NOVEL NEXT Chapter 4: Mythrilblood, part two (53)
…
Hilma got up from her bed and looked around her room. She was the leader of the drug department of the Eight Fingers crime syndicate. Recently, she had been having trouble with her drug production.
A group of adventurers had been destroying her drug production villages and other such facilities. She had a feeling that said adventure party was in fact the team Blue Roses, but she couldn’t be for sure.
They didn’t really leave a paper trail in their wake, so she couldn’t be sure that it was them. But they were skilled enough to be able to completely cut off a paper trail, so that was why she was thinking it was them.
But from now on, that was the least of her worries. She got up from her bed and poured herself a glass of water from her nightstand. She readily gulped down the water, it was cool and fresh in her throat. went over to her window in her room.
The sky was dark, but that wasn’t strange. No, it was night. The sky should have been dark. But… the light that should have come from the moon was coming through the window at strange angles.
It was almost kind of bent in a way. Like the window was covered in vines. Old and gnarled vines that wrapped around the window frame and gave it a cursed feeling. But that was half I her mind, at least that was what was going on in her head.
It was almost like something was blocking it. A dark feeling came over her, as if the night held something evil. But that was such a silly thought. She brushed it off and decided to take a walk around her manor that night. After all, other than the dark feeling she held, it was a rather beautiful night.
She stepped out of her room in nothing but her usual night garb. Her servants other than her guards should be asleep right now. But that feeling crept up on and over her again. It was like she was being watched. Like she was in the dark of a forest with nothing on her.
She looked to the window that was in the wall of stairway. The window was covered in vines. Like her own window must have been. She sucked in a breath. Her gut wrenched for but a spilt second. A feeling of wrongness filled her. she felt eyes on her back. She then turned around.
What she saw confused her to no end. It was a little boy, no older than twelve. He was dressed up like a little girl instead of the usual boys’ clothes a boy would wear.
But that wasn’t all too strange, after all, she had known a lot of perverts. While the majority of them didn’t actually seem to care all too much about the clothes their play things wore, she had still seen it enough to know what was going on with his clothes.
She started to walk down the stairway as she opened her mouth to talk to the little boy. Now that she was getting closer, she noticed that the boy had elf ears and dark skin. That was strange, there aren’t many dark elves in Re-Estize.
“Hey there little boy,” she started to speak, “may I know how you got in here?” she asked in earnest.
Instead of answering, the boy asked his own question. Voice came out with a slight quiver, like he was nervous about something. But Hilma’s gut told her that the quiver wasn’t from the vines or the dark night.
“Are you the most important person in this building miss?” he asked.
She decided to humor him, “why, yes, I am. Now, could you answer my question little boy? How did you get in here?” she asked once more.
“Oh, thank goodness! I thought we were going to have to look all around this place all night to find you! Now come on we have places to be,” Mare said as he raised his staff.
…
Instead of going to the place where the message from the six arms had made their demands indicated, Peregrinus went to the new location along with Entoma and Mare. Mare had covered the whole place in vines and had managed to locate the majority of the people they needed with the help of Peregrinus.
He had even found the person in charge of the drug trade. Of course, she herself could see the woman named Hilma, but she decided to let the little boy have his fun. He seemed really antsy though. Maybe she would reward him later with a head pat or a kiss on the forehead.
After all, he needed a mother figure; and while his own mother was away, she would and have to take up the mantle. But that just made her want to have a little one of her own.
She frowned at that thought. Ever since she had seen the status of Albedo, which was just yesterday, she had started to want a baby. Maybe even a couple. Baby fever as it was, the feelings were still true. But she sucked in a breath and walked on through. The night was young, and she had plans to finish.
As she walked out of the building with Entoma behind her, she noticed someone. Of course, Peregrinus could sense and see most things in a rather large radius around her, so of course she saw the woman. She glanced in the general direction of the person.
It appeared to be a member of the adventuring party, “Blue Roses.” Peregrinus had of course been briefed on who was in certain groups and who to watch out for. This person, Gagarin, was her name. In all honesty, the woman wasn’t that frightening in the grand scheme of things.
In fact, she had been plumb forgotten about by Peregrinus for the longest time till she had just showed up right now. Peregrinus turned to Entoma and smiled a rather motherly smile. She then spoke in a way that a mother would to her child.
“Entoma, you can go with your bugs to wherever you need to. Someone is coming and I don’t want you to get hurt,” she said to the maid.
Entoma looked up at the supreme being with what one would call a smile of utter joy under her mask bug. She nearly kneeled to the older woman right then and there, but held it in.
“Of course, my lady,” was all she could say.
She then summoned her own transport bugs and ordered them to carry all of the people they had captured. She then had suddenly remembered the snack she still had in her hands, but decided to carry it to where she needed to be.
As Entoma left on her own transport bugs, Peregrinus looked behind herself and smiled. There, in the moonlight stood one of the lower leveled members of the party Blue Roses.
…
As Gagarin looked at the woman in front of her, she couldn’t help but feel a shiver run up her spine. This person was powerful, a challenge for sure. She was undoubtedly a part of Eight Fingers. At least, that was what she thought until she Gagarin started to speak.
“Hey there Miss. I was wondering what you were doing out here at this time of night,” she simply asked or rather stated.
As the woman in front of the Blue Rose started to speak Gagarin looked her up and down. She had on what would be called a three-piece suit. On her hip was a yard long baton that looked like a piece of metal wrapped in braided leather.
“Well, it is a nice night to take walk in. Though, it was interrupted by some fools calling themselves The Eight Fingers,” she shrugged at the name drop, “They seemingly got mad at me when I decided to help out one of their nearly dead employees after they had been tossed aside. So, I cleared them out,” she finished her story with a wide sweep of the right arm toward the manor that Gagarin was going to clear out.
“Oh, so you aren’t part of Eight Fingers? I thought you were for a second there. My mistake,” she responded to the silver haired woman.
The strange woman shrugged in response and spoke.
“That’s fine. Clean people often mistake one crime ringer for another. Happens all the time,” she said.
Gagarin did a double take in her mind. Did this person mean to just drop the fact that she was a part of another crime syndicate? Or was that an accident? Either way, she had to bring her in.
“Well, if you’re part of a crime ring, then I am afraid I’ll have to take you in,” Gagarin said in response.
The other woman frowned. It seemed like she hadn’t meant to drop the fact that she was a part of a separate crime ring on the adventurer. But she had and now she had a Adamantite ranked adventurer on her tail tonight.
“Listen, I didn’t mean to tell you that. Can we just go our separate ways and act like this never happened?” she asked with a slight exasperation.
“No can do,” Gagarin said in response to her.
“Listen, you don’t even know my name or anything. If we’re going to fight, I’ll tell you my name,” she said before continuing, “It’s Peregrinus Mythrilblood. You better remember it after I leave this fight unscathed.”
Gagarin nodded her head and prepped herself for a fight.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s fight now. I’ve been itching for this,” she finished her line with a woosh of her hammer, or war pick if you had to call it that.
The both of them kicked off of the ground and clashed.
…