“Well… that went well,” Bo’guth said from the chair of his desk. “However… we still have a little bit more to deal with.”
Right now, inside Bo’guth’s office, it was just him, Asteora, Miss Gaos, and me. Nicole had already left with her family, which insisted that she had to at least go home now, and since there was no reason to hold her at all, we let her do as she pleased.
As far as her becoming Asteora’s next student, it took a little bit of negotiating between Nicole and her parents, but in the end, they agreed that she could do it as long as she kept attending the Academy for the other classes that she takes.
There was some grumbling from the girl, but she relented on that point, which meant that she was still going to go to classes at the Academy. As for Asteora, she didn’t seem to really care, since just like she said before, there really wasn’t any sense of urgency…
That was only if we ignore the very unknown threat of the Holy Gods being out there, looking for this world. But that was something that we were keeping between her and Nicole.
“I don’t see a reason for dealing with all the people clamoring outside,” Asteora said, taking a sip out of a yellowish drink—something called ‘lulo’ juice.
I couldn’t help the curiosity myself and had also been tasting the different kinds of fruits and drinks that were brought here, and found myself amazed by the great taste of these things, so just like Asteora, I was also drinking from the same juice.
“Well…” Bo’guth said, scratching a horn with an awkward expression. “Even if you don’t want to talk to any of them, you’ll likely have to go by them when you go out, and they’ll hound you then.”
“That’s not something to worry about,” Asteora said, followed by an almost imperceptible movement of mana.
Right when I felt that, Asteora completely disappeared. It was as if in the blink of an eye, the woman simply wasn’t there anymore. Bo’guth looked surprised as he looked everywhere in the room, just like Miss Gaos was doing.
I wasn’t surprised, as this was likely just some form of concealment magic. I didn’t know any of them—or rather, I didn’t know how to properly use them—because as the Hero of the Holy Gods, there was no reason for the light to hide in the darkness. It would’ve been an insult to the power given to me by the Gods if I hid.
“Did she just… teleport?” Miss Gaos asked, turning her eyes to look around the room.
“No. A teleportation spell would consume much more magic and we’d see her use it. She’s just concealed,” I said while paying close attention to the food in the room.
It was then that I noticed how one of the apples disappeared just like Asteora had done, which meant that she simply reached for one of them. It was a couple of seconds later that she finally reappeared, still leisurely sitting on the couch while taking a bite of the apple.
“Then… are you planning to simply walk out of here like that?” Bo’guth asked.
“I guess I could,” she said, putting aside the skin of another fruit.
“Urgh… the headaches that I’ll get for not letting the people out there at least have a word out of you…” Bo’guth said with a low tone of voice as he looked slightly down, before looking back up to Asteora. “Can’t you at least say a couple of things?”
“Hmm… I could but… it all just seems so annoying. Why do they want to know what I’m doing with my life? That’s something that I don’t quite understand about a lot of people in this world,” she replied, reaching for a green apple this time.
I didn’t fully understand what she was talking about, but I knew a little bit about something that kids at the Academy were talking about a few times—something about social media and famous people—But like my master, I also couldn’t understand why people wanted to share and know everything about other people that weren’t related to them.
“It’ll just… help me greatly,” Bo’guth said with a forced smile that Asteora ignored.
After a few moments of the atmosphere turning somewhat awkward due to the forced smile on Bo’guth and Asteora biting into the apple, there were a few knocks on the office door.
It was to be expected, as there were still a lot of people outside that could be heard, and it had been a while since we came in here.
Miss Gaos quickly moved over to the door, opening it to reveal a young man standing on the other side with a bright smile.
He looked somewhat similar to Asteora, in that he had the same kind of pale skin, soft features, and slim figure. The only bits of difference would be his orange hair color and blue eyes.
“Excuse me!” he exclaimed with a cheery tone of voice, taking a step inside the office.
I worried about who this handsome young man could be, that he could simply walk inside like that without having to present himself, but I remembered that there were plenty of armed people keeping strangers outside, so he was either an important person or someone powerful enough to force his way in. If he had forced his way in, then he had committed a grave mistake, as Asteora would be able to dispose of him with the flick of a finger.
“Who might you be?” Bo’guth asked, the forced smile he had before replaced with a look of caution.
“Ah! Sorry about that! I thought I would’ve been expected here!” he said with a forced chuckle as she turned to look at Asteora.
I followed his gaze to look at my master, but she just gave him a glance and ignored him. Just from that action I could tell that he wasn’t an enemy—in fact, just the way that she reacted said more than words would’ve said.
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I turned my attention back at the handsome young man, then back at Asteora again, and finally back at the young man. I carefully looked at his forced smile and his features, and realized who this was likely to be.
With narrowed eyes, I moved over to look at Asteora. She avoided looking at me as her eyes turned to the side as far as her face would allow her.
Asteora was someone who liked pretty young men like this one. It wasn’t rare for her to fly over a new city whenever we reached one to look for someone ‘to have fun during that time’, however, her tastes were usually varied, for as long as they were pretty, she would try to get them.
Although, it was quite rare to see her return to someone who looked similar to what other elves looked, even if this one was human, as she once claimed that she was tired of the same looks that the elves had, so her picks had been different from the usual elves.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Asteora said, still refusing to look me in the eye. “I didn’t pick this one. He was given to me.”
I still didn’t change my narrowed eyes. “Is that so…?”
“U-um…” the young man interrupted, bringing my attention from my master to him. “H-has Lady Asteora not said anything…?”
“Sorry lad, we don’t know who you are,” Bo’guth said with a shake of his head. “So… care to introduce yourself?”
“Right!” he said, straightening himself and wiping the awkward smile he carried to put up a much more elegant one. “I am Oliver Hanssen, Assistant Director for Lady Asteora.” He did a slight bow. “Pleasure to meet you all.”
“Ah, the pleasure’s ours,” Bo’guth quickly replied. “As you might've guessed, I am the Director of this Magic Red Zone. I must say, you’ve come at just the right time, because I was worried about how we were going to deal with the mob downstairs that is just dying to get something out of the Embodiment of Magic.”
“‘Embodiment of…? Oh! Right, that’s what Lady Asteora gets called sometimes,” he said, looking over at Asteora, “I must agree with Director Bo’guth here, ma’am. I didn’t expect that your short trip would turn out to be like this, and much less that it would last almost a month!”
“Well… it wasn’t quite as simple as I thought it would be,” she replied, avoiding looking at him just like she had done to me before.
“It must’ve been!” he exclaimed, turning his eyes to look at everyone in the room, from Miss Gaos to Bo’guth and finally settling on me. “This is the so-called Hero of the Holy Gods?”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise, since I didn’t expect this young man to know who I was with just a glance. I turned to look over at Asteora, hoping to get some answers, and she simply nodded.
“Yes. She is in fact the very same woman. You were right in your assessment of the report,” she said, reaching for a drink this time.
“Oh ho! I must say, she’s much prettier in person than in the pictures,” he replied, looking me up and down, and before I could say anything about such a glance, his expression turned somber as he turned to Asteora. “However… Why didn’t you say anything in the past few days?!”
“Must’ve slipped my mind,” she said, sipping from a red juice.
Oliver sighed with his shoulders dropped. “You said that I’d have to work much more if I missed the mark on this ‘Althea’, but I still ended up doing so much work because of how long you took to say anything!”—he pointed a finger at Asteora with a look of indignation in his face—“No, even then, you didn’t say anything. The only reason I found out about what you were actually doing was because people were reporting it on the news and social media!”
Asteora continued to drink her juice without looking at the man. “Sorry.”
So she said, but her expression didn’t carry that feeling at all.
Again, Oliver dropped his shoulders and sighed. “Ah well. At least I get to charge for extra time.”
“Ahem,” Bo’guth cleared his throat, calling everyone’s attention to him. “So, Mister Oliver. About this whole situation, since you’re the Assistant for the Embodiment of Magic, how should we deal with this?”
“Hm…” Oliver put up a thoughtful expression. “It’s not an easy task… generally, we’d have a whole schedule set up for these sorts of things, where Lady Asteora would go in an organized manner when dealing with people of high importance… but right now, it’s more of a free-for-all where people from all sorts of backgrounds are trying to get something out of her in any way that they can…”
“Can’t we just ignore them? Push them aside and not care about what they say?” I asked with my head slightly tilted to the side.
“I agree,” Asteora said with a nod.
“No, no, that won’t do. The whole world already knows that we’re here, and they’re all watching; wondering what is going on in this place to have Lady Asteora come all the way here. So if we don’t say anything, then there’s going to be much more powerful people asking questions, and others creating speculations about this; ones that could go from petty things, to just straight up lies to rile people up,” Oliver said with a serious look on his face.
“So what? Asteora goes out there and proclaims something?” I asked, glancing at the calm-looking Asteora.
She wasn’t someone that ever bothered to do that. In fact, I only ever saw her stand to face a crowd and address them once, which was something that only she could do back then, but I didn’t see how she was going to do the same thing for something so minor. Usually, it would be me who would do such a thing.
“Well… that would be great but…” he trailed off, looking at Asteora who still appeared completely uninterested. “If it comes to that, I’ll be the one that takes care of that.”
“I see,” I replied, slightly changing the way that I was considering this young man.
It seems like he’s much more capable than he appears. Which is surprising, since he didn’t have any magic power either, so for someone like that to be standing up and taking responsibility like this, it was quite commendable.
“And… there’s one small-big issue that, sadly, you’re going to have to deal with…” he said, taking a big book-like phone from a small bag he carried. “There’s still a few powerful people in this place that we cannot avoid. I took the time to get in contact with them and organize a small greet so that they’re satisfied, and I made sure to get across the information that Lady Asteora wasn’t interested in dealing with any of them, so it should take no more than a couple of minutes to talk to them.”
Asteora sighed, putting away the empty drink, and returning a few of the fruits that she had lined up back to the food tray. “Do we really have to do that? I could just threaten them like I did a few days ago and get this over with.”
“W-well, there’s no need to go that far… These are much higher-up than the ones in that police station, so they could actually give us a headache—Besides, compare it to being left alone after this, to being hounded by other international institutions for days that are going to demand answers for the threats. Much more annoying, right?” Oliver said with a worried smile.
“Fine…” Asteora finally relented, “But I’m not going out there to meet anyone. Tell them to come here, say whatever bootlicking message that they have, and then have them leave.”
“Right away!” Oliver replied, pressing his fingers on the large phone. “The first ones are going to be from the Ministry of Magic and the Military.” He turned to look at Bo’guth. “I take it that there’s no issue if we use your office, Mister Bo’guth?”
“Oh, no, not at all. Do I have to leave?” he asked, getting half-up from the chair.
“No, no, that won't be necessary. These are just some simple things. Nothing to be worried about. And we wouldn’t dare to take your office for something like this, so please, sit down, and relax. It’s all under control,” Oliver said with the same elegant smile he had when he introduced himself.
“Very well,” Bo’guth said as he sat back down.
“Let's get this over with,” Asteora said, hiding as much as she could her annoyance as Oliver pressed a few things on the large phone.