While seeing the [Priestess of Purity] drop like a sack of potatoes was kind of funny, the fact that nobody stopped her body from smacking face-first onto the ground was extremely funny.
The impact sounded wet and crunchy, leaving me without a doubt that she had broken her nose, a fact corroborated by the rivulet of blood that was flowing from under her head onto the pavement.
Sir Prise briefly looked in our direction, just long enough to grace us with one of her stoic nods, which Sheeno reciprocated, and then she and her entire contingent of [Knights] and [Guards] left the scene, whilst carrying the unconscious woman in garish clothes like, I hate repeating myself but the comparison is still too accurate to ignore, a sack of potatoes slung over the shoulder.
“I’m honestly surprised that it went so well”, I said while looking at their receding forms.
“Why would you say that?” Undine asks, seemingly confused by my reaction.
“Because, when he’s around, things never go smoothly, and unexpected complications are extremely prone to appear at the most inopportune moment”, my amazon explained way too casually for my taste.
“Go ahead and paint me like some kind of ‘unlucky charm’, will you?” I exclaimed, only slightly offended.
It had been proven as the undeniable truth, time and time again, meaning that however insulting I might find it, I had made peace with that fact already, and I definitely didn’t need someone else pointing it out.
“He’s not unlucky: He’s just very involved with the [Fate] that is currently unraveling”, the Nymph tried to defend me, but I think she ended up oversharing.
“Come again!?” I whipped around to stare at her.
Her face suddenly froze in forced calmness, while her eyes started twitching in seemingly random directions, which probably meant she realized she had fucked up, and was now checking her [System] to see how she could possibly salvage the situation.
By the emotion I could feel, she wasn’t panicking as much as I thought, so this shouldn’t have been something that I wasn’t supposed to know, but her action spoke about her reluctance to tell me about it, enough that I started pitying her.
“Ok then, keep your secrets. We're not going to push you-“
“Says who!?”
I was trying to defuse the situation, and drop the subject, albeit temporarily, but apparently Sheeno had other ideas, one of which was prodding our new companion for the unknown variable that she was unwilling to share with us.
“Says me, the one the secrets are about. They’re not important for the near future, or Undine would have definitely emptied the sack already, and I already have an inkling of what this is about, so nobody needs to push anybody”, I explained, giving her a as meaningful of a glare as I could.
“Tcht, fine! But we better pick this discussion up another time”, she eventually replied with a click of her tongue, after staring into my eyes trying to discern how serious I was being.
An extremely soft sigh of relief notified me that my stance was noted and appreciated, but the one most affected by this seemed reluctant to even point that out to me in order to avoid talking about it at all.
“We should be done with our preparations then, right? We just have to contact Merglobth and tell them to proceed with officializing our chosen [Quests]”, Sheeno was the one that reluctantly decided to move the discussion forward.
“I think so, yeah. Can’t wait to put my new drip to the test!” I responded, while pointing out the new leather armor I was wearing under the cloak. Pale grey and with a rough texture, my new form of protection over my equally new dull white and black garments that were made to be worn together. As far as I could tell the latter was meant as simple under-armor, but I still thought it still looked stylish enough to double as normal clothes.
The whole ordeal with my introspection, and then the stalking [Priestess], made me almost forget that the two pushy grannies had almost demanded that I exit their store while showing off my new apparel. Maybe it was one way they advertised their work, or maybe they simply were so proud of it that they needed to see it used as soon as possible, it mattered little to me since I was one of those people that wasted no time using the new stuff they had just bought.
A leather breast-plate with incorporated flexible shoulder pads, so that I didn’t have to worry about fitting it myself every time I had to wear it, leather arm and leg guards that went around the entire limbs, with the only less protected parts being the back of the knees and elbows, where a sort of ‘webbing’ was used to close the gap and add at least a little bit of protection; said ‘webbing’ was also used on the armpit’s part for probably the same reason. If there was anything that I would critique it would be the fact that the leg guards made it look like I was wearing chaps, and the lack of a helmet, but that last part was easily explained by the fact that it was common knowledge that [Mages] preferred to leave their heads as bare as possible to more easily emanate their [Will] from their brains, which is the preconceived part were one instinctually does it from; notable exceptions were the use of circlets or crowns, which were small enough to not count towards that, but for that one needed to find a very specific type of jeweler, who not only would be extremely expensive, but there was no way that we would find any that had an open slot to work on something for us without a reservation taken years in advance.
Thankfully, the hood of the cloak made for surprisingly good armor, and once I had applied [Adaptability] to everything, followed by my unique brand of force-dampening and antagonistic elemental response [Enchantments], I felt confident enough to be ready to go right away on an adventure.
“I don’t even want to know why you would use ‘drip’ that way, but I got the gist of it, and, honestly, I wholeheartedly agree: After all, I too have a new toy that I need to put through its paces”, my girlfriend answered right back, patting the four knuckles hanging on her belt with vigorous affection.
Undine threw a discreet glance their way, having definitely noticed them before then, and then asked a simple question that made me sweat internally.
“Those are exceptionally well done! Where did your late father commission them?”
Wasn’t she being too nosey for someone that almost started begging when one tried to pry any secrets from her? The nerve of some people, really-
“My father, the late [King of Fire] unfortunately was not around when I commissioned these beauties. I’ll tell you though that their crafter is highly elusive, and it was mere luck that I managed to meet them and have them forge these for me”, my mate stupefied me speechless with the bullshit she was unapologetically spewing.
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I mean, nothing she said was directly false, only misleading, and I think that was deliberately done so; because if someone had to have a [Skill] that could discern truth from falsehood, it would definitely be a [Priest].
“A fortuitous encounter indeed. I just hope that they won’t attract more attention than they already have: Even obscured from inspection, their high rarity and impressive craftmanship is not so simply hidden”, the [High Priestees] said in a low tone of voice, probably so that it would carry less.
Now that she mentioned it, there were a lot of people that threw one or more surreptitious glances our way in passing, but I honestly thought they were just wrought from that I tagged along with two objectively gorgeous women. After all, ‘jealousy’ was the emotion I was getting with my [Aura].
I was wondering why you were not more worried about how badly hidden your hand-made weapons were, with all the looks they were receiving.
Turns out that you just had your head down in the gutter the whole time.
“Yeah, ok. But to be fair: Today I was already made to deal with a lot, you can’t blame me for leaving my mind wandering a little.”
I can and I will.
“… Fiiiine…”
I really wanted to groan out loud, but now it definitely wasn’t the time, nor place, so I ruthlessly pushed it down and kept my face as neutral as possible all the while; and, by the fact that neither of my companions made mention of it, it seemed that I had successfully hidden my inner discussion from being too obvious, for once.
One teleport later, and we were back in the main building of the [Rainbow Guild], where I was forced once more to wear the goggles that I had now grown accustomed to, in order to protect my sensitive eyes from the erratic bits of magic that there laid, intertwined, and strewn across the place.
If I had to be honest, since receiving my new eye I could deal better with it than before, even gaining a small increase to my [Mana Regeneration] when I actively concentrated on absorbing the errant magical energies through it… but why would I ever want to give the game away?
Sure, out there people could see that my eyes were even more weird than before, but if I were to constantly wear the goggles to hide them I would only end up attracting more attention because of it. No, it was far better that I made it obvious that I had a [Trait], or something akin to it, that changed me further aesthetically, than to imply that it also removed one of my perceived weaknesses.
“I already contacted Merglobth, who was very insistent this time around on sharing contacts, and while they’ve confirmed that they’re finalizing our [Quest list] they also said that [Guild Master] Riverfist wanted to speak to us before we departed”, Sheeno informed us.
“The old brutish gorilla wants to see us? That doesn’t sound good… Do you know anything else about the eventual [Parties] that we’re supposed to cooperate with during some of our missions at least?” I asked, after enunciating my thought about the flat-nosed [Cultivator].
“Nothing yet on that front, unfortunately” she replied with a grimace.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one that didn’t like being kept in the dark about this, although, as far as I understood it, this was sort of part of the punishment that I still deserved for scaring people with my unregistered [Mount].
“Why did you call the [Guild Master] a gorilla? Isn’t he a [Scimian Kebunu]?” Undine pulled my attention and made me aware of her furrowed brows.
But it was not me that cleared her confusion.
“Darwin gives anyone that he knows little nicknames, and the less he likes a person, the less flattering and consistent they become.”
“Oh, interesting”, the [Water Nymph] was now looking at my nosey girlfriend with a thoughtful expression.
“Wait, do they really get more inconsistent?” That kind of sounded new to me, but maybe it was simply something that I did subconsciously.
“Calling a monkey a gorilla sounds like the type of thing you would normally be pedantic about, and I can tell that without even exactly knowing what a gorilla is!” Sheeno put two of her hands on her hip and gave me her signature look.
“Shit, you’re right”, I muttered, feeling defeated by my own actions.
“I always am!” She boisterously declared.
“Don’t push it, woman”, I warned her goodnaturedly.
We idly chatted some during the walk, with me trying to involve Undine some more in our usual banter, which unfortunately backfired with the two of them allying against me.
“Did I really think this was going to go any other way?”
Soon, we were in front of Merglobth’s office, and a palpable tension seemed to permeate through the closed door.
“Well, looks like Rubicon is in his ‘unapproachable strong and authoritative man’ mode. I’ll leave the talking to you two, before I put both of my feet in my mouth”, I stated.
I still didn’t like all these personas people here were more prone to using, but as long as I didn’t actively interact with them I found that it didn’t bother me all that much.
Many would argue that keeping my mouth shut would work best in most situations anyway, but fuck those guys.
With a smirk from Sheeno, and an even more puzzled look from Undine, the former pushed the door open, and graciously kept the door open for us, gesturing for us to get in with a bow.
There was something funny about a [Banished Princess] being so courteous with us for no apparent reason, but at the moment I was preoccupied with trying to figure out what kind of mind game she was playing at this time.
Sheeno Fyratta was not someone that did anything without a reason behind it.
…
Except maybe fighting. That was simply something she liked to partake in.
Getting into the room, my [Aura] was the first sense that registered the unexpected guests inside.
Inside we found the expected Merglobth and Rubicon, but the latter had somehow used his own overwhelming presence to mask the other four individuals in the room. Four unfortunately familiar individuals: 3 [Sky Gnomes] with pointy blue hats, practically indistinguishable one from the other, and a visibly furious, yet with a face that spoke of reluctant restraint, [Tree Elf] with light green hair and a wooden Gatling gun strapped to her back.
“Good, you’re here. I was made aware that you would be departing soon on a long assignment, where you would take on numerous [Quests]. Cherry here, and her three minions, will accompany you for the first quarter of your travel, where you will be forced to cooperate with one another. You’re not allowed to refuse this: Consider it the last part of the punishment for both guilty [Teams] for that ‘[Mount] mess’. [High Priestess] Undine, you’ll be required to go along with this even if you don’t share any of the blame: I’m not going to make exceptions, not even for you.”
Everybody present was looking at the [Guild Master] with various degrees of emotion, from shock to anger, except for me and Sheeno: The others might be shocked by how much he said, since it was generally known that Rubicon wasn’t one to like to speak for long, or outraged at the inflexible punishment he had just sprung on us all, but we knew better and recognized it as him dropping his mask a bit to just let his point get more easily across.
If there was something that he actually disliked more than speeches, it was having to repeat himself or minutely explain what he was trying to say. That last one was a quick way to getting hit in the back of your head, and as someone that had been personally instructed by him, I knew it all too painfully well.
I sent a quick wink his way and he responded with a disgruntled look and a slight purse of his lips.
Do not mess with your employer…
Of course, [Buddy] was right, but that didn’t stop me from having my bit of fun.
Before anyone could anything sensible, the one whose anger kept on spiking finally exploded.
“Why would I work with [Demons] like those!?”
Everyone, and I mean everyone, even her three little stooges, were giving her astonished looks.
“Aw, shit. Here we go again.”