Munching on the roasted squid, juicy and perfectly done, even after reheating it with magic, Velvet’s attention went from the food to the machine, and back to the food.

“So, what is the SP? Is it related to Permafrost?” She had seen the blueprints, noting how every single one of them had the function of retaining heat and repelling frost, connecting the dots.

Tristan swallowed the fish. She wasn’t a picky eater, but liked machines too much to care about other things. “Yes. In a few days one of their ships will come, leave some things and take another's.”

“What will they leave? Ice?”

Tristan chuckled. “Stop clowning. Records, notes, experimental logs… any kind of discoveries.”

Velvet stared at her in silence, with a waiting smile.

“And ice.” Tristan ended up admitting.

“I knew it.”

“I just told you to stop clowning. I don’t need two Ceres in my life.” Taking a sip of beer to clean her mouth, she continued. “Anyway, I’m sure you didn’t come here to bring me food and company, so, shoot.”

“You know me so well, my beloved Tristan!” Velvet exclaimed, clapping her hands, before starting to rummage through her things. “You see, I got-”

“You didn’t pay for it, I assume?”

“I acquired it with my superior skills. So, I got this mop-looking thing, but I don’t know what it does.” She passed the container to Tristan, making it roll over the table towards her.

Tristan picked it, looking inside. “It’s a concealer. It serves to clean up the traces of floor formations, as to make them impossible to recover and track.”

The only floor formation Velvet had made was the one surrounding the hut, with Hyde’s help (well, actually, Hyde did all the work while she tested the brooms).

Even so, it was really useful.

“To keep it in nice condition you need to wash it by hand before five hours have passed from its use. Or it will activate all the formations it cleaned at once.”

Velvet nodded. It was a more efficient drawback that the one Sinoe’s Baslard had. Of course, the knife had more raw power.

“Speaking of formations, there was another thing I wanted to ask. So, a mage with whom I had a… quarrel used some strange spell. It was as if she summoned a colosseum. It looked incomplete, and didn’t last for long.” Velvet extended her hands slowly. “As if she suddenly made a formation. But it wasn’t a formation. I checked.”

Tristan hummed. “Nothing you should bother with. Not until you obtain half an Esca.”

“I already have half an Esca.” She said.

Tristan looked at her up and down. “Huh, that was fast. Alright, I don’t mind explaining it to you. But not for free.”

Velvet’s smile flinched, as a bad premonition crawled over her. “I still have four free classes from the Mergifari. Can’t I simply spend one for it?”

“No.” Tristan shut her fantasies down fast. “I want you to do me a favor in five days.”

Resigning herself, she asked. “Can you tell me what that favor entails first?” She wasn’t going to agree to do anything she didn’t know beforehand. She didn’t agree with Dianthus, and she wouldn’t agree with Tristan.

And in addition to that, she would lose the Devil’s Blood buff by then.

“Of course.” Tristan took out a sphere made of stacked gears, and pressed it against the table with one finger on top. The sphere’s gears clicked open, starting to turn.

Slowly, the noises coming from outside the room disappeared, as the surroundings grew increasingly quiet.

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A concealment artifact… Velvet guessed. She wondered why Tristan simply didn’t call Udulluay, but didn’t ask.

Tristan continued. “The ship coming from Permafrost, the Pioneer Three, will arrive in five days. They are apparently bringing in an exceptional item this time. I don’t care about that item, but the head and watchdogs of the Traversa family do.”

“You want me to sneak into someone's house and steal something?” Velvet remembered Agorn, the mage who had snuck into her hut to set traps. She had caught him the second time, sending him on a nice, deserved vacation.

“Not a house, this is a big mage family I’m speaking about. You only need to infiltrate the pocket dimension and memorize certain documents. If I wanted to steal something, I wouldn’t pick a knowledge mage.”

Velvet grinned. “Oh, you have other options aside from me?”

“Of course. You’re just the one who got here first.”

Disappointed about not being THE only choice, her grin disappeared. “Like who?”

Tristan avoided the answer, taking another sip of beer. “I don’t tell them about you, I don’t tell you about them.”

You don’t have anyone else, right? Was Tristan a Pride mage or something similar? She was starting to have doubts. Even so, she didn't press the issue, still having other questions. “How do I enter a pocket dimension without permission? If it was so easy, Frenese wouldn’t have eaten that many mages.”

“Don’t ask me about why or how the Frenese thing happened. Devils do not fall under my area of expertise. Machines do.” She made a pause, waiting for Velvet to accept the facts as they were. “What I did was hide a position replicator, which you can connect to another by getting close, making a temporary portal.”

“How did you sneak the replicator in the first place?” Velvet felt like Tristan wasn’t telling her the whole history, which wasn’t helping her in building trust.

“I didn’t sneak it.” Tristan sighed, noticing how Velvet was progressively squinting harder at her. “I left it with someone ten years ago, when she still lived there. She barely uses the room now, so it’ll be empty.”

Ten years?! You really didn’t have anyone else to ask! “And you’re sure it still works?”

“No, but that’s even better for you, isn’t it? If the replicator on the other side is broken or damaged, you don’t have to do anything and still get information for free.”

“What if it’s been found, and the mages inside are waiting?”

“I will give you enough artifacts and information to prevent those situations. As long as you don’t take too much time and don’t try to steal anything, it’s doable.”

Velvet pressed her lips in deterrence. “And I only get paid information about a spell?”

“It’s more than a spell, but alright, let’s see…” Tristan rummaged through her pockets. “What kind of artifact would you lik-”

“A gun. I want a gun.”

“Guns are forbidden on the Mergifari.”

She now kind of understood why. Guns were useless to learn magic, and the chances of a life-threatening wound appearing after a confrontation where they were involved increased by a tenfold.

Official mages could deal with guns easily, but the same couldn’t be said for most novice mages. Even some who were no longer novices had problems. Case in point, Cornelius Graham.

Remembering the apathy mage they confronted on the Opening, the triple shotgun he used was more a dispeller artifact which resembled a gun than an actual gun.

“Ngh…” Velvet groaned. “Or something similar. Purely offensive.”

“If I give you something truly dangerous, and you end up killing someone, can you pay the debt?” Velvet didn’t need to answer that, since both of them knew the answer. “Do you want to belong to the Mergifari?”

“What are you willing to give me then?”

Tristan looked at her in silence, lost in thought. “You’ve probably seen the remains of my life on the hut you’re occupying now, and seen how easy it is for people to approach it.”

“I’m aware.”

“When I was younger, I built a whole security system, the Tristan’s Almighty Fortress.”

Velvet pressed her lips, trying not to cringe. “D-did you pick the name?”

What she really wanted to say was: how can you say such a name without flinching even a little?

Both of them stared at each other, unblinking. In the end, Tristan squinted at her. “I was younger back then.”

Still sounds like a name Celia or Creftalia would come with…

“Names aside, I can reinstall it. If you get me what I want. If not, you’ll have to do with only the information.”

Velvet thought about it. The number of mages after her wasn’t small, and she needed to increase it even more, which made Tristan’s offer not that bad. And she would give the material and artifacts needed to do the mission.

“I’ll do it.” She said.

Tristan nodded. “Good. As promised, I’ll tell you about the spell you saw. Spell, or, how it is actually called, Embodiment.”

“The shortest explanation would be an Esca Overturn. But you don’t want the short version, do you?”