"We're being followed," Sophie informed Lone quietly as they were approaching the Bengon Forest.

"Oh? By what?" Lone questioned. 'Monsters? Unlikely. Slavers maybe? Also probably wrong. Could always be adventurers. Maybe those bigots from before? They were dumb but they didn’t seem the type to jump someone outside of an official setting though…'

"Children. Two of them. They are cloaked in magic to change their appearance, but we can tell that they are nothing but tykes. They are quite similar to you, actually," Sophie noted impassively.

"How so? Are they devilishly handsome?" Lone asked with a smirk on his face.

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Of course. Yes, they're devilishly handsome, even the girl. No, they have big bushy tails and fox ears on their heads."

"Foxkin? Interesting... Can you tell what colour their fur and hair are?" Lone was quite curious if they were being followed by his own kind or if they were of a different race of foxkin to himself.

This would be his first interaction with those of the species he had been forced to become, after all. More information on them couldn’t hurt.

The heavily-armoured woman of ice shook her head. "No. We have vaguely described this to you before, but we do not see in colours. Not conventionally, anyway. We see in mana. Your mana is bright golden, yes, and while theirs is a different colour, a deep red, we do not understand our power enough to tell if that is due to affinity or racial differences.”

"Huh. That makes sense, I guess. I've never really thought about it too deeply," Lone said as he held his chin in his hand. "Anyway, you said that they were disguising themselves with magic? What do they look like right now then?"

Sophie grinned. "Like the fools who we just defeated at The Adventurer's Guild."

"Interesting... I wonder what they want?" Lone muttered to himself.

"We really shouldn't be doing this... I thought you were just going to tie his shoelaces together or something, not try to do... this," Trella complained as he looked down at his now much taller and lankier figure. "I hate this feeling. It's so icky..."

A big smile was spread across the short man's face who resembled the novice fire mage, Grindol. "Stop worrying so much! It's perfect! Sure, he might hit us with that lightning magic thingy, but I'm very confident that he won't kill us! This'll be great! He'll see that we're family and laugh it off!"

"Tiera, these kinds of schemes are why the next leader of our clan will be me, not you, even though you're older than me by a few minutes," Trella noted as he sighed with Quint's mouth.

"Meh. Who cares about being the smelly Matriarch? Pranks are fun!" Tiera bounced around excitedly as Grindol's ears twitched. "They stopped! Maybe they're taking a break to shit? Perfect time to strike if you ask me!"

Trella held his face in his hands. "Look, I'm not saying a word. This is all on you, Tiera. If we get hurt or annoy him, I'm telling on you to Grandmother."

"Boo! Just watch! It'll all go smoothly! As smooth as silk!" Tiera claimed, which only helped to reinforce Trella's lacking faith in her idea.

He sighed into his hand. “More like as smooth as your brain…”

Lone stirred the stew that was sitting over the campfire and savoured its lovely aroma. "Yup, food that I create is stupidly good. What’s even the point of cooking when magic is so OP?"

Sophie ignored him as she polished her armour. Since they were having a 'break', she'd chosen to take advantage of this time to increase her skill with maintaining her armour and her swords.

Suddenly, Lone's fox-like ears twitched. "I can hear them. Well, at least they're not trying anything sneaky, I suppose. Kids are real cunts at being sneaky when they really want to be. Low weight and high natural dexterity can be a real bastard."

Raising his head, Lone saw 'Quint' and 'Grindol' approaching him and Sophie. The former looked nervous and very regretful while the latter had a certain twinkle in his eyes.

"Can I help you two?" Lone asked as he carefully stood up and brushed off his dirty knees. "I'm pretty sure we settled everything back in the guild, didn't we?"

The short man, Grindol, confidently strode forward before he put his hands on his waist and cackled like a cartoon villain would. "Give us yer money, or we'll steal yer woman!"

Lone didn't look impressed. "Try to take her and you both die."

'That should be enough to scare them out of this illusion, right? Then again, they might actually be super old if they're really foxkin like Sophie said... Hmm.' He wasn’t wholly sure of how the whole ‘immunity to ageing’ thing worked. That needed more research on his part.

Lone wasn't particularly worried about any further escalation since they seemed... harmless? He didn't feel threatened by them, at least.

As he was setting up this camp, Sophie had told him that both of the foxkin tailing them could use magic, but they had only slightly more magic inside of them than an average Goblin Mage did.

This told Lone that they probably weren't ranked very highly or were actually as young as Sophie said their true appearances suggested.

While he watched the two guests share a few concerned glances, he tried his best to see if he could look past their illusion with his own skills.

Congratulations! The host’s passive skill [Illusion Detection] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 2.

‘Ah, I can feel something. There’s a slight… haze? Yeah, a slight haze to their clothes. Looks unnatural,’ Lone thought.

He also realised that his Illusion magic Resistance wasn’t reacting nor had he gained any new skills. This meant a few things.

First, the illusion wasn’t being used directly on him, meaning it was on the foxkin in front of him. Obvious, really. The more interesting implication, however, was that Illusion Detection had actually levelled up.

‘Its description only states it weakens illusions I have entered or am trapped in. Is it because my visual senses have been trapped or something? Very, very, bizarre,’ He concluded.

Sweat dripped down the face of the foxkin pretending to be Grindol. "Ahahaha... Um, give us all of your money, or, eh, we'll steal your clothes?"

'Dropped the accent already? Hmm... That response just reeks of childish mischief to me. Something I am sadly well-versed in. Let's test the waters a bit to double check,' Lone decided.

He wore a disgusted look on his face as he glanced back and forth between the two men. "You would strip not only an innocent woman but even a man? Now, I have nothing against same-sex relations personally but to think you’d go so far just because I defeated you both in a fair duel… The guild will hear of this after I show you both the sole of my boots once again.”

"Uh..." Grindol’s face was slowly becoming more sweat than skin. "N-Not your clothes then?"

Lone shook his head. "If anything, you two should be giving us your clothes."

"Wha?!" Grindol's face had turned beet red while Quint's was being firmly held between his hands at this point.

Lone tutted his tongue and went back to stirring his stew. "Don't you know that it's common amongst human bandits to leave a piece of their clothing with their victims? It's like a calling card. Most usually just leave a scrap of cloth. Considering your reaction, are you two really humans?"

"Uh, o-of course we are!" In a mad attempt to prove himself, Grindol took off his belt and threw it to Lone.

As soon as it touched Lone's hand, the belt turned into a few motes of light and then reappeared around Grindol's waist.

"Okay, that's enough playing around," Lone said, having decided that the two kids were, in fact, children and harmless. "Dispel the illusion and join us for some grub, huh? We can talk about this nonsense while we all fill our bellies."

"Eh?" Grindol's body morphed into that of a small foxkin girl with red hair and a single bushy tail while Quint became a handsome young lad with three tails to his name.

"I told you he wasn't stupid. He's a Golden Foxkin." The boy stepped forwards and bowed deeply. "I'm sorry for my sister's stupid actions. I couldn't convince her to act otherwise. She's the type to be even stupider if I try to get her to stop, so it's best if I play along and try to make sure nothing goes horribly wrong... I hope you can understand and forgive us."

Tears started bubbling out of the girl’s eyes. She ran up to Lone and stared up at his face accusingly. "How'd you see through my illusions?! I was really worried for a bit there, but if you knew all along, why didn't you just play along?!"

Lone just laughed as he served the two children a bowl of his stew.

Sophie, however, had a fed-up look on her face. Clearly, she didn’t see the pureness nor the humour of the situation.

Her icy demeanour soon dissolved though and was replaced by a brightly smiling face. "So fluffy..."

Soph ambushed the frantically swinging tail that was attached to the young girl’s hips so quickly that no one could react in time.

"Hya!" The little foxkin yelped in surprise as her back straightened up like a bow. She turned her head around as quickly as was physically possible before she asked, "Wha-wha-what are you doing?!"

"Savouring your floof," was the only reply that she was ever going to get.

The boy looked over at his twin anxiously. "Um, the human won't hurt Tiera, will she?"

Lone shrugged. "I doubt it. She loves fluffy things. It's been a while since she's done that to my tails. I wonder why she didn't go for you? You've got two more than your sister does. Anyway, Tiera? What’s your name then? I’m Lone and that’s Soph."

Trella shuddered as he slowly replied, “I-I’m Trella. Trella Redtail”

Lone smirked once he saw the fear-stricken look on the boy's face. "Cool name. Well, mind telling me who you two are then and why you were following us?"

"Uh, em, sure," Trella answered hesitantly as he kept his eyes off his sister who appeared to be struggling for dear life.

"A baby Golden Foxkin, huh?" Lone asked rhetorically as he had finished listening to Trella's explanation for why he and his sister were in a fairly discriminatory human country.

Not realising that his question wasn't actually meant to be answered, Tiera nodded her head as she sucked down her third bowl of stew. "Yup! Grandma wanted us to find them, but even after spending two months here, all we could find out was that the baby was in Ranton somewhere, which we already knew. Part of some big auction or something."

'Well, you're only kids. You don't exactly strike me as master information gatherers. This 'Crimson Foxkin Clan Matriarch' must've been pretty fuckin' desperate to send kids over here,' Lone thought.

He stroked Soph's hair softly, making the lazy woman who was resting on his lap smile in her sleep. "Well, I think it'd be better if you two went back to your clan. I'm not sure how common your illusion magic is, but I'm pretty certain you'll get found out eventually if you're not careful. From what I've heard, two young kids like you would be enslaved pretty damned quickly in these parts. At least with your magic, you can cross the border pretty easily."

Trella nodded sadly. "You're right. We were actually going to leave until Tiera found you. I guess we can go back though now that we've met."

Lone shook Soph awake and then stood up to stretch his back. "Sounds good. Tell your matriarch that I'm more than happy enough to talk to her if she comes to visit me in person. It's a shame you can't use that 'communication orb' of yours whenever you want, huh?"

"Yeah! It sucks! I wanna talk to Mum and Dad more often!" Tiera said loudly before she muttered, "It sucks that they're so sick..."

"Quest?" Soph asked in a dreamy voice as she rubbed her eyes.

"Yeah," Lone replied calmly. "The day isn't getting any younger, and I really would like to fight at least one or two orcs before the sun starts to set and we have to go back."

"Um, it was the Amberbark Inn you two were staying at, right?" Trella asked to double-check his info.

Lone smiled faintly. "Yes, the one run by the Lesher."

"I'll make sure to tell Gran-, em, the matriarch that that's where you're staying so she can visit you," Trella said as maturely as he possibly could.

Lone casually rubbed the boy's head. "Sounds good. Tell her I look forward to meeting her."

"We will!" Tiera answered in her brother's place. "Seeya later, Mister Lone! Soph!"

"Yeah, um, bye," Trella added a bit bashfully. “I know we were kinda rude, but, uh, it was an honour to meet a ninetails. Truly.”

"Thanks, and stay safe," Lone replied while Soph just waved slowly as the kids wandered away.

Soph returned control to Sophie who immediately demanded Lone to help her into her armour since Soph had removed it to take a nap.

As Lone was finishing strapping her into her steel-reinforced plate mail, Sophie asked him a question. "Why did you lie?"

"About?" Lone responded immediately.

"About looking forward to meeting their leader," Sophie elaborated.

Lone got up and, after finishing with her armour, shrugged. "I didn't have much choice. It's not like I could have just told them to go back in time and not tell their matriarch about me ever existing, now could I?"

Sophie raised an eyebrow at that.

Lone sighed. "You were awake in here, weren't you?" Lone asked as he lightly tapped the girl's exposed forehead with his index finger. "You heard him say that he was the next patriarch of their clan, right?"

"Yes... And do not touch our forehead without our permission," Sophie replied with a sulk as she put her helmet on.

Lone grinned at her timidity. "Well, why the fuck would the future leader of a clan of foxkin - which I'm assuming are powerful - be sent to a small human country that is widely known to enslave demis when it has the chance? Just to follow a lead on a Golden Foxkin baby? There's got to be more to it than that.”

"Your meaning?" Sophie didn't quite follow.

"Well, there's all of these supposed legends about Golden Foxkin, right?" Lone said as he started walking towards the forest.

"Indeed. We've yet to hear a single one, but there certainly are legends, it would seem," Sophie answered.

"Right. Well, my current running theory is that the Crimson Foxkin Clan is in a war or something, so the matriarch is looking for a powerful ally to turn the tides. She sent the next leader away to avoid the flames of this war of theirs from reaching him since he's too young, or maybe to use his good nature to win over a powerful expert to help back at the clan's base as they searched for the rumoured baby. Maybe only one of those, maybe all of them, maybe none. I'm just making assumptions here," Lone explained.

"And you did not wish to refuse or act rudely because you were afraid?" Sophie concluded. “How foolish. We did not know you liked to create fantasies in your head.”

“Sophie, we’re in a fantasy.” Lone sighed. "If this matriarch is coming to see me regardless due to my heritage, I see no reason in making her mad. Hell, it could even be a good opportunity to learn about my race, but I don't like it."

"Because you're a coward?" Sophie teased.

Lone scoffed. "No, because I'm a control freak, but right now, I'm far too weak to control anything, so I've gotta suck it up and try to make the flow that's pushing me, bend to my will at least a little bit."

"How childish," Sophie mocked.

Again, Lone shrugged. "Call me what you want. I dealt with enough of my life not being decided by me back on Earth, I won't let the same thing happen here. We barely got through our encounter with the elves.”

“True enough,” Sophie agree for once.

“Right? Caution seems wise. Anyway, on this topic, let's go kill some Blue Orcs and rank up, shall we?" he asked with a smirk strewn across his lips.

Sophie smiled coyly beneath her helmet. "Yes, we shall.”