡°That doesn¡¯t really comfort me, Lynn. That just makes me even more afraid! If they¡¯ve been so repressed, I fear the backlash will be insane if they do come out!¡± I complained. ¡°If it does occur, then I¡¯ll immediately fly and pick you up, and bring you back to the ship. Mistress will be in a familiar setting and I¡¯ll be by your side the whole time. That has always successfully calmed you down in the past. If the absolute worst case comes to past, the ship carries the necessary drugs to medicate you. Mistress will descend into a peaceful and dreamless sleep for about a week.¡± Lynn said. ¡°I really, really hope that you never need to medicate me like that.¡± I stated. ¡°I don¡¯t want to do that either if I can help it, Mistress. Like I said, it¡¯s only for the absolute worst case where you¡¯ve lost complete control of your psi. There was the possibility of myself being required to use it two weeks ago, but you were actually still in good control despite the damage you were wreaking on your room. You didn¡¯t damage anything vital, after all. I¡¯m not worried about the possibility of it occurring. It hasn¡¯t happened since the time of your rehabilitation.¡± Lynn clarified. ¡°I suppose I¡¯ll do my best to not remember.¡± I said sarcastically. ¡°That would definitely be the ideal scenario, Mistress.¡± Lynn replied. I took my pillow out my pack. With my net set up, there was no worries of it being seen and replaced the inn pillow with it. ¡°Alright Lynn, good night. I¡¯ll talk to you more tomorrow. I think I¡¯ll try to research the dungeon at the guild, so we might get lucky and there will be some written notes about it.¡± ¡°That would be wonderful, Mistress. Deciphering the written language is only a step away from completion.¡± Lynn answered. ¡°Rest well Mistress.¡± I smiled absentmindedly and went to sleep. Chapter 39 Chapter 39 Immediately after awakening, I carefully deconstructed my psi nets. Once that was done, I sat up and swung to the edge of the bed. ¡°Good morning, Coa.¡± I patted the little dragon that was watching me from where she lay on the other pillow with half lidded eyes. It looked like she was still sleepy. I¡¯m sure that will change quickly once she smells food. ¡°Mistress, I was distracted by you going to bed, but why are you going to look up information about the dungeon? I don¡¯t believe another dungeon expedition was part of your plans.¡± Lynn inquired. I almost stumbled upon getting out of bed because of Lynn¡¯s unexpected voice. ¡°Well, you know, it¡¯s there, Lynn.¡± I replied, as if this simple fact explained everything. ¡°Yes, I know ¡®it¡¯s there¡¯, Mistress. That still doesn¡¯t answer anything! Mistress wouldn¡¯t be intending to waste time in another dungeon right? I mean, that would just be a silly notion wouldn¡¯t it? Therefore it can¡¯t be correct, right?¡± Lynn asked with an edge present in her voice. ¡°Yes Lynn, I do want to go to the dungeon, even if it¡¯s a distraction from my goals. That tower is mocking me. Never conquered they say? No one has ever seen the top? To that I say, bring it on! I welcome the challenge it presents. Maybe I won¡¯t be able to do so alone and maybe it will be pointlessly dangerous, but even so, I still want to explore it!¡± I argued. ¡°Mistress.¡± Lynn spoke with a whisper. ¡°I don¡¯t want you to go in there. If it works like that other dungeon, I¡¯ll lose contact with you once you¡¯re inside. That greatly worries me. What if something occurs? I won¡¯t even know about it until it¡¯s too late! I can¡¯t accept you taking those kind of risks! Why can¡¯t we just stick to the mission and focus on that organization. That will already be risky, but at least I¡¯ll be able to monitor and respond with sending aid in case of an emergency.¡± ¡°Lynn, it won¡¯t be the first time we¡¯ve been out of contact. We¡¯ve been separated for months in the past without any issue, so I don¡¯t see why you would be so uneasy about possibly a few hours. If it really does seem overly dangerous I¡¯ll immediately abort my exploration and return.¡± I assured her. ¡°There is even a possibility that I won¡¯t bother entering. It depends on what the guild or other adventurers can tell me about the dungeon.¡± ¡°It¡¯s different, Mistress! This world is odd. It¡¯s just too illogical in a number of ways. There is too much that belies understanding which creates an inability for me to calculate the threat value of any target! Before when we were separated, I could run my simulation to see how dangerous the missions should be. Anywhere in the galaxy we had been before, and even ones we hadn¡¯t, I could determine even unlikely factors ahead of time. I can¡¯t do that here! I don¡¯t have all the necessary data! How do I classify ¡®magic¡¯!? Should I consider it as dangerous as certain psi techniques? More or less dangerous? Can magic cause effects that tamper permanently with the brain? Based on what you told me about that forest dungeon, the mist in that dungeon could interfere with your senses, and that alone is terrifying enough! What about all the races of this world? Is it only appearance and longevity that sets them apart or is there more? Are their nations in this world even more advanced technologically? Can magical enchantment substitute entirely for technology? It seems to do so, what with the lights and that bathroom back at that fancy inn!¡± Lynn spouted. I let out a groan and settled back on the edge of the bed. I guess Lynn had finally reached her boiling point. It had probably been filling up since my breakdown and the knowledge that I planned to go into the dungeon was the tipping point. I scooped up Coa and began petting her as I listened to Lynn¡¯s rant. I¡¯ll let her get this out of her system. ¡°And another thing! That Rie girl! Why did Mistress let her leave when you should keep an eye on her!? She could create countless issues and become a potential catastrophe for us! Mistress should have kept her by your side at all costs. So what if she had a brother that was her only family, she clearly wanted to be with you. Now she¡¯s with her brother and you said she can tell him about what she learned. The brother is in no way going to keep that secret if he feels like it would keep his sister away from you. As Mistress herself noted, the brother did not trust or like Rie¡¯s attachment to you. Also, what was with that school! It was way too suspicious! It was gathering orphans with ¡®blessings¡¯, doesn¡¯t that just set off warning bells!?¡± Lynn ranted. I think she¡¯s going a bit far afield now. ¡°Lynn-¡± I tried to interject. ¡°I¡¯m worried about Mistress more than ever! What would I do if something happened to you!? And now you want to go to another stupid dungeon with completely unknown dangers!? Mistress is always like this! You take dumb risks whenever you find something interesting! You let down your guard too easily around people!¡± Lynn started crying. ¡°You had a breakdown just two weeks ago and you tried to kill yourself! I would have lost you if not for my backup programming! I¡¯ve been keeping silent about this, but no longer! Please Mistress, don¡¯t give me more causes to be afraid for your safety.¡± Lynn pleaded. ¡°I apologize Lynn for not taking your feelings into account. I can¡¯t promise you that I won¡¯t take stupid actions and I understand that insisting on visiting the dungeon is idiotic. I know you care about me and want me to stay safe, but I don¡¯t want that kind of sheltered and coddled life. I might be stuck on this world for now, but I¡¯m still an explorer and mercenary first and foremost. I realize that I could lose my life and that horribly frightens me. It scares me more than anything else because I absolutely do not want to die on this planet. I want to find a way to return home to the other people I care about. At the same time though, I¡¯m going to try to be as true to myself as possible. Whether it¡¯s influence from ¡®Seri¡¯ or ¡®Aaron¡¯, I want to climb that tower. I want to be the first person at the top. I want to be able to say I beat it!¡± I laughed. ¡°Well, I¡¯d probably only brag about it to you like most of my other accomplishments. That¡¯s the normal routine after all. So brighten up and just trust me like always Lynn. I¡¯ve never failed to return home before and I¡¯m not going to now. Plus, you have to be ready to have the party for when I return to the ship as usual right? We always have a party when I return to Lullaby after a long absence off on a mission.¡± Lynn joined me in laughing. Her dark mood had lessened slightly. ¡°That¡¯s true, Mistress. I¡¯ll accept that for now. I still have severe reservations about this choice of action that I¡¯d like you to keep in mind. Really, I want nothing more than to drag you back to the ship and make sure you¡¯re actually fully recovered.¡± Lynn sighed. ¡°It¡¯s wrong of me to still be so overprotective of you, but I can¡¯t help it. I¡¯d even admit that that part of my personality borders on being a bit too intense, and maybe even go as far as saying it¡¯s creepy. It¡¯s not very easy for me to change though.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t change any part of your personality ever, Lynn. I love you just the way you are.¡± I told her. ¡°That¡¯s always nice to hear. I do believe Mistress should add investigating that school to your list of actions to take. That place just bothers me somehow.¡± Lynn said. ¡°I can¡¯t say I¡¯m not worried at all about Rie and her brother going there, not to mention the rest of the kids, but I think that a school like that would be under watch at least a bit. They take in orphans every few years, so wouldn¡¯t it be noticed if the orphans they brought in disappeared? If they take in thirty kids and only ten of them make it to graduation, I can¡¯t see them having the sterling reputation they seem to possess. Also, the teachers, or whatever they were that came to meet the kids, were genuinely concerned and glad the kids were safe. I don¡¯t know if people that would turn around and hurt the kids themselves would have that kind of feeling.¡± I reasoned. ¡°There are ways they could be ¡®genuinely concerned and glad¡¯ without actually caring about the kids themselves.¡± Lynn cautioned. ¡°Noted. I still think Rie should be safe enough there for the month I¡¯m in the capital. Much safer than she would be by my side during that time anyway. If I¡¯m wrong on that, I can always tear apart the place from top to bottom.¡± I replied. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll back off for now. If Mistress does visit the dungeon, I hope she does so in moderation. If I lose contact with you for more than a day or two, I might feel forced to take inadvisable actions.¡± Lynn warned. ¡°I definitely do not want you to do that! I still remember when you used some of my antimatter explosives to blow up that syndicate space station just because they were hiding information that you were after.¡± I said. ¡°I only did that because the station¡¯s AI was being very rude!¡± Lynn stated angrily. ¡°So what if our starship¡¯s frame is slightly wide! That doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m fat or anything!¡± ¡°Yes, yes, Lynn. You¡¯re definitely not fat or anything. Lullaby is a very sleek frigate class. That station AI¡¯s sensors were clearly malfunctioning.¡± I reassured her. Lynn merely hmphed in response. ¡°Now, if you¡¯re done scolding and warning me to behave, I think I¡¯ll just go about finishing up getting out of bed and seeing about some breakfast.¡±The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Lynn let out a sigh. ¡°Understood, Mistress. Good luck on your search today.¡± Lynn said cheerfully. Or as close to cheerful as she could sound right now. Coa had gone back to sleep in my arms, so I laid her back down and then got dressed. After finishing my preparations, I took a moment to examine Coa. As I petted her earlier I had noticed cracks in her hide again. She was definitely still growing at a good pace. Possibly close to fifty centimeters now? Maybe closer to forty-five? She was rapidly reaching the length where she might have trouble wrapping around my neck. Once she reaches her parent¡¯s length of over a meter, I wonder what she will do? If she still wants to hang around my neck, I¡¯ll at least accommodate her as much as possible. For now, let¡¯s get these cracks administered. I removed the salve from my pack and rubbed it into her hide carefully. Coa groggily woke up and chirped at me and then started purring in relief. Once I was finished, together we went downstairs to the dining room for breakfast. Unlike the obvious guests and people from out of town last night, it looked like it was serving time for locals. From the snippets of conversation, it seems like most of them were either eating before going to where they work or they just came from work and were eating before going back. I collected some food for myself and Coa and relaxed off to the side of the room while listening for any new and interesting information. Sadly there wasn¡¯t anything along those lines, but I did catch one of the guys grumbling about needing to head to the adventurer¡¯s guild for some business. I didn¡¯t care about his issues, but he would serve me very well indeed. Tour guide to the guild located! That saves me the trouble of asking people for directions. I finished my meal while keeping a surreptitious watch on the man to see when he left. Of course I had no need to do that with my eyes, I was doing it with my psi instead. As soon as he mentioned visiting the guild, I had tossed a link on him. Ultimately that meant there was no need for me to do something as silly as following him closely enough to keep him in sight. I could follow him at a leisurely pace and from fifty meters away whether I could see him or not. If I wanted to strengthen the link in a very particular way I could even tap into his hearing or vision temporarily to know exactly what business he had at the guild entailed. It was a difficult and potentially time consuming process to set up, but it had served me very well at times in the past. I didn¡¯t believe it would take much time with the people on this world though, with their nonexistent resistance to psi. Maybe a minute or two of unbroken concentration would be all that was necessary if I felt inclined to do it, in addition to having the Empath Class set. I had no intention of doing such a thing. There was no reason to start intruding on some random person¡¯s privacy. If I had a legitimate cause then sure, but that was not the case here. The odds that a random link would provide me with an important lead were extremely slim. The only thing this guy was thinking about was his distaste for having to visit the guild this early when it was supposed to be his one day off. This was hardly something worth noting. I¡¯d be feeling exactly the same way in his shoes after all. I absolutely despised when something happened at the game store that required its ¡®assistant manager¡¯ to come to work on a day off. Worst mistake I ever made was accepting that promotion! I was just too happy about what the extra pay would do for my savings to think about all the consequences. Like how many more hours I¡¯d be expected to work and how often I¡¯d be expected to step in at a moment¡¯s notice. Or how much extra work my boss would end up dumping on me. Well, he was overall a fair boss. Not many would have let me use the store VR pods for gaming during breaks like he had. My link pinged me that the man was finally finished eating and was now heading toward the inn¡¯s exit. I gave him a decent head start before I started following. I also picked up an extra meat roll for Coa to snack on as I made my way out. I fed her small bite size pieces as I walked along, following the man. It took about thirty minutes to get to the destination, which I assumed was the adventurer¡¯s guild. It had been a good distance from the inn I was staying at, but still nowhere near the other side of the city, given the size of the city in question. The inn was close to the upper district while the guild was nearer to the wall leaving the city. The guild, or what I¡¯m pretty sure was the guild based on the guy¡¯s heartfelt resignation as he went inside, was much, much different than the previous guild buildings I had seen. It was a large, dome roofed structure with some smaller connected side structures with their own domed roofs. I was quite surprised since I hadn¡¯t seen domes used much in architecture outside of the cathedral I had glimpsed the previous day. The large set of doors were open and had some mural painted on it that looked like monsters and adventurers fighting. I walked inside and was immediately impressed by the place. It wasn¡¯t a messy bar like place like the other guild. The ceiling went all the way up to the dome above, and had a number of banners that hung down from it. The entry area was wide and open and there was a number of tables and chairs off to the side. The man I had followed was over there with some people having what appeared to be an argument. To my left there was a staircase that was going both up and down. Some kind of basement I guess? The upper floor walkway went around the circular room and there was a number of open hallways up there that I could see from this ground floor. There was a reception area in the back that had a circular desk that went around a pillar. All in all, it reminded me more of a lobby of some modern corporation than what I would have expected from a medieval guild. Especially with how neat and organized it was. Most of the people in the room were looking at a long bulletin board off in the back by the counter while others were going down into the basement or off into one of the hallways. There was a number of staff working at the counter so I made my way over to one. Even with the multiple workers, though, I still had to wait in line. Of course, with my luck the cute rabbit girl was still talking with someone else when it was my turn, so I was stuck with what appeared to be a grumpy looking male fairy. The fairy couldn¡¯t have been more than 25 centimeters tall and he was sitting on the counter with a small notepad his own size. ¡°Wotcher lookin'' for, mate? ¡± The fairy asked as I came close. He definitely wasn¡¯t wasting time on any pleasantries. I was quite amused by his accent. It sounded British, if I¡¯m not mistaken. Do all fairies have an accent like this? He was the first of his race that I¡¯d met after all. It had always puzzled me how the psi translator kept accents like this though. One would think it would remove them since it was based around a special kind of psychic link technology. Well, none of this was important right now. ¡°I was wondering if there were any records about the dungeon available? Or possibly some information along those lines?¡± I replied. ¡°Guild card, eh, mate?¡± I pulled out my adventurer¡¯s card to show him and he nodded briefly. ¡°Records room. Off dahn the bloody ''allway ter the right.¡± He gestured to one of the hallways on the ground floor and shooed me away. It was a clear end to the conversation so I didn¡¯t bother responding. I simply followed the given directions and left the lobby. I walked along the well lighted hallway and glanced into the open doors I passed. They seemed to just be small office rooms like I had seen in other guilds. At the end of the hallway was another set of double doors which I walked through to find myself in a decent sized room with a number of shelves of books and maybe some scrolls and other forms of written material. There were a few tables situated together in the center of the room and a single elderly man was seated facing the door with a small book in his right hand. At first I thought he was a human until I saw the tips of pointed ears barely poking out of his long white hair. An old elf huh? When he saw me, he snapped the book shut. ¡°How may I assist you, young lady?¡± He asked. ¡°I am after information about the dungeon. I was thinking about trying it while I was here for the anniversary.¡± I answered. ¡°Oh, a properly cautious young adventurer! That¡¯s good! Too many youngsters rush in there mindlessly. I¡¯m glad to see at least one coming here to prepare ahead of time!¡± The old elf exclaimed. The man stood up and walked over to one of the shelves and slid out a small volume. He brought it back over to the table and laid it there. ¡°This is a catalog of the floors that have been conquered and their peculiarities. Just a summary really, but includes the important details. If you are more interested in reading personal accounts from other adventurers I can get those instead.¡± ¡°No, no. This should be plenty. Thank you.¡± I replied. I took a seat at the table and opened the book. I looked over the pages slowly as if I was internalizing the information when really all I was doing was letting Lynn scan the pages for now. She said she was almost done so it shouldn¡¯t be too long of a wait. It was indeed not that long. From one moment to the next the text on the page I was looking at went from unreadable to readable. ¡°I got it Mistress. Turn back to the previous page if the feed is working properly, if not turn to the next page and I¡¯ll review it and get back to you.¡± I turned back to the previous page and then from there back to the start of the book entirely. The information provided by it was pretty in depth and was exactly what I was looking for. It included the monsters and what levels were on each floor, which floors were boss floors and what the bosses were, and also what type of trial one had to complete to get to the next floor. The first floors were simply to find the access point to the next floor, but they started getting more complicated after that. The stranger detail that is mentioned here in these notes is that that dungeon has environmental themes that it follows. The first 10 floors are a standard stone labyrinth, while the next 10 follow a progression of a beach and then down into the ocean until the 20th floor has the feeling of being at the ocean floor. Apparently the floors are actually entirely filled with water too, but it¡¯s somehow breathable and doesn¡¯t impede normal movement, so one is free to walk around as normal. Of course, apparently since it is water you can swim as well. Lynn¡¯s comment upon seeing this information was that she could send me my swimsuit. Yeah, no. I¡¯ll pass on wearing a swimsuit to a dungeon. Floor 21 and above are floating islands in the sky connected together by wooden bridges. All of this sounds so bizarre! How does any of that even work? It must be because of magic! Magic is just plain and simply weird. Very weird! Chapter 40 Chapter 40 It was difficult to fully accept this information. This was way beyond anything I had been expecting to find when I came to research. Nothing in here even says how large the floors are! Given the information written here, it¡¯s obvious that these floors are way bigger than what would be evident from the outside appearance of the tower. These are only the known floors up to floor 26 as well! No one knows what is beyond this Thunder Wyvern boss monster. I¡¯m positive that my gun could take it out, but how long would it take me to get that far inside? A few days? A week or more? How long would it then take me to get back out? No matter how much I desire to conquer the dungeon, I can¡¯t justify wasting that much potential time in there. Plus I really, really can¡¯t afford to have Lynn go on the warpath after me. I can already visualize the devastation she would cause to this capital if I was really out of contact that long. I sighed. It looked like my dungeon conquering plans were over before they even got a chance to begin. ¡°What¡¯s the matter, young lady? Troubled by how dangerous the dungeon is?¡± The old elf asked. ¡°I¡¯m more worried about how long it would take me to actually move through the dungeon.¡± I responded. ¡°For example, how long would it take me to get back out once I get as far as I can?¡± The old elf looked surprised for a moment. ¡°Young lady, can you give me that book for a moment?¡± ¡°Sure.¡± I handed it across the table to him. He flipped through the pages briefly before closing the book with a grumble. ¡°I should have looked at this before I gave it to you. I¡¯m going to have to amend it. It left out one of the more important details of the dungeon. In the dungeon at the entrance of each floor is a gateway that will take you back to the entrance. If you then take the gateway at the entrance, you will be returned to the floor you were last at.¡± ¡°So if I got to the 5th floor and took the gateway, I¡¯d be back at the entrance and able to leave the dungeon. Then the next time I visited the dungeon, I could immediately start back out at the 5th floor again?¡± I asked to make sure I fully understood the process. The old elf nodded. ¡°Exactly. It¡¯s very convenient. The only exceptions are floors where bosses are located.¡± I was surprised and yet at the same time I realized how idiotic it was for me to keep being surprised by magic. Hadn¡¯t I already just come to terms with the absurdity of it? These gates though sounded very similar to teleportation. I had regrettably never been able to get the knack down for teleporting using psi. It was a pretty rare ability to see anyone able to use due to the complexity involved with doing it without maiming yourself. I wonder if I can study these gateways and figure out my own magical method for teleporting. Possibly using magical enchantments? That would be a very helpful thing to have. If I created a system like that I could carry something with me that would let me immediately return to the ship. Getting back to where I was previously might be more of an issue though. I wouldn¡¯t really want to leave something behind to teleport back to. It seems like that would have some obvious downsides if someone else stumbled upon it while I was gone. I could probably rig some security devices on it to keep it from being meddled with, but there was always the chance of something going wrong. Nothing was perfect after all. It¡¯s not a risk I feel comfortable taking. I was interrupted from my thoughts by a short bark of laughter. I returned my attention to the old elf and he had a grin on his face as he gazed at me. ¡°Young lady, I can tell by the look in your eyes that you¡¯re thinking of studying the gateways aren¡¯t you? You don¡¯t have to answer, you wouldn¡¯t be the first one to try. Wizards and Sorcerers have attempted to duplicate them for centuries. Even before this Empire existed and when there was only a small city here surrounding the dungeon, they were trying.¡± He released another bark. ¡°I should know. I was one of those very fools that came here for that very reason! Despite all our collective effort, we have not even the slightest result to show for it.¡± I didn¡¯t bother answering. I merely shrugged. ¡°Anyway, thanks for the help.¡± I was about to get up and leave when I remembered something else I might be able to find information about here. ¡°Are there notes about certain kinds of beasts?¡± ¡°We have a number of bestiaries, yes. What specific beasts were you interested in?¡± The old elf stood up and walked back near the shelves. I placed my hand up to pet Coa. ¡°First, I¡¯d like any information on serpent dragons like this child here. Taming her was a bit of a fluke so I could really stand to get some facts about her species. I only know a little and that¡¯s mostly from first-hand experience since I tamed her. The other beast that I¡¯m interested in are demon wolves.¡± ¡°I can understand your dragon, but I¡¯m curious about why demon wolves in particular?¡± The old elf asked. ¡°I had a run in with a pack in the past and had to escape. Any knowledge would be nice if I ever see more of them in the future.¡± I replied. It was a good enough excuse and was even basically the truth! ¡°I see. Demon wolves can indeed be quite difficult to deal with.¡± The old elf. He started running his hands along the shelves. After a moment he pulled out one book then bent down to grab another. He came back to the table and place them side by side in front of me. ¡°This book contains information on demon beasts.¡± He indicated the right one. ¡°Demon wolves are recorded therein and more general facts about the types. The other has information about the various known species of dragons.¡± ¡°Thank you.¡± I focused on the book about demon beasts first. According to this, demon beasts are created when a beast is exposed to a rare miasma and doesn¡¯t lose their life to it. Usually a number of beasts will get exposed to it at the same time and all change together, especially if they¡¯re pack animals like wolves. Once a beast had changed, it no longer felt any connection with its previous species and would even attack former packmates. The beast would also lose it¡¯s mana and no longer be able to use magic. It would not be able to regain that ability either. I wonder if the miasma uses the creature¡¯s mana pool to fuel the transformation? On demon wolves in particular, the book only mentioned that they had odd bone growths that started appearing outside of their bodies, starting at the head and then gradually going along their entire body. It noted that the older a demon wolf got, the larger it would grow, while also becoming more intelligent. The largest one ever recorded had been approximately seven meters from head to tail. Sirius was about two and half or three meters, I believe. I hadn¡¯t really looked at Sirius¡¯ status beyond a glance so I checked it to see how old he was. Thirty-four years old huh. That¡¯s quite a bit older than I was expecting. How old was that one recorded here if it was that much larger? A more troubling fact that I have learned from this book is where the miasma comes from. It sounds very similar to a geyser, except according to this, the geyser location is never in the same place twice. So there¡¯s just this random eruption of this gas that changes beasts into stronger monsters and no one knows any pattern to it? It could erupt by my ship or underneath my feet and there¡¯s nothing to predict that? I doubt that greatly. These people probably just lack the necessary equipment to do so. It does open a new question about what¡¯s underground, inside this planet, if something down there produces this odd substance that causes these mutations. I tapped my finger along the information about the miasma eruptions and Lynn got the hint. ¡°I¡¯ll set up some underground sensors, Mistress.¡± That reassured me quite a bit. Considering the number of demon wolves that were in that area, there are probably miasma geysers somewhere in that forest. Either that or the wolves somehow congregated together there in that place. I don¡¯t have a way of knowing unless I can ask them when I get back to the ship. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. I went through the whole book pretty quickly after finishing the section on the miasma. Lynn could save all the information without me bothering to actually read any of this. None of it was really currently relevant anyway. I then moved on to the book about dragons. I was sadly very disappointed upon looking through this book. The information was very, very sparse on most of the breeds of dragons. Even the winged serpent ones like Coa had little information I didn¡¯t already know. The two main pieces of information being that they are migratory and that they fully develop their mana pool at around one year of age. While they do possess a mana pool, they don¡¯t know how to actually use magic, so a beastmaster would have to teach them. So Coa will probably develop a mana pool before me, but I won¡¯t be able to really teach her to use it because I won¡¯t know how yet. I¡¯ll get Myura to do it, I suppose. Probably. Kind of an interesting tidbit was that they process things emotionally and it¡¯s also how they communicate. They broadcast their emotions along with their voice. I¡¯ve definitely experienced that phenomenon with Coa only a day or two ago. I glanced down at Coa who, just like I had been, was looking at the book. Not like she could read it though. She seemed to become aware that I was watching her and raised her head to look me in the eye. She warbled and I picked up that she was confused. Was she confused about why I was looking at her or just confused about the book? ¡°Coa, this book has information about you.¡± I tapped the book and her head turned back around. ¡°It says you¡¯re a very cute, little dragon.¡± Her head shook a bit side to side and she crooned. Happiness. Ahh, she¡¯s so adorable! I flipped through the book rapidly while keeping one hand petting her head. The old elf had a slight smile on his face as I returned the books to him. I could take the time to read even more here, but the festivities start tomorrow, so I should be able to get into the imperial library and gather information there instead. I had other things on the agenda I needed to get done today too. With my business at the Adventurer¡¯s Guild finished, I left after asking for directions to the Merchant¡¯s Guild. Along the way there, I checked out shops. I was hoping to find an alchemy shop selling potions and also a good tailor. While I had Fiona¡¯s recipe book saved, I wanted to get some healing and mana potions, for them to get analyzed back at Lullaby. As for the tailor, that was because I was still after a pair of pants, also possibly some other changes of clothes. Having multiple sets of identical clothing was a bit odd. I managed to find an alchemist and purchased a small variety of potions, including a few antidote potions. They only cost me a few silver coins, so no big deal. I don¡¯t plan on using them anyway. I wonder if I could get Lynn to come pick them up with one of the drones? I debated that idea for a few moments before I gave it up. I¡¯d have to travel quite a distance from the city, probably all the way back into that forest to leave the package. The area around this city was just too open and visible. The Merchant¡¯s Guild, as described by the directions I was given, really was a small castle overlooking the wharf. I was a bit taken aback by the sheer size of it in comparison to the other guilds I had seen. Then again, they seemed to be processing all the goods coming into the city, so it¡¯s quite possible they do indeed need that much space. I was watching as crates and barrels were coming off some of the ships, being loaded up on carts and then taken through a gate in the side of the guild wall to the inner area. I walked up to one of the gates I saw people entering by. As I approached, the guards stopped me. ¡°Please display your guild license.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have one.¡± I answered honestly. ¡°Then I must ask you to use the gate further down this way.¡± He pointed along the wall to my right. ¡°This gate is for members only.¡± The guard explained. ¡°I understand.¡± I said and then moved to find this other gate. It actually wasn¡¯t all that far, just thirty meters further away. I wasn¡¯t prevented going through and was directed down a hall to a small foyer. At the foyer was a few men talking amongst themselves along with some desks set up as well. Other than the three men there was no one else here. This entrance and path did seem pretty deserted. Maybe only guild members regularly visit so this area is relatively unused? When the men became aware of my presence, the one on the right who looked to be some type of beastman, took a step away from the other two and beckoned me over to one of the desks. The other two moved away and continued their conversation. After we were both seated, he spoke. ¡°Good afternoon, Miss. What may we, the Merchant¡¯s Guild, assist you with?¡± ¡°I¡¯m looking to procure some materials. I have samples of what I require. So far I¡¯ve had no luck finding a supplier.¡± I explained. ¡°What type of materials specifically? I can bring one of our specialists to help you if I cannot.¡± The beastman replied. ¡°They¡¯re metals, or ore would be okay too if the processed metal is unavailable.¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s definitely not a good I¡¯m familiar with, but may I see one of your samples before I get a specialist for you?¡± The beastman asked. ¡°That¡¯s not a problem.¡± I didn¡¯t take out the adamantite and instead pulled out the titanil that not even Huvreck was able to identify. I showed it to him and he gave it a hard stare for a moment before shaking his head. ¡°Indeed, I have no clue what that material is. I¡¯ll get a specialist for you to do business with. Just to be upfront, there is a charge for making use of one of our specialists. You did say you were intending to purchase more of the goods though, so some of the cost can be waived by the commission fee for the products.¡± The beastman explained. ¡°How much of a charge are we talking about here?¡± I asked warily. ¡°Normally it costs five silvers, but I¡¯ll reduce it to three silvers this time. The commission fee will be decided by the specialist if you choose to place one.¡± He answered. ¡°I can accept that.¡± I had been worried it might cost more than a gold. I slipped out a few of the silver coins. ¡°Here¡¯s the fee. Do I just wait here or are we moving to some other room?¡± The beastman nodded. ¡°Yes, I¡¯ll take you to a waiting room and then get the specialist for you.¡± ¡°Alright then. Lead the way.¡± I stood up and he did likewise. It wasn¡¯t a far walk, only about ten meters further down the hall from the foyer area, he opened a door and waved me to enter. When I stepped in, he spoke up for a moment. ¡°Would you like me to send someone to bring you a drink while you wait?¡± ¡°No thank you. I¡¯m good.¡± I replied. If I was going to be negotiating with some merchant, I didn¡¯t need the risk of them slipping me some magical concoction. The room was pretty much in the same vein as the other business rooms I¡¯ve been in at the various merchant guilds I¡¯ve been too so far. This one is a lot more upscale and luxurious to be fair. The other detail that made this room stand out is the variety of magic effects my psi was picking up and they weren¡¯t just the obvious lamp on the table. One was a spot on the left wall and there was another on the ceiling above the table. They definitely don¡¯t feel like any magic I had detected before. Magical security cams possibly? That shouldn¡¯t be a problem if so. The entire reason I¡¯m even here talking about these materials isn¡¯t because I expect the guild to actually be able to help me. I¡¯m just here to use them to spread more information about myself for that organization to pick up. I had to bait my hook properly if I wanted to tempt them into biting. While I waited, I scoped out the building with my psi, giving everything in my reach at least a cursory examination. I found that all the rooms in this general area had those same magic locations. There were lots of people moving around in the area underneath me. If I¡¯m connecting it together right, that should be where the carts from the docks were coming in at. I felt the presence of that beastman from earlier coming back with another presence. The new one felt kind of familiar, but I couldn¡¯t place exactly how. It hadn¡¯t been that long and it seemed like the beastman was hurrying the other presence along. The beastman stopped away from the door and let the other presence come alone the rest of the way. Oh! I know how what it feels like now. It feels similar to Huvreck. Sure enough, it was indeed a dwarf that came thundering into the room. He was less muscular than Huvreck, but still bulky and also a bit taller. Probably within ten or fifteen centimeters of myself. ¡°Damn it all. I was just about to enjoy a late lunch with a pint of my favorite ale. Stupid mutt, bothering me with petty matters.¡± He sat down with a thud and I could hear the chair creak under his weight. ¡°Alright, hurry it up girl. Show me the goods so we can get this over with.¡± He ordered me gruffly. I guess this beats wasting time at least. I pulled out the titanil first, followed by the chromanite and then finally the etherenite, or adamantite as it was known here. To my surprise the dwarf entirely ignored the etherenite and focused on the other two. He had whipped out something that looked like a jeweler¡¯s magnifying glasses. There was some magic flowing through them as he examined the titanil and chromanite. He took out a small hammer and was about to hit the chromanite when I yanked it back away from him. ¡°Huh?¡± He looked around. He seemed surprised that the object of his interest had suddenly disappeared. He finally spotted it in my hand. ¡°Miss-¡± Being respectful now? ¡°- name a price. I will pay anything for these two metal samples.¡± ¡°Not for sale.¡± I instantly denied. Chapter 41 Chapter 41 ¡°What!?¡± The dwarf rocked and fell off his chair in his surprise. I heard a heavy thud from his impact but scarcely a moment later he had jumped up on the table and was now looking down at me. ¡°You have to sell them! This is huge! These are unknown metals! Completely new! We have to study them! We have to learn all of their properties! Where did you find these!? Money is no object! I¡¯ll pay a hundred gold, no, two hundred gold coins for each of these! Please sell them to me!¡± He started pulling coins out of a pocket on his vest and spilling them out onto the table. A lot more coins than could possibly have fit in there. A bottomless pocket? That¡¯s interesting. I held up my hands. ¡°Hold on! Wait! Stop! I¡¯m not selling these. I¡¯m the one that needs to locate more of them! Are you serious that these are completely unknown?¡± I had been hopeful, but maybe this was a lost cause after all. With adamantite or etherinite rather, I could rebuild my engines but sadly not my warp drive. There was the possibility of mining chromanite or titanil out in asteroids in system, but that was a slim chance at best. The dwarf hopped back off the table and righted his chair before sitting back down. ¡°Indeed. Completely unknown. All my appraisal could pick up were their names. Orichalcum and Arcanium. I couldn¡¯t pick up a single other detail! That has never happened to me before! That¡¯s why I must know where you acquired them, and you must sell them to me! I need to study them as much as possible! They might possibly surpass even adamantite in quality!¡± He was getting all excited again and giggling madly. ¡°Wait! Seriously, calm down.¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m not parting with these. They¡¯re my important clues to what I need. If you can¡¯t help me with these two, what about the third?¡± ¡°That?¡± He shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s just adamantite. Who cares about that? Especially when compared to these beauties!¡± He reached for the titanil and I smacked his hand before he touched it. He pulled it back and gave me a look similar to a child that was caught looting the cookie jar. I think I¡¯m going to get a headache dealing with this dwarf. His thoughts are going absolutely nuts which doesn¡¯t help any. Thinking about all kinds of theories about what these metals are, where they developed, and what they could be used for. ¡°Look. I¡¯m not selling them or even parting with them temporarily.¡± I put them back in my pack. His face immediately fell into despair. ¡°Can I at least put in a commission for more adamantite?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± His voice had gone monotone. ¡°That will cost you five gold for putting up the commission. The final price will depend on the seller. Please be aware that it is rare that anyone sells adamantite. The only time it ever appears on the market here is in small loads from overseas, and usually even that is already owned before it ever got here. I don¡¯t know what the chance of your commission actually being filled would be.¡± He sighed, stopped for a moment and then his eyes went wide. He slammed his hands on the table. ¡°What are you using those metals for!? If you require them, then you must know their properties! You must tell me! Please! I have to know! Or at least where you got them! Some scrap of information! Anything!?¡± Time for making up bullshit. ¡°I found them in a dungeon on another continent. I¡¯ve been wandering around the world for quite a while now. Their only property I know of is that they¡¯re similar to adamantite. I was hoping I could use them as a cheaper substitute for adamantite. I¡¯m still not going to part with them though, because there is always the chance I might find a place that knows of them and sells them. Here¡¯s the gold for the adamantite commission.¡± I took out the coins. I might need to start being more careful regarding my money spending habits soon. The dwarf took the coins and then left the room grumbling. I tossed a link on him as he left, but at least he doesn¡¯t seem to be thinking about trying to steal from me. At least not yet anyway. I don¡¯t know for sure where his thoughts will end up. Not like I could maintain this link forever and at any distance. I cancelled it and then left the guild. Right after leaving I realized that I had forgotten to ask about the location of a good tailor. Well, there was something else I wanted to ask about too. It would look weird to go back, but they would be the best source for suggestions so I¡¯ll just bite the bullet and do it. Upon returning, the three men who had all been conversing again, looked at me surprised but the beastman from before came up to me once more. ¡°Hello again Miss. Was there still some other business that you required the Merchant¡¯s Guild for?¡± I nodded. ¡°Yes actually. I was hoping to be directed to a good tailor.¡± ¡°That isn¡¯t a difficult request.¡± The man replied. ¡°I¡¯d also like to know where the best desserts in the city can be found.¡± I said with a smile. ¡°The best desserts is it? What kind of desserts would the Miss be after?¡± He asked. ¡°Something sweet would be my preference.¡± I answered. ¡°I understand.¡± He said with a nod. After a small exchange of coins, he described the route from the guild to reach a respected tailor and also an inn that made excellent tarts. Mmm, a strawberry tart sounded really good right now. I hope they make those. I feel like I could use some comfort food. I don¡¯t like what that dwarf revealed about titanil and chromanite being completely unknown. Sure, I was starting to expect and fear something like this happening with Huvreck¡¯s lack of knowledge of them, but it¡¯s definitely going to make things difficult for me. Unless there was some other metal on this world I could substitute, it meant I¡¯m going to basically be trapped here regardless of fixing Lullaby¡¯s engines or not. There was no chance of us making the journey to another star system without a warp drive. It¡¯s really not a pleasant thought. I¡¯m not going to give up yet though! That dwarf found names for them at least. Orichalcum and Arcanium. That must mean they exist on this world somewhere right? They have to! I mentally sighed. This could probably be seen as me denying reality. The tailor shop was closer than the sweets producing inn, so I went there first. When I stepped into the shop, I noticed that I had once again made a very stupid mistake. This was a tailor that specializes in gowns and dresses! I wanted to collapse on the spot. Why didn¡¯t I realize that this would be the kind of place I would be recommended to!? A young in appearance female asking about a tailor? Of course, I¡¯m going to be sent to a dress shop! Damn it! And now I have to listen to Lynn giggling because she knows why I wanted to find a tailor. Well, there¡¯s still a chance it might work out! I walked beyond the doorway and deeper into the shop. It was definitely a very clean and orderly place. There wasn¡¯t actually that much clothing hanging around, so I assumed that they served more as examples of what the shop could produce than being on sale to buy. Lynn was busy providing me with a running account critiquing the styles of the clothing I was seeing. I was happy that most of the time I could leave that topic up to her. I¡¯m not really all that good with fashion. If only I could trust her to not put me in only cute clothes. I don¡¯t know if Seri was totally okay with it, but I don¡¯t think I am just yet. In retrospect, I should have fought harder about the outfit I¡¯m wearing now, but Lynn probably showed me that gown first for the very reason that I would accept this one easier without a fuss. She¡¯s sneaky like that. One of the shop assistants finally took note of me and came to greet me. I wonder why none of them saw me sooner? I¡¯ve been in here for at least a minute or two and it¡¯s not like the place was busy. I only saw one other woman in here that seemed to be acting like a customer. It wasn¡¯t that easy to know for sure. I mean it¡¯s not like people here have work uniforms. I¡¯m just guessing by the way the older woman was acting toward the slightly younger woman she was discussing with. The shop worker reached me and immediately bowed her head to me. ¡°I deeply apologize Miss for not immediately coming to greet you upon your arrival to our store.¡± She raised her head and gave me a smile. ¡°How may we serve you?¡± ¡°I was directed here from the Merchant¡¯s Guild, but now that I see your goods, I¡¯m not sure if you can help me or not.¡± I answered. ¡°I was hoping to have some pants tailored and possibly the rest of an outfit to go along with them.¡±Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. The worker looked surprised for a brief moment before putting back on her business smile. ¡°It¡¯s not a standard request here, but occasionally female adventurers arrive asking for the same, so it would pose no problem. I assume Miss is an adventurer as well? No matter. We have a small area to take measurements and you can describe what kind of outfit you would be wanting. I must say your current outfit is quite fetching. Are you sure you wouldn¡¯t prefer a similar outfit or maybe a longer dress such as this?¡± She gestured at one of the displayed items. ¡°A longer dress would flatter your figure and give you the appearance of being taller. Petite ladies like yourself tend to appreciate that.¡± I internally winced and then felt annoyed. Being this short had been alright when I first started playing the game, since Seri was the same height as my character in the previous game I had played. As I grew up past being a teenager though, it started becoming more of an issue to go from my height as Aaron to Seri¡¯s height in game. At this point I¡¯d grown accustomed to looking up at people, but I didn¡¯t really appreciate being reminded of it! ¡°No thank you. I am just here for what I specified. If that is too much of a problem, then I will take my business elsewhere.¡± I stated coldly. Coa picking up on my anger, hissed at her. I glared and she flinched back from the combined assault before I calmed back down. She¡¯s just doing her job after all. I sighed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry about that.¡± ¡°Oh no! I apologize if I offended you, Miss! Let¡¯s move to the back for those measurements.¡± She hurried me to a curtained off area. There was even a tall mirror placed back here! As I gazed at my reflection, the shop worker pulled the curtains shut behind us. ¡°If you could just undress, Miss.¡± She requested. I didn¡¯t mind the request and began taking off my clothes. I placed my pack on the ground by my feet and laid Coa on top of it. It was a bit of a shame that I was taking off my clothes with a passably cute female in close proximity, but not for any fun purposes. This setting could be interesting. I mean sex in the fitting area of a clothing store where you might be intruded upon? Could be an enjoyable time. No! Bad Seri! No naughty thoughts right now! I¡¯m starting to think I might need to find some relief. At the same time though, I don¡¯t believe I¡¯m comfortable doing that yet. That¡¯s a pretty gigantic step for me to take. Wait, the woman was being pretty quiet. I paused my undressing to glance at her. She was staring at me with her eyes wide. I looked down at myself. Oh fuck! I completely forgot about all the marks running along my body. I¡¯m so used to them that I didn¡¯t even give it a second thought. Shit. Shit. Shit. They¡¯re clearly unnatural and there¡¯s no way I could just pass them off as odd injuries. They¡¯re too uniform looking for that. I slipped my clothes back on, though I left my cloak and boots off. She¡¯d just have to ignore the marks on my legs. ¡°Can we just do the measurements over my clothes?¡± I asked. ¡°Oh, yes. That should not be an issue.¡± The woman finally came out of her daze. She pulled a few items off a rack along the wall. One was a long, thin piece of what looked like leather that had markings on it and the others were a piece of paper and what looked like a pencil. It was obviously some kind of writing utensil at least. She gestured for me to raise my hands. She went along my legs first with the leather and then moved up my body. She jotted down numbers on the paper as she went. ¡°What style of outfit are you looking for, Miss. You stated that you wanted pants, but do you want them to be sturdy and made for wearing under armor? Do you have a preference for the material you¡¯d like them to be made out of? Linen or wool are the most available. I¡¯d personally recommend linen.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll accept your recommendation then. Just to be clear though, I don¡¯t intend to wear them under any armor. I just would like two pairs of pants made and a top that would match them.¡± I figured I could always wear them under my dress if I wanted to as well. ¡°My main concern is comfort. I want them to be comfortable and last. Also, I¡¯d like them to be a darker color if that would be available.¡± I said. ¡°Would Miss be alright with a dark blue?¡± She asked and I nodded in acceptance. ¡°Understood. Your measurements have been completed. I¡¯ve also noted your specifications down for the order. There is still the matter of payment. For two pairs of pants and two blouses, the charge would come to a single gold coin and ten silver coins.¡± There was no way I was going to pay that much money upfront, not for items I was having made. ¡°I¡¯ll pay half the price now and the other half when I¡¯m satisfied with the product.¡± I said while taking fifteen silver coins picking up my pack off the floor. I draped Coa back around my neck while doing so. ¡°That would be acceptable. Please return in three days for a fitting to see if Miss likes the result or would like further adjustments.¡± She responded while accepting the coins. She then bowed her head slightly to me and showed me out of the shop. There was a new customer group in the shop as I walked through. One of them was a young woman wearing pretty high class clothing from what I could see. She had a cloak that covered most of her body other than her face. She had a older looking maid next to her and behind her back was a guy wearing full knight armor. I didn¡¯t give them much more than a passing glance since they had nothing to do with me. I had something more important to accomplish now! The quest for sweets! Mmm, I wonder what types of tarts the inn makes? I¡¯m looking forward to it! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I finally managed to draw myself away from the sweets after a few hours. I had been suffering a severe sweets drought, so I made up for it and then some! Coa had eaten an entire strawberry tart by herself too! I almost wanted to turned around and go eat some more, but I¡¯m already completely stuffed and Lynn will nag me if I actually get sick from all of this. I¡¯m honestly surprised she wasn¡¯t already nagging! Let¡¯s see, my next destination would be the cathedral I suppose. I wanted to check and see if I could attend that midnight mass. I felt like it would give me a good glimpse of the religion and how it and its followers behave. I¡¯m less than optimistic of my chances though. I¡¯m pretty sure a religious event on the eve of a big festival would have pretty hefty requirements in order to attend. At least the cathedral wasn¡¯t that far away from my current position. I was hardly more than a few steps out of the inn when I felt the ping of someone watching me with more than a casual interest. There was no hostility in it, but it was clear that they were observing me very closely. They were out of range for me to get an accurate feel of their thoughts to learn the reason, but I could at least tell the location they were watching me from. They were in one of the nearby building¡¯s uppermost floor. It was the tallest building around here which likely gave them a very good view of this area. That was an odd place. Obviously whoever it was, wasn¡¯t intending to follow me. Unless there was a quick way to exit that building, which was always a distinct possibility. I continued on my way and the observer faded away as it was no longer in my detection range. It did not attempt to follow me as I suspected. Due to the range, I had gotten only a cursory feel for that person, so it was unlikely I¡¯d be able to pick them out of a crowd. The only bright side to the encounter was at least this means someone in the capital is keeping an eye on me already. I just have no idea who that someone was! If they¡¯re part of or hired by that Ghost organization then good. The sooner they took a deep interest in me, the sooner they might step slightly out of the shadows to extend feelers toward me. If I had to bet on who it was though, I¡¯d say the Merchant¡¯s Guild. They knew where I would be since they were the ones that recommended that inn. Of course, the other likely suspect would be someone associated with those paladins that heard about my prowess. I don¡¯t have anyway of knowing which, but I¡¯m pretty sure they weren¡¯t involved with that Ghost organization. I doubt that group would be making any moves regarding me. For now at least. It was too soon. While I had been preoccupied with my thoughts, I had arrived at the cathedral. It was just as fanciful as yesterday. It was a lot busier today though. I wasn¡¯t really familiar with religious events, but I thought a midnight mass would be happening at, well midnight? I must have been mistaken because it looked like the cathedral was already filling up and it was only early evening. There was a number of people dressed like nuns and priests ushering people inside. I also saw a number of paladins wearing similar armor to the ones I met before. They didn¡¯t appear like they were on guard duty though. Their behavior seemed to be more along the lines of decorative purposes. A ¡®See the majesty of our mighty paladins!¡¯ kind of idea. I did notice that all the people going inside were showing some shiny object to the priests before they were allowed in. That definitely didn¡¯t bode well for my chances. Expecting rejection, I walked toward one of the entrances that I saw more commoner types entering by. As I got near, I could see what was being used to gain entry was a silver medallion of some kind. A priestess called out to me. ¡°Spirits¡¯ blessings to you fellow daughter of the world. Please display your Spirits¡¯ Emblem and you may join the mass. If you do not possess one, I deeply regret that you will be unable to attend. The Grand Cathedral has already reached capacity for those poor souls without emblems.¡± ¡°I understand.¡± I nodded at her. No reason to make a fuss. This was the outcome I expected. ¡°I¡¯ll be on my way then.¡± I started to turn around to leave. ¡°Hold a moment, fellow daughter.¡± The priestess requested. I returned my attention to her in response. ¡°I shall bestow upon you a blessing of the Spirits¡¯ grace to console you.¡± She closed her eyes and then she raised her left hand and it began to glow. She then waved it in the air between us in a pattern. I took note of the fact that most of the people nearby had closed their eyes and lowered their heads upon seeing this act. Her hand finally topped and for a brief instant there was the a symbol drawn in light in the air. The symbol resembled three infinity signs tied together. The air was still sparkling slightly when the priestess opened her eyes again and gently smiled. ¡°Spirits¡¯ blessings to you!¡± She stated again, before going back to her other charges. This was a bust and it''s already evening. I might as well go back to my inn. I want to have Lynn teach me how the written language works so I''m not reliant on her for it. Tomorrow, and possibly the next few days, I¡¯ll be hitting the library for research. I¡¯m quite curious about what I¡¯ll learn. Chapter 42 Chapter 42 I yawned as I locked my room, and then strode to the stairs to head down to the dining room. Lynn had kept me up a bit late practicing the language. She had been ecstatic when I told her I wanted her to teach me. At least it went well. The sentence structure generally followed English¡¯s structure, so that part wasn¡¯t too difficult. The hard part was memorizing the symbols that they use to represent letters and sounds and other things. It was a lot more complicated than a simple twenty-six letter alphabet. According to Lynn there was a hundred and twenty-six symbols that were used in this language. Some of the symbols were very similar, too. It reminded me of some of the Asian languages on Earth where a single small dot or line could be important. Lynn had discovered the language was actually extremely similar to a language in our database, once she deciphered it enough to notice the connection. The language of the Sel¡¯ae from Cladus V. Now that Lynn had seen that connection, she reviewed the spoken language and had found traces of the Sel¡¯ae language there as well. Unlike the written language though, it was only a small part, which was why Lynn hadn¡¯t immediately perceived it. Lynn had concluded that the language was most likely a mix of at least three or four other languages, if not more. It created a whole new question. Had there been Sel¡¯ae on this world at some point in the distant past? The language would be a remarkable coincidence if not. It felt like every time I learned something about this world, it just created more questions. I was really hoping I¡¯d get at least some answers today at the library. I arrived at the bottom of the stairs when I finally became aware of the absence of something. Where was the noise? This should be the first day of a month long celebration. There should be tons of sounds, but instead I don¡¯t hear anything. I reached out with my psi and felt lots of tension and fear radiating from all around. What had happened? What had I missed while having a language lesson in my room? Entering the dining room, I found myself the center of attention for a moment before everyone returned to their whispered conversations. They weren¡¯t particularly interested in me, they were all just jumpy. I went to the bar to order breakfast. The inn owner was working there this morning. She had a worried look on her face. ¡°Good morning, I¡¯d like to order breakfast.¡± I said. ¡°What will you be having, dearie?¡± She replied. Seemingly grateful for some task, even a short one, to take her mind off whatever was worrying her. ¡°I¡¯d like to get a plate of pancakes again. Also some cold cuts for my pet here.¡± I patted Coa and she perked up at the mention of food. ¡°Got it.¡± She scratched it down on a handy scrap of paper and then sent it back to the kitchen along the line. ¡°It will likely be a longer wait than yesterday. It¡¯s been a bit hectic this morning, what with the news and all.¡± ¡°Yeah, I wanted to ask about that.¡± Grateful that she had brought it up. It saved me from having to broach the topic. ¡°I retired pretty early last night, so I¡¯m not aware of what happened to cause this weird atmosphere. Shouldn¡¯t everyone be busy enjoying themselves with the anniversary festival?¡± The inn owner looked astonished, but then nodded. She had known that I had gone to my room last night early. She sighed. ¡°I hate to be the bearer of bad news then. There was an oracle last night during the midnight mass.¡± ¡°What kind of oracle?¡± I asked. Does she mean an actual oracle, as in a prophecy of some kind? That kind of thing can happen here? Wait, didn¡¯t Huvreck mention oracles before? ¡°A very bad one, especially considering the timing that it arrived. Mid sermon, the Archbishop, went into a trance and began announcing the coming of a new Devil. The worst part was that oracle was vague and only mentioned that it was coming! The Emperor declared that he would be putting out a call for Heroes. If the situation becomes desperate enough, we might even have to summon Heroes¡­¡± She trailed off with a pained face. Summoning heroes sounds dramatic, but I¡¯m more curious about the first part. ¡°Sorry, but what is a ¡®Devil¡¯?¡± I inquired. The inn owner was astounded. ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡± I could only shake my head. ¡°A Devil is the term for the leader of the fiends.¡± She stated. I felt my face go blank in response. ¡°You don¡¯t even know of fiends?¡± I grimaced. ¡°Fiends are the feral demons on the far east continent. An oracle mentioning a Devil means a new leader will emerge and unite all the tribes together, and it always means a war. The last time a Devil appeared was at the founding of the Empire. The Devil was so powerful that the Founding Emperor only barely overcame it! An oracle of a Devil on the anniversary¡­¡± She trailed off again. Her thoughts had gone to darker places. That definitely explained why everyone was so fearful! That kind of history would have a deep significance for all these people, considering how they all idolize that founder. There was one other detailed I needed clarified though. ¡°You had a sad face when you mentioned summoning Heroes. Why was that?¡± ¡°Well, of course, it¡¯s because we¡¯d be taking them from their homes and bringing them here! Isn¡¯t that a horrible thing to do? That¡¯s why I said it¡¯s only a last resort. The Founding Emperor was very upset when he learned about that being conducted. That was why he confronted the Devil himself. No one wants to dishonor his memory by doing it again if there are other options we can rely on.¡± She explained. A plate topped up with pancakes appeared out of the kitchen. There was a smaller plate with the meat on it to the side. She took them and handed them to me. ¡°Your breakfast, Miss. I apologize for giving you the bad news, but do try to enjoy the festival.¡± I took my breakfast with a nod of thanks. I scanned the room. There was no empty table to sit at, what with all the people loitering around gossiping. Coa was moving down my body to go for her plate of meat. ¡°Coa, stop. You can wait until I sit down.¡± I scolded her quietly. She looked at me with a wide-eyed expression before slowly slithering back to my neck. With her taken care of momentarily, I steeled myself for the likely annoying conversation that would follow and went to a table that had a free seat. ¡°Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?¡± I asked, trying to sound polite. ¡°Just take a seat, youngin. We ain¡¯t got no problem with a new face joining us.¡± A demon man with a middle aged appearance replied. The other five at the table nodded. ¡°Thank you.¡± I answered. I placed the down the plates as I sat. I immediately picked up a small piece of meat and held it up to Coa. ¡°Here, you greedy, little thing.¡± Coa snapped at it immediately. ¡°No reason to rush. Your breakfast isn¡¯t going anywhere.¡± I rubbed her head as she chewed and swallowed before crooning at me as she begged for the next piece. The other people at the table chuckled at this display. ¡°That pet looks to be quite a handful.¡± An elven woman commented. I fed her another piece with one hand while I poured syrup on my pancakes with the other. ¡°She¡¯s just a glutton. She¡¯s well behaved outside of mealtimes. Mostly.¡± I gave Coa a pointed look, which she ignored as she whined for more. I continued giving her slices of meat while I started consuming my own breakfast. I was just about to start on my second pancake when the demon man spoke up again. ¡°So youngin, have you heard the news?¡± ¡°You mean about the Devil? The inn lady filled me in.¡± I realized that it was kind of bad that I didn¡¯t know her name. She had introduced herself when that knight brought me here, but I hadn¡¯t cared enough to remember it.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ¡°That¡¯s important, and of course related, but since you looked like an adventurer, I was referring to the call for heroes.¡± The demon man stated. ¡°What does that have to do with being an adventurer?¡± I asked, taking a moment to stick more pancake into my mouth. ¡°I¡¯m definitely not hero material.¡± I¡¯m too much of a monster to be a hero. I¡¯d be more suited to being a devil. ¡°The Emperor is asking all adventurers to challenge the dungeon and is offering rewards and positions to any that can show proof of getting past the fifteenth floor.¡± One of the other men said, speaking up for the first time. Just what I needed, even more potential problems. ¡°What kind of proof will they be seeking?¡± ¡°Likely to be one of the boss¡¯ stones I reckon.¡± The demon man said. ¡°I can¡¯t see anything else being used.¡± A human woman agreed. I guess that means I can¡¯t sell any of the stones I get. A bit of a shame to lose the extra income, but oh well. It¡¯s better to stay as much off the radar as possible. That might be an exercise in futility with how I showed off with the bandits. ¡°I don¡¯t see myself getting that far in the dungeon. I¡¯m just going to shoot for getting up to the tenth floor.¡± I lied. ¡°Best of luck, youngin.¡± The demon man replied. The group at the table went back to conversing about the Devil situation. How soon will it arrive or how the military will be handled. Those kind of topics. I joined the conversation occasionally with brief comments, but I was more focused on my breakfast and satisfying Coa¡¯s stomach. Not an easy task by any means. I had to order another plate of meat, and then she wanted some fruit too. You wouldn¡¯t normally expect a dragon to be an omnivore. Once breakfast was done, I excused myself from the table and thanked the group for the conversation. They invited me to join them again the next day and without any reason to decline, I accepted. Local gossip wouldn¡¯t hurt any, and I had already scanned their thoughts to know they¡¯re just being kind folks to the poor girl they saw eating alone the previous morning. No ulterior motive present whatsoever. Well, almost no ulterior motives. The young male elf at the table thought I was just too beautiful. Ugh. As long as he doesn¡¯t make any moves though, I¡¯m content to just ignore him. If he¡¯s smart enough to not try anything stupid anyway. Now to get to that library. I know it¡¯s on the second level of the city, but not precisely where. The knight a few days ago said it was near the gate to the third level. That shouldn¡¯t be too difficult to find. As I walked through the city toward the closest gate to the second level, I took in the sights of the city decked out for the festival. There was new banners hanging nearly everywhere and extra stalls set up. It looked like just because of the news, the merchants still weren¡¯t missing out on any chances to sell their ware. It was a bit of a struggle to make my way through the streets with the sheer number of people hustling around. The absence of noise from when I had woken up had disappeared like it had never even been there. There was still an undercurrent of fear and confusion running through the crowds though. I suddenly detected someone watching me. I was pretty sure it was the same person as yesterday. Did whoever it was know that I¡¯d be going along this route today? I didn¡¯t really keep it a secret that I was planning on visiting the library. The knight girl knew at least, and I was sure the knights had reported me to their superiors. I walked out of range, and again they didn¡¯t make any attempt to follow me. That feels odd. What do they get out of observing me for these brief moments? I honestly can¡¯t understand it. Maybe if there were more watchers, but so far I¡¯ve only caught that person. I can¡¯t rule out the possibility that someone could be outside of my range, but with the buildings in the way, I don¡¯t know how they could do that all that successfully. Possibly magic? A magic that lets you monitor a target has to exist. If they had that though, why would they even have an actual person watching me? I really can¡¯t understand it. It feels so random, but there must be some kind of explanation. There wouldn¡¯t be any person watching me unless they had to. Oh? Maybe the reason they had to have a person watch me was because their magic wasn¡¯t working? Why would it not be working? Fuck my lack of knowledge. I don¡¯t have the slightest clue! This was the kind of troublesome topic that the library should hopefully rectify. After I entered the second level and started heading toward the third level to look for the gate. I passed the school and had the thought of visiting Rie, but decided not to. I gave the school a glance from the corner of my eye. Lynn was right that I should to investigate it, though. I would need to find the time to do that too. I might have to have Lynn send some of my more specialized equipment. I could take the opportunity to send samples back to the ship too. I¡¯d just need an excuse to leave the city for a day or two. A job from the adventurer¡¯s guild would assist there. Sounds like a decent idea. I¡¯ll ask Lynn to give me a list of items that she¡¯s interested in examining tonight. The second level was just as busy as the first had been, but here there was more carriages in use. This was the noble or upper class level of the city, so I suppose it made sense. At least it made the streets less of a hassle to travel along. I stood out a bit in this district, which was engendering some odd glances to be thrown my way. Was it weird for adventurers to visit the library? That was a stupid question. Of course it would be a strange sight. A scholarly attitude has never been all that common. A few minutes later, as I passed through an intersection, I perceived a new individual watching me. The gaze was too focused to just be another person taking a momentary interest. I couldn¡¯t pinpoint their exact location due to the range, but they were somewhere down the street to my right. As soon as I crossed through entirely, the perception that they had their eyes on me was gone. There was no movement from the source that they were attempting to follow either, just like the other one. Interesting. So at least that tells me that whoever that other person is, that they¡¯re not operating alone. I doubt two unrelated people would be following the exact same tactic. Eventually I saw a large gate in the towering rampart in the distance. It was very elaborate and very well guarded. I wasn¡¯t much interested in the gate or what was beyond it. Next to it was a large, white marble structure. The entrance of the building was higher than the street and there were two wide staircases that led up. Between the two staircases there was a statue. It was of a lion beastman. He had a long, wild mane and seemed to have more beastlike features than other beastmen I had seen. He was wearing a long robe over a suit of armor. In his left hand, he was holding a scroll and looked like he was reading from it, while in his right was a halberd with its end in the ground. There was an inscription on the statue so I walked closer to read it. ¡®An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.¡¯ was what it read. That seemed like a quote I had read somewhere before, but I couldn¡¯t place the origin. Under the quote was the name ¡®Emperor Leto Tevalon I¡¯. So this was the founder. I gave the statue another once over. I now noticed that he had not just the halberd, but also two short swords on his belt and some daggers stuck in his boot. His race explains the lion motif I¡¯ve seen in places too. All the weapons and armor doesn¡¯t seem like it was fit for a statue in front of a library. Possibly the reason why the scroll was there too. I left my examination of the statue and stepped up the stairs. There were knights on guard here too, but other than asking to see identification, they didn¡¯t prevent me from entering. Once I was inside I found myself in a large hallway with painted murals along the walls and ceiling. I took the time to admire them and I wasn¡¯t the only one. There were a few other people in the hallway admiring them. If I had to hazard a guess, they told the tale of the founder. There was a beam of light and a lion beastman below it. Then it moved on to showing him fighting dragons and other monsters. Him talking to members of all the races and then leading them to a city, which I assume to be this one. At one end, taking up the most space was a fight with a dark shadow with large wings. The devil he fought, perhaps? He was facing it with multiple flaming swords.The rest of the murals were just more of the same. Battles and the like. I passed through the open doors at the end and found myself in a large room surrounded by book shelves. The bookshelves were tall and had those sliding ladders along them. There must be thousands of books here! I honestly had not expected the library to be this expansive. I scanned the room, but didn¡¯t see any official looking people. I was on my own then. I strolled over to the nearest shelf to glance at the books and see if I could figure out how they were organized. A code on the side read ¡®C9¡¯. I had no idea what that meant. I carefully pulled one of the books out. I immediately felt the urge to facepalm upon seeing the book title, ¡®Raising and Breeding of Sloth Lizards¡¯. I slid it back into its space and then tried a few of the other nearby books. They all fell under the same type. Each were dedicated to a certain type of beast. These were not what I was looking for right now, though it would be nice to find even more information on Coa. I¡¯d have to look at another area. I wandered to the next shelf, when I felt a sudden wave of anger and hostility directed at me. I whirled around to face it and found an older human woman wearing a plain white robe bearing down on me with a scowl. Did I perhaps do something wrong by checking the books myself? Chapter 43 Chapter 43 ¡°How dare you bring a filthy monster into this bastion of knowledge!¡± were the first words out of the woman¡¯s mouth when she reached me. My anger peaked immediately. This bitch! Coa was not a filthy monster! ¡°Excuse me? Would you care to repeat that?¡± My voice was dripping with malice and I let my psi radiate a certain amount of pressure around me. She took a step back in sudden fear before finding her courage again. ¡°I shall have you arrested and thrown in the cells for this transgression! I have already signalled the guards, so don¡¯t even attempt running away!¡± The guards were the ones that let me in, you idiot! Obviously they hadn¡¯t had a problem with Coa! She¡¯s gotten too big to be hidden while hanging around my neck after all. Fuck, this bitch is going to create problems. I can¡¯t afford to lose access to this library. Am I going to get a chance to plead my case at least? The guard that had cleared me to enter had just walked into the hall. He scanned the room quickly looking for something or someone. Upon seeing the bitch he made his way over to us. He saluted and performed a slight bow. ¡°Lady Gless, you called?¡± The bitch smiled and pointed at me. ¡°Captain, I demand you clamp this girl in irons and take her away!¡± The captain gave me a once over before turning back to the bitch. ¡°I apologize, Lady Gless, but what crime has the young miss committed? I cannot arrest her merely on your word with no further explanation.¡± The bitch looked taken aback at being questioned instead of her orders being followed right away. She pointed at Coa around my neck. ¡°She brought that disgusting creature into these hallowed halls. Now take her away at once!¡± I was about to speak up in my and Coa¡¯s defense when I caught the eye of the captain as he gave me another brief glance. There was something about that look. Checking his thoughts, He was focused more on the bitch than myself and he was hoping I wouldn¡¯t cause any fuss for some reason. I picked up something about an important order. ¡°Lady Gless, all I can see is a well trained pet. A serpent dragon would require extensive training to rest so peacefully on its owner¡¯s body.¡± Huh? Extensive training? ¡°As such, it is perfectly allowable per the guidelines my superior gave me regarding admittance to the library.¡± The captain stated. A flash of fury ran across the bitch¡¯s face. ¡°I am the Keeper of the Imperial Library and I say this girl must be removed. I do not care what orders you were given, captain. Take her away this instant!¡± The captain nodded. ¡°I understand perfectly, Lady Gless.¡± He brought out a pair of manacles that were hanging from his belt and then took a few steps toward me. Well, shit. I was hoping it wouldn¡¯t come to this. I guess I was mistaken to keep quiet, though I don¡¯t think I could have defended myself against this bitch anyway. She seems pretty biased against monsters. I can probably scramble their senses and short term memory to make this affair blurry and then escape. I don¡¯t like doing that, since it is really a brute force method and can have a range of odd aftereffects. They would remember this kind of scene but with a person somewhat similar to how I look now without any clear details. As long as I don¡¯t come back with the exact same appearance, I should be fine. It won¡¯t trigger the memories becoming clear if I come back in Noble Lady mode or some other persona. Of course, I¡¯ve never tried this on the people of this world, so there might be some highly negative side effects on them due to their zero psi resistance. If I have to do it to keep access to the library, then it¡¯s a tiny price to pay. I don¡¯t know where I¡¯ll find another potential treasure trove of information. I¡¯m quite sure they¡¯ll survive. Pretty sure they¡¯ll survive. I started preparing my psi when the captain stopped barely a step away from me and turned back to the bitch. ¡°Ahh, but Lady Gless, I will notify my superior that there was an issue with my directions. I¡¯m positive that he will schedule an appointment with you to discuss them. Marquis Sornan is very keen regarding the library¡¯s affairs after all.¡± ¡°Marquis Sornan!?¡± The bitch squeaked. ¡°I thought Earl Vilis was handling this task?¡± The captain had a brief look of surprise. ¡°Were you not aware, Lady Gless? Earl Vilis was called back to his earldom due to urgent business. Marquis Sornan graciously offered to take over the duty in his stead.¡± The captain explained. The bitch was mutely opening and closing her mouth as if unable to respond. Checking her thoughts, all I could get was a feeble ¡®oh no, oh no, oh no¡¯ over and over. Whoever this Marquis Sornan is, she definitely doesn¡¯t want to cross him. ¡°Lady Gless? Shall I inform the Marquis regarding this matter, so that he may consult with you?¡± The captain inquired politely. ¡°No!¡± The bitch responded urgently. ¡°I mean, no, that is quite alright, Captain. I was just mistaken. Your instructions were undoubtedly correct in this instance.¡± She shot a glare in my direction. ¡°I will be returning to my other manifold responsibilities. Good day.¡± She strode off very quickly. I caught the brief glimmer of a smirk on the captain¡¯s face as he watched the retreating figure. In his thoughts, he was ecstatic that he got a chance to fulfill his orders on the very first day. No idea for sure what the orders were, but it obviously had something to do with making that bitch look bad in some way. Some kind of politics. It seems to me like I was just used in some political game and while the captain still doesn¡¯t care about me one iota, he¡¯s sure to at least mention me to his boss. Should I wipe him? No, because I¡¯d have to track down and wipe the bitch too, or it would cause complications. The captain returned his attention to me. ¡°Miss, I fear that my actions have ruined any chance you had of getting assistance in our Imperial Library.¡± ¡°No, I¡¯m just grateful that I wasn¡¯t arrested or thrown out.¡± I replied honestly. ¡°Do you require help locating any particular item? I am in possession of a fair knowledge of these shelves.¡± He inquired. ¡°I¡¯m very interested in history and the Spirits and their exploits. I was also looking for information on magic, such as books about enchanting.¡± I stated. The captain nodded. ¡°The volumes on history are this way.¡± He led me past some shelves and into a side room. ¡°This room is dedicated to history. Both related to our Empire and other countries and what we know of the world. Books chronicling the Spirits¡¯ and their time here are back in the main hall.¡± He directed me back the way we had come. ¡°They are up on the second floor at that large balcony right there.¡± He pointed out a section of the upper floor. ¡°As for books related to magic, regrettably there I cannot assist you. I only know that subject is somewhere around the main hall.¡± ¡°That was quite helpful. Thank you.¡± I said.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. ¡°My duty is to serve the public. It was no trouble at all. Before I go, allow me to compliment you on your pet. My uncle was a Beastmaster that trained beasts in order to sell them, and serpent dragons are quite difficult to raise properly. It must have cost you a fortune or taken a lot of effort to get one so well behaved.¡± The captain did a slight bow. ¡°Now I must return to my post. Enjoy your stay in our library, miss.¡± The captain strode off, back towards the entrance. I glanced down at Coa sleeping, hanging off my neck. Well trained and behaved? I guess she behaves most of the time, but hanging on the body requires special training? She¡¯s been doing that since the first minute I tamed her. It was probably just the circumstances that I tamed her in. I did just save her life, and her family had just been killed. The more important current matter is which to research first? History or Spirits? I feel like the Spirits would be pretty well tied into history with their actions, so let¡¯s focus on them first. The history section can fill in the gaps afterwards. As I made my way over to the second floor where the captain had indicated the books to be. I saw a few other individuals wearing white robes and they gave me glares or turned away from me as soon as they saw me. That bitch didn¡¯t waste any time did she. Let her play her petty games. As long as she doesn¡¯t try to get me kicked out again or sabotage my researching, she can do whatever the hell she wants. There was an ornate spiral staircase that I had to use to get up there. I pulled a book from the nearest shelf, checked the title, ¡®Spirit Korzan¡¯s Adventures¡¯. Sounds silly but I suppose I am indeed in the correct place. I opened the book and then pointed at the first page. ¡°I¡¯m ready, Mistress.¡± Lynn answered. ¡°Go ahead and browse through the books. I¡¯ll be scanning and compiling the information as you do.¡± I probably should actually work out some signals for Lynn and I to communicate with. I¡¯m not used to having her actually seeing everything I do. At least it¡¯s been useful so far, even if it has come with some extra annoyances. I started leafing through the book. Never spending more than a second on a set of pages before turning to the next. After I finished with one book, I would slip it back into its slot and remove another. I gave each title a quick glance as I did. I had repeated the process probably close to a hundred times. I had managed to work my way across the shelf and onto another. I was being a bit picky on the books I took out. I didn¡¯t want to grab too many with the same subject material. I knew that two different writers could have very different perspectives on an event, but I didn¡¯t need or want an in depth overview of every Spirit. At least for now. I felt movement around my neck. Coa had woken up and was now giving me pleading eyes while softly crooning. She was positively radiating hunger. It was a little after lunchtime, so I suppose I¡¯ll take a break and get something for us to eat. I think I¡¯ll go back to the inn for that. The lodging fee covers three meals a day. I might as well take advantage of it. I placed the last book back onto the shelf. Based on the title, it had been about some Spirit founding the Adventurer¡¯s Guild a millenia ago. I should have guessed that that idea hadn¡¯t sprung up naturally. The white robed librarians were still giving me the snub as I made my way out. I don¡¯t expect that to change. The guard captain was still stationed outside as I exited the building. He gave me a polite nod and I was going to pass him by when I realized that I didn¡¯t know how long the library was open for on a daily basis. ¡°Excuse me, but how long will the library be open til?¡± I asked. ¡°It will be open the entire month of the festival, but I feel that is not what you are asking. The library is usually accessible from the tenth hour until the nineteenth hour. That is subject to change though. The library is also closed on the fifteenth and thirtieth day of each month.¡± He explained. ¡°Thank you again for the help.¡± I responded. ¡°Anytime Miss.¡± He said, giving me another nod. I started down the stairs and then onto the road. Judging by what he said, the library should still be open a few more hours after I get food. I think so anyway. I¡¯m still unclear on how they keep time. It¡¯s not really information that comes up much since it¡¯s something that everyone just picks up as they grow up. Oh, what if I try to find a shop that makes clocks or watches? That should at least help giving me the local time. There might be even one that tells the day of the month too. It¡¯s at least possible anyway. Coa was beginning to grumble and shake side to side. ¡°Relax. It won¡¯t be a long wait. You can be a good girl for a little while longer, right?¡± I stroked her head reassuringly. I reached the area where I had detected that observer from earlier. Once again they watched me, but this time it was only for a few moments, before they moved and disappeared. There was a feeling of warning and the need to make haste. What an interesting reaction. Obviously something has occurred. Should I try to follow? No. I don¡¯t know the signature of that observer well enough to attempt that. Yet. I passed through the gate back to the commoner tier and wow was this area busy compared to earlier. That feeling of fear had faded away in the hustle and bustle of the city going into full blown celebration mode. I had to stop for a moment to do a quick psi exercise to protect myself from the sensory overload. There were just too many thoughts and feelings coming from all directions. I really had been slacking off when it came to my psi. That exercise would have been part of my daily routine before I came to this planet. Though, it¡¯s not like it was always necessary. More of a leftover habit from when I was younger. A lot of the worlds and stations I had visited had long since moved past the idea of crowding everyone into tighter and tighter spaces. Space had a lot of space after all. The observer that had been close to my inn was not there at this time. I wonder if that has anything to do with that other one that ran off? I stopped for a moment and shook my head. Of course it does. Seeing me leaving the library was a signal or something. I strode into the inn. The eating area was packed and the inn lady was looking harried. Her tension jumped when she saw me coming to the counter. There was a tinge of guilt present too. Intriguing. ¡°Hello. I¡¯m back for lunch. It¡¯s pretty busy down here, so I think I¡¯ll eat in my room.¡± I said. At the mention of my room, her anxiety skyrocketed. None of it showed on her face or in her speech as she took my order. I wonder what was up with my room? I tried to scan up there but there didn¡¯t seem to be anything amiss. I¡¯d need to get closer for a more accurate reading. I was sure at least of the fact that there was no one upstairs. As I waited for my food ready, I scanned through the customers¡¯ conversations. Apparently, the tournaments had already started, but it had just been the preliminary rounds before the main event. I wasn¡¯t really interested in those so I tuned those conversations out. One group was talking about some merchant ship that had gone missing. They were laughing over the misfortune of their colleague that owned the ship. Another was talking about how the Empire might levy new taxes to expand the military. Pretty normal gossip all around. The inn lady finally returned with my lunch of seafood. I¡¯ve grown to really like this type of fish. It tastes a lot like salmon. Very delectable. Of course I also got the required extra plate heaped with tidbits for Coa. It was a difficult challenge to stop her from immediately pouncing on the food. Maybe I should actually train her a bit? I kind of enjoy her antics though. I started up to my room holding the tray, while keeping Coa on my neck. I was passing her small pieces of meat to keep her calm. When I reached the same floor my room was on, I could finally get a reading. I frowned. My web I had established last night had given me a very detailed mental map of my room and I could see additional magic sources placed around. They were very small and well hidden. What action to take? It¡¯s unsure if I¡¯m even detecting all of them. My experience with magic is still lacking. I could get rid of these and miss one or even more because I just didn¡¯t know it was there. I don¡¯t even know what use these have. I haven¡¯t felt this particular type of magic before. I can be sure of the fact that I can no longer rely on the privacy of my room to discuss things with Lynn. At least not yet. I¡¯ll need to have a private chat with her somewhere tonight about setting up a different way of communicating. Using a different language to chat might work, but if they are listening in, it would probably still be clear that I¡¯m conversing with someone. I became aware of my psi swirling around my body. I took a breath and calmed down. I was getting irritated and losing control. I should be better than that. Damn idiots playing games with me. The inn lady was aware this had happened, but she felt guilt about it. Does that mean she¡¯s not actually a part of anything that happened, but that she can¡¯t actually go against whoever it is? That seems more likely. There¡¯s an idea. Could I change rooms if another was available? I think that would just postpone the inevitable though. They¡¯d bug my new room tomorrow or later today while I was at the library again. For now, I¡¯ll just eat out here in the hallway. No one is coming upstairs anyway. I¡¯ve got all afternoon and evening to think up a new plan. Chapter 44 Chapter 44 I decided not to return directly to the library after eating. I was wandering through the busy streets examining the wares at the many stalls. I took advantage of the noise to communicate with Lynn. [The room is bugged][We need a different][Non-voice form of communication]. I said each set of words quietly in a different language. Seri knew about seventy different languages, so I might as well use that knowledge. In the game, everyone got the psi translator at the start and it handled any language problem that might arise. From Seri¡¯s memories though, one couldn¡¯t always use a psi translator and some races had more favorable opinions when working with people that they could truly communicate with. She stopped at learning only as much as she did because they were the most used languages in the area of the galaxy she operated in. The others weren¡¯t exactly friendly to the human vocal system. ¡°So that¡¯s why Mistress didn¡¯t enter her room to eat! I see. I already possess an answer to this predicament! Tada!¡± Lynn announced. On my vision, a keyboard had appeared. I could see how this would work, but wouldn¡¯t it still look weird to tap along at it? I maneuvered around in the crowd and typed as much. I was typing slowly and disguising my movements as I did so too. Not like anyone could really take notice of my moving fingers with how packed in we all were. Actually now that I think about it, wasn¡¯t this the perfect environment for pickpockets? ¡°That is true, Mistress, but I believe the detail that it would be completely impervious to being spied on is well worth it. Any voice communication can be deciphered given enough time or, as much as I loathe to say it, possibly magical means.¡± Lynn responded with clear distaste in her voice. That was true. I still didn¡¯t have a good handle on the more subtle side of magic. I had only seen a few different types of magic circles for enchanting and offensive magic. Well, there was also that note back at the fortress. {What is your opinion on the bugs in my room. Should I remove them? Personally I think it¡¯s a futile effort to do so, but they could have more sinister effects than merely observation.} I entered. ¡°My first reaction would be to get rid of them immediately, but like Mistress said, it would be inevitable for them to come back. I do suggest setting up a bug of your own to observe anyone that might enter. I can prepare a suitable one right now if you wish.¡± Lynn offered. {Please do so.} I typed. ¡°The other reason I don¡¯t think Mistress should eliminate them is because doing so would remove one of Mistress¡¯ cards. It would reveal that you possess methods to detect them, which means they would know to set up even more advanced bugs in the future.¡± Lynn continued. {That¡¯s true. I can¡¯t afford to have this keyboard on my vision all the time, so let¡¯s work out some signals as well. First, for the keyboard, let¡¯s do if I rub the inside of my right eye for making it appear, left eye to remove it. If I pinch the bridge of my nose, that¡¯s asking you to report on what you¡¯ve learned or anything happenings. I can¡¯t really think of anything else we¡¯d need signals for with you watching through my eyes.} I keyed. ¡°Affirmative.¡± Lynn replied. {That aside, I¡¯m going shopping. What kind of items would you like?} I wrote. ¡°Potions would be nice, but I believe Mistress already picked some up for that purpose. Some metal ore or ingots of unknown types. I¡¯d also like some fabric, cloth and thread to play around with.¡± Lynn stated. Fabrics? Cloth? {Why do you need clothing materials? Especially ready made stuff?} I asked. ¡°Just interested a bit.¡± Lynn answered with an odd tone of voice. Hmmmm. Suspicious, but I know she won¡¯t explain any real reasons if I press her. {Alright. I¡¯ll see what I can do about that shopping list.} Wandering around the bazaar was pretty enjoyable, surprisingly. Finding the stuff for Lynn didn¡¯t take all that long, though I couldn¡¯t find any new types of metal at least that weren¡¯t already processed into something. I ended up buying a pot made out of something called aether steel along with a few other random doodads. I also picked up some more odd potions. One was something called an elemental ward potion that would supposedly keep the elements from harming you. Not like I needed something like that with my shield, but it did sound like a neat effect. I ended up buying enough that I bought a separate pack to toss them all in. I couldn¡¯t use a bag of holding yet so I had to make do with a simple, well-made leather one. I did buy a cheap one to send to Lynn though. If there was one annoying detail that came up as I was going about the shopping, it was that I had not just one, but six separate offers from people wishing to buy Coa. One of them was so persistent that I had to use a quick snap of psi to slip away from her. Once I had cleared the shopping list, I headed toward the library. I should be able to get another hour or two of study in. Unfortunately there was a commotion along the way. ¡°I¡¯m telling you that you must give this to me!¡± A woman¡¯s voice shouted. ¡°And I¡¯m telling you missie, that if you can¡¯t pay, then I¡¯m not selling.¡± A man¡¯s voice argued back. ¡°But that is-¡± The woman¡¯s voice attempted to reason. ¡°I don¡¯t care about any sob stories you might make up, missie. Now get out of here before I call for the guards. You¡¯re disrupting my shop.¡± The man said. At this point, I finally got through the crowd and got a glimpse of the scene. It was the girl in the cloak from the tailoring shop along with her maid and that knight. The maid came close to the girl and then tugged on the cloak. ¡°Y-¡± She was interrupted from whatever she was about to say by the knight knocking her on the head. ¡°Milady, we must leave.¡± ¡°But, Wymund, it is right there!¡± The girl pleaded. ¡°I understand, Milady, but we have no choice but to retreat for now. We must first procure more funds in order to acquire it.¡± The knight responded. The girl huffed and stomped her foot against the ground. She angrily whirled back to the merchant. ¡°You absolutely must not sell that item to anyone else! Do you hear me? You must not! I shall return post haste!¡± The crowd made way for the irritated, and obviously noble, girl. The maid did a slight bow expressing apologies to all concerned before quickly following. I caught the merchant saying ¡°Stupid, spoiled noble brat.¡± under his breath. With the show over, everyone started going back about their own business. I was a tad curious about what the fuss had been over, so I decided to hang about a bit and talk to the merchant. Whatever the item was, that girl had expressed a very strong attachment to it. The merchant was selling small accessories and jewelry. All his merchandise was displayed in glass cases. There wasn¡¯t anything that jumped out as being particularly special. He gave me a look when I came up to his stall. His thoughts were expressing annoyance with all the sales that scene might have lost him and all the people badgering him about it.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. This was easily remedied though. ¡°Do any of your accessories have protection enchants? I was looking to buy a simple one as a present for a young girl.¡± Might as well get Rie something useful. The merchant immediately brightened up. ¡°Of course! I recommend one of these items over here.¡± He moved a certain case over for me to examine. I was bit surprised that the accessories in that box were made of wood or leather. ¡°They¡¯re not made of metal?¡± ¡°Since Miss Customer specified a simple enchanted charm. Wood and leather made from beasts is much better for these types of enchants. Is there any that catches your eye?¡± He inquired. ¡°This one right here.¡± I pointed to a wooden bracelet that had blue lines running along it. ¡°A fine choice. This one has a minor magic resistance enchant. I can let you have it for five silver.¡± The merchant said. ¡°Five silver huh? Do you mind if I examine it more closely?¡± I asked. ¡°Not at all.¡± He withdrew a key and unlocked the case before holding it up toward me. He wasn¡¯t handing it to me, just raising it closer to my eye. This was pretty much a sham. I had already decided to buy it. I could tell that the merchant enjoyed showing off his wares. I was happy to oblige. Whatever worked, as long as it put him in a better mood to sate my idle and likely dumb curiosity. ¡°It¡¯s very well-made. It¡¯s perfect for what I had in mind so I¡¯ll take it.¡± To my surprise, he placed it in a small box before taking my coins and passing it to me. ¡°Miss Customer did say it was intended to be a gift.¡± He said with a smile. ¡°Thank you.¡± I replied. ¡°If you don¡¯t mind me asking, what was that fuss about earlier?¡± He sighed. ¡°Just someone raising a ruckus because they saw something caught their eye. Came up to my stall and pointed at this necklace here.¡± He indicated a necklace with a large dark blue gem as the center piece. ¡°Then started yelling about how it belonged to her and I had to return it.¡± ¡°And there¡¯s no way that would be the case? If it was possibly acquired through others?¡± I asked. ¡°Of course not! Every item on display here was crafted by myself! None of the merchants I have contracts with for supplying me with gems or other raw materials condone buying or selling stolen goods either. Just a spoiled noble trying to get something she wants.¡± He whispered the last bit in a bitter tone. ¡°I see. Thank you again for the bracelet. I¡¯m sure my acquaintance will be pleased with it.¡± I said by way of concluding the business deal. With that short detour done and my curiosity satisfied, I returned to the library. I spent the next couple hours until the library closed flipping through more books. I was making decent headway, but I really hadn¡¯t made much progress when considering the sheer number of books. It would probably take me at least a few days at this rate to go through all these shelves. These are only the books on Spirits too! I still have to look at the other sections afterwards. Rather than head back to the inn though, I took a detour and went to adventurer¡¯s guild. It was evening now, but it was still open as I had expected. I went to the counter, instead of checking the request board. I had no idea what the locations on the requests would be about, so it was easier asking the guild staff for suggestions. I didn¡¯t have to wait in line very long. Only a few people were here. Most adventurers were probably getting drunk, as per the stereotype, at this time of day. I ended up with a super muscled old man for receptionist. Where are the pretty girls!? ¡°Show your ID and then state your business.¡± He said in a gruff voice. I had expected that, so I already had my card ready. He only gave it a brief glance. ¡°I was looking for any jobs that might be available in the surrounding area. I would have checked the board, but as I¡¯m new to the city, I was hoping for any suggestions.¡± ¡°You¡¯re in luck. The Guard just dropped off some requests. They¡¯ve got their hands full with the anniversary celebration, so they passed some non urgent work to us.¡± He pulled out a sheaf of notes. ¡°Let¡¯s see here. There¡¯s a herd of elkan over at the Dhona Woods causing some problems for the farmers on the outskirts. Then there¡¯s a celea up north along the coast that attacked a fisherman. Lastly, if you follow the coast in the opposite direction, there¡¯s some blast jellies. Any preference?¡± ¡°The elkan one sounds good.¡± Being in a forest would be less observable than on the coast and would make it easier to do the exchange with Lynn. ¡°Okay. You have sufficient rank to accept it, so it¡¯s fine. There¡¯s no real rush on completing it, but try to get it done within the next week if possible.¡± He explained. There was something about what he just said that bothered me. My rank. Wasn¡¯t I still a bottom level adventurer? ¡°What rank is the request?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a rank 3. You¡¯re rank 3 as well, so that¡¯s all sorted. Right?¡± He said. Rank 3? I was absolutely sure the bottom rank was rank 5. I think the guild leader back there said you had to take a test of some kind to reach higher ranks too. I definitely never did that. ¡°How am I rank 3? I only joined the guild recently.¡± I asked. ¡°I can¡¯t say for sure. Odds are that you received some commendations and requests to be ranked up by notables like guild leaders or nobles for services that weren¡¯t affiliated with official requests. That¡¯s not all that uncommon really.¡± He explained with a shrug. It¡¯s the event with the kids rearing its head again, isn¡¯t it? This probably isn¡¯t the last I¡¯m going to see of the aftermath of that either. ¡°I see. One last question. Directions to the area the beasts were seen at and a description of them, if you could.¡± The guy was startled. ¡°You¡¯ve never seen an elkan before?¡± I was saved by a timely assist by Lynn. ¡°Mistress, elkan came up in one of the books. They look very similar to the terrestrial elk you may be familiar with.¡± Thank you Lynn! ¡°I¡¯m not positive about the official names for beasts really, but were elkan the somewhat equine looking monsters with large antlers on their head? He nodded. ¡°Yep, that¡¯s them. As for where they were spotted. Near the large forest close to the city, but down at the southern fringes of the farmland area. Witnesses saw three of them, but there may be be a few more. Contact the farmers around there for more information. Remember to collect their antlers as proof of subjugation.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take care of it.¡± I said before leaving. Before I left the city, I stopped by the inn and let the inn lady know that I¡¯d be out of the city tonight. She accepted that, but was inwardly afraid that I was aware of everything. The guards at the gate were surprised to see me leaving the city so late, but they let me through. I was lucky there. It was close to the time where they locked down the gate for the night. I started jogging. I needed to reach the forest quickly, but not quickly enough to draw attention to my speed. No one was still out in the farms, so I just had to be cautious of the guards at the city. I wasn¡¯t sure how far they could accurately see, but I could expect that they¡¯d have methods of observing the open, expansive farmland from atop the walls. Ultimately, I reached the forest around midnight. I pushed in deeper and deeper until I found a decent location to rest for the night. I hunkered down and started preparing my campsite. Once I had dinner started cooking, I decided to talk with Lynn. ¡°Lynn, can you send the car to collect the goods?¡± I said for a start. ¡°It¡¯s already on the way, Mistress. I¡¯m being cautious about the route I am taking due to the inability to go to higher altitudes.¡± Lynn replied. ¡°That makes sense.¡± I handed a slice of fruit to the gluttonous dragon on my lap. ¡°Can we go over the information collected today?¡± ¡°To begin, the spirits don¡¯t appear to follow any pattern for when they arrive, unless a number of them hid their identities which is an option. They appear out of thin air, possessing an odd Class and usually weird equipment. A lot of times, they are also a race that doesn¡¯t exist here. Sometimes, they are accompanied by others as well. The highest number of spirits that appeared at once are what are referred to as the Divine Spirits. According to the notes, they were a group of forty-five that were sent to ¡®oversee the birth of the world¡¯. That Airin that Mistress has heard of, was said to be the leader of that group.¡± Lynn recounted. ¡°The ¡®birth of the world¡¯? That kind of sounds ominous to me. Is that explained at all?¡± I inquired. ¡°Sadly not. All that remains to this day are legends and various details like blessings and the like. From the accounts though, it was at least several millennia ago, if not longer. Since then, spirits have come that have changed the world, for good or ill. A lot of times their impact has been relatively minor, limited to showing off by fighting strong monsters or clearing high level dungeons, but some stand out by founding empires or even going as far as trying to conquer the world. One of them even destroyed a kingdom for simply offending her.¡± Lynn continued. ¡°So they¡¯re not universally good then. Was there any commonality between their arrivals?¡± I asked. ¡°None that I could determine from the books today. Possibly, we might discover one.¡± Lynn paused for a moment. ¡°Mistress, the scariest detail that I¡¯ve learned, wasn¡¯t about the spirits. It¡¯s about what it revealed about the people of this world.¡± Lynn announced. ¡°What do you mean?¡± I questioned. ¡°The people of this world revere the spirits to a ridiculous level. They will wholeheartedly follow even a crazy, insane one that does unspeakable things. That woman that massacred that kingdom is seen as being justified because they had the audacity to offend a spirit!¡± Lynn explained. ¡°That is simply terrifying.¡± I answered honestly. ¡°With that level of devotion to take advantage of, don¡¯t people try to pose as spirits for the benefits?¡± ¡°It¡¯s an anathema to them. In addition, they wouldn¡¯t be able to imitate the non-standard classes of the spirits even if they overcame their feelings.¡± Lynn concluded. I sighed. ¡°I really wish you had said something that would have eliminated the possibility that I could be considered a spirit.¡± ¡°Regrettably, Mistress, you and possibly even myself, both seem to fit the requirements to be considered such.¡± Lynn said hesitantly. ¡°Fuck.¡± That summed up my feelings pretty well. Don¡¯t drag me into your shitty religious fervor, stupid world! Chapter 45 Chapter 45 I took my and Coa¡¯s dinner out of the cooker. I placed Coa and her platter on the small fold out stand. ¡°Lynn, how much longer until the car gets here?¡± I asked. ¡°Approximately seventy more seconds, Mistress.¡± Lynn answered. ¡°Ahh, good.¡± I really wanted to get this bag of stuff sent off as soon as possible. I was curious about what Lynn would discover from examining them. I plopped a meatball into my mouth. Delicious. The food here wasn¡¯t bad, but I definitely preferred the taste of my own supplies. ¡°Mistress, why don¡¯t we make use of the ¡®Spirit¡¯ identity to get what we need?¡± She asked after a moment of silence. ¡°No.¡± I bluntly refused. ¡°There¡¯s too much room for uncertainties cropping up using that method. Plus, don¡¯t forget what happened the last time we got mistaken as ¡®Gods¡¯.¡± I countered. Lynn groaned. ¡°Right. That was most definitely not an experience I wish to relive.¡± ¡°I¡¯m definitely aware of the fact that it might provide us with benefits, but I just cannot bring myself to trust religious fanatics in any way. I think the demerits would rapidly outpace any positives to be gained from it. There¡¯s also the little detail that I don¡¯t know if I could adequately prove my spirithood. You mentioned that one of the methods by which spirits were identified is them possessing a non-standard class. Back at that first town and at the fortress, I was scanned, but my classes didn¡¯t appear on the result. I don¡¯t think my powers or strength alone would be enough. I think it would be hard to demonstrate that I was a spirit without showing the people Lullaby, and I have no intention of ever revealing her to anyone, if I can help it.¡± I explained. ¡°That¡¯s true. With Lullaby¡¯s current state, we wouldn¡¯t be able to fend off a determined assault and some of our munitions and other goods would be extremely dangerous if they got into the wrong hands.¡± Lynn responded. ¡°Lynn, to be fair, I don¡¯t think anyone on this world could match you for counting as ¡®the wrong hands¡¯. You¡¯re pretty undiscriminating once you get going in causing widespread destruction.¡± I said. ¡°Mistress! That only happened the one time! The. One. Time. I never did it again!¡± Lynn cried. ¡°Are you sure? Let¡¯s see. There was the time with the syndicate space station.¡± I started ticking off my fingers. ¡°The time with the cartel on that water world. That group of mercenaries that you chased through eight systems while leaving me behind on an asteroid. Or how about the time you ended up assisting a rebellion by blowing up the seat of a corrupt government? Oh, yeah there was also-¡± ¡°Stop!¡± She interrupted. ¡°I admit it! I go a little overboard at times.¡± ¡°Only a little?¡± I laughed. ¡°Okay, maybe a lot overboard, but there were extenuating circumstances in all those cases!¡± She stated. ¡°Yes, yes. It is surely just coincidence how often these ¡®extenuating circumstances¡¯ lead to massive destruction when it comes to you.¡± I teased. ¡°Mistress, you¡¯re being very mean!¡± Lynn accused. ¡°By the way, the car is directly overhead.¡± She said it a lighter tone. I guess that puts an end to our banter. ¡°Well, bring it down.¡± The car came down and angled its way through the trees before stopping about four meters above me. It¡¯s appearance scared the blazes out of Coa, and she left her plate of food behind and shot back to my neck. I briefly chuckled at her reaction. I picked up the pack and then hopped up to the car door, slid open the door and placed the pack down while exchanging it for the tiny case that had been on the seat. I glanced at the devices Lynn had prepared. As expected, she had chosen the perfect tool for my current situation. One was a surveillance device that viewed the world in a few different ways at once, including detecting the fluctuations from psi use. In addition, the device came with a way of cloaking itself. I wasn¡¯t sure how that would stand up against magic, but I was pretty sure it would be effective. With its small size, it wouldn¡¯t be difficult to place it with psi without it being noticed. The other item in the case was not something I had expected though. It was a security weapon. Just seeing it next to the camera, I knew Lynn had definitely already linked them together. She had done something unnecessary. If the camera detected a hostile this weapon would ¡®neutralize¡¯ them. With Lynn having made it, that would range between a limb getting sliced off, at minimum, or more likely a laser straight through the heart. ¡°Lynn, I think the security laser is a bit much. If the intruders are killed entering my room, there might be problems. Not the least of which being that I can¡¯t interrogate dead people.¡± I pointed out. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Mistress. I took that into account! I¡¯ve configured it to only target locations that will guarantee that they¡¯ll live at least a few hours. More than enough time for any interrogation. After that they¡¯ll probably succumb to their wounds and die, but that can¡¯t be helped.¡± Lynn said proudly. I sighed and took the security laser out of the case. I returned it to the car and shut the door. ¡°Lynn, I don¡¯t need such a thing.¡± I dropped back down my campsite. ¡°Fine.¡± Lynn said moodily. The car rose back up into the air and then after it clearing the trees, it shimmered becoming practically invisible. Coa was still nervous, but when I placed her back at her food, it seemed like her fear was forgotten and her appetite took over again. I¡¯m slightly worried that if someone tempted her with food that she¡¯d gleefully let herself be kidnapped. ¡°I think tomorrow, I¡¯ll finally make the time to visit an information dealer in the city. I¡¯ll just use the visit as another way to spread the word that I¡¯m interested in doing business with that Ghost group. For now, I guess it¡¯s time to sleep before going back to the city in the morning.¡± I said. ¡°Mistress, don¡¯t tell me you forget about that guild job you took?¡± She asked. ¡°Oh right, there was that huh? I guess I¡¯ll go swing by those southern farms in the morning, ask a few questions, take care of those elk things, and then head back to the city. Should be done by midday.¡± I reasoned. ¡°Mistress, aren¡¯t you taking an unknown beast too lightly?¡± She scolded. I perked up. ¡°Are you telling me that the elkans might be a decent fight?¡± ¡°Well, no. From the information in the books they¡¯re only a bit stronger than your tamed wolves, but it¡¯s still not good to let your guard down!¡± She said.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. ¡°You¡¯d think a fantasy world would have more interesting and exciting stuff. Other than that sabretooth, nothing else has even close to being a challenge.¡± I complained. ¡°Isn¡¯t gathering the materials we require enough of a challenge?¡± Lynn pointed out. ¡°That¡¯s true, but it¡¯s not really the kind I can get excited about.¡± I sighed. Coa interrupted our conversation by letting out a burp, followed by a satisfied purr before coiling up to sleep on the now clean plate. ¡°Coa has the right idea. It¡¯s definitely time for bed. Night Lynn.¡± I said with a yawn. ¡°Good night, Mistress.¡± She replied I packed away the cooking stuff and then crawled into my tent. I laid Coa down on the blanket, set my proximity alarm and then went to sleep. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The alarm went off, so I immediately swept out of my covers with my knife in hand. I stopped stunned when I saw what had set it off. One of those sloth lizards was wandering around my campsite, chewing on plants. It came up to my tent and smelled it a bit before plodding around it, obviously uninterested. I was going to go back to bed, but I realized I had no idea how strong one of these things were. Due to this idle curiosity, I pulled out my scanner and aimed it at the beast.
L71
This beast spends most of its life asleep. They only awaken for short intervals every few days to eat before returning to their slumbers.
Level 71!? That thing? I was frankly astonished. I hadn¡¯t expected them to be nearly that strong. I glanced down to the device in my hand. I should probably be using this more often, but it would be really hard to hide its bizarre appearance to anyone of this world, especially any that knew anything about mechanisms. I also don¡¯t really need it all that much. I mean, learning something¡¯s level and a brief description rarely if ever gives me useful information. I can generally tell if something is actually a threat too without relying on this gizmo. Whatever. Let¡¯s just go back to bed. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Once I awoke, I glanced around, but I didn¡¯t see any sign of the sloth lizard. It had probably wandered off to find a tree to sleep in. I quickly prepared breakfast for Coa and I before packing up my camp and leaving. Since I was playing the role of an adventurer, I had set my main class as hunter and taken my bow and quiver out of my pack. Like I had said the previous night, instead of wandering the forest without a direction, I¡¯d first go talk to those southern farmers. Surely they could at least give me some kind of reference for where to search. When I reached the farms at the south edge of the forest, I was a bit confused. I had expected there to be crops, but instead it seemed like the area was filled with livestock. I called up the keyboard and typed out a brief question which got an immediate response from Lynn. ¡°Correct, Mistress. Elkans are carnivores.¡± was Lynn¡¯s answer. How can they be like elks if they¡¯re meat-eaters!? I trudged the rest of the way to one of the nearby farm houses. This farm in particular seem to raise pigs. That brought to mind an interesting observation. Wasn¡¯t it odd that the variety of livestock was so normal? I looked around and only saw animals that I could have seen back on Earth. I wonder why there aren¡¯t any farms raising actual monsters for livestock? Maybe they just aren¡¯t around here? Didn¡¯t that book in the library mention breeding sloth lizards? That guard captain mentioned raising serpent dragons too. Possibly monsters just weren¡¯t treated as simple livestock and more as valuable commodities then? That made sense. Are there merchants that sell them or possibly a guild of some kind for beast masters? Ahh. I¡¯m letting myself get sidetracked. I stopped at the house and knocked. I tried to hurry the conversation with the inhabitants along, but once they understood that I was here to take care of their monster problem, I got an earful of complaining about the knights being no help and other such comments. Was it really okay for seemingly commoner farmers to say this kind of stuff? Eventually, I managed to escape with the simple directions they could provide and I returned to the forest. According to them, the elkans always came from the treeline directly south and they believed the beasts were likely near some spring that was not too far from there. It was definitely a good place to start. It was a jackpot. When I made it to the spring, a group of five creatures was there. Upon taking in their features, I felt forced to make a remark. ¡°Lynn, how do those things look like Earth elks!? I don¡¯t even know where to start.¡± Lynn had been right that they were vaguely elk like at least when looking at just body frame and size, but then the rest was definitely not! The face looked more like that of a wolf and they had four eyes! Two in the front and two on the side. They also had four antlers rather than the two an Earth elk would have had and all the elkan here had them, though one in particular had extremely huge and more elaborate ones. That one was probably the male leader of the herd. The clawed hooves were definitely out there too. ¡°Mistress, they have four hooved legs and they have antlers. An Earth elk was the closest beast I could compare to on short notice to be of help to you yesterday in that conversation.¡± Lynn stated calmly. ¡°They are about to attack.¡± She added. Right. I readied my bow and fired a quick shot at the closest monster¡¯s leg. The beast was thrown off balance right at the start of its charge, which had the bonus effect that it also threw off the others that had been next to or behind it. I followed up that first shot until the whole lot was dead. It was a pretty boring fight. Only the large male even got close to me and that was because it managed to somehow shrug off the arrow that burrowed into its head. Of course there was a tiny problem that arose after I killed the adults. The last assumed female had tried to cover them, but there were two small kids. I had sensed their more simple minds, but this was the first look I had gotten at them. Probably newborns by the look of things and likely the reason why the elkans had been raiding the farms nearby so often. I might like kids, but that didn¡¯t really extend to monsters. I at least showed them some mercy by ending their short lives by putting them to sleep first. Now I just had to slice off the antlers of these things to show I had gotten rid of them and I¡¯d be done out here. I did that from afar with my one of my knives while I used the other to cut tidbits out of one of them to feed Coa. She was quite pleased with these unexpected offerings and I made a short game of floating the small chunks of meat around her as she snapped them out of the air. It was a short game because it didn¡¯t take long to collect my bounty. ¡°Mistress, I was thinking. It¡¯s not something we¡¯re used to, but on this world, beast parts seem to have value beyond just being trophies. It is possible that a piece of a monster could be utilized in our ship repair.¡± Lynn said. I laughed. ¡°You think we could use dragon scales or something?¡± ¡°Yes. If they work for our purposes, why not?¡± Lynn countered. I was taken aback by the notion. I really hadn¡¯t considered options other than gathering the actual metals we required. Why would I have? Beasts themselves weren¡¯t worth anything where we came from. This was a world with magic and true monsters though. That meant the possibility was there. One flaw with this idea is that I have no idea how to accurately harvest from a monster. I¡¯m sure that I¡¯d most likely damage anything I practiced on or was working on for the first time. The other would be that I don¡¯t think it¡¯s likely that we¡¯d find any monster that had something that could truly serve as a replacement for what we were missing. ¡°I suppose I¡¯ll have to add learning how to properly take apart monsters to my list of things to do and finding out the properties of them. Thanks Lynn, I really appreciate the added workload.¡± I muttered sarcastically. ¡°Any time, Mistress!¡± Lynn quipped. I stored one pair of antlers away in my pack and then bundled up the others as best I could. I had forgotten the obvious necessity of rope at the market. There was no way I could use the cable in my pack for that mundane task, thus I was forced to carry them until I reached that earlier farm. Apparently they had seen me trudging out of the forest and came to check on me. They were ecstatic that I had solved their problem and only too happy to provide me some rope, especially when I told them they were welcome to what was left of the beasts back at the spring, which I used to tie up the antlers so I could easily carry them back to the city. It wasn¡¯t midday yet, but it would probably be later than that by the time I got there. I just sighed and started moving. Chapter 46 Chapter 46 Upon arriving at the Adventurer¡¯s Guild, I went to the counter. There were only a few obvious adventurers around. As expected, not many people work during a big festival if they can help it. Plus, I bet a lot of them are participating in one of the many tournaments I heard about. Having a good showing in one of those is probably good for an adventurer¡¯s reputation. Oh yeah. I wanted to go check out one of the magic tournaments didn¡¯t I? It completely slipped my mind with all the other stuff I¡¯ve had going on. It wasn¡¯t like it was that important though, so I don¡¯t mind missing it. The guy at the counter took one look at me and the antlers I was carrying over my shoulder before telling me that request turn ins go somewhere else. He pointed out a double door that was off to the side. I saw someone go through the doors carrying a large crate. When I passed through the doors, I could see that it was like a warehouse. Crates and barrels lined up. I could see some workers taking meat out of what looked like a cold room. Others were stacking up items on carts and pushing them out through another set of doors. Interesting. ¡°Job completion, Missy?¡± I glanced to the side and saw a man sitting on a table. He was looking at me with some papers in hand. ¡°One moment. Oi, Kel! Don¡¯t think I don¡¯t see you slacking off over there! The supplies for old man Steral are prepared in the back. Take those over to his shop!¡± He shouted. ¡°Yes, Sir!¡± Another voice yelled in response. ¡°Now what can I do for you, Missy?¡± He asked, again speaking at a normal volume. ¡°I had to turn in these antlers as proof for my request.¡± I laid the antlers out on the table. ¡°Can I see your guild card?¡± I slipped it out and handed it to him. He waved some object across it. ¡°Ahh, you picked up a request to hunt some elkans. Wait? You took it up last night, but you¡¯re already done?¡± They can scan the card somehow to look at your accepted requests? I don¡¯t remember the guy doing anything with my card last night when I took the job. Still, this guy was obviously doubting me. ¡°You can talk with the farmers in that area if you want. They pointed me to the elkans and I let them have the remains other than the antlers.¡± I stated. ¡°You only have the antlers then? The request was for three elkans, but I see twenty antlers so you must have killed five. I¡¯ll toss in a small bonus.¡± His voice was neutral, but I picked up the disappointment from his thoughts. He seemed to have been hoping for the guild to be able to purchase the pelts off me cheaply. He was also planning to send a guild agent to check the area. ¡°Sounds fine.¡± I really didn¡¯t care too much about what I was paid. This task had just been to get me out of the city for the night after all. He passed me some silver coins which I deposited away along with my guild card. Oh. I just realized something I could bring up. ¡°If you don¡¯t mind me asking, are these antlers used for anything?¡± ¡°Powdered elkan antlers can be used in making weak health potions.¡± The man explained. I nodded and left the warehouse since my business was done there. Health potion material. Doesn¡¯t that mean that the guild made me collect those antlers just so they could then turn around and sell them off for extra money or something along those lines? How annoying. ¡°Mistress, after reviewing the information we received from that witch girl, powdered elkan antlers were not mentioned anywhere in her notes. Her health potion recipe definitely didn¡¯t include them.¡± Lynn chimed in. That guy didn¡¯t lie though as far as I could tell, so maybe you can use different ingredients for similar results? Or maybe Fio¡¯s health potion recipe was just better than the one that used the antlers. That honestly made much more sense to me. Fio seemed quite talented. Since I¡¯m here, why don¡¯t I check out that study room again? The bestiaries there should mention some common uses for monster bits. The old elf guy wasn¡¯t there today, instead it was a younger woman wearing a robe with a bored expression. I think I caught the sight of some horns in her hair which would mark her as being a demon. ¡°Do you require some assistance?¡± She asked, perking up. ¡°No, I¡¯m good. I¡¯ve been here before.¡± I replied. She immediately deflated back to her previous state. I went over to the shelf and grabbed a half dozen bestiaries. I sat down at the table and began idly flipping through them. It didn¡¯t take me long to finish all six. None of them were all that long since they each seemed to only focus on one subset of beasts. I placed them back on the shelf and grabbed another few more and repeated the process. That should be enough for now. I still had something else I wanted to get done today. I noticed that the woman was watching me with fascination. ¡°Did you just read all those books?¡± ¡°Yes?¡± I responded. ¡°You didn¡¯t even spend a second on a page! How could you possibly have read that quickly!?¡± She demanded. ¡°I¡¯m a quick reader.¡± I stated simply. ¡°I¡¯ll be going now.¡± I added before she could press me with more questions. I really didn¡¯t care to listen to that kind of nagging. I got up, returned the books and then left the study and then the guild too. I could go back to the inn for a late lunch or early dinner, but I think I¡¯ll just pick up something from a stall on the way to my destination. Not that I had an actual destination in mind or anything. I knew what I needed, but actually getting there might take a few detours. While I wandered toward the marketplace searching for lunch, I asked Lynn to give me a rundown of the information we had just collected. ¡°There was nothing that stood out as special, Mistress. There were a few particular materials that were said to have a positive effect when used for enchanting or alchemy, but that¡¯s all Mistress would probably be interested in. Most of the information was simply along the lines of this monster having a hide as strong as steel or that monster having bones that could be used to make a magic focus. Your sabertooth fang was considered a top rate material for that.¡± Lynn detailed. I sighed. So that research was a waste of time. ¡°Mistress, I wouldn¡¯t give up on the idea yet. All the highest level monsters were remarkably sparse on the details. It¡¯s still possibly some of them might satisfy our needs. Actually given how bare the information about those beasts was, I¡¯d say the people of this world have never killed any of them. If any of the spirits had, they kept any special features of the materials to themselves.¡± Lynn added. So not a complete waste of time then, but still ultimately pointless reading those books. I wasn¡¯t really enthusiastic about the idea of fighting some high level monster on this world. I wanted a challenge, but that didn¡¯t mean I wanted to risk dying. I was pretty damn sure that if I died, there wouldn¡¯t be any coming back like in the game. At the same time though, the mental image of sniping a giant dragon out of the sky made me crack a smile. That would undoubtedly be a really enjoyable spectacle. Actually, how would you even go about hunting something if you had to be careful about not damaging it because you want parts of it? If you wanted horns off the head, you¡¯d have to be wary of hitting the head or you might break your entire purpose of fighting the monster. That sounds like a major pain. Some kind of high powered tranquilizer would be necessary, maybe. Do we even have the supplies to make something like that? I¡¯ve never needed that for killing giant alien beasts before, so I doubt we do. Let¡¯s just focus now on my agenda for the rest of the day. Finding an information broker. If this was back in the game, I could just access certain hidden sections of the galactic net for any kind of information, but I can¡¯t do that here, so I¡¯ll have to do this the old fashioned way. There are a few decent starting points. First would be wandering around the shadier areas of the city and visiting the taverns and stuff in that area. For some reason those kind of shops always have some kind of connection to the underworld. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. You know, I wonder if it''s like a chicken and egg scenario? Are the slums the slums because criminals congregate there? Or do the criminals congregate there because it is the slums? Oh well. If that fails then there is a more upscale option that is almost guaranteed to work. Personally, I¡¯d rather try that kind of establishment first, but Lynn is very against me entering those. It¡¯s unfortunate, but to be fair, I always seem to run into trouble whenever I visit them, so it¡¯s not like I don¡¯t understand her feelings. As for the city, it was still in just as high spirits as it was the day before. Can they really keep up this festive atmosphere for a whole month? I passed through one of the many plazas and grabbed my lunch. Coa of course woke up immediately. What a glutton she is. She just had a bunch of meat earlier too. She¡¯ll eat me out of house and home eventually! That does bring something else to mind. We might have to do some remodeling on the ship and expand the small hydroponics lab for when we leave this world. We still don¡¯t know how much time it will take to get to any other recognizable location we could restock at, so we¡¯ll need to assume I¡¯ll have to rely on our own stores entirely. At least the ship¡¯s power core was replaced only a few years ago, so it should be able to handle the extra load. At least for a few decades feasibly. At that point, I don¡¯t know what we¡¯ll do. If we don¡¯t make it to some kind of civilization in that time frame, we, or more accurately I, will be in a lot of trouble. I should bring this up with Lynn, but knowing her, she¡¯s probably already taken this into consideration huh? As I let my mind wander, I reached the shady part of the city. While I referred to it as such, it wasn¡¯t like it was all that visibly different from the other areas of this district of the city, except for a boarded up building here and there. There were some other telltale signs though. The main one was the atmosphere. The festive vibe that was so present in the rest of the city was very muted here, bordering on nonexistent. There were few people walking the streets and most of them had furtive looks as they hurried about their business. Their clothing looked quite shabby and they were visibly carrying weapons too. I guess that last one wasn¡¯t all that unusual. There were also women that to my eyes were obviously prostitutes. They weren¡¯t openly advertising it, but I¡¯m sure their status was just as evident to the residents as it was to me. ¡°Mistress, you¡¯re staring at those women a bit too much.¡± Lynn¡¯s scolded. Right. I was attracting a fair amount of attention though. It could be broken up into basically three categories. The first group were just people that were mildly interested in what I was doing, but nothing more than that. The second group were the people eying me as a target. Afterall, Coa was a bit too big now to be easily hidden around my neck and my shield jewelry was visible. My clothes were also well-made and clean. All these facts together told the story that I was well off and that robbing me would likely yield a good profit. The last group were the ones looking at me in fear and confusion. Not fear of my possible strength, but fear of what kind of backing I might have that allowed me to walk through this area so nonchalantly. Well, some of them feared my possible strength too, but those were in the clear minority. I do look young by this world¡¯s standards even for an elf or demon. Do I look around for a tavern or just ask for directions to one? I think I¡¯ll just ask. By coincidence the nearest person was one of the prostitutes. Yes, purely a coincidence. There wasn¡¯t anything amazing from that quick conversation though. There wasn¡¯t even any vague allusions to asking if I was interested in ¡®doing business¡¯ with her. Kind of disappointing really. My gender was likely to blame. Oh well, I knew where the bar was at least. I strode along, while choosing to ignore the people that were now tailing me. There was only a few of them at the moment and they were staying quite a distance back. They didn¡¯t seem to have any plan to close in on me. For now. I turned a corner and found myself in front of the tavern. The Empty Flagon huh? How original. I went to the door and pulled on the handle and walked inside. As I had expected it was a dimly lit and quiet place, but despite that was full of people. How shameful of all these people to be already drinking even before dinner time! They should learn from my example! Actually, don¡¯t I fall into the same category as these people when it comes to drinking? I do, huh? I was receiving even more attention here and not much of it was pleasant. The barkeep only spared me a short glance, but a quick peek at his thoughts told me exactly why this tavern was where that prostitute had sent me. It also provided me with an interesting tidbit which decided my course of action. It could be fruitful, so I¡¯ll take advantage of this stage I¡¯ve been provided with. A simple act should suffice, I think. Too bad this method will involve a brief detour. I¡¯ll make sure to remedy that for my next visit. Not knowing any of the proper signals or codes is really a hassle. I went straight up to the bar and sat on an empty stool between two cloaked people. I took down my own hood showing off my dark purple hair. I started waving. ¡°Barkeep! Barkeep can I get served?¡± I made it like I was totally unaware of everyone else and acted a bit obnoxious. Since he didn¡¯t immediately come over, I decided to call out again. ¡°Barkeep! Come on! I want a drink!¡± My raised voice killed the silent atmosphere, rewarding me with even more annoyance from my surroundings. The barkeep was intentionally ignoring me while he chatted with someone. I turned to my neighbor. ¡°Hey! Nice to meet you! What are you having?¡± I asked cheerfully. All I got in return was a grunt. I turned to repeat the process with my other neighbor, but they stood up and moved to an empty chair before I could even open my mouth. Quick check of the room tells me the hostility towards me is ramping up and most of them are believing my act of being an innocent and naive idiot. Let¡¯s reinforce that impression with some psi nudging. That¡¯s right, there¡¯s nothing suspicious about little old me. Just an idiot that wandered into the wrong part of the city. This act does make me feel awkward though. My stalkers had been busy while I was in here. One was waiting by the door, likely for me to leave. The rest had spread out to watch the place from different angles. They didn¡¯t seem to want to let me slip away. The barkeep finally came along the bar towards me. The person he was talking to walked out of the bar and stopped next to the guy waiting there. When the barkeep was close, I spoke up first. ¡°Finally! I was waiting you know!? Also why is this place so gloomy? Can¡¯t you get more lights or something? My pet isn¡¯t happy with this!¡± I patted Coa, but she was asleep, so there was only a small whimper like snore. Sorry, Coa. I used you for the sake of the act. ¡°No. Now what do you want, girlie?¡± He growled at me. Oh. I hadn¡¯t noticed, but this guy was an elf. I guess I shouldn¡¯t be that surprised. An elf is free to become a big macho guy if he wants to, though usually they are pretty slim in stories. ¡°I want something to drink!¡± I replied with a smile. He groaned for a brief moment. ¡°What do you want to drink?¡± He specified with some heat in his voice. ¡°Ahhh! Ummm. How about something strong? No one ever lets me drink strong liquor for some reason! Isn¡¯t that weird? It¡¯s weird right?¡± I nodded to myself. ¡°So, I¡¯ll have whatever you recommend.¡± Let¡¯s hurry this along. This kind of scene is as bad as knowing spoilers before you read a book. ¡°Sure. I¡¯ll let you sample one of my special brews.¡± He stated with a wide grin. Yes, yes. I¡¯m positive that it will be very ¡®special¡¯. He was back a few moments later, placing a large glass in front of me. There was amusement flickering around me. Obviously everyone was looking forward to watching the idiot, me, drink this ridiculously strong alcohol. The only bright side is that the barkeep didn¡¯t drug it. I wonder how strong this is though? 140 Proof? 150? If it reaches past that, even I will have problems drinking it. I lifted the glass to my lips and took a sip. Whoa, this one definitely has some kick to it. Strong enough that it would likely knock someone out and that could be considered a good result! After my small sip, I took a larger drink and then another. I wasn¡¯t going to drink it all. Maybe just half of it. Start being a bit unsteady with my hands and now was a good time I think. I wobbled and fell backwards off the stool, spilling the rest of the drink on the bar. Gruff laughter erupted amongst the other patrons. ¡°Wow, that¡¯s a dooozy¡± I slurred. I tried to get back on my feet, but intentionally fell over again. Of course these actions finally woke up Coa, who started crooning to me. She was trying to ask what was wrong. She was getting shriller too in response to the laughter of the bar. She was not a happy dragon. She might be a child, but it seems like she understood in some way that I was being insulted and she didn¡¯t like that. I finally dragged myself up and got my head over the bar. I waved my right hand limply. ¡°Heyo barkeep, I think, that one¡¯s all for me. What da I owe ya?¡± ¡°No sweat. It¡¯s on the house, girlie.¡± Giving me a vicious grin. I really wanted to sock him, but I can¡¯t do that yet. ¡°Really!? You¡¯re a pal!¡± I responded cheerfully. I swayed my way out of the bar, accompanied by Coa hissing at people, which just made them laugh harder. When I failed to push open the door, one of the other patrons pushed it open for me. I thanked him and stumbled out to the street. I took a few steps and then tilted and slid against the building. ¡°Miss, are you alright?¡± Cue Stalker One making his appearance. ¡°I¡¯m a¡¯ok!¡± I righted myself and attempted to take another step, but went off balance again. ¡°Miss, you¡¯re definitely not alright. I have a place nearby you can rest at.¡± He said. ¡°Yeah?¡± I acted like I didn¡¯t understand. ¡°You can rest off your drink and then make it home easier when you wake up. Doesn¡¯t that sound like a good idea?¡± He urged in a gentle voice. Well, he passes a bit on acting, but he needs to fix his expression. ¡°I¡¯m meeting lots of friendly people today! Bed sounds good.¡± I said with a fake yawn. He nodded and started leading me to a building that was not too far away from the bar. Which was pretty much the point. Prostitute points potential mark to that bar, barkeep gives them a strong drink to knock them out, and then the criminals take them to their base to rob and get rid of them. If it was a girl, they¡¯d probably be sold off somewhere too. That was the general idea anyway. In this particular situation though, what they¡¯re bringing inside was a monster. Chapter 47 Chapter 47 While my escort was unlocking the door, I sent my psi throughout the building. There was a short hallway on the other side of the door which led into a common room. There were two people in that common room positioned to watch the door. Upstairs there was one more person. When including my escort and the other seven stalkers, I have eleven enemies to neutralize. I swapped my main class over to Enforcer. A melee based, crowd control class would serve better for this scenario. The guy finally opened the door. He took a while at it because he was letting the other stalkers catch up and get closer. ¡°Right this way, Miss. There¡¯s a spare room with a cot.¡± He led me into the building. The two men waiting in the common room were playing some kind of card game. They acknowledged my escort and gave me a searching look, before smiling. I was taken deeper into the building to an open door. I noticed that the door had a pretty fancy lock, but the lock was on the outside of the door and the door looked very sturdy. Obviously, the room was used as some kind of holding cell. When I saw the cot in the corner of the ¡®room¡¯, I went over, sat down my bag, at the edge of the cot and laid down after slipping off my boots. There was only a flimsy blanket present, but I pulled it over myself. Then I waited, while acting like I was asleep. All the stalkers were now inside the building and my escort was watching me carefully to be sure I was asleep. One of the stalkers went upstairs toward the person up there, probably to report my ¡®capture¡¯. After a few minutes, my escort came closer and attempted to take my bag. That¡¯s when I took action. I was out of the bed and on top of the man. I stopped him from making any noise while delivering a well-measured blow to the back of his neck. He was instantly knocked out. Now that the first problem was taken care of, I gave the room another onceover. There were some chains and shackles in a small side cabinet in the wall. There were also wall fixtures where you could attach them. That gives me an idea. I took advantage of the items and imprisoned my escort. I hung him from a wall that wasn¡¯t immediately visible from the doorway. One of the men from earlier was coming closer, so I flattened myself against the wall by the door. ¡°Oi, Dirge. You¡¯re taking forever, you¡¯re not sampling the goods again are you? The boss will be pissed.¡± He spoke in a low voice as he entered the room. He opened his eyes in surprise to see his associate chained up, but that¡¯s all he could do before he too was knocked out. It was too much to hope for that they¡¯d all come trickling in to be taken care of, so I bound this guy quickly and then moved out. I took advantage of the surprise of my appearance to take out another one before the rest could even react. After that as they were getting up, I took out one more, but now I had five people up drawing their swords. It was the time for the Enforcer Class to shine! The specialty of this class could only be shown when in the thick of battle and when facing multiple foes. One thrust his sword and I swayed to make it narrowly miss. I followed up by gripping his wrist and twisting to make him drop his weapon. I suddenly leaned forward and kicked my left leg up and backwards, hitting the man behind me with a heel to his chin as he swung his weapon over my now lowered body. He was instantly out. This was the effect of the Enforcer class. The more I comboed together counter attacks, the more likely my counter attacks were to successfully disable. The flaw was that as an exchange for this effect, your attacks actually became less lethal. That was good in these circumstances though. It kind of sucks that I¡¯m not carrying any of my special Enforcer equipment, but just my body was enough to handle some thugs like these guys. I¡¯d estimate them at level 30 to 40 at most. That estimate was proven right by the fact that the five were down and out inside of twenty seconds. Right on time for the last two targets in the building to show up at the top of the stairs. They had hurried at the sound of fighting, but they were too late to do any good. ¡°By the Spirits!? What happened? Did you do all this?¡± The one that had been upstairs from the start shouted after surveying the wreck that had been their common room. ¡°Boss, that¡¯s the girl we captured!¡± The other one said. ¡°You obviously didn¡¯t capture her, you idiot. It looks like you just led her to us.¡± The Boss punched his subordinate hard which caused the man to kneel down. Simultaneously, he raised his other hand toward me. ¡°Wind Cannon.¡± Fuck. The effect was too fast and wide to dodge it. I twisted my body and wrapped my cloak around Coa. I didn¡¯t know how this would go, but I was sure I could take the damage at least. The blast of pressurized air hit my clothes and then was dissipated by my shield. Well, I guess that answers the question about whether or not a magic spell can penetrate my shield. Some of the thugs on the ground got hit as well, but they were out cold and weren¡¯t even aware of it. Without missing a beat, the man called out another spell. ¡°Lightning Strike!¡± It goes without saying that there was no way electricity was going to pierce my shield. I didn¡¯t feel like letting him cast again, so I tossed one of his unconscious goons at him. He managed to dodge it, but I had already dashed toward him in that small interval. I was surprised when he managed to not only react, but also throw two knives at me before I reached him. This guy was pretty skilled. ¡°Air Blast!¡± He yelled. Unlike the other spells targeted at me, he aimed this one at the stairs in front of him, right where I was about to step. I flexed my legs and flipped over him and landed on the last goon that was behind him. Before the caster boss could move, I had him caught in a hammerlock and I pushed him against the wall. ¡°Before you try anything else, be aware that the only reason you and your idiots aren¡¯t dead is because you have some use. At least as long as you do what I tell you, understand?¡± I stated. When he didn¡¯t respond and instead I felt a magic fluctuation, I applied more pressure to the armlock. The forming magic was cut off. ¡°I said, do you understand?¡± He groaned. ¡°What do you want then, bitch?¡± I slipped my dagger out of its sheath and slammed it into the wall by his head. ¡°First, if you call me that again, the dagger is going to start cutting things off.¡± For good measure, I drew the dagger back out and then slammed it into the wall again. Right by his pelvis. I think he got the hint. ¡°Next, you and I are going to go for a short trip. You¡¯re going to get me in through the back of a bar to meet the guy in charge. You will do whatever is necessary for that purpose. Trust me, this is the easy way for all concerned, mainly you. I¡¯m sure you are attached to living, so give me a good answer.¡± ¡°Fine! Anything you say. Just spare me! Please!¡± He begged. ¡°Perfect score.¡± While keeping ahold of him, I pushed him forward down the stairs. I looked at the thugs strewn around the common room. I should probably do something about these guys first. ¡°Actually, first we¡¯re going to lock up all your monkeys.¡± I made him help me bring them all to the cells. It turned out that there were a few of those beyond the one I had been in. The boss has the key, so he can just release them later. I don¡¯t have anything against them after all. I just don¡¯t want them getting in the way right now. Once that was completed, I ushered him out of the hideout and back onto the street. He had slipped on a long overcoat and I had my hood back over my head. I was following him closely to the point that I was basically his shadow. I occasionally poked him with the dagger if he ever so much as slowed for even a step. We turned down an alley by the bar and walked around and reached a door there. He knocked on the door five times. There was a rhythm to the knocks that I would be sure to remember. A small panel opened in the door. ¡°State your business.¡± ¡°I needed to discuss the details about a shipment of Dragon¡¯s Breath whiskey. There has been a delay and I don¡¯t expect to be able to deliver it in two days. It might take as many as six days for it to arrive.¡± My minion replied. Some kind of code phrase perhaps? Another thing to keep in mind if I need to come back. ¡°I see. We might want to think of alternatives then.¡± The door panel closed. There was the sound of locks being undone before the door opened. ¡°Come on in.¡± The man inside was almost as macho as the barkeep was. ¡°So Bartram, some problem with your new prize that you need to see Jhaeros about?¡± He asked when the door was closed. My minion was astonished since from what he knew I was right behind him and not exactly hiding. In actuality I was using my psi to hide myself from this new guy¡¯s senses. Since he was floundering, I gave him another poke with the dagger. He got the hint. ¡°Something like that. Sorry, but I have to talk to him about it.¡±Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. ¡°Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Jhaeros is in his study.¡± The man sat in a chair by the door, put on a pair of glasses and then picked back up a book. The dichotomy between a macho, glasses and a book. I gave out another poke, so we started moving. We went down some stairs into what I assumed would be a cellar or basement for storing alcohol, but all I saw down here was a door at the bottom of the stairs. A brief knock followed by, ¡°It¡¯s Bartram. Jhaeros, I need to speak with you.¡± ¡°Enter.¡± It was the voice of the barkeep I had met earlier. Minion opened the door and went inside. I walked in after taking a moment to erase myself from being noticed by the barkeep. It was more difficult to do that than it should have been given the lack of psi resistance. He must be considerably strong minded. The room definitely fit what I would call a study. It was even carpeted. Pretty at odds with the macho appearance of the man inside. The barkeep looked up from his chair. ¡°Need help disposing of the girlie, Bartram? I saw her jewelry and it was quite high class. Did you discover some kind of affiliation you need to be careful of? Based on the design of the jewelry, connected with Dodasea perhaps? What¡¯s wrong? Take a seat already.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t mind if I do.¡± I said. I knocked out my minion and he collapsed forward. From the barkeeps point of view, I simply appeared. ¡°The girlie from earlier?¡± He sighed. ¡°You fooled me. I must be going senile.¡± ¡°You can do that after I pump you for information.¡± I stated. ¡°Now why should I do that? You attacked one of my associates and even snuck in here. I don¡¯t see why I should tell you anything.¡± He had a wide grin. ¡°It would be a nice thing to do?¡± I offered. ¡°I don¡¯t think so. How about you leave now and I¡¯ll forget about this.¡± He smirked This elf macho mistakenly thought he had the high ground here. I should disabuse him of that notion. I went toward him, he tried to block me, but I was too small and nimble for him. I grasped hold of his hair and yanked. I swiveled my body and he landed on the ground. He rolled upward and swung with a backhand at my face. I caught his fist on my palm. It was a pretty strong blow, but not good enough. He was astonished to see me not even flinch. Was it really that amazing? I mean this is a world operating on game mechanics, so even a small child could have a high strength value couldn¡¯t they? I gripped his fist with my hand and then placed my foot on the back of his head and pushed him face down into the carpet. With that done, I crushed his hand. I heard his muffled cries, but didn¡¯t pay it any particular note. ¡°Why do you people always, always have to make it go like this? I was willing to handle this peacefully.¡± I squeezed his hand again. ¡°Don¡¯t go thinking you¡¯re irreplaceable, alright? I¡¯m sure there are countless people in this city able to get me what I need, you¡¯re just the first one I found. So please don¡¯t waste both of our times by thinking I won¡¯t kill you. Before you think of threatening that your associates and underlings will get revenge for you, not a single one of them saw me come in here. If I have to kill you, then I¡¯ll also be killing this other moron who got me here. Then for good measure, I¡¯ll kill the moron¡¯s minions that I left chained up back at their hideout. There will be not a single soul that can connect me to your death. Consider all these very important details now before we get down to business.¡± I let him sit back up and then plopped down in a chair I placed in front of him. He was holding the hand I had broken. I detected some magic that was centered on it and then a few seconds later, it seemed like he had at least eased the pain. He hadn¡¯t fully healed it though. He was glaring at me, but didn¡¯t seem willing to risk another bout of violence. ¡°You seem well enough to listen now. I need to speak to certain people. I can tell you have a number of connections, so I¡¯d like for you to send a message. See, isn¡¯t it a simple and straightforward task?¡± I told him. He clicked his tongue. ¡°Who are you so interested in that you went to all this trouble?¡± ¡°Ghost.¡± I answered simply. His terror and anxiety ratcheted up sharply. They really have quite the reputation to spark that extreme of a reaction with just their name. ¡°I¡¯ve never heard of anyone called that before. I can¡¯t help you.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t lie to me. I know you know of them. It¡¯s why I chose to get into contact with you.¡± Well, not really, I just picked up Ghost from his thoughts earlier. Them possibly being behind some smuggling that had ruined something for him. It was related to the topic that he had been discussing with that guy when I arrived. ¡°I¡¯m quite well aware of their existence and that they must operate here in the capital. All I need is a message sent to them. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s that dangerous?¡± He let out a long drawn out sigh. ¡°Look girl. I¡¯ll be frank, you don¡¯t send a message to them. They contact you.¡± ¡°I can understand that, but there must be some method to put a message out there.¡± I said. ¡°No no no. Even if everyone that is anyone knows they exist, they are really definite when it comes to anyone openly broadcasting it. Trying to send a message to them at all would cross the line.¡± He explained. ¡°Surely, you could do something that left any details of them out, but still made it plain who I really wanted to speak with.¡± I pointed out. ¡°I probably could, but there¡¯s no guarantee they would pay it any mind. I¡¯m not affiliated with anyone that comes close to dealing in their circles. It¡¯s too risky. They¡¯re quite a bit more involved with politics.¡± ¡°How involved are we talking about here?¡± I asked, curious. ¡°No one has the slightest idea. There are suspicions that they might actually be part of the Empire¡¯s government, but no one has ever found any proof of such a link. I¡¯ve been working in the Empire capital for two centuries and they¡¯ve always been here.¡± He commented. ¡°You¡¯re being remarkably forthcoming with information. I thought I might have to threaten you more.¡± I stated. I was impressed that he hadn¡¯t even tried to lie after that first one! ¡°I know that it''s hopeless for me to fight you and I could tell you were being honest about having no stipulations against getting rid of me if I should become a problem. I¡¯ll take the option that keeps me alive in that case.¡± He confessed. ¡°What would you recommend when it comes to contacting them?¡± I questioned. ¡°I won¡¯t do you much good, but I do know of someone that is much more likely to be of service. Her business naturally involves a lot of important people, so she has routes available to her that I simply don¡¯t have. Getting to see her will be difficult though. Her business has extremely high security, including magical means of detecting visitors that don¡¯t come in through the normal manner. Unless you have a way around all that, the only option would be to enter through the front door as a customer and make contact that way. That has it¡¯s own share of problems. Like I said before, she deals with important people, so someone that looks like a common adventurer being allowed to enter would be impossible.¡± He responded. I could easily do something about my appearance since I still have that gown. ¡°Anything else? Also where is her business located. Actually, you haven¡¯t even given me a name yet.¡± ¡°Her pseudonym is Madame Lorelei. As for where to find her. Her establishment is in the middle district overlooking the harbor. Oh, I almost forgot. All her customers wear masks to hide their faces. A stupid custom to be honest. You¡¯d need to bring your own mask. If you do manage to get admitted, she¡¯ll probably get in contact with you naturally as she wouldn¡¯t recognize you.¡± ¡®Madame¡¯? ¡°A brothel?¡± I asked. ¡°Yep. A brothel catering to the rich and powerful. If there is anyone in this city that can pass a message to them, it would be her. Either that or she¡¯s actually a member.¡± He replied. A brothel! That sounds fun! Not sure how this world views same-sex coupling though. ¡°That sounds like a plan then. I¡¯ll show myself out. Since you¡¯ve been so very helpful, and if this works out, I¡¯ll consider owing you a favor. That¡¯s quite valuable, you know?¡± I said with a smile. He grimaced. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure I¡¯d rather you just never came back. I think you¡¯re bad for my health.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not making any promises on that front.¡± I replied. ¡°Please, don¡¯t come back. You¡¯re poking your head into a dragon¡¯s nest, I don¡¯t want my subordinates dragged into that as collateral damage.¡± He begged. I let out an exasperated breath. ¡°For now I¡¯ll use the favor I just gave you for that purpose. I doubt I¡¯ll even need to come back if the information you gave me was good. One last question, does the type of mask matter or is anything fine as long as it conceals some of your facial features?¡± ¡°Anything goes.¡± He answered simply. ¡°That works well for me then.¡± I already had a good idea for the kind of mask I¡¯ll wear. ¡°So long!¡± I left his study and walked out before a thought came to me. I poked my head back into the study. ¡°Hey, it¡¯s me again, why didn¡¯t you drug the alcohol?¡± He looked at me incredulously. ¡°That kind of tampering isn¡¯t respectful to the alcohol.¡± I couldn¡¯t help but nod. It was true after all. I guess his pride as a barkeep outweighed any other concerns. That extra question taken care of, I went upstairs. The guard was still suffering from my psi trick, so when I opened all the locks and the door with telekinesis, he kind of flipped out. I slipped out past him during that ruckus. It was only early night, but since I had preparations to make I wouldn¡¯t be able to visit the brothel until tomorrow. I guess I¡¯ll use the morning to do my shopping and then I¡¯ll visit and check up on how Rie is doing. After that, I¡¯m unsure. I should probably wait until evening for the brothel, so maybe I¡¯ll waste my free time inside the dungeon. I called up the virtual keyboard. [You heard him, Lynn. I¡¯m visiting a brothel. No complaints since it¡¯s for official business right?] ¡°I¡¯m preparing a tactical nuke.¡± Lynn said in a monotone voice. [Wait wait wait! You don¡¯t have to go that far!] I urgently typed. ¡°I know you too well, Mistress. Brothels are terrible and troublesome. A nuke will wipe all those troubles away before they can fester.¡± Now she sounded serene! [Lynn, please calm down. I promise, absolutely promise that I won¡¯t do anything with the workers there. I will absolutely stick to the plan.] I wrote. ¡°Whatever!¡± And now she was sulking! ¡°Good night, Mistress.¡± I massaged my temples. What a troublesome AI! She never has a problem when I have girlfriends, but somehow she considers brothels and prostitutes out of bounds. I truly can¡¯t understand her pickiness. Let¡¯s just go to the inn, set up that device and go to bed. Chapter 48 Chapter 48 Upon waking up, I got out of bed slowly. I was careful to not wake Coa. I wanted to let her sleep for now. I pushed her a bit too hard with the game I think. After getting back to the inn the previous night and acquiring a late dinner, I had set up a simple matching game for Coa to see how she¡¯d respond to it. I had pulled out some slips of paper and then marked two of each of them with something that looked distinctive. I placed them face down, mixed them up and while Coa watched I played the game. I did it a few times on my own before I communicated to her that she should try. Flipping thin pieces of paper over was beyond her motor skills, so she would nudge one and I would flip it over. She stared at the symbol before nudging another. She actually did quite well. She never erred on remembering the right location for the match if she had seen it previously. I was pretty impressed considering she¡¯s still only seventy or so days old. While this had been happening, I had taken advantage of the obvious distraction I was creating for any would be watchers, to set up the tiny security cam. I had used my psi to skim it slowly along the ground hiding it in the shadows of objects before sliding it up the wall behind the door and onto the ceiling slightly away from that wall. From there, it would be able to watch the entire room. That was last night, now It was time to get ready for the fun times I¡¯d be having today. The innkeeper knocked right on time and provided me the warm water I had requested last night. I wiped myself clean. Regretting not for the first time that I didn¡¯t have a real bath. I miss Lullaby¡¯s comforts. Before leaving the room, I scooped out the pouch of the monster stones I had collected from the forest dungeon and tossed it on the bed. A small trap and test for my watchers. I would be dreadfully disappointed if they acted on it. I ordered breakfast and then sat with the group from a couple days ago. A few of the group gave me nods, but they were more interested in watching the argument going on. Coa was awake and alert as if her sleeping state just a minute ago was a lie. ¡°I¡¯m tellin¡¯ ya, that guy is just plain lucky this year.¡± The demon man was saying. ¡°No way. His use of spells has shown he¡¯s definitely a top tier sorcerer.¡± A young male elf retorted. I think he¡¯s the one that was attracted to me? ¡°If Glacier and Quake were participating, his little fire tricks wouldn¡¯t amount for much. That brat wouldn¡¯t have a chance at winning.¡± The older demon man shot back. I handed a piece of meat to Coa and then turned to my neighbor. ¡°What are they bickering about?¡± I asked quietly. ¡°The Magic Tournament is coming down to the finals today. Vulmar is a fan of Flare, so he¡¯s happy that he¡¯s the current favorite for winning. On the other hand, Habboch is old enough that he recalls when he first appeared.¡± The human woman answered. ¡°And Glacier and Quake?¡± I queried. ¡°One of them is always the winner with the other the runner-up of the tournament.¡± She said and then added. ¡°When they show up anyway.¡± ¡°Neither did though this year? That seems weird to me.¡± I remarked. ¡°Not really. The two of them are actually married. Glacier is probably just pregnant again. Last time she was, they stayed home.¡± She explained. ¡°So they¡¯re married, yet they still come to fight each other in a tournament every year?¡± I questioned. That seemed like a bit of a waste of time. Couldn¡¯t they fight each other whenever they wanted? ¡°Yep. Apparently they met on opposing sides of a battle sometime in the past, so they come to relive their first meeting by trying to kill each other all over again.¡± Why do I feel like I just learned of some very elaborate foreplay? ¡°In a safe environment that is. If they really went at it outside of the measures of the coliseum, the destruction they¡¯d cause would be quite extreme.¡± She laughed. Our conversation attracted the arguing pair. ¡°Oh, the youngin is here! We missed you yesterday! Didn¡¯t we, Vulmar?¡± He threw the elf a smirk. The elf had a slight blush, but didn¡¯t rise to the bait otherwise. Don¡¯t tease him, you damned old man! Now he¡¯s working up the courage to take some kind of action. I started eating quicker. I would really prefer to not have to quash some guy¡¯s heart this morning. Seri¡¯s done it before, countless times at that, but I don¡¯t feel comfortable doing the same. I will if I have to, though. The conversation had gone back to the mage tournament and I was paying attention to some of the descriptions of the earlier matches. Even if it''s just gossip, it¡¯s still information about spell slinging. That Flare guy does seem pretty competent since it sounds like he can accurately use his fire magic to consume the oxygen around his opponent to knock them out while casting more noticeable spells to distract them. Something like that might even work on me if I let myself get caught in it. I finished, so I got up and picked up my tableware. ¡°Thanks for the company. I have errands to run. I¡¯ll see you all tomorrow possibly.¡± Right as I was about to leave though, the elf, Vulmar I guess, spoke up. ¡°Wait!¡± Damn! I turned my head back around. He had stood up. He faltered upon receiving the frown I directed at him before rallying grandly. ¡°Would you like to come to the tournament finals with me?¡± He managed to get it out in a rush. While it was an intriguing event to go see, I¡¯m not going to go about encouraging any romantic aspirations, so my response was predetermined. ¡°No.¡± I coldly stated. ¡°Ahh.¡± Was all he could eek out before collapsing back onto his seat. Our tablemates were laughing at his misfortune or patting him on the back, but I didn¡¯t pay any more attention and passed the plates and mug to the inn lady. The best option for shopping would probably be the giant market stall line up that I visited before. I had an amusing idea for a mask, but I wasn¡¯t positive if I¡¯d be able to find something like it. If I did though, I was sure to make quite a splash! It would be the first occasion that I really intended to do so on this world, if I ignored the spur of the moment decision back at that inn. I wasn¡¯t entirely sure if it was a good idea or not, but I felt like I was drawing things out enough already. If showing up in the limelight to nobility was what it took to get what I wanted, then I¡¯ll do it and get it over with. If even this doesn¡¯t work, then there¡¯s always another level to escalate to. A level that involves lots of mysterious deaths appearing in a certain capital city. Not the most pleasant option really. I¡¯m just feeling really damn impatient. It wasn¡¯t long until I was once again in the thick of the frenzy of shopping mayhem. I took advantage of the acquaintance I had made with that accessory merchant, who I noted was still selling that necklace, and asked if he was aware of anyone selling masks. He gave me some directions after I passed him a few copper coins. The first location was a flop. Not at all what I was looking for. They were more like hanging hair accessories. The second was exactly what I was looking for. It was an actual shop for one thing, which meant the selection was much greater than some kind of stall would have. The problem was that while the masks were neat and some were even like masquerade style masks, they didn¡¯t really have what I was looking for either. Irritating really.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Mistress, why not that mask to the left and up?¡± Lynn chimed in. I had already noticed the one she had pointed out. It looked slightly dragon or serpent like in design with feathery wings on the sides. The comparison to Coa was pretty obvious. While it looked nice, it still wasn¡¯t the kind of mask I wanted. [I¡¯m looking for something else.] I wrote back. ¡°What kind of mask are you looking for then?¡± Lynn asked. ¡°I could always put one together.¡± [I was hoping to find a solid blank face with no features at all. That includes no eye slots either.] I explained. I heard Lynn sigh. ¡°Mistress, I understand that you want to make an impression, but I think that would be a bit much. How would you explain the fact that you could see with that kind of mask. Sure, if we were somewhere where psi is known, then it would be a simple answer, but this world doesn¡¯t seem to be aware of it. They¡¯ll likely know you are not using magic to accomplish it so there will be questions.¡± Ohh. I was focused on making an impact that I had forgotten something really simple like that hadn¡¯t I? I resigned myself and purchased the winged dragon mask. Since I was nearby I stopped and visited that clothing shop for that fitting check they had told me to come back for in a few days. The finished pair of pants were a tiny bit off, which sparked a complaint from Lynn about shoddy tailors. I don¡¯t think that was very fair of Lynn considering the advantages she had to work with. They informed me that I could return in a few more days to pick up the completed order. That business concluded my errands, so it was time to visit that school. I hope the fact that I only know the name ¡®Rie¡¯ isn¡¯t going to be an issue. ¡°There¡¯s no student by that name here.¡± One of the four guards at the gate told me. None of the ones on duty were the ones that had been here that evening when we delivered the kids. I cursed my earlier thought. Of course it was a nickname. I can¡¯t recall if I ever learned her brother¡¯s name either. ¡°Rie is about this tall.¡± I took my hand and placed it at about neck height. ¡°She has shiny silver hair too. If you could just tell her that Seri is here to visit her, I¡¯m sure she¡¯ll tell you it¡¯s fine if you pass along my description to her.¡± The guards eyed me suspiciously. ¡°What is your connection to the supposed student?¡± ¡°I¡¯m one of the adventurers that rescued them and helped bring them here some days back.¡± I supplied. He looked at one of the guards. ¡°Brynn, report to the Professor on duty for verification and instructions.¡± The guard, a woman, saluted and went through the gate and toward the nearest school structure. ¡°Now we¡¯ll just wait here for her to return.¡± He added, focusing on me. I was kind of amused that the remaining guards were positioned in such a way that they could subdue me should the need arise without getting in each other''s¡¯ way. I didn¡¯t have anything to do so I started scanning around. The guard around the school was pretty impressive. There was magic running along the walls and even the gate that the female guard just went through has some weird effect at the opening. A magical version of a fingerprint scan maybe? Is this really the level of security a school requires? That¡¯s kind of a stupid question given I¡¯ve visited academies before that had auto turrets, anti-air emplacements and even mechs on standby. Those academies defenses made sense given what I knew of their environment and other factors. I don¡¯t know enough to decide if that is the same in this case. It does seem excessive compared to the protections I¡¯ve seen elsewhere here. The guard came jogging back. ¡°The professor verified her story, but regrets to inform you that you are unable to meet with Valerie today. The lessons will be going through the afternoon and into the evening. They request that you return tomorrow at this time and you will be able to have a meeting.¡± I considered my options. Other than breaking in to see Rie, this was satisfactory. As long as they do let me see her tomorrow without more excuses. ¡°That¡¯s fine with me. I¡¯ll come back then.¡± I left and my attention was drawn toward the tower that stretched into the sky. This hadn¡¯t taken as much time as I had expected, so I¡¯ll take a quick detour. I went to scope out the location of the brothel for later which turned out to be a complete waste of time. The barkeep had said it was overlooking the harbor, but this mansion and its grounds were gigantic. It was pretty much the only lot here. Sure there were smaller mansions around, but this was the only one that had ridiculous security measures like he had warned me about. Hmm? That guard looks familiar. Or would he be a bouncer instead in this case? Whatever. Anyway, I can¡¯t place him, though I¡¯m sure I saw him somewhere before. Recently at that. I could get closer, but there was a quicker method. [Lynn, that guard at the brothel, I swear I¡¯ve seen him before. Can you identify?] ¡°One moment, Mistress. Oh!¡± The image of the guard magnified and was cleaned up. A second image came up next to it. It was that knight guy that was with that noble girl. What the hell was he doing watching the gate of a brothel? I feel like I just got a hint about what kind of trouble I might run into tonight. I¡¯ll leave it for later me to deal with. The tower was beckoning! It¡¯s time for some stress relief! The dungeon was located at basically the dead center of the city and there was a very spacious plaza surrounding it. No one was doing business here, which somewhat surprised me. You would think that adventurers going in and out of the dungeon would be a good market for certain types of goods and services. Instead the plaza was decorated more like a park with artificial streams and flowering trees and bushes. I walked along one of the pathways leading toward the tower. There were a number of stone arches I had to pass under. As I got closer, I saw that the water for the streams was actually flowing out of the tower like small waterfalls. Maybe this park is something like the lobby of the dungeon? Due to what I had heard at breakfast a few days ago, I wasn¡¯t all that surprised to see the large number of soldiers near the giant door of the tower. They were using those status orbs to check everyone going in. They¡¯re taking this examination a bit more seriously than I expected them to. They¡¯re supposedly doing this to recruit talented individuals to serve in the military. Does some mythical villain really necessitate this? Is some kind of hokey prophecy that trustworthy? Regardless, there was no way I could sneak by thirty to forty soldiers on a sunny day in an open area without overusing my psi, so I adjusted my classes to Beastmaster with no subclass. I pulled out my bow as well. If they inquired about why I was going in alone with this class, I¡¯d just tell them I was planning on unlocking Hunter at the first floor. That should satisfy them given what I learned about the level of the monsters. When I arrived, I was ushered through the crowd toward one of the status orbs. I followed the instructions to place my hand on the orb like usual. Unlike the orb I saw used before this one had the information appear written in the orb. Another soldier jotted down the information. ¡°Thank you for your compliance.¡± The soldier said. I just nodded. I was a bit confused that he didn¡¯t ask for my adventurer card. He didn¡¯t have the slightest reaction to my classes either! ¡°There are currently a few companies traversing the dungeon. We ask you to be courteous and defer to them if you cross paths.¡± Just great. Even my relaxation time is coming with hassles. I simply nodded again. I went past the guards and toward the large door. Next to the door, I noticed another door, but this one was plain weird. Inside of the door, I could only see the stone exterior of the tower, except there were ripples every second or so along the surface. Was this the teleportation gate that had been mentioned? I¡¯ll find out later when I return I suppose. ¡°Mistress, be safe and good lu-¡± She was cut off as I strode across the threshold.
*You have discovered the Dungeon (Rank ?????)*
A four star rank huh? That means it¡¯s the same level as that cave I found back in that mountain range. I survey my surrounding before I started walking casually. Just like the notes detailed. The first ten floors had the appearance of a simple labyrinth with a torch every five meters. The path is pretty wide being about five meters from wall to wall. The guide said that can vary though and that not all the walls were solid stone. Some had holes large enough to crawl through, or that monsters could use to get at you. Speak of the devil. A large rat came around a corner ahead of me and leapt with its mouth wide open. I took a step back and lightly spun and kicked it against the wall. It died on impact. Just like the monsters back at the forest it then dissolved, leaving only a tiny stone behind. Not like one could expect much from the first floor monsters that weren¡¯t above level ten. I wouldn¡¯t be having any fun until floor seven or eight when the monsters began to reach the forties and beyond. Sadly, the notes had no directions for the stairs leading upward. The tower changed its inner configuration every single day, apparently. I¡¯d have to wander around until I locate it. When I arrived at an intersection, more rats came from both the left and right paths. It felt like stepping on bugs as I disposed of them. Literally, since I stepped on and crushed one of their heads and then knocked the other away. I wonder if Coa could handle these? I glanced at the serpent that even now was once again dozing around my neck. I don¡¯t really want to wake her though and I¡¯m not sure I want to risk her fighting when I don¡¯t really have a way to heal her if she gets seriously injured. I guess pass for now. Was I babying her too much? I took the route that a rat hadn¡¯t come from with the fervent hope that it would be the one that led to the stairs. Chapter 49 Chapter 49 My arrow drilled its way straight through the giant spider clinging to the ceiling. It dissolved before even falling to the ground. The arrow and a stone fell to the ground. I picked them both up and examined the stone carefully.. I threw the stone at the wall, causing it to shatter. Another fucking dud! I hate this damn floor and I hate these damn spiders. I¡¯m supposed to be looking for one that is much faster than the others, but how do I know which one that is when I kill them all immediately! I¡¯m stuck just hoping the next I kill is the correct choice that will drop the stone with white marks, which is necessary to open the weird magic field up to the next floor. The previous floor was so much easier since I just had to find a boar like monster and it was the only one of its kind on the entire floor. The size of the floors have definitely been increasing though. The outside of the tower was maybe fifty meters wide, but I swear these floors must be multiple kilometers of walls and passages. Some weird kind of magic shenanigans going on in here. Other than the mist, at least that forest seemed normal. I really didn¡¯t expect to get stuck at the 7th floor like this. On the bright side, Hunter had reached level 26 and gotten me some more stats. Also an absolutely amazing new bonus! I mean a perception bonus is definitely something I couldn¡¯t live without! Damn class and it¡¯s worthless bonuses. First a detection skill and now this. I leaned my back against the wall. I pulled out my device to check the time and saw that it was now almost mid afternoon. I was already running out of time for the day. If I could just get past this floor the next two or three shouldn¡¯t be a problem. I¡¯d really like to get to the 11th floor at the very least since it¡¯s after the first boss. I slid down to the floor and stretched out my legs. I placed my bow beside me. I might as well take a small snack break. I pulled out a package of jerky from my bag. After tearing open the bag, I gave a piece to Coa and then starting eating my own. I felt Coa slither down from my neck. She stuck her head in the bag and was currently gobbling up all the jerky. ¡°Coa, I know you¡¯re a growing girl and all, but you might end up needing to go on a diet with all this food consumption.¡± She froze and pulled her head out of the bag and gave me a perfect puppy dog look. Impressive for a serpent! I had to bow down to the power of those sparkly, upturned eyes. ¡°Take them all! I¡¯m warning you, if you get fat, the diet will be rigorous!¡± She crooned and dove back into the bag. Within a minute all my jerky was gone. Coa slid back out, letting out a soft burp, before returning to her customary perch. At least that was what I expected. She crawled all the way up my head and buried her face into my hair before hanging down and swiveling around back and forth in front of my eyes. ¡°Coa, what are you doing now?¡± She spun around and trilled. I got the message that she was going to help. ¡°Coa, if you stay there you¡¯ll get in the way.¡± She nodded before going back atop my head. She was still swinging her head around every which way. It probably made an amusing sight with her tail still wrapped around my neck and her head sticking out of my hair. Not sure what she thinks she¡¯s doing though. Oh well, I¡¯ll let her do what she wants for now. I put the trash back into my pack and I resumed my idling. Hmm? A couple presences coming closer? From opposite directions at that. Let¡¯s see, two people from my right and it seemed like one of those horned beetle things from the left. It wasn¡¯t an exact method of determining, with how weird the monsters inside the dungeon felt to my psi, but based on how it was moving, I was pretty confident that was what it was. If it was one of the spiders it wouldn¡¯t be moving along the ground. Given the speed of both parties, they¡¯ll get here about the same time? I don¡¯t feel like getting back up, so they can just deal with the monster. Well, they could just ignore the monster like I¡¯m doing and let it attack me. Depends on how charitable they are. Just in case they confronted me too, I attached one of my plasma knives¡¯ sheaths to my belt. Coa started flapping her wings and crying aloud. I noticed she was trying to make me turn my head toward the direction the beetle was coming from. I guess she decided she could contribute by being on watch. So cute! I had to reward this kind of good behavior, so I started rubbing the spot on her head between the two small horn nubs. She started purring and relaxing before realizing that I wasn¡¯t taking action despite her warning which caused her to kick up even more of a fuss. The beetle was now hurtling toward me upon picking up my own presence. Its large horn was angled to gouge me. From the other direction, the two people were close enough to see me and also see the monster barreling down on me. ¡°Oi! Get up you moron!¡± A shout from one of them was directed at myself. Coa buried her head back into my hair to hide. I glanced that way. One older human and a younger, possibly mid to late teenage, one. The older of the duo assumed a stance and in the next moment launched a small spear. It hit the beetle head on and pierced it, staggering it from the force. Its shell was cracked around the spear, but it seemed otherwise still fine. The pause gave the other person enough time to run past me and reach it though. He swung down a large hammer and the beetle¡¯s head was smashed to pieces. The young man scooped up the stone and spear before coming back this way. The older man was carrying a longer spear as he came closer too. No hostility present in either of them, though the young one seemed quite annoyed at me. ¡°Hey, are you stupid or something? You should know better than to sit down in a dungeon! You weren¡¯t even paying the slightest attention! Did you want to die? Huh? Answer me you moron!¡± He was getting way too close, bending down to glare at me. I was just giving him a blank stare in return. There was no need to respond to such silly provocations. Of course, the fact that I didn¡¯t respond in anyway just made him more annoyed. He was almost face to face to me now. The old man was about to take action, but Coa beat him to the punch. She shot out of hiding, aimed directly at his face. ¡°Uwaah!¡± He tried to lean back, but his reaction was too slow. Coa latched right on his nose. I hurriedly stood up and reached for Coa before he could retaliate. Once she felt my hands, she immediately loosened her clamp and let herself be cradled back to my body. The guy had nothing to show for her attention except a red mark on the tip of his nose. She hadn¡¯t even managed to draw blood. She was shivering out of fear. Silly child. Taking action first and only thinking later. She¡¯s pretty bold today. I soothed her with some focused petting and humming. He was about to begin a new verbal assault when the old guy smacked him upside his head. ¡°Ouch! What did you do that for you shitty old man!?¡± Another smack. ¡°You broke two rules, boy. You¡¯re lucky you only got off with a play bite. Do you know which rules?¡± The old man asked. ¡°I wasn¡¯t polite to another adventurer.¡± The young man mumbled. ¡°And the other?¡± The old man questioned. ¡°I wasn¡¯t courteous to a woman.¡± Was the reply. ¡°That¡¯s right! You broke two of the most important rules! You never know when you might offend a stronger person and as men we should always be afraid of an upset woman!¡± The old man expressed with a heartfelt nod.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. ¡°You only say that because Mom-¡± The young man tried to retort, but was interrupted by another smack.. ¡°We¡¯re not bringing up your Mother right now!¡± The old man, I guess his Father, stated firmly. With his son sulking off to the side, he brought his attention back to bear on me. Coa had already returned to the land of dreams in my hands. ¡°Sorry about my idiot-¡± ¡°Hey!¡± ¡°-giving you trouble.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine, he didn¡¯t do anything. More importantly, what do you want?¡± I can tell by his thoughts that he has some other purpose than just apologizing. ¡°Ahh, you can tell? Well, you see, we found the key stone for getting up to the next level, but we haven¡¯t had any luck locating the stairs. So I was wondering if you might have that information and would be interested in a trade.¡± He said. ¡°Basically, I show you to the stairs and then get to take advantage of your key¡¯s opening of the barrier?¡± I don¡¯t really see any disadvantages in that for me. ¡°That¡¯s about the size of it. Deal?¡± He extended his hand, I clasped it and we shook. I picked up my bow. ¡°We need to go the direction you just came from.¡± I pointed that way and took the lead. The old man calmly took the rear, but the young one rushed ahead of me. ¡°I¡¯ll take point.¡± He said with a glare as he passed by. I merely shrugged. I let him walk past the right path without saying anything. I signalled that we were going to the side and the old man followed, but shouted for his ¡®idiot¡¯, causing the kid to run back with a red face. He didn¡¯t take the lead again. It didn¡¯t take long to reach the stairs. I had been staying relatively near to it the whole time once I had found it, which in retrospect might have been why I couldn¡¯t locate the right monster. On the way we ran into only a single monster, another beetle. This time my arrow bore into and killed it before either of my temporary companions could react to its appearance. That earned me a surprised gasp from the kid and an appreciative whistle from the old guy. The shimmering barrier over the entrance to the stairs was quickly dispelled when the old guy held out the stone that had a white plus sign on it. ¡°Both of you go through.¡± We walked onto the first few steps and he followed, the stone shattering and dissolving as soon as he passed the threshold. The barrier was instantly lit again. ¡°Is it possible to just leave that set up there to keep it open?¡± I asked. This wasn¡¯t something covered by the book I had read. ¡°Nah. Once you use it, the stone will break when it is out of your grasp. The stone will also break after a few minutes of use, so you couldn¡¯t just stand here all day letting people through.¡± The old man explained. I nodded in thanks. We went up the spiraling stairs in silence. Our deal had already concluded and there was no reason to pursue further conversation. The eighth floor landing was different than the other floors so far. For one the stairs to the ninth floor were located here as well. Of course there was a barrier preventing access to this, but compared to the last floor¡¯s challenge, this one was a lot simpler. I just had to find and touch a number of devices that were hidden somewhere on the floor. The other main change was in the environment of the floor itself. Unlike the previous seven floors that were basically bare stone walls, this floor had a sort of overgrown with plants feel. Moss on the walls and vines hanging here and there. It increased the possibilities available for hiding things. ¡°This is our stop. If you¡¯re ever interested in joining up with an adventurer party, ours can always use a good archer. There¡¯s six of us now, seven if you count my son here. Leave a message at the guild for the Iron Oath party if so.¡± The old man said before dragging his kid through the portal door. It rippled like water as they went in. Yeah, that¡¯s not going to happen. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I stretched my arm to its limit and barely grazed the small box with my fingers. That was the eighth and final one I had to find on the ninth floor. This last one was very unfriendly to someone petite like myself, being down a small shaft in the floor. How would most people even reach that? The hole isn¡¯t even that wide! I pushed myself back up off the ground. That just leaves backtracking to the stairs and the boss floor. I walked over to the nearest wall, felt for the right spot at the bottom and tapped it twice. The wall slid away revealing another passage. This floor had been a bit annoying until I had gotten used to detecting those small switches. I had been searching for magic signals when instead they were pure mechanisms. I traveled through the barrier and began the ascent. I was glad that pets weren¡¯t required to hit the switches to go through these. It would really make a beastmaster totally useless in this dungeon if so due to the limitations it would add on what kind of beasts they could bring. I was afflicted by a moment of intense vertigo between one step and another followed by a crashing slam behind me. I stopped and shook my head before glancing back. The stairs behind me were gone. There was only a solid wall with according to my senses, absolutely nothing behind it. The dungeon¡¯s way of saying no turning back. The wall continued progressing as I climbed the steps. When I strode through the sinister looking gate at the end, there was a final impact, removing any sign of the stairway. According to what I read, your initial start point is safe for a short period of time and I¡¯m already pushing it on time, so some last minute extra preparations for this would probably be good. I decided to swap out Hunter, which had gotten to level 31 from the last two floors, for more of a powerhouse set up. Psion and Ranger should work. Ranger improving my endurance and Psion giving my psi that extra oomph if I should need it. I stored away my bow and pulled out my gun and knives. No one other than myself existed here to worry about. Dumb, screwy dungeon magic. The labyrinth on this level looked to be in ruins. Broken walls, fallen pillars that created obstacles, and rubble littered the ground. Just to test, I pushed my psi against the nearest cracked wall, but it was just as solid as any of the other floor walls would have been. No give at all, which destroys any chance of making a path myself. Alright, I¡¯m ready. ¡°Coa, hang on tight.¡± I shot off. The challenge on this floor wasn¡¯t to defeat the boss, it was to get past it somehow and get to the exit point. The book said the boss, a giant Minotaur, was unkillable. It would chase you relentlessly once it discovered you and it was guaranteed to do so once you got close to the goal. The trick was to get it to follow you, distract it with a variety of methods while leading it away from the exit, before you looped around and hauled your ass for the gateway. It sounded simple, but apparently the damn thing was a bulldozer. My plan for getting past it was even more simple. I questioned its reported invincibility, so I was just going to meet force with force to push my way past it. That would definitely be the quickest way. There¡¯s always following the normal strategy if it doesn¡¯t succeed. I dove through a small hole, rolled upon hitting the ground, and continued my sprint. My two knives were out and floating ahead of me. The rubble created dead ends where there shouldn¡¯t be one, necessitating detours from a straight course, and while the pieces could be moved, destroying them outright didn¡¯t work. I heard the sound of a giant hoof before the creature was even in detection range. I angled my route to take me toward it. I rounded a corner and saw the five meter tall hulk of muscle. The thing was also just wide enough that it took up the whole passage. It noticed me as well, causing it to release a roar and charge me with its weapon that looked like someone took a spear and added a giant axe at the tip. My knives launched forward and weaved around to sink themselves into its weapon arm, but the minotaur appeared to completely ignore them even as they sliced through the arm. I had expected some kind of reaction to that attack. I prepared my psi and when the monster stepped into swinging range, I lashed out with a furious strike of telekinesis. I doubted the monster¡¯s vitality extended to its weapon, so I sent my strike to hit that first. After that I hit the monster dead on in the left side of its chest and pushed it as hard as I could against the wall. It went off balance, but caught itself with its hand before it could crash against the wall. It had stopped moving for a second and I didn¡¯t waste the opening, I retracted my knives and prepared my gun and unloaded on the monster¡¯s head. My knives were slicing madly at the neck. The assault combined with pressure from my psi, was enough that it kept the minotaur from regaining its stance. I only ceased when the gun overheated. My enemy¡¯s upper body had been reduced to tatters. Its head was gone and the body slumped to its knees. I guess it wasn¡¯t really as tough as the document said. I collected my knives, slung my gun over my shoulder and trod around the corpse. I wonder why it left a corpse anyway? All the other dungeon monsters dissolved. Fuck! You idiot! Chapter 50 Chapter 50 A giant hand grasped at me, but my shield held, which stopped it from actually getting a grip. Coa let out a high-pitched screech in terror and tightened her body against my neck. If she was stronger, she¡¯d be strangling me. I used my psi to shove it away and jumped away from the not so dead boss after all. The body lurch backed to its feet. It was still headless and its destroyed weapon was still on the ground. Suddenly, the shards of the weapon liquefied. At the same time the top of the monster was regrowing. The liquid weapon was flowing back to the minotaur and for some unknown reason I couldn¡¯t stop it with my psi. Despite it not being fully regenerated it was swinging its fists at me. It seemed to be in a frenzy. I was parrying the blows with my psi, but it was steadily pushing me back with the number of blows. I think that I have to proceed to the normal strategy. I pulled out one of my grenades and immediately slammed it against the thing¡¯s chest with my psi, while turning and running. It attempted to remove the foreign object on its chest as it exploded, removing its arm and leaving a gaping hole in its chest. Sadly, they were already being restored. The damage wasn¡¯t even preventing it from pursuing me! The blasted monster was armed again and had the weapon lowered and thrust forward as it charged. I ducked under a pillar, but it went right through with a crash. How is that fair!? I can¡¯t destroy anything, but it can? I tossed some psi-propelled rocks at it and other than a momentary slowing, the thing didn¡¯t take any damage. Can it actually destroy the walls? I was getting the glimmer of an idea. I skid sharply around a corner and then hopped through a hole. The boom and flying rocks that immediately followed told me that was a resounding yes. I began leading it around in circles, taking advantage of gaps to make it break its way through obstacles to follow me. I was impressed that the boss could actually keep up with me. It seemed much faster than it was when I had first ran into it. Eventually I could even use the destruction it was causing to loop around it with the extra space I was given. In all honesty I probably could have ran for the exit by now. If I figure on it being near where I ran into the boss then I should find it easily, but I wanted to give myself as much time as possible to get as large a head start on this unstoppable menace as I can. About sixty meters squared of passages reduced to rubble and I¡¯m currently using this open space to dance around the furious minotaur that can¡¯t touch me. I dodged it and let it smash another pillar. All this running around and rampant destruction served two main purposes. It let me regenerate all the psi I had wasted on our first fight. And it let me set up this wonderful killing field. I switched off my shield and focused all my psi on this task. I started lifting up the many wonderful stones that the monster had provided for me. I couldn¡¯t manipulate the walls, but once they were reduced to rubble they were fair game apparently. There were stones of all sizes and I began propelling them. Sure, it might have shrugged off one or two rocks, but I¡¯d like to see it try that against hundreds of stones of all shapes and sizes. Now truthfully this torrent was a bit beyond my normal limit with how much I can lift with psi. Good thing, I¡¯m not holding them for long. I pick them up, shoot them and then grab another. Except now multiply that by thirty and I¡¯m doing that multiple times a second. The minotaur had steadily been forced back and was now starting to show some serious wounds. Oh, that jagged fragment tore into its knee. That must have hurt, if that thing can even feel pain that is. The beast was buried in rock, except I noticed a certain part that it had somewhat protected. I guess having its head blown off made it more cautious of that spot? I wonder how smart it actually is? Whatever, it¡¯s time for the coup de grace. I dropped a pillar on its skull and its head went splat. Fuck, that was exhausting! I don¡¯t have enough psi left to turn my shield back on. I feel better after letting loose like that though. Now, let¡¯s get the hell out of here before the blasted abomination comes back to life again! The stone pile was already starting to rumble, so I¡¯ll correct myself. Let¡¯s get the hell out of here before it manages to dig itself out! I sprinted toward the location of my run in with the boss while scanning for the exit. It was supposed to be a ornate metal gate about three meters tall and two meters wide leading into a small tunnel. It should stand out given the difference between it and the ruined stone labyrinth environment. Come on! It has to be somewhere around here! I was scrambling around searching when a sudden boom resounded in the distance. It was followed by a roar that felt like it shook the entire floor. Damn thing, why can¡¯t you just stay down!? I rounded another corner, only to be met with a dead end. Shit! I turned back around and went a different direction. The wall on my left had a large number of small holes, so I glanced through and saw the gate. Okay, goal located, but now what path connects over to there? A chain of explosions were getting closer. A gap! There was a tiny gap at the bottom of the wall ahead. I stored away my extra items and then slipped my pack to my side, and slid through. The space between my body and the top of that hole had definitely been only a few centimeters. For the first time since I¡¯ve been stuck as Seri, I¡¯m glad I¡¯m small! I got back up on my feet and ran. The distance to the gate was only a few hundred meters. The wall behind me erupted, sending shards of rocks my way. My shield was still not back up, so I held Coa to my chest as I felt some of them impact my back. Thankfully, they weren¡¯t actually thrown or that would have hurt. Fuck, why did I think that. I grabbed the giant slab that the minotaur hurled at me with my psi, orbited it around my body and sent it flying back whence it came. Whether it had any effect on the brute, I didn¡¯t care. Less than fifty meters now. The gate swung open. I did it! Where¡¯s the tunnel!? This is only a small cave! The open gate was behind me and the ¡®tunnel¡¯ was just a small opening that went beyond the gate about ten meters or so? The sound of the giant hooves were right at the gate now, and I saw the thing lean down to stab with its giant weapon when the gate snapped shut. The minotaur wasn¡¯t diverted by this turn of events as it stabbed between the bars, but as the tip pierced through, the air shimmered and I felt that sense of vertigo again. The labyrinth on the other side of the gate was gone. It reopened as if telling me to exit. I accepted the invitation and found myself in a circular room. The walls were covered with gates similar to the one I had just left. In the center of the room was a dais surrounded by arches that looked to be at the center of the light that was shining down from above. This must be the interim room that you are brought to after defeating a boss. The altar in the center of the room transports you to the next set of floors. Which means, I¡¯m finally done in this dungeon for the day. Next time, I¡¯ll trust those notes when they say something is immortal. As I neared the altar, I detected the presence of three individuals up there, which raised the question of why it seemed like they were just waiting around. Are they ambushing people right after they fought the boss, and before they have a chance to leave? That doesn¡¯t seem correct, they appear to be idling carefreely. Recovering from dealing with the boss then? This room is supposed to be a safe zone with no threats, so that¡¯s possible. I hopped up the steps and the open area was pretty bare other than markings and symbols etched on the stone slabs. There was a large, bulky statue of a knight at one end, but the way out was nowhere to be seen. There really was nothing here. ¡°Oi!¡± A voice called out. I turned toward the group of three that were lounging against one of the arches. ¡°We have to wait for everyone to gather, Shortie.¡± I narrowed my eyes. This guy had instantly received a position on my shit list. ¡°What do you mean, ¡®wait¡¯?¡± I asked in return. ¡°Exactly what I said, Shortie. Someone is still engaged with the minotaur so we have to wait for them. It¡¯s annoying, but it¡¯s how this works.¡± He shrugged. Damn book, it didn¡¯t mention this! I walked to another pillar and rested against it. I wasted my time by soothing Coa. Getting her to calm down from her hysterical state of mind. I¡¯m starting to think it might be a bad idea to keep bringing her with me, but I don¡¯t have anything else I could do with her. Other than sending her to the ship anyway. The group of three were now eying me suspiciously and were not thinking very nice things. I could understand their reasons though. They were wondering how I not only appeared totally uninjured, but how even my normal looking clothing seemed fine. Their ideas ranged from me being extremely high level, stealthy enough that I managed to entirely avoid it, or that I must have abandoned my party to their deaths. The general consensus was leaning toward me having paid for an escort and then ditching them when the goal was in sight. Do I really look that harmless or heartless? I caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of my eye. A group of four, two guys and two girls, had just arrived through one of the gates and they were not in good shape. One of the men had his arm across the shoulder of the girl helping him to stay upright and walk. His left leg was basically gone, all that was there was a mangled mess. The other guy was piggybacking a girl wearing a light blue robe. She seemed to be unconscious with cloth wrapped around the top of her head. I could see a small trickle of blood running down her cheek, so the wound wasn¡¯t bandaged all that well. The guy hurried ahead of the other pair and came up to the altar area. ¡°Can anyone here use healing magic?¡± He asked with hope in his voice. His eyes bounced between myself and the other party. I shook my head and the other party also returned a negative response. He clenched his fists in frustration. It was when that the other two caught up that there was finally a response from the dungeon. ¡°The strong have gathered and the weak have been culled.¡± A voice utterly lacking in any emotion rang out. It sounded robotic. ¡°Forge onward and upward, Challengers. Aim for the top.¡± The altar shook and then the etching of the center area began glowing. All of us moved in and then the platform under us began to rise into the air. Despite that and the initial shaking, there was no feeling of movement at all. We were just steadily going up and up closer to the source of the light that had been pouring down all along. The illumination grew brighter until it was blinding and then we were there. We were now standing on a small patch of grass and nondescript trees. I scarcely noticed the four battered people immediately go for the exit door portal thing that was not far away from where we had appeared. I was too taken in by the tableau spread out before me. I had thought I was prepared for this, but I guess maybe I truly hadn¡¯t believed after only reading about it. It was a wide crescent beach stretching out as far as I could see in all directions. The waves lapping at the glistening white sand while the sun shone overhead in the cloudless blue sky. Of course, there were a number of details that ruined the picture perfect scene. Such as the group of soldiers engaged with a two meter tall hermit crab or the adventurers in full armor diving into the water. There was even a group fishing out eel monsters from the shore. Then there were things that while normal at an actual beach seemed bizarre here, like a group of people lounging in chairs, while surrounded by a ring of guards, or a restaurant slash bar that was selling food and drink which was likewise being protected. This was a pretty good opportunity. If I could eat here then it would save me some time after leaving the dungeon. The smell of the food wafting in the air after hours of being in the dungeon helped contribute to that decision. It has nothing to do with the fact that Coa is urging me to go there and I want to spoil her after terrifying her so badly. Really! It seemed like the three man party had made that their destination as well, so I initiated operation petty revenge! The man that had called me shortie, suddenly stumbled when he stepped on some object that felt like a rock. In truth, it was just my psi manipulating the sand by his feet. In the restaurant itself, I made sure that the chair he chose was ever so slightly adjusted that he sat on it wrong when he lowered himself. I couldn¡¯t really think of anything else that wouldn¡¯t be too obvious or wouldn¡¯t make him antagonize the restaurant staff, so I finished with slipping sand in his boots. Vengeance is mine! I wrapped up eating my seafood, because of course a restaurant at a beach inside a dungeon sells seafood, and left. This was going to be my first time using the exit portal so I was prepared for another dose of vertigo but it never came. Once I passed through the gate, I had already said goodbye to the sunny beach and was now looking at a sky just entering the first stage of night. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. ¡°Mistress! You¡¯re back! Are you injured? How was it? May I drop a nuke on the city? Did anything interesting occur?¡± Was heard from a certain AI¡¯s worried voice. [I feel like you mixed something dangerous in there. Anyway, no I¡¯m fine. I might have underestimated the dungeon a tad, but there weren¡¯t any major problems to speak of. Just made me waste some time. The beach was beautiful though. I¡¯ll take a picture of it to show you next time. Some enterprising merchant had even started a business there selling food.] I answered. ¡°That¡¯s surprising. Anyway, Mistress I have something to report.¡± A small screen popped up in my vision showing my inn room. Someone opened the door, I didn¡¯t neglect to notice that the sound of opening wasn¡¯t that of the lock being picked but someone turning a key, and came inside. The person that entered quietly closed the door behind them while slipping a small wand out of their coat. They stood there with the wand in front of them for a few minutes before they seemed satisfied and went further in. The first thing they did was check the bag I had left, which they showed no real reaction to it just being dungeon monster stones. They probably doubted it would be of any importance, but were possibly told to check it out anyway? Then the person walked over to one of the walls where I had detected the odd magic signature. This also gave me my first good look at the person¡¯s face and honestly I didn¡¯t know what to think. Were they male or female? They could definitely pass either way. The body lines, that could have given me a more accurate idea, were obscured by the clothes they had chosen. As I studied the individual¡¯s actions I left the dungeon, and the soldiers still garrisoned there, behind. They placed their wand on the spot on the wall and an glowing inscription appeared there momentarily before flickering off. Refreshing the magic? If so, it¡¯s good to know that it doesn¡¯t last forever. They did the same to the other location, before exiting the room as smoothly as they entered and locking the door behind them. [When did this happen?] I typed. ¡°Approximately twenty minutes after Mistress entered the dungeon. The infiltrator is not someone that has crossed Mistress¡¯ sight. Also before Mistress asks, I¡¯m not positive whether that individual is a boy or girl either. Based on analyzing their movements and other small details, I¡¯d estimate that they are a female, but I am regrettably only seventy percent sure.¡± Lynn explained. So they¡¯re even androgynous enough that Lynn can¡¯t determine it? That¡¯s impressive! [Nothing else happened then? All that¡¯s left is my business at the brothel.] I wrote. ¡°Mistress, how will you prepare for that? If you return to the inn, you¡¯d have to walk a long distance in your attire. That is not something I¡¯d recommend. You also lack a place to store your bag, which will detract from your beauty.¡± Lynn stated. [The pack I can¡¯t do anything about, but I already have a plan regarding how I¡¯ll change clothes. It should benefit the effect of my entrance as well.] I replied. Yes, I just needed to ¡®shop¡¯ around for what I desired. I hit an unexpected jackpot after only a few minutes of searching. Seems like a party was going on at this mansion and thus a great number of carriages were lined up and overflowing out of the long driveway with some parked on the street. Which carriage would be good? I need one without any kind of family crest, but I¡¯d still like it to be relatively fancy if possible. I also need one that isn¡¯t blocked in, which excludes any of the ones on the driveway. That wooden one over there should work. There¡¯s some gilding around the doors and there are curtains blocking view of the inside.The driver looks to be sleeping too, so obviously he doesn¡¯t expect to be needed soon. I made my way over and shook him. ¡°Huh, what? Is it time already?¡± He shooked his head groggily and focused on me. ¡°Here, you¡¯re not one of the footmen, what are you bothering me for?¡± I introduced a slight influence into his mind with my psi. ¡°I am here to rent your carriage for a short while.¡± He was about to protest, but I gave him a nudge and he waited for me to finish. ¡°I¡¯m offering you two gold coins.¡± I flashed the money at him. He gulped. ¡°Two gold coins? And what would you need me to do? I have to be back for my Lord and Lady.¡± ¡°We both know that your lord and lady won¡¯t be done in that party for a while. You¡¯ll be back in no time with two shiny gold coins in your pocket. All you have to do is take me to a certain location and drop me off properly.¡± I stated. Any hesitations he had had were wiped out at the thought of the money. I didn¡¯t even need to use my psi anymore. He was rationalizing it all by himself just fine now. ¡°Where do you need to go?¡± ¡°To Madame Lorelei¡¯s.¡± I said with a smile. ¡°Do we have a deal?¡± He hid his surprise well and nodded. ¡°Deal. Right now?¡± ¡°Yes. How long will it take to get there from here?¡± I asked. ¡°I¡¯d judge not that long. Most will already be busy with their evening entertainment.¡± He answered. ¡°I need a little bit of a time to finish my preparations, so don¡¯t rush too much.¡± I gave him another nudge for good measure. I handed him one of the gold coins now. ¡°You¡¯ll get the other one after I arrive.¡± I slipped into the carriage. I fixed the curtain blocking the door window, laid down Coa on the wooden seat and then got to work. About twenties minutes later, there was a slight knock from the driver¡¯s seat before the motion of the carriage came to a stop. We must have arrived. I placed the set of four sapphire earrings in my ears. I flipped my braided hair onto my shoulder and draped Coa along my left arm. The feathery dragon mask finished off my look. It was regrettable that I can¡¯t do anything about my bag, but I¡¯ll just have to make do. I quietly knocked back and I heard the driver get out of his seat. ¡°Coa. Sorry, but you¡¯ll need to be a good, quiet girl tonight.¡± I sat down and waited. The door opened and I stood and the driver had his head bowed while he held out his hand to help me down. I placed my hand delicately onto his and stepped lightly down the coach steps. Before removing my hand, the second gold coin slipped from the gown¡¯s sleeve onto his palm. He didn¡¯t straighten up as I glided gracefully past him. I eyed the mansion in front of me. I detected magic, but it was hard to determine any details from out here. The magical reactions were too jumbled to make out. I didn¡¯t recognize either of the guards and I expected them to stop me at the door, at least temporarily. Contrary to that though, they merely opened the doors and granted me entrance. I took in the atmosphere of the building almost immediately. I was in an entrance hall with a number of doors on the ground floor and a spiral staircase that led up to a second floor ahead of me. At least I immediately understood why the magic had felt off outside. There was magic everywhere. Spots on the walls, the paintings, the windows, just about everything I could see had some touch of magic to it. I couldn¡¯t let myself get drawn into that examination, I had to remember my current role. I was a noble lady. I could express interest in decorations, but gawking like a buffoon or standing around like an idiot was right out. A butler came up to me and bowed and offered me his hand. I accepted it and he led me up the stairs in the back to a pair of doors above. Upon opening the doors, I was suddenly assaulted by the sounds of a party. Conversations and dancing and other merrymaking was going on. Not really what one would normally expect from a brothel, but this place was obviously more like a cabaret club. Most people were wearing fancy masks, except for a number of girls that were dancing or hanging off men here and there. Of course, they weren¡¯t just with men. There were a number of masked ladies that were also enjoying the attention and flirtations of the women. As I entered, I was the center of attention for everyone that glimpsed me. I might have helped it along by doing some psi amplifying of my presence for a brief moment. I could see from their thoughts that they were wondering who I was. I didn¡¯t match any of the individuals on the ¡®normal guest¡¯ list, which meant in their minds that I must be someone with foreign connections. I noted down the fact that based on my jewelry designs, some were thinking I was from the Grand Duchy of Granait, wherever that was. I walked forward while bestowing a smile to people that met eyes with me. A path in the crowd was suddenly opened in front of me. A woman without a mask was sauntering toward me. Her tall beastlike ears stood up from her mane of pale blonde hair and the smile on her face was seductive to say the least. Her dress accentuated her figure while revealing the top of her very ample assets. A large, fluffy tail swayed back and forth behind her with each step. Despite all that though, I was practically forced to look at her eyes. They were dark at the edges but lightened until eventually they were white at the center. She performed a most elegant curtsey upon reaching me. ¡°My Lady Seri, I am most gratified that you accepted my invitation to visit my most humble abode. I, Madame Lorelei, promise you a most fanciful evening.¡± She declared. She clapped her hands once, silencing the room. ¡°My guests, I must regrettably call it a night. My dear Challi shall be my substitute.¡± She clapped again, signaling the party could resume. ¡°Now, Lady Seri, let us retire to my parlor for a private chat.¡± I felt like this evening had just gotten away from me somehow. At the same time, I was getting what I was after, but this was way too easy. I was now being noticed by everyone in the room as I followed Lorelei. They all wanted to know who I was, though there were some reactions of understanding when they heard my name. I couldn¡¯t pick them out of the crowd though. One thing that did momentarily surprise me was that I saw that presumed noble girl walking around the hall serving drinks. That explains her knight being on guard outside earlier, but why would she be working here? A mystery to consider some other time. At some point Coa had fallen asleep, which was probably her way of staying nice and quiet. I wish I could do the same. My mind was now on full alert. There was a high possibility of some kind of trap. Trying to read Lorelei¡¯s mind though was a fruitless endeavor. The only thing there was the humming of a tune that was in sync with the motion of her amazing body. We went up a flight of stairs and she stopped at a door there. She drew a circle on the door with her finger and it swung open. After being so inundated with magic before, this room really stood out because there was nothing in here of a magical nature. Even the light was being provided by a number of candles. She sashayed over to a lounge chair and laid down with her head resting on her hand. There were no other chairs in this room and she was gesturing for me to come sit with her. Instead of doing so, I stayed standing. She made a wounded expression. ¡°Does Your Highness not wish to begin with pleasure rather than boring business?¡± She enquired with a lick of her lips. The way she addressed me set off alarms in my head. This woman knew about what happened at the fortress. Not a huge surprise, since it¡¯s been a few weeks but still. ¡°Oh? Does that mode of address distress you? Would My Lady perhaps be preferable? Or is there another title? Possibly Countess or Duchess or possibly even Your Majesty? You really are so fascinating.¡± She was observing me with a wondrous expression. ¡°I¡¯m not going to play these games with you. Call me whatever you want, but I want to get down to business.¡± I asserted. ¡°My, you really are no fun, Seri.¡± She released a delightful giggle before turning stoic. ¡°I refuse to contact Ghost on your behalf.¡± I wasn¡¯t surprised at all that she knew why I was here. ¡°I can tell you¡¯re not worried about retribution from them, so what would you lose by helping me.¡± ¡°Absolutely nothing. That does not mean I should help you. There are no benefits for me in doing so, therefore I decline to do so. You have no chips to play to turn that decision around and petty threats mean nothing to me. Feel free to kill me or torture if you so choose. This parlor has no means by which to protect me and I would not struggle in anyway.¡± She expressed. A smug smile was playing on her lips. Damn that humming in her head. ¡°You say that, but I don¡¯t think there are no grounds for negotiation. You wouldn¡¯t have brought me to this room if there was nothing you wanted.¡± ¡°Very true, there is indeed something I desire from you. I wish to ask you questions and for every question I ask you, I¡¯m willing to release some information regarding Ghost to you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m getting tired of all the runaround about Ghost. I believe you greatly neglect my capability when it comes to torture.¡± I stated. ¡°That is quite possible. I admit I do not want to end up like those bandits.¡± Another warning bell. No one was around to see that. ¡°I suppose I¡¯ll have to offer something first. Let¡¯s see, I¡¯m sure you¡¯re aware of the observers that have been spying on you?¡± I nod. ¡°They have no connection with Ghost other than that of being hired help. They weren¡¯t even hired directly, but through a chain of intermediaries. Another freebie is that Ghost is one of my many employers, which is why I¡¯m not afraid of death at your hands. If you killed me then you would ruin any chance of coming to an agreement with them.¡± ¡°I doubt they care much about a brothel manager. I¡¯m sure you¡¯d be easy to replace.¡± I said. ¡°Quite right. Madame Lorelei is completely expendable. The Oracle Lorelei on the other hand, is extremely precious.¡± She replied. An Oracle? As in those people that give prophecies? For some reason I had gotten the impression they belonged to the church, but I guess that was a stupid assumption on my part. Of course, some would end up in employment elsewhere. I could just leave. It doesn¡¯t seem like she¡¯d prevent that. If she¡¯s not going to help me then there really isn¡¯t any point to sticking around. I¡¯m really interested in what she could tell me though. Is the reason she knows so much because of being an Oracle? Or is she just trying to psych me out? ¡°I¡¯ll entertain you for now. Ask your first question.¡± I announced. ¡°Oh my, thank you! I¡¯ll begin with my most burning one. What are you?¡± She asked. ¡°Mistress! This woman is dangerous! Get rid of her quickly!¡± Lynn warned. I chose to ignore Lynn for now. Lorelei had piqued my curiosity. ¡°Can you repeat that? What am I?¡± ¡°Yes! What are you! You first appeared twenty-six days ago at a small town in the northern area of the kingdom. You disappeared after making a giant ruckus with a pack of demon wolves. Then only eight days later, you appeared in the Empire at a border fortress. A border fortress that identified you as a princess! A princess from nowhere! Then you started showing off those metals of yours and started looking for Ghost of all things.¡± She sighed and waved her hand. ¡°Of course, these are all insignificant.¡± Her eyes took on an unearthly glow. ¡°I can¡¯t ¡®See¡¯ you.¡± ¡°What?¡± This was confusing. She had placed a lot of emphasis on the see and she knew way more than I felt comfortable with. ¡°I can¡¯t ¡®See¡¯ you! This has never happened before! Your beautiful self is right before my eyes, but you are utterly blank to me. The details I have picked up are entirely from ¡®Seeing¡¯ others you have made contact with. I¡¯ve sat in meditation for the slightest hint about your identity to absolutely no gain. I even began using my talents in other broader terms. You are not a Hero. No Hero exists in the Empire. You are not a Devil for the same reason. Lastly, you are not a Spirit either. There is only one Spirit on our continent at this point in time and you are definitely not them. They are nowhere near here. You are an utter enigma!¡± She was now speaking feverishly. ¡°That¡¯s why! That¡¯s why! I absolutely must know!¡± ¡°What are you!?¡± Sorry, not a new chapter. Update. So, I''m honestly not in a great condition right now. Some developments on the job front have caused my depression to flare up and I''m back to having suicidal thoughts. A week ago, I was close to deleting this story and wiping my google drive. Then my uncle passed away and while my family hasn''t been close to the rest for the last few years, it''s caused some of the rest of the family to try to reach out to us again, which has created other emotional issues in the house. Especially after how they treated us five years ago after a different death in the family.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Well, it hasn''t been total doom and gloom over the last two weeks. My sister just gave birth to her first child. Anyway, my emotional state has just not been conducive to writing at all. I''m trying to struggle my way through the next chapter, but I can''t make any promises right now. Chapter 51 Chapter 51 ¡°Mistress, kill her. She''s a threat to our safety!¡± Lynn strongly advised. I tentatively agreed, but there was a problem to work out first. I had to determine how much she might have shared with her employers. I also had a nagging suspicion that her sight wasn¡¯t as all powerful as she was trying to imply it was. I believed that she was bluffing to some degree and merely extrapolating from other information she did know. For now let¡¯s continue the conversation. ¡°I¡¯m an angel.¡± I told her with a bright smile. Rie called me one not that long ago, so I¡¯ll take it. I felt my smile only deepen as the calmness of her thoughts fell apart and was replaced by a feeling of utter dumbfoundedness. Apparently, my answer was far out of left field from anything she was expecting. ¡°Well, I answered your question. So give me some information as you promised.¡± She started waving her hands. ¡°Wait! That¡¯s impossible! Angels don¡¯t exist. The Spirit Arisia introduced them as a concept, but even said they were just fiction from her world. Of course they appear in some fairy tales and even some sermons of the church, but they aren¡¯t real!¡± I shrugged. ¡°You¡¯re free to believe me or not.¡± And she didn¡¯t hear me. Her brain is currently running overtime and she¡¯s mumbling to herself about whether I¡¯m really an angel. I guess when you have the ability to potentially see and understand everything, when faced with something you can¡¯t, it¡¯s majorly vexing. Especially when the person herself wasn¡¯t really being that cooperative. Well, while she¡¯s lost in her thoughts, let¡¯s prepare the stage. I slid my pack under the love seat she was resting on, while I set up my psi web. Or maybe in this case, my web was closer to a cage. For all intents and purposes this room was now pretty much isolated from any outside interference. I stepped close to Lorelei and held out my arm toward her neck. ¡°Coa, if you don¡¯t mind, please bite her.¡± Coa followed my directions properly and slithered down to my hand, where she lunged forward and snapped down on Lorelei¡¯s soft flesh. Lorelei was shocked out of her contemplation, though more out of surprise than pain. Coa had only managed to cause two tiny punctures after all. They weren¡¯t even bleeding. I laid Coa down on the back cushion and pushed the still somewhat surprised and confused Lorelei down. I would be lying if I said I wasn¡¯t going to be enjoying what came next in more ways than one. I was straddling her and leaned forward to kiss her neck. My shield had to be turned off to do this properly, since it would get in the way of this kind of intimate contact. I trusted my web completely to protect me though. She tried to speak but I shushed her with a finger. ¡°Let¡¯s forgo further business for the moment and pursue other entertainments.¡± She displayed a sensual smile. ¡°I''m not adverse to the prospect, but I don''t believe we were finished yet? I had other details I was still curious about.¡± ¡°Well, we can always continue that later.¡± I raised my head up and placed the gem on my forehead, my psi amplifier, directly to her own forehead. I let my psi flow through her and then back through my hand that was now stroking her cheek. I was creating something of a feedback loop that put her into a trance. Ultimately, she¡¯ll have only a vague memory of this. ¡°Now, how much and to whom have you shared the information about myself with?¡± I spoke with a soothing voice. The psi flowing through her created a compulsion for her to respond to me. ¡°No one.¡± She replied in a daze. I raised an eyebrow. ¡°That¡¯s interesting. Why haven¡¯t you?¡± I inquired. ¡°They already knew about your activities inside the Empire. The only event I¡¯ve withheld is the one with the demon wolves. They¡¯ll find out about it soon though.¡± She explained. ¡°Won¡¯t they get angry when they learn about that?¡± I asked. They might not want to kill her, but I¡¯m sure they have their own methods of punishment. ¡°I used the information about a new Spirit¡¯s arrival to divert them. They haven¡¯t consulted me regarding you since then.¡± She stated. That made sense. They had bigger fish to fry now than me. At the same time though, it sabotaged my own plans. ¡°Are they willing to do business with me?¡± ¡°Yes. They are currently debating the risks involved in such a venture. You are going to receive an invitation to a party at Marquis Sornan¡¯s manor in eight days.¡± Marquis Sornan? That name sounds familiar, but I can¡¯t place it at the moment. ¡°They will use intermediaries to talk with you using truth verifiers. If you fail the test, they will remove you to acquire the goods you carry.¡± She said. Hmm. So an interview to sound out my possible loyalties and motives. Then again, right now I have an Oracle at my disposal. ¡°Do you know where Ghost¡¯s headquarters are located?¡± I asked. ¡°No. Nor do I know who are their key agents. They have magical tools that muddle my Sight. I only know about them through others and the knowledge they provide me.¡± She said. ¡°Why am I so special then, if there are others that block your ability?¡± I inquired. ¡°In your case, there is nothing. No wall preventing my Sight. Just nothing. It is as if you do not exist.¡± She explained. ¡°I understand. What about the location of the Dark Dwarves¡¯ home which is the source of adamantite?¡± Might as well try that topic too. ¡°That is beyond my Sight as well.¡± Another dead end I suppose. ¡°Why? Actually, why don¡¯t you explain your power for me? Your limits and such.¡± I commanded. ¡°I cannot See beyond the sea. Thus I am constrained to the piece of land this Empire resides on. I am also incapable of Seeing more than a month into the past and I cannot see into the future.¡± So, she¡¯s basically only capable of basically seeing the present then? That the dwarves aren¡¯t on this continent is valuable to know though. ¡°I can see events as if I was a bird overlooking them, but there must be a living person there for me to affix my Sight. I can not See through beasts or monsters. I did not See you torture those bandits. I only Saw their remains through the female adventurers at the bandit camp.¡± Random thought. ¡°How long is a week, month, and year?¡± ¡°A week is ten days. A month is four weeks. A year is nine months and one day. That one day lies in the middle of the year and is the day we worship the Spirits.¡± She said. Back to the actual conversation. ¡°What do you know about my actual abilities?¡± If she can see anyone that is living, she might have been able to see my conversation with Rie from Rie¡¯s side. ¡°You are physically powerful and possess some means, magical or otherwise, to manipulate entities from beyond your reach.¡± So she knows generally about my psi, but doesn¡¯t seem to know what it actually is or exactly how it works. Also unaware of the mental aspects of it. That¡¯s good, but even with the vague memory, she¡¯ll be able to realize that I was the cause of it which means that cat will be out of the bag. What else do I need to ask about? Ghost is taken care of for now and I have a warning that they are potentially going to turn violent on me. The dwarves are still out of reach. There is a Spirit around¡­ oh! ¡°What do you know about the Spirit?¡± ¡°The Spirit is a male of around two and a half meters in height. His name is Fafnir Nidhogg. He is a being known as a Dragonian, a never before seen race. His Class is Feralshifter. When using his abilities, he transforms progressively until reaching a full dragon in form. Along with the transformation he enters a berserk state. I am not aware if he possesses a subclass. He tore apart a level 130 Giant Wyrm eleven days ago.¡± She described. That name is just, I don¡¯t even know what to think about that. Otherwise, it sounds almost like he¡¯s a werewolf type thing. Except with control over the transformation. Killing a level 130 does mean he¡¯s pretty strong though and that¡¯s unlikely to be his limit. Lorelei was still talking and explaining how he looked like a cross between a human and a dragon, except without wings. I wasn¡¯t really interested in that sort of information though.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Except for what she said at the end. ¡°His emergence took place twenty-nine days ago in the Restless Desert at the southern tip of this continent.¡± ¡°Mistress! That coincides with our own arrival on this world!¡± Lynn interjected. Yes, I realized that myself, Lynn. Does this mean I am a Spirit after all? Could there be others that also appeared at that time? Lorelei said she was limited to this continent, so if we consider him and myself to be the only two foreign entities here. ¡°Lorelei, how many continents or land masses are there on this world?¡± ¡°There are eight. We are currently on the second largest named Ailune.¡± She replied. If we operate on the idea of two per continent, then there would be sixteen, but I doubt it¡¯s that uniform. If I had to make a leap of faith. I¡¯d go with somewhere in the five to ten range. ¡°What is going on with that Spirit at the current time and what are Ghost¡¯s plans regarding him?¡± ¡°He is sleeping.¡± I could have phrased that part better. ¡°I am not aware of Ghost¡¯s goal. They most likely wish to draw him to this country to visibly serve as a new champion or symbol of glory.¡± She answered. ¡°That sounds pretty calculating. Aren¡¯t Spirits supposed to be seen as objects of worship? That sounds like Ghost is just planning to use him.¡± I stated. ¡°Not all worship the Spirits. I am not aware of Ghost¡¯s opinion regarding them.¡± She said. Now I think I really am out of things to ask. I guess I can release her from the trance. I cut off the flow of psi and lifted my head. She blinked a few times before meeting my eyes calmly. ¡°How cruel of you, Seri! You promised answering my questions, but instead you wrung me dry for your own amusement!¡± She accused. ¡°I¡¯m quite surprised you so easily put me into a controlled state though.¡± She should have only vague memories! ¡°Don¡¯t be shocked. Of course I can See myself. I talked quite a lot, the last few minutes.¡± She placed her arms up around me. ¡°If I¡¯m not going to get you to reveal anything, then I¡¯m just going to follow your example and take what enjoyment I can salvage out of this evening!¡± She kissed me deeply while using her hands to loosen my dress. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I was still cuddling with the resting Lorelei. Unlike her, I had kept myself awake. Our clothing had become strewn around the floor, thankfully still together. The sex wasn¡¯t as wild as it might have been. Right, the sex. I had extremely complicated feelings about it. It was fantastic in one sense, but it was different from just having the memories of doing it. This time it was me. I was the one being the enthusiastic participant. Of course, there¡¯s the other complications like the fact that I should probably kill her. I¡¯m conflicted though. Why did I let myself get dragged along into that sex!? Stupid, stupid! Hah. Even if she hasn¡¯t shared the information she has acquired about me, there¡¯s no guarantee she won¡¯t if she¡¯s actually questioned about it. I don¡¯t even need to consult Lynn for her opinion because I am already aware that she is really fucking pissed right now. In the end if I removed the emotional aspect, it comes down to whether the security risk she represents is offset by the increased difficulty I¡¯ll face in acquiring the materials I need. If she was telling the truth, and I¡¯m quite confident she was, then Ghost will be upset if they lose her services. I¡¯m the most likely suspect if she dies since I¡¯ve spent the night with her along with other obvious factors like how everyone at that party saw her identify me and pull me aside. If only I was carrying one of my delayed action poisons on me. Putting her under surveillance would be impossible unless I had her with me at all times. I can¡¯t fit the ear piece into her beast ear since it was made to fit in my ear. Giving her one of the contacts is out for the same reason. I¡¯d have to have Lynn construct something specifically for her use, which means that I¡¯d have to visit again to deliver it and until I did so, she wouldn¡¯t be under watch. Actually now that I think about, the delayed poison wouldn¡¯t work for the same reason, huh? I suppose the best options are to kill her or to make some kind of deal with her that she won¡¯t reveal any information about me. Lorelei¡¯s eyes snapped open with a slight glow. ¡°It¡¯s still quite early.¡± Had this woman just used her ability for the sole purpose of telling the time? ¡°Why don¡¯t we take a bath, relax, and freshen up, Seri?¡± Well, I guess there¡¯s no harm in delaying things a little bit. An actual bath sounds really good. After packing away my dress and draping the still sleeping Coa around my neck, I followed Lorelei out of the room with both of us still nude. Normally, I wouldn¡¯t wish for these people to see my body due to the reaction some might have to my appearance, but I could tell that to the limit of my senses that there was no one along the paths we were taken. That wasn¡¯t to say no one was awake, just that Lorelei would always turn down corridors avoiding them. It seemed like she had reasons of her own for wanting to avoid the people patrolling her mansion. She pushed open a pair of doors and what lay on the other side was a small hallway that opened into a larger room that contained the bath. The room seem to be covered in smooth, polished stone which was a bit of surprise. What was more of a surprise was the bath itself. It was large like I had expected, but what I hadn¡¯t expected was the design. It was sloped for one thing with the water entering the bath through what looked like a waterfall flowing from the wall on at one end. The water then flowed to a wide pool before disappearing through drains at the bottom end. Lorelei waved her hand over an orb situated on the wall by the entrance and the water began to steam. She waved her hand over a different orb and the waterfall that had been pouring out normal water, now was also filled with soap bubbles. In less than a minute, it had become a steamy, bubble bath. Lorelei got into the bath and stood under the waterfall as she washed her body. I decided to follow suit. When the water hit Coa, she woke with a screech and shot off my neck. Sadly for her, she was still addled from just waking up so all she managed to do was to dive into the water and get caught by the light current. She was flailing her wings as she tried to escape the bubbly water to no avail. I sighed, went over and scooped her up before she managed to get herself flushed down one of the drains. I returned to the waterfall and decided to take care of her cleaning first. I sat her down outside the bath after I was done wiping the bubbles off her. She immediately hissed and shot to a corner of the room to curl up there while glaring at me. She was radiating anger. Good job, Seri. You managed to piss off both your companions in the same night. By the time, I finished my own washing, Lorelei was already lounging in the pool. Her beautiful body totally on display. Honestly, I could understand how I fell to the temptation she offered. She really is almost entirely to my taste. If she¡¯d been a cat rather than a fox, she would have been perfect. My long hair clung to my body as I walked toward her. I didn¡¯t lay in the water though, I stood looking down at her. She gazed back at me without evading my eyes. ¡°Did my display of affection and our lovemaking not move you enough to spare me? Ohh! Do not think that this was my only purpose for that act. I do find you to be incomparably charming, if only because of your unique nature.¡± ¡°Of course.¡± I replied. ¡°Do you have any other reasons for why I shouldn¡¯t kill you and please don¡¯t try to use the detail about Ghost or other organizations being upset at your death. I¡¯m prepared to deal with that.¡± It was only a small lie. I wanted to know if she did have something else to offer. ¡°You may use me as an informant for as long as you wish.¡± She stated. ¡°Were you aware that the Count that is in control of the territory where you tamed that pack of wolves has called in favors from other nobles to recruit a decent sized force of knights and scouts? There are currently twenty-six of them preparing to search that forest for you. All of them are above level 40 with the two leaders of the unit closer to level 60. They¡¯re a well balanced party.¡± That could be an issue, if she¡¯s telling the truth. ¡°Why should I care about that? They can search in that forest all they want, but all they¡¯ll find is the pack of wolves I left behind.¡± I responded without any reaction. ¡°That¡¯s not all you¡¯re offering though. What you¡¯re actually offering here is to provide me with news and gossip from around the continent that I wouldn¡¯t be able to discover myself.¡± ¡°Correct. Is this not a good deal for you?¡± She said. ¡°That doesn¡¯t at all negate how much of a threat you are. Also, I find it doubtful that you are offering this in exchange for your life. You didn¡¯t care all that much earlier when I threatened to torture you. What are you after now?¡± I asked. She shrugged. ¡°Since you won¡¯t satisfy my curiosity yourself, I hope that by repeated meetings with you, I¡¯ll be able to determine what you are.¡± I scrutinized her as I contemplated. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I had been wandering the early morning streets since I had left Lorelei¡¯s mansion. It felt like I had made an irrevocable decision. Sparing her had set something into motion. What that was, I couldn¡¯t be sure. I knew it wasn¡¯t going to be as simple as her betraying my trust though. Whatever it was, was going to be something big. That wasn¡¯t what was troubling me. I had made an irrational decision. It was illogical. It went against all my experience. Yet, I couldn¡¯t not do it. I couldn¡¯t bring myself to end her life. Maybe the Aaron part of myself had exerted its presence enough to influence me. I hated to admit it, but recently, I had been thinking entirely like Seri. I could even begin to imagine that Aaron had never existed outside my own head. I might have spared her because of that. An action that despite being stupid, said that I wasn¡¯t just an individual that would slice the throat of anyone that crossed me. Or possibly I was just trying to find some excuse to justify my sudden onset of idiocy. I patted the sleeping Coa that I was cradling in my arms. She let out a quiet purr. ¡°Mistress, are you okay?¡± Lynn inquired. [Aren¡¯t you still angry? Actually, shouldn¡¯t you be more upset now?] I typed with my left hand since my right arm was still holding Coa. ¡°I¡¯m still not happy about it.¡± She said bluntly. ¡°But, I don¡¯t like Mistress behaving like a lost soul more.¡± [Sorry.] I replied simply. ¡°You aren''t going to share your worries with me?¡± Lynn sounded sad. [Later. I just need some time to sort it all out in my head.] I wrote. ¡°Mistress, I¡¯m absolutely holding you to that later. Don¡¯t think you¡¯re going to escape me.¡± Lynn threatened. ¡°Come out of the city to the forest tonight. I have to deliver some goods to you.¡± Chapter 52 Chapter 52 I watched the waves as they lapped against the shore. They always stopped just a few meters in front of me. This dungeon floor really was relaxing. So peaceful. I hopped up into the air and flicked my dagger casually straight down. It stuck into the face of the crab monster that tried to attack me from under the sand. I stomped my dagger with my foot, finishing it off. It dissolved as I settled back down. So peaceful. I flicked the monster¡¯s stone over to where forty-one identical stones were. I glanced at the stones. I had been here a while hadn¡¯t I? What time was it now anyway? I had entered the dungeon on a whim when my wandering had brought me nearby. I took another, better look around me. Well, there was a lot more people here than there was when I stumbled in. Back then, there was only one guy that was swimming around in the water in full armor. Now it resembled how it did yesterday when I reached this floor. Had I been so out of it that I hadn¡¯t noticed the passage of time and all these folks showing up? Damn, I¡¯m such a moron. I had been absentmindedly showing off my strength! I really wanted to scream. I¡¯m second-guessing my decisions and now I made another fuck up only hours later! No, calm down me. The monsters here aren¡¯t actually all that strong. The people that matter already know I wiped out a horde of bandits. This little display is a drop in the bucket compared to that. Right, right. No big deal at all. Let¡¯s just get out of here already. I scooped up all the stones and dropped them in my bag. I¡¯d sell most of these off to the guild later on along with the ones from yesterday. More pocket change can¡¯t hurt. I left through the dungeon and saw the sun was nearly at its zenith, so it must be close to noon. I had been in the dungeon for at least six hours then. Oh well, not like I had any plans today. Let¡¯s just go back to the inn and get lunch. ¡°Mistress, where are you going?¡± Lynn asked as I was walking in that direction. [To get food] I responded. ¡°What about your appointment to see the girl? It¡¯s about that time.¡± Lynn stated. Oh shit! Because of Lorelei It completely slipped my mind! I started running for the school, only momentarily pausing to pick up a snack to soothe Coa, who had woken up while I ran. Through some very creative maneuvering, I managed to make it to the school in a matter of minutes. The three guards showed a brief moment of surprise at my sudden appearance before schooling their expressions. ¡°Hello, I¡¯m here for an appointment to see a student. Rie is her name. Here¡¯s my adventurer card for identification.¡± I pulled it out and showed them. ¡°We were informed ahead of time. Evan will take you to the waiting room.¡± The guard that was speaking indicated the one to his right, who slightly bowed his head. The gate was opened slightly to allow us passage and I followed the guard along the pathway to the nearest building. I took the time to scan around with my psi. Judging by the number of magic signals everywhere, the defenses should be pretty formidable. That is if all that is for defense. My understanding of magic is pretty low, so it¡¯s not like I can identify based on what I¡¯m detecting through my psi. For all I know, the stuff I¡¯m detecting right now could be what keeps all the greenery healthy. The landscaping was pretty impressive with the small trees and color divided flower beds. The school really was gigantic though. It reminded me a lot of the small college campus that I went to as Aaron. Even a small college is pretty large compared to lower education schools, and I had thought this place was primarily for teens or thereabout. The size alone wasn¡¯t the only reason though. The one I went to had been founded in the early industrial age, and the building design of this place looked very similar. This curiosity was answered when I saw a statue of the Empire¡¯s founder with another quote and the status of him being the first principal. Another detail that could support him being from the same world as me. Personally I think it¡¯s already just about guaranteed though. Since we were near the buildings, my psi was now beginning to roam freely and I was finding lots of young, not fully developed minds. Children really tended to stand out when searching with psi. Of course, psi wasn¡¯t a precise tool. Just because you come across something that seems to be a young, mostly undeveloped mind, doesn¡¯t actually mean it¡¯s a child for example. Based on this being a school, I can assume they¡¯re kids, but it¡¯s not an absolute. Limiting yourself to only focusing on the minds around you was what got a lot of inexperienced psi users killed due to letting down their guards. It was necessary to add other criteria to your repertoire. This was a topic that I would have to make sure to teach Rie, so she wouldn¡¯t have to learn the hard way. Ahh. Right. Of course, that¡¯s only in the event I end up taking her with me. ¡°Do you know how many students there are?¡± I directed a question at my escort. ¡°I do not know any precise count. I am merely a guard after all, but all the nobility and wealthy merchants have their children study here.¡± He replied. ¡°You¡¯d be better off asking one of the teachers.¡± ¡°Thank you anyway.¡± I said. That would be what? A few hundred? Possibly up to a thousand or so? I¡¯m not sure exactly how big the empire is since there seems to be a remarkable lack in maps available. Still seems like a big place for such a small number if my estimate is close. I was led through the open doors of the largest building. The interior design was pretty much as I would have expected based on the exterior. There was a small, comfortable lobby that was currently empty. My guide indicated an opening further down a hallway. The open area was a very luxurious meeting room with two couches and a long low table between them. ¡°The student should be coming mome-¡± What he was about to say ended up being needless. There was the sound of running feet which also brought along a cry of ¡°Miss Seri!¡± Rie was barreling down the hallway on a collision course with me as she waved her hands, a bright smile on her face. A woman wearing what looked to be a well-tailored, but otherwise plain dress, was chasing after her. I took note of the fact that despite being young, the woman had pure white hair. The guard went to intercept her, but I beat him to the punch by quickly stepping past him and meeting Rie halfway. Her smile got even wider and she leapt toward me with her arms outstretched. I stopped her momentum with one hand while chopping her on the forehead with the other. She crouched down while holding her head. This gave time for the assumed to be teacher to catch up to her. ¡°Valerie! I keep telling you to act more ladylike! Running in the halls like that is not proper behavior for a lady.¡± She scolded. Rie totally ignored her. She hopped up before shouting at me. ¡°Miss Seri, why did you hit me!?¡± She glanced at Coa. ¡°Hi Coa! Did you see what Miss Seri just did!¡± Coa chirped a hello. ¡°See, Miss Seri, Coa agrees that you were mean!¡± The woman turned Rie around by the shoulder to face her. ¡°Valerie Winterfall. I am speaking to you. I can cancel this appointment and send you back to detention if you do not behave properly. Am I clear?¡± Rie nodded sulkily. The woman sighed. ¡°Now fix yourself up to receive your benefactor. Your hair and dress are untidy.¡± She straightened Rie¡¯s clothes and then tried to do the same with Rie¡¯s short hair, but Rie jerked away from her hands. I decided to take action to make sure Rie didn¡¯t get taken away before I could chat with her. I reached my own hands up to Rie¡¯s hair and ran my fingers through it, combing it. Rie flinched and was about to escape before she realized it was me that was doing it. It was pretty clear she had some complex with this, but I wasn¡¯t going to question her about it. It might explain why it looked like it had been hacked short rather than cut though. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))>Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. The woman was now watching suspiciously as I combed Rie¡¯s hair flat. She seemed like she was burning to ask me questions regarding our relationship. For now at least it looked like I had successfully distracted her from her annoyance with Rie¡¯s behavior. ¡°It¡¯s fine for us to have our meeting now?¡± I asked her. ¡°Yes, it¡¯s alright. Please use this room. I will be acting as a guardian, and will be present as well.¡± She stated. It was an unwelcome, but not unexpected development so I simply nodded. If Rie was more experienced with psi we could get around it by establishing a telepathic connection and then having concurrent conversations both aloud and through that. There was no chance of Rie pulling that off on a first go though, especially not with me being unable to explain any of it. I steered Rie into the room and she sat at the nearest couch before looking at me expectantly, so I sat down next to her. It would be a bit awkward to have a conversation like this, but oh well, if it made her happy. For good measure, I allowed her to hold Coa. The woman sat on the opposite couch and seemed like she intended to stay unobtrusive. I was somewhat surprised though that the guard had actually left. ¡°So Rie, are you doing well? Enjoying school life?¡± I inquired. I immediately wanted to smack myself for that terrible conversation starter. ¡°No! It¡¯s so boring here!¡± Rie complained while the woman had a very slight twitch. ¡°They are always like ¡®do this¡¯ and ¡®do that!¡¯ I can¡¯t even avoid the lessons!¡± ¡°What are they teaching you right now that you want to avoid it so much?¡± I asked. ¡°Right now, they¡¯re teaching me how to read and write.¡± She said. ¡°You haven¡¯t learned that yet?¡± I was surprised. Or was it possibly normal for there to be a low literacy level? She looked up at me guiltily. ¡°I avoided classes at the orphanage¡­¡± I really didn¡¯t want to be an adult that harped on these kinds of topics, my mom as Aaron was definitely a pain in the ass when it came to education, but this wasn¡¯t something I could really excuse. ¡°Rie, I won¡¯t ask you learn it right away, since that¡¯s not possible, but if you do want to come with me, then knowing how to read and write will be important.¡± Seeing the instant look of despair that bloomed on her face was like a shot in the heart. ¡°I promise I¡¯ll learn! I promise, I promise. Please still take me with you!¡± She begged with tears threatening to pour out of her eyes. I placed my hand on her head and patted her gently. ¡°Calm down. I¡¯m not going back on what I previously told you, so cheer up, okay?¡± She nodded and sniffled. ¡°Let¡¯s talk about other things. Have you talked with any of the other kids? Maybe made a friend or two?¡± ¡°No, everyone else is even worse! Can you believe that all they want to do is study? They keep saying things like ¡®I¡¯ll become rich and laugh at all those people that teased me!¡¯ or ¡®I¡¯m going to show them who¡¯s useless¡¯. It¡¯s boring!¡± She whined. ¡°You don¡¯t feel the same way?¡± I questioned. Rie stared at me blankly like I was suddenly speaking another language. ¡°Why should I? No one matters except for my brother and Miss Seri.¡± Okay, Rie obviously has some major dependency issues. I can¡¯t really bring myself to fault her on that topic. I¡¯m probably just as bad, if not worse, where Lynn is concerned. ¡°What about your brother? Is he doing well?¡± Rie looked down. ¡°He hasn¡¯t spent any time with me.¡± ¡°Did something happen?¡± I asked. ¡°Brother doesn¡¯t like Miss Seri. He said that he¡¯ll be the one to protect me, not some weird woman.¡± I felt mildly offended at being called a ¡®weird woman¡¯. ¡±He¡¯s been taking a bunch of extra lessons in swordsmanship and other weapons. Even some basic magic now. I tried to tell him that Miss Seri wasn¡¯t bad, but he doesn¡¯t believe me.¡± Rie explained. Not much I can do about that issue, especially since I don¡¯t think he¡¯d meet with me even if I asked him to. Rie and him would have to work that out themselves. I just have to hope that he doesn¡¯t do something stupid if Rie comes with me. ¡°Miss Seri, what have you been doing?¡± Rie took advantage of my silence to ask a question of her own. ¡°Pretty much just normal adventurer things. Raiding dungeons, hunting monsters, drinking odd beverages. The usual.¡± I replied. ¡°What kind of monster? Was it a dragon?¡± Rie excitedly asked. ¡°No, no. Why did you come up with a ridiculous idea like that? It was just some monsters near the city that were troubling farmers. I¡¯m pretty sure if a dragon appeared there would be much more of a fuss.¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m sure Miss Seri could beat up a dragon! It would be no match for you!¡± Her eyes were sparkling. I wonder what she¡¯s basing that conviction on. I doubt she knows any better than I do about the strength of a dragon. Or does she just want to watch me fight a dragon? Well, to be fair if all dragons were like Coa, I don¡¯t think I¡¯d face any problems. That feathery fiend was currently ensconced on Rie¡¯s lap purring away, oblivious to the rest of the world. The woman clapped her hands. ¡°This is long enough, Valerie. It¡¯s time to return to your lessons.¡± She said. ¡°What!? But it¡¯s not even been that long!¡± Rie instantly jumped to her feet and shouted at the woman. ¡°I might have been inclined to allow you more time, had you not been so disruptive this morning. You almost lost the privilege of even having this meeting, so you should be grateful you got this much.¡± The woman stated. The woman truly focused on me for the first time since she had appeared. ¡°I hadn¡¯t introduced myself yet, but my name is Bethany Lairden. I am Valerie¡¯s primary tutor.¡± ¡°Ahh, my bad. I hadn¡¯t named myself either.¡± I responded. ¡°I¡¯m -¡± ¡°An adventurer, Seri. Correct?¡± She was suddenly extremely hostile in her mind toward me. None of it showed on her face or in her voice though. ¡°Valerie can do much better for herself than traipsing along after a vagabond like yourself. I do not agree with the idea of her leaving this academy to accompany you. It would be throwing away a bright future for herself.¡± I¡¯m not sure about how best to respond since she¡¯s confronting me on this purely out of concern for Rie. She¡¯s sincere about wanting what is best for Rie, or well what she thinks would be the best for her. I know that¡¯s not exactly the same thing, but it¡¯s not like I don¡¯t think she has a point. ¡°I don¡¯t entirely disagree. I think getting a proper education is good. Not just good, but essential. To be honest, I think it would be for the best if Rie stayed here and studied.¡± Rie was about to cause a scene, so I lightly flicked her with my psi to stay quiet. ¡°At the same time though, if Rie wishes to come with me, then I¡¯d like to accommodate that desire.¡± She glared at me before returning her attention to Rie. ¡°Valerie, are you positive you wish to accompany this¡­ adventurer?¡± She emphasized the last word with a bit of distaste. ¡°Yes!¡± Rie enthusiastically responded without a moment¡¯s hesitation. ¡°I understand. I will give you a moment to say your farewells and then it is back to the study hall.¡± She left the room and and walked partly down the hallway and did something because there was a very brief flash of magic use. Afterwards, she came back towards the room. Rie reluctantly handed Coa back to me. ¡°Miss Seri, can¡¯t you sneak me out?¡± She whispered. I smiled and then pulled her into a hug. ¡°I don¡¯t think that would be the best idea, Rie. For now, just behave yourself and I¡¯ll come make another appointment to see you again in another week. Try not to get in too much more trouble, please.¡± She nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll try, but I really, really don¡¯t like them. That woman least of all. She¡¯s super scary. Always with the ¡®talent, talent, talent¡¯. Making me do a bunch of different things.¡± ¡°Maybe she¡¯s not really as bad as she appears?¡± I respond. I wanted to explain more, but I really couldn¡¯t afford to. ¡°Just do your best and stop making me feel like I picked up a troublesome little sister.¡± Given the age difference, I could have said daughter or granddaughter, but spare me that please. I felt the conversation was basically over and didn¡¯t want to drag this out anymore, so I flipped her around and picked her up. She was confused until I carried her out of the room and toward the teacher. ¡°Here, I¡¯m returning this to you.¡± I told the woman as I placed Rie back on her own feet. She let slip a tiny smile. ¡°I understand. Valerie, we¡¯ll be attending the water magic lesson now. It will be beginning shortly, so let us hurry along.¡± Rie was making no move to respond so I pushed her forward. Rie looked over her shoulder at me with a look of resignation, but went over anyway. ¡°I signaled the guard to return, so feel free to rest comfortable here until then.¡± The woman stated while turning to walk away. They left down the hall. I followed their presence until they were out of range. Looked like they went outside this building. I stretched out on the couch as I let my psi roam freely without any conscious control. Likewise I was letting my brain roam freely too. Why did I feel so attached to Rie? Was it because she was an unfortunate child that I had met in a somewhat emotional moment? Was it because she was the first user of psi I had encountered on this world? Was it just a mix of both or was there something else at play? I had had the suspicion before that it felt odd that a child with psi had just fallen into my lap but it¡¯s not like I have anything to go by. Fuck! I hate this feeling of being in the dark! Why can¡¯t mystical forces be simpler to understand!? I sighed and went back to my scanning. There really was nothing. Just small groups of people and nothing negative at all. No thoughts of pain or fear or anything. All the assumed children were earnestly working hard. Would this result allay Lynn and my suspicions though? It does well to put mine to rest, but I don¡¯t think it will have any effect on Lynn. She can be stubborn about the conclusions she arrives at. The guard returned and some minutes later I found myself back outside the academy premises. I still hadn¡¯t eaten, but meeting Rie had cleared my own head. I had a couple errands to get done now. Let¡¯s head to the Adventurer¡¯s Guild first. Apparently my story was stolen? I had given the adventurer¡¯s guild receptionist a bit of a sob story of needing work urgently to live due to the festival draining my funds away. She had in return handed me a set of work requests that fit my requirements of being well paying and getting me out of the city for a few days. I had already discarded a number of the jobs for not being suitable. I was tempted to choose one that involved hunting a dangerous monster that had appeared near a close by village, but the extra information about the beast mentioned that it had been spotted by other villages and towns. Some of these were quite far apart. I didn¡¯t feel like wasting time looking for the blasted thing. Putting that one aside left me with only one other option, a monster nest investigation. Some strong monsters had made a nest in a seaside cave and it was necessary to identify them. That was the simple part. The complicated part was that if the monster was a particular type of bird monster, that according to the description provided sounded like a pelican, then I wasn¡¯t supposed to kill it. Somehow, there were special crystal gems that could be harvested at their nests and which I would need to gather to show proof that the monsters there were indeed those. The location of the cave was also described well, so I wouldn¡¯t be wasting time looking around for it. Ultimately though, beggars can¡¯t be choosers and this one did work for me. I¡¯d grab some of the gems for my own personal use too, though Lynn hadn¡¯t seen any success examining any of the other goods I had provided her yet. I registered for the job and left the guild. I needed to visit the clothing shop and tell them I would be out of the capital for a few days and would pick up my order when I got back. The same with the inn. I¡¯d need to tell the innkeeper not to give away my room, though I don¡¯t think she would since she seems to be aware of and being used by those people keeping an eye on me. ¡°Mistress, why did you take that job? I know I asked you to rendezvous outside the city, but there was no reason to take one so far away.¡± Lynn asked. [It¡¯s because I plan on returning to Lullaby.] I responded. ¡°What!? For what reason would you need to do that, Mistress? Wouldn¡¯t that ruin your efforts?¡± Lynn enquired. [Because we need to take care of that scout group that Lorelei mentioned. They are slowly scoping out the forest so they¡¯ll probably come across either one of the wolves or the ship in the next few days. It¡¯s important that that doesn¡¯t happen.] I typed. ¡°Mistress, I can take care of some hired simpletons.¡± Lynn objected. [Simpletons?] I asked, somewhat surprised by her choice of word. ¡°Yes! Complete and utter morons. According to our research, their civilization hasn¡¯t advanced in centuries. They are absolutely stagnant as a society!¡± Lynn explained. [That¡¯s not the issue right now. I¡¯m actually positive you can do it, but you can¡¯t without Lorelei witnessing at least the result of the weapons. I doubt that I¡¯m lucky enough that my hidden status applies to all of them and the ship too.] I pointed out. ¡°That¡¯s another reason you can¡¯t leave! You have to put a collar on that woman to keep her in line!¡± Lynn said. [If she wants to betray me, which wouldn¡¯t even be a betrayal to begin with since she never once said she was on my side, then she had all the time today to do it. There¡¯s not really many good options for placing something on her either. At best it would be a small item of some kind, but then she could just intentionally not carry it around. We can¡¯t exactly put an implant in her after all without bringing her to the ship. The only other thing would be to stick around her, but that brings with it some very obvious disadvantages.] I responded.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. ¡°Mistress should have just killed her and dealt with the fall out. Whoever came for revenge then could have led you to the someone important, or if not, killing them too might have done it.¡± Lynn grumbled. ¡°I hate this world. Extremely so. The society feels so haphazardly put together because they¡¯ve always just done whatever a ¡®Spirit¡¯ tells them to. I already know that ¡®Spirit¡¯ that that woman mentioned is going to cause problems.¡± [I sadly agree with you entirely on that front, but meeting him at least once is still absolutely necessary to gather information. If he¡¯s like me or not or possibly some other type of anomaly. Anyway! No matter what you say, I¡¯m coming back to the ship so I can help take care of that group. Also, so I can relax and take a shower and sleep in a good bed and a number of other things to be honest. This society is better than some medieval hell hole, but not much better.] ¡°If Mistress insists.¡± Lynn answered moodily before brightening up. ¡°I¡¯ll just take this chance to show you all the wonderful presents I have for you. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll enjoy them!¡± [What did you do, Lynn?] I asked. No response. [I order you to answer!] I typed quickly. ¡°I can¡¯t recall doing anything! Oh no! The connection from your side is broken Mistress. We¡¯ll have to wait until you¡¯re back at the ship to continue this conversation.¡± Lynn said happily. The visual keyboard I had been using was gone and I¡¯m sure she turned off the rest in just such a way that I won¡¯t be able to send her another order. Why does my AI have to be so weird? I hummed to myself. I guess I was completely and absolutely to blame for it, huh? Well, given her hobby, I should probably expect a lot of new outfits when I get to Lullaby. Probably. I don¡¯t think she can do anything worse than that. Please let it not be something worse than that. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It took me some time to leave the city, more so the traveling through the crowded streets than to finish my two errands. Due to that, there was someone watching me when I left the city. I wonder if they¡¯ll send someone to follow me? It might be interesting if they do. Well, that¡¯s a problem for later. I had a more pressing matter at the moment. ¡°Come on, Coa. Just eat this jerky.¡± She growled at me and turned her head. Damn this spoiled snake. She thought we were going to eat at the inn, so when we instead left without getting anything to eat and then didn¡¯t stop on the way out of the city, now she refuses to eat perfectly good jerky. It¡¯s out of my supplies from Lullaby! It¡¯s not bad jerky! ¡°Look, Coa.¡± She glanced at me with her left eye. I took a bite from the jerky. ¡°It¡¯s tasty.¡±I told her before breaking another piece off and holding it to her mouth. Finally, she opened her and mouth and consumed it. ¡­ ¡­ God damn it Coa! She just spit the damn jerky at my face! ¡°Coa, I¡¯ve come to the realization that maybe I¡¯ve been pampering you too much. Perhaps I¡¯m going to have to start being a lot more strict on you.¡± I glared at her. ¡°Regrettably, I¡¯m pressed for time, so I can¡¯t start immediately. Just know this, you aren¡¯t getting anything other than this jerky right now. So enjoy being hungry for the first time in weeks.¡± Coa squawked in protest, but I ignored her and merely continued on. Looking up at the sky, I realized that I may have been in too much of a rush to leave the city. It was only late afternoon which meant I had hours to go until Lynn could pick me up. Other than admiring the ocean, there was nothing I could really do, though it did bring to mind how perfect that dungeon sea had been in comparison. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised to learn that that place had been intentionally designed to be beautiful. Another hour passed and still no sign of any followers. I was so bored. I threw a rock at a small bird that was on a branch ahead of me. It exploded into body parts which caused Coa to perk up. She had been holding out against me despite her obvious hunger, but now she propelled herself toward this new source of food. Before she reached them though, I used my psi to launch them off into the ocean. Coa froze as she saw the meat vanish from her eyes. She craned her head desperately back and forth before letting out a shrill cry. She wailed out her frustration loudly. Which probably wasn¡¯t the smartest idea for a tiny, weak little thing like her. A small shape shot out of a hole in the ground on a direct course for her. I was about to block the creature with my psi but to my surprise, Coa sprung into the air with a strong flap of her wings. I had not expected her to even notice the threat. Regrettably, she didn¡¯t yet have the strength to stay airborne and she was starting to come back down despite her frantic efforts. She was slowly gliding back to me while crying out for me to protect her. This turn of events might be just what she needs though. ¡°Coa, if you want to eat something fresh, then here is your chance. Look, it delivered itself right to you. All you have to do is catch it, on your own, I am not going to help you at all.¡± To emphasize my comment, I increased the distance between us by about six meters. My scanner had told me that the beast was a mutated weasel and only a few levels higher than Coa. She should be able to handle this. Coa didn¡¯t appear like she understood me. She was now warbling and wobbling back and forth in the air. What a difficult pet she was. ¡°Coa. If you kill that.¡± I pointed at the weasel. ¡°You can eat it. Food. Understand now?¡± Stolen yet again? Should I just delete this story outright already because jackasses keep taking advantage of it? nagamage42 over on webnovel.com is claiming to be me along with a bunch of other authors and posted their works over there. They have already been caught stealing Arcane Emperor and just said they were doing it for the sake of the story''s publicity, despite the fact that they claimed outright that it was theirs at the start. I''ve already reported the story and user but I really felt like venting here. It''s not like I''m not trying to write folks. Car accidents, sick pets, life is stressful and after work I just do not have the energy to devote to properly sitting down and working on this story. Fuck my work is even moving its office location now and I might have a much longer commute to deal with every day. I know there are a lot of readers of the story and I do feel ashamed that I''ve let everyone stew for two years at this point, but I can only do what I can do. I hate my life. I extremely fucking hate it right now. I also hate that I have to have 500 words. Seriously? Just to post some kind of update? There should be some kind of option for this kind of post. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Rune Factory 4 Special is awesome. Hell mode as a new difficulty is painful. Crafting and Forging is even more necessary as it should be. Chemistry is still super slow to level. My curse from the 3ds is still in effect and I still can''t tame the butterfly boss. Why can''t cats stay at the cute kitten stage forever. Why do they have to get old and die? Otherside Picnic is getting an anime. I highly recommend it. Her Majesty''s Swarm is an interesting novel as well if you want to read something that is basically zerg queen the isekai. Finaly got around to reading Otome Game Mob, was a fun read as well. How far must I suffer just to post this? As a shout out. Warhawx continues to post a bunch of nice gender bender stories on his wordpress. da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Please forgive me for the previous bit I really couldn''t think of anything else to talk about.