[Edited] Chapter 16 - On the Town

Yet again, this chapter required quite a lot of restructuring. Same general theme, just cleaned up and better stitched together.

I think I was pretty deep into the editing process for my last book about the time this was written, so the distraction likely resulted in a lot more errors and missed plot threads than usual. 

Anyhow, original is in the attachments if you're curious.

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Waking up the next morning was… interesting.

It was the first time in many weeks that I arose actually needing to use the restroom. Of course, I was currently sandwiched between the lilim, as was our custom, so I immediately realized the difficulty in extricating myself without disturbing them. But at least the three of us were sleeping sans covers, so it could have been worse.

I had a running theory my lilim ran a little hotter than I did. That would explain their apparent cold immunity… but then, they never complained of heat either. So who really knew?

Regardless, with how closely we slept together, it had not taken me long to notice how our long-awaited ‘comfortable bed’ had rapidly become a human pressure cooker, and I had been forced to kick off the blankets that night just to avoid boiling alive.

I doubted the lilim had noticed. They did not seem to care so long as we slept skin to skin.

As ever, Arx was the big spoon. I no longer felt quite so dwarfed in her embrace since her transformation, and she was gradually becoming ever more… comfortable to lie against. So, I had that going for me. Which was nice. Fortunately, she seemed to still be in torpor from having filled her Core the previous evening, so instead her usual death-grip, I only had to contend with the single arm draped limply over me.

Of course, I wanted to take a quick look at her changes, but just as I was sitting up, Jax sucked in a sharp breath. It would seem that despite my efforts, she had awakened the moment I began to stir. “What the…? Aye… Drookit fannies of me ancestors!”

“What? What is it?” I whispered back.

“I gotta pish!” she hissed through her teeth and quickly rolled out of bed. But before she could straighten, she winced and almost doubled over. “Whore’s arse barnacle… Wha—? Master help! I-I cannay stand from it!” That final bit was accompanied by a squeal, and she clenched her eyes closed.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, jumping out of bed in a panic. “Carry you to the outhouse? We’re not even dressed!”

“Nay! Just… just bring over the piss pot!” She pointed a trembling finger over to one corner, and I saw a large porcelain bowl sitting there. I had noticed it the night before, but until now, I had not realized what it was for. “Hurry! I’m… I’m starting to leak!”

That was all the encouragement I needed. Almost skipping with haste, I grabbed up the mercifully clean bowl—which was surprisingly heavy given its size—and slid it beneath her. The instant I did, she gasped in relief, and the sounds of her emptying her bladder filled the room. Embarrassed, I turned to give her a degree of privacy… and tried my damnedest to dispel the images of waterfalls and fire hydrants dancing through my mind.

Hold it, boy… I began lightly hopping from side to side. Just pinch it off!

“Hooo…if I’da knowed the script for the morning after, I’da never tanned it so hard,” Jax groaned from behind me. “Ah… Hand of Maeve, but this is weird.”

“What is? Peeing?” I asked, a little confused. “As a… well, with woman parts, you mean? Is this the first time you’ve had to do that?”

“Aye, ‘tis,” she affirmed.

Huh. Now that it came to it, I could not remember the last time I had needed to, either. Oh… I could recall fretting over it but, having been stuck in the Dungeon for who knew how long with no food or water, I had put it down to simple dehydration and cast it from my mind. And then, once Jax and I had taken up our rather unusual feeding habits, I had not rediscovered a need for these sorts of ‘waste-management’ rituals until this very moment, so I had not thought about it. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

Must be a side-benefit. We’ll need to remember this the next time we hit the bar… or actually try to eat anything. I grimaced.

Jax clicked her tongue. “I ain’t certain-like as I care for this.”

“Really?” That actually surprised me quite a bit. She was usually rather gung-ho about the whole lilim thing. For her to express even the slightest qualm about her changes was unexpected to say the least. “You missing the ability to aim or something?”

“What?!” she said aghast, and I could actually hear the disgust in her voice. “No! Never! I just don’t like this feeling. It’s unnatural to have to… to let go like this. Feels… wrong.”

“Uh… if you say so,” I replied. I really did want to explore the topic further, but I was feeling a little too desperate in the moment to care just then. “Could you hurry it up a little? I’ve got more than a bit of ‘wrong’ built up myself.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said with a chuckle, and I heard the sounds from behind me abruptly redouble. “One… second…”

It was a little closer to thirty. We really had drunk too much.

*****

About an hour later, the three of us were standing in front of a small tailor’s shop that Tips had recommended. The storefront had a signboard carved in a flowing, elegant script which read, ‘Clothes for the Cultured.’

It looked expensive.

“This… might be more than what we need,” Arx said uncertainly.

I sighed in agreement before taking another furtive glance at her. This last Layer had just pushed her Charisma up past the ‘natural limit.’ According to her, no one could ever be born with an attribute higher than that. It was 11 now, and it showed… though it was hard to explain why. The best I could describe it would be with something like the famous Spinal Tap quote: she was one hotter. And the ‘amp,’ to punish the metaphor even further, was only supposed to go to 10.

To be sure, I had definitely seen women who had more up top or extra junk in the trunk, to put it crudely, but as Arx was most assuredly demonstrating, that did not matter in the slightest. As of this moment, she was the most attractive person I had ever seen. She absolutely glowed with it. And the fact that I could just casually kiss her—and that she would eagerly return it—almost made my heart palpitate.

Her body was… well, perhaps it was to do with the particular set of stats she was sporting, but she most closely resembled a dancer. An intensely fit… exotic dancer. She looked lithe—particularly in the legs. Each was long and thickly corded with muscle, yet soft to the touch.

Her physical stats had not yet achieved the levels of her former existence, of course, but she was already dexterous to an unreal level, affording her complete control over each movement… which she had demonstrated that very morning. Apparently, it was a trivial feat for her to wrap a leg around my shoulder. While standing.

As seduction techniques went, it had been exceedingly effective, though I had just managed to resist. We had a number of things to accomplish that day. The last thing we needed was to waste half of it in the bedroom.

Fun though it may be.

Her only flaw was the stump of a tail that had grown out overnight. It was now about a hand-span long, which was a bit too much to conceal under her skirt. We were still speculating about what its eventual form would take, but currently, the thing looked like a long, gray-skinned, finger growing out of her backside. Much like with all adolescent things, it was in that awkward stage between cute and weird-looking, but I was sure it would come out fine given a few Layers.

And that one minor flaw was probably the only thing that was soothing Jax about the whole situation. We had all known this was coming—it was an inevitability. Arx was now officially the fairest lilim in the land. The simple fact of the matter was, Arx had started with better stats, and there was nothing any of us could do about it save hold her back. And that would not be fair to her.

It would be nice if they had some kind of stat-boosting equipment like you can get in D&D. I had no idea what form that would take in this system, but if Jax’s adventure with that pill was any indication, it would likely be dramatic… and probably traumatic to put it on. You literally had to grow into your stats here, so equipping a magic ring to boost your Strength or Charisma would be interesting to say the least.

Might be fun, though. And more than a little dangerous. Just the idea of Jax suddenly growing into a shitload of Charisma was enough to make my head spin. She hardly needed the help.

It was about then that I detected the beginnings of a smirk starting to curl up the side of Arx’s lip, and I realized I had been staring. Again.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat gruffly, and quickly turned so as to regard the storefront once more. “Tips did say that if we wanted something durable, this was our only option.”

“I can’t see how,” Jax argued, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary. “Fancy place like this?”

When I glanced at her, I detected a bit of a hard look in her eyes. She might not have been ‘jealous,’ but she was certainly less than happy. In an attempt to mollify her, I reached down and gave her bottom a quick squeeze. She was still my number one, after all.

She squeaked slightly before flashing me a now much-more-contented smile. “Do ye think he can do engravings?”

“Maybe,” I hedged, though I doubted it.

Engravings were this world’s approach to enchanting magical items. The mechanics were still unclear, but from what I had gathered, it required a specific subset of skills to even get started, and then you had to actually know the Words you intended to engrave. Which was a daunting proposition to say the least. Outside the contexts of a spell, I could neither speak nor write a single Word, and I knew eleven of them!

“Let’s find out.”

The interior was fairly cramped. Along one wall, there was a changing booth with a draw-curtain on a rod. Meanwhile, the other was taken up entirely by a series of simple mannequins with what I assumed to be formal wear. They were far too elaborate to be anything else. Short of a costume ball or a cosplay event, you would be hard-pressed to find a person who might consider wearing outfits like these on Earth. The closest we had ever come would have been something like the French court just prior to the revolution. That said, they looked well made… if not precisely the Dungeon-fare we had been hoping for.

Although, notably, I had not seen a single person in the whole town who dressed like that… save for the individual behind the counter.

The man—or I assumed he was a man… it was hard to tell sometimes with the kinds—was wearing a wide-brimmed hat with several gigantic feathers poking out of the band. The rest of his outfit seemed to be composed mainly of straps, enormous buckles, and brightly-colored pouches. He looked like one of the Three Musketeers had just crash-landed into a Final Fantasy dimension.

Whatever his kind was, he had yellow skin and was rail thin. As far as I could see, he had no ears nor nose, though he had a wide mouth that seemed to be set in a permanent frown. Meanwhile, his head and torso merged together without the benefit of either a neck or shoulders and were of equal width, so where one began and the other ended was a mystery. Worse, his arms were little more than sticks that were attached… approximately where you might expect them to be? I could not see his legs at the moment.

Altogether, he seemed more like a cartoon caricature than a person. Nevertheless, there he was, and I was not about to let any preconceived notions about how a person should look color my judgment—as best I could, anyway. I probably looked pretty strange to him myself.

Stepping up to the counter, I cleared my throat.

He did not acknowledge me at first. He was apparently too engrossed in the book he was reading. However, after a moment, he plucked one of the feathers adorning his hat and folded it into the book as a mark. With a snap, he casually set the volume on the counter and turned to us.

“Velcoom do Clooze forza Cooltured,” he drawled in a bizarre accent that somehow distorted the lines between consonants and vowels. “Hoo can I—”

At that he stopped. Apparently, he had only just now gotten a good look at us… and our clothes. From the wide-eyed horror in his eyes, he did not approve. Which was understandable. Rude, but understandable.

Jax was not much of a seamstress, and her handiwork had been hasty—more focused on function than style. Since they were going to be quickly replaced anyway, our clothes had not been hemmed, so they were already beginning to fray. And they were… well, they kept us decent, anyway. Still, if this peacock thought he could criticize her work, he would find out just how fast we could take our business elsewhere.

Quirking an expectant eyebrow, I folded my arms and waited.

The man took a deep breath and produced a handkerchief from one of his many pouches. For several moments, he proceeded to dab at his forehead and neck area as if to wipe away excess sweat. But, it was overcast that day, and besides, it was very nearly winter. There was no way he was sweating.

Finally clearing his throat, he began again, “Oom… yis. As I say. Velcoom do mai shop-puh. As it happoons, you vill noot finda bet-tortailor in all oov ze Enbrad-donlands. I varn you… mai services are noot chape-puh!But-ton!You vill noot regret my quali-tai!”

I blinked several times as I processed that. What even is this accent? It’s like some vaudeville actor tried to mash up allof the European languages with… like Japanese or something?

Fortunately, Arx seemed to recognize it, and she stepped forward. “Yes…” she began in a language that I suddenly realized I knew yet had no name for. Whatever it was, it must have been one of the many I had gained instinctual knowledge of after binding her. “We were told that you were able to—”

“No, no! Stop!” the man interrupted quickly in the same language. “Your accent is horrendous! I cannot tolerate it. If you understand, then fine. We can each speak our own languages, but please, I beg you. Do not sully my native tongue!”

Abruptly, Jax twirled on her heel and marched outside. At first, I thought that she might have been upset—the guy was being a bit of an douche—but then I caught the sound of her laughing her ass off rolling in from the street.

Rather more deliberately than I needed to, I cleared my throat again and opted to speak in Laoi’na. “Uhm… right. As my companion here was about to say, the three of us are Questers for the Words. During our last excursion, the clothes we were wearing… sort of disintegrated. We were told you were the person to see for durable replacements?”

He took a breath and smiled as though relieved. “Ah, yes. That explains much. Well then. You are in luck! I am well-versed in the tailoring arts, and have the Goddess-given skills to prove it! If you buy from me, I can personally guarantee that, short of tossing them to the flames, your purchases should regenerate perfectly.”

“They regenerate?” I repeated curiously, thinking of the enchantment I had discovered on Arx’s knife. “How? Do we have to power them with Life Energy or something?”

Arx subtly elbowed me in the side, and when I glanced at her, she was giving me an exasperated look.

Oh, right. We were supposed to keep the Life stuff a secret.

The tailor chuckled incredulously at my question and favored me with a pitying look. “And how would you go about that, I wonder? No, no. Nothing of the sort. You won’t have to do a thing. I have my own methods to empower the effect. And at my current skill level, it should last at least a year—more if you do not stress them too much.”

Skill level, huh? I nodded slowly. “So… you’re saying that this is a skill effect, then? Not an engraving?”

“An engraving?” he repeated shrilly. “Do not be absurd! Why, I have never even heard of—” He stopped himself abruptly and took a steadying breath. “No. I do not have such an ability… good sir. And I would be very curious to discover anyone who did. Although, being Questers, perhaps you might have one or two such trinkets for sale? I have long been searching for engraved items related to my trade, but the Dungeon rarely grants them. I can pay you handsomely.”

At about that point, Jax had finally calmed herself enough to return to the store. She had missed most of the exchange but had heard enough of the last part to answer. “Nay. Naught such as that. We was lucky to escape with just a few bits and bobs the last time.”

“I certainly hope you escaped with a few coins, ”the man said with a chuckle, though there was a bit of a hard edge to his tone. “Preferably, gold ones.”

“Gold?!” Arx repeated incredulously. “You expect us to pay gold when your skill only lasts for a year?”

“At least a year,” he corrected quickly. “But if the price offends you, you are welcome to shop elsewhere. Perhaps you could find someone cheaper in Bradfirth? Though, I doubt it. It takes a great deal of time and money to develop a crafting Class to this level, and there is no knowing whether they will have the appropriate skills. Still… if you are short on funds, I can make you a set of regular clothes. My rate is four copper per complete set. Non-negotiable. Mind you, that is for daily wear. Formal items and other bespoke options are priced individually.”

Four copper? That’s like $200! Shit!

But it was not as if I had ever had custom clothes made. Maybe that was just how much it cost. Most of the time, I was feeling fancy just to shop at a department store… as opposed to Wal-Mart.

Hesitantly and almost dreading the answer, I asked, “How much is it if we do go for the regenerating set?”

He sucked in a breath to answer but seemed to quickly reconsider. For a moment, he drummed his fingers on the counter, apparently thinking it over. All the while, he gave each of us a long appraising look.

Eventually, he said, “I usually charge a gold piece per set. However… as there are three of you, I could perhaps consider a discount—provided you allow me some… creative license?”

Slowly, the three of us glanced over at the ridiculous outfits he had on display and then at what he himself was wearing.

I grimaced. “Exactly… how much creative license are we—”

But before I could finish, Jax quickly stepped forward.

“How much of a discount?”

Initially, the man had offered to knock a silver off his price, per set of clothes, but Jax had merely sneered and launched into counter-negotiations before I even had the chance to blink. Being from modern-day America, haggling was not a skill-set I had ever developed. That particular art was only ever practiced in car dealerships, to my knowledge, and the one vehicle I had owned was a hand-me-down from my grandfather. So I was more than willing to hand her the lead.

As for Arx… well, she chimed in here and there, but she mostly let Jax handle it. From what she later told me, she was usually drunk by the time she got around to buying replacement equipment, so she was lucky if she remembered to even bother. There was a reason she had been all but penniless when we had met.

Eventually, the tailor conceded to a price of six silver apiece. Which was still a lot but way better than the gold he had threatened us with. Let’s see… a silver is something like four hundred, so eighteen of them would be… Seventy-two hundred bucks? For clothes?!My entire wardrobe had not even been worth that. I doubted whether I could even get that much for my car!

Chebs of Ahnbe…

It was no wonder Arx had cautioned me to be frugal. We only had about twenty gold to our names. Change included. At the rate we were going, it would be far too easy to blast through everything we had earned. Still, if we planned on ever going back to the Dungeon, we were going to need some kind of solution. It was not as if we could bring a steamer trunk full of our spare laundry everywhere we went.

So, with a great deal of regret, I counted out the total. At eight silver to the gold, that worked out to two gold and two silver pieces, which he quickly swept into a cash box. Then, the three of us were ushered into the back.

For some time, the man bustled about with a brace of pins in his mouth and a cloth measuring tape, taking meticulous notes in a small, leather-bound book. Each of us were asked to stand upon a little, wooden crate in turn, while we were posed and measured in every way imaginable.

For me, this went rather quickly. However, once he got to the lilim, we ran into a bit of a snag.

“Madam-uh,” he argued, momentarily slipping back into Laoi-na in his irritation, “I have measured it twice to be certain. I can assure you that you measure at a precise forty-one and a third fingers at the rib, and fifty and two-thirds across the bust. I could never live with myself were I to intentionally make something that did not fit.”

“And I’m telling ye,” Jax argued back, “I’m still growing. What good’s paying all that money if it’s not even gonna fit me in a month.”

“Same here,” Arx chimed in. “And don’t forget to include a hole in the back for a tail. Hers hasn’t grown in yet.”

The man looked between them for a moment, muttering, “…hasn’t grown in yet? What does she expect to do? Pupate?!” Then, making some kind of fustering noise with his tongue, he assembled his features into an obvious outward appearance of decorum. “I suppose I will have to think of something. In the meantime, I have some samples. Why don’t the three of you look through them, try a few things on, and see what sort of styles you like?”

With that, he produced a few boxes of assorted items and excused himself through a side door. Whatever he was doing back there, we could clearly hear him swearing and tossing things around.

“’Snails, what a character,” Arx murmured in English. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a merchant who was so up his own ass.”

“There was that JigJig, guy. Remember him?” I asked.

“JigJig the Smith, ye mean,” Jax corrected me. “Aye. Spoke Laoi’na worse than you, as I recall.”

I just smirked at the barb. It was… deserved. But I had gotten better.

“That was his actual name?” Arx asked incredulously. At our nods, she chuckled. “Well, was he a smith, at least? It would be hilarious if he ended up being a tanner or something.”

Amused, I knelt to sort through the samples. I honestly did not care all that much about what I ended up with. As long as I had something resembling pants and a shirt, I was good.

Although… I was styling myself as something of a wizard these days. And I had the beginnings of a beard already. I wonder if he has one of those pointy hats lying around?

If I was going to be a proper wizard, that was one of the prerequisites. Do not bother asking why. Rules are rules.

My musings were cut short when I heard Arx hiss loudly, and when I glanced up, it was to find her hastily removing a pair of panties and throwing them to the floor as if they had bitten her.

“What was that?” I asked, more than a little befuddled.

She did not answer at first. Apparently, she had to work a shiver down her spine before she could speak. “Nails of the Three, that felt disgusting!” she finally gasped out.

“Disgusting?” I repeated incredulously and picked up the panties.

On inspection, they were a lacy, white affair with more than a few unnecessary little tassels along the leg-holes, but the material felt soft enough—much nicer than anything I had ever worn, anyway. I generally favored boxers, though most of ones I had ever owned had been three-pack Wal-mart specials worn to the point of structural collapse.

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, still dancing in place and waving her hands around like she had just seen a particularly large spider. Except, of course, I had personally witnessed her eating gigantic bugs. Raw. “As soon as it touched your pussy, my skin started crawling all over.”

I had to rerun that sentence back through my head a couple of times before what she had said finally registered. Did she just say… what I thinks he just said?

“What?” she asked defensively. “Why are you looking at me like that? Jax what is this? There’s too many emotions all at once.”

Jax chuckled low in her throat and shook her head slowly. “Oh… several things. Little bit of disbelief. Lots of shock… and a touch of arousal. A few others, but less important,” she explained. Smiling distractedly, she began sorting through the pile of clothes on the floor. She paused on finding a nice set of black panties and glanced at Arx before holding them consideringly to herself. With a shrug, she began threading her legs through the holes. “You nay realize what ye just said, do ye? Ah, ye poor muddled thing.”

“Okay, I can still taste the shock, but disbelief? I didn’t even know that was a—Wait, what do you mean? What did I say?” More than a little concerned now, she looked back to me. “Dearest, what did I say?”

“Uh… well…”

Right about then, the tailor burst back into the room triumphantly holding a bolt of some kind of undyed cloth. “Ah ha! Eureka! Iya have foond it-tuh!I knoo thair woos a raisoon-uhI kept these mat-terial-la!”

Jax interrupted the man by making a sound like a tiger that had just been trampled by an elephant and literally ripped off the panties she had just slipped on before hurling them to the ground. Stomping them several times aggressively under her clawed feet, she shouted, “Hateful fud-wrapper! How dare ye do that to me!”

The man stared at the ripped garment on the floor like she had just murdered one of his children. I think some of the feathers in his hat wilted, too.

After that, we had been—politely, yet forcefully—asked to leave. The tailor had informed us that our clothes would be ready in five days, we were escorted to the exit, then the door had been slammed in our collective faces. Soon thereafter, a series of screamed epithets had issued forth from the shop.

The man’s accent was a little too thick to make out the specifics from outside.

“That were rude,” Jax commented sourly.

“You did destroy a perfectly good set of underwear.”

“It were an awful set of underwear,” she retorted before glancing at Arx. “Ye was right about that.”

“Told you,” Arx said. “Besides, it was just a sample. There was no reason to get so upset.”

I just grunted noncommittally. The man’s reaction might have been overboard, but he had hardly been unprovoked. Not that I was about to say that. Still, I wished he had at least let us finish picking out what samples we had liked before tossing us out.

We had been right in the middle of a conversation, too. What a weird slip of the tongue. ‘Your pussy?’ Who says that? Jax had certainly taken it in stride, though. Almost like she had expected… well, maybe not that exactly. But something like it.

Hmm.

In any case, the lilims’ reactions to wearing undergarments was yet another curiosity to chew on. Was it something to do with the material, or were they just required to go commando? And when had that started?

Thinking back, Jax had ended up using her own underwear as a top—at least until it got ripped up—pretty much as soon as she started growing breasts. And Arx’s clothes had gotten blown up entirely the very moment she had become a lilim. So, pinpointing an exact moment was all but impossible.

However, with everything else on my plate, this was a fairly minor concern. They did not really need underwear, did they? They had quite a lot of control over themselves down there—more so than any human woman could ever have—so they should not to worry about leaking.

Although…

Curious, I glanced over at them briefly before frowning. Now that I was thinking of human women, there was the question of… well, to put it politely… menstrual cycles. I could see Jax being ignorant of the subject given her origin, but if it was going to happen, it should have by now. She had been female long enough for it to be a problem. However, neither she nor Arx had ever mentioned it, nor expressed any concern over its delay. And Arx has always been female. She’d be far more aware of that kind of issue.

However, that presupposed quite a lot. I had no idea how the reproductive systems of keltha or lilim were supposed to work, nor did I know whether any of that would ultimately be compatible with my own. So whether periods or pregnancy were even on the table was a mystery. We were talking about a species whose diet consisted solely of emotions and, as this very morning had demonstrated, only even needed to pee if they bothered to drink anything. For all I knew, they could have something like the vulcan’s pon farr and only mate every seven years.

Or, more worryingly, they could always be fertile. They could both be pregnant right now. It was not like we had any means of protection—assuming either of them ever let me use it. Which was doubtful.

Shit… that would be the last thing we need.

But I quickly dismissed the idea. Such matters would be far more present in their minds than my own—just as a matter of their being female—and they tended to be… less polite about that sort of thing than I was. For neither of them to mention it even in jest was telling.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Master,” Jax said, interrupting my reverie with a gentle touch on my arm, and I looked at her sharply. “I think that poof were more upset I stomped on that hateful rag after than that I ripped it up a bit. He were a prideful sort.”

Arx nodded along before adding, “I got that sense, too. I think it’s important to him that we be satisfied with his work.”

I took another long look at the two of them before ultimately sighing in resignation. Hmph… Ah, well. I’m probably worrying over nothing.

“In that case, let’s be all smiles when we come pick up our clothes. We don’t want him chasing us down the street with a club,” I quipped. “And in the meantime, why don’t we see about getting some weapons and armor?”

They both shivered at the suggestion.

“No armor fer me, Master,” Jax said resolutely. “Just the clothes is bad enough.”

“Agreed,” Arx chimed in. “I would like to get a pair of scimitars, though. I’ve lost my old fighting style, but I still have quite a lot of skill with them. If it comes to close quarters fighting, I’d much rather have something like that than a dagger.”

I nodded before glancing at the sun. It was about noon, I decided. We had wasted half the day in that shop. “Well… then, I guess we should find a weapons dealer. I bet Tips would know a good one. In the meantime, let’s check out that arena next to the inn.”

“Aye, let’s,” Jax agreed. “Need to find out when the next tournament is set for. I need past me Boundary.”

With that, we set off again. Though, by that point, the streets were starting to thicken with people, all bustling about with their various errands and, as we were still a little full from the day before, we decided to walk quickly. If we stayed in this town much longer, the three of us might start actually getting fat from all the Life Energy.

Psh… wouldn’t that be something? I could just imagine the conversation in some distant future. Oh, no! I couldn’t possibly attend your party. Your friends go straight to my hips.