Kiel didn't want to gather too much attention, so he teleported to the rooftops where Edel was running at. Trying to remain inconspicuous, however, was futile as the guards that had started to chase Edel took notice of him almost immediately.

Most amazing of all, however, was how fast they climbed up to the rooftops themselves. It was like they were parkour artists making a live-action movie, only it was real life and they were chasing them.

He knew he'd messed up at this point, but for some reason being chased like that felt exciting. Like having stakes to the game you love the most. It's less scary and more thrilling.

They started to pick up speed to the point where they would jump over some buildings entirely. Unfortunately Edel who was heavier caused some damage from that, but in a world with mages it shouldn't be too difficult to fix a small hole in the rooftop.

While the guards were quite fast themselves, they were unable to close the distance once he and Edel started getting serious. In less than five minutes they were at the walls with no gate in sight.

He couldn't help but ask Edel how she was planning to get over the wall.

She sent him back a look of confusion, then determination. The last stretch towards the wall didn't have any houses nearby, but thankfully there weren't any people in the way either.

When Edel jumped down from the last building her claws dug deep into the ground and she exploded with a burst of speed, running even faster towards the wall as if it didn't exist. With that burst of power she reached the wall in two seconds, covering a distance of over a hundred meters in seconds.

He was further behind, so he was able to see what she did in its entirety as she jumped a story and a half in height, and then with her claws digging into the wall, she jumped again, clearing another five meters like that and going over the wall.

In her wake she left deep gouges on the surface of the wall, and he couldn't help but hope the repairs wouldn't be too expensive, because there was no way they wouldn't find out whose fault this was.

Not being as daring as Edel, he simply teleported in the space ahead of the wall, not slowing down at all. Of course, Edel was waiting for him outside with a smug look on her face. She didn't transmit any feelings to him, he just knew it was smug, he could see that tail wagging clear as day.

Now outside the city, they could see the forest a bit further away. Thankfully Melissa didn't seem too far away from here. They continued the rest of the trip in a small trot, enjoying the quiet of the forest.

Living inside the city and comparing it to the forest, he could say without a hint of doubt, the forest won out ten times out of ten. The peace and quiet in the forest was soothing compared to the bustling city.

Maybe peace wouldn't be quite right in the forest, but I haven't been attacked by random monsters in a while. Though random monsters wouldn't be able to do anything to me at this point either way...

He shrugged and continued towards Melissa and Cassandra.

Thirty minutes later they found the two of them in the forest, Melissa carefully digging around a purple flower with a single red petal in its core. She was wearing a pair of leather gloves to protect her hands, holding a garden trowel. Her small garden shovel met no resistance from the earth, but she removed only centimeters of dirt each time, taking a look to see if she'd damaged the flower before repeating the pattern.

Even to his senses the plant had a great deal of ether coursing through it. It even smelled somewhat spicy.

Further away he could see a burnt spider corpse the size of Edel. Its abdomen also had three small holes in it that resembled a wound he thought more in line with a high caliber gun, which he assumed was the work of Cassandra's enhanced skill. He'd seen her fight and she didn't have that kind of power in the cave against the bunny monstrosity.

Melissa meanwhile was so focused that she hadn't noticed the two of them yet. Cassandra who was paying attention, however, did and almost ended up shooting them before recognizing their figures. She held a questioning look on her face but didn't say anything and motioned them to be quiet.

He told Edel the same, taking care not to make too much noise as they walked closer. Funnily enough Edel ended up being even quieter than him, making little to no noise even as she walked over dead leaves.

This has to be a skill... I refuse to believe it otherwise.

A few minutes later Melissa had dug up the entire flower, roots and all. She picked it up gingerly and held it against the light of the sun, smiling brightly.

Seeing that she had finished what she was doing, Edel bark-growled in greeting, making her jump in surprise and drop the flower from her hands. She had a horrified look on her face as she scrambled to catch the falling flower.

Before she reached it, however, it disappeared from her very eyes, and she couldn't help but kneel down and pat the ground, searching for where the flower had disappeared to.

Kiel found her expression too funny to keep a straight face, but thankfully he was a cat, not having a straight face didn't matter to him. Not thankfully, however, she immediately turned her face towards him.

Well, the cat's out the bag.

She held her hand, palm open, in front of him, knowing that somehow, someway, he was responsible for making the flower disappear. She was right of course. He removed the flower from his spatial storage on top of her resting palm.

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If anything, he was surprised by that flower too. The flower had taken up an entire fifth of the space inside his spatial storage and handling it with his will was like picking up a heavy rock rather than what its actual weight would betray.

Melissa was surprised only for a moment, "That was not nice!" she scolded him, looking at Edel with suspicion as well. No matter how much he tried to explain, she didn't believe he hadn't planned that with Edel.

He was waiting for her to comment on his new skill, wondering if she forgot or something, when she turned to him and spoke in an excited voice, "Don't think I didn't see you use an inventory skill!" She grabbed him under his arms, and he teleported away. "Oh come on, I can't hug you?" she yelled indignantly.

She tried again, and this time he teleported on top of her head. She was expecting that reaction, though and took a step back, leaning back and catching him as he was falling. Before she could reach him though, he teleported again and this time she wasn't able to dodge.

Cassandra started laughing at their antics, and both Melissa and Kiel turned their heads in her direction at the same time, making her laugh even harder. Edel didn't understand what was going on, but she joined in all the same, howling and growling.

Melissa broke a few seconds later and started laughing as well, "By the way, did you have any trouble leaving the city?" she asked lightheartedly, to which he remained silent.

Picking him up from her head, she held him in front, looking at him at eye level. "Why the silence...?" She asked again, to which he pretended to be oblivious. She narrowed her eyes, "What did you do?"

He ignored her and instead licked her hands, purring and trying to act cute.

She narrowed her eyes even further.

In the end, he shrugged and taking a page from Edel's book, instead of replying he sent her images of their time before leaving the city. For every second he described, her face fell more and more. When he reached the part where Edel climbed up the wall in two jumps, she couldn't help but facepalm.

Huh, I didn't expect this to be a universal gesture.

"You know you aren't avoiding a collar after this," she said to his look of horror. "I know how you feel about them, but even a non-enchanted one will prevent this from happening in the future. And I don't think Edel's avoiding one either."

He shook his head vehemently. Neither of them were pets, tamed or otherwise. "You wouldn't put a collar on Cassandra, right?" He said to her, to which she put him down and shook her head.

"It's not the same," she said, "I don't want to put a collar on you either seeing how much you dislike it, but I'm not sure how the city officials will take it." And in a smaller voice she said something under her breath that she didn't bother translating and her face flushed a little red.

She coughed when he asked, "Anyway, we will see how it goes... higher ranked adventurers are offered some privileges. I should register you as affiliated with me at the very least. Can't believe I haven't done that, honestly," she said, going to place the small flower to her satchel carefully, only to realize she didn't have it on her arms.

Her look of exasperation turned into a look of dismay as she patted herself down and looked inside her satchel to find where she put it. Not finding it, she was about to start panicking, before Kiel coughed.

"You almost dropped it chasing me, so I picked it up again," he said, which made her let out a breath of relief.

Cassandra and Edel approached from behind, startling Melissa. Cassandra chuckled and asked if they were going back now, something which Kiel managed to understand without Melissa translating. Well, he got the "return" word, and could infer the rest. Melissa nodded, glaring at Kiel who seemed all too happy with himself for causing a mess everywhere he went.

Nothing happened during their walk back to the city. Where they met their first problem was at the gates. "Somehow I knew it was going to be the two of you," the guild master said and Melissa translated, "if I wasn't so grateful for helping me find an excuse to get out of my office, I would have been very angry with the two of you."

Melissa went to explain, but he cut her off, "I was pretty sure I'd informed the city officials about the two beasts in your care without a collar, but it seems like not everyone got the memo. You're still going to have to pay for the damages the two of them caused to five rooftops and the wall, but you shouldn't have any other problems."

Melissa and Cassandra nodded at the man mutely, and he couldn't help but sigh, "Unfortunately if that's all, I have to return to my office. While the outing was nice, try not to make it a habit," he said, turning to leave, "You should still visit the city hall to apologize, and pay for the damages as soon as possible."

And then he left, leaving the three of them dumbfounded with Edel's panting being the only thing breaking the silence.

"I think I like him..." Kiel said to Melissa, to which she glared at him,

"I think you might start staying at his office if you like him so much."

He looked at her mock hurt, and fell on the ground as if wounded. She ignored him and they moved towards a part of the city they hadn't explored yet. A few seconds later he got up and ran until he caught up with them.

Twenty minutes later they were in another large plaza, of which at the furthest end was a building twice as large as the adventurer's guild.

The plaza was full of people walking, running, playing around, and generally having fun. Opposite to that, in the large building where city officials worked, everyone seemed to have a cold air to them, like bureaucracy had stolen every laugh and love and joy from their faces.

He could sympathize with their plight, as he'd been a victim of it too once when filling out the paperwork for a scholarship in his university. He had no one to help him and although everyone in the secretariat had been very helpful, he still left with a searing headache at the end of it.

Entering the building, it was as cold and unimaginative as he expected. There were no decorations and the only life it had was a few people walking to and from various offices. Everyone looked extra tired.

Cassandra led them towards an office on the second floor. A voice replied after they knocked, and he asked Melissa to confirm if the word meant "enter". It would be pretty funny if it didn't and the man had just told them to screw off, but seeing Cassandra open the door, that was probably not it.

The man inside was middle aged and seemed like he hadn't slept in days. "Ah, it's you troublemakers... the fine is 10 gold, you can pay at the office below," he said and shooed them away.

Melissa seemed stumped at that, "Eh, we came here to apologize for-" she started saying but the man cut her off. Kiel would have been angry at that if the man didn't look like he was going to collapse any second now.

"Don't care. You lot are the least of my problems. Pay the fine and leave." He said and shooed them away again, with more vigor this time.

As they left, Melissa translated the entire interaction to Kiel, who couldn't help but feel something was off. This didn't seem like simple bureaucracy at work.

"Melissa, what is going on, is this normal?" he asked her.

She shook her head, "I... no... I don't think so."

Even Cassandra who was normally cool and collected seemed uncertain at this moment.

Kiel tried to ignore the growing dread in the pit of his stomach. Something was probably going wrong, but considering how big a city was that could mean a lot of things.

None of the officials seemed particularly nervous, but he couldn't help but think there was more to it than what meets the eye.