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Chapter 245: Return
🕑 Added 2024-01-27 13:00:06 +0000 UTCTeleportation using the Beacon was different from teleportation using a circle in terms of feeling. It was more ‘unstable,’ in whatever way teleportation could feel like that—I arrived slightly off-balance, disoriented, and most importantly, absolutely sick to my stomach. The moment I saw the Goblins’ forest around me, I immediately lurched over, almost certain I was about to puke my guts up. A glance at Erani told me she felt similarly.
“Do not feel good at all!” Ainash said, followed by a thudding sound. I looked at her, only to find her lying in the dirt, staring up at the treetops with her mouth hanging half-open. “Feel like…body is turning inside out.”
“Yep, sure doesn’t feel good, huh,” I gave a strained response. However, the sensation was quickly fading. I took a few deep breaths, finding each one returned some sense of normalcy back to my body.
As my nausea subsided, I heard Erani groan. “I really hope it doesn’t feel as bad when we return.”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I said, letting out one last shaky breath. I hoped my face wasn’t visibly green.
“No, seriously, I’m considering suggesting we find some way to take a carriage next time. I can’t take that again.”
“If we’re using mundane means of transportation, you’ll have to settle for walking, miss rich girl. Especially if Sylvie is apparently going through some sort of ‘financial crisis’ right now.”
“Is okay if I stay here for rest of night?” Ainash asked, still flat on her back.
“Unfortunately, there’s at least a thirty percent chance that Slyvie’s problem is actually as urgent as she made it sound, so we should probably get moving,” I responded.
“I would give it at least fifty,” Erani said. “She’s not stupid, you know; she wouldn’t ask us to return right after we left if it wasn’t actually important.”
“Either way, I think we’re in agreement that we should head to town.” I reached down to help Ainash up, and she reluctantly took my hand.
It was only after I took a couple steps forward that I realized we weren’t alone in the forest.
Off in the edges of the treeline, Goblins were staring at us with amazed eyes—almost reverent.
“Uh…” I gave an awkward wave. “Hi.”
One of them stepped forward. It was draped in an oversized cloth that it was using as a robe, but was clearly just some grown man’s tunic that I hoped it just stole and didn’t loot off of a corpse. “Have returned, just as prophesied!”
“...What?”
It turned to face the rest of the group of Goblins. “Great Crystal has returned Great Ones to us! I am prophet!”
Ainash looked at them for a second, clearly confused, but after a moment seemed to figure out what was going on. She took a short breath, then stepped forward, puffing out her chest proudly. The Goblins all looked at her, and she dramatically made a few hand signals—her way of communicating with them. I had no idea what she was saying, but once she finished the short string of movements, the Goblins’ eyes widened and they bowed in reverence.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
“Seems like Goblin in front thinks we are special people, and other Goblins believe one in front now that we teleported back. Said Goblin in front is right.”
Erani turned to me and muttered, “Did they…start an entire religion around us while we were gone?”
“We were only away for, like, half a day!” I responded. “Ainash really must’ve instilled the fear of the gods into them when she was training them, huh.”
“Is this even a good thing? It feels like it’s not.”
“Sure as hells tells me she knows what she’s doing.”
“What Goblins are doing is called ‘religion?’” Ainash asked. “Is about gods?”
“Uh, yeah, essentially,” I responded.
“It’s when Humans take things like the System or the stars or other things of great, mysterious power and try to extrapolate information from them to make sense of the world,” Erani explained. “Like, some religions say that the stars are actually the people who created everything that we see around us. Or that when you die, your consciousness goes someplace else instead of disappearing.”
“That sounds good!” Ainash said. “Think I like religion!”
“Yeah, it looks like the Goblins assume we’re one of those great powers,” I said. “Uh, it looks like you’ve got this handled?”
“Will show them how great I am!”
I turned to Erani. “Should we just leave and go talk with Sylvie while Ainash does…this stuff?”
“Are you sure we should?”
“It’s past midnight. I’ve got my uses back in case anything goes wrong.”
She pursed her lips. “I guess.”
We started walking back to town after that, leaving Ainash behind to sort out this Goblin business. I supposed that now that we would be coming back here every now and then with the Beacon, it would be best to keep them relatively self-governing, but still obedient to her. Besides, I still wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea to bring her into town.
We entered Salvation not as Annor and Eita, but as Arlan and Erani, with me wearing Light Plate and her keeping Distortion Strike inactive. It didn’t take long after entering for people to notice, whispers spreading everywhere we walked. Nobody directly confronted or spoke to us though, not even the guard. After the stunt we pulled killing Jon in that massive battle, I was pretty sure the whole town would know of our presence within an hour.
Which was perfect, since Sylvie didn’t even give us a place to meet her.
Erani and I just made our way to the guild lobby, hoping she’d be waiting for our arrival and would hear that we’d come. Maybe she would have someone come wake her up to come meet us, or something.
But when we entered the lobby, I saw her sitting at the bar, front and center, a mug in her hand and about six more empty ones lying on the floor by her feet.
The room went quiet when we walked inside, and Sylvie looked back to see us, eyes growing wide and a grin spreading across her face. “Hey! It’s you guys! C’mon over here!”
After a slight pause, I made my way across the room as she eagerly beckoned us forth, clearly drunk out of her mind.
“So what happened to ‘financial crisis?’” I asked, eyeing the empty cups of booze surrounding her.
“Aah, I’ll be fine. What’s one last night of a little fun, right?”
“What’s going on?” Erani asked. “Why did you ask us to come here?”
She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Flamin’...parents are being shitters. Took away my assets. No income, no stockpile of eyt left. All I’ve got is what I’ve earned while I’ve been here.”
“What?” I asked. “Why? Is that even legal?”
“Ugh. It’s so stupid. They heard about me and the whole fight thing with that one Cleric dude, and were like ‘Oh no, we don’t want our daughter associating with terrorists and committing cold-blooded murder,’ or whatever. So they disowned me. All my stuff was technically in the family name, so now I’ve got nothin’.”
“Disowned?” Erani’s eyes grew wide. “That’s extremely serious.”
“Yeah, I know it is, that’s why I’m drinking, dumbass.” Sylvie groaned, her head falling into her hands. “It’s fine, whatever. Didn’t wanna be a part of that whole family anyway. So, basically, I’m just cashing in that favor I got banked with you two. You promised you’d let me tag along with stuff you got up to, right? Boom, here we go. You’re probably out making bank and living well, take me along with you.”
“Are you sure you can’t fight them on this?” I asked. “Like, you can just tell them you stumbled upon the fight, or you could convince them that you were fighting for the right side, or that you were just protecting people in trouble, or something.”
She flopped her head on the bar. “Are you saying I can’t come?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Good. Them I’m coming. They’re stubborn, and I don’t wanna have the argument. Would be way more satisfying to just go get rich without them or something, and then I can go rub it all in their faces.” She sighed, as if imagining the scenario. “Yeah, that’d be great.”
“The problem is, we aren’t currently focused on money,” Erani said.
“What, too busy fighting off more armies invading the capital or whatever?”
“Nothing like that. Um, Annor and Eita have signed up for this tournament in Precipice. It was only created recently, so I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it, but—”
“You’re doing the Conqueror’s Tourney?!” Sylvie’s head shot up, staring at Ernai.
“Er, yes, they are, but…”
She leaned forward. “I wanna do it too.”
“I thought you wanted money,” I said.
She turned to me. “Do you think the empire doesn’t pay the winners for their work? Are you stupid, or something? That’s perfect!”
“You would technically be competing against—”
“I’m fine competing against you guys, whatever. I’ll just win.”
Erani snorted. “Yes, alright.”
“What?” She turned to face Erani again. “You think the idea of me winning is so comedic?”
“No, no, it’s just that Arlan said almost the exact same thing earlier. Er, he said it about Annor.”
“Mhm, whatever,” she said. “Let’s get going, yeah? I think I have enough leftover to comp you two for the teleportation, but you’ll probably have to fully cover my cost of living and all that, so…call it fair?”
“Uh, just come with us,” I said. “We have a cheaper method of transportation.”
“I hope I don’t need to pack for a week-long trip or anything. I think I have some shit at Boy’s place, so let me go there first.”
“You won’t need to worry about a long trip. But I guess you’d want to bring your things if you’re planning on staying in Precipice for a while. Which I guess you are planning on doing?”
“Probably. Don’t really have anything attaching me to this place.”
“That seems rude to Entismo, Aliss, and Boy.”
“Meh, they can take some bad manners. Besides, Aliss is still missing, so she deserves it. And Boy does too for not telling me where she is. And Entismo deserves it for not telling her he had a crush on her and finally fucking the woman before she disappeared. So, y’know.”
“You’re really just gonna leave?”
“I’ll come back eventually. Once I’m obscenely rich.”
“You mean once you’re back to being obscenely rich?”
“Oh, you haven’t seen obscene wealth if you think what I had was a lot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Clearly I haven’t.”
We walked over to Boy’s place together so she could fill a backpack with the essentials. The place was empty, Boy apparently having spent the night someplace else. Probably wherever Aliss was. Either way, Sylvie used her key to enter and packed up her stuff while also raiding his well-stocked food supply, which included a lot of expensive-looking cooking ingredients. I tried to stop her, but only managed to get her out of the kitchen after she’d shoved a handful of raw sugar into her mouth.
“Honestly, I wonder if she’ll get along with the Goblins when we pass through the forest to get to the Beacon. Considering how much she acts like a savage, they seem to have a lot in common” Erani muttered while Sylvie shoved clothes into her back in the other room.
“I mean, she did just get disowned. That’d probably convince anyone to just try and forget about it all for a night. And I guess in her case, forgetting about it involves drinking six mugs of straight liquor?”
“She doesn’t even have that high an Endurance, does she? I wouldn’t think she’d need something that strong as a mead replacement. I worry that her stomach won’t handle the teleportation very well.”
“Yeah, she’s definitely gonna puke her guts out. And we’d picked out such a nice cave,” I said sarcastically.
“I would like to at least keep it from smelling from half-digested tavern food. I mean, we’ll probably be spending a decent bit of time in there with you needing to charge it every time we—”
Erani was interrupted by the front door opening. Standing in the doorway was a hooded figure, standing there staring at us.
“Oh,” the person said in a familiar voice, removing their hood. “I…didn’t expect people to be here.”
Sylvie popped her head out from her doorway. “Aliss? Where in flames have you been?!”
Comments
Nameless NPC Art
Oh boy the goblins are back! I hope we see Ainash's pet beetle too
