Griffin shouldn’t have been impressed by an elementary wizard trick. It seemed to pale in comparison to the cloak of shadows the woman that had reluctantly introduced herself as Shen-Ya had been capable of and he supposed that his own Dagger of Descension was terrifying when it came to its ability to absorb literal souls.

Nevertheless, Griffin was not ashamed to admit that he was very impressed when Jun-Ra pulled out a fresh set of robes from thin air. His former tax lawyer, well, tax evasion lawyer would have absolutely loved that party trick, assuming that she had actually stashed those robes in a magical safe of sorts and could summon them as and when she needed. Though then again, it would make him sort of redundant, so maybe not.

The question was practically burning at the tip of his tongue, but Griffin liked the thought of no longer having to run down a sewer butt-naked just a tad bit more. It could wait.

And it did wait.

The robes were clearly a woman’s, most likely Jun-Ra’s.They were clean, smelled nice and only slightly tight though, so Griffin wasn’t going to go and complain to his unexpected benefactor.

“Uh, before I get into the long-drawn explanation, can I ask you something?” Griffin decided to just go for the question, unless they were very strongly opposed to the idea.

“Sure,” Jun-Ra offered him an encouraging nod, signaling for him to go ahead.

“That thing you did just now,” He made a grabbing motion with his right hand, as if he were trying to tug at something that wasn’t visible to the naked eye. “Is that magic?”

Shen-Ya let out an audible gasp.

Jun-Ra’s eyes went wide with an emotion that seemed to lie somewhere in between astonishment and anger. Perhaps both.

“How dare you compare my esteemed Senior Sister Jun to a filthy mage!” Shen-Ya thundered as the blood rushed to his face and the shadows coalescing around her back deepened.

Griffin took a wary step back, clearly not having expected that reaction.

Jun-Ra’s right hand shot forward, blocking Shen-Ya’s path forward with a clear warning in her gaze.

“Strong outbursts of emotion are unbecoming of a martial artist, junior sister. Daoist Thorne does not seem to remember our customs.”

“I…. Forgive me, Senior Sister Jun,” Shen-Ya’s face fell, her clenched hands calming as she realized that she had overstepped.

“To answer your question Daoist Thorne, it is not magic that I just used, but a function of the system. While I will not pry about your classes, even if you don’t have one, you can call upon the inventory and store upto ten small to medium items.”

“Wait, you mean I could’ve—-drat,” Griffin’s face darkened with realization as he realized just how much free stuff he had lost out on. He loved free stuff because, well, who didn’t—- it was free!

“Oh well, I suppose what’s done is done. Better alive than trapped forever in a secret enclosure. On that note, Inventory,” Griffin commanded, even though he didn’t completely put his stock in Jun-Ra’s words. Magic couldn’t be that easy, right?

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“Whoa,” Griffin muttered in astonishment, as he felt a strong tingle at the tips of his fingers. Naturally, that wasn’t all. There was resistance, as if he was prying open unseen folds in space itself. There was also feedback beyond his sense of touch, almost like a sixth-sense. For some reason, he could perceive the presence of a small room that was hovering before him. Its edges were frayed, as if it was forcefully imposing itself on Aeldfane’s gravity, but Griffin was too impressed with the space magic to meaninglessly conjecture upon what implications that could have.

“You must really have lost your memories,” Shen-Ya’s remark had a bite to it, though initially Griffin hadn’t caught on to the hostility in her tone. “Or you’re an exceptional actor. Never seen someone look so wide-eyed at a basic system function.”

This time, Jun-ra did not interject. It seemed like she agreed with the assessment.

“Well, that’s a bit rude,” Griffin replied after a beat, too fresh off the high of discovering that he could cast spatial magic on the fly to care. “But then again, you two are the only reason why I’m not running around without clothes and hopefully, won’t starve.”

“That depends upon your explanation,” Jun-Ra subtly warned and Griffin had not forgotten that she mentioned something about belonging to a sect, possibly implying that she was here on the behalf of the organization she had mentioned earlier.

“Fine, fine,” Griffin raised his hands up in surrender. “I’ll tell you the truth, alright. So, it all started when I woke up on a stone dias in a secret chamber….”

Griffin had a feeling that lying to these not-magicians, because apparently calling them magicians seemed to be akin to uttering a slur, was not a great idea, considering Shen-Ya just seemed to be looking for an excuse to knock him out and deposit him in the nearest equivalent of a jail cell.

Plus, Griffin couldn’t lie, for the most part. If there was one thing his years of being on the run from an international network of law enforcement agencies had taught him, it was that lies required basis. On Aeldfane, he knew nothing about nothing, so the best he could do was withhold information. Any attempt to overcompensate for his story would result in his amnesiac cover falling apart almost instantly.

So he told them about how he woke up in an eerie stone chamber with no recollection of how he got there. He told them about the dead cultists that encircled him in some sort of ritualistic formation. Then, he described his accidental escape— his butt-naked dive towards freedom.

That was how he found himself in the sewers of Zenari-Shu, penniless and clothes-less.

“...and in my defense, those damned creatures attacked me first, alright? I get that you’re responsible for them, but what was I supposed to do? Let my face get ripped off my flesh?”

Silence reigned in the halls for a few long moments.

“What an awfully convenient story. You say that you can lead us back to the chamber, but it’s magically sealed and there’s no way to access it without blowing the wall up and possibly flooding the canal,” Shen-Ya sneered, clearly losing patience with his explanation.

“Is there any way you can prove your claims, Daoist Thorne?” Jun-Ra asked, her question framed far more politely.

“Look,” Griffin gently massaged his head, as he feigned confusion. “I know their leader’s name. The bitch who locked me in that chamber.”

“Oh?” Shen-Ya muttered.

“Her name was Sliver Knifeshadow. She’s dead and this is her cursed dagger,” Griffin blankly explained, as if the name didn’t mean anything to him. Well, it didn’t, but from the cues the so-called ‘System’ had offered him, he could guess that summoning a literal person from a different world probably wasn’t a feat Bob from accounting could manage.

As for the dagger itself, Griffin didn’t much care if the girls robbed him off it. Shen-Ya’s gaze had been on it the entire time and it would work far better for him if she just took the damn thing instead of robbing it off his dead body.

The reaction that he got though, was far from the one he had been expecting.

Shen-Ya, who had been eagerly pressing him for information all this while, took a step backwards.

On her visage was an emotion that his encounters with the Crackjaws had repeatedly brought forward—-

A definite, visceral fear.