Chapter 43: Arc 3 Ch. 19: Welcome to the Party

A witch, a fox, and a futa walk into a bar…

“Come on Beryl, drink up!” Titania cheered.

“You really recover fast with a beer, don’t you?”

After our group bathing session, Titania was more than enthusiastic to invite us all for a private dinner in the back room of her guild. It was hard to say no to the free meal, and impossible to say no once Alice and Viela were excited for the ‘party with our party.’

When we had finished eating, I decided I would tell all three of them about my quest with the witch. Titania wasn’t likely to interfere, and she was supposedly a highly capable adventurer who might be able to give us some pointers. At first she couldn’t believe I was actually working with ‘that old witch everyone hates,’ but her opinion began to change after I told her about Evelina’s true form due to her potion of eternal youth.

“Did you just say she’s a loli?”

I groaned. “It’s complicated…”

As I had anticipated, Alice was ecstatic to hear that she could have a chance to get into the Magic Academy with me, and almost equally as happy to gain admittance by gathering a bunch of herbs—even after I gave her the witch’s deceptively large bag that we would need to fill. It was only when I was halfway through describing the details that I realized Evelina hadn’t mentioned exactly where we needed to go to find the damn things. Was that intentional…?

“Apparently, she wants us to gather a bunch of this herb called murkthistle,” I said, “but she never told me where—”

“Ooh, I know that one!” Alice blurted out.

She reached down to her rucksack on the floor and pulled out her book she had been reading earlier. She set it on the table, flipping through the book until she stopped on a page that showed a drawing of a tall plant with sharp leaves and a dark, prickly flower.

“Yes, this it it,” she continued with a satisfied nod. “Murkthistle: various magical properties, hard to detect with divination spells, native to… ‘The Dourland?’”

Titania drew a sharp intake of breath. “That’s where you’re headed?” she asked incredulously.

“Seems like it,” I said. “What about it?”

She frowned. “The Dourland is a massive untamed mountain range to the southwest—the place is ‘Wilderness’ with a capital ‘W.’ Beryl, you really don’t want to go there.”

I shrugged. “I think you’re right, but we’re going anyway.”

“This is serious!” she replied in a matching tone. “There’s a reason adventurers stay away from that place!”

“And why is that? Lions and tigers and bears?”

“More like, bears and leopards and… worse.”

“What’s ‘worse?’ Mountain trolls?”

“No, you probably won’t have to go that high up and run into those for some flowers,” she sighed. Titania stared at me for a moment, anxiously rubbing her neck before slamming a resolute fist on the table. “But you’ll be fine, because I’ll go with you!”

“Wait, what?”

She stood up and struck a pose, flexing a muscular arm. “It’s been a while since I’ve gone out into the wilds like this. I kind of miss the adventuring days a little, you know? Besides, you’re going to need someone to help you pick out the right gear for the journey, and I can hook us up with transportation there!”

I shot a glance at the other two. Alice was beaming with delight, clearly eager at the idea that we would get another traveling companion. Viela set down her mug of ale, grinning at me with flushed cheeks. I couldn’t tell if she found this situation that amusing, or if she was just red from getting foolishly drunk all over again…

“Hold up, what about your guild here?” I asked. “We’re going to be out of the city for a while. Is that really going to be okay for you?”

Titania sat down again with a sheepish grin. “It’ll be fine! You were right about my assistant managers. Most of the time I hang around the guild just for appearances as guild master, and to make sure the ‘R and R’ isn’t falling apart. Sometimes I head out to make business deals with the surrounding towns to share bounties and stuff like that, so I have this!”

She reached a hand down the front of her breastplate and pulled out a thin necklace. Instead of a jewel attached to the front, there was a small metallic plate engraved with a magic symbol.

“It’s an enchantment that lets the crew get in touch with me if they ever need my advice,” she continued with a proud thump to her chest. “We haven’t even run into any real emergencies yet, though! Well, not… really…”

Another anxious hand went to the back of her neck.

“Are you sure everything is alright?” I had to ask.

“Y-Yeah, it’s fine!” Titania said. “Anyways, you can teleport us back here if something comes up, right?”

Oh yeah, she did kind of watch me cast Recall in that tavern yesterday…

“I can’t really guarantee you a reward for this,” I told her. “Unless you were planning to gather some herbs for yourself and sell them? There’s supposed to be a shortage of that murkthistle, or whatever it’s called.”

Titania stared at the wall behind me, deeply lost in thought.

“Yeah… Yeah, that’s a good idea!” she decided with a clap. “H-Hey, don’t give me that look! I wasn’t even looking to get a reward like that from the start!”

Hmm, was she still trying to repay me for the way I ‘helped’ her before? Did the initial excitement of running her own business start to wear off, or was she really just looking forward to adventuring with our party of misfits? Or…

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“Beryl, we should bring her with us!” Alice said.

“The more the merrier,” Viela mused with a sly grin. “Plus, if memory serves there should be a fun place I’ve heard about on the northern edge of that region.”

“What kind of ‘fun place’ would you be interested in way out in the wilderness?” I asked. “A hot spring?”

The fox spirit blushed, bashfully tapping her fingers together. “It’s not like I just want to visit a nice hot spring, you know…”

Well, we could probably all use a nice hot bath after a few weeks out of the city anyway. As for Titania, I couldn’t tell what she was thinking exactly, but she did have a lot of adventuring experience regardless. With all the things she had already seen and heard about…

“Oh, that reminds me of something else!” I said. “In your line of work, you must have heard something about the Demon King’s soul fragments and where they might be, right?”

Titania took a second to process the new topic. “Those things? Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about them in the two years I’ve been here. But you see, finding hints about them isn’t the issue…”

The guild master explained to me how some of the natives of this world had been affected by the influx of Outworlders all aiming to slay the Demon King and earn those thousand years of paradise. The most devious, unscrupulous locals had taken to running scams on naïve Outworlders by selling them phony intel. That trick worked especially well if they could convince adventurers that they needed to go all the way to the other side of the continent, giving plenty of time to disappear or feign ignorance.

A handful of people here genuinely did want to see the Demon King gone—mostly nobles in the capital who had their rightful concerns living within the same city as an overpowered drunk maniac. In their paranoia, some of them did try to offer genuine information, while others were schemers trying to use Outworlders as pawns against their own political rivals… More often than not, it was nigh impossible to tell the difference. At best you could be trying to break into some other noble’s private collection and steal an old enchanted heirloom, which might be powerful in its own right, but usually brought some fairly obvious repercussions.

Basically, so much trouble had been caused by those fake reports that many guilds in the city had been pressured by the nobility to outright ban any selling of information related to the Demon King’s seven soul fragments. To make matters worse, it had been untold centuries since Mao had originally created those fragments that made him immortal. That made it far more likely that they had already been found and were held by the most powerful families in the city, rather than hiding out in some forgotten cave in the wilderness. The most chilling rumors Titania had heard were that they were all incredibly dangerous items that you were better off not happening to find by chance anyway. All the conflicting information had made her skeptical of everything about them, however, and she didn’t know what to believe anymore.

Regardless, suddenly Evelina’s idea that I could find one of them in the Magic Academy seemed a little less crazy…

“I spent my last year of adventuring trying to found out as much as I could about those things,” Titania went on. “But don’t mind me! If you’re set on going after the bounty on that guy, I won’t get in your way.”

“Why’s that? After all that time, did you really give up?” I asked.

Titania sighed, reaching for her second beer of the night and chugging it down before continuing.

“It’s like I said before; I really do love the simplicity here. I have a strong body with good health, I get to run my own business, and I can even travel around once in a while. This world has its own unique troubles, don’t get me wrong. But in a way, it’s almost like a dream come true to me. So… I already decided a while back that I was going to spend the rest of my days here. You know, like everyone else.”

What? Someone from Earth planned to stay here? In this world? The thought was so foreign to me, it took me almost a minute to realize she was serious.

“So, you still really want to join us with no strings attached and no promise of payment?” I clarified.

“Beryl, I thought you would have said ‘yes’ an hour ago!” she complained.

“And what gave you that idea?”

Titania fidgeted in her seat, looking away. “No one’s ever asked to play with my lance before…”

Viela raised an eyebrow in my direction. “Oh? Beryl, just how naughty have you been?”

“No! Damn it, why did you have to pick such a suggestive weapon?”

“Hey, it’s going to be just fine!” Titania said with a renewed sense of drunken bravado. She hefted her lance and shot me a lewd wink. “You don’t have to worry about a thing; I’ll fit right in!”

Alice covered herself. “Fit where?!”

Oh, God… “What happened to you stopping after one drink?”

Titania rubbed her neck. “It’s, uh… a special occasion today. House rules!”

I rolled my eyes.

“Aren’t the three of you basically all spellcasters?” she added hopefully.

“Yeah, I know…”

I was already well aware that it would be nice to have a warrior to round out my party. Wait, my party?

One glance confirmed that the other three all eagerly looked to me for an answer. A rush of unfamiliar emotion overcame me when I realized that they all saw me as the leader of the party. I had to admit, this was actually kind of nice!

Honestly, this whole time I had been thinking it would be good to have Titania join us for various different reasons. Everything else aside, her motivations seemed genuine enough—whatever they were. But given the circumstances, that didn’t mean I had to agree so easily…!

I reached out to offer her my hand.

“Welcome to the party, pervert.”

End of Arc Three: The Unlikeliest Party

 

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