We wake up and see that the sun is already shining brightly in the sky, so realizing that we woke up later than usual we have to shorten our Litly petting session in order to do make up for lost time and we head downstairs after having prepared everything.

“Good morning you two, did you sleep well?” Asks the female waitress when she sees us.

“I think? I mean we didn’t exactly sleep poorly but we woke up a lot later than usual.”

“It was probably due to all the festivities though, but the rooms and beds were good.”

“Good to hear, should we prepare some breakfast?”

I look up to Shiona and ask what she wants using eye contact I see her looking down at me with the same eyes, so I nudge her with my shoulder, hopefully conveying that I want her to choose.

*nudge*

But she just nudges me back and stares at me again, this time with slightly puffed cheeks.

*sigh* “Well what’s available? Any local specialties?” I finally ask when I give in.

“Yes sir, that’ll be two Krull breakfasts then?”

Despite being slightly worried by how she only told us the name of the dish rather than the ingredients used I still agreed, I mean it can’t be that bad right? And even if it is we have enough money for a few hiccups here and there.

We pay waitress and she walks off into another room while telling us she’ll come up to our room with breakfast once it’s done since the actual dining room hasn’t been cleaned up yet since last night.

Once we get back upstairs we make up for lost time in a different way by finishing the petting session which had previously been cut short until the waitress knocked on the door and came in with a trolley and two plates, put them down on a table and left while telling us to have a nice meal.

“I… I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t squid…”

“Yeah, didn’t they use to call it ‘devil fish’ or something back home? I wasn’t expecting this place to have them as food…”

“Oh well, I always like eastern food, shame there’s no chopsticks though.”

After we got over our initial surprise we sat down and started eating the squid which looked to have been deep fried using forks and knives, however we were unable to stand how wrong it felt and I ended up having to go inside the book to make chopstick of our own, and, well, the only material I had to do so with was…

“What are you doing?” Asks Lizz when she sees me doing something in the kitchen.

“Chopsticks.” I say as I’m using the knife I got from Cy to carve away at what I’m holding.

I was back in my human form in order to get a better grip on all of it.

“What’s a chopstick?”

“An eating utensil.”

She takes a deep breath and I sigh as I drop what I’m doing and cover my ears.

“WHY ARE YOU MAKING EATING UTENSILS OUT OF DRAGON BONES!?”

I wait for a few seconds before uncovering my ears, just to make sure she was done you know.

“We didn’t have anything better to use, now please don’t scream when I’m using a knife like this.”

Just a second or so later I come back outside holding two pairs of chopsticks and we start eating again, all in all it hadn’t been longer than maybe ten seconds since the waitress had arrived with the food.

And then the waitress came back in again.

“I’m back! You didn’t actually think we’d have you eat something like this right?”

We look towards the waitress who’s smiling so widely she can’t keep her eyes open while our mouths are full of food, and when she finally gets curious as to why no one’s responded she opens her eyes and sees us enjoying the food.

“...What…?”

“Tasty.” Says Shiona between her bites.

“This is really good, reminds me of home, send our regards to the chef.” I say, both Shiona and I pretend we didn’t hear what she said to save her some face.

“R-right… I’ll tell our chef you both liked it…”

She seemed to think that we really hadn’t heard her as she pretended she never said anything and went back down with our plates once we finished them, at first she looked at our dragon bone chopsticks for a second but seemed to mostly disregard them as a foreigner thing before leaving.

“That was really good, I haven’t had Asian in at least four years!”

“Yeah, I’ll have to look around and see if I can buy a few squids before we will Krull.”

We left Krull’s inn and headed to Krull’s guild instead, we notified the staff that we were there in case they had trouble with anything (hopefully we wouldn’t repeat what happened with Vartan) and asked for a bit of info.

“You’re after high ranked delivery quests? How high do you mean?”

“At least Silver A rank.” Responded Shiona.

We’d found it easier if Shiona took care of the talking when we and the other party were on opposing sides of a desk or some other object that made them unable to see me properly.

“Well you’re kind of in the right place, but deliveries within the same town are never that high ranked, even with all the sparkwoods here there’s not THAT much danger, but if you were to take a delivery quest that went from town to town it then the sparkwoods WOULD be enough to raise the rank. Let’s see here...” She says and unfolds a map on the counter.

“We’re here-” She says and points at Krull. “-And I’d say…”

“Wait, what are sparkwoods?” Asks Shiona while the staff member is thinking.

“Oh, sorry, forgot you were new here, sparkwoods are plant creatures that live in the foggy parts of the forest and shoot electric magic at anyone who passes close enough to them for them to be able to get the corpse if they kill something, you’ve probably come across them on your way here.”

“Yeah, those things…”

“Now then, I’d say if you took this-” She hands us a big bundle of letters. “-and deliver them to the main guild it should be enough to get a few things, especially since each of the letters is technically its own quest.”

“Hoo…. We kind of really don’t want to set foot in Vartan is that’s possible, but thanks either way…”

“Vartan? No way man, Vartan’s just the home of some high ranking noble who’s way to focused on looks, they spent all their money on building a castle that they didn’t even have enough money to keep the house alive for another generation, by now the castle nothing more than a tourist attraction. The real capital is here-”

We look where the staff member is pointing (I had to get lifted up by Shiona) and see their finger hovering over a large looking city called-

“Logholm?”

“Yeah, honestly I’m surprised you’re traveling with as little knowledge of the country as you are.”

“Well… I don’t have any excuses, but think you could tell us a bit more? Ehm… It’s kind of embarrassing but what’s the name of this country even?”

“Wow, you really don’t know anything.”

Shiona and I laugh while scratching be back of our heads, and looking down at Shiona’s bag we see Litly looking at us before trying to copy us with one of her paws.

The staff member sighs and puts on a pair of half rim glasses as she takes out another more zoomed out map.

“This-” She says and traces a country on the map. “-is where we are, the Engdom, and I already said Logholm is our capital.”

The country she pointed at was a giant landmass of an island, the island was divided in two diagonally from northeast to southwest by country borders, Engdom was the south-eastern half of the island.

“And this-” She points at the north western half of the same island as Engdom. “Is called Norther, pretty easy to remember with it being the northern half of the island, as for the capital it changes pretty often due to internal conflict. Next is this place-”

This time she points at a separate island, this one to the west and slightly south of the one we’re on now, looking closely we could see that it was actually connected to Engdom and Norther through a very thin stretch of land, to the point we didn’t see it at first.

“-this is Niceland, their capital is called Greeting rapids, just don’t get fooled by the name, if you go there you’ll think you ended up in an old people's house with how grumpy and drunk they always are there, and then finally there’s Dayground here with Purchase Port-”

She pointed to another island, this time it was actually properly separate from everything else.

”-As you can probably tell it’s a country filled with mostly merchants, apparently way back in history one of the kings of Engdom decided it was a good idea to raise the taxes for traveling merchants since anyone from Niceland needed to cross Sveia to get to Norther and vice versa, so the merchants unanimously decided they’d rather to go the sea route and stop by an at the time uninhabited island before carrying on, however since both countries had decided on the same thing without the other knowing they ended up meeting in the middle and doing business there instead, eventually they set up shops and made villages and gave the island the name of Dayground.”

“So… We’re in Engdom and our capital is Logholm, our neighbours are Niceland with Greeting rapids and Norther that doesn’t have a capital, and if you go over the sea you get to Dayground with Purchase Port?”

“Yup, and well, there’s obviously a lot more even further out past them, but no one really ends up needing maps that big except for the kings and queens of the countries so you won’t come across them often.”

“Alright, thanks a lot, we’ll be on our way then, bye!”

“Thank you to, we haven’t been able to deliver our reports for a while so we’ve been getting behind schedule, you’re a big help!”

After we leave the guild I realize something and ask Shiona-

“Didn’t we purchase a map of the nearby countries so that we wouldn’t need to ask people like this?”

“... Oh… Right…”

She looked embarrassed so I decided to drop it since I’d also forgotten about those maps just like her and we walk back to the inn to ask where they got the squids from.

“Wait, you want more of them!?”

“Yes?” I answer with a confused tone.

“So you actually liked it? You weren’t just messing with me?”

“Err, yes to the first and no to the second?”

“Well… I-I’ll tell our chef, you want to meet him then…”

The waitress droops her shoulders and looks like she feels lost as she entered the kitchen again before soon coming back out and gesturing us to follow her back in.

“You two the ones who’ve been messing with the waitress?” Asks a stout bald man with a white apron.

“What?”

“I said; are you two the ones who’ve been messing with the waitress?”

“No? We just want to buy some squid, if you have any?”

The bald man gives me an evil stare while I reply with one of confusion.

“Now I don’t know what trick you used to make the lass believe you actually ate those slimy things, but unless I personally see you eat them I ain’t selling a thing!”

When the chef says that the waitress starts looking panicked.

“W-wait, isn’t this the perfect opportunity to finally get rid of the squids!?”

However the man ignores her and keeps staring at us.

“Yeah, alright, wouldn’t hurt to have a meal before we leave. How much?”

“Oh your faces when I see you eat the squids without your tricks’ll be more than enough!” He says and walks back into the kitchen while laughing.

“W-well dear customers, the dining room has been cleaned so please wait there…”

So Shiona and I walk into the room which had been filled with drunkards last time we were there and sit down at one of the now empty tables while we wait and I take out the dragon bone chopsticks.

“Here you are, enjoy!” Says the chef as he comes back out with two very luxurious looking plates of squid, once he puts them down in front of us he takes out a monocle which has the same patterns on it’s rim as the magic loupe that the guild used to differentiate the goblin ears.

“Just to make sure you won’t try to cheat.” Says the man while putting on the monocle and smiling widely. “Speaking of things, what are those?” He asks while pointing at our chopsticks.

“They’re chopsticks, they're a type of eating utensil.”

He takes all four of the chopsticks and looks at them thoroughly with his monocled eye before sighing and handing them back with a disappointed look on his face.

“They’re clear.”

“Okay, thanks for the meal.”

After we thanked the chef we both started using the chopsticks again just like this morning to pick up small pieces of squid which had been arranged on the plate and ate them, and although we had a lot of trouble using the chopsticks this morning, what with me having a finger less than before and Shiona having to somehow use her feathers like fingers, but once we had finished breakfast we’d both adjusted to it pretty well, so we finished this meal with much more ease than earlier today.

Once we finished eating we looked at the chef who simply stared back at us.

“I always say that I don’t believe something until I see it, but even now I don’t believe what I just saw.”

“... Does that mean we can buy some squids? Or no?”

“Sure, we’ve been looking for a way to get rid of them since no one wants to eat them, I’d have sold them to you either way to be honest, I just wanted to play a little prank…”

The chef takes out his monocle and walks off while dispersedly hunched forwards.

“Uhm, the squid?”

“Oh, right.”

After I reminded him that we were in fact her to buy he turned around again and stood up straight as we talked prices, and after a few minutes we left the inn with a large basket of squids that we put in the inventory once we were out of sight

‘It be great if we could use the inventory less conspicuously…’ I think, half expecting to hear the familiar sound of leather rubbing together as the book does something, however only silence responds so I give up on that venture for now.

“The guild receptionist said that the things that shot lightning at us were called sparkwoods right? Well I think we should go and pay them back a little before we leave this place.” Says Shiona with a menacing grin, however-

“Not with Litly here we aren’t” I answer and pat the bag Litly is in, making her stick out her head and look confused.

*sigh* “Fine.”

And like that we leave the forest without any major trouble happening.

*zap*

Or at least so we’d hoped, however it seems that the so called sparkwoods saw Litly when she stuck her head out and started attacking again, so Shiona quickly ate the tiger striped magic fruit again and started to jump around while holding the Litly filled bag between her wings to keep it from swinging around, however the lightning just keeps coming this time and doesn’t let up even when the bag is covered by the electric proof wings.

“Okay, fine, we’ll go pay them a visit, give me Litly.”

Shiona hands me the bag and I take out Litly and put her on my head before handing back the bag, and since Litly is much smaller than Shiona I’m able to cover her fully with Phasing, however I don’t do it on myself to save energy since the lightning doesn’t do anything to me either way and I started launching myself from tree to tree while Shiona flew behind me as the lightning bolts got bigger and bigger the closer we got.

As we got past the last tree in our path we came into a bush filled clearing in the forest and started looking for what we expected to be a type of treant due to its name.

*zap*

And I was hit in my back by a small bolt of lightning as eerie laughter sprang forth from the centre of the clearing, and when we looked there we saw the bushes, their leafs standing straight as they crackled with electricity.

*FWOOSH*

However they’re creepy child-like laughter is cut short end replaced by loud shrieking when Shiona ate the red fruit and lit almost all of them on fire simultaneously, causing them all to wither up and die after having spent three or so minutes perpetually screaming in pain, leaving only something glowing yellow under the fog where the sparkwoods had previously been, and after I handed back a now very excited Litly to Shiona I picked up what turned out to be thunder magic stones, much like the core of the water slime except yellow and glowing, and I put them in the inventory before we both travelled back to the road and left the forest and took off towards Logholm.