“What is it Joseph? I don’t think we had any particular appointments today.”
The woman in front of us says.
Apparently she’s referred to as commander, and she’s in charge of the team exploring the ruins.
But why commander? She’s sitting down, and seems to be locked in a fierce battle with paperwork.
“I’m sorry, but she…”
Joseph introduces Chris, and when the woman raises her head, she gulps.
She gets up with a clunking noise, and her footsteps echo as she walks over to Chris.
Her eyes show surprise, and she reaches out towards Chris’ pendant, but stops. Then she takes a big breath.
“I see. I understand why you brought them. It’s nice to meet you… All. My name is Rizalie, and I’m responsible for the team exploring the ruins. More importantly… That pendant. How did you get it?”
“I-I was given this pendant by Filo, the person managing an orphanage in Nahal. I don’t know a lot about it either, but she told me she was told by grandma Morrigan to hand it to me.”
The mood has clearly changed.
It’s not just Rizalie either. Joseph and the rest of the staff here too. They are reacting to Morrigan’s name.
“I see… So it was through Miss Morrigan.”
“Y-yes. She looked after us when we were younger.”
“Is that so… I understand. So what is your business here?”
“Well… To be honest, I don’t really know, but after I put on this pendant, I got this feeling that I had to go to the ruins… I’m sorry, I can’t explain it very well.”
It’s just a feeling she has, so Chris doesn’t know how to explain it.
“I understand. So is it safe to assume that your objective is to explore the ruins?”
Chris nods, and Rizalie writes something down and hands it to Joseph.
“Use this to give them a permit to investigate the ruins. Also, arrange for a place for them to stay, and tell them about the ruins.”
“T-thank you.”
“No problem, but the investigation is almost over. There might not be much to explore.”
Rizalie says the ruins aren’t all that large, so most of the places they can investigate have been investigated.
She also says that they found all sorts of things, so if we do happen to find anything new, we should report and present it to them.
Joseph then takes us to the lodging facility, and introduces us to the staff and adventurers present.
They seem particularly surprised that we have a permit to investigate. Like they’re perplexed that they’re giving permits this late in the game, when pretty much everything has been explored.
But they continue carrying out their duties without any weird questions, probably because Rizalie herself issued the application for the permits.
“You will be staying here. This is all we have available. Will that be an issue?”
Joseph peeks over at me.
When the girls nod, I see his expression turn into kind of a jealous one.
You’re wrong though. We’ve camped together so many times, that unfortunately, there’s a very good chance that they don’t even see me as male anymore. It’s scary how people get used to things.
And me? I guess the same can be said about me. Even if I take some distance from them when it’s time to sleep!
I’m sure it’s because we’ve spent so much time together at this point. Or maybe I’ve been building up resistance because of how clingy Hikari was when I met her.
She hasn’t been coming over to sleep alongside me recently… But I’m not lonely or anything.
“Anyway, it’s late, so we should explore tomorrow.”
“Yes. Apparently there are adventurers who camp in the ruins, but there is no need to go out of our way to go right now.”
Chris agrees with me. She looks tired.
The extremely polite way she was treated left her perplexed, and was probably taxing on her mentally.
“Should we review what we learned about the ruins?”
Says Rurika, and we talk about what to do next over dinner. Incidentally, said dinner is food we brought.
They weren’t expecting us, and I imagine they don’t have a lot of food to begin with. I preemptively prepared food for us because I felt that was the case based on the situation in Nahal.
That said, I still have a good number of monsters in the Item Box.
I’d like vegetables too, from a nutrition point of view, but high rank monster meat should cover it. The problem is whether or not we’ll get sick of it.
Hikari would probably be happy eating only meat. But only if it’s properly seasoned!
“Right now, we know that the ruins consist of the buildings on the surface, and three floors underground. Apparently they’re checking to see if there are any hidden rooms.”
“They said there are a lot of small rooms. And they even found magic items.”
“Yes. And they’re having an historian examine a mural in the third basement floor.”
Say Rurika and Sera, to confirm.
The rest of us chime in from time to time, but it’s mostly them talking.
Hikari doesn’t say anything, but at least she’s listening, while stuffing her cheeks with meat.
“Anyway, let’s go around checking the rooms tomorrow. They say there aren’t any monsters, but let’s be careful anyway.”
Says Rurika, wrapping everything up including our course of action for tomorrow.
But there are things in Joseph’s explanation that caught my attention. He said there are no reports of monsters, but sometimes when they entered a room, stone statues attacked them.
And apparently those were the places where the magic items were.
And the thing that I’m most curious about, is that among the items they retrieved, they found something similar to Chris’ pendant.
It’s true that Chris’ pendant has a design that’s peculiar in this world, but are the two things related? I fall asleep while thinking about that.
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Happy Thanksgivings!
Thanks for the treat.
U to don’t celebrate that here though. Looks like I was wrong about that guys intension go figure