Severin continued shooting angry looks towards Samuel. But it was the oblivious girl who picked up on his displeasure and questioned him.

“What’s wrong?”

Forcing himself to calm, he answered, “Nothing, Em,” and suppressed the urge to hug the girl. Instead, he contended himself with ruffling her hair. “I have just been very worried about you. That all sounded pretty dangerous, you know.”

“No way! Samuel was looking out for me. There was nothing to worry about! This was just the first floor of the dungeon. The monsters there are soo weak, you know, and since they can recognize the difference in strength, they would never approach Samuel. And as long as I stay close to him, his, eehm, aura, would conceal mine. So there was no danger at all!”

Severin tried to be patient and let the girl recite the information she had clearly just been told herself. Only when she was done he said, “Oh? What a relief,” while squinting above the girl’s head and again in Samuel’s direction. “So he was taking care of you when you saw that cat?”

“Well, of- uhm. I mean, that was when we were in the camp with all the others. There were all kinds of people!”

“Is that so?” Severin said, still searching for eye contact with the [Berserker].

“Obviously!” she laughed.

“Obviously. You are right. Haha,” laughing a strained laugh, he again ruffled her hair. Before seemingly changing the subject.

“What do you say? Want to try some of the local food. While you were gone, I have be-”

“Yes! Yes, please. That’s the best day ever! Thank you so much.” The girl could not be stopped in her excitement.

“But only if you tell me some more about your trip.”

“Of course!”

Severin started backtracking his steps and led the small group towards the nearest of the food stands he had already scouted in advance, as the girl was overflowing with words, recounting her adventures.

When they arrived at the stall, Severin produced some coins and pressed them into the girls’ hands, holding them a bit longer than strictly necessary, the girl still too excited to notice.

“Get one of those skewers for each of us, will you?”

“Only o-”

“We will eat it on our way to the next stand over there,” he pointed a few meters ahead and quickly forestalled her objection.

“Yes!” she steamed off.

Severin waited for a few moments until he was sure the bustle on the street put the girl out of earshot.

“So. Tell me! What happened?”

“I don’-”

“The cat! What happened?” He demanded again.

“It’s like she said,” still fidgeting but not trying to avoid the topic, Samuel finally gave in. “It was a Margay. It is relatively harmless to humans and tends to avoid their contact. It either hunts prey that is smaller than itself or tries to lure it into an ambush by mimicking its prey’s calls. Now, the dungeon variant is, of course, more cunning and daring, but even then, it wouldn’t sneak into the camp of a whole raid group. So it’s not some- “

“Samuel!” Severin finally interjected, his patience running low.

“Yes, well… as I was saying. Its behavior was highly uncharacteristic, and judging by its size, it had to be a mutated specimen. Nothing anyone could have predicted. Even the regular ones are quite rare to begin with. But even then, I assure you, this sounds far mo-”

“There you go!” Way too soon for Severin’s liking, Em came running back towards them. “They let me skip the line! This really is the best day ever! Just look at the meat!”

“Thanks, Em. But stop running with those skewers in your hand. If you stumble, you will only hurt yourself.”

“Yeees, Sev.”

“Your being overdramatic,” Samuel meekly came to Emily’s defense. Causing Severin to swiftly turn around towards him. “You!” he said, almost accusatory. But before he could say anything more than that, he was interrupted by his little assistant’s smacking voice.

“Hmm. Shish ish shooo tashty! I-I wonda, wad,” Gulp, ”kind of meat this is.”

Severin, who had only taken a few bites off his own skewer, had to reluctantly agree with her; it was very tasty, but he wasn’t in the mood to indulge.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Samuel, again in an attempt to smooth the waters, took this chance to change the topic of the conversation and begun to answer her question.

“I can’t say for certain, but it has to be some sort of dungeon monster. Like basically all the meat around here. Most of the fruit and vegetable are as well.

That spicy flavor, though. That sting? That’s the Adventurer’s Spice I told you about. That one herb I showed you, remember? The one with the four lobed leaves and the thick stems?”

“Really? It tastes amazing.”

But Severin was having none of it. With the sweetest and calmest voice he could muster in the current situation, he asked, “Wanna go check out the next stall?”

“Yes!” The girl, of course, readily agreed.

Just a few meters further ahead-not a great enough distance for Severin to further question the girl - the scene of him pressing a few coins into the girl’s hands repeated. And again, off she went.

Set on continuing his talk with Samuel, he turned around. But this time the man, surprisingly, beat him to it.

“Listen, I’m sorry about what happened. The beast shouldn’t have been able to sneak into the camp like that. Mutated or not. But there really wasn’t any danger-”

“Five hundred,” Severin interrupted.

“What?”

Severin took a deep breath before continuing; apparently the man wasn’t quite aware of the extend of things and what had almost happened to Emily. “That is the amount of damage that ring could prevent before breaking.”

“What?!” the incredulous question was followed by an audible, uncomfortable gulp. Similar to Severin’s own initial reaction, Samuel’s face now too was drained of all color. “That is not what...”

‘Not what?’, Severin had the inclination to demand, but somewhat mollified by the-if in his opinion belated- reaction, restrained himself, and let the man finish his sentence.

“… they had told me.”

“What do you mean they told you?” Severin immediately blurted accusatory.

Look at these! And how they smell!” again the young voice interrupted them at the worst conceivable time. Accordingly, grumpy was Severin’s reaction.

“Em! What did I say about running?”

“You only talked about skewers. Can’t hurt myself with these, can I?” the girl said, pouting and while holding up the three disposable bowls she was carrying, each filled with what looked like to be deep fried vegetables topped with a blob of green sauce. Severin had to admit it truly did smell delicious, even if the color of the sauce wasn’t quite as appetizing. Still, given his current mood, he had to force himself to down the stuff as he changed his approach.

Ignoring Samuel for the moment, his full attention was now back of Emily, fully intent to figure out what exactly had happened.

“So, about that cat, Em.”

“It was soo cool.”

“Right. And you said that was inside the camp?”

“Mhmm,” she had already stuffed her face again. “Ahlwedy dishmandld. It shudnly-”

“Swallow first.”

Gulp

“It suddenly stood right behind me, wh-“

“Behind you!?”

“Seeev. Do you want me to tell you or not?”

Silently, Severin made an apologetic gesture and let her continue.

“I suddenly tripped and for a moment thought something was passing by my head. Then I heard Miriam shouting that something was behind me. Well, and there it was. So cute, with its big eyes! Like a confused little kitten! Well, more like a big kitten. But…” at this point disappointment crept into her voice, “… Timothy immediately chased it away. I think he was just startled, hihi.”

“And then?” Severin asked with bated breath.

“Nothing,” she answered, her voice now regretful. “Miriam pulled me away towards the others. Left soon after.”

“Towards the others?

“Mhm. Sam was still talking to the [Pri- I mean Markus.”

Severin’s look towards him immediately prompted Samuel to speak up and explain himself.

“Once we arrived, I had to go report the situation to Markus,” he admitted. “So I instructed the two to watch out for her. But this is not quite what they… I guess that explains…” Dread, guilt and a hint of anger could be heard as Samuel began mumbling to himself to process the facts he himself quite obviously hadn’t been privy to in its entirety.

The person in question was already off again to the next stand when the man finally spoke up.

“In case it makes you feel better... Timothy got the thing. It is dead.”

It followed a short awkward silence during which Severin again evaluated all the information and tried to calm himself. He was still very much upset, but noticeably softer and nodding to himself, he finally replied,

“It does.”