Chapter 298 - A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Whew! We’re finally back!”

A bright orange furball stood up on her back legs and stretched her spine as she crested a familiar hill. From its peak, she looked down on her favourite seaside city and basked in all its mundane glory. It had taken almost a full week of travel for the fox and her friend to head to the desert, terminate their target, and return to Vel’khan. Of course, they could have easily compressed the trip by ripping a portal between their origin and their destination, but as a particularly depraved human once said, ‘Where was the fun in that?’

Sylvia’s only complaint pertained to the duration of their stay. They had barely spent a day touring the area even though they would have needed something closer to a year to hit every landmark worth a visit. The desert was filled with all sorts of mysteries. Countless tombs and dungeons were buried beneath the sand, ready and waiting to be explored. But they had seen none.

According to Claire, her favourite chair, person, and means of transport, they would return sometime in the future to experience it in all its glory, but the fox was doubtful of the claim. Summer had come swinging through the door, bringing a fresh batch of requests along with it. There were at least another five misadventures in the queue, not counting the orders placed in their absence, and they needed to conduct a series of investigations before they could lock in their targets. The preliminary fieldwork was the most important and time-consuming part of the process; it was precisely through careful selection and scrutinization that they kept their friend’s spirit alive.

“So where are we gonna go next?” The fox-elf scooted forward and looked down at her mount—not that there was any point in such an action. The qilin-dragon-snake-moose had an eternally blank face; it was impossible to read her expressions.

“I don’t know,” said Claire. Her silvery-blue hair fluttered as the salty sea breeze embraced the hill. “Ask our clients.” She glanced briefly at the grave beneath the tree before sitting on the swing right beside it.

Slowly, the former lyrkress began to move, falling back and forth as she looked beyond the sea. Sylvia knew, in part because of her top-secret, totally-not-exposed mind-reading abilities, and in part because of their year-long friendship, that she wasn’t nearly as calm as she might have otherwise appeared.

The very act of seeing the grave had soured her mood. It had been a full month since Lia’s death, but Claire was still far from recovered, and the fox herself was hardly any better off. A part of her wanted to return to Llystletein and idly pass her days like the rest of her species, lazing in blissful ignorance. It hurt to lose a friend. She didn’t want to risk the pain again.

At the same, its prevention was precisely why she had chosen to remain. She did still want to see the world, of course. To expand her view beyond the lost library was the reason she had first set foot outside her great-grandfather’s domain, and she had every intention of seeing it through. But more importantly, she couldn’t leave Claire unsupervised. Without her, the reckless dragon-moose would no doubt get herself killed in the blink of an eye, and that was the last thing she wanted.

Claire was her pet. If horrible things were going to happen to her, then it would only be on her watch and with her permission.

“You’re thinking about something stupid again, aren’t you?” asked the pet in question.

“H-huh!? How did you kn—I mean, no I’m not!”

“I can see it on your face.”

“You're literally not even looking at me!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Claire grabbed the fox off her head and pulled her into her arms as she turned her eyes on the city. It had changed drastically since the spring coup. Much of the initial damage had already been repaired and the foot traffic was back to its previous high. The streets and canals were swarming with people and fish of all shapes and sizes. Not all the travelers and city goers were sentient, however. Many were pack animals purchased as means of transport, but at a glance, it was difficult if not impossible for a foreigner to determine which species belonged to which group. Just as there were pets sitting in the carriages, relaxing alongside their masters, so too were there people committed to carrying others and their things along. The lines between the groups were muddied even further by their intermingling. Some of the boats were pulled by a mix of one and two-tailed sharks, with only the former group capable of speech and coherent thought.

The beautiful half-submerged city was a veritable melting pot of races. Elves, lizards, spiders, rocks, and humans alike mixed in with their aquatic neighbours without a care in the world. For some, it might as well have been a paradise, but the halfbreeds were numb to the sight. If anything, they considered it as more of a pain in the rear, as it meant that their shop’s design had to account for customers with drastically differing restrictions.

Having to maintain one set of goods aboveground and another beneath the surface was a chore when the items in question could easily be carted out the door. Claire had made sure that no such incidents had occurred when she was present at least, but there was a noticeable uptick in theft when the doctor was left to tend to the storefront alone.

They had tried asking Boris, Claire’s weapon and pet lizard, to watch the doors by putting his infinite copies to work, but the self-replicating iguana failed the task spectacularly. He didn’t need sleep. In fact, he had no use for it at all, and yet, all seven of the clones assigned to watch duty wound up napping on the job.

That was about as hard as they tried before eliminating the underwater segment. None of the store’s staff cared much for the decrease in profitability. Even with the potential customer count halved, the apothecary-cum-information broker did well enough to keep the shop afloat. Hefty as the payments were, the extra income that their less-savoury business brought in was just icing on the cake.

Launching herself off the swing at the height of its ascent, Claire began to fly, or rather, fall towards the sky. She broke free from gravity and pulled herself towards the distant sun. It was the sort of slow, gradual motion that was impossible with natural flight, and yet, it was also the more familiar. She had mastered vector-based movement long before she grew her first set of wings.

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“Where do you want to have lunch?” asked Claire.

“Somewhere that sells fish, duh! We haven’t had fish in days!”

“You ate a whole whale yesterday morning.”

“Yeah, but that was a sand whale! That doesn’t count. Plus, whales aren’t even fish to begin with!”

Claire paused briefly but decided to keep her comments to herself. Squeezing the fox just a little harder, she began drifting her way towards the northern wharf. She assumed her true form about a third of the way through the journey. The constant pain she suffered was not quite as sharp in the larger body. It did still throb, however, especially when she put her magic to work.

Just over a month ago, the transformation would have entailed becoming a long, serpentine creature with an absurd length, but her most recent ascension had shrunk her body down to a more reasonable size. She was hardly ten meters from front to back, with her tail comprising roughly half her total length. Her eyes flickered black and red before returning to their usual tints, and her body was covered in a layer of thick, silvery scales. If not for the wings growing from her ankles and the talons that adorned her feet, she would have looked like a thin, stretched qilin.

She changed her form again as she landed in front of a stall by the harbour. They very well could have entered one of the restaurants, but Claire didn’t see the point. Her palate was unlikely to be satisfied unless they picked a place reserved for the upper class, and Sylvia lacked the manners to fit in. They would no doubt be kicked out after starting their meals, assuming they were allowed to be seated in the first place.

The pair walked through the street after getting their food. The fox had munched her share down in the blink of an eye, while Claire took her time with it, taking the odd bite as she trod through the city. It was hard to see in the crowd. Standing at only a meter and a half tall, she could only see over the city’s various two, three, and four-meter-tall residents by spreading her wings and taking to the skies. But while it was certainly inconvenient to be towered over by shellfish, it was not without its merits. She found it much easier to go unnoticed when everyone else was double her height.

Slowly, following the waves of people, she moved from one end of the city to the commercial district at its core. The streets weren’t quite as busy away from the harbour, but they were still flooded with pedestrians and wagons. She would have been readily overwhelmed had she been any less familiar with Vel’khagan’s arrangement.

Twisting through one alley and out another, she arrived in front of the shop. The storefront was perfectly clean thanks to the maid they had borrowed from the castle, but there wasn’t anyone to appreciate its polish. Estelle was holed up in her lab, and there wasn’t a customer in sight.

The maid in question bowed as they entered the shop, with Claire returning a silent nod, and Sylvia cheerfully breaking the silence. Josephine was a piece of sentient coral with a bright purple body made up of branching limbs like a tree. She didn’t actually have a face, as far as Claire could tell, but the caldriess sensed her gaze coming from the tip of each extension. Fish would always gather around her when she was in the water, and she needed to soak at least once every two hours if she didn’t want to die a sad and empty husk.

That much, she had told them—her lack of vocal cords did not in any way prevent her from speaking aloud. Unlike Chloe, Arciel’s most debauched human maid, the coral chunk simply preferred to remain silent. Any mana wasted on voicing her thoughts was better used to keep her hydrated for longer.

She wasn’t the only maid responsible for tending to Misadventures Incorporated. The janitorial staff cycled through a pool of volunteers, with the switch happening once every three days. They wouldn’t return to the castle until the end of their tenure, during which they would stay at the girls’ house and tend to things there as well. It was certainly a rather spoiled lifestyle, and Sylvia had been somewhat concerned for their privacy, but Claire found it far more comfortable and familiar than the alternative. She hadn’t the slightest clue how to clean. Lia had been responsible for most of the housework when she was still alive.

The warehouse was the only place that had been allowed to rot. Being the queen’s personal servants, the maids were driven and fiercely efficient, but not even they could handle an entire storage facility by themselves, and that was doubly true of one filled with miscellaneous goods. Its previous, feline owner had a penchant for gambling, and she thoughtlessly shoved everything she had won inside. Likewise, the same fate had befallen all the random souvenirs that their clientele had occasionally brought back when the shop was still the MACC. The employee housing once located on its second floor was the only thing that had been removed, magically erased in much the same way it was first constructed.

No one knew exactly how the various things were meant to be stored, or if they could even be touched without specific considerations given that some of the objects were apparently cursed. For that, they would need a judge or an appraiser, but Claire couldn’t be bothered to hire one. She was happier leaving the cat’s things as they were. The sentiment had been applied to Lia’s room at first as well, but she changed her mind after seeing it for herself. The entire bedchamber had been a mess of coins; the only way to get anywhere was to sneak between the various piles. The money had since been moved to Sylvia’s tail, where it joined the million other things she kept in her pocket dimension.

The two halfbreeds reported to completely different parts of the shop as the maid returned to sweeping. Sylvia ran right up to one of the walls, which was covered with a map of the continent, and turned into a tiny fairy with two distinct pairs of ears. The parchment transformed as she ran her fingers across it and marked the locations they had visited over the course of their journey.

Most of Pria—the continent they were on—was still blank, but the bits that were filled in quite literally came to life. The animals wandered around their domains, the trees that dotted the woods fluttered as the wind blew past, and sand even rose from the burning dunes and fluttered its way onto the polished wooden floor. That, of course, earned the fox a glare from the maid, but Josephine’s thoughts were outright ignored. The Llystletein forest critter had never asked for the cleaner’s presence, and she was more than capable of containing the mess. A quick song or two would have everything fixed in no time. Singing was how she had constructed the building to begin with.

While the oversized squirrel filled in her canvas, Claire went straight to the front desk and perused the notes that the maids had prepared. They made a list of visitors and allowed people to leave confidential messages for the half-lamia to sort through upon her return. In other words, they were requests, additional misadventures that she would have to consider adding to the list.

The maids had been instructed to give the standard warning, and while their delivery was not quite as good as the lyrkress’, they were certainly composed enough to inform the requestors that all parties would be equally judged. In fact, Claire had turned on her prospective employers on three separate occasions already when it was revealed that the circumstances were not quite as they had claimed.

Naturally, the cleaning staff’s handling of the scenarios meant that they were fully aware of everything that happened under the hood, and the news was passed along to their master. Arciel never complained about or otherwise condemned the business, only asking Claire to ensure that she properly documented everything that had been done. Every raid came with a writeup, and it was half to deliver them that the maids had been dispatched to begin with.

“Why are there so many?”

To Claire’s annoyance, there was a full stack of pages awaiting her return, nearly a hundred different documents in all.

She doubted that most of the applications would ultimately result in kills. But either way, it looked like there was much work to be done. So she sat at the desk, grabbed her quill, and prepared to see it through.