Pockets of sunlights eluded birch leaves by its gaps as the sun peaked on top of the forest. The Freedom Group, as they claimed, was cleaning after their lunch break—feeding leftovers to the inhabitants and burying what they could back to mother nature.
Mei Magmal finished her part of tending their horse Tuna to rest, before she gathered with the team below an older tree to plan. With the map laid out, they sat on the grass with the exception of human-formed Esmeralda who was sitting on Rina's lap for no real reason other than soft bonding between the elf and the dragon.
The kid was leaning back to rest entirely on Rina’s shoulder, which didn’t bother her at all, on the contrary she was holding Esmeralda tight.
‘If Marc is my mom, do I call Pearl my aunt too?’—out of nowhere, Esmeralda thought; she stared blankly at the map below.
“So, to recap.” Pearl spoke up “We are aiming to reach Fonlend; the region of magic, also the furthest away from Sulkos. With this pace, we would need another month or two.”
“The problem arises here, we are not having enough funds to travel that long. To my knowledge, two more weeks we have to do a full resharpening of Marc’s sword and enchant the staffs Mei and I use, which needs mana crystals, not to mention potions or food.”
Having the situation laid out flat like that, the team immediately got to thinking, seeing the distance from the town where they were and the country far East named Fonlend, the financial problem was real; Mei then added in her thought, hand on her chin.
“If we choose to take a dungeon, it would not be under the name of the Adventure Guild, which meant no insurance, no help with scheduling, no long term benefits, discounts, internal market,...”
“Simply put, a lot of benefits, gone. Even though they are scammers and jerks, they did give us deals.” Pearl said, crossing his arms in frustration “Our life turned over one eighty and we are supposed to accept it, they might have just canceled our adventure badges too when the wanted posters came out.”
“They did,” Marc added “I checked.”
“...” Esmeralda lowered her head and started fumbling her thumbs together, nervous and embarrassed when hearing this part of the conversation.
“Our next stop is a city right, that means there should be an adventure guild’s building…” Rina said, arms around the kid hugging tighter while her eyes panned to Pearl. “Remember the Dungeon of Water?”
“... You don’t mean-” Pearl frowned.
“Yes, the spirit’s.” Rina replied.
‘The what.’ Esmeralda thought, wiggling a bit trying hard to get comfortable on Rina’s lap, that is when Pearl summoned out of his palm a blob of water.
Item: Elemental Spirit's Solid Water.
Rank: B
Rarity: Epic
Direct consumption of this item will help the user wield the full power of Water Elemental Spirit for one hour. Can increase its ability if used differently, methods unknown.
Only drops if there is one or more powerful being(s) nearby.
“We had this conversation.” Pearl said "We are not selling it, not to the guild while wanted, and not illegally with the risk of destruction.”
Upon seeing Pearl tensing himself up, the team decided to drop this conversation to think of an alternative. Best chance was to raid a dungeon, but by the off chance another team entered and tried to report, steal or even hurt them, it might not even be worth it at all. But Mei got another idea.
“My point back then still stands, we are not keeping this, and we are not selling this under the shades, we are selling it to the Adventure Guild,” Mei said, looking over at Esmeralda “The wanted posters didn’t include Es, she could say that it once was a gift and now she wanted to sell it.”
“No.” Marc intervened, “It’s too risky for her, Vel wouldn’t know how to deal with those situations.”
“She’s more than capable though! And we could make a sound connection to tell her what to say from afar and such.” Mei shook her head in disagreement with Marc.
“... I think she’s right.” Pearl changed his mind and closed his eyes to think, before adding:
“She was not included in the poster Gona showed us, not as Esmeralda nor Veldrielynth. She could disguis-”
“No, she’s my daughter and I’m saying no, period.” Marc said, raising his voice.
Rina Wenswood was slightly startled by Marc; the elf didn’t want to add anything prior to this, just fine with either option. But upon seeing the leader unable to give any reasoning, she added her own to someway ease up the situation before anymore argument broke out:
“She would be in a room full of strong individuals, if anything happens, no one can ensure her safety.”
“Since when did selling an item anonymously be life threatening?” Pearl said, letting out a huge sigh of disbelief, “Anyone got better options?”
“...Um…” Esmeralda finally spoke up, getting everyone’s attention as she anxiously gripped onto Rina’s shirt.
“I can do it, I can talk and… pretend to be a civilian, but I wanted to…” She said, while getting off Rina’s lap and stood before the map, squatting down to touch it; her finger stopped on a caved like symbol a bit North of Chalk Town; the town they were supposed to head.
“I feel… It looks strange to me. I want to be there too.” Esmeralda added a simple reasoning with little to no sense.
“...That’s your reasoning?” Pearl, not wanting to take either sides of raiding nor selling, was visibly frustrated yet unable to think of any other option.
“I got an idea. How about we-”
“How about we face it?”
Before Rina could say what she meant, she was interrupted midway by Pearl.
“All this trouble could be avoided if the first place we never had the drago-”
“slap”
With a quick motion, Mei stood up and swung her palm across Pearl’s face, Marc and Rina also instinctively stood up to anticipate and break them up if things go wrong, but it all was just pure silence.
“Say sorry, you egotistical douchebag jerk.”
“...”
Pearl kept his hand on his face and didn’t react to his sister’s scolding; closing his eyes for a moment he looked up again.
“...Sorry, captain.”
Followed by more silence, as they contemplate, Marc soon got close to Esmeralda and patting her head, not wanting her to feel guilty for all the shenanigans that’s been terrorizing everyone, but deep down inside, everybody might have knew. When did this all start? Because of who? Maybe it’s already behind us.
“I’m… sorry…” Esmeralda mumbled with her hands on her eyes.
“No Vel… Just, no.” Marc whispered.
“... My suggestion is,” Rina started talking again, managed to keep her composure during this and pointed at the map.
“Split us in two; Chalk City, Esmeralda will try to sell the item with help watching nearby telling her what to say.” She then continued “In case of the item being confiscated or scammed: Avora Dungeon, we scout to see the contents, then try and learn the schedule to know when no one would be there before trying to attack it. Agree?”
Marc looked at the map for a while, estimating the time between Chalk City and Avora Dungeon to not be that far from each other, he then nodded.
“If Vel said she could,” he sighed “I would like to protect her.”
“I think I would be at Chalk City too.” Mei said, then continued, “Rina should be the best at scouting, if you don’t mind.”
The elf shook her head and replied calmly:
“No problem. Pearl?”
“Let me go scout with you. Mei, help me set up a teleportation spell, you remembered, right?”
“Of course.”
Pearl and Mei then joined hands, connecting their mana flows with each other; the Magmals being twins themselves, it was much easier to understand and feel the other’s energy. The teleportation spell would include the ability to do as the name suggested; teleport, but with many conditions applied.
“If either party gets in trouble, let us know.”
Such convenience is sadly only applied with magics, so whenever they had to split the team in two, Pearl and Mei never got any chance to be each other, in cases of them losing track of Rina and Marc, one of each shall be with them.
“So, let’s do that then.”
With everyone agreeing on what to do, even though still very much not satisfied with the choices they had to make. They packed up and got on their horse to move again. They first arrived near Avora Dungeon, with a ten minute walk away from it to drop off Pearl and Rina.
After another minute of revising thoroughly, Mei stood up and suddenly hugged her brother, tightly around his chest, which startled Pearl. The young man awkwardly thought for a minute before hugging her back, at that point it was already time for Mei to release from the hug.
“Be back safe.”
“We will.” Pearl answered, before turning around with Rina toward the North.
Marc, Mei, Esmeralda and Tuna waited until they were completely out of sight before turning towards Chalk City.
I still can't get over the horses name
𝓣 𝓾 𝓷 𝓪