Before the Storm.

The thirteen day of the Origin Month goes by without nothing worth mentioning for me. The festival, technically my birthday party, is out there, I don't want people to 'touch' me, mentally or physically, so I hide myself in the garden. Sleeping outside is nice, except the stars are too spare.

I could see the bustling of the festival if I peek my head over the castle walls. It's not that high, roughly ten meters in height while I could reach twelve when I stand on hind legs. However, whenever I do that, it causes a small commotion in the guards on the walls. How annoying. Could I do something without being seen?

Speaking of seeing, I have to look after the angel kid all day because I couldn't summon the wolf. I tried using different chants, but they always end up in failure. The mind shocks were the same each time, and there was no message about it so I didn't know where I went wrong. The knights couldn't help either. They have no experience in Spirit Summoning.

I keep getting bugged by the knights no matter how I ignore them. Sometime they tell me to go out for better 'protection', sometime they try to trick the angel kid into become a Holy Knight. The kid hasn't decided yet, but he expressed interest in Holy magic and Knight Code. Ah, I have to feed him to the wolf as soon as possible.

It's not like I asked for it, but I also learnt a few things about magic from the knights. When they taught the kid to chant, they told him to chant as fast and quiet as possible. When I curiously asked.. no, expressed my curiosity, they said fast and quiet chant would consume fewer MP (less Mana); Further more, because the kid is inexperienced in magic, he was advised to 'ask the element nicely' instead of commanding. It's not the same as in 'that' game so I started speculating on how it work. In the end, I gave up because I didn't intend to become a magic users anyway. The reason, you-know-why.

Not being a magic users, what should I do? I mean my Occupation (Profession / Job / Class / etc...), I haven't really decided on that. Though it's nothing important anyway. People in this world train and level up to get stronger, but in the end their life will end someday. Everything will eventually end, even me; so why bother strengthening yourself to the limit while you could just enjoy life to the fullest? First, I'm going to...

"I want to see the Ceremony tomorrow!" The kid suddenly says. "Can I go, please?"

Ah well, I have been keeping him close to avoid those fanatics, so he thought he would need my permission to go out.

"I have to be there tomorrow anyway." I tell the kid then glance at the castle's building. I wonder how they will help me escape. With one of the knights always be my side, we couldn't discuss anything directly.

After seeing the knights' power during the escort, I find out that escaping on my own is impossible. They have multiple ways of dealing with airborne creature like me. If I try to fly away now, the knight who is with me will cast a signaling spell and the rest of the squad would join in. The strongest man in the whole capital is around Lv40, so there is nothing could stop them from recapturing me. Their reputation? They could even throw away their life.

Once they unleash their unstoppable force, we lose. So we either need a lot of people and/or a very well-thought plan. If the king is too stupid and uses brute force, I will tell the crowd about his real element. It will cause a chaotic mess and I will use that slim chance to escape.

That is my plan. Failure or Success.. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

The fourteenth day of the Origin Month.

Early in the morning, a group of guards come escorting the blue-clothed man. His name is Vaf..something, I didn't pay attention to him when he introduced himself because he called me 'Your Holiness'. He claimed to be the Minister of Diplomacy, however he seems to carry almost every national business for the king; for example: this event. He comes to tell me about what I should do during the ceremony, however one of the Holy Knights is here so obviously he can't directly tell me. Instead, I receive the event's plan from the guard.

The plan for today's event was written on a sheet of paper or leather or something... It's even smaller than my finger so I have no idea what it was made of, not to mention the tiny contents. Even if I have a magnifying glass here, I probably couldn't read this world's texts anyway.

"I can read that for you." Seeing the tiny elemental-less parchment-thingy in my hand, the knight offers some help.

I hesitate and look at the blue-clothed man. He retains his wide business smile, so wide that I could see the sly on his tiny face clearly. So the plan doesn't say anything about my escape. It was coded or was hidden in plain sight or doesn't have escape plan at all.

The knight picks up the square thingy in my hand after receiving my nod. He rotates it 180 degrees before staring at it. Oh great, I just tried to read it upside down. I hope no one is going to laugh at me.

"Why does it involve the little Angel?" The knight suddenly says.

"It's my idea." I say bluntly. I want the kid to stay close to me, but let not tell the knight about that. The knight raises his eye brows for a moment then continues staring at the plan.

Ah, speaking of the kid, he was bored of hanging out with me so I gave him to one of the maid. The last time I saw him was last night, he came to tell me that he would sleep in the guest room because he liked the cushion bed. It's probably the last time he could sleep on a bed, so I let him.

"It seems to be a good plan. Though I still have to ask permission from..."

"I give you permission." I interrupt the knight before he could find a reason to tell this plan to the high priest. "So, can you read it to me now?"

The knight wants to say something but under the stare of everyone present, he can't act against me like usual. After looking back and fro between me and the indifferent blue-clothed man, he reads the contents out loud.

Although the thing looks small from my perspective, it contains a good dose of useless information. I have no reason to know about what they would do without me. It contains the plan for the whole day while I would only come out once in the noon and have a small performance at night.

I come out for a very brief moment at noon so it's probably for showing off only. However, the 'performance' at night would have me cast a specific spell. Judging from the chant they prepared, I immediately understand their plan. That seems to be a good plan, and escaping at night with a pitch black body is just perfect. I'm not sure if the moons would cooperate or not though. A cloudy sky would be the best, but not rain nor storm though.

Back in the inn.

"What did you say?" A holy knight is yelling at the inn keeper.

"Eh.." The inn keeper timidly tries to answer. "I don't know where it is..."

"The Toothpick was in a locked room, but it's gone now. The lock was intact, so how did it disappear?"

"You tell me, Sir. We only have two keys for each room. One I gave you, and the spare key is in this locked box..." The man leans down and pick up a wooden box from under the counter. He unlocks and opens the box, taking out a metallic key with number 3xx on its handle.

The knight glances at the key in his hand. Both keys look similar, but that's not the issue here.

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"Sir, are you suspecting me?" The inn keeper says with a wry smile.

"Origo.. cough.. His Holiness's Toothpick is missing, and you are the only one who has the key to that room!"

"Sir, if you want a toothpick, we have plenty over here..."

"Are you messing with me?" The knight grabs the handle of his sword by his waist, with a swing, the sword blade pass through the air where the inn keeper was a second ago. "What?"

"You shouldn't blame others for your mistake." A [Lv32 Lacertian] is standing beside the inn keeper who is now a step away from where he was.

The people in the bar, who were simply watching, are now speaking among themselves.

"Such Speed." "That's at least 30 Speed." "Are you kidding? I could only see a green blur." "There wasn't any sound, so a DEX Speedster?"

"Hey, do you know what is your brother's Speed?" A brown haired human asks a different lizard who is sitting with him in the bar.

"More than fiffff... Five times ten." The other lizard hardly answers with a whisper.

"I don't really want to imagine how people with higher Speed than that would move." The man says then turns to look at the lizard by the counter.

The lizard and the knight are still glaring at each other. Judging from the lizard's speed, the knight know he wouldn't have much hope hitting this lizard without going all out, and doing that for this simple problem would ruin the Holy Knight's image in the civilian. However, he couldn't just let this go.

"You are fast.. Are you a Thief?" He suddenly asks in a deep tone, trying to frighten the lizard.

"Oh, I have Green scale, obviously a Ranger." He says then turns to other people in the bar like seeking confirmation.

"Yeah, I heard Green Lacertian are either Druid or Ranger." A soft voice coming over from the bar's direction.

"See? You shouldn't try to shift the blame to other people like that."

The knight grumbles then was dragged up the stair by his comrade.

"That's right." "Let's search together again."

After seeing the knights disappear from sight and receiving a thanks from the inn keeper, the lizard returns to his table.

"I couldn't stand seeing someone get hurt because of us." Argon sits down then explains himself softly.

"Do you think they would find Glutton?" Rector glances at the stair from a far and asks.

"Trust my brother's magic." Argon says and glances at Neon who is finishing his breakfast, some dried fishes on a dish.

Last night, they had a drink again, but in their room and with Glutton. Neither head of the huge two-headed wolf spirit could drink; while Neon, as usual, drank a lot and fell asleep like dead. This morning, while Neon was still sleeping, Rector and Argon ordered breakfast to their room, for Glutton too.

"You liz.. Lacertian seem to love fishes. I remember you said the reason to fight Glutton was because of some fishes."

"Crunchy Bug. Swimmy Fisshess~" Neon sings quietly.

"I told you to eat more Vegetable, or you are going to turn black!" Argon jests.

"Brother!" Neon raises his voice like a little brother being bullied.

"Haha, you two are funny."

"Awww." Neon acts like a child again.

"Quickly finish your meal. We have work to do today." Argon grumbles.

Rector looks toward the window, seemingly feel the storm coming.