First a new pair of makeshift underwear to hold her over until she could find a tailor, next the chest wrappings, then the long process of braiding her hair. By the time she was halfway through the first braid, she felt Zefaris shifting, soon followed by the feeling of her fingers in her hair. She said nothing, silently working on the second braid. Once the braids were finished and bound together, the markswoman just sank back under the covers with a quiet utterance of “You’re welcome.”

Next came her trousers, boots, the arm-harness, the cleaver in its holster… The Tablet. “Where’d I…” she wondered, and the memory instantly sparked into her mind. It fell off the other side of the bed, and indeed, there it was. It came alive at her touch, showing the exact screen it was on when she last let go of it.

TECHNIQUES Fog-breathing Beast Butchering Arts

An absent-minded tap on the former as she turned to walk to the bathroom. There was a single unnamed technique in that category, with the option to give it a name glowing beside it.

Unnamed Breathing Technique Name Technique

The name flickered the moment she laid her eyes up on it, a brief wave of warm buzzing spilling through her hand when it changed.

Lover’s Breath

A small chuckle escaped her at that, silenced by a realization when she crossed into the bathroom. The tub was half-full, most of the bath salt phials were empty, and the ground was still littered with the wilted poppy flowers that she had stuck into her braids on the way here. “Explains the lack of residue,” she thought, allowing a smirk to spread over her face while she browsed the Tablet’s Fog Storage in search of a toothbrush. It wasn’t very far down in the alphabetically sorted list.

x74 Ikesian Dental Hygiene Ration

She retrieved two, placing one at the edge of the sink for Zef to use later before she took to brushing the taste of morning breath and sex out of her mouth, the taste of bitter mint soon overwhelming both. A part of her wanted to explore the town, to visit whichever of its shops were still open and maybe buy something, but she quickly snuffed it out. She would have more than enough time to do all of these things and more - once the payout and the beast’s Azoth were safely in her possession.

What if another beast-slayer tried to snatch the quarry out from under her nose? After all, the posting could very well still be on the board in plain view. A roll of the shoulders, a splash of water on the face, and out the door she went, taking care to not make too much noise as she made her way to the ground floor. The inn was half-filled with a nearly equal distribution of the old and the young, and both groups shot her strange looks when she passed by to head to the bar.

Shopping and exploring the town could wait, but hunger could not.