To be fair, I did not want to let her in, but the begging look in her eyes made me feel guilty. So I stepped aside and let her enter.

  That didn’t mean I was about to forget the insults she’d thrown at me as if they were nothing.

  “Say what you came to say,” I sighed, walking past her toward the bucket of water on the table. If she wanted to talk, fine. I could at least wash up in the meantime.

  “I… I came to apologize. Properly,” she murmured as I splashed water on my face. “I disrespected your goodwill and assumed a plot where there was none. All Your Grace did was to help us again and again.”

  “Mhm.” I nodded, still washing. “That you did.”

  “For that, and much more, I will forever be grateful. So if you want…” Her voice trailed into silence.

  It felt off, but I was mid-wash, so when the quiet stretched into something unbearable, I turned, freezing on the spot like a deer in the headlights.

  She stood with her eyes squeezed shut, neck tilted to the side, exposing her left artery.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I sighed, water dripping from my chin as she blinked her eyes open, just as confused as I was.

  “A-apologizing?” she stuttered. “Giving you my blood in exchange for your forgiveness. As long as I don’t get turned into a vampire just yet, I’m fine.”

  “Just yet?” I frowned. “What does just yet mean?”

  “After I get bored of being human and whatnot, maybe I’ll be up for it,” she shrugged, straightening her neck.

  “...Get out of my room,” I said, already pushing her toward the door.

  “But, Your Grace, do you forgive me for calling you an ancient Evil God?” she blurted.

  I groaned. “You didn’t call me that shit.”

  “I thought I did!” she protested, trying to resist me as we neared the door.

  “Get out,” I yelled in a panic. “I need to change, and I promise you I’ll be butt naked. Do you want to see an Evil God’s ass, Enna? Is that it?”

  “W–WHAT?” Her cheeks went crimson. “Accusations! I’m a priestess!”

  “Then get the fuck out with your bullshit, chastity priestess,” I muttered, shoving her through the doorway.

  But just as I was about to manage to close the door, she spun around. “But do you forgive me?”

  I stopped the door just enough for her to see one pink-red eye.

  “Yes.”

  Ignoring the prideful laughter echoing down the hall, I turned and finished my preparations with a sigh, already thinking about what I needed to buy for the road ahead.

  After a trip to the toilet, trying very hard to forget that a female vampire was clinging to my clothes and could see everything I was doing, I met up with everyone. Hearing how wonderfully and peacefully they’d all slept, I silently cursed all their left toes as we headed down to breakfast.

  A glass of fermented milk, some stale bread, and a way-too-fatty stew for such early hours later, we returned the keys and left the inn, making our way to whatever shops were open, grabbing more supplies for the road ahead.

  “But it’s pointless to buy too much,” I said casually as Stevin checked a sack of unprocessed wheat in the corner of the shop. “How long until we reach your House’s estate?”

  “We’re close. If the weather allows it, four or five days,” he shrugged, letting the wheat trickle back into the sack before brushing the dust from his hands. “Maybe a week or more if we have to stop in villages or towns to hide from bad weather.”

  “So at least a week of food for eight people,” I sighed. “Remind me again, why didn’t we take that horse from those bandits and instead abandon it in the forest?”

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  “Because, Your Grace, that horse was older than I’ll ever get to be,” Stevin groaned. “We’d have been stopping every hour because of it.”

  “Calm down with the pessimism. You liked the plan we made the other day,” I said, annoyed.

  Stevin clenched his jaw and lowered his gaze for a moment before turning to examine the dried and smoked meats.

  “It gets harder and harder to like anything the closer we get,” he murmured. “You may think I’m exaggerating, but-”

  “I don’t,” I cut in immediately. “Just trust the plan, or speak your concerns.”

  But he said nothing more. Instead, he focused on the shopping until we’d finished with everything, except for one last stop near the town’s exit.

  A weaponsmith.

  A great choice of destination, really, because it seemed I needed some kind of weapon on me, at least more than the chipped sword I took from one of the bandits I killed.

  Another reason why we were here was, as luck would have it, the adult beastfolk, Arther, Silvien, and Melsa, all had weapon-based Roads.

  A weapon-based Road was still magic at its core, but it manifested best through a weapon. Something like Thor and his hammer, Mjolnir.

  Thor was still the God of Thunder, while Mjolnir was just the catalyst.

  Well… in the case of the three beastfolk standing in front of me, it wasn’t nearly as epic, but the concept was the same.

  “Pick whatever works best with your Roads and whatever you actually know how to use,” I said to the trio while the others waited near the entrance, keeping the little dog boy, Arthur, busy.

  “Y-Your Grace,” Silvien stuttered, exhausting her daily allotment of dialogue she allowed herself per day, “Why?”

  “Why what?” I asked, already used to her questioning every benevolent act I committed.

  “Why buy us weapons?” she clarified.

  I sighed, not expecting a genuinely good question. “Because if we’re going to claim you were Adventurers, you’ll… need to look like Adventurers. Hopefully you’ll never have to use any of them, but it’s better to have something just in case so that the past does not… repeat itself.”

  Silvien nodded at that. She understood better than anyone what I meant, how important it was for her, for all of them, to never allow themselves to fall into slavery again.

  “So go,” I added. “Let me know when you’ve decided. Until then, I’ll look for my own.”

  Silvien and Melsa nodded and drifted along the walls of the shop, pretending not to notice the stares from the man behind the counter. But Arther didn’t move.

  “Allow me, Your Grace, to help you pick yours first,” Arther said, his eyes steady with confidence. “I used to help my father at the forge when I was young. I know a thing or two about weapons.”

  Well, I couldn’t turn that down. My own knowledge of weapons leaned heavily toward the modern side of things, and anything from a similar era back on Earth I only knew through lessons, pictures, or museum exhibits safely tucked behind thick glass.

  “Please, Arther,” I said, nodding to his offer.

  An hour later, with a small machete-type sword at my side and its leather scabbard hitting the side of my thigh as I walked, we left the town with no events worth mentioning.

  The guards did look suspiciously at us once in a while, but it seemed that a four-year-old climbing up the free side of my body was enough to deter any questioning they may have had planned for us. Whether it was pity or just couldn’t be bothered with normal, armed civilians, didn’t matter. I was just glad that at least the humans in this place were decent enough, despite the shattered pieces of reality floating above their heads without their knowledge.

  “May I ask, Your Grace?” Airina spoke from beside me, a grin appearing on her lips, “Did you… have fun last night with someone? Who was it?”

  “Fun?” I frowned, turning to look at her, “I doubt much fun could be had in a chairless, hay-filled room.”

  Airina giggled, her light-blue eyes studying me closely, “Then why were you grunting like that?”

  My eyes shot wide at the absolutely baseless accusation the elven lady was throwing my way, “Stop lying.”

  “My room was next to yours,” she pointed out, “The walls weren’t thick enough for elven ears, you know?”

  Was I making sounds like a dumbass because of my dreams? Doubtful. They were a nice memory and felt quite real, but I don’t remember Julia ever mentioning me snoring; it was not even worth mentioning, something like random noises. I was a silent sleeper through and through.

  “Maybe you were just imagining things, or hearing something from other rooms,” I shrugged, “I went to sleep as soon as I went back to my room.”

  She kept grinning but didn’t push the issue, letting me dismiss it as yet another oddity among the elves of this world.

  Besides the little air-bender brat who pointed at me and called me a vampire like I was some museum exhibit, the strange guards, and the even stranger looks from the villagers, Airina was the daughter of the strangest one of them all: the Elf Chief and his mini-harem of wives.

  So, of course, she heard whatever she wanted to hear.

  But as we kept walking, tuning out the ongoing conversations, not wanting to linger on the fact that I would have to sleep on the ground again, I forced myself to refocus on the Fracture above us, trying, somehow, to understand it.

  ‘Ephe,’ I said inside my head, ‘Do you feel like telling me anything important about the Fracture this time? Or are you ignoring me again as if you are an angry, sulky wife?’

  [Ephe is not ignoring Elio.]

  ‘Oh? Good morning, sunshine. Does that mean you will tell me something that might help me?’

  [No.]

  Figured.

  ‘Not angry, my ass.’

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