Meantime, in the Eastern Kindoms, on a snowy road between cities…

Straf is walking on ahead of the rest with his hands in his coat's pocket. Valleys fill the land, and tall mountains dot the landscape. Though none are taller than the Eastern Ranges to the west, it does not stop the broad spires of stone jutting out of the earth from contending with their betters. The vegetation is very sparse, but Straf can see distant, snow-covered bamboo forests north and south, as well as regular trees more familiar to the people beyond the western mountains.

「…Lia? Are you coming?」

Straf asks, stopping to look back. Cycelia is dragging her feet, gasping for air with a weary face.

「I am… But I'm hungry…」

She replies, struggling to keep up with Straf, Lily, or even Nona.

「So am I… Come on, Lia. Lily doesn't need to eat, and I'm fairly sure Nona will be fine with sharing our spare change for your food. We'll stop by at a place next town-」

With a patronizing smirk on his face, Straf rolls his eyes and lets out a sigh. He gets distracted by a flash of yellow from above.

「Hm?」

He looks at it, and snatches the golden feather dancing through the air towards the ground.

「…A feather?」

Lily tilts her head, raising her brow with her arms crossed as she looks at the feather in Straf's hand. He focuses his eyes on it.

『Thunderbird Feather』

[Magical] [Alchemical] [Animal]

Converts loose environmental mana into electrical current, released upon applying lifeforce mana. Possesses certain alchemical qualities.

Stored mana: 100/100

「…Huh. Not just any feather. It's from a thunderbird…」

…Zzzzzap!

Straf says, then pours his mana into the feather. A small lightning bolt arcs out into the air about a finger's length away, before disappearing as abruptly as it appeared.

「…Neat, but kind of useless. What do you think, Lily… Lucky charm?」

He shrugs his hand and throws the golden feather into the swirling vortex that appears right beside him. It disappears as soon as it hungrily devours the feather.

「From a thunderbird?… What's a thunderbird feather doing all the way here?…」

She asks with her brows furrowed, then turns her scarlet gaze upward. Straf joins her, and the two look around the sky above for a few seconds.

「…Dunno. I only see some shitty pigeons. Probably just a random drop. Let's go, Lia.」

Straf shrugs and dismisses the thought, then turns to continue onward as soon as Cycelia finally catches up.

「Ahhhhhhhh…」

She lets out a long, weary, throaty sigh with her hands on her knees when she realizes her stopover is but a fleeting moment…

…

Two hours later, in the very early evening, in the vicinity of a city…

Straf and his group arrive to another eastern city, likewise built in the same peculiar style as the previous one. There are guards armed with lengthy wing-tipped spears at its gates. The walls are low, barely higher than the buildings visible through the gate, and even the lowest city walls in the west dwarf these ones. Though the guards look at Straf and his group as they approach the gate, they neither move, gesture, nor react in any way. They simply watch them pass, then return their gazes forward to the road.

「…Huh. I figured we'd have trouble with the guards?」

Straf remarks while glancing over his shoulder back towards the gate.

「Hmpf. Their lives are spared.」

Lily scoffs while following alongside him with her arms crossed.

「Lily, you're not exactly allowed to just rip apart foreigners at a whim either…」

He replies with a lightly patronizing smirk, then stops at a busy crossroads within the city. While the previous one was lively, this one is simply packed. There is seldom any space to squeeze in, let alone to flow with the crowd. Straf clicks his tongue in frustration, then looks around for an alternate route. There are a few alleyways, as well as a sparsely populated road just off to the side.

「Nghhh… Lily, Lia, Nona… What do you want to do? Do we just shove through the crowd and look for that place she mentioned, or do we go around and look for food?」

Straf groans with his mouth scrunched to the side while rubbing the back of his neck in frustration. He places his hand back in his pocket, then turns to the group as he asks.

「Er… Won't shoving through the crowd attract attention?」

Cycelia meekly raises her finger to object, furrowing her brows.

「Well… Yeah, kind of… That's why I'm asking. It's not a problem for me, I can shove through them easy, and I already have assassins hounding after my ass… So?…」

Straf shrugs his arms, then points his hand to the flowing crowd behind him as he asks.

「Let's humor her and find her food… Just so she stops complaining.」

Lily says as she lifts her scarlet eyes up to Straf with an annoyed, tight-lipped grimace on her face. She turns them to Cycelia, and stares at her. Nona tilts her hooded head at the two.

「Wow. It's rare of you to actually care about someone, Lily-」

「Don't misunderstand! I'm just weary of her sluggish pace and constant bemoaning of her hunger! She doesn't know what hunger is!」

Straf smirks at the little vampire, but she interrupts him with a shout, pointing her clawed finger at Cycelia, who turns her emerald eyes to the crowd of people behind Straf. Some of them are now looking their way as they pass by. The guards at the gate peek into the city, leaning from beyond the walls, before nonchalantly returning back to their positions. Lily lets out a frustrated huff from her nose and flicks her golden head aside, jiggling her twintails.

「…Alright. So, we're going through that side street there. Any objections? Nona? Lia?」

Straf declares, then asks as he turns his eyes to Nona and Cycelia.

「I don't really mind…」

Nona shrugs, then glances at Cycelia, who shakes her head at Straf.

「Right. Let's go.」

Straf shrugs as well, then turns for the side street with much less traffic. The girls follow him in.

The street is much narrower, but thanks to the crowd being absent, the group can appreciate the ground being made of chiseled stone slabs.

「Wow… This must have been really labor-intensive…」

Cycelia remarks with her brows raised while looking down at her feet. Lily scoffs without saying anything while her boots clack noisily against the stone beneath them.

The unlit lanterns line the sides of the narrow street, hanging off beside doorways. Straf reads a few. Most of them advertise an equivalent of a pub, or services related to drinking. Straf ignores those advertising eateries where one can get alcohol, dismissing them as too expensive without even bothering to verify. The group continues onward, with Nona trying her hardest to make sense of the cryptic characters written on the lanterns in black ink.

Straf takes a turn out of the narrow street into a slightly more populated and wider one, though nothing like the street packed with people. The smell of something delicious hangs in the air, which Straf sniffs in small, rapid huffs. He nods in approval, then glances over his shoulder at Cycelia, who gulps while trying to maintain a straight face. He continues on, and the group follows.

「T- That… That smells really good…」

Cycelia remarks while looking around for the source of the smell while navigating around the people passing them by.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

「Yeah, it does. I wonder what that is… I'd have a bite too, but I doubt we can afford that.」

Straf nods, quickly peeking over his shoulder at Cycelia who is just barely holding back drooling by constantly clicking her tongue and swallowing repeatedly.

He turns his gaze forward, and [Contextual Time Perception] activates as Straf feels the telltale resistance of time itself slowing him down. He turns his head in search of the source.

「Hey… Eh?」

Stripe calls out quietly while clutching onto Straf's sleeve in her fingers. Her head perks up in surprise when Straf is staring directly into her golden eyes, despite being certain he was looking elsewhere just now. In her other hand, between her clawed fingers, she is holding onto round balls impaled on thin wooden skewers. There are three on each skewer, for a total of nine balls.

「Cat. I thought we were supposed to meet at a place, not at a random street?」

Straf replies while looking at her oval pupils. She turns them away towards nothing in particular. Cycelia's brows rise, and Nona tilts her head at her sight.

「Well, yeah, but… 」

Stripe nods slightly while grimacing heavily.

「…I got hungry, so I thought a quick little snack wouldn't hurt.」

She adds and eats one of the balls off the skewer, briefly flashing her sharp fangs to Straf as she takes a large bite.

「What's that?」

Cycelia asks as she curls her lips inward into her mouth and licks them hungrily as Stripe gulps.

「That's-」

「Dango, huh?…」

Stripe tries to answer, Straf cuts in before she can do that. Her brows rise, and her golden eyes turn back to him.

「You know?」

Stripe asks, briefly blinking her golden eyes at him before biting another ball off.

「Yeah. Is that what the smell around here is?… I see you're also blending yourself in.」

Straf nonchalantly nods in reply, then looks at Stripe's kimono and the warm woolen hat on her head. For all intents and purposes, she looks exactly the same as any random passerby would, with the only identifying element of her attire again being her hat. It stretches down the sides of her head and partially covers her regular, human-shaped ears. Though her hat is the only thing that stands out, a quick glance at the city's citizenry reveals that some of them have similar headwear on.

Her collar appears to be covertly hidden underneath an indescript, knitted wool scarf of drab tone wrapped around her neck and matching her robes.

「Yeah…」

She nods and raises her arms slightly. Her wide sleeves hang loosely off her wrists.

「…Do you think that this might be a little too flashy? If it was too plain, I'd stick out as well.」

Stripe asks while trying her best to keep her mouth from scrunching slightly as she looks into Straf's eyes.

「Nah, it looks good on you… I didn't expect to see a cat in a kimono, though.」

Straf returns a nonchalant shrug. After a second, he adds a remark with a smirk and an amused scoff.

「Wha-? It's not supposed to look good on me!…」

Her golden eyes widen, then quickly escape aside as her face reddens a little.

「It really looks good, though! And I saw you, but I didn't see you, you know!?」

Cycelia chimes in with her dainty fists clenched, nodding her chestnut head in agreement. Stripe quickly peeks at her, then turns her eyes away again.

「I saw the hat and thought,「That kind of looks like her hat!…」but I didn't think it'd be actually you… Tehe…」

Nona adds with an amused grin, leaning in slightly.

「…Mh… Okay…」

Stripe nods weakly, and awkwardly scratches her cheek with her claw.

「…Er, ah… Listen, Straf… I have pretty important information, but it's not something that I can tell you here.」

She quickly collects her thoughts, and returns her eyes back to Straf.

「Same. But first…」

Straf nods with a tight-lipped grimace on his face, then extends his hand out towards her head.

Pat!

「…How do you have money, Stripe?」

He asks as his hand noisily lands on top of her head, right between her animal ears, which are now silhouetting through her hat.

「Geh?…」

She utters out as an awkward grin appears on her face. Straf continues staring into her eyes with a tight-lipped grimace, and it slowly but surely is turning frustrated.

「…Were you hiding something from me?」

Straf asks another question in a stern tone, leaning in slightly. Stripe leans back.

「I… I had some funds stashed…」

She meekly replies while evading eye contact with Straf's very close face.

「Funds?… You mean the money you stole?…」

「N- No!… Old stashes full of old coins!… Most of them were from my training days!… I figured I might as well collect them, since I doubt I'll need them again…」

Straf asks, and Stripe tries to shake her head, but his hand restricts the motion. She quickly explains herself while looking at his piercing, unyielding gaze, averting her own.

「That's rather fortunate… 'Cause you didn't inform us that they don't accept drakes here!」

He replies, peeling his hand away from her hat.

She quickly readjusts it with her free hand, and nervously bites another dango away from a skewer, chewing through it rapidly with massive eyes as if it were the last thing she'll do.

「…I forgot!… And I figured that you'd know anyway! Besides, it's been years since I last came here! I didn't know for sure!」

Stripe gulps noisily and replies with her arms spread while Straf is staring at her with his mouth heavily scrunched to the side.

「The fact that you forgot cost us, and now it's going to cost you…」

Straf ominously declares while pointing his finger in her face. She gulps nervously with a tight-lipped grimace, and quickly bites onto another dango.

「…You're going to take us to a nice place and fund us food. I'd go for a dango, but Lia is hungry and we could use something more substantial.」

He adds, casually placing his hand back in his pocket. Stripe winces, and her shoulders slump.

「Fine. We're not squeezing through the main street at these hours. There's somewhere we can go not too far from here, though. Come, I guess…」

She lets out a defeated sigh, then shrugs her shoulders with her brows furrowed in frustration. She turns around, gesturing her hatted head down the road.

Straf glances over his shoulder at his group, then shrugs and follows after Stripe…