Chapter 131. Disregard Women, Acquire Soda
Korii came out to meet them, intercepting Rhys with a hand on her sword and a wary expression on her face. She looked Sable and the skeleton up and down, then, in a forcedly neutral tone, asked, “Who is this?”
Sable hopped free. She stood at a distance, the skeletal limbs on her back shifting subtly to prepare if Korii lunged. Korii noticed, and adjusted her stance, readying an attack. The tension between the two was palpable, both of them on edge, waiting for the other to make the first move.
With great effort, Rhys clambered free of his comfortable perch and landed on the ground, then snapped his fingers, dismissing the skeleton. It vanished back into his core, and Korii stared in surprise. He nodded. “Sable, Korii. Korii, Sable. She’s an old friend. Someone I met out in the forest, who I’ve known for a while. You can trust her.”
Korii narrowed her eyes, but stood upright, lowering her hand from her sword. Sable stood as well, tucking her skeleton arms behind her back.
Korii glanced at Rhys. “Every time you go out into the forest, you come back with another beautiful woman. How mysterious.”
Rhys blinked at her, then realized: he’d gone to town and come back with Lira and Mouse, then headed out to free the other camp and come back with Sable. A line passed through his mind, one he’d read in a few too many trashy novels: My parents raised me as a traditional man…
He waved his hand. He wasn’t building a harem, he really wasn’t! It wasn’t his fault that the powerful mages he kept running into were female. For that matter, wasn’t Korii being sexist for pointing out that all the mages he’d recruited were female? She wouldn’t have pointed out if he’d only recruited men, after all. There was nothing wrong with women fighting and being powerful. In fact, he was all for it. The more, the better! The fact that he’d just happened to recruit all women had nothing to do with his efforts. It was all a big coincidence, a big coincidence!
“Yeah, so? I recruit the mages I find. Do you want me to start turning aside women because they’re female and seek out male mages in particular?” Rhys challenged her.
Korii retreated a step, taken aback. “Not at all, it’s merely that your predilections—”
“What predilections? It’s not as if the fact that I like women means I’m going to run into more women. Women are fifty percent of the population. If you flip a coin six times, you wouldn’t make a point of having flipped heads three times, would you? But because they’re women, and I’m a man, obviously it’s because I’m horny and not because it’s an honest coincidence, huh?”