Page 64

The embarrassment was gone by the time we made it back to town. It was a bit after midday, around lunch time. Mimi was back in my sword sheath and Morrigan casually walked to my right. It made me happy that she was walking next to me rather than a few steps behind me like she had been up until that point.

"Are you hungry Morrigan? Anything in particular you want to eat for lunch?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. I never had the money to spend on any restaurants or anything in the area so I don't really know of any places."

I nodded. "Makes sense. Maybe we should ask somebody." I looked around but everyone seemed pretty busy. Since it was lunchtime so there were a lot of people walking around. I would have pulled an adventurer aside but I couldn't spot any, everyone seemed to be craftsman and other laborers. No kids though interestingly enough. Come to think of it I hadn't seen any kids at all since I've come here.

"I haven't seen any kids around." I said to Morrigan.

"This is a frontier town, almost everyone here is involved in the adventuring business in some way. Either supporting them directly with armor and weapon shops, or providing general services that adventurer's would take advantage of. Things like inns, bars, and restaurants."

"Huh. How old is this town anyway?" I looked around, there were paved roads and lots of stone buildings. The architecture was kind of all over the place though and a lot of the streets only barely made any sense.

"Mmm... three years old?"

I was shocked. "Only three years old!?" I took another look around and was even more impressed by the town around me. "A lot of the buildings look like they're made from solid stone."

Morrigan nodded. "Once terra mages become powerful enough they're able to quickly put up stone structures using magic. They're pretty sturdy but settlements like this are usually thrown up fast so a lot of the buildings are just empty shells until someone comes in behind them and customizes it. Even though there are a decent number of three story buildings around here, a lot of them don't even have running water or anything like that. Not unless the people who moved in puts in the magic tools themselves."

As we were walking we came across a small looking restaurant that had people sitting at an outdoor patio eating sandwiches. Normally something like that wouldn't intrigue me so much but this is basically the first time I've seen food here that wasn't some kind of stew or soup. The restaurant, or maybe deli is more accurate, was packed and looked pretty upscale.

I pointed it out to Morrigan. "How does that place look? You wanna eat there?" I asked.

"Oooh! It looks good! Yeah! Let's eat here."

The two of us went in and were quickly shown to a small table in the corner. There were lots of people talking but it wasn't too loud despite that. The atmosphere of the restaurant felt relaxed and friendly. I looked at the menu, most things were a silver or two.

I looked up at Morrigan who looked shocked. "Lilith! This place is way too expensive! This meal is 2 silver!" she whispered to me, pointing at her menu.

Hmm, in a way I kind of understand her point. The inn I originally stayed at had cost half a silver for dinner and a room for 2 people a night. Most of these sandwiches cost at least a silver each. I might feel the pinch a bit more if we didn't have something around 50 gold combined in our group right now. And that wasn't counting any of the money we would earn from the whole dungeon escapade.

"Don't worry about it, I'll pay for it. Think of it as a reward for everything we dealt with in the dungeon. Most adventurers can afford to splurge every now and then, I guess I'd just rather spend it on fancy sandwiches than alcohol," I said with a grin.

"Oh... okay." Morrigan looked back down at her menu anxiously before picking a sandwich that had three meats I didn't recognize and a type of cheese I had never heard of.

Looking at my own menu really didn't help me too much either. I didn't recognize any of the names of anything here, even though [Sightspeak] was supposed to be translating for me. Though I guess if they don't have quite the same animals here than there wasn't much I could do.

When the waitress came to our table I just ordered the same thing Morrigan had ordered and hoped for the best. At one and half silver for each sandwich I was pretty excited for what it would taste like. The waitress glanced at Morrigan's exposed slave collar but decided not to comment on it since I didn't seem to be making a big deal out of it. I was happy for that, I'll give her a nice tip. Wait do I tip here? I better ask later.

I scratched the base of my horn. "So how are you holding up? I know that things have been stressful for you the last couple days."

She smiled at me in return. "It was stressful, but I feel a lot better now. Honestly." She paused to gather her thoughts. "I'm really happy you bou- Er, that we were able to come with you. You've treated us with nothing but respect and courtesy, much more than our status usually allows... I felt a little hopeless when we were pulled back to the slaver's guild the night we got back. It felt like I finally got a taste of happiness only for it to be quickly taken away..." she looked down and looked into the glass of water in front of her. "That's why when I saw you at the slaver's guild I knew I had to try to convince you to take us. You're a good person, I was afraid if I didn't speak up you might have been unable to commit to buying us despite your reservations..."

I frowned, a bitter taste in my mouth. "I don't think I would have been able to actually walk away... But it did feel like a betrayal of my ethics to become your owner. I don't think slavery is right, it was disheartening to be forced into that situation."

She nodded. "I thought you might have difficulty swallowing it. But for us, it's normal. I knew from a very young age that I would always be a slave. Whether it's fair or not doesn't make any difference to me, I just wanted a reliable, kind master." She smiled up at me. "I'm lucky it's you."

I sighed. "Let's talk about something else. I'm glad things worked out but I'd rather not think about the details right now."

"Of course. Well, other than that things have been pretty good. I got to go to the spa for the first time, the beds in the spa's rooms were really comfortable. And you gave me the staff I had been dreaming about since we found it. Other than the initial fear of being sold off to someone else after making such a strong connection with you, things have been pretty good!" She said with a laugh.

Just then our food arrived. The sandwich they brought me was on a soft bread that tasted a bit like sourdough with a tangy sauce similar to mustard spread on the inside. Morrigan was happy to point out which meat was which on my sandwich for me as well as what region the cheese came from. I kind of doubt I'm actually going to retain much of the information she gave me though. It's quite a challenge to remember more or less trivial things when most of your points of reference for places and things were just gone. How am I supposed to remember which country made this cheese when I don't even know where this country even is? Still, it was a damn good sandwich.

Morrigan looked in heaven while she was eating her sandwich, I thought it was good but it must have been something extra special for her. I smiled, it was cute to see her so excited by something so mundane to me.

"So Morrigan, what's your favorite color?" I asked.

"Hmm." She sat back in her chair and licked her fingers. "Blue."

"Any particular reason why?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. I never really thought about it I guess. How about you?"

"Purple. I like prefer the cooler shades like violet rather than fuchsia. It's calming and pleasant to look at, and it looks pretty when combined with a lot of different colors."

Morrigan laughed. "That's so like you."

"What do you mean?"

She looked down at her drink with a smile. "You've obviously thought a lot about it and ended up coming to the answer most nobles would give but for a completely different reason."

"Nobles?"

"Yeah, nobles are obsessed with the color. They talk about how rare and luxurious it is, how much it proves their status and position. I've never once heard someone say they like the color purple because it's pretty," she said with a laugh.

I shrugged. "Where I come from the association with royalty and nobles was much less pronounced. I know purple dye was pretty rare once upon a time, even where I'm from, but we kind of got past the color being any more expensive than other colors."

"Were you royalty where you came from Lilith?"

I laughed in response. "Royalty? Hardly. I don't remember much about myself from that world but the best I can guess is that I worked as some sort of artist. Bella has said that I talk like a noble sometimes but the social classes were much less... rigid where I'm from. I was probably middle class, most people were. If I were to guess, the equivalent here would probably be merchants and adventurers, in terms of wealth."

She nodded. "That's interesting. Merchants and adventurers, while plenty numerous, wouldn't come close to the number of slaves and poor villagers in this kingdom. How would merchants even compete if there were that many of them?"

"They'd find a way. Invent new things, cater to different interests. There are a lot of things merchants can do to differentiate themselves if they had to. Actually, where I'm from it's pretty well known that a lot of competition in a field increases innovation and newer better products are introduced. In a lot of ways competition is very lucrative in the long run, even when it can be quite detrimental in the short run." I stood up and stretched. We had been there for a while and the place was still plenty busy, it would probably be best if we left. "Lets go hang out somewhere else."

Morrigan smiled. "Sounds good."

I paid and we headed out back in the town. I found out tipping isn't common but very much appreciated, so I left our kind waitress a nice tip. It was late afternoon and a lot of the midday bustle had gone away. I had fun today, it was nice spending some one on one time with Morrigan to get to know her better. Maybe it would be a good idea to spend some one on one time with Torien too.

"Hey Morrigan, how about we go shopping for some personal clothes? Mimi can hold onto a lot of our stuff so it probably wouldn't it be too much trouble. Ah, Hold on a moment."

-- "Mimi, you don't mind us asking you to carry our stuff right? I know I've been asking you to carry a lot of stuff lately." --

-- "I don't mind! But maybe I should increase my storage soon if it's gonna be a regular thing. Can we look for some of those tasty stones Torien let me have the day before yesterday?" --

-- "Sure, that sounds fine." --

I turned back to Morrigan who had raised an eyebrow at me. "Is there a reason you just stared off into space for a while there?" she asked.

I looked around before moving close and whispering into her cute cat ear. "I share an ability with other Succubi that lets us talk to each other silently. I can talk to Mimi and Bella like that."

"Oh... that sounds handy."

"Anyway, Mimi said it would be fine to carry more stuff for her but also asked if we can get her more of those monster cores."

"Oh! I know exactly where we can find those!" she beamed.

"Great! Lets go pick some up for her and then go pick out some new clothes."

After we picked up some cheap monster cores for Mimi we spent the rest of the day checking out clothes and picking up some things for ourselves from secondhand clothing stores. I decided it would be a good idea to spend the day tomorrow with Torien. It was probably important to foster our relationships with each other and sometimes that was easier to do when we weren't always in the same pairs all the time. It also gave me the chance to candidly talk to Morrigan about her feelings today and I think Torien might appreciate the same opportunity.

We finished up and met at the new inn we would be staying at going forward. It was a bit farther from the adventurer's guild but since our entire party slept in the same room, whether we liked it or not, it put less pressure on us to meet up in the morning. We found an inn that had private bathrooms, while not as luxurious or warm as the public ones, it at least gave us a chance to wash up in private. We ate dinner together in our room and chatted for a bit before going to sleep for the night. It was a good day.