NOVEL NEXT Book 4, Chapter 4
"So, what's your impression so far?" Helen asked.
It was Saturday, and I'd just gotten out of my last class of the week about a half hour ago. Helen and I were in her office, with nobody else present, save for Volex, who was always in my pocket... well, aside from when I dropped her off with Professor Takeda, who had offered Volex a more conventional apprenticeship than what Summer had gotten.
"Erica Silverpetals- the girl from the Silver Maidens- should be pretty straightforward," I said. "We just need to go on a lucrative adventure and use that money to buy out her marriage contract, so that she doesn't have to leave the Guild immediately after graduation."
"Immediately, huh?" Helen asked.
"Look, you know as well as I do that expecting someone to do this job their whole life is a bit much," I said. "So... Let's find a reasonable number. How many years as an active Adventurer would you need out of Erica before her education stops feeling like a waste to you?"
"...We'll circle back to that," Helen said, looking away. She didn't want to give a finite and concrete number of years, because she did want Erica to do this job for the rest of her life. "What about the others? The twins and that Envy girl?"
"The twins are either very easy or very hard," I said. "Their dad is dead, and some weird noble law states that, unless there's a Lord Vega soon, then House Vega and its assets, which includes its women, will be absorbed into another House, and they'll most likely be forced to quit the Guild to be concubines or whatever. Which, obviously, we both think that's bad."
"Damn right I do," Helen said, nodding. "Right. I'll make it known that any man who tries to force a woman out of the Adventurer's Guild will be forcefed his own testicles."
"May I suggest an..." I paused, and reconsidered. Obviously, Helen's idea was far more deranged and violent than the idea I'd had, but... When I actually thought about it, I realized that I didn't really need to discourage that. "...Well, not an alternative course of action, but an additional and complementary course of action?"
"Go on?"
"We need to find some way for one of the twins to be recognized as Lord Vega," I said. "As in, head of their House in their own right, no need for a husband, all that jazz. I know the Hikaano hate women, but is there anything on the books that would possibly allow for that?"
Helen hummed quietly, drumming her fingertips on her desk. "...I think so," she said, finally. "I don't remember the details, and the law might have changed, but... I think that there's a rite that the Adventurer's Guild can perform that confers upon a woman the rights that are normally exclusive to men. Which mostly involves a truly impressive adventure, so if you can get those worthless girls to actually do that, I will consider them to have proven themselves, and expulsion will no longer be on the table. And Miss Valentine?"
"I still haven't talked to Envy," I said. "I've heard a few things from the Vega Twins, but nothing terribly useful, so... I'll have to get back to you on that. But so far, I think we've got a good plan to unfuck The Harpies: an adventure that is both impressive enough that House Vega can have a female lord and lucrative enough to buy out Erica Silverpetals' marriage contract."
"That's close enough to a plan that I can start looking into options," Helen said, nodding. "Right, Catherine. Good work. Anything else?"
"No, that should be it. I'll see myself out."
---
After the meeting with Helen, I made my way to the residence of The Harpies, which was a small airship they had taken from sky pirates last semester, called The Harpy. And while "The Harpy" was a perfectly cromulent name for an airship, the fact that The Harpy was owned, lived in, and operated by a group called The Harpies meant that we would hit semantic saturation fairly quickly.
"Hello, Catherine," Veronica said, as I climbed up onto the top deck- they'd landed the ship in their portable house lot, and thrown up an off-the-shelf metal scaffolding-staircase on the port side. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"
She was dressed down from our first meeting, and was wearing a sleeveless white undershirt along with a pair of very short shorts; she was working out, and likely didn't want her arming clothes getting soaked in sweat if she could avoid it. Without the padded jacket in the way, I was more confident that she was built much like her sister, and simply concealed her curves most of the time; admittedly, the sports bra that Veronica was almost definitely wearing probably wasn't there to flatten her silhouette, but simply to keep her boobs under control while she exercised. It was certainly something that Talia complained about when she had to exercise.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
However, there was one thing Veronica had that I'm pretty sure none of the other Harpies had, and that was thick, well-defined musculature, currently glowing with a sheen of sweat; her arms weren't quite thicker around than my thighs, but it was closer than was normal, and I felt like I understood the appeal of a well-muscled woman a little better, now.
(I wondered, briefly, if Veronica's muscles were a product of more organic transmutation, or if she'd earned them naturally. For a human Fighter, developing that much muscle by the age of 21 wasn't out of the question, but Veronica was a half-elf (Yes, yes, the actual fraction is 3/8ths- people aren't dogs, and I refuse to care about blood quantum), and those tended towards the same reduction in muscle growth that full-blooded elves had.)
"I'm here to walk your sister through a few pocket dimension exercises," I said. "She's been wanting to upgrade your ship, so there's more interior living space, and it's also pretty relevant to the class we're both taking, Arcane Architecture."
"Ah, I see," Veronica said, nodding. "Will you be needing help with that?"
"No, but if you wanna audit the lecture and try the exercises too, you're welcome to join us," I said, shrugging. "Well, assuming you're a Wizard; I'm realizing I have no idea if you're a spellcaster or not."
"I am, yes," Veronica said, setting down her dumbbells. "Wizardry isn't my primary focus, but it's a very useful tool to have, and I might as well learn more when I'm offered the chance. Besides, someone has to help you find my sister."
"Lead the way."
---
Airships, by and large, were a lot smaller than water ships. The simple fact of the matter was that the sorts of enchantments that would let a ship float in air got more expensive as the ship got heavier; as such, airships had to be made near-exclusively from wood, and also had to be made much smaller than an ordinary ship. Even the smallest of corvettes was bigger than a house and warranted a crew of a few hundred people. The Harpy, however, was small enough that four women living aboard it found its accommodations uncomfortably cramped.
And unfortunately, when Veronica and I went below deck to meet Vanessa, it was to find Envy already in the narrow hallway, and looking rather unwilling to move.
"Oh look," Envy began, planting her hands on her hips. "The little nepo baby is here to do another grand quest that's been handed to her through no effort of her own, as is apparently her birthright."
"Envy," Veronica began to protest, before I cut her off.
"What the fuck are you on about?" I said.
Look, I said I was cutting her off, not that I was being diplomatic and conciliatory.
"I have worked my plush little ass off to secure a better future for my family," Envy snapped. "Who, I should note, are not anything special, just a middling merchant house who had a stroke of luck with a scholarship. And now all of that is in jeopardy because you are the granddaughter of the Archmage, and she apparently thinks you need a challenge. Do you think we'd be risking expulsion at all if it weren't for you being here, Princess? Do you think that, perhaps, I just might have a good reason to be mad at you?"
"I do not, because I didn't ask for any of this shit," I said dryly.
"You've certainly benefited from it, if your official list of completed adventures is anything to judge by. Face it, Princess-"
"My name is Catherine."
"-you were born a hero, and it is the height of injustice that a girl who had to work her way up is being judged as unworthy by a girl who didn't."
"I was-"
"I don't care about your excuses," Envy said. "I'm done with you."
She stepped back into her room and slammed the door. A second or two later, the sounds of a harpsichord began to emanate through the wood.
I turned to regard Veronica, who looked pretty sheepish- chances were, she didn't exactly approve of her teammate's conduct.
"...Well, we're all works in progress," I said quietly. "Let's just... Go do that demonstration with your sister."
"I'm really sorry about Envy, she's... Well, she thinks the nickname is just a fun and sexy shortening of 'Natalia Valentine,' but everyone else who's met her knows better," Veronica said. "She's... Well, she's very sweet once she's warmed up to you, but until then..."
"Oh well," I said, shrugging. "As nice as it would be, I don't need to be liked by every attractive woman I ever meet. We'll sort her out later, one way or another. After all, I've got plans for you and Vanessa, plus Erica- that's seventy five percent, which passes just about every test I've ever taken."
"Let's hope you're right about that..."