Chapter 195: In Diner Talk
———Jeff———
<12: 07 pm>
“Yeah. I don’t get it at all. Why don’t we see her as often as we should?” It makes no freaking sense when you think about it for like a second. If she’s someone super close to Karra we should’ve spotted her like maybe trice a week or something.
“It’s very doubtful that she genuinely stays in hiding all the time if it looks like Karra keeps close contact with her.” Orrel noted. “Maybe some sort of illusion or shapeshifting ability. There are rumors of that type of ability existing, but we can’t say for certain.”
“That is way too easy of an explanation… I really want to say it's most likely true, but we have no evidence, let’s be real with ourselves here.” Gregori said before he kept eating.
“If it is true, that just means we have no real way of actually figuring it all out. In case all of you forget, it’s clear that this Navi person is extremely strong, probably even stronger than Kenni or Emmie. I’d imagine that if she has an illusion-based ability it’d be extremely potent and hard to detect… Wait a minute.” Orrel was talking for a quite a while before a realization struck.
“What?” Useph asked, it’s pretty rare for him to look so puzzled.
“In the first place. Why hasn't anyone encountered her until multiple months after the Eclipse? That implied either one of two things. She doesn’t come from here, or she already mastered her ability to conceal herself, whatever it may be. For the former, it would explain why she isn’t around often, but why is she involved with Karra then? Were they online friends? Someone she secretly met up with? Most of us rarely wandered outside the town, especially after the Eclipse, so when did it all take place? And the latter explanation is even more convoluted with more possibilities and theories to go through. Honestly it’s going to take a while to explain everything, and even then all those possibilities I came up with could still be wrong. We need to remember that we live in a time where anything is possible. The existence of magic greatly widened the causes and the methods.” Uhh… So basically we still have no clue, right?
“It’s kinda weird for Karra to know someone outside our group. I know she mentioned being in other group chats before, but never about meeting them or anything, right?” Jeyst pointed out.
“That is a rather large assumption about our friend. I wouldn’t cut out that possibility, personally.” Orrel replied. “I think the best takeaway we can get from this is that trying to speculate as things are is a fool’s errand. In the first place, should we really be discussing this topic so frequently? We don’t have much else to do, but this seems like a waste of time at the moment.”
“Ain’t that why we even talk about it?” I pointed out. We need some gossip to keep going and entertain ourselves. We really don’t have a lot to do.
“Oh, shut it. If you want to kill time, maybe you should go to the dungeon and grind up. You’re still the weakest out of all of us in terms of raw magic power, in case you forget.” Gregori suddenly brings up that point that really stings. “As it stands, let’s just shut up about this for now. Some of you haven’t even finished your cheesesteak yet.”
…I mean. I finished eating mine a while ago.
“...You think Kenni is still bandaged up and in bed right now?” Wers spoke up after a moment of silence.
“Unlikely. She has always been a tough one to put down, even if she looks like she has hollow bones.” Orrel remarked. Does she actually have bird bones though? Or is that just we’re assuming because she’s a crowkin. “It wouldn’t be surprising to see her already going around terrorizing the territories of those warlords. She loves a place where she can go all out and without any inhibition.”
“...You think any of us are gonna do anything like that at some point?” I said, since it seems really cool and heroic, if obviously risky.
“You can try if you want. I wouldn’t risk it, personally.” Gregori said with a sense of skepticism. “These are actual criminals we are talking about. It’s absurd enough as is that those two actually dare to jump into those situations multiple times in a row.”
“I mean we did try something like that once before when Useph got kidnapped. Remember that?” Why can’t we do something like that again?
“Because it was insanely risky and we only act on it in the heat of the moment. We didn’t even do that much in the grand scheme of things.” Orrel chimed in. “Looking back with hindsight, it seems like his family already has a plan of getting him back, there was never a need for us to get involved. It was a moment of weakness for us as a group.”
“...Speaking of Useph’s family…” I said before realizing Useph is with us right now. He is the one covering the cost of our lunch. “Whoops. I mean. Useph, you know anything about why your mother is… you know?”
“I don’t freaking know, man.” He voiced his frustration clear as day. Good thing he isn’t shouting, even I don’t want to know what’ll happen if we make a fuss in Rico’s place. “She’s not around very often, and she seems to keep to herself a lot. I didn’t know she had all that!”
“It’s gonna be weird to know your mom hides some really important stuff from you.” Gregori remarked. Yeah, I feel bad for the guy. Even before we know about all the magic stuff he couldn’t even tell us what his parents even actually do to get all that wealth, so I guess having him knowing all this is maybe a bit of a reach?
“Yeah. I’m kinda glad I don’t have any skeletons in my family’s closets. Sounds like a bit of an existential nightmare.” Jeyst said with a small smirk. “Anyway, let’s not talk about this further. You know other people could hear us, right?”
“We don’t even talk that loudly.” I pointed out. No one is gonna pick up on anything when this place is so filled up.
“I really don’t want to talk about it.” Useph said flatly. He really found this topic a sore spot, huh.
“If that’s the case, then let’s talk about something else then. Like the recent news about something happening in the town next to us.” Orrel said, suddenly. What town?
“You mean the one to the west? I saw the headline this morning about divine retribution or something. You got an update to that?” Gregori chimed in. Did I miss something cool to talk about? Divine retribution?
“That I did. It seems like a certain someone came to their rescue.” Orrel vaguely stated. Is there a need to be vague at this point?
“Wiina, I take it?” Gregori said with a rather serious face.
“Indeed. She had rescued everyone in danger and subdued everyone that was part of the group that took over the entire town.” Orrel elaborated. When did this even all happen? What is this even about? They make it sound like it happened only a few hours ago.
“It hasn’t even been more… four hours, roughly speaking…” Gregori mentioned. That’s extremely fast if she basically cleaned up the entire town. A town has a lot of people and even a small portion of the population would’ve been pretty massive as far as a dangerous gang goes. Like at least a hundred people.
“Care to explain more for us at home?” I said while scratching my head. Feels like I’m missing a few things here. Kinda confused.
“Basically the town to the west was taken over by a violent gang led by a rather powerful fighter, it seems that the town has been occupied for roughly a week, and they have been using hostages for all sorts of things like free labor or as leverage to the outside world. Of course, no one really knows too much about what happened, but there is public pressure to make sure no hostages were hurt or killed, so a few companies and officials were forced to send them resources to appease them, otherwise the gang would’ve broken apart before half a week passed. It was a messy affair that I don’t think we should all really talk about, for multiple reasons.” Orrel said before looking at Gregori, as if wanting him to continue the explanation.
“...And if we discuss it before all of this, Kenni or Emmie would’ve run in guns blazing. Here’s the thing. I think those two will easily slaughter the entire gang for multiple reasons. Like their dirty tactics implying a rather weak power level and needing to cultivate their strength further before invading other settlements, or how there were rumors of the group being rather top-heavy in terms of power distribution, having a very clear leader at the top, making it seems like if that person was killed, the rest would be easy picking by being lacking in both power and cohesion. The problem is that there is a good chance either of them would end up causing some hostages to get killed by accident. They have self-control for the most part, but I don’t expect them to hesitate if those guys tried to use their prisoners as leverage, especially if they’re already on a streak.” Gregori explained in detail about why things would go badly and why none of us has heard about this until now. “With Wiina… It seems like she rescued everyone and captured all but a few of those miscreants. If I were to guess those are probably the main figures of the group who she either killed or kept at a separate place. It’s hard to tell.”
“Kinda morbid to think that there are people in our friend group willing to just let people get murdered like that… Then again, that’s probably a mercy compared to living in servitude to many terrible people, if your comments are anything to go by.” Jeyst remarked.
“Eh. I wouldn’t really discuss that topic, especially out in the open.” Gregori said. “It’d be quite bad if others are actually eavesdropping in on us. We already have a bad reputation as is for hogging the dungeon to ourselves despite simply being one of the many explorers. I’d rather not have anything taken out of context.”
“Aren’t most of those badwill directed at Kenni and Emmie anyway? We shouldn’t be too worried about that.” Useph chimed in. By the way, has everyone already finished eating their food? Feels like we have just been hogging the table and not doing anything else.
“Hey, give me another classic cheesesteak, a large one, please.” I said to one of the waiters. A waitress in this case. Kinda weird to see a staff member who doesn't look like a weird unrecognizable blob. Didn’t we talk about this at one point? How no one can quite remember what they all look like or where they came from.
“I wouldn’t say that they took the majority of it. Isn’t the fact that we haven’t been to the dungeon as frequently because of people bitching and moaning about us conquering like forty floors every time?” Jeyst said. I mean I haven’t been there often because I was exploring the options at that giant football field arena thingy at the school. I have heard about people complaining about us, but I never think it was anything that serious.
“It’s hard to tell how serious those complaints are since they never directly said those things to our faces.” Orrel remarked. So that’s why I didn’t think it was a big deal. If it was, shouldn’t they just try to say it to my face? Or are they just afraid of what happened yesterday?
“And they might never do that again with the incident with Emmie yesterday.” Gregori said with a smug face. “Anyway, do you guys have anything to do or are we just gonna laze around here the whole time? Useph, you got more cash to throw around, right?”
“Why? You wanna go somewhere?” Useph asked.
“Nah, just asking. Because if we’re gonna stay in this place for a long time I want another order.” He bluntly stated. I don’t think anyone actually has a plan and would rather just laze around. Tomorrow we have to go back to school anyway. It’d be a bad idea to go back all tired and not rest up on the first day.