It seems like Sky's family has gotten adjusted surprisingly easy. I suppose this world's standard of living is lower than my old one's but aren't they adjusting a little to easy? We're on the road. A road infested with monsters. On top of that we're being hunted by an organization backed most likely by a foreign power. I get that you're sleeping in a secure underground bunker every night but you'd expect someone to at least be mentally exhausted right? Actually now that I think about it, They come from a family that used to be Esu's royalty. They probably have a stupidly high compatability with support magic. So I guess Sky and her father make sense but what about the mother? Upon asking she told me,

"Fufufu, are you impressed, Bernadette? Believe it or not I used to work as a carpenter before having sky. We had to be very strong to carry the large pieces of lumber."

A carpenter and a furniture maker getting together, huh? I suppose that somewhat explains how they met. Although its pretty rare to see any woman in the carpentry field in this world. She's also still referring to me like I'm Bernadette. I should really take this opportunity to explain I'm not her.

"I haven't really spoken much to you, Shuria, but I should probably get this out of the way. I'm not Bernadette Autumburn, hell I'm not even a noble anymore. To explain things simply, Bernadette's soul has left this body and now I, Sam reside. So please don't refer to me as Bernadette anymore."

She's giving me a strange look now. I'm not a malicious body snatcher, you know? Just an accidental one.

"Please don't look at me like that! I don't know why I've come to possess this body either. I just am."

"Is that why that Con. . . core . . . corn something? Whatever that guy's name was thought you were a monster?" Pipes up Livia.

"If you're referring to Cornelius, then yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if he noticed my mannerisms differing from Bernadette's and thinking I'm some kinda monster that replaced her. Makes him sound like he's got capgras delusion bullshit going on, but its not that far off from reality."

""What's a capgras delusion?""

Oh right they wouldn't know what that is. I really need to stop using terms and phrases that don't make sense in this world. 

"To heavily simplify a complex issue, the capgras syndrome, which is its official name, is a mental illness where those afflicted irrationally believe one or more people in their life have been replaced by an imposter."

"You know about a lot of strange things berna. . . Sam."

"Well Sam is very smart after all! She even figured out how to summon gol-"

I promptly bonked Livia with my staff. Afterwards we continued to have a lively conversation and I taught Sky's family about various simple spells before calling it a night.

------

The next day while traveling on the road we encountered a carriage. It wasn't moving and looking at it from afar its clear that its run down. Wow that isn't ominous. 

Mi'ara decided to give me a hand signal. With her prompting I decided to cast a detection spell. It seems the carriage is a distraction for an ambush. Damn, I picked up 15 responses, all of them human. Looks like we got bandits. I'm honestly surprised we haven't encountered any sooner.

The left region of Esu, Which we're currently in, is mostly farm land. This means there are a lot of farmers. A lot of farmers leads to competition. When competition occurs someone is bound to fail. Failure leads to desperation l, and when you're desperate you turn to crime. Doesn't help that there are some really incompetent nobles scattered liberally around Esu. In-game there was a very long, multi-step side-quest where you just took down various bandit groups. Basically bandits are everywhere on Esu. It was a miracle that we haven't encountered them sooner. Well let's get this over with. I purposely took exaggerated steps towards the carriage and said in a voice louder than necessary,

"WHY IS THERE A RUN DOWN CARRIAGE ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD? I WONDER WHAT HAAAAAAAAAAAAPPENED?"

Then they popped up and surrounded us.

"What do we have here? Children like you really should stand behi-"

While he was about to say threatening things, one of his subordinates dressed in mage like robes came up and whispered into his ear. Likely because I conjured many small dragons made of fire using magic and made them fly around me. Making your magic take a shape like this requires fine control and making many complex shapes like this takes some serious skill and focus.

"You know what? Sorry about bothering you, little missy. Please, don't mind us and go on ahead," the bandit leader said as he stepped aside.

Man, its really nice having criminals with a self-preservation instinct.