Straf returns to Cycelia, walking up the stairs against the leaving spectators' grain.

「Straf…」

Cycelia smiles and stands up from her seat when she notices him come closer.

「Why'd you wait for me here? You could have just waited outside.」

Straf stops by their seats, standing casually with his hands in his pockets as they look down the stairs at the stream of people flowing down.

「I thought you'd get worried if I wasn't here when you come back… That was a pretty amazing match, Straf! I didn't expect it to end that way!」

She clasps her hands together with big eyes, still mildly excited by Straf's show of force.

「Yeah. I guess I would be…」

Straf says, as his voice trails off. He nervously eyes the upper rim of the arena.

「Do you still get that feeling, Straf?」

She looks up in the same direction, but sees nothing.

「That somebody is watching? Not at the moment, at least. Let's go get our gold.」

Straf nods his head towards up the stairs. The crowd has thinned out considerably, and only a clique of gamblers is left at the tables, discussing winnings and the tomorrow's bout.

「Hey! Here's Straf!」

The gamblers move aside to let him in, and the bookie peeks at his ledger. Straf pulls out his tokens, and puts them down on the betting table with a clink.

「Straf! You gonna bet tomorrow!?」

「Nope.」

Straf answers the voice in the crowd, as he waits for the bald bookie to count the total value of his tokens.

「Why not!?」

「Stakes are too high.」

Straf shrugs with a bored face. Cycelia tilts her head, slightly shocked.

「Y- You're not going to bet, Straf?」

「Nope. Don't bet on me either, Lia.」

「But…」

She lowers her gaze and fidgets with her medallion, pouting a little. Straf turns his bored eyes to her.

「Lia, knowing when to quit and take your winnings is a skill that lets you keep your home and your pants.」

Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank.

「Hoookay! Here's your coins. Five… Ten… Fifteen… Twenty…」

The baldie bookie places groups of gold coins on the table, and counts them. The gambling crowd stares on in awe, respect, and some of them in mild envy, as the table slowly runs out of free space.

「…Seventy…」

The bookie mumbles to himself. Straf shoves himself into his thought flow.

「Can I start taking them yet?」

「What?」

「The coins. Can I take them yet?」

「Yeah yeah yeah, I guess… Fuck, where was I?」

The bookie asks himself, and Straf opens his [Portable Storage] and starts throwing the coins in. The gambling crowd once again furiously begins discussing the whirling vortex of storage.

「Twenty.」

Straf says, throwing handful of gold after a handful into the purple hole.

「Wha-? No I fucking wasn't! Straf! Don't make me make you pull those-」

「Heh, yeah, make me-」

Straf interrupts the irate bookie.

「You were at seventy.」

…And Cycelia interrupts Straf, nodding her head a little to reassure the bald man.

「What? Oh, yes. Thank you, lady… Seventy five…」

The bookie glances with his narrowed eyes at Cycelia, they then widen for just a second. He thanks her, and picks up from where he left off. Straf clicks his tongue, rolls his eyes, and continues taking the coins as the bald man places them on the counter.

The gamblers arrive at a likely conclusion, that the purple whirl is actually a hole to a magic gold dimension, where its inhabitants worship Straf's hand as a deity, and provide it with a tribute of gold.

One man in the crowd questions why would the gold dimension inhabitants possess coins of the Redwing dynasty, which stumps the main proposer of the little gold creatures theory. Another man is about to deliver his explanation, but Straf abruptly closes his [Portable Storage], leading to an end of the discussion with disappointed sighs.

「…That's all the coins. Like I said, tomorrow is the big betting day. All the nobles and gamblers crawl out of the woodwork. The word of mouth spreads in the city, they'll most likely be betting on you, since most people hate the other guy.」

The bookie says as he stares into the formerly full box beneath the desk. Only a small layer of gold coins remains at the bottom, after he handed the rest back to Straf. He lifts his bald head up, and leans onto the counter with his elbows.

「Straf, are you seriously going to kill the fucking king?」

「Yup.」

「…Is that why you need the gold?」

「Nope.」

The bookie shakes his head in confusion at Straf's monosyllabic answers. He leans in even closer, and squints his eyes.

「…Then why?」

The bookie asks, in a hushed tone. Straf gives the question only a second of thought, then shrugs with his hands in his pockets.

「'Cause he's a dick.」

Straf turns away, and starts walking towards the stairs. The bookie stands up from his stool.

「Wait! I have to know! You could build a castle with a quarter of this money! What do you need all that gold for!? Straf! I won't be able to sleep at night! Straf!」

「Yeah, welcome to the club…」

Straf shakes his head as he walks down the steps with Cycelia. She looks over her shoulder at the shouting bookie, then turns her eyes to Straf.

「I'm curious about that myself. Why are you amassing so much money, Straf? Are you planning on recruiting mercenari-」

「Nope.」

Straf shoots back another monosyllabic answer. Cycelia is slightly taken aback.

「Then just how do you plan on throwing him out of the throne?」

Cycelia takes her confused eyes off Straf only to watch her step as they walk down the stairs.

「Easy. Just walk in there, and stab him.」

Straf shrugs, and Cycelia suppresses a giggle. They take the last step down to the lowest auditorium level, before turning for the stairs to the lobby.

「Ahh… Straf, I'm not even sure if you're just joking, or serious at this point. Knowing you, it's likely you could do it-」

「Of course I'm serious, what did you think? That I'll assemble a rag-tag resistance group with a token non-human?」

Straf's brows furrow in confusion, and Cycelia laughs into her hands, turning her face away from Straf. It takes her a few moments to calm down.

「Last thing I need is another boring and overtly long arc full of characters I won't remember. I guess I'll remember Roland. I don't know why he quit being an adventurer, if he's a walking tank cliche.」

「Ahh… That reminds me, do you know what happened to the fight between Bob and Sturm?」

Cycelia asks, wiping a tear with her finger from her amused eyes. They manage to squeeze into the stairwell down after a moment of waiting.

「It didn't start, right? I guess Bob had to leave to stab his friend. Or, return back to the couch in his family sitcom. Or both, at the same time.」

Straf and Cycelia walk down the stairwell into the lobby. Straf stops to take a look at the tournament bracket wall. The wall's carved channels glow, reaching all the way to where Straf's and Sturm's names are placed. Straf smirks and walks out of the arena, with Cycelia close behind him.

Once outside, Straf stops to look at the shadows and the sun above. Cycelia catches up beside him as well.

「Guess it's a little too early to go back to inn…」

Straf shrugs with his hands in his pockets, squinting a little to avoid being blinded by the light.

「Yes, it'll be a few more hours before it's dark, I think…」

Cycelia joins Straf in looking at the very sparsely cloudy, blue, summer sky. The slow and gentle wind pushes the lonely white clouds along on their way, and brings relief to the people caught outside the shadows in the otherwise scorching cobblestones and walls of the city.

「So, you've never been here before, right?」

Straf's gaze drifts down at Cycelia.

「Yes. I rarely had an opportunity to go anywhere, or any interest, really. I feel like I missed out. The capital had everything I needed, but maybe it didn't have the things I didn't know I needed.」

Cycelia locks her eyes with Straf, fidgeting with her gemmed medallion.

「Uh-huh. Like fights to the death. So, do you want to go take a look around? See if there's something interesting? Buy something?」

「Mhm!」

She nods her head with a huge smile, and clasps her hands together behind her back.

「But, um, Straf… I don't think I need fights to the death…」

Cycelia looks into his eyes, somewhat concerned about her image.

「Okay. Anyway, I don't know this place either, so let's just pick a direction and keep walking until we inevitably run into a dumb trope, or at least something cool. Come on.」

Straf nods down the road, and moves along one of the main streets. Cycelia joins beside him, with a great spring in her step, almost hopping about.

《Aaaaaahhhh! This must be what I read about! A date! Like in The Prince and The Beggar Queen! But with roles reversed! And Straf isn't really a beggar! And he's stupidly strong!- Actually, maybe it's only vaguely related…》

Cycelia grins ear to ear, as she thinks about her idea of what spending her time with Straf is to her. She remembers the announcer's words from earlier.

「Ah, that's right. Straf, the announcer said you were a writer your whole life, is that true?」

She leans forward to take a better look at Straf's bored face. He doesn't react, as he's staring onward blankly.

「…Straf?」

「Eh? Yeah, I guess.」

「Ah…」

Cycelia gets a little self-conscious by Straf's uncommitted answer, and starts fiddling with her medallion again.

《Is he upset at me? Or is he just tired? Surely he has to be tired after all that fighting?》

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She looks up at his face again, this time with uncertainty in her eyes.

「You know, I read a few novels, I was wondering if I maybe read one of your works under a pen name-」

「Nope.」

Straf interrupts Cycelia with another monosyllabic answer. It takes her a second to gather up courage to ask another question.

「…How come, Straf? I'm pretty well-read, even if you're from a distant-」

「'Cause none of it was ever published.」

Straf clicks his tongue and looks at the sky with disdain, then answers.

「Huh?」

Cycelia blinks, trying to process how Straf can be a writer, and his works not be published.

「Yeah, none of the stuff I worked hard on was ever appreciated. Except one, and I didn't get to publish it. Y'know, dyslexia might be a writer's worst enemy, in ways we don't expect it to be.」

Straf lets out a large sigh as he looks back down to avoid the crowd.

「…What's dyslexia?」

Her confusion only deepens, as more strange and foreign words enter her vocabulary.

「Forget it. I want to forget it, too. It'll just make me mad again.」

Straf sighs again. Cycelia looks down at the ground, anxiously fiddling with her medallion.

《Is anything in Straf's past not painful?》

She wonders, as they navigate through the somewhat dense, afternoon crowd on the streets.

…

A few minutes pass. The buildings around Straf and Cycelia become more commercial-focused, with large display windows facing the streets. Though there are still private homes or other service establishments like a cobbler mixed in, the unabashed greed is out on display as well.

「Straf, are you tired, or in a bad mood? You are staring off into distance a lot…」

Cycelia asks, after managing to charge up her courage-batteries through silence. Straf glances at her with his bored eyes, which at this point have almost become his defining feature.

「Yeah, I'm tired of this city, and I'm tired of the tournament… But I'm mostly trying to figure something out, and the deadline is tomorrow…」

Straf's eyes drift upwards mid-sentence as he begins intensely thinking again, rubbing his chin.

「What is it, Straf? How to beat Sturm?」

「What? No- I mean yeah, kind of. Not quite, you're close. Ah, whatever. I guess I'll just figure it out later. Have you seen anything interesting yet?」

Straf looks down at Cycelia, returning his hand back to his pocket. His eyes are now a lot more focused, which turns her mildly concerned expression into a smile again.

「No, but… Would you want to enter a random shop, just to look around?」

Her hands clasped behind her back, she leans forward again. Her chestnut hair slides off her shoulder, and partially rests on her eye-drawing chest while it bounces with each step considerably.

「Sure, I'd love to annoy the store workers.」

A minor mischievous smirk appears on Straf's face. Cycelia points to a clothing store near them and tiptoes quickly to the entrance, with Straf trailing behind.

Ring ring!

A bell above the door lets out a clink, bringing the attention of the shop keeper and the workers to Cycelia, and to Straf behind her.

「Welcome to The Golden Thread. Are you looking for anything in particular, miss?」

A serious-looking man with a large, graying mustache stands at a tall counter near the door. He greets Cycelia with a light bow.

「Ah, no, not really…」

Cycelia immediately waves her hands in front of her, getting a little flustered by the instant attention.

Ring ring!

「Boy, they love people like you.」

Straf scoffs, smirking at the mustached man. He walks up to a wooden mannequin dressed in a suit similar to the shopkeeper's. Black, neat, with a little bowtie of matching color tied underneath a white collar, the suit on the mannequin would most likely fit the tastes a man of the late 19th century.

「Ah, fine taste, sir. This garnment is best worn together as a set. As you can see, it's tailored out of high-quality smooth textiles, all imported. We call this design The Man of the Fourth Era.」

A skinny, young man wearing a tuxedo walks up to Straf and begins showing off the suit, pointing out its elements and underlining its qualities. With his hands on his hips, Straf listens to the man with a disdainful grin, as if he was holding back laughter after hearing a really good joke. Straf nods every few words, while Cycelia looks through the womens' section of the store.

「…And we believe that in the future, when we advance the magic arts so far ahead, that there will be nothing left for a man to do, but read books, the commoner and the nobleman alike will be all dressed like this. So, why wait for the future? Why not become the future? …Would you like to try it on?」

The young man lifts his thin mustache with a large smile, satisfied with his delivery of likely the best pitch in his career as a salesman. Straf simply continues to grin back.

「Wow. A future so close I can smell it, huh? No thank you, I'm just browsing.」

Straf exquisitely politely turns the young man's offer down, putting emphasis on the last words. The man's shoulders slump, and he blinks a few times.

「Understood, sir. Do let me know if you change your mind, or need help, please.」

「I am beyond help.」

Confused that his pitch didn't work and greatly disappointed, the man backs away with a light bow. He switches targets to Cycelia instead.

「…Is this some sort of a ball gown?」

Cycelia asks idly while staring at a white dress on a female mannequin. She rubs her lip with her thumb, holding her elbow with her other hand. The young man quickly begins orbitting her.

「Good eye, miss. You were close… However! This is not any gown! This is our new design for a wedding dress…」

「Wedding dress!?」

Before the man has a chance to properly shill the somewhat modern-looking wedding dress to her, Cycelia turns away, hiding most of her face in her hands while blushing heavily. A flash of vexation appears on the man's face as she, too, ignores whatever he has to say.

「…Yes, a wedding dress. Ahem, as I said, it's our new design-」

「Ahh! But it's too early to think about that! I have so many things on my head still!」

Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

The man tries again, and Cycelia interrupts him, hiding further into her hands. Her face and ears are so hot, they are practically steaming, while the young man is almost fuming.

《Ahahaha… Nooo it's too early to even think about that, but I suppose if he insisted… As a price to pay to get the throne back… I suppose there's no helping it…》

While Cycelia is writing the plot to a romance novel featuring herself as the main character in her head, something very out-of-place in the refined and futuristic-old-timey store catches Straf's eye.

「…What is this?」

With a greatly amused and mildly confused grin on his face, Straf asks as he walks up to the unusually dressed mannequin, pointing his palm at it. The young man is delighted by the potential customer's question, and he pirouettes about to stand beside the female mannequin holding Straf's attention.

「This, sir, is a bathing set. For when a fine lady wants to keep her decency, and still enjoy the cool river, or sea waters.」

The young man points to the mannequin, smugly grinning as if he just hooked a massive fish.

「This? Decency? What kind of an exhibitionist slut is going to buy this? Or, y'know, what kind of a perverted boyfriend…」

Still amused that he's seeing it with his own eyes, Straf questions how the absolutely miniature two-piece micro-bikini which quite possibly only covers the bare minimum required to avoid being legally described as nude is being sold at this store.

「…Actually, maybe I should get this for Ath-」

Straf abruptly stops his loud thoughts, and looks over his shoulder at Cycelia, who is still giggling to herself like a woman who lost her mind. He raises his eyebrow.

《Hold on. So far, the gift score between that dyslexiac bitch and Lia is 1 to 0. If I give her another gift, someone may get the wrong idea that there's a main girl, or worse, that Athea is the main girl. I'd like to avoid shipping wars until I have a decent fleet of submarines and frigates, at least.》

Straf looks at Cycelia with cautious eyes, rubbing his chin.

「Sir? Would you-」

「No I'm not going to try it on, what's wrong with you?」

Scowling, Straf interrupts the young man that's trying to get his attention back.

「…I was going to ask if you wouldn't be interested in our collection of gloves. Sir.」

「…Right. Unless they are magical, and will help me lockpick doors- Actually, forget it. My foot is a master key at this point. I don't want any.」

Straf waves the man's offer away dismissively.

「Is there any demand for this… Swimsuit?」

Straf asks, with a sardonic smirk.

「It's currently the most popular design in our offer, sir.」

The young man nods his head while rubbing his hands.

「Wait, what?」

Straf's head recoils back from the shock, and his eyes narrow in surprise. His eyes widen when a realization dawns on him.

《I can't believe it! He might be just doing the old it's popular trick, to try and get me to buy it for sake of conformity… But what if he's saying the truth!? There may be some otherworlder sluts throwing beach balls thigh-deep in water at each other in someone else's beach episode!》

Straf rubs his chin intensely. He turns his eyes back to Cycelia.

《Myyyyy… You want how many!? Uhuhuhu… You are such a hopeless pervert, Straf! But I suppose it would be lonely without a big family…》

「What's so funny, Lia?」

Straf asks with his fists on his hips, standing behind Cycelia.

「Gya!!」

Cycelia screams and lowers her hands from her face. Not realizing she spaced out, her red face is twisted into abject, mortified panic from Straf's unexpected voice behind her. The tips of the older man's mustache jump up and down as his face grimaces, and the young man in tuxedo peeks over Straf's shoulder out of concern, both of them heavily startled by the shout.

「…What's with that reaction? Did you see a spider, or something?」

「Yes! A spider!」

「That's weird. I don't see anything.」

Straf slinks past Cycelia and squats down, looking over the floor carefully. He searches under the various assorted jackets, coats and pants, finding no arachnid in sight.

「It ran away…」

Pouting and red-faced, Cycelia mumbles while she fidgets with her medallion.

「Huh. Spiders here are fast sons of bitches. Well, did you look through everything you wanted to see here?」

「Y- Yeah…」

She replies, smiling nervously while twirling her hair, without turning to face Straf.

「Alright. Let's go then. What was so funny, by the way?」

Ring ring!

「Nothing!- I mean- I forgot!」

「Okay? It's not a big deal, you don't need to shout… I just thought you saw something ridiculous, and I'd like a laugh too…」

Ring ring!

The young man follows the two to the door, with his shoulders slumped. He turns to the older man, and shrugs his hands…

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

> 『Demonblade Soul Devourer』

>

> Allegedly wielded by one of the vampire barons during The Ash Nights, its ultimate fate remains unknown after the death of the demon lord.

>

> It is also known to some as『The Maddening Blade』or『The Whisperer』due to its cursed nature. There are certain unverified records of the sword possessing shape-shifting abilities.

>

> - Compendium of Cursed Things and Beings, p. 418

『Demonblade Soul Devourer』 [https://files.catbox.moe/jven5u.png]