In the darkness that veiled his eyes after having closed them, Isaac concentrated on envisioning his entire body, down to the tiniest details. At this point, he perceived even red blood cells to be incredibly massive. After a few moments, everything in this new body he had created the day prior was under his absolute and conscious control. Now, it was time to begin the restoration process.
A normal human body would only allocate a small amount of resources to the restoration of the body after a tough workout. Even many hours or days later, depending on how much the muscles were strained and the body was exhausted, the human body still wouldn’t be fully restored. But that didn’t mean a human body couldn’t speedily deal with these issues. In fact, only a few minutes would be needed for the initial restoration to be completed, if a significant amount of resources were allocated to it. But as the human body normally allocated them to many different senses and body functions, that may not always be needed, it was terribly inefficient.
In his concentrated state, Isaac consciously paused processes that his body didn’t need for now, and made his body focus almost fully on restoration, only keeping other essential functions operational. Because it was he who had built this body with the help of the system, he had a much better understanding of it than anyone else, and it only took him a few minutes, before his formerly irregular breathing returned to normal. His muscles didn’t contract and spasm anymore, they relaxed and began their recovery processes. What would have taken a few hours had been condensed down into a much shorter period of time.
When he returned his body’s operations to normal and opened his eyes, the first person Isaac saw was Ais. She was currently sitting next to him and seemed to be quite happy to witness his speedy recovery. A barely perceptible smile had flashed across her face when she noticed him opening his eyes.
At the same time, Riveria was fascinated by what she had just observed. It had only been five minutes ago that he had asked them to guard him while he rested for a short time. She had initially thought they would be here for a lot longer, so she had observed the ragged and exhausted body of Isaac while he had been resting, as she had nothing else to do in the meantime. What surprised her greatly was that, even without any items or spells to boost his recovery, the body in front of her, which had seemed like an overdrawn bow, recovered to peak performance faster than should have humanly been possible. Just how did Isaac do this?
About five meters away, Jakk had been guarding the group from approaching monsters, as that duty had been assigned to him. He had originally thought that he’d have to do this for a long time, but just five minutes after he had started to concentrate on observing his surroundings, he turned around upon hearing someone stand up. To his surprise, it was Isaac, his room mate.
‘He has already recovered?!’
Jakk couldn’t help but be baffled. But even more than that, he was excited. This meant that he would be able to leave the group and venture into the dungeon himself far earlier than he had expected.
“Have you recovered?”
Seeing the young man in front of her stretch relaxedly, Riveria asked to confirm her suspicions.
“Yes, Lady Riveria. I’m ready to go back.”
With a relaxed smile, Isaac ensured Riveria that he was fine.
“When we get back, I’d like to have a talk with you. In private.”
When hearing these next words, the relaxed smile on Isaac’s face froze for a moment, before he almost started to sweat nervously. He was well aware of how important of a position Ais held in the high elf’s heart. If he somehow happened to screw up this coming interrogation…
Thoughts like these occupied Isaac’s mind for a moment, before he shook his head slightly, clearing it of such distractions. He just had to tell the truth, nothing more. It was just a simple interrogation by Ais’ guardian, nothing to worry about.
Before Ais, Isaac and Riveria separated from Jakk, Riveria gave the Hume Bunny youth a stern reminder to not overdo it. If he came back home with too many injuries, she would have to assign him to a party. Only when there was no reason to doubt his ability to stay safe on his own would he be allowed to roam the dungeon solo.
The group of three left the dungeon soon after. While still in Babel, Isaac hurried to the Guild’s exchange counter to convert today’s earnings into usable currency. All in all, he had 43 goblin magic stones, 32 kobold magic stones, two goblin fangs and one kobold nail. The latter two were drop items. Similar to magic stones, drop items were parts of a monster’s body that were left behind after their destruction due to a huge accumulation of mana in a specific area. Contrary to magic stones, which were the core of every single one of the dungeon’s monsters, drop items were random and seemingly quite rare.
A goblin fang sold for 300 valis, a kobold nail for 500. All in all, he had earned 6450 valis. Quite the respectable sum for his first real trip to the dungeon.
Other than Isaac’s increase in wealth, nothing else of note happened on the way back to the Twilight Manor.
Sadly, it seemed like Isaac wouldn’t get a chance to take a shower before being interrogated by Riveria, as the noble elf led him straight towards her study immediately after they arrived in the entrance hall. Having nothing else of major importance to do, Ais tagged along and decided to just wait outside the room while her mentor talked to the young man.
Shortly before reaching the study, the three of them came across a group of four girls walking along the hallway, chatting excitedly.
The one surrounded by the other three girls was someone Isaac recognized: Ais’ friend, Lefiya. Right next to her was a girl he didn’t know, however. She was the only human of the group and had shoulder-length, slightly curly, brown hair that was partially bundled into a short braid on her left side, towards the back of her head. Over her white blouse and short dark blue skirt, she wore an open, lavender blue mantle with white highlights and decorative designs. The rest of her outfit was comprised of a brown belt and sural-length white socks mostly covered by short dark brown boots. Just like the rest of the group, she was only slightly taller than the young elf next to her.
Flanking these two was a pair of Amazoness twins that Isaac instantly recognized. They were Tiona and Tione Hiryute, Ais’ close friends. Both of them wore pretty revealing clothing, as customary for Amazonesses.
Tiona had short, dark-brown hair with two golden pieces of jewelry at the ends of short braids, which started from around her temples. Around her neck, wrists and ankles, she wore some more ornamental, golden jewelry of the same style. Only a simple strip of white cloth was wrapped around her almost flat chest. To cover her lower body, she had knotted a huge, beige piece of cloth with green edges into the shape of a skirt, which she wore over another piece of dark brown cloth she had wrapped into the shape of underwear. Just like her sister, she walked around barefoot at all times.
Tione, on the other hand, had long dark-brown hair, while the pieces of jewelry at the ends of her similarly short braids were silver-coloured. Just like her sister, she wore various pieces of jewelry at the same places as Tiona, they were just silver instead of golden. One major difference between the twins was Tione’s well-endowed chest, which she held in place with a crimson-coloured bra. Underwear of the same colour could also be seen on her lower body, barely covered by a small beige cloth with green edges, knotted to be like a short skirt. Her legs were mostly covered by stockings of the same shade of red.
As soon as the four girls noticed Ais, Isaac and Riveria, Tiona had already bolted off to give her friend a welcoming hug. And contrary to what had happened with Loki, Ais didn’t try to dodge the physical affection. Instead, she let the bubbly Amazoness hug her and snuggle up against her tightly. It seemed like Tiona had already mastered this kind of innocent and happy hug, as she stopped hugging Ais right before a small frown could even begin to form on her face.
After Tiona had acknowledged Riveria, who had been watching the affectionate hug amusedly, with a happy smile, she finally noticed Isaac. The young man had been standing next to Ais the whole time and didn’t look familiar, so he had to be the one Lefiya had been talking about earlier. Interestedly, she sized him up, but besides noticing his good looks and moderately well-built physique, she soon noticed that he was incredibly weak compared to other adventurers. That wasn’t too much of a surprise though, seeing how Isaac had only just started out.
“You’re pretty weak, but you seem like a good guy!”
As blunt as always, Tiona spoke her thoughts and then patted the young man’s shoulder encouragingly. Accidentally, however, she put a little bit too much strength into her pat. When she realized this and wanted to apologize for hurting Isaac, she noticed something that surprised her. Even though it had to have been pretty painful, the calm expression on Isaac’s face showed no single sign of change. While Tiona was able to consciously ignore pain below a certain threshold so it wouldn’t impact her combat effectiveness, she would still let the fact that she was doing so show on her face.
While the lively Amazoness just stood there with an amazed expression on her face, the rest of the girls caught up. Tione had, of course, noticed her sister’s blunder and couldn’t help but facepalm a little in shame. Would that airhead ever learn to control her strength better?
“Sorry about that, I hit you too hard, didn’t mean to. You’ve got to be the Isaac Lefiya told us about, right? Nice to meet’cha! I’m Tiona Hiryute.”
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Even though she was already a Level 5 adventurer, Tiona was still extremely impressed by Isaac’s self-control prowess, that he had unintentionally showcased just now. Meanwhile, Lefiya was blushing madly at having her gossiping nature exposed like that. She was embarrassed that Isaac now knew she had been talking about him and Ais to her friends and couldn’t help but hide her face. The human girl next to her started giggling while quietly poking fun at the uneasy elf, while Tione introduced herself before Isaac had a chance to say anything.
“I’m that idiot’s twin sister, Tione. Nice to meet you, Isaac.”
Contrary to the bubbly and bright Tiona, Tione spoke with a gentle and sophisticated tone of voice, clearly trying to appear like the older of the two. Had Isaac not known how pervertedly she behaved in the novels whenever her beloved Captain was around, he would have thought her to be a refined and mature lady.
Not wanting to be outdone by the others, the human girl introduced herself with a bright smile as well.
“I’m Lefiya’s room mate, Elfy Colette. Lefiya has been talking about you constantly, you know? Anyway, nice to meet you!”
These words made Lefiya even more embarrassed. So much that she hid her face on Tiona’s back while Tione patted her back gently. Isaac, on the other hand, could only laugh awkwardly upon hearing this. The way Elfy had said this made it almost seem like Lefiya was interested in him in a particular way, which he was sure wasn’t the case. Still, before he could finally respond to their introductions, a delicate hand gripped his right sleeve and pulled on it.
When he turned around, he saw Ais pouting unhappily, clearly a bit annoyed at what Elfy’s words had insinuated. While he was sure that the young girl had only meant to tease him and the adorable elf a little, Ais seemed to have been even more responsive to these subtleties than him. Seeing her care about him this much made him smile warmly, which caused Ais to relax her grip on his sleeve in response.
As the other girls saw Ais’ reaction to the situation, they were a bit surprised at first, but soon came to accept that what Lefiya had told them about this weird connection between their friend and the newcomer was indeed the truth. Ais expressing feelings of jealousy was something they had never seen before, so for a moment, the entire group showed smug smiles while looking at the still pouting golden-haired beauty. This moment of quiet finally gave Isaac enough time to respond.
“Nice to meet you all. I’m Isaac Blackshaw. I think I’m probably ‘that Isaac you heard about’.”
Now that he had confirmed his identity himself, there was no chance they mistook him for someone else. With an excited look on her face, Tiona asked her next question.
“Wanna join us for dinner with Ais tonight? We wanna get to know you!”
Yeah, Isaac truly couldn’t say no to such a heartfelt and friendly invitation. The bright smile of the brown-skinned airhead made it even more impossible to refuse.
Before he could respond, however, Riveria interrupted the merry interaction by coughing loudly, to get their attention. Isaac easily understood what she wanted him to do.
“I’d love to. But for now, I’ll have to talk to Lady Riveria for a bit. Sorry about that, but I’ve got to go.”
Once Isaac had excused himself and followed Riveria into her study, the four girls surrounded Ais tightly, eager to hear about her thoughts and any new developments. No matter which world it was, gossip would always be a popular pastime.
Riveria’s study was mainly made up of bookshelves and a few desks, covered in a plethora of orderly arranged books. If Isaac hadn’t known it was her study, he would have thought it to be a library.
After he had glanced around the room and sat down at one of the desks, across from Riveria, the high elf started her interrogation.
“First of all, welcome to the familia. I already introduced myself to you in the dungeon, and I’m sure you already heard about me even before that, but it’s still nice to meet you, Isaac. I’m sure you know why I wanted to talk to you. You are quite close to my student, Ais, and I don’t know much about you. So tell me. Who are you and where did you come from?”
A wry smile couldn’t help but find its way on Isaac’s face when he heard this question. He had already expected Riveria to ask about his circumstances. Nevertheless, they weren’t something he could casually share. The most he could do was make her an offer, just like he did when he met Ais and Lefiya for the first time.
“I’m Isaac Blackshaw. As for where I come from and anything related to that, I have to ask you to keep that a secret after I tell you. If you won’t promise me this, Lady Riveria, I won’t be able to tell you, it would be too dangerous.”
As an elf, Isaac’s polite way of speaking appealed to Riveria quite a lot. What made her frown was the content of these words. A promise to keep his circumstances a secret? What did he have to hide? While she was quite sure that whatever danger would come their familia’s way if Isaac’s origin were publicized wouldn’t be a problem, she also wouldn’t betray someone’s trust after giving her word. And honestly, how outstanding could his origin even be? It was highly unlikely to bother her much. Thinking about how much Ais trusted this man, she finally made her decision.
“Alright, I promise I won’t tell anyone about what you’re going to tell me. I will reserve the right to judge you based on what you tell me, though.”
Her reply made Isaac smile brightly. He wouldn’t have it any other way anyway. If someone as intelligent as Riveria was to give him a free pass just like that, he would be worried about the future of the familia instead.
Isaac spent a couple of minutes telling Riveria exactly the same things he had shared with Ais and Lefiya when he first came to this world. Of course, he made sure to point out the answer to the question Lefiya had asked him: How he came to this world in a different way compared to the gods. But where her young protégé was entirely overburdened by such revelations, Riveria remained relatively calm and collected.
It would be a lie to say she wasn’t surprised and shocked, though. She had never expected the young man’s origins to be so extraordinary. The only reason she was able to keep her calm was that as a long-lived mage, she had indeed researched into the gods’ descent upon the Lower World before, so the concept of world travel in itself was even more accessible to her than to the commoners of this world. She shook off the mental blow of meeting someone capable of things even the gods couldn’t ever achieve relatively quickly and resolved herself to research this kind of world travel a bit in the future, whenever she had time.
Now, she fully understood why Isaac had wanted her to promise him not to share his secrets. If it became known what kind of a curiosity he was, every single god and goddess would try to obtain him for their collection. Even Loki would be hard-pressed to protect him, if the rest of the godly community wanted to use him for research purposes. Even just the revelation that worlds outside of their own existed would already be enough to make these enjoyment-starved immortals, and any other researcher, drool uncontrollably.
The main reason she chose to believe these outrageous words by the young man was that she he didn’t seem to be lying. Everything he said had no hint of subterfuge and his eyes remained crystal clear throughout his whole explanation, never clouded by a hint of guilt. Additionally, as gods were already world travellers, having another kind of world traveller didn’t cause Riveria to experience cognitive dissonance at all. It was astonishingly easy to accept these circumstances. Of course, she didn’t believe he told her the entire truth, there were definitely parts he didn’t bother to mention. Nobody would tell their entire life’s story and all their secrets so easily. Still, he had told her more than enough.
“Thank you for sharing that with me. I have another question for you. What are your feelings for Ais? Are you in love with her?”
This question was the one that had made Isaac the most uncomfortable when he had thought about which questions he might possibly be asked during this interrogation. Talking about his romantic feelings wasn’t something he usually did. There was no reason to shy away from answering though, he only had to reply honestly. No matter how embarrassing or unsure it may sound.
“I do indeed like Ais. I like her a lot, more than anyone I’ve ever met before. Being around her makes me feel like I still have something to look forward to in life. I feel happy when I’m with her. I can’t tell whether that really is love or if these are just budding feelings for now, but I have never felt these kinds of affections for anyone before. Of that, I am certain.”
Although he had already answered Riverias question, Isaac continued with what he thought to be important talking points she would ask him about later anyway.
“I’m aware that these kinds of feelings sprouting so quickly after having met one another is rare and can lead to overly hasty decisions. Most people usually regret these in the future. Also, Ais is still quite young. In the world I came from she wouldn’t even be considered an adult yet. So I don’t intend to pursue these feelings too seriously or hurriedly. I only want to spend time with Ais and grow stronger alongside her. I want both of us to live happy and fulfilled lives, without any rash decisions.”
Riveria honestly hadn’t expected such deep and self-reflective thoughts from a man of such a young age. This only served to make Isaac seem even more outstanding in her eyes. He felt more like an old sage than a young man barely out of his teens. His words had accurately pinpointed all the things she was worried about and reassured her. Of course, Riveria wouldn’t just take these words for granted, she would still cautiously watch over Ais. But now she could do so with a lot less weight on her shoulders.
“I will keep an eye on you both, so be aware of that. Also, while I’m sure you wouldn’t do this, if Ais ends up getting hurt, there will be hell to pay. Do I make myself clear?”
Isaac couldn’t help but show a sad smile when he responded. He had to try quite hard to keep the loneliness hidden away this time. If it were to momentarily overwhelm him by thinking about a time without Ais, someone so similar to him, a time like before he came here, he might inconvenience Riveria.
“I understand. But Ais getting hurt would already be much worse of a punishment than what you could ever possibly mete out, Lady Riveria…”
Yet again, the young man’s words stunned the high elf. This time, it was because of the pure sadness and loneliness they conveyed. It was almost heart-wrenching. She didn’t know what to say.
So after a few moments of confusion, she allowed him to be excused and fell into deep thought. Especially the secrets he had revealed to her had given her a lot of food for thought.
Outside of Riveria’s study, the four girls were still surrounding Ais when Isaac returned. He didn’t know what they had talked about in the meantime, but judging by the slight blush on Ais’ face, it was probably something embarrassing he shouldn’t ask about.
When Ais noticed Isaac’s return, she was the first one to make her way over. And just like before he had left for his interrogation, she grabbed his sleeve. Only then did she seem to be satisfied.
While this was undoubtedly an extremely adorable and affectionate action, it made Isaac smile awkwardly. His sweat-soaked clothes and equipment had only recently dried on the way back from his morning exercise. And while all adventurers were used to sweat and dirt, he didn’t want the girl of his dreams to be stained by his dirty clothing.
“Ahem… Ais. I haven’t had a chance to take a shower since coming back from the dungeon...”