Ari continued praising the dragon, she smug smile on her face the entire time. I was kind of jealous for some reason. It was still early morning, we had breakfast using food from my inventory, sadly I didn’t have much food left. Ari turned to me with a curious look afterwards and asked me.

 

“Yami, how do you pull objects out of thin air?”

 

I was troubled, I did not know how to answer. Are inventories even normal? I decided to answer her question with a question, I decided I would ask Ari about an in-game item that would increase your inventory capacity. It was an item bag. I looked at Ari with a friendly smile, I guess she found it kind of awkward because she stiffened for a second. I started speaking.

 

“Ari. Do you know what an item bag is?”

“Yeah.”

 

Oh, they do exist. Well, let’s just say I have one.

 

“I have one of those.”

 

Ari froze for a second and started thinking. Looks like I said something that I shouldn’t have, Aizen looked at me with a smirk, and decided to approach. I was annoyed. Aizen stood in front of Ari, Ari noticed this and involuntarily looked at her. Aizen knelt down and grabbed Ari’s shoulders while looking at her with a solemn expression and spoke.

 

“Don’t worry about it, Yami is kind of weird.”

 

Ari just nodded, as if saying ‘I know right?!’ Aizen, I thought you wouldn’t betray me like this. I was kind of depressed about it, Fenri noticed this and as soon as Aizen was no longer next to Ari. Fenri ran towards Aizen and tackled her, she hit the ground making a loud dull sound.

 

“O-Oh is this a game?!”

 

Aizen said with a dignified yet playful voice while still on the ground and started wrestling with Fenri? Damned dragon. I looked towards Ari, she seemed concerned about Aizen, when she saw that Aizen was unscathed she became really confused, and her face quickly changed to concern again. I looked at Aizen and Fenri again. Fenri was trying to maul Aizen over with all his might but couldn’t…

 

When they were done, the ground was completely turned into dirt as if grass never existed there. Ari wanted to ask something, but we all pretended like nothing happened. She couldn’t deal with the awkward atmosphere and did not ask anything.

 

We started heading towards the road, the place I met Ari in, to my surprise the road was completely clear as if nothing had ever happened. ‘Huh?’ I muttered in a confused voice, Ari seemed confused too. Aizen kind of just scratched her head and tried to look confused, however that did not last long. Aizen could not stand it anymore and started walking, she called out to us.

 

“Hey aren’t we going to town?”

 

However we did not move, and looked at Aizen as if she was dumb, she quickly started fidgetting with visible uneasiness. Ari felt kind of bad for her and spoke in a kind but nervous voice.

 

“U-umm, Aizen the town is the other way around.”

 

Aizen froze for a second and just turned around and started walking in the right direction as if nothing ever happened. She called out to us again.

 

“Hey aren’t we going to town?~”

“”Nn…””

 

Ari and I just nodded, as we were walking Ari was fidgeting a lot, she was glancing at Fenri frequently, she wanted to say something. I noticed Fenri was quite big. Could it be? I decided to ask Ari in a curious voice.

 

“Do you want to ride Fenri?”

“Nn!”

 

She instantly nodded with excitement, well I guess that does it. Fenri sat down and waited for her to be on top of him, and then stood up. It looked kind of ridiculous seeing a cheerful girl on top of an intimidating white wolf. Right… How are we getting Fenri into town? I guess I will come up with something when the time comes.

We continued walking leisurely, Ari at first had a hard time staying on top of Fenri but she slowly started getting the hang of it. After 1 hour or so of walking, Aizen and I noticed something. Aizen spoke while pointing her finger at something.

 

“Those are bushes right?”

“I think?”

 

I had a hard time answering, they were bushes… I think? They kind of looked like bushes, except they were in the middle of the road, and looked somewhat deformed. As we continued walking towards them, the worse they got. Once we were close to the bushes, I noticed something. ‘Aizen noticed it too huh?’ I muttered. Those were not bushes. Bandits started coming out of the bushes and they had evil smiles. Basically, a generic bandit, the strongest looking one started speaking in a menacing tone, while pointing at us with a sword.

 

“Hey, little girls, where are your parents.”

 

He was moving the sword slightly while talking to make it more threatening or something. I did not really understand it. Ari seemed scared. Aizen did not even flinch. No, she was looking at the bandit like he was in the way, she spoke in the best-dignified voice she could.

 

“I will not tolerate this.”

 

Ari was bewildered by Aizen’s behaviour. I facepalmed. ‘There she goes again.’ I wonder how many times she has said that to people, at least she didn’t say: ‘Mere human!’ this time... As I was thinking, the bandit spoke in a mocking matter.

 

“O-hooh, this frail little girl wants to play.”

 

Aizen just pointed her finger at him. At that moment I knew what will happen if I don’t stop her... I had to stop her, I went with the first thing I thought of.

 

“Di-”

 

I hit Aizen on the back of her head, it made a loud dull sound. I did not hold back. Ari tilted her head in confusion and then looked at me with a reproachful look. I whispered into Aizen’s ear in a cold voice.

 

“You cannot just instantly kill people especially when Ari is here.”

“...N-Nn.”

 

Aizen was stiff from the sudden attack but nodded. She seemed to regain her reasoning again, Aizen held the back of her head in pain for a few seconds and pointed her finger at the bandits once again. They were frozen by our weird behaviour. Aizen spoke in a dignified voice again.

 

“I will spare you for now. [Fissure].”

“Huh?! Just wh-...”

 

The bandit retorted in a mad tone but was cut off by extremely loud crack noise. The space itself distorted slightly, like a displaced two-part image, it went back to normal just as fast as it distorted. The bandits were groaning in pain and fainted.

 

Do I need to tame this dragon now? Like, does she not know how to hold back! You can’t just use a high-level spell casually even if you use 1 mana point on it. I wanted to hit her. She continued walking as if nothing happened.

 

Ari started muttering something. Damned dragon! I hit Aizen again, she looked at me with a confused look and teary eyes. I was mad, I whispered to her again.

 

“You can’t just use high-rank spells when you are a lvl 20 mage, even if you were a lvl 20 archmage, it still wouldn’t make sense.”

“...ah.”

 

Aizen made a dumb ‘ah’ sound. Ari was still muttering… I sighed, I just started walking pretending I did not see anything, Aizen was flustered but did the same. Ari was still muttering on top of Fenri. When we were passing next to the fallen bandits. The leader seemed to have regained consciousness and asked in a lifeless tone. He was looking at Aizen.

 

“... Who are you?”

“Tch.”

 

Aizen clicked her tongue while looking at the bandit with a cold gaze, she pointed at the bandit and used some kind of magic, the bandit fainted shortly after. Ari was still processing the information from the previous battle so she did not notice. I asked Aizen in a curious tone.

 

“What magic was that?”

“What one?”

 

Aizen played it dumb, I decided to just answer her question.

 

“The one that made the guy faint.”

“Ahh, well it's complicated, however, he should forget everything that just happened.”

 

Aizen answered while scratching her head with a troubled expression. ‘Well if that erases his memories I guess I don’t mind. But I think the guy is dead. sigh’ I continued thinking. Ari seemed to regain her senses and started questioning Aizen. Aizen pretended like she knew nothing, so did I. Ari gave up on pressing for an answer. We continued walking leisurely, after some more time we could see some old stone walls on the distance. It was the town the slave merchant spoke about.