I like making friends!
Especially friends with skills. So, regardless of winning or losing, I will gift you an Iron Hammer Guard—after all, I have plenty of spare weapons to swap out."
"Friends? No! We're not friends yet."
Meckel seemed tempted but still replied coldly:
"I don't know how you Transia people interpret friendship, but in the Dark Valley, until we've bled for a common cause, the word 'friend' should not be thrown around casually. Wait a while; after arranging the defenses, I'll go down with you.
But we must return before dawn."
---
"After my parents took you away, your mother struggled to survive one more night. At dawn the next day, she finally passed away in agony, calling your name in delirium until her last breath."
In a stone building in the Shadow Valley, one that could barely be called a "temple," Adel placed a bouquet of wildflowers she had picked by the roadside in front of the stone coffin where her mother lay buried.
