Chapter Ten: Xing Received a Collaborative Mission
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In the end, Cerys still took Stelle out for a walk.
On Daffodil Street, Stelle was catwalking along the curb, both arms stretched out to keep her balance and make sure she did not fall off.
“What are you doing?” Cerys asked.
Stelle turned her head and replied with deadly seriousness, “My feet can’t touch the ground, or I’ll die.”
“How childish.” Cerys shook her head in disdain and strode ahead with long steps.
Behind her, Stelle watched Cerys’s steps alternate between large and small, then hurried after her to ask, “Why do you take one enormous step every few paces?”
Cerys lowered her head and glanced at the uneven pavement. With equal seriousness, she replied, “My feet can’t step on the cracks between the paving stones, or I’ll die.”
While answering, Cerys failed to pay attention and accidentally stepped on a crack. She paused, then continued forward as though nothing had happened.
“It hadn’t started yet. It only counts from now.”
Stelle looked at her with disdain. “How childish.”
[You two are exactly alike. Neither of you has any right to criticize the other.]
Stelle planted her hands on her hips, looking immensely proud. “I’m only one year old. I’m at the age when innocence and carefree joy are perfectly natural.”
“And him”—Stelle pointed at Cerys again, sighed, and shook her head with deep regret—“that sort is the kind who’d still drool even after being cured.”
“What innocence and carefree joy?” The contempt on Cerys’s face nearly overflowed. “I think your cerebrum is underdeveloped and your cerebellum never developed at all.”
Stelle rolled up her sleeves, ready to show Cerys the might of the great Galactic Baseballer.
She reached out to scratch Cerys, who reached out at the same time. Their palms smacked together in midair, then were forced downward by the pressure from both sides.
Seeing that her opponent actually dared to resist, Stelle became even more enthusiastic. She attacked with both hands, alternating them as she scratched faster and faster.
Cerys was no less eager to fight back.
The two of them moved faster and faster.
[You two look exactly like a pair of cats fighting.]
Watching the two of them tussle by the roadside, passersby could not help sighing, “Ah, youth is wonderful. I remember when I was…”
Conflicts between children came quickly and vanished just as quickly. Before long, the two of them had shaken hands and made peace once more.
A heartwarming ending indeed. A heartwarming ending indeed.
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Stelle promptly declared that Cerys was getting in the way and announced that she wanted to explore the map by herself.
……
Ten minutes later.
Stelle had been racing all over Mantingen, hunting frantically for treasure chests, when she seemed to sense something.
Following the guidance of her instincts (crossed out: the quest marker), she wound her way back and forth through the streets. All the while, she muttered incomprehensible things about “quests” and “the main storyline.”
At last, she made her way to Zotland Street, where she spotted an old man with graying hair dressed in a classical black robe. The old man appeared to have twisted his ankle and was limping badly.
Although there was nothing above his head, Stelle could have sworn she saw a faint blue exclamation mark hovering there.
Stelle wondered whether she was hallucinating. She even felt as though a line of text had flashed before her eyes. But it did not matter. The great Trailblazer was accustomed to this sort of thing.
Activate quest. Speak with the old man. (0/1)
Stelle hurried over, stopped the old man, and greeted him. “Hello there, Grandpa.”
The old man’s name was Neil, though everyone who knew him called him Old Neil.
Old Neil seemed to be having a particularly unfortunate day. Perhaps because he had stayed up too late studying the occult the previous night, he had overslept by five minutes that morning and missed the public carriage. Since it was not terribly far, he had decided to walk. Then, just as he was approaching the company’s building, he twisted his ankle.
Ordinarily, at this hour he should have been sitting idly in the weapons guardroom, drinking tea and reading the newspaper. But one piece of bad luck had followed another, and Old Neil could not help wondering whether the goddess had grown angry because he had prayed too often lately for reimbursement of his expenses.
Just then, a young woman came rushing up to him and greeted him.
Old Neil froze for a moment, apparently not expecting a stranger to approach him. Even so, he soon put on a kindly smile.
“Hello, miss. Is there something I can help you with?”
Stelle tilted her head and studied the old man. Suddenly, inspiration struck. Old Neil’s appearance seemed to overlap with someone else’s.
She took out the ten pounds Cerys had given her that morning and held the money out before Old Neil.
“I am Tarnished. Teach me Thops’s Barrier.”
Old Neil’s brows drew together into a pronounced knot. He frowned and thought for quite some time, but ultimately could not figure out what a Tarnished was or what Thops’s Barrier might be.
He pushed the pound note back toward her.
“I’m sorry, miss, but I think you have mistaken me for someone else. I don’t know any Tarnished, and I have no idea what Thops’s Barrier is.”
After pondering for a moment, Old Neil added, “If you need help…” He pointed in two directions. “The police station is that way, and the church of the Night Goddess is that way. You can seek assistance at either place.”
Looking into Stelle’s clear, guileless eyes, Old Neil asked uneasily, “Would you like me to take you there?”
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Hearing that the old man before her actually dared to question her—question the great Trailblazer—Stelle immediately took offense. She raised her right arm and flexed her biceps, showing that she was in perfectly robust condition.
Old Neil became even more worried.
Looking at his complicated expression, Stelle felt not the slightest bit embarrassed. Instead, she decided she had to prove her strength and bestow upon him her own gospel.
She was practically an angel.
Stelle ignored Old Neil’s suggestion that he escort her to the police station and instead asked where he was headed.
Though Old Neil was puzzled, he still told her that he was on his way to the Black Thorn Security Company on the second floor of No. 36 Zotland Street. There was nothing particularly confidential about that. After all, he had worked there for so long that he knew all the surrounding shops by heart, and plenty of people knew where he worked.
Once she had a definite destination, Stelle took one enormous step forward, hoisted Old Neil onto her shoulder, and sprinted toward No. 36 without so much as a glance back.
“Ah!” Old Neil cried in fright. For a moment, he thought he had been kidnapped. He began wondering whether he had offended someone yet again and started planning how he would escape later.
The wind created by Stelle’s running howled past Old Neil, whipping his hair into disarray.
But before Old Neil could come up with a plan, Stelle had already set him down at the entrance to the Black Thorn Security Company.
“Huh?”
Old Neil’s eyes were filled with confusion. He patted and felt his body from head to toe several times, making sure none of him was missing.
Stelle looked immensely proud and thumped her chest with a resounding bang.
“No need to thank me. Miss Sampo never leaves her good deeds signed.”
With that, she turned and ran off. Her selfless act of doing good without leaving her name behind was truly admirable.
She really was an angel.
Stelle felt absolutely exhilarated, as if a game that had been stuck in a drought for ages had suddenly generated a quest.
……
[Companion mission accepted: “If I Cannot Save Her”]
“Huh?”
Cerys, who had been squatting by the roadside and eating an apple, was startled by the husky that suddenly appeared. He held the apple up close and examined it carefully.
“What the hell did I just eat to trigger a companion mission? Is this even still an apple?”
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