Somehow we ended up as their escort. Me and my big mouth .. When the pay was offered I said yes without thinking .. It's actually not that bad, if anything it's easy money. It's not some lame movie where assassins start showing up one after another. If they thought assassination could fail, they would send more from the beginning and not alert their target like some idiots.

But the anticipation was killing me, I am so close to getting my new toys. I know it's childish, but I just can't help it.

As for our employers .. they were carrying their dead friend. They refused our offer to use the Space Time magic, claiming it's 'disrespectful' to the fallen. The middle-aged human seemed to be in charge. He introduced himself as Brandon. Rest of the group were two humans and an elf. I realized that their dead friend Mark was only a bait, while Adam, the other human, was the real target of the assassin.

"So where are we going ?" asked Reveon.

"To The Temple." answered Brandon.

"Ah, so you must be Templars. I thought Assassins never accepted a contract on someone from your Order." said Phoenix while looking at them.

"Silver Sword Order?" I finally asked with a bit of interest, I thought they had only priests. Brandon just nodded in response.

"It's because I am one of the Champions." finally said Adam while looking at the corpse of Mark.

"Dammit, Adam! You were supposed to keep that as secret." glared Brandon at Adam.

"Champion?" I asked even with more curiosity.

"Champion, the Hero, The Chosen One. A fancy name for a servant of Goddess Evelyn." answered Adam while ignoring Brandon.

"And you think you are this Champion because?" I asked.

"Because I meet Goddess face to face after my death, just like others .." said Adam.

"Others? Does it mean .." but before I could finish he did that himself.

"Yes, I am not the only one. There are more of us. All of us died one way or another and Goddess Evelyn offered us a chance for a new life, in return, we will help her defend this world. We accepted .." said Adam and for the first time smiled when said the last part. "Most of us .. that assassin was something else, I never thought there were so many curse words I wasn't aware of. She blamed Goddess with her death, from her rant I picked only meteors and something about tampering with her explosives." as he said that I looked at Phoenix and our eyes meet. This can't be me ..

Maybe that assassin was someone else? After all, Adam didn't recognize me .. ah, who I am kidding, I look completely different now. There might be more people who died from meteors, but there is no way any of them died because of their own explosives. But why I don't remember any of this?

"What happened to her?" asked Reveon.

"I think she was banished .. one moment she was cursing at Goddess, then suddenly a black hole appeared and she was gone with a scream. After that, no one dared to be disrespectful to Goddess. After we received our gifts and got to choose how our new bodies will look, we were supposed to appear at the Temple in Capital. But as I heard from Brandon, our summoning was interrupted and only a few appeared in the Temple, rest of us were teleported to random locations .." but he was interrupted by Brandon.

"Do you have to expose even your comrades?" asked Brandon angrily.

"Fine." said Adam. "But I don't think this secrecy serves any purpose." he said after a quick look at the corpse of their friend.

"I think he might be right. One normally doesn't go through there to the Temple. The assassin was scouting this area yesterday. No matter how you look at it, he knew about your group and where you will be." said Reveon.

"What ?! Dammit, I should have used another route." cursed Brandon.

Rest of the journey was uneventful. As we reached the Temple we were greeted by more Templars and some priests. They escorted Adam deeper into the Temple, while Brandom stayed to explain everything to his superiors. I overheard that Adam will be teleported directly to the Capital with gates of the Temple.

"Rank F?" asked Brandon with a surprise. We showed our badges when it was time to receive promised rewards. One gold for escorting inside the city was a great deal. Yes, there was a small chance that we would be attacked, but like I said, that chance was almost nonexistent.

Oh, that reminds me, I still haven't changed my rank to F. When we got from the dungeon and received money for all our materials, it just slipped my mind. The look of that priest when he asked for my rank next was priceless. Very quickly all of them had the same look. Reveon couldn't hold back anymore and started to laugh.

As we left bewildered Templars, we walked to the Adventurers Guild. There was a bounty to collect, and it was good opportunity to change my rank. If nothing else it's to be on the same page as Phoenix.

*

"Is it really ok to bring his head to the receptionist?" I asked when we entered the Guild.

"Yes, only they have enchantments to check criminals by blood." said Phoenix.

I checked who was working today and when spotted a dwarf, an evil smile appeared on my face. He was the same dwarf who had an attitude with slaves.

I tore the poster with the bounty on Naeren and stood in the queue. I was pleasantly surprised when noticed that his bounty was thirty-one gold now.

"Hey, this isn't a request bulletin. You can tear bounty poster only when the target is dead." an adventurer behind me said in an annoyed tone.

"I know." I said with a smile and pointed at the bag I was holding, that quickly silenced him.

Finally, it was my turn. When the dwarf was about to finish with an adventurer before me, I removed the head from the bag and placed it on the table the moment he looked at me.

"Ahh!!" the dwarf screamed in fright.

"I would like to collect a bounty on his head," I said while suppressing a giggle and showed poster of the assassin.

"Poor guy." laughed Phoenix together with some adventurers behind us.

After finally calming down the dwarf confirmed the target is indeed the assassin from a poster and started counting reward. It was small but satisfactory revenge, others might not notice it, but I know from the smell that this dwarf just wet himself. It's all about timing when to place the head. While it was their job to confirm bounty, I doubt they did that very often. The death of the assassin wasn't exactly painless and it was quite visible from the expression on the head.

After receiving our money, I changed my rank to F as I was now above level ten. I could do that last time we were there but at that time my mind was elsewhere.

"How many guild points for rank E test?" I asked the dwarf.

"Four hundred for rank E." he answered immediately.

Hmm, even after my prank he acted quite professional. It seems he doesn't remember that I was once a slave he was rude that time.

After bounty on the assassin and our hunting at the dungeon, I had nearly five hundred of the points. If we were doing regular requests, it would take months to gather this much.

"Yes we can." grinned Phoenix when I looked at him.

That settles it. We will take a test for rank E.

Unfortunately, we couldn't take the test right away and will have to come after two days. We were registered as participants and four hundred guild points were subtracted. If we fail to appear during the test for any reason other than an emergency request - no refunds.

After that, we made a quick detour to the Merchant Guild. I sold daggers of the assassin and acquired some raw mithril, a bit of ruby and other materials to work with.

*

Blacksmithing reached level 7. Blacksmithing reached level 8.

And finally, my first working handgun was complete. Though this was only a 'normal' quality handgun. I already had half parts made for it when we left to hunt the assassin, it would be a waste to leave it half done. This time Phoenix made enchantment weaker and after some testing shots, the gun was still in perfect shape.

And it should, I might have been greedy at the start, but I had my reasons. The components might be not made from mithril, but it was still a metal of advanced metallurgy from my world.

I was satisfied with the performance of the gun. Recoil might be stronger than usual, but that's nothing increased stats can't handle. Even with weaker enchantment, fired bullets were way faster than bullets from an average handgun in my old world.

Hmm, even with all that, I will still call this type as 'Hano', it stands for Handguns of Normal quality. Hano had a twenty centimeters long barrel, the trigger guard was wide and covered sight of the hand. With this, it was not possible to tell if the trigger is pulled. Even I would have a hard time to dodge if this was aimed at me. With the newest addition of a laser sight, even Phoenix should become a sharpshooter. It took some time to create a battery and laser, Ruby was bought just for this.

Maybe later it will be possible to make those with enchantments, but for now, it was pure science. I made them mostly to improve the accuracy of Reveon, but an option to blind the opponent with a laser was nice too.

As there was no need for cartridge cases, the magazine had a capacity of twenty bullets. I can't wait for the day when Reveon is capable of creating enchantments for dimensions... infinite magazines... now that would be epic. Bullets were 11mm wide and had quite a punch. There was also a possibility to make them enchanted. While there was no way to enchant many of them, it never hurts to have some if the situation calls for it.

Just imagine what exploding bullets could do.

And just like with grenades, Phoenix made enchantments so it was impossible to use the gun without Space Time magic.

I summoned my phantom claws still with Hano in hand. Perfect. It acted like energy barrier and there was no need to put the weapon away if I wanted to go melee. With this, I can swap from melee to ranged combat just in a blink. I just should avoid using the gun while phantom claws are still up.

Hmm, a creation of even better guns will have to wait. I realized that new design is needed, even Hano type weapon showed signs of heating up, there is no need to even talk what will happen when I use way more powerful enchantments. After I reached Blacksmithing level 8, I had an intuition that mithril alone won't solve this problem.

Well, for now, I will make more guns of Hano type, so both of us have a pair .. I then looked at the door and sighed. Will have to do that after we deal with city guards, at the moment they were knocking at our door and shouting to open... A girl can't even test guns in peace, will they react like this at every little explosion?

How annoying.

After some time of arguing with city guards, I managed to make only one more Hano. As it was getting late, we decided to end for today.

"There you go, Darling." I handed both of them to Phoenix when we left the Workshop and started heading for the Inn.

"Wait! Shouldn't you be the one to keep them?" Reveon asked while looking at the guns, "I am not used to those 'weapons', and your aim is way better than mine, it's more effective if you have them."

"We will make more tomorrow. I simply had no time to make holsters for them, and my Space Time magic is too slow at the moment. If situations calls for it, you can just toss them to me. It will be way faster." I explained my reasoning.

*

"Ahh, my favorite lovebirds." greeted us Tamara with a giggle.

Both of us immediately turned red.

"I will go prepare a bath." Reveon quickly slipped away.

As he left, I order dinner for both of us, it will take a long time before water is heated. And after a long day at the forge, my body was screaming for a bath. Pouring over some water after work doesn't count. The only good thing about it was a nice view for both of us.

"So, do you like him?" asked Tamara when placed our meal at the table.

"Yes," I answered with a warm smile while looking at Phoneix talking to Kilmor.

"I am glad to hear it. He is a very nice guy. It wasn't easy for him when his so-called friends just took advantage of him and started those rumors. I am so glad that someone nice finally entered his life. You will not leave him right?" asked Tamara.

"No." I said with a smile "He is mine, and there is no escaping me."

*

After a bath, we returned to our room feeling refreshed. There was no crazy love like last time right after we closed the door. There was no need... that's because we already had a wild sex in the bath. Maybe after some time, we will manage to just bathe, but that's very unlikely in the nearest future.