A few days after the raid at the governor’s garden, we decided to leave Newron and finally head towards Lanport.

We made sure to give Lewis enough time to recover his injuries and allow everyone else to rest as well.

We headed out early in the morning as it would take about two days journey to reach Lanport, according to Lewis at least.

On the journey, Lewis, Tal, Mun, and Chris ended up joining.

“Hey, Din, so what does Lorelei look like anyways?” Mun asked.

“Huh?” I asked. Then I realized that nobody here had actually seen me.

Din stopped for a moment and inspected me.

“You don’t need to look that closely, Din,” I said. “You already know what I look like, right?”

“Hmmm…”

For some reason, Din was really staring at me. I tried hiding my embarrassment by covering my mouth, but it was no use. I’m sure anyone could see how embarrassed I was.

Well, everyone aside from Din, who was still staring at me intensely.

“Um, Din, if you could not stare at me like that, I’d appreciate it.”

“Hold on just a second,” Din said and then only after that, he nodded. “She’s just the same as usual.”

“What?” Tal asked.

“Well, aside from her Spirit eyes, she still looks the same as before,” Din claimed confidently.

Tal held his face as he struggled to understand Din’s answer.

Lewis held Din’s shoulder, “Look, lad. We don’t even know what she looks like in the first place. Couldn’t you just describe her? Like what kind of hair does she have? Is she tall or short? Just regular things like that.”

“I’ve been… curious about her appearance as well,” Chris mentioned.

“Ohhh that’s right, you’ve never met Lorelei before!”

The look everyone gave Din was that of disappointment. Even Mun was giving him the same look.

“Well! She has long black hair and black— I mean, her eyes used to be black, but now they’re white with black everywhere else. She’s a little bit shorter than me. She’s wearing a light blue dress… anything else you’d like to know?”

“Is she the same age as you?” Lewis asked.

“She’s a year younger than me.”

Only by a few months, but I didn’t feel like pointing that out.

“Is she cute?” Mun asked. “Or is she hot?”

This was it.

What did Din really think of me?

He suddenly turned towards me, but this time, I instinctively turned around. There was no way I’d be able to hide my embarrassment, not even from Din.

I waited.

I waited for what felt like eternity before Din finally answered.

“Yeah, she’s cute.”

There it was!

I felt like my heart was about to explode from my chest.

Din thought I was cute!

Lewis even whistled at his comment, to which he received a light slap from Chris.

Were the two of them together? They didn’t seem like they were dating, but it was hard to tell since Chris rarely spoke.

I turned back towards the group.

Tal was scratching his chin while avoiding eye contact with the group, “Does she have big boobs?”

What?!

I couldn’t believe I was wearing that from Tal. I wouldn’t really say I had small—

“No, they’re small,” Din answered.

What?!

“Why, Din,” I started.

“Well, as long as she has a cute face. Small is fine too!” Tal cheered.

“Din, why would you tell him that?” I asked.

Din looked at me with a blank expression, “Why? Should I not have?”

I couldn’t believe this man.

“Oh, right! I forgot to ask,” Din reached into his bag and pulled out a pendant that had a rose engraving on it. “Anybody know what this is? Eliana gave it to me for helping her out. She told me it would help me get a boating pass for free.”

“That’s her family crest,” Tal pointed out.

“Our Boss is a rich lady,” Mun mentioned.

Lewis added, “The biggest reason she was able to start a pack of her own was because of her family name and their fortunes. She had a lot of funding for such a small group and it eventually grew to become what it is now.”

“By just showing that pendant, you prove your alliance with her family so she’s right, we should be able to get a free passage using it,” Tal answered. “I’m surprised she gave it to you though.”

“Yeah, normally, you’d have to do a grand favor for the family to receive their pendant, but what you did was participate in a large group mission. It’s unusual for her to just give that pendant away for that reason. Why do you think that is?” Lewis asked.

“Could be because they helped her figure out the culprit and the location of their lair,” Chris answered.

“Oh that’s right, I guess we didn’t really know where those bastards were hiding. To think the governor was behind it all,” Lewis said.

“Is that really much of a surprise?” Tal asked. “He’s been trying to get rid of packs for a long time now. I guess it just got to the point where he didn’t care how he got rid of pack members as long as they were taken out of the streets and mainly, as long as everyone else was too scared to join a pack.”

Lewis agreed, “You have a point there. Governor White really wanted to get more funding from the king, but he knew that as long as the packs ran Ravenwalt, he’d have no chance of getting any kind of funding.”

“Is there a reason why there are so many packs in Newron?” I asked.

Din repeated my question to the group. It was Tal who answered, “I don’t know too much about it, but I think it had to do with how Newron had so many rich nobles in it. The governor used to lead the city until one day, the nobles just had enough and formed a coup to overthrow the government. With no higher power left in the city, the nobilities started forming groups to support their rulings and it eventually deformed into packs.”

“So it all started with control over power,” I whispered.

“Lanport is a much better place, you won’t have to worry about any power struggles there,” Lewis shared proudly. “The only thing you’d have to watch out for is picking the wrong fights in pubs.”

“Why’s that?” Tal asked.

“Well, Lanport is a famous place for travelers of the sea, which includes pirates as well. We welcome all!”

“We’re going to run into pirates there…?” Tal asked.

“You bet we will. Some of my best buds are from the seas. I can’t wait to meet them again.”

Tal let out a worried laughter.

Paro warned us of pirates in Mesotic, but maybe the ones that visit Lanport won’t be as bad. That was the only thing I could hope for.

I was only glad we decided to take Lewis with us. Having a local will always be nice.

“As long as we keep at it with this pace, we should reach Lanport in about a day and a half,” Lewis pointed out.

“Don’t say that as if a day and a half’s worth of walking isn’t a huge pain,” Tal groaned.

Suddenly, I felt something tighten around my chest. It was getting hard to breath. I looked around to check on the others, but they were walking at the same pace and seemed to be unaffected by it.

This was the first sense of pain I felt ever since my death. What was this sensation?

The closer we moved towards Lanport, the worst the feeling became.