EXTRA: A Date with Cassandra

And then, after thinking about how much of a nightmare a harem is, a telepathic Discord call arrived.

He accepted it with a flick of his attention, and Cassandra's voice came through, crisp and professional, but with a glimpse of nervousness.

"M-my Liege... I'm here in Oakhaven. I've arrived where you told me to. But..." A small pause. "...But I can't see you."

"I'm on my way," Mordecai replied, already moving. "Wait for me outside the guild. I promise that it won't take long."

"Understood, my Liege. I'll... I'll be here." Another pause, softer. "Take your time."

He ended the call before the warmth in that last sentence could do anything to his blood pressure.

"System," he thought, straightening his collar out of pure habit. "Activate [Totally Hide Status]."

The skill wrapped around him like a tailored suit sewn entirely from pure mediocrity. In an instant, in Mordecai's place stood Kaitoyama: the updated edition. A perfectly unremarkable Level 40, D-Class adventurer. A completely ordinary mage (Shadow Electrician) in a plain traveling coat, the exact kind of background character a reader's eyes would slide right past on their way to someone more important.

[SKILL ACTIVE: TOTALLY HIDE STATUS. You now radiate the narrative significance of a lamppost. Have fun being nobody.]

"System," he thought. "Get me to Oakhaven. Use the damn fast travel."

There was a pause where Mordecai could literally feel the System's disapproval.

A new window appeared in front of him, and this time it was different than usual.

An admin of the Higher Realms was speaking.

[You're so boring,] it complained, letting the word drag out with theatrical disgust. [You just casually ruined, by my count, at least ten potential chapters of exploration. Do you have any idea how much filler content we could have generated on the road to Oakhaven? A bandit ambush. A wounded traveler with a mysterious past. A roadside inn with a suspicious innkeeper. A monster-of-the-week with a tragic backstory that makes the readers cry. That's a full week of daily updates gone, because you want to take a shortcut. Plus, people miss the "Talk No Jutsu" skill. You only used it once.]

"Move," Mordecai ordered, leaving no room for argument.

[A random encounter with a slime that turns out to be a reincarnated philosopher. A—]

"Move."

[...Fine. Ugh. Fine. Activating Fast Travel. You're the worst protagonist I've ever been assigned to. The absolute worst. Do you know that other Systems get to work with heroes who want adventures? Killjoy.]

Mordecai closed his eyes and allowed himself, for exactly one second, a small, private smile. Ruining this world and its narrative was his goal.

An instant later, he opened them again in the familiar, quiet dimness of his private VIP room.

The same room from some time ago, where he met Lucy and had a mental breakdown.

The first thing he heard, before his eyes had even fully adjusted to the dim VIP room, was the snoring.

It came from the adjoining chamber, and it was a deep, rattling, industrial-grade ZZZZRRRRK-hhhooooo that shook faint dust from the rafters and made the water in a nearby pitcher tremble in concentric rings.

Mordecai knew that snore. Only one person in Ravenloft Holdings could produce a sound like that.

Valeria. Sprawled across a rented bed in the next room, sleeping like someone who worked a 48-hour shift.

"...I better get out of here, I don't want to waste any more time," Mordecai muttered under his breath, already stepping toward the door. The last thing he needed on his one scheduled afternoon of relative peace was Valeria waking up, seeing him, turning tomato-red, and launching into a forty-minute "i-it's not like I was waiting for you, baka!" monologue.

So, very, very, very, very silently, he started walking and made it approximately three steps.

Something warm and soft pressed against his shins, and a low, rumbling purr filled the room.

"Boss...~"

Mordecai looked down.

Nya, the catgirl thief, was rubbing the side of her face against his knee, her tail curled high and quivering, her cheeks flushed a soft pink.

She was licking her own wrist between purrs—slow, deliberate little grooming strokes—and gazing up at him with pupils blown wide and glassy. Her whole body radiated a restless, feverish energy.

Mordecai's stomach dropped.

[STATUS UPDATE — SUBJECT 'NYA': [Feline Heat Cycle] active. Affection-seeking behavior escalating. Recommend intervention.]

'Oh, come on,' he thought. 'Not this. Not today.' He thought, looking at Nya.

'The system is still forcing these things... I'm so tired.'

But Nya wasn't doing it to be lewd. The System had simply flipped a switch in her code, and now she was standing here, confused and overheated, instinctively seeking comfort from the one person in the fortress who had never once yelled at her.

So Mordecai sighed, crouched down, and did the only merciful thing.

He reached out and scratched the top of her head, then gently behind her ears, right at the base, where the soft fur met her scalp.

The effect was immediate. Nya went boneless, her eyes fluttering half-shut, and the purr climbed into a register that was frankly ridiculous, a deep motorboat rumble that vibrated through the whole floor. She even pressed her head up into his palm, chasing the sensation, and licked her wrist and then his one more time in pure, dazed contentment.

"Nyaaaa..."

"Yeah, yeah," Mordecai said, not unkindly. "I know." He kept scratching for a few more seconds, then addressed the ceiling. "System. Do something about this. Humanely. She's not a joke; she's just glitched. Put her to sleep, cycle her out, I don't care. Just let her rest until it passes."

There was a rare, almost thoughtful pause.

[...Huh. No sarcastic comeback? No demand for a filler chapter? You actually want to help the NPC.] A beat. [Fine. Deploying [Gentle Slumber]. Don't say I never did anything nice for you, Killjoy.]

A soft, golden shimmer settled over Nya. Mid-purr, her eyes drifted fully closed, and she slumped sideways against his arm, fast asleep, the fever already draining from her cheeks.

Mordecai carefully scooped her up, carried her to the room's spare couch, and laid her down, tail curling into a neat spiral around herself like a blanket.

He straightened, looked at the two sleeping women, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"My life," he informed the empty air, "is a poorly-written light novel." But there was another important thing.

Someone was missing.

'Where's Seraphina? I didn't hear her 'Te-Hee'. Let's get out before something worse happens.'

And then he left before anyone else could wake up.

Outside, the guild hall opened up before him in all its aesthetically-offensive glory.

[THE SILVER DRAGON'S GOLDEN DAWN]

He remembered the first time he approached this guild. It was one of the moments where the poor electrician really wanted to die.

Now he was looking at the guild with a strange sense of nostalgia.

After a few instants, he finally saw Cassandra.

She wasn't in her spectral secretary uniform. She'd dressed down with well-made adventurer's clothes, a simple traveling tunic and fitted trousers, the kind of unremarkable outfit that let a person blend into a crowd. And, more startling: no glasses.

Her hands were clasped in front of her. She was pretty nervous, shifting her weight from foot to foot, rehearsing something under her breath.

She hadn't spotted him yet. The [Totally Hide Status] was doing its job; even Cassandra's eyes slid past the forgettable Level 40 mage in the plain coat.

Mordecai then let the skill relax just enough, like a camera pulling him gently back into frame.

Cassandra's gaze immediately snapped to him. Her green eyes widened, and the tension in her shoulders dissolved into something soft and relieved and terrified all at once.

"My Liege— ah." She caught herself, glancing around, and lowered her voice. Here, in public, in these clothes, he wasn't her Liege. He was just a guy. "...I mean. You're here. I— I wasn't sure you'd..." She trailed off, cheeks coloring faintly. "You came."

"I said I would." Mordecai offered a small, easy Kaitoyama smile, the ordinary one, not the CEO one. "Sorry to keep you waiting. Ready?"

Cassandra nodded, a little too quickly. "Y-Yes. Where... where are we going?"

"Nowhere special," he said, and meant it as a comfort. "Just a walk. I want to see the city. You've been buried in Oakhaven's paperwork for weeks, so I figured you've earned the chance to actually see it as something other than a stack of forms. We'll start here, then head out into the streets."

The relief on her face was almost painful to look at. A tour. A normal, simple tour. No stakes, no meetings, no grievance forms. Just an afternoon.

"That sounds..." Cassandra swallowed. "That sounds lovely."

They then stepped together into the main hall of the guild, and immediately walked into a wall of noise.

"VAMPIRES."

At the reception counter, a woman was slamming both fists onto the wood hard enough to make the inkwells jump.

She was, objectively, a spectacularly high-budget design. Short black hair, a skin-tight dark leather suit laced with silver runic straps, sleek low-profile sunglasses, and an enormous double-barreled crossbow mounted on her left forearm. She looked like what would happen if Bayonetta and a League of Legends splash art had a very angry daughter.

This was the Vampire Slayer, and she was in the middle of a tantrum.

"Give me vampires," she snarled at the receptionist. "They killed my family. Every last one of them has to suffer."

Elara, the receptionist, didn't even look up from her ledger. "Ma'am. We have not had a vampire-related quest in approximately twenty years. There are no vampires. I can offer you a werewolf contract. They also have... fangs. And, you know. Paws."

The Vampire Slayer slammed her fists down again, rattling the entire counter.

"YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND MY PAIN! THEY MUST DIE!" she howled, her voice cracking with theatrical anguish. "GIVE ME VAMPIRES!"

"...We don't have any."

"VAMPIRES!"

Cassandra leaned toward Mordecai and whispered, "Is she alright?"

"No," Mordecai said flatly. "None of them are. That's kind of the whole thing. That girl has been asking for vampires for months now." He steered her gently past the counter. "Don't make eye contact. If you engage, she'll tell you the entire backstory."

In a quiet corner nearby, slumped over a table and staring miserably into a mug he wasn't drinking from, sat another familiar figure. The Dragon Slayer. Out of his armor, dressed in plain, rumpled civilian clothes, he looked less like an edgelord and more like a deeply depressed man at the end of a long shift. He was muttering to himself, over and over, in a low monotone.

"Wife... wife... I must find a wife... my parents wanted that... before the dragons... find a wife... carry on the bloodline... wife..."

He wasn't talking to anyone, and it looked like everyone else was ignoring him too.

'I was wrong. It would never work between him and the vampire slayer.'

Cassandra stared. "...And him?"

"He's supposed to be her male counterpart," Mordecai said. "Same as her, different monster. His whole family got wiped out by dragons; so, after he killed that big lizard in our dungeon, he fulfilled his only goal. The System gave him exactly two personality traits and called it a character arc." He shook his head. "Honestly, he and the Vampire Slayer should just get married. They have identical trauma, and it'd solve both their subplots in one wedding. But the System won't allow it, because it says 'crossing two revenge arcs would collapse the tragedy budget.'"

And then, cutting through the ambient misery, came an entirely different sound: the sharp clack of billiard balls and a burst of rough, delighted laughter.

At a carom billiards table on the far side of the hall, a young man with black hair and a Ravenloft Holdings™ tracksuit was lining up a shot, cue in hand, looking more relaxed and more bone-tired than anyone else in the room.

It was Kaz, the perpetually disillusioned tracksuit boy, one of the few people in this entire narrative who seemed to understand exactly how stupid all of it was.

And he was playing billiards against three goblins in impeccably tailored business suits.

The goblins — green-skinned, sharp-toothed, and wearing pinstripe jackets, silk ties, and tiny cufflinks — were arguing amongst themselves in gravelly voices about portfolio diversification and the projected Q3 returns on the Oakhaven agricultural annexation. They were, Mordecai realized, investors in Ravenloft Holdings. His investors. Playing pool. With Kaz. Yeah. Strange, right? 💀

"Nice shot," one goblin rasped, adjusting his tie as Kaz sank the ball. "You've got a good eye, kid. Ever consider a career in asset management?"

"I just want to sleep," Kaz said, chalking his cue with the dead-eyed serenity of a man who had made peace with the absurdity of his existence. "I don't want assets. I want a nap. Working here to welcome new adventurers is becoming pretty stressful, but I would never trade this job for anything else. Toilettes here are amazing."

Cassandra watched the scenery: the screaming Vampire Slayer, the muttering Dragon Slayer, the tracksuit boy hustling corporate goblins at billiards, and turned to Mordecai with a bewildered expression.

"Is it... always like this in here?"

Mordecai looked out over the beautiful chaos of the [Silver Dragon's Golden Dawn], the flagship guild of a world he was slowly, methodically dismantling from the inside, and allowed himself a small, genuine smile.

"Welcome to Oakhaven, Cassandra," he said. "Come on. It gets weirder outside."