Chapter 18: 018 – Downtime

After a few more rounds of fun stuff, we finally put all the loot in the bags of holding and got dressed.

I don’t have a shirt anymore, I didn’t bring any other clothes… 

My torso feels chilly, but I like this more than having an unbuttoned shirt.

There’s literally nothing worse than that…

Besides, guys going shirtless is pretty common, even Master and Septimus will do it from time to time, so it shouldn’t be an issue for me.

My pants are mostly fine, same with my shoes, but they are absurdly filthy.

I should be able to buy new clothes easily, it should only cost about a dozen coopers, but I liked the uniform…

Well, I had to outgrow it eventually, so now is as good a time as any,

Antonia has it worse, now that her chest-binding bandages are broken, her shirt barely fits her, leaving a delightful amount of underboob out in the open.

It’s a lovely sight, but this is not the time for it.

“It doesn’t look too obvious, right? ” Antonia asks nervously, as if clinging to her last string of hope.

“Yeah it does.” I mercilessly cut down that string.

I walk the path of an honest man.

I will never tell another lie, ever!

Antonia whimpers sadly, almost on the verge of tears.

…

Let’s ignore that.

“Did we get everything?” I try to shift the topic.

“Oh? Yeah, there’s nothing left, I’m sure of it.” Antonia spoke with the saddest tone imaginable, like a child whose puppy just died and then got slapped by their parents for it.

Isn’t this a bit much?

Well, compared to Makoto this is much more restrained.

Let’s try to salvage this situation.

“You don’t have a change of clothes?” 

“I had, but I couldn’t find it here at all, they probably threw them away…” She curls into a ball.

“Do you want my arm bandages then? I don’t really need them anymore.” 

“Are you sure? Don’t we need to keep this a secret?” Antonia sounds very reluctant.

“Eh, I’m bad at lying, and Marceline was definitely going to notice one way or another.” I start unwrapping my bandages. “But it should be fine as long as we don’t mention the inheritance.” 

I give the bandages to Antonia.

“Thanks!” She jumps and grabs the bandages, then hurries into a corner to put them on.

T-that was fast…

Was the sadness an act? 

Or is Antonia just like this on her own?

Either way, it seems I can’t lower my guard too much around her…

Following that train of thought, Antonia must have some kind of background, right?

She’s too strong to be just any random girl, most of the disciples back in the clan aren’t her match, hell, even I might have some problems beating her.

Why the hell would we need clans if it was that easy to become strong? You could almost call that a slap to the face of civilization.

Of course, it’s not like it’s impossible, I myself have been quite lucky thus far, why couldn’t Antonia have had a fortuitous encounter in the past? 

So it’s certainly not unheard of, a good number of clans started because a powerful rootless cultivator decided to settle down.

But then why would she be such a small scale merchant? She doesn’t really strike me as the overly cautious type like Marceline…

“There! Thanks a lot~!” Antonia comes out with her top fixed, almost skipping from joy and kisses me on the cheek…

I- uh…

Ah, whatever, I’ll think of something later, this works for me.

Hehe.

“Well, let’s go!” She releases me, and with a serious look on her face she opens the iron door.

Light fills the storage room, and I feel a little chilly.

The room where we fought is a little different from before, there’s noticeably less grasshoppers, and the bodies of those two have been moved to who knows where.

Makina, the slave-girl, notices us while collecting grasshoppers.. “Oh! You guys finally came out of that closet, you were very loud.” Her tone is completely deadpan and her expression is very tired. 

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“W-we didn’t make everyone wait, right?” Antonia’s whole body is red as a tomato, and she’s trying to avoid looking at the slave’s eyes.

“Oh, not at all, not at all.” The slave girl says in a sarcastic tone. “No seriously, Master is just starting to calm down, and mister Timotei needed some rest anyway, you guys are fine, maybe even a little early.” After she finishes saying that she continues picking up the grasshoppers from the floor.

Antonia breathes a huge sigh of relief, and her skin tone visibly becomes less red and turns back into a healthy light color.

I’m almost getting whiplash from how sudden the transformation was.

“We still need to deal with your father.” 

She immediately turns red again, almost stops breathing, and her posture straightens like an arrow.

Heheh.

“Where’s everyone?” I ask the slave girl

“Hmm? Over there.” She points to a door without looking up.

We go inside the room, it’s smaller than where we fought the jester, but not by much, there’s 3 shabby beds, an iron door and a window next to it showing the outside, but otherwise the room is the same as all the other rooms in here.

Everyone is here. 

Timotei is sitting against a wall, his injuries seem much better now, he looks at me and gives me a thumbs up and a knowing grin.

Makoto is still curled into a ball, he lifts his head to look at me with a teary look on his face.

Marceline is cooking a lot of the small grasshoppers over a cooking tool, I don’t know what it's called and I also don’t really care right now. 

When she looks at us, her face contorts into a horrified expression, as if she had seen a corpse get up. she’s specially fixated on my arms, she must have noticed that they’re not broken anymore…

And then there’s Anton sitting next to Makoto, the rotund merchant and Antonia’s father, he’s looking straight at me, and if looks could kill, I’d die a dozen times before I hit the floor.

Wow, I’m getting a lot of attention now.

How neat.

I sit next to the cooking tool, it seems to be some sort of metal box that produces a flame? It’s made by my clan, but this kind of low rank stuff is below me.

It’s pretty basic though, the metal is clearly an alloy of iron and lycantine, while the box has a <Flame> magic circle inside it, and since Marceline doesn’t seem to be providing mana to it, it should use rank 1 fire crystals as fuel, and then it should have a way to turn some of that energy into mana too.

But unlike turning mana into ether, turning elemental energy into mana is not hard, it should only have been a simple engineering problem to implement such a feature in this thing. 

This is such a simple tool, but basic appliances like this are the true lifeblood of the Paprika clan, we barely make a profit selling the tools themselves, but the common folk of Paprika are unable to fight monsters on their own, so they have to buy the fuel from us, providing a constant secure stream of profit to the clan.

Of course, it’s also a good deal for people like Marceline, who can secure their own crystals, but that’s basically a happy coincidence.

Antonia awkwardly sits next to me, trying not to look at her dad. “So, when do we leave?”

Marceline coughs, “You guys are clearly fine now, so it should be fine to leave after we finish eating, though if someone wants to rest then now it's the chance to do so, this place should be safe after all.” 

Timotei scoffs at the idea. “Hah! I don’t even need to rest, these can’t even be called injuries! Please, don’t waste your worry on me, and save it for someone who truly needs it..”

Anton on the other hand continues to glare at me.

“I- I’m fine too.” Makoto says, almost crying again. “I- I didn’t fight after all.”

Marceline nods, and continues cooking.

“Before that! Antonia, come with me.” Anton says in a tone that leaves no room for arguing while he stands up. “We need to have a serious talk.” He leaves the room.

Antonia gulps, but she leaves with her dad.

How awkward…

…

“So you like biting, huh?” Timotei asks with an amused expression.

This guy…

“What?” Makoto sounds confused.

“You saw all the bite marks all over the lass’s body?” Timotei then bites his arm.

“Oh… oh!” Makoto realizes what Timotei meant,  and looks creeped out. “Why would you do that!?”

…

I didn’t bite Antonia…

What do I even say here?

Marceline on the other hand looks scared out of her wits, she probably figured out where the bite marks came from.

I grab a grasshopper from the cooking tool and eat it while looking Makoto straight in the eyes.

I’ll just intimidate him into not speaking!

The grasshopper also tastes quite good!

Today has been pretty great, all things considered.

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