Lone and Sophie woke up after a long night of vigorous 'exercise', and after getting dressed, Sophie returned to the summoning room with Kyuubi while Lone collected his companions and went downstairs to enjoy some breakfast, courtesy of the inn.
Paying for the most luxurious rooms meant that they got the best service, not to mention the fact that somehow, word had spread amongst the employees of Lone's enormous tip to the worker that had handled booking his rooms. This could clearly be seen by how hard the waiters were trying to please Lone's group.
"I could get used to this..." Lone said as he took a tankard of beer from a handsome Deerkin. Lone tossed him a golden coin which he happily accepted before bowing and leaving.
"And here I thought you were trying to be less arrogant, but look at you, busy drinking and tipping like there's no tomorrow in sight," Eolande sarcastically stated before eating another rasher of bacon.
Lone frowned. "There's a difference between being arrogant and simply enjoying your own wealth."
"Yeah yeah, I'm sure there is, oh wise and mighty Foxkin," Eolande said grandly while she waved a piece of egg around on her fork.
"Why can't you be more like Swind and Breena? Look at them, peacefully eating their food and not playing with it. You're such a child," Lone scoffed.
"Good thing I look like one since you're only interested in child-like bodies, right?" Eolande asked with a provocative smile.
"Oh, fuck off. One of these days, I'm going to beat the shit out of you for making fun of me so much," Lone growled in response. He was getting less and less tolerant of Eolande's sexual taunts and it was clearly showing in his attitude.
"Rough play? If it will make you happy, Husband, I can agree with getting a bit rough," Eolande flirted as she waved a rasher around.
"Oh, will you give it a rest alread-" Lone's retort was cut off by a nearby conversation that a group of Adventurers were having which happened to catch Lone's interest, so he strained his ears and used his skill, Good Hearing, to make sure he didn't miss a word of it.
"Hey, is that true?"
"I'm certain. The Guild sure is scary."
"Tell me about it? To think they annihilated all of the countries armies and nearly killed the royal family."
"That just goes to show how mad the headquarters was at that Milindo country. I mean, can you believe they tried to kill and demonise the branch's Guildmaster?"
"Bunch of arrogant fools. Some of those lesser countries just don't know who the real superpowers on Altros are."
"Yeah. It really sucks too since the Guildmaster in question had to flee and apparently he used a teleportation orb without any preset coordinates."
"Uwah... doesn't that mean he could have ended up anywhere?"
"Yup. He's been missing for over a year now, though the headquarters released a statement saying his life orb is still intact, so he must be out there somewhere."
"Well, he's not a Guildmaster for nothing."
At this point, Lone had approached these Adventurers. They were quite strong. Four in total, two Elves and two Halflings. All of them were men except for one of the Elves, both of whom hadn't spoken yet. From what Lone could tell, they were all B-Rankers.
"Excuse me," he respectfully asked, fully aware of the discrepancy between ranks. He didn't want to flaunt his power right now. All he wanted to do was get some answers, so being respectful was the wisest course of action.
"Huh? Foxkin? Golden too... huh, you've awakened a bunch even though you're only a C-ranker," one of the Halflings said with a friendly tone.
'They know about Foxkin awakenings? I wonder how... ' Lone thought before he replied, "Thank you. I train rather hard. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I was wondering what you were talking about just a moment ago. Did you say the country was called 'Milindo'?"
"Hmm? Yeah. That's right, why?" the other Halfling asked with a little bit of suspicion in his voice.
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"Ah, well, I happen to have been in the capital city of Milindo not too long ago and I have information regarding the missing Guildmaster. Would that be of use to the Adventurers Guild?" Lone asked.
'Maybe I can use Gilbert to help start my path to fame?' Lone wondered. He was still interested in what had actually happened in Milindo, but for now, he wanted to know if he could gain anything from his connection to the Dragonkin in question.
"Sure it would. What kind of information do you have, young one?" the male Elf asked with interest.
'Young one? This guy looks younger than I do... hmm, perhaps Elves are long-lived like the Beastmen? I'd imagine they are since every book I've read about them said as much,' with that though, Lone decided to use his new power to inspect the Elf in front of him.
????? ??????'s Status Name: ????? ?????? Sex: Male Age: 394 Level: 432 Race: High Elf HP: 2010/2010 SP: 4000/4000 MP: 120,320/120,320 Description ????????????????????????????????????????????? Basic Stats Strength: 154 Vigour: 210 Dexterity: 4,321 Agility: 2,421 Vitality: 400 Luck: 341 Secret Stats Magic Power: 12,032 ????? ??????: ???
As expected, Lone couldn't see any details he had no knowledge of like the man's name, description and additional secret stat, but he was content with the information he could see.
'Well, that proves that B-Rank displays are light blue as well as my own rank's, C-Rank. Still, pretty decent stats for a B-Ranker and I guess he is older than me. In fact, he's even a bit older than Gilbert,' Lone thought.
Lone then took a quick second to think about that matter. 'Gilbert must be a genius or something to reach the power level he did at his age, but then again, does that mean that Humans have even more potential than Demihumans have since both George and Henry, the Dukes, were A-Rankers despite not even being one-hundred years old yet? I'll ask Gilbert about this if I have the time.'
After noticing the strange looks Lone was getting from the four Adventurers, he finally answered The Elf. "I'm not sure. Probably not, but you never know. Even the smallest scrap of information could be useful, right?"
"Indeed," the Elf nodded his head in satisfaction. "Truly wise for one as young as yourself. We happen to be returning to the Guild branch here in Everlast ourselves, would you like to come with us?"
"I'd love to. I happen to have some other business with the Guild as it is, so this is perfect," Lone happily agreed. 'It's about time I created an official group.'
After gathering up Eolande, Swind and Breena, Lone headed to the Guild and introduced himself and his companions to Al'ka's group. Al'ka was the Elf Lone had spoken to while Rel'frez was the Elven woman who had yet to speak. At first, the two Halflings, Fosco and Tobias, were hitting on Eolande non-stop.
This was inevitable. Although not a huge problem thus far, Eolande was incredibly beautiful. Add to the fact that she oozed natural charm, it was no wonder that everyone got infatuated with her at first glance.
Sophie didn't suffer from this as badly as Eolande did because, while she was just as gorgeous as the Tylwyth Teg, she didn't have the charm stat, which was the biggest factor that led to Eolande being chased so fervently three-thousand years ago.
Lone was worried about this being a problem somewhere along the line, but she was his master in craft, and he felt that he had no right to force her to put an illusion on herself to alter her appearance. Lone had to stay content with her agreeing to mask most of her charm with a powerful illusion in exchange for a lot of Lone's filled mana orbs.
Upon thinking about it though, perhaps letting Eolande's charm run wild in the future could prove useful once Lone was confident in his power again. After all, what better way to gain fame than to kill a lustful King or a powerful and famous Adventurer greedy for Eolande's body?