The sun faded into the horizon and made its round around the planet, before once more gracing Asteria’s manor with its warm light once again, the gentle rays entering uninvited through the window of the guest’s room, waking Kary from her long slumber. Eyes still closed, the girl yawned like never before, here body still struggling to process that she was, indeed, not asleep anymore. For a good while, she battled her growing desire to simply go back to sleep, the coziness of the bed so inviting, so tempting, that she seriously thought for a moment that the battle was lost. Thankfully, her inner debate was settled when Marta, Asteria’s maid and the person who had brought her some of the most delicious food she had ever eaten, unceremoniously barged into the room, bringing with her another tray made out of what Kary could only assume was iron, filled with more delicacies than the amount the teenager had eaten during the entirety of her previous life.

Breads of various kinds, each exhaling a different, equally appetizing aroma, pastes she failed to recognize accompanied by a silver knife with which she could splatter the differently colored condiments onto the interior of the breads. Even a bowl of soup if she so desired to wet the bread with it and a glass of what she assumed to be water to quench her thirst were present, the soup in particular making Kary more excited to eat her meal than she would have liked to admit. Although she tried to maintain a stoic face so as to not appear completely ridiculous in front of Asteria’s servant, the glint in her eyes was more than enough for Marta to understand the girl’s intentions. With a smile that made her appear to be much more mature than her age would entail, she settled the tray on the nightstand, the foodstuff on top of it barely trembling at the sudden motion. It was a brief exchange, but Kary felt something fluttering in her, the same sensation she had when she first talked with Liz or Asteria, a sentiment she had grown to realize might be causing her to grow too attached to some people.

It was something that had been so alien in her own family life that she couldn’t help but desire it, crave for it, sometimes even imagine how her life would be if her mother had any semblance of it, if the bitter woman held any desire to propagate human warmth. With a sigh, Kary realized that she had been lost within her own thoughts, making her fail to catch part of what the maid had been talking for the past few moments. Resisting the urge to slap her own cheeks to quench her own embarrassment, the girl offered a silent prayer to the mad god that had brought her to this world, since despite his obvious lack of sanity that should probably be checked at by the local psychiatrists, he was the only god whose name she was aware of in the present moment. Perhaps it would come a time where she would be able to pray for someone slightly less unhinged, but, if the prayer was only about her desire to not having missed anything important, then it should be okay to deliver it to Limo, right…?

“… and this bread right here is supposed to be eaten with the soup, since it’s the hardest of the three and made specifically to blend with the flavor of the ingredients, or at least that’s what Calvin told me. Hah… I’ve never seen a man so prideful about his own creations, but alas, he does his job well enough, I guess. Oh, sorry if I was boring you with all that explanation that turned into a bit of venting at the end. You can just eat everything in any way you want in the end. Since it was Calvin who made it, any combination will probably taste good. The combinations I just told you were just his personal recommendations, so you don’t need to abide by them though it would surely make him very happy.”

“Ah! Before I forget it, I might as well tell you right now about the mistress’s plans for today. As you heard yesterday, there will be a big party in the royal castle this afternoon, and the mistress decided this would be a good opportunity to present you not only to the king, but to the nobles and important people who will be attending as well, and, for that, you’ll need to be dressed accordingly. Since we wouldn’t have time if we just waited for you to wake up on your on, I took the liberty of measuring you while you slept, and for that I am very sorry. I have to admit, though, you have quite the nice body. Make sure to thank the mistress later for protecting you from any potential suitors, alright?”

While the girl in maid outfit went over Kary’s day, the girl herself was just trying to make sense of what she had been hearing. Sure, the broken pieces of information about her breakfast were easy enough for her to digest, but everything that was said after just went over her head. As Marta had said, she should know that there would be a party later today, but for some reason she hadn’t even considered the possibility that she would part of it. Since almost nobody ever invited her for parties, birthdays and the like, and she never went out of her way to interact with people in order to get said invites, she had simply assumed that herself and the term ‘party’ would never be said in the same breath with any correlation between them. And now here she was, just waking up and being told that she not only will be part of a party containing the most important people of the country she was in, but also that it would be used to introduce her to the king himself. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to simply sink into her bed and fall, fall for eternity, until time itself became meaningless, her body a mere shell of its former self, trapping her thoughts within its fleshy entrails. She would be able to accept such outcome, if only it meant that she would be exempted from the responsibility that had been suddenly placed upon her shoulders.

Sadly, the bed she was still lying in was perfectly solid, and, as far as she knew, it existed entirely within the same material plane, making her wishful dreams nothing more than that. If the out of the blue reveal that she was going to a party wasn’t enough to short-circuit her brain, than the nonchalance with which that maid had said that she had taken her measurements during her sleep was sufficient to make the girl question all the decisions she had made during both of her lives that had led her to this very moment. On a fundamental level, she was able to understand the need to do such a thing, as the announcement of the party came with little to no time for its participants, especially the ones who had just arrived from Táfos, to get themselves sorted. Thinking about it, Kary couldn’t help but agree with Asteria’s indignation from the day prior, since the invitation was like an attempt to make the people who had managed to make significant advancements on the study of the people who lived on the regions centuries, perhaps millennia ago look like complete fools. What other purpose could a party thrown with so little prep time serve, if not to humiliate those who were only able to receive the invitation at the last possible moment?

The day had barely started and Kary already felt exhausted, the sheer thought about what she would be forced to endure enough to make her consider just going back to sleep as soon as Marta left the room. Of course, she would never do such a thing to the people who had brought her in after arriving in this weird, fantasy-like world, but the thought nonetheless crossed her mind. With a sigh, the girl stared at the food tray perfectly standing on top of the small piece of furniture beside her bed, before once more focusing on what the maid still had to say. While she was criticizing the nobility of this kingdom in her head, Marta had taken a small brass bell from somewhere, with a string attached to its very top, placing it on the far edge of the untouched tray, letting out a soft, melodious sound, clear enough to be heard from a distance, and yet pleasant enough that it wouldn’t annoy the one who used the little bell. The moment it touched the tray, though, the sound was immediately gone, restricted to the confined of the bell’s smooth interior, fated to die out in mere seconds. Noticing that Kary’s attention was once more on her, Marta continued her speech, unbothered by the girl’s seemingly waning concentration.

“Since today is a very abnormal day, in the way that we have very little time to get everything in order before the party, I was instructed to give you this little bell right here. After you are done with your breakfast, please ring it so that I know when to come and get you. The mistress spent the rest of yesterday contacting everyone she knew to get you a proper dress, even providing one of her old ones to be modified. Though we did manage to get your measures, we still have plenty of fine-tuning to do if we want to make you presentable to those prickly folks, so time is of the essence here. I know I asked you to enjoy your meal at your own pace, but please don’t take to long, for your sake and Asteria’s.” With that, Marta bowed towards Kary and hurriedly left the room, leaving the girl alone to catch her thoughts while she enjoyed the most delicious breakfast she had ever eaten, much too different from the simple, tasteless food she had been able to eat in the mornings before school. Despite not having listened to most of what the maid had said regarding the food, just the first spoonful of soup alone had been able to convince her that she had never eaten anything quite this good.

It was a delicacy like no other, its flavor spreading through her mouth in an explosion of flavor, a combination of salty, sour, and something else she failed to recognize, all working in tandem with each other to provide the best experience possible. As soon as Kary processed that first spoonful, she turned her eyes towards the soup itself, the gears on her head turning in a futile attempt to understand how something that looked so… normal could possess such taste. In the blink of an eye, all that remained in her hands was an empty bowl and a spoon in the process of being licked clean of any remaining soup that might still be there. With a satisfied burp, she eyed the rest of the tray with greedy eyes, almost as if she was trying to eat the rest of her food with only her stare. Once she realized she would need to physically move in order to finish everything in a reasonable time, she got to work, experimenting with different combinations, eating with so much gusto that her previous self would be unnerved by it, until not even crumbs remained. In the end, despite having thoroughly enjoyed herself, she still felt like she could have eaten more, despite knowing on a logical level that if she were to stuff more food in her stomach she might explode in a gory mess, and that wouldn’t be fun.

Feeling full and ready to start the nightmare that would be the rest of her day, she picked up the little brass bell, still obediently sitting on top of the now empty tray, swinging it from left to right, left to right, each swing bringing about a sonorous, almost melodious sound, which traveled far and wide, its invisible waves penetrating the smallest of crevices, propagating in all directions in the spacious manor, until they finally reached Marta. The maid, upon listening to the ringing bell, dropped everything she was doing (mainly cleaning and dusting the same things she had grown used to taking care of) and rushed to the girl’s room, moving swiftly and efficiently, her path so direct it was if she knew the corridors and passageways of the mansion better than the lines and creases in her own hand. In a timeframe much shorter than Kary could have ever predicted, Marta was already barging into the room, arriving just in time to see the last crumbs of bread that had once been on the girl’s bed disappear into her mouth, her professionalism the only thing preventing the maid from teasing the hungry girl in front of her. Ignoring the wide-eyed girl who stared at her as if she had just seen a ghost, Marta walked to the bed, grabbed the girl by the arm and began pulling her out of bed, her unimpressive strength doing little to move the sitting girl, though it was enough to wake her up from her shock.

“Wait, wait, wait! I’ll get up myself, so please top pulling me! See! I’m getting down, okay? Okay. See, I’m already on my feet and ready to go… wherever it is that I am needed. There was no need to be so forceful at all!” Kary said while hurriedly leaving the comforts of her bed, the girl’s teary-eyed expression almost making Marta regret playing what she had assumed to be a harmless prank. Almost. Maybe she would have stopped if Kary didn’t make it so easy to tease her, with the shy personality she had expressed yesterday so vividly contrasting with her eagerness to be of help. With a smile, she petted the slightly smaller girl’s head, before telling that she wouldn’t do anything of the sort ever again, the lie so blatantly told that Kary wouldn’t even think that the maid hadn’t told her the truth. Before the pale girl could process the sudden act of being petted, a sensation so foreign to her that she was on the verge of physically interrupting the act, Marta’s hands moved in a sudden burst of speed, the gusts of wind created making Kary closing her eyes on a reflex, the only indication of where the maid’s hand might have gone being the sudden warmth in her left hand. And then Marta started running.

“Wha —”

In much the same accelerated her day post-breakfast had started, it continued for the rest of the morning, with Marta taking Kary from place to place at breakneck speed, dragging her out of the manor and into the city, the concentration required to keep up with the crazed maid making it so that Kary was unable to appreciate or even look at the places they were going, the twists and turns taken by the maid more than enough to make the girl being forced to dance to Marta’s tune not only lost, but completely dizzy as well. Their first stop was at a store hidden from the public eye; on a side street that was just shy of being completely devoid of people, where Kary was made to choose between a few different shoes, each one more beautiful and stylish than the one before, and all made to perfectly fit her feet, just like the boot she had been given after she was found out in the last expedition in Táfos.

While choosing, she felt as if she couldn’t be more grateful towards Asteria and Marta for allowing her to make the final decision, as there was one high-heels shoe that, despite its stunning beauty, seemed like a nightmare to wear, especially for someone like Kary, who had no experience with shoes of that type. In the end, they ended up going with a black platform shoe that made the rather short girl barely an inch taller than Marta, with beautiful silver decorations on the side and a charming ribbon on the front of each shoe. It was a bit showy, but Kary was quite fond of it, despite being overly conscious of the fact that this pair of shoes was fancier than anything she had ever worn before. Before she could think too much about it, though, she was dragged out of the shop, her left arm linked with Marta’s right one, with the maid’s left arm carrying a leather bed with the shoes in it. Once more poor Kary was forced to hasten her pace to inhuman levels, her body sweating like she had just gotten out of heavy rain, until they arrived in a dress store in what was possibly the second tidiest street the girl had ever been, only behind of the nobles’ street where Asteria resided.

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Without giving her any time to rest, Marta brought her inside, where the same scene from the shoe shop repeated itself, with Kary being forced into different outfits so that she could choose which one she liked the most, which ended up being a red dress that perfectly matched Kary’s eyes, its sleeveless design and its size, that almost reached the girl’s feet, coupled with the professional work done on the fly by the staff at the store, perfectly accentuating both Kary’s face and curves, making the dress almost unanimously chosen by the people who were helping the girl change from dress to dress. With the clothing sorted, Marta once more took the lead, taking the already exhausted girl through side streets and bustling avenues, buying little things that Kary failed to recognize. They passed through adults, carriages, and cheerful children, all watching with fascination as the interesting pair passed in a flash through them, disappearing on the next turn right after. Thankfully, in the end, it all worked out, as they were back at the manor before the sun reached its peak, the combination of Marta’s speed and the lightning fast work done by the employees of the shops they visited giving Kary a little more time to get everything sorted.

For a few blissful moments after she saw the mansion approaching, Kary thought that she would be allowed a moment of respite, but she couldn’t be more wrong even if she had tried. If she had seen that Marta’s devilish grin, which had been plastered onto her face ever since she began running around with Kary, had shown no trace of disappearing, the girl might’ve realized that the ruckus was still far from over, though she was forced to come to terms with it after they arrived in the mansion and the first thing they did was head to the bath. In her previous life, baths, no matter how short they were, had always been a moment to unwind and relax, a moment away from everything that could stress her out, a small break from life itself. During the almost entire hour she spent on that damned bath, however, Kary felt nothing but despair, longing for the blissful moments baths once represented, and a newfound fear of Marta, who made sure to scrub, clean and rinse the poor girl until her skin was almost transparent, her hair ready to be dried and styled, and her overall body getting scarily close to being able to deflect light.

After the nightmarish experience she had just gone through, Kary was dragged to an inconspicuous room, where the torture continued, this time on the form of drying her hair much quicker than she had thought it to be possible — a consideration that had been repeated so often throughout the day that it was becoming naught but meaningless — with Marta using some weird combination of fire and wind to turn her hair into a disheveled, dry mess, which was then molded into different shapes and forms by the maid’s apt hands, until she reached a style that she thought to be good, keeping it a secret from Kary thanks to the simple fact that there were no mirrors on room they were in, creating a suspense that only served to make the girl even more nervous. With that done, Marta took the dress and the shoes from somewhere and helped Kary put them on, making sure that everything was according to the plans they had previously made.

Kary almost wanted to believe her suffering to be over, but by that point she knew better than that, and the endless makeup session that followed was enough proof of her suspicions. Time passed in a blur as Marta took out a never-ending amount of supplies from the leather bag she had taken to their little shopping section, applying products left and right with the grace and precision of an Olympic champion. Though Kary tried to keep up with the process, her utter lack of knowledge when it came to fashion, beauty, and everything in between made it so that the only thing she accomplished by trying to follow Marta’s hands flying from bottle to case then to another bottle and so on was a sense of dizziness strong enough to make everything blend physically into a blur. It was only when that last session of torture was over that the maid allowed Kary to rest, as she was now ready to mingle with the local nobility. Despite being asleep from yesterday’s early afternoon to the today’s early morning, Kary could say with confidence that there were few times when she felt more exhausted then right now. It was nothing physical, thanks to the grueling training she was put through, but the mounting pressure on her shoulders, constantly weighting her down, was more than enough to bring her to the verge of a mental collapse. The more she thought about such things, the more Kary felt grateful for the help both Asteria and Marta had provided her, the former with arranging multiple choices of outfits for her, and the latter with taking her from place to place quickly enough to have everything done before she had to go with Asteria to the castle.

She was so tired that she almost thought about trying to get some sleep before Asteria came to fetch her, but in the end she decided that any sleep time she might be able to get would much too short to recharge any significant amount of her batteries, serving only to leave her craving for more sleep, which would not be good if she is made to interact with the (assumedly) proud and pompous nobles, especially when they might use any weakness she may show against the knight who had not only saved her after her first, rather reckless fight amidst the ruins of an ancient civilization, but also had been kind enough to take her in after months of helping her getting stronger and more apt to socialize with the adventurers and the scholar of the expedition group. After getting so much help, the girl felt as if she had to reciprocate in some way, though it was hard to come up with something little old her could do that the knight, with all her strength, influence, intelligence and kindheartedness was unable to do.

Knowing that, Kary told herself that she would do her best to not bring shame to the household she had been made a part of, using her very limited social capabilities to hopefully navigate through the sea of piranhas she would soon find herself thrown into. Perhaps this time she would use the ability to hide what she truly felt, something honed through years of hiding her feelings from the world around her, to do something good, instead of just bottling up her feelings until it became too much. Clenching her fists, Kary grew more and more determined to make it so that her presence would be felt by the people she was soon to meet, to make it so that they remembered who she was and where she could be found, her memory in their heads hopefully nothing negative. As she ruminated these thoughts, trying her very best to lower the tension she felt all throughout her body, the door of the room she and Marta were in suddenly burst open, a figure Kary was able to vaguely recognize entering with no hesitation behind her steps, her conduct as perfect as a that of noblewomen who spent their entire life perfecting the way they held themselves.

Although Kary knew the person in front of her to be Asteria, the image she had of the stoic, toned and tanned knight failed to connect with the woman in front of her, her braided black hair cascading down her back, almost reaching the bottom of her spine, her body covered by a beautiful orange dress, with delicate yet fiery patterns inscribed all over it in light yellow, her feet protected not by the sturdy boots Kary had grown used to seeing her wearing, but by high heels that seemed to have terribly thin platforms connecting them to the ground, looking as if they were ready to snap in half at a moment’s notice. For longer than she would have like to admit, the girl stared at the beauty in front of her, her brain desperately trying to make sense of the fact that the woman was the same sharp-eyed knight that she had grown fond of during the few months they spent together. It was only after Marta began to lightly shake the girl’s body that she remembered where she was, growing terribly red as embarrassment flooded her systems, her head hanging low as she waited to be berated. What came instead was laughter, a melodious laugh that permeated the room, seeping into Kary’s ears, making her jolt her head upwards, confused, as she wondered what was so funny as to invite such joyous laughter.

Looking up, she saw Asteria looking away; hand over her mouth as she silently trembled on the spot, her eyes curved like crescent moons, from which little droplets of tears occasionally escaped. Kary quickly turned her head to the side, just in time to catch Marta doubling over herself, laughing her soul out with no concerns about keeping appearances in front of Asteria. She wanted to ask what had happened, as she didn’t feel like her reaction to the knight’s appearances called for such extreme reaction, but before she could do so she was interrupted by a still recovering Marta, who cleaned the tears in her eyes before explaining to the lost girl:

“Sorry, sorry. You must be surprised by our sudden outburst. Heh heh heh. You see, Asteria and I made a bet yesterday night, to see if you would be able to recognize Asteria in a dress. She was hell-bent on her belief that you would immediately recognize her, whereas I, the ever-reasonable one, betted that it would take you a while to recognize Asteria. Heh heh. It seems I won, doesn’t it, mistress~?”

“Hah… yeah, yeah, it seems that even after months interacting with the girl, she still has that same trouble people always have whenever I have to change outfits. I should have guessed that it would happened, but oh well. I girl can hope.”

“Oh… sorry —”

“You still call yourself a girl? Hah! You’re closer to the grannies selling food on the main street than to their grandchildren blissfully playing by the well nearby.”

“So you’re calling me a hag?”

“I never said anything of the sort.”

“Well… you’re not too far off… Sometimes I still think of myself as the excited girl who had just entered the knights’ academia. Oh, how I wished things could have stayed the same. But here I am, pulling my protégé’s leg right before a high-profile party at the royal palace. If I had told my younger self that, I wonder how she would’ve reacted…”

“Mistress, you’re being weird now.”

“Heh… I guess so.” Shaking her head, she turned to Kary, a complex expression on the knight’s face. She tried to smile, but, if it was meant to lighten the mood, its melancholic complexion failed wholly in its task. “Sorry about that, Kary. It’s just… I haven’t had much time to think about anything other than my job, or, right now, about the party we have to go… I just needed a moment to vent, that’s all.” Kary pointedly felt like there was much more to it than what Asteria was letting through, but for now she could do nothing except trust the knight to eventually be able to be more honest with her. With a barely audible sigh, the girl addressed the almost perfect image of a noblewoman in front of her, the only difference being the peculiar expression she wore, a mix of different emotions that Kary failed to recognize.

“It’s okay. Hopefully you’ll have some free time after the party; otherwise I don’t know what will be of you.”

“Hah… I don’t know either… Whelp, no time to worry about that right now. We have a party to attend and I don’t want us to arrive later than needed. Are you ready to go? Is there anything you need to do before we leave?”

“Nope. I’m ready to leave whenever.”

“Then come, let us go at once. Come on.” Asteria said, holding out her hand to the still sitting Kary, who apprehensively took it, as if afraid that she would get a repeat of the hectic journey from earlier. Thankfully, nothing of the sort happened, and they just walked out of the room with the knight taking the lead, the door held opened by the maid, who had silently made her way to their front. Powerwalking through the manor, the duo quickly made their way to the front, where the massive wooden double doors were already open, revealing a simple carriage down along the path through the garden. Although Kary had never been in a carriage before, with her closest experience being lying down on a cart, she wasn’t particularly excited about the ride, considering that she had never seen a work of fiction that depicted the first carriage journey in a nice light. Still, there was nothing she could do to prevent it, as it was through that same carriage that they would make their way to the castle, despite the place being at walkable distance.

From somewhere, probably from behind the carriage, the gardened Gunther appeared, wearing a garb that contrasted with his usual outfit almost as much as Asteria’s clothing contrasted with hers. With a perfectly angled body that one wouldn’t expect to belong to a gardener, the man stepped forward, before swinging the carriage door open, waiting patiently for the two women to approach, each stunning in their own way. Once they were close enough, Gunther gave a perfect ninety-degree bow to his mistress, looking at the verdant ground he had put his body and soul into as he waited for the knight and her company to get comfortable inside. Once he heard them both sitting at the padded benches inside the carriage, he gently closed the door before moving to his spot on the front, where he jumped up in a practiced, fluid motion that betrayed his age, a crisp contrast to the pained grunt that followed right after. After the few moments the man took to recover, he took the reins that were lying beside him on the wooden bench sitting in front of the de facto carriage and the two horses tasked with transporting it, commanding the animals to move.

Inside the carriage, Kary could do naught but hold on to dear life as she tried not to fall from her bench as the vehicle moved through the cobblestone streets, shaking and jutting due to the irregular path. Due to her previous experience during the expedition, the girl had naively thought that there would be no problems, despite an annoying part of her brain still insisting that she would suffer just as much as the heroes of those cheap, wish-fulfillment-type novels she read in droves online anytime she was free. She hoped that part of her would be wrong, though she was prepared for it to be somewhat accurate still. What she wasn’t expecting was the just how on the spot that tiny portion of her mind had being, with she now being reduced to a shaky mess, not falling to the ground through the sheer power of her will, all the while Asteria watched from the front row, trying her very best to contain the laughter that threatened to escape her mouth. For Kary, it was a bit frustrating, as she was unable to talk to the knight sitting in front of her with all the composure of a princess any of the things she would have liked to say, forced to direct every ounce of her concentration into keeping herself seated.

For a few more minutes, her suffering held strong, the constant shaking a stark reminder of the privileges she had access to on her previous life, making Kary all but wonder why there was no magic implemented in the transport system for nobles, given that they were the only ones who were allowed to use magic to their leisure. She had to admit that she was quite unknowledgeable about all things magic, but what little she knew made her question the very ineffective ways it had been put to use, at least from what she had seen so far. Perhaps things would be different inside the castle. Part of her really hoped that would be the case, as her inner child yearned to see some real magic taking place in any place other than the battlefield. Before she could dive deeper into that train of thought, though, the carriage suddenly grinded to a halt, making the girl almost fall on the ground, this time not due to the erratic vertical movement, but because of the abrupt stop of the horizontal one.

Looking at the small window on the door, Kary saw a massive structure extending upwards, farther than her small field of view allowed her to see, stories and more stories jutting from the base in an almost orderly manner, creating a bizarre layered cake-like structure, where the floors got smaller and smaller the taller they were relative to the ground. In front of them stood not a closed gate, or even an open one, but a queue of carriages that were patiently waiting for the guards at the very front to allow them entry. With a nervous sigh, Kary realized that they were here, and that there was be no coming back. Despite not knowing anything about noble customs, she would see this to the end to the best of her abilities, hopefully not messing everything up in the process.