I quickly explain to Nikki what I had been up to back at the mansion with my teleportation spell, keeping an eye on what the others are doing and trying not to draw any attention from Sam. But it looks like Hilda and Lise are keeping her well enough distracted.

“Awh, Ami, that’s so hecking cute.” Nikki giggles. “It’s sad that you don’t have the rings here otherwise I’d have loved to see them.”

“I guess you’ll see them when we get back. I plan to give them to her when we return to the mansion after our trip.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it. I’ll obviously not tell her a thing.”

“Thanks.” I smile. “I’m also really looking forward to her reaction.”

“Hey, are you two coming? Or is something wrong?” My sister calls out from in front of us. Looks like our conversation ended right on time.

“Nono, I wanted to show Ami something, we’ll be right there.” Nikki calls back, swiftly shooting me a wink. After which we huddle to catch up to the group.

Once we catch up with the rest I go walk hand-in-hand with Sam while we approach the big city gates of Ribaquen. The guards greet us and let us in with no problem at all, although I do notice that they turn around for a while to follow me with their gazes.

“Let’s hope at least not everyone in this city knows who I am…” I squeeze Sam’s hand tight.

“That’s going to be rather hard in those clothes and while being in a group together with us, sis.” Lise comments as some townspeople who are walking around stop what they are doing to stare at me for a bit.

“I guess you could try to tailor a disguise.” Hilda suggests. “But as long as you stay as a pink-haired catgirl, I doubt it’ll be very hard for the people to put one and two together.”

“Hmmm.” I groan. “Well, at least they are not trying to grab onto me or something like that.”

“I would never let them.” Sam smiles and squeezes my hand back.

“And neither would I. We are the bow and shield of the Goddess after all.” My sister grins.

“Lise…” I pout but I start to chuckle shortly after anyway.

Fortunately a lot of the citizens continue on with their days when we keep walking.

All-in-all I feel relatively fine all the way to the town center.

“Max and Carol should be here already. I have no clue where though.” Our entire group looks around but the main square is quite busy at the moment. It looks like the weekly market is in full swing which is also why people are probably not noticing me too much. There’s just too much going on to pay attention to everyone and everything.

“Can you send them another message?” I ask.

“Just did.” Sam nods.

“We will wait with you till you find your friends, it’s not like we are hurried anyway.” Nikki replies as she walks around to the other side of me. She puts her hand above her eyes to shield them from the sun that’s just peeking above the rooftops of the nearby houses. “One of them should be a Nekote, right?”

“Should be, yes.” I nod and mimic Nikki. “Easier said than done to find the specific Nekote though. Being on the Dwarger continent for so long, you’d almost forget how many different species are represented here.”

“Yeah, can’t say I mind being surrounded by more Ulusu. Even though we have you with us, it still feels like we stand out a lot less over here. And that wasn’t even a jab at the Dwarger’s average height.”

Hilda rolls her eyes and gives Lise a teasing push.

In return my sister cheekily sticks out her tongue.

“Hmm, they say that they are on the North side…. Wait, I think I see them!” Sam starts hopping and raises her hand, waving it a little. “Yeah, they saw us.”

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After a couple of seconds I see two people move towards us. One of them, as we all knew, is a Nekote who doesn’t really bare many resemblances to Carol, but the way she’s smiling at us makes it clear that it’s none other than her. She’s a rather fair-skinned Nekote, just a tiny bit taller than me, with red hair and bright red eyes.

Next to her walks an Ulusu who I can only presume is Max. Her character’s skin is a bit darker than Carol’s, with a long blonde braided ponytail. But what really strikes about her character is her cheer size. Sam’s character is already pretty tall but Max’s towers above her by like a good 15 centimeters. She’s definitely in the two meters range if I had to guess. Apart from that, her character also looks very muscular, accentuated by the fact that she’s also barely wearing any armour. Heck, the huge - handed axe on her back is probably providing more armour than her leather garb. It’s not like it makes her look too naked, but it just leaves them open to the open air in the places that it counts.

-Damn those arms… those abs… and not to forget them thighs.-

“Wow.” Sam next to me exclaims. She even starts blushing a little. “That’s Max’s character… huh…” Yep, she’s thinking the exact same thing I was.

“Damn girl, you are tall.” My sister chuckles as Max and Carol arrive at our location.

“Hah, thanks.” Max replies. “I wanted to create some kind of barbarian character. I felt like the size fit.”

“I think it definitely does.” Sam replies after which the two friends give each other a quick fist bump.

“I didn’t even know Ulusu could get that tall.” I add.

“They can.” Hilda explains. “While the people here, down south, are generally not that tall, the people up north are generally a lot taller. If I had to guess that’s probably where her character would be from ‘in universe’ so to speak.”

“Oh.”

In the meantime Carol has come to stand in front of me with a big grin. “Ami! What do you think?” She opens her arms and spins around, it makes her blue robe lift a bit.

“Looks very cute.” I smile and give my friend a hug. “Are you also a mage.”

“Yes! I specialize in water and electricity.”

“Oh, nice combo.” Hilda agrees. “It’s not going to be as good as a pure caster in the relative elements, but the potential of combining water and electricity makes it nonetheless very dangerous.”

“It’s actually Max who suggested it.” Carol smiles.

“Is this how you want to look, by the way?” I ask.

“You mean back on Earth?”

I nod.

“Nah, I just wanted to feel how a Nekote felt, which I really still like a lot. But since we are in a space where we can try things out I thought I could fool around a bit with my appearance as well. I do like how it turned out, a lot, but I still prefer being me for my daily life.” She smiles.

“Fair enough, I wanted to ask to make sure.” I smile back but then immediately get ambushed by another hug from Carol.

“I’m so glad we are finally going on an adventure together.”

“Me too.” I hug her back.

“Alright, since you are all together now, we will go and take our leave if that’s fine for you.” Nikki replies after everyone has said their hello’s.

“Yeah, do be careful, okay? Don’t forget you don’t have your healer with you.” I wave my family goodbye.

“Don’t worry sis. I will keep them safe.” My sister grins and then waves us off too.

“Hilda, please keep my sister in line as well.”

“Will do.” Hilda chuckles while my sister starts chuckling. “And before I leave, I got a message from Crystal, if you want a quest, I heard she has a couple.”

“Oh! Thanks for the tip!”

“Do you remember where her guild hall was?”

I nod once more. “I do.”

“Great, then see you girls here in three days?”

“See you!” We say our final goodbye to our three veteran adventurers as they make their way off the market square, leaving me and Sam in our newly formed party.

“Okay, little ones, where are we going now?”

“Shush.” Sam gives Max a push.

She chuckles. “Whaat?”

“As Hilda mentioned we could go to Crystal to ask for a quest, unless you have already something you wanted to do with us?”

“No, we didn’t really have anything planned.” Carol nods.

“Who’s this Crystal you are talking about, Ami?” Sam tilts her head.

“Did I never mention her?”

“I can’t remember if you did.”

“Well, she’s a player I met when I first got to Ribaquen. She’s a friend of Hilda, Nikki and my sister and she used to be an Alpha tester too. She is the guild leader of those testers.”

“That sounds very promising.” Max agrees.

“I don’t see why not.” Sam does too. “It sounds like a good enough starting point for our adventure. Better than just wandering around at least.”

“Let’s make every second of our adventure together count!” Carol enthusiastically raises her fist and grins almost from ear to ear.

“Yay!” I too raise my hand, but not nearly as enthusiastically as my friend.

-She’s definitely very excited for this.-