We neared the town and walked through the big gate that guarded it.
Corisa is still by my side, walking just a few steps behind, but she's close.
Seems like my job is finished, though.
I take a few steps to the right, hoping to quietly move on, when I feel a faint tug at the back of my cloak—gentle, almost unsure. I turn around. Corisa stands there, a few steps behind me, her fingers pinching the fabric like she's afraid I'll vanish if she lets go. Her eyes don't meet mine, but in the silence between us, I can feel the weight of everything she doesn't say as she's looking down.
"Th-thanks."
She lets go of my cloak, and I slowly and gently place my hand on her shoulder, leaving a trace of my mana on her clothes.
"No problem."
I turn back around as we go our separate ways. I felt something. I don't know what it was, but I had just had a hunch that something was going to happen, so I imbued my mana into her clothes, which allowed me to keep track of her, and it lets me know whenever she's in distress or in danger from her emotions.
Thanks to the cloaked mage from a couple of months ago, I picked this technique up when he tampered with my Sylph.
I walk through the crowded streets in the town. It was the middle of the day, so people were busy and out and about with work. My inn was on the other side of town, which was a ways from the town gate.
I head back to my inn and prop up a chair from the desk near my bed, and put it in the open space in the middle of the room. I take a seat, holding my hand out.
Release.
Two direwolf corpses plop on the floor, which dirty the wooden floor with their dark red blood. I don't pay attention to it. I grab the small knife that was sitting on the desk and get to work, extracting the hide of each of the direwolves. Once I was done skinning both of them, I set the hides that were done in the corner of the room and put the corpses back into my ring, sending in the next batch, until I finally extracted twenty of them.
The direwolf hides were sitting in the corner of the room, and there were an abundance of them. Not just that. How am I going to clean up this mess...
I stare in disbelief as my carelessness left my inn floor stained with blood in the middle of the room. There was too much, it looked like I squeezed all of the blood out of someone's body. My expression started to form into even more disgust.
I'm actually so fucking stupid. Whatever. I'm just going to clean this up later when I get back.
Brontyx.
I carry all of the hide at once and head for the guild hall. I can't just store them in my ring, because I'm going to need to pull them out, and I don't want anyone discovering this ability. It's just more convenient for me in the long run to do it this way, even though it is a nuisance to carry all of this hide at once. These are still pretty heavy, even with Brontyx activated.
Opening the gigantic wooden doors of the guild hall with the back of my foot, I enter and quickly make my way to the counter, speaking to the lady behind it. Luckily, there wasn't a line.
"Hello, I'd like to report the completion of a quest." I place the stack of direwolf hide on the counter.
"Your quest paper, please?" The lady stretches her hand out, and I pull the paper out of my pocket, handing it to her. "Thank you very much!"
She stamps the paper with ink and goes under the counter to grab my reward, taking out a pouch of coins and handing them to me.
"Party not here with you again, huh?" She asks, trying to make small conversation.
I let out a fake chuckle, "Yeah, they're always too lazy to get the reward, so they send me."
This lady has been under the impression that I'm part of this crazy strong party, since I always take quests that are made for a group. I don't tell her that it's wrong, though. It actually works in my favor, and it's more convenient that she thinks this. I don't want word to get out that I'm taking care of all of these quests solo. The attention would be rather tedious.
I wave goodbye to the lady and walk towards the door that leads outside, when I spot something interesting.
"Please, can I join your party?"
It was Corisa. She was talking to a man in rusty armor with a long beard, with an unusually large mace on his back. The man looked like an experienced adventurer.
"No," the man responds as he turns away from her, fleeing the situation.
Corisa persists and pulls his arm back, "Please, let me in your-"
**SLAP**
The man snapped around with startling speed, his hand whipping across Corisa's face with a brutal crack. The force of the blow sent her crashing to the ground, her body crumpling like paper. He loomed over her, eyes narrowed in revulsion, his lip curling as if her very presence was an offense.
"You damn elf! You oughta know your place and give me one good reason we would let someone like you in our party."
Without another word, the man turns around and walks away. Corisa stayed down, her gaze focused on the floor as she looked emotionless, grabbing her bruised cheek with her left hand. She forces herself to get up and walks to another person, asking them the same question, where she's met with yet the same response. Repeating this action to many different people.
I can't bear to watch this.
I open the guild hall doors and exit the building, thinking.
Why do they keep turning her down? What does her being an elf have to do with anything? I pity her, but it's not my place to do anything when she's doing this of her own accord. Still, how did her previous party accept her when all of these guys aren't?
Lots of things to think about.
I walk towards the middle of town, extracting the talon from my ring out of sight, as I enter a small shop.
A big sign greeted me on the way in. It read: "Drenvar's Blacksmith Shop".
In the shop, although it was a little compact, there was a string of weapons lined up on the walls that varied in size, from daggers to swords, to even ranged weapons such as bows. The shop had wooden planks on the floor with a stone wall and a ceiling that was a little too low. There was a counter and an open doorway that led to a room right next to it, from which a man came out.
He had dark goggles on, and the top of his head had no hair, but instead had many drops of sweat on it, leaving me a little blinded by the way it glistened in the light. The man had an apron on with a long mustache that curled up to his eyebags.
"Welcome to Drenvar's Blacksmith Shop. I'm Drenvar. What can I do for ya?"
"Uh... Do you do custom orders?"
Drenvar looks at me with a big smile, revealing his yellow teeth.
"Of course we do! Whatdya' got in mind?"
**SLAM**
I placed the heavy talon that I was carrying in my hands on the table, and the sound of the slam echoed through the shop.
"Can you turn this into a weapon?"
Drenvar slowly lifts the goggles from his eyes as his face starts to fill with disbelief. He runs across the talon slowly with his fingers.
"Why this... This... This is a Skarvyrn Dragon's talon!"
Skarvyrn Dragon? What does that mean? I thought there was only one type of dragon.
He leans over the counter and grabs my cloak, pulling me closer to him.
"Where'd ya find this?"
He's too fucking close.
"I-I found it in a cave on a mountain."
I can't just tell him that I took down a dragon and ripped its talon off.
Drenvar picks the talon up and examines it. Turning it over and touching the edges.
"What kind of weapon do ya want me to make?"
"A katana."
"A katana? Huh? What's that?"
Shit. I forgot katanas don't exist in this world.
I explain the structure of a Japanese katana, trying to make it as detailed as possible, in order to let him forge it as precisely as he could.
Once I was done with my explanation, he held his right hand to his mustache, fiddling with it while thinking. "Hm... It's going to be hard to make it just off of your description, but I'll try my best."
He lifts the talon and holds it in the air, closing one eye as he examines it further.
"Still, in all my years as a blacksmith, I've never seen someone come in with a material as rare as yours."
"How long will the order take?"
Drenvar sets the talon gently back down on the counter and thinks for a bit.
"I can have it ready for ya in two days. You can stop by then."
I thank him as I exit the shop, closing the door behind me.
It was dark outside, the moon, a light crescent, shone down on me and painted a shadow on the streets caused by the buildings.
I head back to my inn and walk into the room.
Shit. I forgot about this mess.
I look at the massive stain of blood on the floor from the direwolf corpses from earlier.
I'll clean it later. I'm too exhausted to deal with this right now.
I ready myself for bed and pull the sheets as I submit to my fatigue.
**PULSE**
I jolt awake.
Something was wrong. I could feel it... What is-
Then I realize.
Corisa.
The mana that I imbued on her shoulder connected to me, telling me that something was wrong. She's in distress.
I rip the sheets off my body and grab my cloak, quickly putting them on as I slip into my boots and bolt out the door.
I could track where she was from my mana.
Brontyx.
I ran at top speed into the desolate night, in the direction where I felt my mana.
Just wait Corisa...
I'm coming...