The Night that (9): The Bubbles Burst.

I'll start by apologizing for the delay. There were two reasons why this chapter took so long to come out.

First: I don't like talking about politics, but I think everyone is aware of the recent events that happened around the world. That affected my work. The beginning of the month was extremely difficult — it still is, but at least it's better than before.

Second: my mother's dog passed away.

I wasn't particularly attached to the dog, but my mom was. She took it really hard, so I stayed with her for a while. I ended up going from work to her house and from her house to work.

Things have gotten a bit better. I got her another dog of the same breed. It was the only option I could find, and it made her happy — it gave her something to focus on.

Well... the arc was supposed to end in the next (P)(A)(T) chapter, but due to everything that’s been going on, it’ll take one more. I didn’t feel like writing the final part — I was mentally exhausted and stressed — and I felt the quality might drop, which is something I try to avoid at all costs.

So, the arc will officially end on April 21st, which is when the next chapter comes out.

Well, I think that’s it. As always, if anyone wants to read 3 to 7 chapters ahead, that’s possible through my (P)(A)(T). If not, I still truly appreciate you reading. Thank you so much!

As always, have a good Blood Moon and enjoy the read!

[...]---[...]

Of all the things that could have happened, I won’t lie—I didn’t expect this to be one of them… How the hell?…

I didn’t reply at first, my attention was on our surroundings. Not because I was worried someone might overhear her question. Besides being somewhat unbelievable, if someone actually found out that I was the one who created that hurricane, it wouldn’t really matter.

What caught my attention was the semi-transparent bubble surrounding the two of us.

Air still passed through it normally, just like the sound from outside. I could hear the conversations around us without issue, but the woman’s voice in front of me simply didn’t go beyond the bubble. Even the internal mana seemed separate from the external one.

I stood up. The height difference between me and the woman became apparent. She was about five foot five, maybe a little taller. I walked to the edge of the bubble and poked it with my finger. The woman just watched with a curious look, not really trying to stop me—or to stop pointing at me, actually. Her finger followed me as I moved.

The bubble was elastic, entirely coated with her mana. In fact, it seemed to be made entirely of her mana, which was strangely flexible and shaped exactly like a bubble. I felt like I could pierce it if I forced it a little, but it had a decent resistance.

“Innate magic?” I asked. It was almost certain that it was. The way her mana behaved was something I hadn’t seen before.

I could create bubbles with magic too, it wasn’t complicated, but one like this? And just using mana, with nothing else involved? I wasn’t so sure…

“It’s rude to answer a question with another.” She countered.

I didn’t skip a beat: “It’s rude to point fingers at someone, especially one you just met.”

She didn’t stop pointing, and a faintly amused smile appeared on her face. I stopped poking the bubble and turned toward her. Her finger was still pointed at my face.

“Where did that come from?”

“What?”

“Your question. The fact that you think I was the one who created that tornado.” That was my real curiosity.

That this bubble around us was her innate magic was almost certain. She had used bubbles on her feet as well, like skates. But the fact that she had searched for me in the city and approached me with such certainty in her steps when she saw me? I had no idea where that came from.

I hadn’t felt any eyes on me while walking through the desert, and I was really good at knowing when I was being watched.

For the first time, she stopped pointing her finger at me and brought it to her face, holding her chin as a humming sound echoed from her throat.

“Instinct. My instinct has always been good at figuring out strange things. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t.” She shrugged, then pointed her index finger at me again—her right hand this time—but now circling it around, pointing at my whole body.

“You’re not wearing the usual clothes people in Shahrabad wear—”

“Neither are you.”

She ignored me and continued her explanation, her eyes a bit distant as she rambled: “—Your clothes are pretty casual and aren’t enchanted, even though their colors are quite dull. The leader of my group would say you have no fashion sense, but he’s a bit snobbish, so whatever. You also don’t look like a local—”

“Neither do you.” I repeated. She ignored me again.

“—So you must be a tourist. There are only three types of people who would travel through the desert dressed like that.” She raised her left arm beside her body, holding up three fingers. “Especially with the ants acting the way they are: the really strong, the really rich, or the really stupid.”

She paused. Her eyes locked onto me, assessing me from head to toe again.

“You don’t look rich—”

“Is that an insult or a compliment?”

“—I don’t know, who knows?…” She replied, lowering one finger, her smile growing slightly—both in size and amusement—before motioning around us. “You’re also alone. No bodyguards, otherwise they would have shown up by now. That, or you need to fire them and hire new ones, because I could have attacked you plenty of times by now.”

She didn’t pause as she kept talking. Only then did I realize she hadn’t stopped to take a breath at any moment, her finger once again pointing at me.

“You don’t seem stupid…” She narrowed her eyes, lowering a second finger slowly as she stared at me. “Maybe a little—”

“Extremely rude.” A large part of the (CHAT) seemed to like her.

“—You have a serious look, but something tells me you’re kind of goofy, I don’t know why. So that leaves the last option: you must be pretty strong.” She finally concluded, lowering the third and last finger, letting her arm drop to her side before taking a deep breath and adding at the end: “So, was I right? Was it you?!”

(“She’s… peculiar, to say the least. You attract a lot of these types of people, don’t you?”) Ozma commented, his voice amused. (“Her logic actually makes a bit of sense.”)

(“It’s awful logic, as shallow as a saucer!”) I retorted.

(“I said it made a bit of sense, not that it was good, let alone deep.”)

I sighed mentally, ignored my schizophrenia, and asked the woman in front of me:

“Cocaine, do you know it?”

She blinked. “Uhm? No. What is it?”

“A white powder that famous singers like to sniff a lot.”

“Nope, never heard of it.” She shook her head from side to side.

“That sounds like a lie to me.”

“Why?” Her eyes widened, suddenly looking excited. “Oh! I know! You think I look like a famous singer, don’t you?! I love singing, you know?! Do you think I have the style?!”

…Does cocaine have another name in Terraria? Probably another color too.

“The clothes?” I asked. She nodded quickly, her hair swaying with the motion. “A little. I’ve seen famous singers with outfits in a similar style.”

She brightened even more. “And my voice?” She struck a pose, bringing her hand to her throat.

“Please, don’t start singing.”

“Wow, that was rude.” She didn’t seem offended in the slightest.

“I can tell your house doesn’t have mirrors.”

Her smile grew wider, showing her teeth. Her eyes almost seemed to sparkle with amusement. She dropped the pose and extended her hand to me.

“I like you.” She blinked as if remembering something. “My name is Isis, by the way. I. S. I. S.” She, Isis, spelled out. “Two ‘S’s, no ‘Z’, ‘Y’, or ‘H’. There’s an acute accent on the first 'I'.”

“Have people confused your name before?”

“Never!”

“…I figured.” Lucy and she would get along well—thank God I left the axe with Jinn.

I shook my head, grasping her hand. I couldn’t help the small smile that formed on my lips. Whether I wanted to or not, I got along well with idiots. “I’m Devas. Nice to meet you, even if it was a bit strange and out of nowhere.”

As I held her hand in a handshake, my eyes quickly darted to the notification that appeared on the stream the moment she said her name.

[Secondary Objective (3): Cure Isis, ???, ???, and ??? before the activation of the ‘Nine-Pointed Crown Mark’.]

Isis said she was in a team, didn’t she?… I’m going to assume and guess that besides her, there were three other people in that team. If I was right, at least this part of the mission was already slightly ahead…

“By the way, you have pretty eyes.” She complimented, not letting go of my hand as she looked into my eyes. “I’ve never seen that shade of orange in someone’s eyes before.”

…Looks like that dye affected me more than I expected.

[…]

"You know, you still haven’t answered my question." Isis spoke beside me.

"And you're still following me, even after saying I 'must be pretty strong'." I pointed out. "Aren’t you afraid I might get annoyed if that’s the case?"

We were walking ‘randomly’ through Shahrabad. The truth was, I wanted to see if I could find anything else that interested me and was easy to acquire—especially now that I had Isis by my side.

Not all stores required a ‘mark verification.’ Those were the ones I was targeting. Among the ones that did, not every clerk accepted bribes. Most did—that snobby clerk, for example, took it eagerly—but I knew I’d eventually run into someone who was a strict follower of the law, even if it was a pretty shitty one like this.

With Isis here, all I had to do was hand her the money, and if the vendor used the verification matrix—which basically detected whether the ink on a person’s skin contained infected brain tissue from ‘The Brain’—they’d check her mark since she’d be the one paying.

“Nah! You don’t seem like the type of person who would do that. I mean, attacking someone just because they’re being a little inconvenient.” She put her hands behind her back and tilted her head to the side, staring at me. Her body also leaned slightly forward as she continued skating, using the same bubbles as before as skates. "And my instincts are good, I told you. Especially for weird things. You’re kind of weird~"

“So you know you’re being inconvenient.” I ignored the last part of her sentence.

“Me? Of course not! I’m awesome!” Isis spun around, skating backward, dodging the crowd with ease. "You know, you’re a tourist. Want a welcome party? It’s been a while since I threw one of those. We could call it ‘Super-duper welcome party for the one who’s going to save the city from something evil!’ It’s a good name, isn’t it?"

Her words almost made me stumble.

"That’s kind of a suspicious name, isn’t it? Where did that come from?" What the hell? Where the fuck did that come from?!

"I’ll tell you if you tell me if it was really you who made that tornado." She slowed down a bit, poked my chest with her finger, then walked a few steps ahead of me again. "Come on, I know I’m right. Just confirm it for me!"

I ignored her words.

If I wasn’t almost certain she wasn’t a threat—her point on the minimap was green, Shadowflame judged her as a good person, and I could feel she had no ill intentions toward me—I’d be a lot more worried about these freakishly accurate guesses of hers.

Seriously, what the hell?!

“I’m not the only tourist. Why was I chosen?” I asked, looking around.

None of the stores seemed to have anything useful. It was the same old stuff or just a cheaper version of things I’d already bought. The only thing that had caught my eye was a pet shop, but I could stop by later.

"Or do you throw a welcome party for every one of them? You must be pretty rich… but you don’t look like it." I finished my sentence.

"Is that a compliment or an insult?"

"I don’t know, who knows?…" I repeated her words.

She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment before chuckling softly. A message popped up in my vision right then, inside a bubble.

[AdvocateOfGenderEquality]Could you, please… stop flirting?! I know she’s beautiful and all, clearly a milf and a party girl, plus she’s got that crazy-weird personality you seem to like so much, but don’t you think we’ve got bigger problems to deal with?!(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

("The fact that you think this is flirting says a lot about you.") I used my mental mic to reply. ("And what the hell do you mean by ‘crazy-weird personality’ that I seem to like so much?")

Another message popped up. Another bubble.

[AdvocateOfGenderEquality]The fact that you haven’t figured out what that means says a lot about you.(͡ ͡° ͜ つ ͡͡°)

I flicked Kazuma’s message bubble away. In the meantime, Isis had started skating in front of me again, still backward, staring at me intently, silently.

"Any reason you’re in front of me?"

"People move out of your way for some reason. If I stay here, I don’t have to watch out to avoid bumping into anyone." She pointed behind her shoulder with her thumb, where the crowd was parting and flowing around us like we were rocks in a river. "Your innate magic? Or does it have something to do with that stare-into-the-void moment you had a few seconds ago?"

"You’re pretty observant," I remarked. She might act the way she did, but she wasn’t an idiot.

Isis could say she trusted her bizarre instincts, but it wasn’t blind trust. She’d been feeling me out since we met. Even the little insults she’d thrown at me earlier seemed like tests to gauge my reaction.

"You weren’t even trying to hide it." She glanced around, as if looking for something. "Just like you’re not hiding the fact that you’re disgusted by something. You keep making weird faces out of nowhere. What is it?"

"Am I?" Was I?

"You are!" Isis wasn’t the only one who answered.

("You are. You didn’t notice?") Ozma’s voice echoed in my head. ("One moment you’re fine, the next you’re making a face like you stepped in shit.")

Ugh… fuck…

"I hadn’t noticed." I replied to both Isis and Ozma. I also decided it was about time to stop stalling. I’d already bought almost everything I wanted anyway.

I used my mana to ‘grab’ the air around us and spun it, creating a dome so our conversation wouldn’t be overheard. Isis seemed to notice something, as she curiously looked around. She pursed her lips before blowing, releasing a semi-transparent bubble from her mouth.

For some reason, it reminded me of a fish.

The bubble floated about a meter above us before hitting the wind dome. It didn’t pop as I expected but bounced off the ‘nothingness,’ dropping a few centimeters before rising again.

"A wind dome?" She stopped skating, almost bumping into me. I stopped just a step ahead of her. Isis was staring at the bubble bouncing against the ‘ceiling.’

"The outside sound is gone too." Isis murmured, looking around, then raised her voice. "You know, I have a friend who would kill to be able to do this. She’s already pissed that I can do something similar with my bubbles, but with wind?..." She shook her head, a playful smile on her lips.

"So, why all the privacy?… Or almost privacy, we’re still standing in the middle of the street." She sang, starting to walk this time. I followed, the wind dome rotating around us. No one seemed to pay us any attention. "You didn’t seem to care about that before."

"I don’t want to cause panic if someone overhears." I explained briefly. "You wanted to know what disgusted me? It’s that." I pointed at her before moving my right arm, tapping a finger just above my left chest, below the shoulder.

I could feel where the mark was.

Isis didn’t stop walking as she pulled her shirt to the side, along with the strap of a similarly pink bra, revealing the nine-pointed crown mark on her skin.

"The city’s mark?… Why?" Curiously, she didn’t seem that surprised that something was wrong with it.

"You already suspected something." It wasn’t a question.

"Yes and no. I suspected there might be something weird about this mark. I wasn’t the only one, but marking the entire population always rubbed my instincts the wrong way." She started explaining, her gaze drifting to my right hand, where my fake mark was.

Isis narrowed her eyes for a moment before continuing:

"I told this to my group’s leader. He’s kind of a paint specialist. The best!" She had a proud look on her face as she said those words.

“Ani. That’s the nickname I gave him—his real name is way too long and complicated to say.” She casually changed the subject before returning to the explanation: “Ani analyzed the ink. He said that aside from some strange ingredients—something that seemed to be made from an animal’s brain, though he couldn’t recognize which one—the ink shouldn’t be harmful… at least on the surface.”

An ink expert, and this guy had detected cultist brains in the ink? If I followed the logic here, her group’s leader might as well be the NPC Dye Trader.

I didn’t get my confirmation. The quest didn’t update like before, probably because ‘Ani’ was just a nickname, as Ísis had said, and not the actual name of her group’s leader. That is, if my guess was right.

“On the surface? Did he find anything else?” I asked. She shook her head, denying it.

“Nope!” She popped the ‘p.’ “But since I had already said the ink felt kind of off, Mari—my best friend—also mentioned that the mana in the mark seemed weird. So we decided we’d only use it when absolutely necessary. Other than that, we didn’t take any risks. We only use it when we go shopping in the city, never beyond that.”

“You make it sound like you can remove the mark whenever you want. Wasn’t a special counter-formula required for that?” Ísis smiled at my words but didn’t answer directly.

“What’s wrong with the mark?” She pointed at my hand. “And that mark is fake, isn’t it? The shade is a little off. I only noticed when I looked up close.”

I decided to answer both her first question—the one she had asked when we met—and the last one she had just asked at the same time.

I raised my arm, showing her the back of my hand. The mark on my skin burned with Shadowflame, the purple glow reflecting in her wide, sky-blue eyes.

“…Oh.” She parted her lips in an ‘o’ shape. “I… I was actually right?!” She let out a half-squeal.

“Yes.” I confirmed, amused by her reaction. “As for the mark: it’s a parasite. The brain matter in the ink infects those who touch it, and when activated, it can control their bodies however it wants. It’s not pretty, trust me.”

Not even ten minutes later, we arrived at the base of Team ‘Pebble,’ as Ísis called her group.

[…]

Team Pebble’s base was located in the inner part of Shahrabad. The city had an underground—an area not as noble as the surface, but just as important for the island’s functioning.

From what I gathered while walking—or rather, while I walked and Ísis skated at full speed—the underground wasn’t exactly a poor ‘district’ but more of an industrial one. Factories, farms lit by Mystic Symbols, warehouses, and ‘industries’ that weren’t exactly well-regarded by the general population were common around here.

Brothels, casinos, underground fighting pits, the black market—I saw all of it in this brief walk. What surprised me a little was that the Guild also had a branch down here. There was one on the ‘surface,’ of course, but the underground Guild seemed even bigger, with more contractors.

That last part didn’t surprise me too much. Risking your life on dangerous missions made people seek some kind of escape—be it alcohol, drugs, gambling, or sex. Especially with that disgusting mark on their skin. I must’ve seen more brothels than bars, most catering to both male and female audiences.

The underground was illuminated by massive crystals on the ceiling, covered in matrices drawn on their surfaces, as well as streetlamps on every road. One thing I noticed was that industrialization seemed more advanced here than in the kingdom. I could hear pistons in the factories, machinery, and even saw what looked like improvised motorcycles.

It wasn’t as refined as the technology in the kingdom, but it was more widespread. The whole scene reminded me of a steampunk setting, mainly because of the smoke rising to the ceiling, getting sucked into pipes enchanted with Mystic Symbols. Selina would probably like this place.

The air wasn’t polluted, nor were the streets dirty, but the environment was nowhere near the same as the surface. What was white up there was gray or black down here. The organized streets of the upper city were crooked underground.

Team Pebble’s base was farther north, in an area that seemed to be a mix of residential and industrial zones—though the latter was in the minority. I didn’t need a second glance to realize that almost everyone living there was a contractor. All ranked Silver and above.

The atmosphere was also calmer, with fewer sales shouts and machinery noise. Everything seemed more orderly; the streets were more uniformly laid out, and the houses had a symmetrical appearance. It was like a reflection of the surface but still kept the underground’s rustic feel.

Several people waved at Ísis as she rushed past. Some called her name, others whistled—she seemed pretty well-known. The Party Girl waved back, even in a hurry, and even threw a bubble at a man who called her ‘hot.’

The bubble burst on impact, creating a pink cloud of confetti and glitter, which Ísis had stuffed inside the projectile before launching it. The number of people laughing at the man wasn’t small. The guy himself looked more embarrassed than angry. This scene was probably a common one for them.

The house where Ísis stopped was one of the biggest in that specific neighborhood. It was practically a small mansion. It couldn’t compare to the Takagi Mansion or the Oakwood Mansion, but ten people could easily live there comfortably without running out of space.

The stone wall surrounding the house had metal spikes on top. I caught a glimpse of dozens of matrices painted on the stones—some fake, others real. There were probably more inside.

Ísis placed her hand on one of the matrices as she entered, and it glowed for a moment before the gate opened. The matrix itself was pretty simple; the Mystic Symbols weren’t particularly well-crafted or organized—nothing close to what Dylan, Helena, or I could create—though they were still above average.

But the ink? That was well done. I could tell with a single glance. It was easily at the upper limit of what those materials could produce—if not the very limit itself.

I noticed three points on the minimap inside the mansion before we even got close. The first person to appear, greeting Ísis, was a man.

He looked older. Nowhere near Gilbert’s age, but older than Ísis herself. I’d say around thirty, maybe mid-thirties. He was tall, about my height, maybe a few centimeters shorter, with black eyes and no beard or mustache.

His skin was dark. The few strands of hair escaping his turban were black and straight. He wore long, elegant robes made of well-stitched fabric, a deep purple adorned with golden details.

My guess seemed to be spot on: judging by his clothes, the man was the Dye Trader.

One thing that caught my attention about him was his hands—or rather, the ten rings on his fingers, each one enchanted with tiny matrices of Mystic Symbols.

He looked at Ísis for a moment before turning his gaze to me, analyzing me from head to toe. And judging by the disappointment and disgust in his expression, he didn’t seem to like what he saw one bit. Ísis had said he was a bit snobby, hadn’t she?

Behind the man, two other figures appeared: a woman and another man, both short in stature. The man was the shortest of the two—by a long shot.

The woman was a good few centimeters shorter than Ísis and also thinner. Not malnourished, but athletic, with far fewer curves than the Party Girl—especially in the chest.

Her light brown hair reached just below her shoulders, with a few gray strands scattered throughout. Her eyes were somewhere between green and yellow, a relatively common shade among Beastkins. Her raccoon ears gave away her race, as did the black markings around her eyes—though those could just be dark circles.

And she had thin whiskers. Raccoon whiskers, to be precise, but they looked like a cat’s, stretching from the upper part of her lips to the ends of her cheeks.

Her clothes were form-fitting: tight brown leather shorts, boots of the same color, and a short gray top that left her midriff exposed. I had no idea who this woman was, but she definitely looked like some kind of rogue.

She also carried three large daggers at her waist, five small ones in each boot, four pinned into her hair—acting as hair clips—and one between her breasts... Basically, a knife maniac.

As for the second man... He was a dwarf. A very dwarf. Completely dwarf. He walked like a dwarf, smelled like a dwarf, had the aura of a dwarf.

He was probably around four feet tall—maybe less—with dark brown eyes. His red hair was braided into small strands that fell just above his shoulders. His equally red beard reached halfway down his chest, which was also covered in thick hair. He wore a simple white shirt with an open collar, dark brown pants, and a pair of black sandals.

The dwarf was muscular and had the expression of someone who had just been robbed—along with a permanently furrowed brow and a perpetually irritated look. He was holding a mug filled with something that smelled like beer—in his right hand, which also had a metal bracelet—but if it was mead, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.

… If I opened a dictionary and looked up "race: dwarf," I’d probably find a picture of this guy.

Serafall agreed with me. Her message appeared in a cloud of smoke, coming from a small factory that popped up from the ground.

[MagicalGirlSera-Tan]This is the most dwarf-looking dwarf I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I’ve been to Asgard, and the dwarves there look less dwarven than him. This guy is a walking stereotype! I bet his weapon is a hammer. I bet!

“Ani, Beldin, Mari!” Isis shouted upon seeing them, waving both arms.

Only the second name updated my quest: Beldin, which I assumed belonged to the dwarf. The other two were probably nicknames.

Before any of them could respond to Isis, the man in purple robes—who I assumed was the leader—and the dwarf, Beldin, turned to the rogue, Mari. Isis also froze in place, looking at the second woman in the room.

Her eyes were wide, staring directly at me. Her muscles trembled slightly. Fear was the most basic thing in her expression. Her whiskers bristled, and the ears atop her head flattened. Her hands instinctively reached for the daggers at her waist before stopping, as if she didn’t know what to do.

I could see the muscles of the two men tense up when they noticed Mari’s reaction. Ani clasped his fingers together, and his ten rings glowed. Beldin dropped his mug, spilling the liquid onto the wooden floor of the balcony, while his left hand grabbed his right wrist just above the metal bracelet.

… Seriously, I hadn’t even done anything… I was even suppressing my mana!

As I sighed mentally, Isis defused the bomb that was about to explode in the room. She placed her hands over her ears, then moved them to her mouth and screamed. At first, no sound came out—just a large bubble formed between her hands.

Then the bubble burst.

“STOOOOOOOOOP!”

The only ones unaffected by Isis’s sound bomb were me and her. The others were crouching down, hands over their ears—especially the raccoon woman.

I coated the inside of my ears with Shadowflame. I was almost certain I wouldn’t be hurt by the noise, or if I was, it would be minimal, but there was no way in hell I was taking that risk. The bubble had been right next to me, and my hearing was way too good for that to seem safe.

Isis shook her head, making the two bubbles covering her ears fly away, before hurriedly running over to Mari.

“Sorry, Mari! I know your ears are sensitive, but I didn’t want a fight to break out!” she said, helping the rogue to her feet.

Mari’s face wavered between irritation, pain, and fear—that last one completely directed at me.

“He… what is he?… His mana… The sun… It’s the sun!” she whispered a muffled scream to Isis, in an extremely low voice. The two beside her didn’t seem to hear it, probably thanks to the earlier scream.

“Mana?… Oh! I didn’t even think about that!” Isis exclaimed, turning to me. “Devas! Mari is super sensitive to mana. I’m really bad at this—totally awful—so I didn’t even notice. You must have a lot of mana. Can you suppress it?!”

“… Uh, yeah, I am suppressing it.”

My response made Mari’s pupils shrink to needle-thin slits.

“Suppress it more! Actually, I can help!”

Before Mari could stop Isis—which she clearly wanted to do—the Party Girl ran up to me and jumped as soon as she got close enough.

“Catch me!” she shouted, spreading her arms and closing her eyes.

(“I don’t think this many things have happened in at least five of my past lives. And we’ve only been in Terraria for a little over a week. It’s impressive how much chaos follows you.”) Ozma practically cackled.

(“Go fuck yourself.”)

(“No, thank you. Are you gonna let her fall?”)

(“Obviously.”)

I took a step to the side.

I would never be against hugging a beautiful woman, especially one like Isis. But given everything that had happened, I had to do it out of sheer spite.

Isis didn’t open her eyes as she approached the ground, but a bubble wrapped around her body, cushioning her fall. She turned around, still sitting, and gave me a deadpan stare.

“I knew you’d do that. Rude.”

“Jumping on people without warning is very rude.”

“I did warn you!” she huffed, got up, and clapped her hands once.

The moment she pulled them apart, a large bubble grew, enclosing both of us. It was the same bubble she had used when we first met.

“Better now, Mari?!” Isis shouted at her friend. This time, the sound passed through.

“… Yes?”

“Is that a question or an answer?!”

“An answer!” This time, Mari’s voice sounded more certain.

Isis jumped up, clapping three times, a joyful smile on her face. I turned to her.

“You sure you don’t do coke?”

“I’m sure!”

“Isis, what’s going on?” The dark-skinned man in luxurious robes had recovered enough to speak. His gaze flickered between the woman next to me and myself. “Who is he?”

I decided to speed things up and raised my arm. I felt four pairs of eyes following the movement. My hand was engulfed in Shadowflame.

“… Oh.”

“Ha! I said that earlier too!”

[...]---[...]

Yes, Ísis is inspired by Pinkie Pie.

Yes, the members of the Pebble group are also based on classic RPG stereotypes: a mage, a rogue, a warrior, and an archer.

The next chapter is about the anthill and a speedrun of fixing the world's mess.

Good Blood Moon, and enjoy the reading!

PS: The next chapter comes out on April 21st.