Chapter 370 - 370 - Like I Said, Learn to Play Dumb

"Holy crap!"

"Asfi, what the hell happened to you?!"

A tall, powerfully built weretiger kicked the door open, and the moment he laid eyes on Asfi slumped in the snow, a large bloodstain already spreading beneath her, his tiger eyes went wide as saucers.

"Far... ga~, E-Elixir..."

"Got it!"

The weretiger swiftly drew a delicate crystal vial from his waist, popped the stopper, and without hesitation poured the five-hundred-thousand-Valis Elixir over her wound.

In an instant, a miraculous change took place.

White mist rose from the wound, and that ghastly gash began closing up at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Just then, the other members of Hermes Familia came charging out, fully armed and bristling with killing intent.

"Where's the enemy?!"

"Where's the intruder?!"

"Damn it, someone actually dares to break into our base? Is this some kind of insult to Hermes Familia?"

Amid the chaos, Hermes, dressed in pajamas with a traveler's cap perched on his head, was "hauled" out by the crowd surrounding him, a blank look on his face.

At that moment, his brain still hadn't caught up.

What invasion? What attack? Where was the enemy? How come he, the god himself, didn't know anything about it?

Then he caught sight of Asfi, who had just struggled to her feet from the snow with Falga's support.

"Asfi? What's all this...?"

"What happened?"

"If I remember right, didn't you go off to the Guild's year-end gathering?"

Looking at her ever-unreliable patron god, Asfi gently stroked her now-healed side. But every touch seemed to draw up a faint, lingering phantom ache.

Recalling that man's face, the corner of Asfi's small face twitched:

"This... is a long story."

...

...

Beneath the dim yellow streetlamps, the road lay buried under snow, reflecting a vast white expanse of deep night.

The remote, lonely neighborhood alley was utterly silent, only three figures crossing through the rustling snowfall, stopping before a courtyard gate to rap on it in a steady rhythm.

There was a knock at the gate.

After quite a while, the crunch of footsteps treading through snow finally came from inside the yard.

"Who is it!"

It was Kureha's voice, with obvious wariness in her tone.

The three of them exchanged a smile and answered softly:

"It's us, Kureha."

The door creaked open.

Warm yellow light spilled from the lantern in Kureha's hand, illuminating the three faces cloaked and dusted with snow at the shoulders.

"It's almost two in the morning. Why are you only getting back now?"

Kureha knit her brows slightly, her tone laced with worry and a touch of reproach.

"If Persephone hadn't promised over and over that you'd really gone to the Guild headquarters for the year-end gathering, everyone might've stormed the Guild demanding to know where you were."

She turned aside as she spoke, making room at the doorway.

"We didn't expect the meeting to run so long either. At the end of the day... it's because we're new players and don't know the ins and outs of these things. But now that we've been through it once, next time will go a lot smoother."

As Leon explained, he naturally took hold of Kureha's icy hand and lifted the lantern from her grip.

"Come on, get inside, quick. Aren't you cold, going around in nothing but that thin little nightgown?"

He led her toward the house first, the lantern light casting a warm halo across the snow.

Rose, who had stayed behind to shut the gate, caught sight of the two clasped hands, then glanced at Miss Jeanne, whose brow was twitching of its own accord, and shook her head, finding the whole thing rather funny.

Ara ara, every time I see the look on Jeanne's face when she gets jealous, it's just so entertaining...

...

By the time the three of them got home, the lights throughout the whole mansion came on one after another.

After changing his shoes and hanging the cloaks, coats, and scarves on the rack one by one, Leon casually took Jeanne's and Rose's outerwear too, then smiled at the few ladies on the sofa rubbing their bleary eyes:

"If you're sleepy, go to bed. What are you forcing yourselves to stay up on the sofa for?"

"It's not like we weren't coming back."

Persephone gathered up the long hair scattered down her back and put on those gold-rimmed glasses Leon found rather interesting, her tone light and airy, betraying little emotion:

"Certain people sleep poorly when certain people aren't home."

Leon raised an eyebrow and followed her gaze.

Aura sat with her head bowed, fingers clutching the hem of her skirt, the tips of her ears flushed red; beside her, Princess Lydia wore faint dark circles, her expression tinged with unease and anxiety.

Lydia's insomnia, Leon could understand well enough. After all, she'd only recently been through so many ordeals, even nearly sold off to the Pleasure Quarter by slave traders. Anyone would need time to recover from something like that, all the more so for a princess of a nation born with a silver spoon in her mouth, pampered her whole life, never once having gone through such dizzying highs and lows.

There was no way the impression wouldn't run deep, so when the three of them weren't home, her feeling insecure and too anxious to sleep was only human nature.

But Aura...

Just then, Laurier grinned and hooked her arm around Aura's:

"Leon, Leon, Leon, what Aura's got here is a common little condition among us elves."

"It's that once we get used to a certain environment, we don't take well to changing it... mm, it's that 'creature-of-habit' thing you're always talking about."

"Now Aura's gotten used to your presence, and Big Sis Jeanne's, and Big Sis Rose's, so when the three of you suddenly weren't here tonight, an elf's delicate senses picked up on that empty feeling right away, so, you know..."

"Mm, you get what I mean, right?"

Put plainly, she can't sleep anywhere but her own bed?

Leon found it a bit funny, looked at Aura, then turned to tease Laurier:

"Aura can't sleep in a strange bed, sure, but when I came in just now, I distinctly saw a certain someone sprawled out on the sofa, sleeping like a log and even snoring away."

Laurier's face flushed red in a flash:

"I-I that, that, that was..."

"Hehe, Laurier! No need to explain, we all know you're a scatterbrain!"

"That's a good thing!"

Struck right where it hurt, Laurier started stammering, her face red as she protested loudly:

"You, you're the scatterbrain! Your whole family's scatterbrains!"

"Hahahaha!"

Teasing the household clown Laurier instantly turned the whole mansion's mood cheerful.

...

After everyone chatted a while longer, Persephone poured the three of them some warm water and asked with mild curiosity:

"So what all did the meeting discuss this time?"

"My guess... there were probably proposals about post-disaster reconstruction, and splitting the funding costs among everyone?"

At her question, sure enough everyone looked over, even Lydia raised her eyes, her gaze full of concern.

"Well, since you all want to hear it, I'll give you the short version."

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