Time went by as the girls picked his clothing. He had already tried out many different combinations yet the girls were always unsatisfied.

Right now he was wearing an expensive and elegant set of green clothes, with red accents on them. Unfortunately the girls only looked at him for a second before shaking their heads and complaining. “This won’t do, we need something different.” Sarah nodded at Erna’s words and went to get the other set of clothes.

Ariel let out a sigh and started changing his outfit. This time it was blue ball clothes, a colour he was quite fond of. The clothes themselves also looked refined and marvellous it was much to his liking, but it was the girls who were giving out orders so he could only hope they would end with this.

As he showed himself in the new clothes the girls nodded with slight regret in their eyes after inspecting him for some time. This time it was Sarah who spoke up. “Blue truly is what fits you the best. I guess there is no reason to continue trying on the others.” Ariel could finally let out a breath of relief since the girls finally decided on it.

However he soon found out that rating the clothes of the girls was even more tiring for him than trying them on. It seemed that women truly have an unexplainable amount of endurance when it comes to clothes. They tried countless sets of clothes and Ariel always had to give his opinion on them or they would start getting angry.

There were clothes that looked better than others on them, but all of them still fit them perfectly. Clothes might make the man, but seemingly it’s the girls that make the clothes.

After several hours of this exhausting work they finally picked everything they wanted. Unlike Ariel who settled with a single set of clothes, the girls each picked a whole mountain of them. He didn’t even believe that they would be able to wear all of them before they grow out of all of these.

The girls however were very adamant about it, saying that he underestimated their capabilities in changing clothes, which left him astonished. Finishing their business they left the building, and at that moment Erna suggested he thoughts. “Its already quite late, we should go eat before going back.”

Looking up, they could see that the sky was already tuning dark. They spent a lot of time in the main market, all the way from until noon. Now even more hours passed and the day was unknowingly coming to a close.

However, as they were starting heading out to look for a restaurant, Ariel felt several people spying on them. They didn’t seem very experience, but there were quite a lot of them making it slightly dangerous.

He did not want to ruin the day for the girls so he spoke out while beginning to leave. “You girls go look for a restaurant and take up a table. I just remembered that I want to check on something, I will be right back.”

The girls seemed a little surprised at his words and asked. “Do you need our help in anything? If you want to get somewhere we know most of the city.” The girls were quite curious and tried volunteering to help, but Ariel didn’t have any interest in taking them with him. “Don’t worry, I know how to get there, you just go find some place to eat and I will come back soon.”

The girls wanted to go with him, but his rejection left no room their arguments so they could only nod at his words. Few moments later, Erna seemed to have recovered her wits and started speaking. “We will be going to the restaurant called Naurance, It shouldn’t be difficult to find, if you ask someone for directions.”

Hearing the name Ariel imprinted it in his mind and replied. “I understand, my business shouldn’t take long. I’ll see you later.” Turning around he left in a fast pace without looking back.

The girls could only look at his back as it slowly furthered away. When he couldn’t be seen anymore Sarah let out a sigh frustration, Erna seeing this, spoke. “We should go take up some seats or we will not have anywhere to eat.” Sarah agreed to her words, and they started moving.

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In an alleyway close the clothes shop Ariel and the girls have been to. There were a bunch of rugged looking men talking among themselves.

“Boss should we attack them now? The golden haired brat is gone now.”

The one to respond was a giant man with enormous muscles that stood out in a majorly, he seemed to be in his mid forty’s and had decent stature, but with the messy hair, unshaved beard and the mean look on his face, he seemed like one of those generic thugs or bandits you would come across in an adventure story.

This man let out a deep voice as he spoke. “That brat wasn’t the problem from the start, as far as I heard he is just a normal person who is not capable of any melee combat or magic. What we are waiting for is the time that there won’t be as many people as now to see our attack. We will wait until they start returning home.” The man seemed to be the leader of this group of thugs and his orders were obediently carried out.

However, as he finished speaking, the middle aged man heard a voice from behind them. “You seem quite confident about achieving your goal.” The voice spooked the men, and they quickly turned around to see who sneaked up on them. Soon however they let out a breath of relief seeing that the person was exactly the useless boy their boss was talking about before.

The leader seeing Ariel let out an arrogant sneer. “You actually got lucky and found us, but who would have though that you would be so stupid and show yourself like this. Even if you have a rational look on your face you were incapable of even telling some guard or other people about us before coming. This was your lethal mistake.” The intruder Ariel didn’t look agitated in any way under the threatening glares of the thugs.

Seeing that these people were adamant about silencing him as fast as possible he didn’t bother being polite. “What a nice joke, truly befitting a clown like you. You’re incapable of even comprehending the difference between us.” Ariel’s mocking words struck a nerve of his. What the middle aged man hated the most was being belittled, especially by a kid who is also supposed to be a weakling.

Letting out a snarl the leader drew his one handed sword and was about to charge at him. Unfortunately for him, Ariel wasn’t in the mood to play with him and was already prepared to deal with them as soon as they started attacking.

Ariel held out his hands, and cast another of his basic spells, he has learned in these past few years. This spell was about manifesting an ice ball covered in spikes, simple yet destructive weapon that he decided to call “Frost bolt”.

When the bandit leader has finally notice the spell it was already too late. Ariel shot out the frost blot which crashed straight into his chest, completely demolishing his ribs and upper organs and resulting in an instantaneous death.

The rest of the group was dumbstruck not understanding what happened, but Ariel didn’t give any time for them to respond. He clicked his fingers as if it was a signal and all of the spikes on his frost bolt shot out in different directions. Most of the thugs were hit by several of them and died, but there were two lucky ones among them who survived.

One was hit by a single spike in his leg letting him live, while the other one was standing behind someone and hasn’t been hit at all.

Seeing the death of their comrades and experiencing the attack, both of them snapped out of their daze, the one who was injured cried out in pain and fell down not being able to move. The other one fell on his behind while trying to retreat, but the fear made his feet unresponsive.

Ariel slowly manifested an ice spear and walked towards him like an executioner. The thug instantly started begging for mercy. “I am sorry, please don’t hurt me, I will do anything you ask.” Hearing his words Ariel only sneered as he responded. “Show mercy? I wouldn’t care what you would do or survive, but trying to attack me or people close to me will result only in their death.” Not waiting for the thug to speak again he plunged the ice spear into the person’s throat without hesitation and after making sure he was dead, slowly pulled it out.

The next moment he directed his gaze at the last survivor who has already pissed himself from fear and was about to start running away. Not wanting him to get away Ariel froze the ground beneath him, making it slippery enough for the bandit to fall down again.

Noticing what happened, the man looked back behind him only to see a spear made of ice flying towards him and impaling his body directly through his heart. The man’s eyes grew dim and he fell to the ground lifelessly.

Looking around after some time of waiting Ariel let out a sigh of relief, the group was instantly crushed by him not letting them to counterattack and ended perfectly.

Remembering that he should hurry before anyone walk by here, he retracted his Mana from the ice making it so that it would melt much quicker, in the end leaving no evidence of his magic.

Finishing that he came closer to the dead leader and started searching through his body, trying to find a clue why they were planning to attack the girls.

In the end his search yielded only a single result, a coin pouch. This pouch had more than a hundred gold coins, you might ask why it would be strange. Well the thing is that this is a very large amount of money, for normal people that is.

The currency goes like this one hundred copper is worth one silver, one hundred silver is worth one gold and one hundred gold is worth one platinum. Five coppers can fee a big family for a month. So there was no way some simple thugs could be carrying so much money unless someone hired them to do something important.

It is safe to say that they were most likely hired by someone to do something to either Sarah or Erna, maybe even both. Furrowing his eyebrows he tried to think who might have done it.

Unfortunately he couldn’t think of anyone, he would have liked to interrogate one of them, but in such groups the only who might know something was their boss. Unfortunately he was a bit to strong to be so easily subdued without a sneak attack.

He let out a sigh and decided to return to the girls before they get worried. As he almost walked out of the alleyway, he suddenly looked back with complicated feeling in his heart about how he killed somebody for the first, yet he didn’t feel anything about it as if it was natural. Letting out an ironic, self ridiculing smile, he walked away.

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If you want to read further, visit https://verathragna.wordpress.com/ I will always have an extra chapter there