I was finally going to spend the night in my bed at the dorm.
It’d been two days since we’d left the island where we’d beaten the shadow of the Minotaur God, Wurn. Trent Vowler, the teacher of the Blue Team of first years, was giving ArchBishop Mavery a rundown on what had happened while we were in Tres. It wasn’t really what had happened there that needed a debriefing, it was the side trip that we’d taken.
“Atlas?”
I looked down at the woman laying on my chest. Her hair was the color of milk and her red eyes almost looked like they were glowing. When we had been in Harror, the people there had called her a demon because of those features combined with skin the color of ivory. Most of the people that I’d seen in that city had green skin, so considering it was the town of Healers and most Healers that I’d worked with had green skin, I could understand how there might be some prejudice against the other classes.
I ran my fingers through her hair. “Yes?”
Ether Klix snuggled closer to me. “What are you thinking about?”
Honestly, I hadn’t been thinking about anything in particular. I was just enjoying being able to relax for a little bit before we headed out to Mive to figure out who our next party member would be. After I had declared myself to be Trent’s son, which I wasn’t, but given that he was a Caster with white hair, brown eyes, and ivory skin, the only thing that we didn’t share was our eyes, mine were green. I hadn’t noticed it before, but after I’d looked at the two of us together, we did have some features that were close enough that I could pass as his son. I’d needed a way to protect Rix from bounty hunters and being the son of one of the most famous Adventurers in the world made me worth a lot more than the price on her head.
While it had saved our redheaded Shooter’s life, it had also gotten the Nobles of the six cities in the Ward to start very loudly protesting that we only had one Noble in our class. So Trent had gotten Mavery to add secondary classes to each of our four classes and then promised that he’d add a child of a Noble from each city to our secondary party. We’d just gotten our third and fourth teammates and honestly, once we went to Mive and picked out our fifth member, our sixth one would be almost set.
I realized that her question had sent me down a rabbit hole and she was staring at me, waiting for my response.
“I was just thinking about how close we are to filling out our team.”
“You mean your Harem?” Aelin Zeb walked over and put both of her brown hands on the footboard of my bed.
The blonde had come up with the idea that I needed to start a harem for some reason and the other women on the team had started running with it. What made it slightly confusing, for me anyway, was that she was currently in a relationship with our Healer and had no intention of joining a Harem with me.
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“I really wasn’t.” I looked around the room. Of the twelve of us that were currently in the open room building, there were only two of us that were guys, myself and Mitchel Zarboe, the new tank that we’d picked up in Tres. And he was acting very reserved, preferring to stay near the corners of whatever room we were in, almost like Rix. I made a note that I was going to have to ask him about that. He seemed pleasant enough the little I’d been able to talk with him so far.
“Is he thinking about handing out another ring?” Jenne Violu looked at her empty golden hand, “Hmm, I think I’d like something that gives a magic boost…”
I could feel most of the eyes in the room on me as the rest of the woman waited for me to respond.
“I gave the last ring we found to Fray.” I swallowed, “Plus, when are we going to be going back into the Dungeon to do a boss room?”
“You’re level four now.” Gesai Alard, the red-haired, green-eyed, silver skinned teacher of the secondary class reminded me. “You could do events.”
“I thought we were supposed to slow down on how fast we were leveling.” I looked over at the slightly older woman. She’d graduated a little over a year ago, which made her seven years older than us, which was usually too young to be a teacher, but after she’d destroyed her hands and arms so badly that she had permanent burn scars from using a item that was way above her level to kill someone to keep my secret, she’d kind of earned her place as Trent’s helper.
“There are ways to collect experience.” She tapped the crystal band that she wore over her elbow length white gloves. The crystal band, or CB as most people called it, was the way that we interacted with our Mantles. It could also hold a limited amount of items as well as information about different Dungeons that we went to. “Almost no one uses them because why would you store experience, when people would earn more by being carried instead, but Trent and I have talked about getting a collector for Rix while we’re in Mive.” Gesai looked at the four of us that were level four, “We could look into getting one for the four of you as well.”
Which meant that our excuse to not have to be in the Dungeon quite as much was about to be nonexistent. But maybe we could feed that experience into the lower leveled members to bring them up.
“Speaking of other ways to get experience…” I looked at Jovena Bothua, who was sitting on the bed next to mine where Ether was supposed to sleep, but never did. “Has Warder got the rest of your team?”
The white-haired shooter rolled her blue eyes. “That eager to try to get rid of me?”
Aelin smiled widely, “He’s just hoping you’ll bring more girls to add to the Harem.”
I sat up and threw my pillow at her. She laughed as she dodged out of the way. “Why Atlas, are you sure you want to start this?” Her eyes promised mischief.
I scooted up against the headboard. “You can take your pillow fight fantasies and live them out with Justia.”
I could see the green-skinned Healer blush, even though she was on her bed on the other side of the room.
Aelin clicked her tongue as she walked away. “Such a dirty mind…”
I suppressed the smirk that tried to crawl over my face. The teasing wouldn’t stop if she saw something like that. I looked at the woman who wasn’t part of our team, “Have you gotten the rest of your team?”