By the time my convalescence ended, we had reached Pandaria, but further adventures in Azeroth would have to wait. It was time to return to our game-like world. I made sure that Fran and I were equipped with durable looking clothing, not that we’d be wearing them for long. Our first stop would be a tailor so we could get some real clothes.

It was more for Fran than me. I didn’t change forms completely the way she did. When I did change forms, holes opened in both my armor and clothes to allow my wings, tail, and horns out. Fran on the other hand changed between a little girl, a house cat, and a huge panther. Big difference from me.

Also, the clothes from the magic wardrobe couldn’t be stored, so when Fran changed, she couldn’t just dump them in her item box. If she wore actual clothes then the clothing disappeared and reappeared when she changed from or to her human form.

We’d tried seeing what happened when she changed from human to the big cat with magic clothes. It wasn’t pretty. The clothes exploded, but since they had instant auto-repair, they ended up stuck on her body in various places.

Basically, we needed real clothes for Fran. I’d get some as well. It’s good to have backup items in case something goes wrong.

I opened the portal that bad been closed for over a month now. The boulder was intact. That’s good. None of us sensed anything, so I opened the door, and we headed into the open air. It was very overcast, and very likely to rain. I dropped the wardrobe and we each pulled out an umbrella and raincoat.

Now we were ready. I collected the wardrobe and boulder, and we were off. We’d stopped about an hours walk away from the city, off the well traveled paths, but close enough to get back on the road quickly.

Before I forgot, I quickly pulled our ID cards out and made sure there was no guild info on the cards. The angel had made cards for the other two with the same option as mine to clear the data after the transformation. If we didn’t have that, there would be some funny questions about why I was registered as a human, and not a dragonkin.

We made our way to the road first. We had been close to the edge of the forest, and there were fields close by. I really didn’t want to piss off the farmers. They have a hard enough time as it is.

We reached the gates of the city about nine. We could have made it faster, but Fran decided to look around at anything she found interesting. I didn’t really care, so I let her do as she wished. This was her first time out in the real world as a girl instead of a cat.

Okay, so I played along with her. I was humanized right now, so we looked like two little girls goofing around. It was fun. Alfred didn’t care either. He didn’t really have any desires outside of serving his master...er mistress, since I am now a girl. I need to be careful about my thinking, I’d spent decades as a male, so changing the way I thought took some time. Fortunately, the body seemed to influence the mind, so it made it slightly easier. I didn’t mind being a girl at all. It was actually somewhat relaxing. And if I decided I needed to turn male again, I’d just have to work at the transformation skill.

Walking up to the gate, we were surprised at the length of the line. It looked almost as long as the border crossing, but instead of being mainly merchants, seemed to be composed of many groups of adventurers. I was able to hear them a lot sooner than I thought. I guess Dragonkin have better ears than humans. They also definitely have better noses and eyes as well. Both Fran and I had to run away when Alfred tried making curry during my recovery. The smell was too much for us.

What I heard greatly interested me. Apparently there was going to be a tournament in the local arena in a few days. Most of the adventurers were here to try and compete. I decided to play innocent child, and begged them to tell me about it. I guess I pulled it off pretty well. One of the women even looked like she wanted to scoop me up and hug me. Ah, the blessings of cuteness.

From what I was told, the tournament happened every leap year before and during the holidays. Only registered adventurers could participate, and there were different sections divided by rank. They started with the lower ranks, and the winner and runner-up of that got the opportunity to fight in the higher rankings. That way powerful new adventurers still got a shot at the bigger prizes. However by taking the opportunity, they gave up the lower rank prizes.

Both Fran and me got excited, we wanted to fight! It sounded like so much fun! Alfred didn’t care, but we’d sign him up anyway. Two of us should be able to advance through at least a few of the ranks. Though we’d have to defeat one or more of each other.

We kept asking questions and talking until we reached the front of the line. Given how many people were in town, we decided that securing a place to sleep was the highest priority. Unfortunately, the only inn with room available only catered to the rich, and if we’d taken a room, it would have ended up bribed out from under us.

Well fine then. Asking around, Alfred did the asking as he was the only adult, we discovered that there was a location close to the dungeon where adventurers could camp. Normal people avoided the area, since adventurers had a reputation for being rough. Didn’t matter to us. We just needed a place to stay.

Locating the campground, we secured a location by dropping a boulder. We got stared at. I didn’t care. This boulder was not the one we used for the portal. This was just one I’d grabbed along the way. I was going to make a portable house!

I started by hollowing out the center. The guts were used to reinforce the walls and roof. The excess, I compressed into blocks for later use. Shaping the walls, I straightened them out, making the boulder into a box. I also raised the building onto legs, so it was obvious that the building was not fixed.

The last major modification was the roof. It was still boulder-like, rough and irregular. I smoothed it down, making it pyramid shaped, but leaving a chimney on one side. Moving inside, I used the leftovers from the roof to finish the inside part of the chimney. Then it was time for interior design. I started with the kitchen. Not there was much to it. I made a counter with a sink close to the fire. Not that we’d really use it. We’d likely either pop into the villa or eat premade meals.

I put out a table, affixing it to the ground, and chairs from my inventory. The chairs had padding, since stone chairs are not too comfortable. They were made during the escort quest. I added a pair of beds along the wall, with shelving above and a drawer below. Between the beds were a pair of dressers. And it was done!

Not.

There was little light, though I could always throw up lightballs. Checking my inventory, I pulled out sand and started transforming it into glass. It was in no way great glass, but it would let light in, while preventing others from seeing in. I put a pane above each of the beds.

Now the only thing left to handle was the door. I tried making a stone door, but Fran had a hard time moving it. It also made annoying grinding noises when moving. I checked my inventory, but didn’t find anything suitable to use as a door. Oh well, Fran would just have to deal.

Hmm, actually one more thing. Proof of ownership. I went inside and took a seat. I wanted this to look good. I pulled out some stones, pulling out all the white parts and pushing them into a single block. The remainder, I put together and shoved back into the box. Now that I had a nice marble looking block, I formed it into a plate, then had our names carved into it. I left that to Alfred. He had the best handwriting. After filling the impression with obsidian, it was done. Heading back outside. I pulled a piece out of the wall and replaced it with the name plate.

Smiling I turned, and seeing the size of the crowd, my eyes went wide, and I couldn’t help ducking into the house with a small eek escaping my lips. It got a lot of laughs. Powerful mage girl, scared of crowds. I peeked back through the open door. Alfred was dealing with the situation. Fran was poking around our little hut. I wasn’t surprised when she decided to climb up the chimney.

The crowd on the other hand was surprised when a little cat girl popped out of the chimney onto the roof. After hiding out for a bit, I gave up hiding and tugged on Alfred’s sleeve.

“Lets go to the Guild?”

He nodded, Fran climbed off the roof she was lounging on, and we made our way out of the crowd and towards the guild.

The guild was close by. This being a dungeon city, and the guild being in charge of the dungeon, they chose to build their local facilities close to the entrance to the dungeon. Walking in, we got stares and people started muttering. It got really bad when we got in the adventurer’s line instead of the customer line.

No one interfered with us though. There was no restriction on registering with the guild, as long as you could pay the fee. Many kids registered so they could do the odd jobs requested around town. There was a system where the registration fee could be taken out of the rewards over time, but it came with restrictions.

The mutters we were getting was because Fran and I were dressed in reasonably lower middle class clothing, but had a well dressed and groomed butler accompanying us. They probably thought we were slumming it or something.

We reached the front of the line. The counter was above my and Fran’s heads, so I dropped a chair for us to stand on. Although Alfred appeared to be the adult here, I took the lead.

“We’d like to register, please.”

The receptionist looked us over, but handed us the forms to fill out. We did that quickly, and passed them back with our cards. She had no problems with Alfred’s or Fran’s, but when she came to mine she stopped.

“Dragonkin?”

“I hope you keep it confidential as is required by guild law, but yes. If you could please continue, we’d like to get the F-Rank test done quickly. We want to register for the tournament, but were told only F-Rank and above could do so, and today was the last day.”

She shakes her head, but continued. A moment later, we were handed back our cards, now with guild registration on them. She directed us to the practice grounds. We headed straight there. Unlike Avenci’s capital, the training grounds were not connected to the guild. Instead, the arena was the training grounds and was open to all, outside of special events.

We hurried to the arena. It was on the other side of the dungeon entrance, so it took us a bit to get there. There were guards at the entrance, but they let us pass when we showed our cards. The place was huge! Most of it was open to the air, but it was the size of a football stadium back on Earth. Looking around, we eventually found the arena manager.

After waiting for our turn, we told him why we were there. He looked fine with Alfred, but us girls, he looked down on. He didn’t think we’d be able to fight, and so he tried telling us to come back in a few years. Yeah, no. We insisted, and after a bit of arguing, in which I had to quote guild rules, much to our mutual annoyance, he finally called over one of the trainers.

He shouted something about us being responsible if we got ourselves hurt, but we ignored him. We followed the trainer. While the place was huge, it was still packed with people practicing for the tourney. Finding an empty corner, he chose Alfred to test first. The test didn’t last long.

The test was only to determine that the applicant had the minimum required skill to reach F-Rank. Once he realized our butler’s skill, he didn’t need to continue. I was next. Again, it was done in moments. Then Fran was up. I was a little worried, since she didn’t have any weapon skills, but she dodged all the attacks and send wind claws at the guy. She passed.

We would have to see about her learning to use weapons. Hmm, I did still have the swordsmanship skill stone. It’d only give me experience to the next level, but for her she’d get the skill itself. Yeah, lets ask her if she wants that.

The trainer came back, signed off on our skills, then we were headed back around the dungeon to the guildhall. So annoying. We reentered the building, but this time there was a bigger stir, as there were people there who recognized us from when I was setting up the house. They started whispering to others, and we became famous. So much for being discreet. Well, I knew something like this would happen.

Cliche was avoided again, as we reached the reception and took care of our business of ranking up and registering for the tournament. We also decided to register as a party. It’d help us avoid issues with other groups, or so I hoped. We chose, OK well I chose, the name White Wings.

While it could be said that it was because of my new appendages, I actually chose it based on a web novel. I’d introduced the novel to the others, and they had read it during the last few weeks. Fran kind of reminded me of the twins. She was so cutely innocent and yet bloodthirsty at the same time.

While I’d like to have retreated to the villa, we still had things to do. We had put it off in order to get registered for the tournament, but we needed real clothes. I used the map’s search function and found a bunch of tailor shops. Choosing one that was close by we went shopping.

We took till evening to do it, and visited multiple shops. Had Alfred been human, he’d have likely been exhausted and irritated with us for all the time we spent. I couldn’t help it. It was the girl in me! Fran and I had tons of fun looking at all sorts of different clothes. Even Alfred chimed in from time to time giving his advice. What a great butler he was!

We wound up purchasing a lot of cute clothes. There was even some decent underwear! We didn’t have to deal with the pumpkin pants anymore! Well, I wasn’t dealing with them to begin with, since the Wardrobe’s clothes worked fine for me. Alfred bought exactly one thing, a package of handkerchiefs… I said he could get what he wanted, but he didn’t really care.

As the sun began to set, we had to stop, since the shops were closing. We stopped off at a restaurant and had a nice meal. I tried the Orc General steak. It was delicious, though somewhat expensive. We’d be able to find the meat in the labyrinth, so we could look forward to that.

After eating, we made our way back to the adventurer’s field. Our lodgings definitely stood out. However, I was unhappy with the condition we found it in. It seemed like we would have trouble today after all.

The door was open, the name plate had been smashed into illegibility, and raucous voices were coming from inside. We had burglers… Well, this was our property, so they couldn’t complain if they were kicked out.

I stomped my way over to MY HOUSE. Standing in the doorway, I looked at the scene inside. There were four smelly men around the table, there was all sorts of garbage littering the floor, and there was something burning disgustingly in the fireplace. One of the men noticed me.

“Come on in darlin’ we’ll show you a good time.” Gah, a perverted lolicon.

“I’ll come in, but while I might have a good time, you pigs will not. Gather your garbage and get out of my house.”

“No one was here, so we claimed this as ours. If you want to complain, then you can leave.”

“This will be your final warning, get out now, thieves. You broke into the property of others, so If you do not leave, I will be getting the guards. I hope you like being punished.”

“”Be quiet yappy girl. This is our place, not yours, you can’t prove otherwise.”

“The hard way it is.”

I sent a message to Fran to go collect some guards, then stepped outside. They thought I’d given up...right until the chairs and floor disappeared from under them. I stored the house in my item box. I did leave out all the garbage, including the pigs.

Yelling out, they thudded heavily onto the ground. Seeing me standing there with a smirk on my face, they did what I knew they would, attack me. They were drunk, which made this so easy. I didn’t even need Alfred’s help.

I stepped out of the way of the leader’s sword, grabbed his arm and chucked him to the ground. I did it soft enough not to kill him, but I definitely heard some bones snap. The next person was already stepping into range. Dodging again, I touched his axe and coated it in stone from my storage, making him drop it. The last two were not as stupid as the first two, trying to flank me. Hah, as if that’d work. I parried the spear of one into the guts of the second, as he tried to backstab me with a knife, then bashed the spearman on the head, rendering him unconscious.

It was over in less than a minute. So boring. I asked Alfred to help me tie the idiots up, then we started cleaning the space so I could put our house back down. I’d just put the house back when the guards arrived. Giving them my statement, corroborated by all the surrounding people who had enjoyed the show, the men were carted off to prison. Alfred had made some decent money from betting on me, as I’d requested.

With the commotion over, people started breaking up, heading to their camps, or to visit friends or the bars. I fixed up the damage the burglers had done, compressing the stone of the name plate until it was as strong as stone could get. Hopefully no one else would try the same thing.

However, to avoid trouble, I’d have to remain in the hut, instead of enjoying the comfortable bed of the villa. Well, until we had some way of messaging...Hmm, we had to try that. Alfred was going to spend the night working in the gardens, but I sent Fran over there as well, then closed the portal.

I couldn’t use telepathy to reach her across the dimensional divide, but when I sent a message from my app, she received and responded. Cool. One or the other of us would need to stay on this side to contact the other, who got to rest in the villa. Since she was already over there, she got the bed tonight. I dropped a mattress on the stone bed, arranged the sheets then got comfortable.

I was sure that tomorrow was going to be a busy day.