“It’s nice to know that this ruins explorer package has artefacts I’ve never seen before,” Claud muttered, before rubbing his eyes, “but they could at least tell us what they do, right? What’s a Sea-Queller? What does a Mapping Beacon do? Is a Dimensional Cleaver really a cleaver? Can I use it for other things?”

He looked at the description of the item with Lily, and the two of them frowned.

“Maybe there’s an explanation included with the artefacts when you buy them,” Lily replied. “After all, if there’s a description publicly available, some people might be able to bypass buying this package by simply buying items that fit that profile.”

“So it might just be a waste, huh.” Claud looked at Lily.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Lily replied, her little nose quivering. “Like I said, we’re doing this as a team. Both of us will make sacrifices here and there over and over again.”

“Okay.” Claud took a deep breath. “I’m a bit used to doing everything myself, that’s all.”

Lily considered his words for a moment. “True. Even when I was following you around, you didn’t…really need me there, did you? You just gave me things to do to make me feel involved.”

“Don’t say that,” Claud replied. “Being paranoid is my specialty. Besides, you also have your strong points that I can’t replicate. Your explosives, for instance, are really handy. I feel a lot safer with them on hand now.”

“Really?”

“Would I lie to you?” Claud replied, before showing her the inside of his coat. “Take a look. Lots of smoke bombs, delayed explosives, sticky bombs...and you know who made them, right? I just never had the chance to use them yet, but feeling safe because I have them on me is really important too.”

He stared at the wrapped package for a moment. “It’s all in the mind sometimes.”

Being able to feel safe wasn’t something he usually experienced. Ever since his mother passed away, Claud never managed to feel truly safe, not until he started living in Moon Mansion. When he was planning to murder the Moon Emissary and flee back then, Claud knew that he would never be able to feel safe, and yet…

Lily had somehow filled up that void. Claud had many things to thank her for, too many for her to know.

“Claud?” Lily looked at him. “Did you think of something good?”

“I was thinking of you,” Claud replied, a serene smile on his face. “Thanks for being here.”

She twitched and turned away. “I’m going to buy that package! You stay here and look for something that costs twenty contributions!”

Claud chuckled as she fled the scene from sheer embarrassment. Lily needed that too, in his opinion. She sometimes lapsed into the opinion that she didn’t bring anything to the table, that she somehow wasn’t special enough to help or contribute to anything in a meaningful way. He didn’t know if this was related to her family issues or her personality, but Claud wanted her to know that she was important.

In fact, whether someone was important or not was subjective and therefore an exercise in pointlessness, but trying to communicate that as he was right now might lead to complications.

Such an epiphany was best arrived at together and naturally.

“We’ve been hogging the treasure house for fifteen minutes,” Claud muttered. “Best to speed up.”

He started to look through the place seriously. Right now, they had lots of defensive artefacts, enough to make an entire enemy army cry, so Claud wanted to get a nice weapon for Lily, whose offensive capability was somewhat lacking.

“Hmm…a sword, I guess.” Claud narrowed his selection to a bunch of one-handed swords. “Lily likes them, and Dia has been teaching her how to use one well too…”

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Deciding that the risk of her pestering him for a spar everyday was quite worth it, he picked out a sword called Twilight Shower. According to the description on it, Twilight Shower was a weapon that increased the user’s attack speed by lowering air resistance somehow. More importantly, however, it was simple and pragmatic, and the blade looked really sturdy to boot too.

Returning to the counter, he handed the sword over to Lily. “Here.”

“You picked it for me?” Lily asked. “But—”

“Your ability to inflict damage leaves much to be desired,” Claud replied. “And you don’t have a soul-bound weapon yet.”

“Where do you get off lecturing me on that particular bit?” Lily muttered. “You don’t have one either!”

“We can do it together,” Claud replied. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Lily twitched once more. “O-okay.”

She turned to the cashier and handed the sword over without looking at the person in question, who handled it with quite the tact. “Thank you, sir and lady Primus. I wish you a good day.”

Stowing their purchases into her backpack, Lily grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the store, all without looking at the cashier.

“You…can be quite shy at times,” Claud panted out, after they stopped in the shade of a tree. “How cute.”

“It’s embarrassing,” Lily muttered, before turning to look at him. “But…it also makes me feel warm inside. I’m not sure what to feel, okay? That cashier was staring at me too, so…”

“There, there.” Claud patted her head. “If you don’t like it, I won’t do that anymore.”

“I didn’t say I hated it,” Lily mumbled. “And this is probably good practice too. Doing things like these together, in front of other people. It’s not like I care about normal people, but when we return to the others…I don’t want to distance myself from you.”

“The others, huh?” Claud pondered for a moment. “We ran away shortly after going out of the room together, so they never really got the chance to tease us, but knowing Schwarz...”

Lily nodded. “Might as well get used to it.”

She took a deep breath. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we started kissing each other in front of them, and made them all uncomfortable?”

Claud flicked her nose slightly. “Don’t do that, okay? I mean, I think a little peck is good enough, but anything beyond that is bad. They’ll start cursing me or something.”

“Eh?’

“Yeah. Back when I hung out in Schwarz’s bar, people always cursed the couples that made out passionately, even if they did it in a corner of the room. You’d hear creative things like ‘Explode, damn couple’, or ‘Stop showing off the life I never had’. Things like that.” Claud smiled. “Now that I think about it, those were peaceful times.”

He sat down on the grass, before patting the area beside him.

“It’s already dark out, though,” said Lily. “Shouldn’t we be going?”

Claud paused. “Yeah. True. We’ll have to check those artefacts in the inn, then. I keep forgetting about the dangers of being in the dark. We can’t even flirt in the shade of a tree at night now.”

“Is that really worth pouting over?” Lily asked, tilting her head.

“Well, who knows?”

After purchasing some food, the two of them returned to the inn and locked themselves in the room. Putting aside the meat skewers, Claud and Lily sat down on the bed and took out the bag that contained artefacts that were apparently important to exploring Celestia.

The contents of the bag surprised both Claud and Lily as they rolled onto the bed. Instead of judging them by appearances, however, the two of them simply opted to read the instruction manuals that were included.

And well, if they weren’t included, Claud would probably have taken it up with the city administration.

“So,” said Lily, “the wristwatch is the Sea-Queller, the cube that looks a bit like Crown is the Mapping Beacon and the knife — to absolutely no one’s shock — is the Dimension Cleaver. Uh, how to use…”

Crown popped out of Claud’s clothes a moment later, before rolling over to the fist-sized cube. “Meep?”

“Meep,” Claud replied back. “You’re still as special as ever, don’t worry.”

Lily looked at Crown thoughtfully. “Best not to mix the two of you up, though. I’ll carry the Mapping Beacon and you carry Crown.”

“That’s for the best, to be honest,” Claud replied. “Anyway, what does the Mapping Beacon do?”

“It helps the user to locate points where spatial traversing is possible,” Lily read out from the booklet. “Locate a spatial node with the Mapping Beacon, use the Dimension Cleaver to cut a path and stabilise the rift with the Sea-Queller.”

“Hmm.” Claud picked up the knife, which was actually the length of Lily’s forearm. “I wonder if this can be used offensively…”

“Better not try it here, though.” Lily kept the artefacts and flopped back on the bed. “Can I sleep on your lap? We’re leaving for the ruins tomorrow, and I’m a bit nervous.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll read out the dangers we’ll face there as a bedtime story, then.” Claud fished out a folder. “How does that sound?”

“On second thought, we’ll go through that first.” Lily sat up hurriedly. “And then you can hug me to sleep.”

Claud rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine…”

Lily made a little sound and said, “If I have any nightmares, we’re going to postpone our trip there by a day, okay?”

“…That is probably actually the best course of action, though.” Claud rubbed his head. “The same goes for me, I guess.”

Flipping through the folder, the two of them began to read about the dangers other people had faced in Celestia.