The mayor’s house was situated in the middle of the one-street village, it could be recognized from afar as it was the biggest and fanciest building in the entire settlement. Going down the street Ren noticed that the villagers came out of their houses, and dropped whatever they were doing to offer bows, cheers, and greetings to his mother. Furthermore, there were all kinds of tanuki-themed decorations along the way – tanuki-shaped shrubs, tanuki figurines on the windowsills, and statues the size of garden gnomes in the gardens. Many people, both old and young, men and women were wearing red streaks of makeup on the cheeks and noses or lining the eyes. Those who were wearing hats had theirs fashioned to resemble the fluffy ears of his mother. The mayor, Ren observed, wore a hat with white ears decorating it pushed back and secured with a string around his neck-fat. He may have even worn makeup too but the grease from the food smudged it to appear as an extensive blush. Then again his face could have been red from running – Ren couldn’t tell.
When they arrived at the mayor’s house, Ren wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Someone’s home? A place of government? A temple dedicated to his mother? No.
As he soon found out, it was all of the above.
They were led to the main hall, where an enormous dining table was straining under the weight of the mountain of food placed upon it. The feast must have started not long ago because the dishes were barely touched and still steaming.
The mayor pulled out a chair for Erin at the head of the table, gestured a maid to place his dishes and cutleries elsewhere – he was sitting there before Erin and Ren arrived – and had her bring clean plates for the demigod and her child.
“A toast!” he declared, raising his wine cup. “To you, Lady Erin, and to you, adorable young miss. Congratulations on your child safely born! I know that the world has become more beautiful with baby Tesha in the world.”
“Thank you for the warm welcome, mayor. You are always so generous.” Erin said as she raised her cup. “I hope you don’t mind me staying at your house. It’s only for a couple of days, a week at most until I gather enough materials to build us a new home.”
“Please, Lady Erin, it’s my honor. Both of you are welcome to stay for as long as you like. Frankly, I wish you moved in for good, the entire village of Hubbletooth belongs to you after all.”
“Eh? It does?” Ren wondered with a raspy whisper.
“Why yes, young miss.” - answered the mayor surprising Ren, who didn’t expect the man to hear him. Sharp ears, he noted and tried his best not to frown being treated as a girl.
“Ah, my name is Alphonse Merrygold, honored to make your acquaintance. You see, it was actually your great lady mother who founded this village” the mayor continued. “She led refugees who were running from a nasty war here in my great-great-grandfather’s generation. Lady Erin created a safe haven here from the undead hordes of the demon lord, and thus, Hubbletooth was founded. Her barrier protects us to this very day. She often helped out with many of our issues, she is truly a goddess of the mortal realm. We are very lucky to have her.”
“Aw, Alphonse, that story is over a hundred years old! You flatter me!”
“This is no flattery, milady. To your health!” mayor Alphonse toasted again, the other dinner guests echoing him. After a round of introductions around the table – which both to Ren and F7 was equally exhausting – they finally started to eat.
Ren couldn’t take in much, and what he could, his mother turned into mush and levitated into his mouth to make eating for his injured throat easier. He nodded off in the middle and woke up to be carried to their room, which the mayor apparently kept specifically for Erin.
They quickly settled in, washed up, and Erin had Ren ingest another round of slimy medicine. This time there was no notification of the level of the ‘Drug resistance’ stat increasing, Ren guessed it will take a couple more rounds to raise.
As they turned in for the night F7 grew jittery with boredom. They drummed on the armrest of the capsule, and after giving it some thought, they decided to play a game while waiting for Ren to wake up.
It was a game F7 themselves made to pass time. Compared to the high-quality immersive virtual reality games of the present era, theirs was very simple. They just had to move a square around to eat small dots while avoiding the triangles that tried to catch them.
F7 leveled up about fifteen times when they noticed a new notification of an incoming message. It was from their boss regarding their request to be allowed to take a look at their file. F7’s boss explained that they couldn’t help them because his own clearance was only A and didn’t have access to the files. As for raising the clearance level – the mail explained – one basically had to achieve merits worthy of notice. The reason why F7’s clearance level didn’t get raised all this time was that while they did their job well, all they did was do their job which was expected of them to begin with.
“So… I would have to achieve something truly outstanding to raise my level…” F7 muttered to themselves out loud. They thought about what kind of merit could they possibly gain while stranded on a small, barren moon alone, and suddenly an idea formed in their mind.
Why don’t I catch the hacker? That’s right. They are a serious threat to national security. If I catch them surely they will raise my level or maybe if I ask for it they will reward me with the file itself!
Having found a new goal to work towards, F7 felt happy for the first time in forever. They excitedly cracked their knuckles and ordered the AI to connect them to the company forum. First, they needed information. Since they couldn’t reveal the details of the cyberattack, they decided to approach the problem from a different angle. They quickly started a new thread.
[My target’s LUC is the worst. It affects even my system’s operation. Anyone encountered similar problems? #letsventtogether #wonkyluck #icanrelate]
Woah.
Hi, thanks for reading this
Lol they have a forum