6.12.

Stravince County. A military state and commerce center which rivaled Luddite Earldom in terms of influence. It was one of the few territories in the south-west region which had a merchant’s guild.

A moat surrounded the outer perimeter of tall forts, guards stationed at every entrance and exit of the city.

They passed the checkpoint after flashing their student IDs, and their taxes were exempted.

“It’s a surprisingly thought out city. I didn’t think it’d be that packed.”

“First time I’ve been here, so not much I can say about this.”

“It’s like the empire’s capital, I see why some demons refer to this as a gold mine.”

“Demons?”

“Yes. I heard that some of them do dealings with the merchants guild here. The guild masters were kind enough to turn a blind eye to the issue of race– as long as there is money to be earned, everything else could be tossed into a back alley.”

“That’s interesting.”

The county is built right at an incline, so there were many multi-leveled terraces with buildings going up in height like a messy stairway. From the streets below though, it created an impression of elevation and scale, making the city seem bigger than it actually was.

“Oh look, food,” Reese pointed at one of the stalls selling what looked to be cheap goblin meat.

“You plan to eat that?” Schwii’s eyebrows furrowed.

“I’m just saying.”

The carriage finally arrived at the drop off point. Thanking the carriage owner, they left for an inn.

“Leticia, are you familiar with the inns here?”

“Not at all.”

“Let’s just pick a random one.”

“Or should we ask for recommendations from Dimitri Guild?”

“Is there a branch here too?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s one for every major city.”

“The problem is where we can find something like that..oh, I know. I’ll just ask!” Reese hit on an idea.

She broke from the group and asked some passing adventurer party. They started an amiable conversation.

“Come to think of it, there’s not a lot of people staring these days,” Schwii tugged at her clothes– a easy-to-move around travel clothes with a reddish-brown mantle over her shoulders.

“Is that something you’re worried about?”

“No, just, maybe I’m too self conscious. I can’t expect people everywhere to act like they’re ogling me.’

“Probably puberty..” Leticia muttered.

“Puberty?”

“I heard it from Risa. Puberty is when people begin to feel self conscious and have feelings for another person. People of that age, are easily attracted to good looking people. She said it had something to do with ‘hormones’.”

“Is it similar to pheromones?”

“I’m not sure– perhaps?”

“I wonder what else the heroes know that we don’t..”

“I’m back! They said they’d guide us there,” Reese said with a jumpy voice.

“Alright. Let’s go.”

FourLeaf, a D-rank party. A balanced team of two females and two males; two mages, two fighters. Except for the leader by the name of Narshal whose rank was C, the others were D. Their stated goal was to work towards accumulating enough money and experience to take on the first grade license as an enforcer in order to advance beyond C-rank.

Besides attending the academy, a popular way of becoming an enforcer was to take external examinations. Though in this case, through real world experiences– they had to create a training plan for themselves without much knowledge of what to expect.

Of course, with part time classes, they could ease some of these burdens. Either way, the critical factor here was money. It was much, much cheaper to take an external examination than to sign up for an academy. Hence why it was popular amongst mercenaries whose age were older.

It was unusual for a young party like FourLeaf to not want to experience academy life.

“What’s your party name?” Narshal asked.

“Do we even have one?” Reese blinked.

“I don’t think so..” Sequencee drawled.

“So you’re not a party then?”

“We’re moving in a group, that’s what I’d say.”

“Three girls, one boy?”

“Yep.”

“I see..”

‘They’re totally judging me..’

Sequencee could practically feel the word ‘womanizer’ oozing from the eyes of the four young mercenaries.

“I’m not sure how it is for other branches, but the guild house here is almost always packed. You might have to wait a bit in line to book a room. There’s no guarantee there’d be one either.”

‘If they don’t have a suitable room there, we’ll just ask for a recommendation.’

As Narshal had said, the place was swamped. Sequence thought the reason for it being so had to do with the current floor plan of the guild. It was the smallest guild building amongst the other branches he had seen.

“Thanks Narshal.”

“You’re welcome. Then, see you around.”

They greeted FourLeaf goodbye before turning to the

‘I wonder why they turned all the way back just to bring us here..’

If they were going out for a mission, it didn’t really make sense to backtrack just to help a stranger.

‘Or maybe I’m just not as selfless as them.’

If Sequencee were in their shoes, he wouldn’t help– that’s when it hit him. He thought to gloss over the realization.

Perhaps it had to do with the air of the place, many eyes were pointing in their direction. Two focal points being Reese and Schwii, both had a mystical quality to their charm.

“How can I help you today?”

“What types of rooms are available?”

“Types of room?” the female clerk tilted her head to look behind Sequencee. “We have the basic two, and fours. The single bed room is completely book, we have only one four, and the rest are two.”

“That room is already booked by another party,” another clerk interjected. Surprisingly enough, it was a beastkin.

“What room?”

“The one for four.”

“Oh, then we only have the doubles left,” the clerk looked at Sequencee.

He turned to the girls, they nodded, Reese shrugged.

“Then two rooms.”

“Hold on a moment while I process the documents..”

With how busy the place was, the clerk wasn’t able to get adjacent rooms. The best she could pair were two rooms on the same floor.

“Reese, you’re responsible for Leticia,” Sequencee said.

“Roger that,”

“Schwii, you’re following me.”

“Eh? Okay.”

They split into two groups. Reese ejected their bags from the shadow domain.

“It’s getting dark.”

“Somewhat.”

Sequencee had to illuminate the orange lit room with beads of light as he and Schwii watched the skies change out the window, laying on the same bed beside each other.

“Sequencee, I really want to do it tonight.. but Iona is not around..”

“.. Is that one of the reasons why?”

“But I don’t want my first time with you to be in a shabby place like this, so.. look over here.”

“Hm?” Sequencee turned to her.

His lips were sealed the moment he became aware.

A deep kiss fixed him in place, her tongue searched his mouth, the sloshing of their salivas.

Then she pulled away and wiped her lips.

“Give me some space alone later..” her voice trembled, her eyes yearning. Yet she knew better than anyone that it shouldn’t go further than this, otherwise..

Respecting her wishes, he turned his body back to look towards the sky and held her hand. She didn’t resist.

“Alright.”

===

“Where’s Schwii?” Leticia asked.

“I’ll bring something up for her a little later.”

“What happened?”

“A succubus thing,” Sequencee said in a low voice.

Both Leticia and Reese had an inscrutable look on their faces.

“I’ll be fine..”

“Maybe I should stay with Schwii instead,” Reese suggested.

Sequence shook his head. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

“I actually have this place I’ve wanted to try when I was younger, is it alright if we tried to find it? I’m not sure if it’s still around after two years.” Leticia said.

“No problems with me.”

The three set off towards a restaurant called Kraken after consulting with the clerk for directions. Located nearer to the upper terraces of the city, it was a 20 minute walk.

“The mansion is right over there,” Leticia pointed at the large fence-walls which surrounded a large patch of land. In the distance were a few villas, trees and other artificially made land formations like a lake could be seen surrounding the large yard space. Light posts illuminated the path from the gate entranceway to the mansion.

“It’s actually close. Have you tried the food here?”

“A few times. I think it’s good food,”

They entered, the bell rang. The waiters greeted them and soon they were seated. Leticia who knew the menu gave brief descriptions of each item, anyone could tell she was enthusiastic about it.

She normally wouldn’t go out of the way to recommend a place with such decisiveness, so Sequencee knew she must really like the food here.

“So, what’s the plan anyways?” Sequence asked.

“Do you remember how I said I was expelled?”

“Yes?”

“Not really the case, it’s more like, there are conditions for me to return. But it’s really easy to see that these conditions are there to force me back into the county, so obviously they had expectations that I would return to this place,” Leticia said as if grumbling. “I didn’t plan on coming, but I changed my mind. I already told Reese, we’ll be walking right in the mansion without any sort of invitation letter. I don’t think they won’t not recognize me, probably, they already have people expecting my arrival.”

“Leticia said that I’ll work in her shadow, so you’re the main vanguard Sequencee.”

“Our main objective is to find out what will happen to Estia, correct? We’ll leave the moment we learn that? What if Estia was really going to become the county’s annex?”

“I don’t care.”

‘Okay, so that makes things easy but..’

Sequencee’s home, the memories of his childhood city. While it was no longer the same, there were some elements that hadn’t changed from back then.

‘No, no. Don’t let my past affect my judgment.’

The price that had to be paid because he couldn’t let go was larger than if he did.

“The problem here is my brother.”

“What about your brother?”

“Part of the letter is a threat, saying that they’ll kill my brother if I don’t come.”

“So will you save your brother if it comes to that..?”

“I think parents would’ve liked it if we could help each other, even if that means we hate each other..”

“If we do save your brother, it’ll only make the matter of the territory rights much more complicated. Just what is part of this cooperative deal your brother signed with the count anyways? If they’d slip a term or two, that small hometown of your’s would’ve been theirs all this time.”

“That's exactly what I need to ask about.”