After a good rest, Anastacia had managed to get rid of her headache and woke up feeling somewhat refreshed, which she considered to be a good sign for the day to come. With a quick look into the mirror to make sure she was looking presentable, she was ready to head downstairs. As she came out of her room, Anastacia caught Emilia exiting Rosie’s room.

“What were you doing there?” Anastacia asked and surprised the priestess who had been deep in thought and hadn’t noticed the necromancer. “Don’t worry, I know what it is.”

“No! I was uh…” Emilia stuttered and tried to come up with anything even remotely believable.

“You were trying to find out where she keeps the new towels! The old ones are basically useless and she refuses to change them all at once. I’ve tried asking her but she won’t tell anyone.” Anastacia guessed and winked at the priestess.

Emilia stared at her in disbelief. It never ceased to amaze her how dense the girl could be at times. “Wha… I mean yeah! Let’s go with that. New towels for everyone!” The priestess agreed.

They continued the discussion about towels while heading to the tavern. Emilia was actually the first one to benefit from whatever new things Rosie bought for the inn, but felt like Anastacia didn’t need to know that either. While getting higher quality goods would have been simple for Adventurers, they often chose not to as having large amounts of personal items didn’t fit the lifestyle too well.

Coquelicot and Gilbert had been awake for a while already and were discussing the logistics of the rebellion’s army, as the high inquisitor hadn’t really been responsible for an entire army before, and Gilbert had a surprising amount of insight on the matter. Anastacia tried to listen for a while but found the matter incredibly boring and instead focused on her breakfast. It was the first time she had ordered an omelet and was baffled by the concept of having fillings inside the egg and how that had never crossed her mind before.

She pulled from Coquelicot’s sleeve and pointed at the plate excitedly. “Have you seen this?”

“Yes, Anastacia, I have seen an omelet before. I have been outside Mournvalley more times than I can count, and…” Coquelicot stopped her sentence to look at the plate again. “Is that ham in there?” The high inquisitor silently got up and disappeared into the kitchen.

Anastacia finished her meal and ordered a second cup of coffee to get her morning started properly.

“Are you sure you need that much coffee? How do you even sleep?” Emilia asked and watched the necromancer dunk a biscuit too long, causing it to crumble into the drink.

Anastacia shrugged and took a sip of the coffee-biscuit mix.

“Now that you’re both here and Anastacia seems to be back to her old self, we might as well talk about something that has come up.” Gilbert opened and cleared his throat. “There has been a sharp increase in the number of beasts causing trouble. While the guild hasn’t gotten any actual request to get rid of them, it has chosen to do so to perhaps figure out what caused it. There will not be any rewards from these quests, but it will make us look good. Dammar and his party has already taken up a couple just in case one of them needs to be bailed out of jail again. So I was thinking we should also pick a few good ones so you two can get a few more quests under your belts.”

Emilia immediately nodded. “I agree. While it may not help you two, this would no doubt get me closer to a permit to open a small temple in the city.”

Anastacia knew she had dragged more than her fair share of trouble into the city, so if these quests would help her get on their good side, they’d be worth doing. Even though she was supposed to get back to fixing the prince.

Gilbert took out a map he had gotten from Dammar. Marked on it were the quests already carried out by other people. Aside from a few outliers, the marks made a suspiciously clear line.

“Isn’t this the village we did the time goat nonsense in?” Emilia asked and pointed at the closest mark on the map.

“The very same. If the two are connected, and we’re just looking at the creatures freed from the goat, there’s nothing to worry about. It means no one is out there, riling up beasts for whatever reason.” Gilbert said and circled a gap between two marks. “I was thinking we could check this area here, it’d take about a week to get there and back. And there’s some interesting terrain there, so you guys would get to try camping in different kinds of places.”

“Alright! That sounds like it could be fu…” Anastacia started but Emilia quickly covered her mouth.

“Don’t say it! So far you’ve said that about every quest and they’ve all turned into horrible trash fires by the end.” The priestess pointed out. “The machine fort went to shit twice, the goat was almost worse and it’d take me hours to list out everything that went wrong on the trip to Crescent. It’s like you’re cursed.”

“…cking horrible. Bet that place is like already on fire or something.” Anastacia continued and thanked Emilia.

The party dispersed to gather everything they needed for the trip. Gilbert would gather the odds and ends they might need for cooking and camping, Emilia was tasked with preparing some food with Rosie’s help and Anastacia just needed to have her gear in order and get King to follow them. She peeked into the kitchen and told the simulacrum to get his sword and come to the blacksmith’s shop with her. Coquelicot had finished her own omelet and tagged along as her new arms should be ready now.

When they entered the shop, the blacksmith greeted them with a small nod. He was engraving something on one of the bone arms and clearly needed to concentrate. To kill time while waiting, Anastacia picked up a spear and poked the air with it. Coquelicot instructed her on some actual spear techniques and made the whole situation far less dangerous by supervising Anastacia’s flailing.

The blacksmith put down his tools and looked up. “Ah! The high inquisitor! I was just putting some finishing touches on your order.”

Coquelicot inspected the product closely. “Fine work! May I go to the back to put it on?” She asked and used the arms to grab the harness onto herself.

The blacksmith nodded and turned his attention to Anastacia. “Are you still being shitty? Looks like you got the bracelet off at least.”

“Nah, I’m back to being cool. Anyway, I need a spear and a bow.” Anastacia said and put the spear on the counter.

“Just a regular spear and bow? No weird necromancy stuff or anything? What do you need them for?” The dwarf questioned.

“Well you see. I need the spear to poke things and the bow to poke things that are far away. I’ve been working on broadening my skillset and those two things seem something I could do.” Anastacia explained enthusiastically.

The blacksmith rubbed his chin and went through his bow selection in his head. “Yeah, I’m sure this is a terrible idea, but I think you just have the strength to use one of the lighter bows I have. With it, you’ll only be a danger to some small animals and yourself.” He took a bow down from the wall and placed it next to the spear. “Please have someone teach you how to use it properly.”