“Let’s see if we can find anything good here~”
Ileya’s lips curved slightly upward, then she reached out and patted Mierpasi’s head beside her.
These ears are really nice, soft and fluffy, warm to the touch~
“Meow?! L-Lady… inside the ears… please don’t… meow…”
Watching Mierpasi look all shy and coy like that… Jenny, standing nearby, nearly ground her silver teeth to dust!
Her focus was no longer on what the Lady was saying.
Jealousy had twisted the noble and beautiful Queen Bee’s face beyond recognition.
Damned flirty cat!! Just because you’ve got a pair of furry ears! How dare you seduce the Lady like this…
Why don’t I have cat ears and a cat tail?!
Damn it… I feel like the rivals around me are multiplying by the day…
While the little schemer bit her finger and thought of a countermeasure, the Lady was already walking toward that “Junk Market.”
Why would the Lady want to come to a place like this? Better to visit the Hundred Treasures Pavilion and the Auction House…
Looking at the ragged refugees around her, and the pots and pans they’d laid out on tattered cloths, Jenny curled her lips in disdain.
Nobody would even bother picking these things up if they were thrown on the street, right?
Still… this was a move born of desperation.
To flee, these people had only grabbed their valuables. Some even carried the label of “fleeing serfs,” abandoning their noble masters’ fields to run into the city.
But as it turned out, their choice was the right one.
Given the precarious situation outside now, for these common folk, getting into the city first meant a better chance to survive the coming calamity.
Just look at how things were going at the city gates.
The Crystal Capital was taking in refugees from outside almost every single day, strictly one-way traffic.
They’d even felled nearly half the forest leading to the castle to set up tents for sheltering refugees.
But it still wasn’t nearly enough.
Helpless, they could only limit the number of refugees entering each day, and even those who got in weren’t guaranteed a place to stay.
“Sigh~” Thinking about it, Jenny let out a slow breath.
The situation was still manageable for now. With the Marquis Castle providing relief, and the refugees still carrying their own dried rations and travel money…
There shouldn’t be any particularly troublesome riots in the short term.
Hopefully the army will succeed in pacifying the foreign races and put an end to this chaos soon.
“Hey! Stall owner, how much for this thing?”
Just as Jenny was worrying about the future of the East Capital…
Ileya and Mierpasi, walking ahead, suddenly heard a familiar voice!
“This one? Uh… five copper coins…”
“Five copper coins? Man, you’ve got some nerve with that price… This thing is covered in rust. You probably found it somewhere, right? Two copper coins, not a copper more!”
A boy with a strikingly familiar back was crouched in front of a stall, holding a rust-covered iron rod about half a meter long, haggling with the thin, dark-skinned stall owner.
The dark-skinned owner was clearly just a refugee himself. Flustered by the boy’s words, his dark face flushed slightly red.
Because this rusted iron rod really was something he’d fished out of a river while fleeing. He figured iron was iron, so he’d brought it along.
Two copper coins… that worked too!
He was just about to stammer out his agreement when, out of nowhere, a voice cut in from the side.
“I’ll take that~”
Huh?
The boy and the stall owner both froze for a moment, turning their heads…
There stood a girl with white hair and crimson eyes, smiling sweetly from the other side of the stall.
“You… uh?!” Franlot blinked, then slowly opened his mouth wide…
Ileya and… Mierpasi?!
For a split second, Franlot had the illusion that he’d never left Gils at all.
What are these two doing here?!
“How about it?” Completely ignoring Franlot as usual, Ileya just smiled at the stall owner in front of her.
“Ah…? Oh! Sure! Sure, sure, sure!” The stall owner nodded eagerly.
“Hey! What’s the deal with you?! I was here first…” Franlot started to panic!
This iron rod was a task assigned to him by the System!
Seemed to be a chain task too—getting the rod would unlock the full quest line…
“Uh… but…” The stall owner was clearly an honest man, and faced with Franlot’s protest, he didn’t know what to do.
“Fine! I’ll offer a silver coin! I was here first, and I spotted this thing first!”
As he spoke, Franlot reached into his clothes for money… and the iron rod stayed death-gripped in his hand.
Clink! But the next second, a gold coin… was flicked onto the stall by Jenny.
“Uh?” The stall owner stared at the gleaming coin, his whole body jolting, and looked up at Jenny in bewilderment.
“Heh~ A silver coin? How unfortunate. When my Lady goes out, she never carries small change~”
The little schemer blew on her nails, casting a contemptuous sidelong glance at Franlot, who was haggling over three copper coins.
Of course she had silver coins in her pocket. But when it came to reading the Lady’s mood… if Jenny said she was second, no one dared claim first.
The Lady clearly didn’t like this pretty boy.
So as the Lady’s loyal hound, it was only natural for her to bite first!
“This…” The stall owner trembled, wanting to say it was too much.
“Not enough?”
“Enough, enough, enough!!” The stall owner nodded frantically, snatched up the gold coin, didn’t even bother packing up his other junk, bowed and scraped his thanks to the three girls, then scurried off.
He was just a refugee, not a real merchant. He had a wife and kids to feed back home—when you sell something, you take the highest bidder.
“The stall owner already said he’d sell it to us. Hand it over~” Jenny slowly extended her hand toward Franlot, chin raised, looking at him like he was a pile of garbage.
“Ugh… you… don’t push it!” Franlot gritted his teeth, glancing at the elegant noble girl in front of him, then at the Lady behind her, arms crossed, silent as always.
“How strange~ We paid the money, and the shopkeeper said it was ours… Shouldn’t it be you who’s pushing it, trying to take our things?”
Jenny gave a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, stepping sideways to block Franlot’s view of her Lady.
“Um… can we at least…”
“No! And watch those dog eyes of yours!!” Jenny cut him off coldly, her tone turning icy in an instant.
Clap clap. The Queen Bee gave a light clap of her hands.
Thud thud thud…
The next second, a dozen or so men emerged from the surrounding alleys, weapons at their waists, burly frames, vicious faces…
Franlot could tell at a glance that these thugs belonged to the girl in front of him.
And the way they were looking at him… was far from friendly.
Damn it… he’d left Xue’er and Teres behind because he didn’t want trouble…
“Hah… fine, fine… take it!”
No choice. A wise man knows when to back down. Franlot could only glare bitterly at the three girls before handing the rusted iron rod to Jenny.
The Queen Bee snatched the rod from his hand, curling her lip in disdain…
But the moment she turned around, the contempt on her face instantly melted into a sweet smile.
“Lady~ Your item~”
“Mhm~” Ileya took the iron rod from Jenny’s hand, turning it over left and right… but found nothing particularly special about it.
Soul Probe had almost no effect on something so lifeless.
Still… whatever~ Since this belonged to Franlot, the so-called “Destined Protagonist,” there was no harm in taking it.
Smiling as she looked up, Ileya noticed that Franlot, who’d been standing in front of them, had already vanished.
“Ran off, did he?” The Lady stroked her chin.
Not completely stupid—at least he knew to run before getting beaten up.
“Lady, should I arrange some people… to cause him trouble?” Jenny asked from behind Ileya.
The suggestion made the Lady raise an eyebrow slightly.
Not because she liked the idea, but because… Jenny’s proposal was very similar to a lot of classic shows Ileya had watched back home.
The villain sends a bunch of minions to suppress the protagonist, and in the end, they all turn into EXP packs, treasure packs, money packs…
Until the protagonist ends up stronger than ever.
“Not needed. Without my orders, none of you are to provoke that guy, understand?”
“Huh? Lady… isn’t that a bit too cautious? That guy just looks like an ordinary pretty boy…”
“Yes.” Though she didn’t fully understand, Jenny nodded anyway, then slowly raised her left hand and waved it in the air.
The Hive members who’d been ready to chase after Franlot relayed the order among themselves and dispersed on the spot.
The catgirl, who’d been standing quietly by Ileya’s side, watched the direction Franlot had gone with complicated eyes.
“What? Still thinking about him?” Ileya glanced sideways at her “Lucky Cat.”
“No… I just feel like the old me must have been possessed. To think I actually believed someone like him… could be dependable.”
Mierpasi gave a helpless smile.
He’d seen her, but from start to finish, he hadn’t said a single word to her.
The two of them were strangers now…
So all those words he’d said to her before… she could finally forget them without any burden now…
…
“Hah… hah! Damn it… damn it! Why do I keep running into that girl everywhere!?”
Franlot felt like he was about to lose his mind!
Every single time he ran into her, he got humiliated something fierce. He hated it!
He wished he could slam her onto the ground and beat her senseless! Then toss her into a pile of goblins!!
After throwing a furious round of Wangba Fist in place, Franlot slowly calmed down.
But… thinking about it, he was really strapped for cash right now…
Given that Lady’s personality, she probably wouldn’t come after him herself, right?
If she sent out some small-time thugs… he might even make a little extra cash on the side.
Robbery of those parasitic scum—he had zero moral qualms about that.
With that thought, Franlot’s eyes darted around.
Since leaving Gils, he’d completed quite a few System-assigned tasks. His current strength was several times what it used to be.
Maybe he actually could… He nodded to himself unconsciously, then turned and ducked into a narrow alley.
He crouched behind a dumpster, starting to wait for the big fish to bite…
But a full hour passed. Franlot was nearly asleep, and still, no thugs came to chase him or cause him trouble…
How was that possible?
That girl… was just going to let him go like that?!
The boy was bewildered, but the facts were clear… no one was coming to kill him.
“Hah… calm down, calm down. It was just a wrong guess.”
Staring at the task displayed on the translucent panel in front of him, smelling the stench that had clung to him from crouching by the dumpster for so long…
Franlot felt that familiar urge… the urge to go berserk!