Ank

“Just wait here for a minute, I’ll be back soon”, the 1st Guild Master said, as he stepped through a portal very similar to the one through which came that [Voider] we killed some time ago.

“Tch, you should have done this when you invited me in for the first time”, the 9th Guild Master complained, frowning.

Hunah and I exchange a glance, before shrugging.

As promised, then, the 1st Guild Master came back, and called us all inside. And, differently from what I imagined, the other side of the portal was of a beautiful idyllic place, with many trees, streams and bushes, and the fake sun up there seemed to be permanently stuck at down.

“Are you a [Dungeon] or something?”, I asked looking over the head of the man, but being granted with nothing more than his name: Kon. No [Levels], no [Species].

“I’m one of the [Serpent People]”, the man involved all in black said, as he guided us through a dirt path; and the 9th Guild Master sighed, shaking her head from one side to another.

“Hey, Hunah~”, I whispered to my twin sister. “Do you think I accidentally stumbled upon a closely guarded secret, his species thing, that will eventually lead us to an unnecessary and unrelated misadventure with this question?”

“Yeah~ it’s like whenever we discover some weird mysterious shit about Taffy”, she covered her mouth and whispered back. “What should we do?”

The two of us looked back and over our shoulders, and to the mentioned woman, who had her head in the clouds, smiling just as ever, eyes perpetually closed, and yet, looking all around, taking in the beautiful [Pocket Dimension].

“The same as ever?”, I asked.

“Ignore it and pretend it never happened?”, my twin sister suggested.

“Ignore it and pretend it never happened”, I agreed; and so we kept faithful to our simple objective of killing [Gods].

“Knock, knock!”, Kon knocked on the door of a simple, but pretty confy-looking wooden house.

As the passage was open, a beautiful woman, just slightly smaller than the 9th Guild Master (who was undoubtedly the tallest person around, while the 1st Guild Master was the shortest) with a white prosthetic leg, and long straight black hair, and hands covered in scales of the same dark color attended us all:

“Hello there”, she said, smiling. “I’m Ur, Kon’s older sister. Please come in, I prepared some snacks.”

And so we did:

“Wow, these are pretty good”, I praised the cookies offered; even Kon had finally taken off his face covering dark bandages, and revealed a surprisingly young face; he looked almost per-pubescent!

“Please, you’re exaggerating”, Kon’s older sister smiled, brushing off the compliment.

“No, no: they’re really great”, I wasn’t lying; they were even better than the food Taffy used to make. “Hunah, it’d be pretty cool if you learned how to do these~”, I said, turning to my twin sister.

“I- I’m still learning how to cook”, she looked a little intimidated by the taller older sister.

“I know how to cook!”, the 9th Guild Master said, crossing her muscular arms, her pretty face beaming, proud. “I’ve even invested 3 points into cooking [Skills]!”, she continued, eyes shining.

“Hu. Cool”, I said, a bit uncomfortable with the intense stare.

“I have housekeeping and massage abilities too!”, the woman with the scarred arms listed.

“That’s good. I wish I knew these things too?”, I didn’t know exactly how I should react to that, or even why she was bragging about those things.

“I KNOW EVEN A 78 DIFFERENT SEX POSITIONS!”, she bragged, blushing strongly, but keeping staring, expectantly.

“PSHUUU!”, Hunah spat the drink offered to us by Ur. Bashing both hands of the top of the table, she glared at me, then at the 9th Guild Master.

And, fuck, I didn’t notice before because the only girl who has ever had any interest in me was Hunah, but I wasn’t (totally) stupid: she was hitting on me! Painfully directly even!

“I’m sorry!”, I replied immediately, pulling Hunah closer to me in a hug with one arm. “I’m sorry, but I already have fallen in love with my twin sister!”, I excused myself, rejecting the beautiful woman with the scarred arms.

Her crossed arms untangled, and her proud smiling face degenerated in a blank, cold expression, as she passed to stare down and to the sides.

“Why? Why do they choose their own fucking sisters?”, she started to mumble to herself. “They all call me pretty, but no one… Ah~ I wish they all became evil, so I could crush their chest cavity the same way I did with Nond”, she continued, and I had to admit, I felt a little sad (and scarred).

A thoughtful 1st Guild Master, however, who nodded approvingly made me feel a little better:

“Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well.”

“A man of culture?”, I asked, and noticed Ur blushing slightly.

“Oh. Oooh~”, Hunah and I were equally surprised.

“I was already starting to think I was the only one currently alive who could appreciate the beauty of the Sister Route”, I commented.

“Indeed, we aren’t many, and we face many hardships. But this is also part of the romance!”, Kon agreed. “Truly, only the few who are wise can see that the truth lays in the Sister Route.”

Hey, that meeting with the 1st Guild Master wasn’t being as bad as I originally expected.

Maybe, and just maybe, that guy could understand me, after all? If he, too, knew that no couple could achieve greater perfection than a brother and a sister, then maybe he could also see that the supreme [class] was that of the summoner?

“Do you also like summoning monsters?”, I asked eagerly.

“What?”, And Kon tilted his head, confused.

I sighed. It was really a shame, had had the potential, after all. But I just shrugged it away.

“Nothing, nothing. Anyway, you invited us to rest at your house, but, I believe, you wanted to ask us something too?”, I finally touched on the main topic.

“Yes”, Kon started. But his eyes deviated, even if for only a moment, towards Taffy, who silently, and just as fluffy as ever, munched on her cookies, and seemed to take notes of it. “But, it looks like we will need to assert some priorities first.”

“Priorities?”, I asked.

“First, give me your Adventurers’ stamps”, the 1st Guild Master asked; and Hunah and I passed him our identifications. He infused the objects with his power, before giving them back to us. He seemed to think for a moment, before offering a hand to Giselle. She stared, gelid, at Kon, but finally gave him her own stamp, and he infused it with power too. “There, now you twins are 50th Ranked, and Giselle got her position as a 6th Guild Master again. Then, Giselle already went through this once, and knows all that she is allowed to know at her position. So I’ll ask you two only: what is the information you want to know?”

“[Gods]”, Hunah and I spoke in unison.

“Just like the hero brothers from Taffy’s tale”, I added.

“Don and Dean? The death [God] killers? That’s a story I haven’t heard in a long time…”, The new 6th Guild Master commented; and, only then I noticed, it was the first time I heard the name of my greatest heroes.

“I guessed”, he nodded, seemingly, approvingly. “I believe you have already heard of ‘Lower [Gods], correct? Do you know what does this means?”, my twin sister and I positively confirmed his first question, and negatively confirmed his second one. “Very well: the deities divided themselves in ranks of power, not differently from us, adventurers. First, and at the bottom of this pyramid, come the ‘Lower [Gods]’, then the ‘Intermediate [Gods]’, and in sequence, ‘High [Gods]’, ‘Higher [Gods]’, and ‘Highest [Gods]’. Of course, there’s variation within these titles too, like you may well know”, Hunah and I nodded. “Differently from what most people think, the stronger they are, the greater was their contribution to the creation of this world, and not the other way around”, I had no idea what he meant with that, but he had a look on his face that made clear we weren’t supposed to ask about that yet. “Right now, you two are strong enough to take down Intermediate [Gods], so those who invented or transformed things like some kind of food, or a couple of rivers, or control the rain in some region, or something like that.”

“What about the High [Gods]?”, I asked.

“You’re not ready yet…”, Kon glanced at Taffy quickly one more time, before adding: “I’ll let you know when you are. You know how it works, when I give you the info about a certain enemy, you have good chances of taking it down already.”

“Cool~ But didn’t you say something about sort priorities out just a minute ago?”, Hunah pointed, finally coming back to her naturally purple color, no longer too embarrassed that her voice would shake if she spoke. “What about that?”

“Ah, I already did it, with this conversation: there was, indeed a change of priorities”, Kon explained.

“Uh? Are you saying that you won’t bother them with your obsession anymore?”, Giselle, also seemingly mentally recovered, was surprised.

“No… Not yet”, the 1st Guild Master talked back.

“Hu, of course”, the woman with the scarred arms shook her head from one side to another, in negative, as if disappointed.

Turning back to us, Kon continued:

“Now, take this as a piece of extra information: the Adventurers’ Guild… Was founded with a single purpose in mind.”

“To help people?”, I asked.

“To defeat villains?”, Hunah asked.

“I can’t tell you just yet what this purpose is, but if you keep getting stronger, you will know.”

“Well, good thing then, that they made an enemy out of the 3rd Guild Master”, Giselle half laughed, half sighed. “If it came up that you were killing [Gods] just a little bit later, they’d already have collected whatever they came to collect, and you, twins, would need to go hunting for things to kill. Now, they will fall onto your lap day and night!”, she shrugged.

“The 3rd Guild Master… he reacted weirdly when he saw me, right?” Taffy asked, saying something for the first time since she introduced herself to everyone after we fought outside Long Rock… And the woman with perpetually closed eyes seemed weirdly serious. “And, you said, he came to collect something?”

“Uh, yeah, a metal box of some kind; our informant didn’t know much either”, Giselle explained.

And the hot drinks we all had in hands, prepared by Ur, at the same time and in an instant, froze, became totally solid and cold.

“Oh, my…”, Taffy spoke as she usually did, but her face was expressionless, not laughing anymore. “We need to get this box back.”

“…Seems like we have a new objective in hands already”, surprisingly, Kon was the first one to give in to the older woman’s request.