I ate my tummy nice and full with all the tasty chicken. Sam wasn’t too hungry so I could even get some of hers. But that does mean that after dinner, we are all really full and are ready for bed. The staff at the mansion is nice enough to pack the dessert in a little box for us to take with us tomorrow though. That’s going to be a nice snack for on the road.

When we are all done the butler guides us to our rooms. He’s a bit surprised to learn that we will only need two, although he’s definitely not judgemental about it.

He leaves us once we reach our neighboring rooms on the just as nicely decorated second story of the building.

“Alrighty, so what time do we need to get up tomorrow?” Max asks, petting her own direwolf.

“I propose we should at least get up at sunrise so we can get breakfast in and then go back to business.” Sam says. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

“Okay, that makes sense. If we don’t get up by ourselves, feel free to come and wake us up.” Max smiles.

“Bucket of water?”

“That’s playing dangerous, Sammy.” Max grins.

“Hehe.” She chuckles.

My direwolf starts to nudge me along with her nose towards the door we are standing in front of. “Oh, I think she reaallly wants to head to bed.” I give her a pet in return as well. “They did have a rather long day too.”

“Yeah, let’s not dally around any longer than. Goodnight you two.” Carol says. Also giving our wolves a good night pat on the back.

“Nini!”

Carol and Max disappear into their room together with their diredoggies, while we do the same. Our doggies run in before us and quickly take their place on the huge rug in front of a magically lit fireplace. I take two cubes out of my bag and feed them one each. “Are you okay being on the rug?”

“What else do you plan on let them do, Ami? While the bed is rather big, these are no small puppers.” Sam laughs and scratches her direwolf behind his ears.

“Just want to make sure they are comfy.” I floof the floof and get a lick in return. “Well, at least it looks like this rug is plenty comfortable enough.”

When I take a step back, she immediately goes and lays her head on top of her brother's back.

“Cute.”

“They definitely are.” Sam starts to undress herself. “And if someone gets in to steal our stuff they’ll get pounced on by them too. Nothing beats dangerous cuteness.”

“Is that why you like me so much? Because of dangerous cuteness?”

“Nah, I like you because you are you.” Sam tosses her jacket aside, walks up to me and pulls me close to her. “The cuteness is just a bonus.”

“Flirt.”

“You do know me really well.” She then goes in for a long kiss, which I really don’t refuse at all.

Sadly, because otherwise we would really not have a lot of time to sleep, we need to go to bed rather quickly without fooling around as much as we’d have wanted.

Ultimately it does prove to have been the right decision, as when the first streaks of sunlight hit my face, it feels like I’d only been asleep for just a couple of moments.

The dogs are both also very chipper the moment I sit upright in the bed. With Sam slowly waking up next to me herself. Stretching her muscular arms.

“That is a really good mattress.” She says. “Too bad we can’t take it along with us.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“A terrible shame. But I do think I can make something like this with my crafting skills now. Just need to find the right materials and it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Such a cheat skill.” Sam chuckles.

“Can’t you make the bed frame? You know how to work with wood don’t you?”

“I could. Could be a fun project too, but that way we won’t have divine bed frame to match the holy mattress.”

“Eh, I’m sure you will make it look and feel outright fantastic.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, babe.” Sam turns around and smiles at me. With the little missed detail that she is still not wearing anything.

With her breasts and abs out in the open and in the center of my field of view… it makes me all very blushy blushy which Sam finds very very amusing.

Once we are done getting dressed we meet our friends in the hallway, they exit their room at almost the same time as we do. So it seems there won’t be any buckets of water required.

The butler who served us yesterday walks up to us in the hallway, presumably having heard us leave the rooms.

“Would you like to have breakfast?” He asks.

“Nah, the dessert from yesterday will be fine, we’ll eat that when we are on the road.” Sam replies with the rest of the team nodding in agreement.

The butler nods and gives us a bow. “Then I’ll go and fetch the dessert from yesterday. If you meet me in the entrance hall I will give it to you there.”

“Thank you.” I smile as the butler goes off to go and fetch our food.

We make our way downstairs to wait where the butler told us to. But instead of the butler we find a maid standing in front of the mansion’s exit. She definitely wasn’t one of the maids who served us yesterday evening because I’d have definitely remembered someone like her. She has some light freckles and neatly tied up long brown hair, her eyes having this vibrant topaz blue color. She seems a little bit older than me, not by much though. Maybe a year or two?

“Good morning.” We all greet her as we walk up to her with our dogs just a couple of meters behind us.

“Good morning to you too.” The maid bows slightly, not really intimidated by their presence. “Sir Gustaf will bring your food over shortly.”

“Thank you, the food really was delicious yesterday so we would definitely not want any of it to go to waste.”

She smiles. “I’ll mention it to the rest of the staff.” I can see her looking at each one of but but her eyes do seem to linger on me for a bit longer than on the rest. “I hope the rest of your stay was also to your liking?”

“Definitely, as short as it was, it was just amazing, we wouldn’t mind staying longer too, but duty calls.” Max replies.

“Are you on some kind of quest?” The maid asks.

“We have been asked to go deal with a bandit problem.” Carol explains without going into too much detail.

“Is it dangerous?”

“It’s more dangerous to the people if we let it go unhandled. The danger to us personally is negligible compared to that.” I reply.

Sam nods in agreement. “Exactly.”

The maid smiles and bows to us again. “Then let me express gratitude in the name of all the people of these lands. I wish you good fortune on your journey.” When she straightens her back again she apologetically lays her hand on her chest. “Please forgive me. My duties require me elsewhere.” And just like that, she walks off into one of the doors at the side of the room. We just barely manage to wish her a nice day before she disappears out of sight with a last smile in our direction.

“Huh, what a peculiar girl.” Max comments, staring at the door.

Carol nods. “Yeah… Was I the only one who thought she looked somewhat… I don’t know… out of place? Not that the other maids looked inferior or something like that, but there was something about this one that I couldn’t really put my finger on. And there was something about her eyes too that seemed really familiar.”

“Mhmm, I know what you mean.” Sam ads. “Maybe she’s the head maid? Though I got to say the eyes didn’t say anything to me apart from that I liked the color.”

-The one thing I know is that I didn’t really sense any magic on her.-

“Thank you for waiting.” The butler comes down to us from the staircase. “I was held up in the kitchen for a bit as we apparently got a bit of a leak.”

“Oh, I hope it’s fixed?”

“It was a minor leak but an inconvenience nonetheless.”

“Well, we don’t mind, we had some company to talk to in the meantime.” Max comments.

The butler looks slightly confused for a moment before he quickly nods, handing the boxes with the desserts over to our barbarian. “We’ve added a bit of fruit too.”

“Looks like your dreams of only cake for breakfast won’t come true today, Ami.” Sam comments with a smirk.

“Shush.” I pout but quickly turn myself towards the helpful butler and give him a smile instead. “Thank you for taking care of us.”

“No problem at all, we would be glad to host your party again someday.” He replies with a bow of his own and then hands us over something else that’s wrapped up in a tube. “This is a map the Sergeant came to hand over to us earlier this morning. She told me to definitely not forget to hand this over to you.”

“Ah, thanks. I’d almost forgotten about it.” Sam takes the map back and quickly vanishes it into her jacket.

And with that we say our final goodbyes and get ready for another quick trip back to where we left off. There’s still a bandit and goblin mystery to investigate!