“My username’s BeatriceTheAngel, but I’d prefer it if you called me Rice. All the other parts are so needlessly grand, and Rice is pretty similar to my real name, anyways,” she says as she shakes my hand.

“Kitty,” I say, shaking hers. “PrissyKittyPrincess.”

“And your friend?” She shoots a glance at the confused but not unhappy Moleman.

“SuperMoleman,” I say. “Moleman or Mole works.”

Moleman nods, “I’m fine with either.” His attempt to join the conversation is unfortunately lost as Rice stares blankly at him, curious but non-understanding. The second he sees the look in her eye, he turns to me with a pleading face.

“...He’s saying that either one works,” I translate.

“Oh! I see!” she says, grabbing Moleman’s hand and shaking it for the both of them. “Pleasure meeting you, Man!”

I can’t tell if she’s making a joke or what, but after about half a second of deliberation, I decide to neither correct her nor inform Moleman of what his name has become.

What follows this greeting is a conversation that is simultaneously attended by two and three parties. By the end, I’m shoved into the role of translator as Moleman effortlessly befriends Rice. I couldn’t even really tell what was happening. They would say things and I’d repeat them and they would go back and forth like that, with me squeezed in the middle. He was genuinely curious about her, and she was genuinely curious about him.

“You won’t be participating in the group tournament? Why not?” As Moleman speaks, I repeat it for Rice to hear.

After nodding at me encouragingly, she shrugs at Moleman. “I fight alone,” she says neutrally. Once I’ve translated it, Moleman and I both perk an eyebrow at her. Body language doesn’t need to be translated, and she quickly explains her position. That is, being one of only a hundred or so Hard Difficulty challengers of the American Server, also being the only one to have reached floor forty-five. But even while she was in the same lobby as the others, the inability to communicate was simply too much. Even in Purgatory, she still can’t find it in her to try to form a party.

“I see…” Moleman says, giving her a pitying look that I really don’t like seeing. “But—”

“But you’ll be joining the solo tutournament?” I ask, maybe a bit too eagerly. Moleman gives me a look of concern, but I’m too focused on Rice to care about it.

After a few moments of deliberation, she gives a toothy grin. “Of course!” Her eyes, still as clear as before, gleam mischievously—dangerously. “Wouldn’t want to miss an interesting fight, now would I?”

Moleman glances at me with what I think might be worry in his eyes. Sometimes I really do underestimate how observant he is, because just a single look at my face told him everything he needed to know. “I see,” I mumble to myself before giving her a grin in turn. “It’d be a shame to fight you with a bunch of meat bags clogging up the arena, anyways.

Rice seems to like what I’m saying, though Moleman appears to be of a different opinion. “As long as you don’t overdo it, I suppose...”

Watching him talk, Rice’s cat-like grin takes on a mischievous curl and she turns her eyes back to me. “He doesn't like you fighting, does he?”

Giving a quick glance at Moleman to make sure he didn’t understand her somehow, I briefly answer. “It doesn’t matter.”

And then there’s that glint in her eye. Some little refraction leaping off the crystal-clear calm waters of her eyes, gleaming like the light stroking a knife. “I see. Interesting fella, you are.” She puts her hat back on her head, face shadowed for but a second, one that feels much longer than it really is. Her eye shines just beneath the hat’s brim. “You better keep him close. When the time comes, I’ll gladly fight you on your terms.” She turns her back to us and starts walking away, only pausing to glance over her shoulder, through a gap between her bow and quiver. “I’ll see you, Prince.”

I don’t even have time to say goodbye before she easily slips back into the crowd, mingling into them just as a roar of cheer roils over them, everyone falling over each other to congratulate and shake the hands of a team exiting the door leading from the scene. They smile and shake hands and pat backs but I’m trying to look for Rice.

In the end, my search leaves my eyes to fall back on Moleman, who turns to me with a conflicted expression on his face. “That last word she said,” he says measuredly, “was ‘Prince’, right?”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I Pause a second before answering. “No,” I say. My nose can still make out the lingering scent of sulfur and ash. “She said, ‘Bye’.”

We share a look, and then the world starts turning again.

Since my preliminary skirmish was still several hours away, Moleman decided for the both of us that we might as well go to the courthouse early. “Is that really your decision to make?” I asked him, but all he did was shrug, so I guess it was. No idea how the trial itself is supposed to work. Honestly, the only reason I didn’t feel more worried about the whole thing walking there was because Moleman was at my side, and he seemed fully calm. Walking side by side, he led me away from the colosseum (interestingly enough, the sprint drake previously tethered outside the colosseum was now gone) and towards the outer parts of the city.

While we were passing through the marketplace area, he actually threw curious glances here and there, downright promising me that we would get something to eat once the trial had concluded. The fact that he boldly assumed that the server leaderships wouldn’t just execute me on the spot was weirdly comforting.

“So, this is it?” I ask in reference to the unusually grand-looking building in front of us. Polished white marble, a statue of the same goddess I saw at my last execution, and a big sign on above the front entrance that reads ‘House of Law’ in bold, brassy letters. Looking at it, I can tell that it—much like Patty’s patch—can be read by anyone for what it is.

Moleman nods, his face and posture abruptly serious. “Yeah,” he says sharply. “This is it.”

As we stare in shared silence, my instincts whisper to me, and I glance stealthily to the side of the building. There, in the shadow of a marble wall, I catch the eye of a man who, upon making eye contact with me, speedily slips fully into the shadow. However, though I can’t see him, his scent is not so easily hidden. Nor is the scent of his comrades. Fear, I’ve found it, is a smell most distinct, even when mingling with the smells of iron, oil and sweat. There’s about thirty-two of them.

“Well?” Moleman asks. “Shall we enter?” There’s a lilt to his voice that isn’t usually there—worry? Not for himself, or for me. I let my eyes linger on him for just a moment, my mind grappling for a few seconds with the fact that he knows.

But the seconds pass as they always do and I let myself sigh. Turning to Moleman, I smile. “Sure,” I say. “Let’s go.”

We enter. I remember now that I hate stairs. The physical pain is minute and it’s not like I haven’t experienced worse bodily sensations, but the memory of the stairs at my old Swedish-high-school equivalent is painful enough in its own right. The inside of the courthouse appears empty, but I can smell them. There’s a stink in this place, produced by the frantic scuttle and shuffle of dozens of people. Not fear, no, but something adjacent. Worry? Yes, worry. Lots and lots of worry, all concentrated here and there in little blobs of stress amalgamate. It’s honestly an interesting smell, and I’m a bit unwilling to relinquish it once we arrive at a small, inconspicuous door at the top of a long staircase.

Moleman opens the door, but instead of shutting out the odor of stress, it actually intensifies it, a wall of solid worry barrelling out from within to hit me face-first.

Enhanced Scent Lv.10>

Greater Scent Lv.1>

And with that skill evolution, the scent almost becomes dizzying. Nevertheless, Moleman seems less than perturbed, entering casually. I follow him, remembering as I do that the smell is hardly new to him. He’s exuding it in equal parts as them, after all.

There are a total of seventeen people already inside the room. But the room itself is… how do I say this…

—Not exactly a courtroom?

I mean, there are all the necessary actors for a classic courtroom scene, but the room itself is just a room. No raised pedestal for the judge, no humongous gallery for the witnesses and audience, no dramatic tables to slam fists and evidence onto, and no stand for the jury, either. No, out of every type of room I can recall seeing, this one appears to me far more like a conference room. The roof is fairly high, but I don’t think it’s designed to hold more than maybe thirty people or so.

There’s a window facing a small courtyard, which provides most of the light. Much like every other room and house I’ve seen in the tutorial, there are no electronic or gas-lit lamps. Since it’s daytime, there’s no need for light of that sort, but… still. All seventeen people sit gathered around a fairly large oval-shaped table, the majority of them facing towards the opposite side of the door we entered through.

Moleman nods to them in greeting, and the man sitting at the Dracula-seat, furthest away from our side, nods back. Then, Moleman guides me to sit at the seat on the very other side of the table, facing the Dracula seat.

As this is happening, I notice with some amount of interest and suspicion that—once again—there isn’t a single guard in sight.

I know they exist. Out in the streets, I saw a pair passing by, proudly wearing a patch showing the server they were from. They didn’t look at me but I sure looked at them, because they were very interesting to see. But in here, where a known criminal is on trial, there isn’t a single guard to be seen. I’m not in a cage. They didn’t even put a pair of cuffs on me, or ask me to empty my inventory, or take a nail-cutter to my claws.

I watch Moleman take a seat next to me, bringing the total number of attendees up to nineteen. Had this taken place in a normal-sized court, like the ones in the movies or the one I was judged at most recently, nineteen people would have seemed like a tiny amount of people, barely enough to fill the juror’s box.

But in this small room, around a single table, with all of them looking at me? Yeah, no, I feel claustrophobic.

I don’t have time to think up ways to bodily vent the itch in my claws before the trial begins, all on its own.

“Thank you all for coming,” the guy in the seat opposite to mine says warmly. Only a few heads turn to him, the rest still facing me. Amongst them, I only recognize one, though seeing Bach, former rebel leader and current Simon-says of the Europe Server does actually surprise me a little. But she’s looking at the guy speaking, so I do too. “I am John Logghammer of the America Server, Normal Difficulty, and I will be acting as judge for these proceedings.”

Judge, eh? His first name is awfully droll, so I’ll just call him Logghammer.

“The leaders of the Server Alliance have graciously decided to act as the jury to represent each server in the judgment.” Presenting them, Logghammer gives the twelve of them a little wave. They don’t say anything, but I can tell they’re tense. More so than me. “For our prosecutor and defense attorney, we have VenedictAllegro and SuperMoleman respectively, both of the Europe Server.”

My jaw drops a little and I turn to look at Moleman. He smiles at me, in a ‘sorry-for-tricking-you’ kind of way.

…Moleman will be defending me?