Xer'rava dutifully followed behind his charge, the young princess of all Mineral Dwarves, and, dare he think it, mayhaps even all dwarves period. He checked every corner, every street, every window, every alleyway, every passing individual.

Nothing would harm the Taker with him putting his all into guaranteeing her safety.

He really didn't have to be so on-guard given that the strongest person in this fringe krieg was the local adventurer guildmaster, a mere higher-stage SS-ranker. It would only take a single punch to kill her.

Still, it was good practice in his opinion to never leave even so much as a single opening. Even if he was essentially a god here, his charge was not.

"Xer'rava," she spoke, calling his name.

Not an uncommon thing. The young lady was a curious soul who wasn't willing to abandon her personality as all other Takers had before her. It would come in time. Such was her responsibility.

The skills she ripped from the souls of others would slowly corrode her own soul and turn it into something hollow and without the charm a normal vessel of existence would exude.

She wasn't mentally strong enough to accept that burden just yet and Xer'rava understood that given she was still barely a century old.

Still, the less she conformed to her fate, the more it hurt her when she did her duty. Such was the working of the soul of a Taker. Even a master Soul Oracle couldn't change this indisputable fact.

"What questions have you of me, My Lady?" he answered curtly but with respect in his tone.

"How can you so blindly work to protect what amounts to a somewhat special child with nary a complaint?" she asked, her voice sounding... odd. "There are so many vast wonders just begging to be explored and discover on this continent, not even mentioning the planet as a whole. I can get not going further down. Creepy stuff there, but with your powers, you could scour so much of this world and grow so much from such an adventure! Why you don't baffles me if I'm being honest. X-rank is hardly strong, cosmically speaking."

Xer'rava felt this was a very out of character question. The Taker did usually ask about the world outside of the kriegs and urds, about the creatures that dotted the planet they resided on known as Altros, about all things foreign to her, yes.

She was a curious being, but never curious about him. She knew he was a tool for her to use and had never questioned that role he filled. Until now. Still, he answered as he felt compelled to do so. "Because it is my duty."

"That's so boring. I do my duty too but I also have fun when I need to. Y'know, between correcting? Well, whatever. Everything's been corrected here. And as fun as it is to become a young woman who's slowly turning into a plank of wood - metaphorically, of course. Dwarves are much too literally thick for it to be, well, literal - I think it's time I visited the spires of Taslo once more," his charge declared, befuddling him.

The words made sense to him but they were utter nonsense coming from her mouth. Visit the spires of Taslo? Again? He wondered briefly if someone had somehow cast a spell on his charge, befuddling her mind.

He watched the Taker stretch her back as she cracked her fingers above her head. "Loosen up a bit, yeah? He's an annoying boy, but Lone sure knows how to be himself. You could learn a thing or two from that pawn."

The Taker then sighed and clicked her fingers together. The next thing Xer'rava knew, he was travelling down the Farwinds while escorting a much more muted version of his charge.

He felt like his memories were fuzzy when he tried to recall his conversation with her back in Krieg Moor's streets, but then he realised that he must have simply been imagining it.

He was an X-ranker. There was no way his memory would be imperfect. He specifically has three skills that reinforced his memories not even counting the enchantments on his mind to stop tampering up to the Divine level.

'I must be shaken up by the fight with the fox. For me to imagine fragments of a conversation with the young miss... How foolish,' he thought.

Not a second later, even that thought was forgotten as were all of his doubts. It was as if they had never happened at all.

----------------------------------------

"Here's where ye'll be stayin' for the next few decades, so get used to it. Make friends wae the bugs tae, they'll likely be yer only consistent company 'ere fer ah while," said the dwarf who had rather rudely shoved Lone into the room that was barely big enough for a dwarf to stand in, let alone him.

"Uh, I don't know if you're just trying to scare me, y'know, break me into the situation and whatnot, but I am aware that I can hire adventurers to help me with my assignments. I also have a talent for making asshole dwarves grow on me," Lone said as he hunched down so as to not bump his head.

"Uhuh, pumpkin. Think ye'r so smart? Clearly nae smart enuff since we foond oot ye learn'd oor sacred art," the dwarf scoffed before he closed the door, slammed it on Lone's seventh, eighth, and ninth tails, before promptly locking it.

"Ah! Fucker. That hurts," Lone yelped.

He fixed his situation with his tails and then took a proper look at his new accommodations.

"Better than the prison cell, way worse than the inn. They could have given me a desk at least," Lone complained with a sigh.

He curled up onto the bed that was clearly built with the height of a four-and-a-half-foot-tall being occupying it in mind.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Bored and not really knowing what to do until he was to be spoken to about his new role, he decided to contact Soph or Sophie, whoever was in control right now, to discuss the matter with the Taker.

It was either that or grind out some skill levels. He had to talk to her eventually, so he decided it was better being responsible first and playing later.

"Hey, Soph-"

"You are alone? You are alone," were the words that interrupted him before he found his unarmoured lover straddling his curled up form.

"Intimate. I get it's cramped in here, but there is some floor that you could have stood on," Lone teased.

"One, we were terrified of you somehow being killed by that X-ranker when you decided to challenge him even if that was irrational of us, two, we were and still are terrified of you being killed by whatever was inhabiting that Taker's body. We wish to hold you, to ensure you are still here with us," Sophie admitted without fear of embarrassment.

"Fuck that was cute and unironically adorable. Those words mean the same thing, don't they? Uh, I mean, I'm always down for a good cuddl-... Wait. Inhabiting? Explain? I feel like you know more than I do," Lone said in confusion.

Sophie pressed herself into him a bit more before she teleported to his side off of the bed. "This conversation would be best done without us being stuck to one another."

"I respectfully disagree, but please, go on," Lone replied as he sat up and assumed a cross-legged position on the dwarf-sized bed.

Sophie paced a little and frowned. "This room really is rather small."

Lone then watched her shrink to her smallest size, a thing he hadn't seen her do in months. It almost threw him off since she was almost always in her adult form.

"Much better," Sophie nodded. "First, if you assume to know less than us, tell us what it is you do know about the Taker. We shall move on from there," she said as she waved her arm, a very cute action given all of her clothes were now baggy on her.

Lone shrugged. "She didn't take my Steamforging away and told me to keep quiet about it. There's no one near us, right? I really hope I didn't just inform a spy that I still have the super-illegal-to-have if-you're-not-a-dwarf skill."

Sophie snorted. "We are not so foolish. There are 16 guards in this building and a couple of dozen prisoners like you. None have the same ears as Hamish. Our words are our own, free of eavesdroppers."

"Huh. Good to know. By the way, where did you put your armour?" Lone asked, clearly not overly concerned by the whole Taker matter since she had, at the end of the day, helped him out.

"We left it at The Rusty Sprocket along with Breena. Hamish is there too, keeping her safe in case that woman you mentioned - the one who wished for your execution - decides to try to use her against you. That's not important right now though. The Taker was not, in fact, the Taker. Some... godly being was in possession of her body, Lone. Do you understand what we are saying?" Sophie asked.

Lone raised an eyebrow. "Maybe? You have to be more specific when you say 'godly'. Did your Mana Sensing see a demigod like a Djinn inside of her? A Primal? Something similar to God from Earth who you killed?"

"That is... a fair question. No, none of the above. We did not see anything. That is the issue, Lone," Sophie explained.

The next 20 minutes soon turned into a brainstorming session after she had fully described her interaction with the old man's voice to him.

Lone frowned deeply. "You're sure he mentioned Snapper?"

"Yes. Why?" Sophie asked.

Lone shot her a funny look. "I know your memory isn't that bad. Don't you remember the frog lady with the square boat who directed us to the ass end of Teresta known as Milindo?"

Sophie scrunched up her brow. "Surely that's just a coincidence, no?"

"I chalked her appearance down to your Luck, if I'm being honest, but maybe that wasn't the case. She called herself something... Well, her people, not herself," Lone said as he held his chin in his hand.

"The Guiders. That was it," Sophie answered for him in a moment of clarity.

Lone nodded as he pointed at her. "Right. And you said this old man's voice claimed to have corrected things for us not once, but twice? Maybe he's a Corrector like she was, is, or whatever else, a Guider? But what was wrong? We could have got out of the court case without the Taker defending me."

"... Did you not at one point make a connection between Snapper and that old man you fought in the tournament at Milindo? Clicker was his name, no?" Sophie asked.

"Just based off the weird name, but that's super loose of a connection. Think it might have been the same person? I'll give you that he was hella cryptic when I spoke to him and I never actually landed a hit on him before he surrendered," Lone pondered aloud.

"... We know too little. Still, we should avoid ever meeting that Taker again or her pet X-ranker," Sophie declared.

Lone nodded. "I agree wholeheartedly. Someone that can ignore your Mana Sensing sounds scary as all hell. Four-twelve was spooky enough as is. This sounds even worse than his case."

"Indeed. We are glad you can see the sense in this for once," Sophie said as she returned to her adult form, filling out her loose clothing.

She then approached Lone and kissed him softly. "We shall shelf this topic for now then until we have more evidence to support our theorised connections?"

Lone nodded as he smiled. "Sounds like a plan."

The look in Sophie's eyes then changed, becoming far softer and more full of an overflowing sense of love.

"Hey, stranger," Lone teased.

Soph pouted. "It's not my fault Sophie's better at being the tough one."

"Can't argue with you there. Will I get to see more of you now that the dangerous expedition and following court case is over? I love Sophie to bits, but I feel the same about you too," Lone said. "I've missed you."

Soph grinned. "I've missed you too. Worried about you as well. A lot."

"I'm trying to be better when it comes to risking my life," Lone said with a wry smile.

Soph gave him a sceptical look as she pressed her forehead against his. "Says the guy who provoked an X-ranker who was probably being controlled by an uber-powerful being?"

"Hey, give me some credit. I didn't know that and I hardly provoked the guy, just asked him if he was cool with me using him as a skill grinder," Lone retorted.

Soph giggled before kissing him. That kiss soon turned into several kisses. "Credit granted."

"Man, I fuckin' love you so much," Lone mumbled.

"The feeling is mutual, you big idiot," Soph replied as she pulled away from him.

Lone raised an eyebrow. "That's it? Only kisses?"

A coy look entered Soph's usually soft eyes. "To use Sophie's exact words 'Go no further with him right now. He stinks, he looks awful, and he will never learn to properly clean himself up if we keep giving in to him.'"

Lone winced. "Harsh. What an ultimatum. Grind out annoying resistances, or sex. You're putting me in a hard place here."

Soph cocked her head to the side. "No, I'm not. That's, uh, kinda the point. I do agree with Sophie though. Go have a shower and eat something. Sleep too. I know, uh, you have your nightmares and stuff but you looked way better when I couldn't see your ribs pressing up against your skin. You're wasting your nice body and dashing good looks."

She smiled impishly then teleported away.

Lone chuckled. "Sophie's influencing her quite a bit, huh?"

He sighed, cracked his neck and got up.

Lone pressed his fingers against his stomach and then trailed them against his ribs. "Yeah, yikes... Why Basic Regen doesn't fix this, I have no idea... Maybe that's worth exploring later."

If he was going to do as requested, he sure as hell wasn't going to waste his own resources on it.

Who cared if he had a small pond's worth of water tucked away along with a week's worth of prison food? If he could get some free stuff, some free stuff he would get.

Banging his fist against the door, he yelled, "Hey! Any guards around?! I want some food and I could use a shower! Please and thank you!"