Chapter 28 – Elf in the Barrel

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I woke up on the walls of the city, the sun was still low but its rays already reached me from over the battlements. A huge pain was drilling in my head, probably caused by all the drinking of the night before.

I sat up, stretched a bit as a yawn escaped my mouth, and looked down, just to realize I was not wearing my clothes but a long-sleeved red dress that looked more like a long shirt as it barely reached my thighs, a black mantle and my leather boots, along with a single knee-sock on my left leg. I decided to ignore my outfit that didn't really fit me and looked around, not far from me a pointed witch-like hat was lying on the ground, next to a broken tree branch and an empty bottle, over the walls I spotted a hole that was a dozens of meters large in the fields in front of the city, the ground inside and around the hole was black, with small lines of smoke still rising from it, sign that someone used high level fire magic on that spot. Finally I spotted two guards patrolling the walls. I got up and walked towards them.

When I reached them one of the two said “Lady Fortuna, you're already awake. We thought you'd be out cold until late afternoon after what happened tonight.”

“The sun must have woken me up. I'll go back to my inn now.”

“Sure, try not to destroy anything else on the road there though.”

“...I'll try my best.” I said and walked towards the tower that led down.

Once I was back on street level I spotted the head of a elven woman with blond medium length hair poking out of a barrel next to the wall. A flash of said elven woman doing a barrel race with an adventurer we talked with at a pub came to mind, along with the crash of said adventurer, with his barrel, against the walls of the city guard stables. I walked up to her and, while shaking her a bit, said, “Missya, I don't think this is the best place to sleep in.”

She slowly opened her right eye and, after a few seconds of looking at me said, “five more minutes,” and went back to sleep.

I took the barrel with Missya in it and started walking towards the inn we were staying at while carrying it with me.

I had just walked a few hundred meters when we passed a tavern whose owner was mounting a new door, which made me remember how the previous one was destroyed in a axe-throwing contest the night before. The owner spotted me and, smiling, said, “good morning, Lady Fortuna, please feel free to come again tonight.”

I was a bit surprised by his happiness in seeing me but still replied, “thank you, I will do so if I have the opportunity,” before walking off.

The trip to the inn was soon interrupted again when a man unloading a cart full of wooden planks called up to me saying, “Lady Fortuna, if you don't have a place for the night come to my inn.”

I answered with an absent minded, “sure,” as the memories of a brawl caused by Missya offering her panties to the strongest person in that inn, which resulted in Lyra winning and a couple of tables being destroyed, came to mind. Which also reminded me that...

Yep, the girl in the barrel I was holding was wearing only the white, light dress she put on before going out of our inn and not the panties she had worn under it, which could be easily spotted by anyone looking carefully inside the barrel, as the dress wasn't able to cover her important bits because of her legs being curled up against her chest.

I only sighed and resumed my walk, hoping that nothing else from the night before came haunting me back in the short distance that was left before the inn.

I obviously wasn't so lucky as in the square that was just a few meters from our inn, amidst a crowd of onlookers a certain short haired elven woman was hovering, sleeping and covered only by a bed-sheet, over the fountain that embellished the center of the square. On her arms she was still wearing the pillow covers she used the night before to imitate an harpy while flying around town, screeching noises included.

A group of guards was trying to take her down from her sleeping spot as she moved around over the jet of water of the fountain, calling the name of one of her three companions every time the water hit a certain spot, weirdly enough she only called for Missya the few times the water hit her rear tho.

Speaking of Missya, seeing as the strings the guards were using to take her down passed right through her as if she was made of thin air, I put down the barrel and trying to wake her up.

After a bit of shaking and calling she half-opened her eyes and said, in a sleepy voice, “what?”

“Is that normal?” I asked pointing at Vilandra who was still happily sleeping.

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She just said, “she likes air,” before going back to sleep.

I shrugged and picked the barrel up again, ready to finally reach the inn but, as soon as the barrel was again firm in my arms, I saw Holiés walking towards me with his arm raised.

“Good morning Holiés” I said when he finally reached me.

“Good morning Fortuna. I heard you had quite some fun around town last night.”

“Well, one thing lead to another and... well... yeah,” I said, looking now at the girl in the barrel I was holding, now at the one calling Alyana's name as the water jet hit her again.

“I suppose the visit to the adventurers' guild is postponed again, isn't it?”

I pondered about it for a bit then said, “no, let's go now, I'll probably sleep all day once I get to the inn and I don't want to waste another day.”

“Good for me,” he said and we started walking towards the close-by guild.

We arrived after only a couple of minutes without anyone interrupting us, except the few people who waved smiling as they passed by. Once we entered, though, almost everyone in the guild, many of whom showed quite a few bruises, either sprang up on their feet or turned to look at us if they were already standing and, saying “good morning mistress Fortuna and mistress Missya,we hope to be in your care again tonight” bowed at us.

“That isn't my doing, ok?” I said to Holiés who was staring daggers at me before walking to the counter, ignoring the bowing adventurers.

“Do you know what that was?” I asked the girl behind the counter.

“Apparently one of the Thorns of Mithril, Lyra if I remember correctly, told a few adventurers to do that as soon as they saw any of you and the voice quickly spread among the rest,” she said.

“I don't think I want to know more. Anyway,I'm here to deliver a viltusk head for the quest I accepted a couple of days ago and to take another quest.”

“Sure, please, let me see the quest form and the proof of verification.”

I opened my storage to take the two items out and immediately realized why the town people were so happy about all the trouble we caused the night before as of the almost a hundred gold coins I had with me only fifteen remained in my storage and probably the same was true of the other four girls' pouches. I sighed and took the quest form and head out of the storage before leaving the form on the counter and the head on a steel table next to it.

The girl looked at the form for a few seconds then said, “I have verified the completion of the quest, if you'd give me your card I'll register it.”

“Here,” I said, giving her the card.

She tinkered a bit with the card and a magic tool before saying, “I've registered both the viltusk extermination quest and the town defense emergency quest. You've completed enough quests to become steel rank, would you like to upgrade your card now?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Wait a second then,” she said, before entering a room behind the counter.

She soon came back with a steel card in hand and gave it to me saying, “the rewards for the two quests amounts to a total of a gold and twenty silvers, deducing the fifty silvers for the ranking up procedure it becomes seventy silver coins,” before giving me the payment for the quests.

“Do you have any steel ranked quest?”

“Yes,” she said, opening a folder with a few sheets of yellowish paper inside, “there is a extermination quest for a den of globlins with a high number of hobgoblins a walking day to the east, an exploration quest for a cavern that was found inside the forest north of here, an hill viper extermination quest also to the east, and a week long guarding quest for a moving herd of sheep.”

“I'll take the goblin and viper extermination quests then.”

“Very well, the fee is of twenty silver coins for each of them, the maximum completion time is five days for the viper quest and a week for the goblin one.”

I gave them forty silver coin and my guild card. She tinkered a bit with the magic tool on the counter again before giving back the card along with the two sheet of paper of the corresponding quests.

I then turned around to Holiés and asked him, “do you want to register?”

“No, thank you,” he said.

“Well, I guess we're done then,” I said, then, facing the girl at the counter I told her, “thank you, have a good day, shiny eyes,” before walking out of the guild, barrel in hand.

Once outside Holiés told me, “you really are like an old man sometimes.”

“Yeah, yeah. Now if you don't mind, I have some sleep to catch up with. We'll depart in the afternoon at the ring of the second to last bell. Have a good day, Holiés.”

“Yeah, you too, Fortuna.”

“Ah, don't forget to practice with sensing mana while I'm gone,” I shouted at him as I walked away.

Luckily for me the short trip from the guild to the inn had no other surprise for me, even the guards had given up on trying to get Vilandra down from her sleeping spot and the life in the town seemed to had gone back to normal.

Once inside the inn I just nodded to the innkeeper, who nodded back with a grin on his face, and went back to our room. I opened the door, happy to be finally able to get the sleep I was yearning for, only to find Alyana sleeping on the large bed while hugging a human girl who was wearing only a rope that went around her chest and tied her arms behind her back and a gag on her mouth.

(Oh right, we didn't only take that outfit from the tailor's shop.)

I sighed and put down the barrel, which caused the tied up girl to wake up. She stared at me and I quickly went to untie her. As I untied her she started thrashing around on the bed, which weirdly wasn't enough to wake up Alyana. Once I had finished untying her I removed her gag only for her to shout at me, “why did you untie me?”

I sighed and told her, “listen, staying like that can be really bad for your arms and breasts, if you still want to play around a bit more, you can ask those two when they wake up, I'm sure they'll be happy to comply.”

“Fine...” she said, before turning towards Alyana and going back to sleep.

I laid down next to her and closed my eyes. I was almost asleep when I jerked up, coming to a sudden realization.

(Wait, where the fuck is Lyra?)

I tried to remember everything that happened the night before but, having no idea of where she could have gone to, decided that an adventurer of her caliber would have had no problems staying by herself for a bit and that sleep is a really important thing.